Chapter 5
I planted my walking stick squarely in front of me, liking the sound of the blade rattling inside it.
“Why should I believe you?” I answered in French.
Moreau carefully laid the knife on the cobbles and rose once more. “You have no reason to.”
He did recognized me. I saw it in his eyes. We studied each other warily.
What did I say to a man who’d once let his soldiers torture me, and then walked away, leaving me for dead? I’d made it home by luck and sheer determination, and I saw him register shock that I now stood before him. He must have thought I was a ghost when he’d caught sight of me yesterday.
The pair of us might have stared at each other all day, had not Brewster lumbered up beside me.
“Bloody hell. What the devil have ye done now?”
“I didn’t kill the man,” I said at once.
“Nor did I.” Moreau said, continuing in English. “I swear on my life, I found him here.”
“Well, then ye should walk away.” Brewster directed the command at both of us. “’Twill be nothing to do with ye, will it?”
Neither Moreau nor I moved. “We should summon les gendarmes,” Moreau said reluctantly.
“I agree,” I said.
Brewster’s eyes widened. “You mean the police what go about in military uniforms? They’ll arrest us, guv, since we’re foreign. I can’t be taken to a French nick. I’ll never see me Em again.”
I could not say that Brewster was wrong. The three of us were conveniently standing over the body of a man who’d been murdered, and police of any country were happy with an easy solution. Moreau, a well-regarded colonel, might talk his way out of it, but Brewster and I would be fair game.
“What happened?” I asked Moreau sharply. “What did you see?”
He continued to respond in English, no matter that I questioned him in French.
“I saw nothing. I was walking from the square to cross the river, and found him here on the bridge. I thought the man drunk, unconscious, and I leaned over him to discover if he was well. I saw the knife and picked it up …”
“A foolish thing to do, but it can’t be helped,” I said. “Where do we seek the gendarmes? We should summon them before anyone else comes.”
Moreau gave me a grim nod. “I will fetch them. Wait here.”
He jogged off across the bridge toward the Presqu’?le, leaving us with the dead Signor Gallo.
“He’s legged it.” Brewster glared after Moreau’s retreating figure. “We should too, guv. He’s not coming back.”
“I think he will, somehow.”
Moreau had been stunned but not panicked, more concerned for procedure than distancing himself from the incident. He’d been this coolly efficient on the night he and his soldiers had altered my life forever.
It was too late for Brewster and me to retreat, in any case.
The Pont Tilsit, named for the Treaty of Tilsit during which Napoleon and the Russian Czar had carved up Europe between them—a treaty that had not sustained, needless to say—was a major crossing of the Sa?ne.
It had been empty this soon after sunrise, but townspeople were now making for the bridge from either direction, pausing to see what was happening.
Fernand Devere was among them.
“Isn’t that Signor Gallo?” he asked, aghast, when he reached me. “My God, who killed him?”
“I imagine the police will wonder that as well,” I said. “But yes, it is Gallo. The paramour of Signora Ruggeri, is he not? Or former paramour, I suppose.”
Fernand continued to regard the dead man in abject horror. I studied him curiously, wondering why he was so affected. Surprise and pity was natural for the poor fellow sprawled at our feet, his dark eyes staring sightlessly at the sky, but Fernand’s face was tight with shock.
“Do you have any idea who could have done this?” I asked him.
Fernand whipped around to stare at me, his pupils becoming pinpricks. “No. Of course not. Why would—” He broke off as Colonel Moreau reappeared on the far side of the bridge, several men in uniform behind him. “I must go. I must—”
His last words followed him as he hastened back the way he’d come, to disappear into the narrow streets of the west bank.
The men and women who’d gathered around quickly moved aside as Moreau led the gendarmes to Gallo’s body, some quietly fading into the nearby lanes.
The lead gendarme, in a dark blue coat, removed his tall hat and tucked it under his arm.
His high boots over tan breeches held no dust at all, as though he spent every morning polishing them to a sheen.
His hair, which held threads of gray, and was thinning over the top of his head, which I saw clearly as he bent over the body.
The silver braid on one epaulet told me he was a captain, if the insignias hadn’t changed since I was last in France.
