Murder on the Rhône (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries #18)

Chapter 1

The tall Frenchman seemed familiar to me, though at the moment I could not place him. He halted when he caught me staring at him down the narrow street of the Presqu’?le in Lyon, where I walked with my daughter on an early June morning.

The gentleman, who dressed in a simple brown suit and boots for walking, peered at me as though he might recognize me in return, and then he abruptly swung around and began striding in the other direction. Not fleeing, but moving as a man who’d remembered he needed to be elsewhere.

Curious. The gentleman rounded a corner and was lost to sight, and I tucked the incident into the back of my mind.

It would come to me where I’d seen him before.

Possibly in Paris, where I’d lived during the Peace of Amiens at the beginning of this century, or in London, into which French emigres had poured at the end of the last century.

Many had returned home from their exile once the Bourbon king had been restored.

Or, I might have encountered the man on a battlefield. England and France had been at war for such a long time, it would not be unusual for me to come across a Frenchman I’d fought on a teeming field in Spain.

Spying him today meant that we’d both survived.

I turned my attention to the more important venture—shopping with Gabriella, who was determined to find the perfect ribbons to adorn her bridal gown.

She’d been ready to rush out on her own this morning from the house my wife, Donata, had leased for our sojourn, but I’d proclaimed I’d accompany her.

Brewster, who’d been breakfasting in the kitchen, had popped upstairs, his mouth full of toasted bread, but I’d waved him off.

Gabriella and I could navigate a street market without harm, or so I’d believed.

Now my daughter and I strolled the back lanes on this island between Lyon’s two rivers. The early morning markets and shops were thronged with those who knew that if they wanted the choicest wares and foodstuffs they had to reach the vendors as soon as they opened.

Gabriella moved with purpose through the maze to a stall I’d never have found without a precise map and a few days to reconnoiter. The round-faced woman behind it beamed when she saw Gabriella.

“Bonjour, ma petite,” she gushed.

Gabriella responded in her friendly manner, using the polite words a young woman would with a person her senior. Gabriella spoke flawless French, having grown up in this country. I spoke it fairly well myself, though at the moment, Gabriella and the woman segued into words I’d never heard before.

Lyonnais, I told myself. A dialect of the city and its region. I didn’t understand a word of it.

As the two chattered, I took in my surroundings. The air was warm, a change from London, where it had been cold and rainy when we’d departed two weeks ago, spring long in coming.

The vendors in this lane sold everything from ribbons and laces to fat loaves of crusty bread, vegetables in bold greens, reds, and yellows, and sweet pastries glistening with honey.

Voices rose as women bartered with sellers or greeted those they knew.

The scents of the pastries, bread, fruit, and the heady aroma of brewing coffee drifted over me.

Because Gabriella often came to the city with her mother or stepfather, many in the market recognized her. They certainly knew Emile Devere, Gabriella’s betrothed.

Donata and I had been accorded much respect since we’d arrived and moved into the hired villa on the hill. Not because Donata was the daughter of an English earl and widow of a viscount, we’d quickly learned, but because of the Deveres.

Their large family owned an ironworks on the south end of the town, just past where the Rh?ne and Sa?ne rivers met. Donata and I had been given a tour of the factory when we’d arrived, and both of us had been astonished at the extent of it.

The Deveres had been running the business for nearly a century, founded by an ancestor who’d been in the employ of the great Louis the Fourteenth. Apparently the Deveres’ generosity and fair practices had gained them much repute in Lyon and the surrounding countryside.

Gabriella purchased ribbons that pleased her then moved slowly among the stalls, stopping to speak with almost every vendor, who were happy to visit with their favorite young lady this morning.

Knowing from experience that Gabriella would be some time, I stepped into the tavern in which I’d been taking coffee and breakfast most days since our arrival.

I’d made the mistake of ordering a full breakfast upon my first visit, which had consisted of much meat. I’d ended up eating for hours, to the amusement of and with encouragement from the locals. I’d then gone home and napped, unable to do much of anything else for the rest of the day.

Today, I greeted the proprietor, a bulky man called Baptiste Beaumont, with a friendly bonjour, and asked for coffee and with a bit of ham and bread.

I nodded to the other gentlemen in the shop’s dim interior. They were here every morning and had somewhat accepted me as a regular. But only, I’d soon realized, because my daughter was marrying a Devere.

Emile had never once boasted to me how well-regarded his family was, which made me view him with a bit more respect.

I exchanged a few pleasantries with the men while I sipped my coffee, but mostly we sat in agreeable silence.

When the commotion began outside, I started up in alarm, but fortunately it came from nowhere near Gabriella. I saw from the open doorway that she still wandered the stalls, too deep among the vendors to notice the noise.

I and a few of the others followed our curiosity out of Beaumont’s shop and through lanes to emerge on the main square, from which the tumult emanated.

Napoleon Bonaparte had begun the restoration of this square twenty years ago, and it was now a vast, open plaza ringed with new buildings.

Once called the Place Royale and adorned with a statue of the Sun King, it was now officially Place Bonaparte, though most I spoke to still referred to it as the Place Royale.

With another Louis back on the throne, it seemed safe once more to use the old name.

The din came from a throng of people chasing a woman and two sturdy male servants, all three of whom sprinted for a waiting carriage. The woman’s fine frock and cloak fluttered as she ran, the mob closing in fast.

The coachman couldn’t pull nearer to the lady and her protectors because another knot of people caught at the horses. The coachman stood on his box and plied his whip without mercy to those reaching for the reins, but even so, his conveyance could not move.

I and my inquisitive friends halted at the edge of the square while the horde of pursuers swept past. I saw, caught up in the mob and striving to leave it, another of the Deveres.

This was Fernand, one of Emile’s uncles. Emile had three of those, all on his father’s side. I’d met two thus far—Fernand and Giraud—plus Emile’s father Auguste, a quiet man who spoke little English.

Fernand spoke it fairly fluently, and also German, as he sometimes went to London or Stuttgart to meet with those who sold the goods the Deveres turned out in their factory.

I stepped into the crowd, seized Fernand, and pulled him from the melee.

Fernand struggled before he recognized me, then he slumped in relief and let me tow him to safety. We caught our breaths beside a sun-drenched wall on the edge of the square, me leaning heavily on my walking stick.

“What on earth is happening?” I asked him. “Who are they chasing?”

Fernand, who stood a foot shorter than me and sported a soft belly from eating many a fine supper, rested his hands on his knees as he wheezed.

“Signora Ruggeri,” he said when he could. “The most hated woman in Lyon.”

“Signora?” I repeated, my brows rising.

“She is from Padua, or claims to be.” Fernand straightened as his breath became steadier. “She is the mistress of the Comte Lejeune.”

I had heard Donata mention the name—she seemed to know every highborn family in Lyon—but I’d never met the man.

Signora Ruggeri had by now managed to reach the carriage, but the crowd closed in as she wrenched open its door. The signora screamed as hands reached to drag her from the coach’s step.

I started forward, unwilling to stand by and watch a woman be beaten to death. There was a sword inside the walking stick’s sheath, which I could use to warn people out of my way.

Fernand caught my arm before I could take two steps.

“No, mon ami. Her coachman was a prizefighter and ferocious enough to protect her. You see?”

The coachman continued to apply his whip without remorse to the men and women surrounding him. He discouraged enough of her pursuers to allow the two muscular servants to shove the lady into the carriage and slam the door.

The servants leapt onto the back of the coach as the coachman urged his team forward, scattering those who tried to stop him. The large vehicle hurtled out of the plaza and into one of the narrow streets beyond.

Some pursued, but as the carriage gained speed, they drifted back to the square, disgruntled and muttering.

“Never lift a finger to help that woman,” Fernand advised me. “Else you become the most hated man in Lyon.”

“Good Lord, what has she done that is so horrible? All I saw was a lady trying to reach her carriage and a crowd ready to murder her.”

“What hasn’t she done?” Fernand answered, shaking his head. “Come, we will sit, and I will tell you the tale.”