He gave Gallo’s body a hard once-over, noting the wound and the knife that Moreau had laid down next to him. The captain nodded at his underlings, one of whom covered dead man’s rigid limbs with a cloak, mercifully hiding his staring eyes.
The captain straightened up, shaking his head. “Signor Vincenzo Gallo. The surprise is not that he is dead but that he escaped murder for so long. He was a nuisance to many. This is the English officer who found him?”
He directed the question at Moreau, his blue eyes holding both curiosity and patience.
Moreau darted a glance at me. “I found him first,” he said stiffly. “The Englishman came upon me only moments later.”
The gendarme faced me, fixing his hat more securely under his arm. “I have little English,” he said, forcing the words out in that language.
“D’accord,” I answered. “I speak French fairly well.”
“Bien,” the gendarme answered, reverting to his native tongue in relief.
“I have never been out of France, except during the war, and spent the whole of it in Austria, where French is widely spoken. I have often considered learning another language but have never come around to it. I am Captain Vernet, in charge of this area of Lyon. You are?”
“Captain Gabriel Lacey,” I bowed. “At your service.”
Vernet nodded. “I am pleased to hear it. Why are you in Lyon?”
He asked me congenially, as though a dead body did not lie at our feet. His men, a lieutenant and a sergeant, stood quietly, waiting for their captain’s next command.
“My daughter is marrying a gentleman of the area,” I answered. “Emile Devere.”
“Ah, a Devere.” Vernet sounded impressed. “My felicitations, Captain.” He turned to Moreau, his nod deferential for a man of superior rank. “Colonel. Please tell me what you saw here.”
“Not very much,” Moreau answered without hesitation. “Gallo lying on the bridge. Found the knife covered in blood, Gallo stabbed. I would guess murdered in the dark as he crossed the bridge last night or very early this morning.”
“Followed by a cutpurse, ready to steal his money?” Vernet pondered.
“Possibly,” Moreau said. “He was not a young man who took care, from what I have observed.”
Vernet swung to me. “Captain? You agree?”
“Was he robbed?” I asked. “His clothing appears undisturbed.”
Vernet gazed down at Gallo’s fine cashmere trousers sticking out from under the cloak. “True, but a skilled pickpocket can rob a man blind without moving a thread.”
“If the pickpocket was so skilled, why bother murdering him?” I asked.
The corners of Vernet’s mouth quirked upward, almost a smile. “That is a question I will be asking myself. Did you see anyone else here, Captain, besides the colonel?”
“No,” I had to say. “But I doubt the colonel was responsible. His actions were of a man trying to discover what had happened, not one gloating over a victim.”
Moreau gave me a sideways glance. His eyes were a light shade of gray, which I remembered from that faraway day. He clearly wondered why I hadn’t claimed I’d seen him kill Gallo so Vernet would have his men march him off in chains.
But I had to be fair. Moreau was guilty of supervising my torture, yes, and I’d readily accuse him of that, but I couldn’t be certain that he murdered Gallo.
“Also, Colonel Moreau has no blood on him,” I continued.
The blood on the stones under Gallo was dark and dried, not fresh, and the blood on the knife was the same. If Moreau had stabbed the man some time ago—long enough for his blood to dry—why wait or return to be found over the body?
Vernet made a noise of acknowledgement. “I thank you for your observations, sir. The colonel is a highly respected citizen of Lyon, and I doubt he has turned into a mad killer overnight. You, however, Captain, I do not know, so please do not leave the city until I conclude my investigation.”
I made him a bow. “I am lodging in a villa on the hill. I must go to the village of Saint-Jean at the end of next week for my daughter’s wedding, but otherwise, I am at your disposal.”
“I am certain I can either clear your name or arrest you within that time,” Vernet said with confidence.
He gestured to his men and gave them a brusque order to remove Gallo from the bridge. The lieutenant, a man in his twenties at most, repeated this command to the sergeant with impatience.
The sergeant, a thin man with a sour face, scowled at the younger lieutenant but lifted Gallo’s booted legs while the lieutenant lifted the man under his arms. The two, with the body, shuffled to the island side of the bridge, then filed into a narrow street, and were gone.
Vernet slapped on his hat. “You are likely right, Colonel Moreau. Gallo walked imprudently home alone in the dark and was followed and killed for what little coins he had in his purse. He did not hide the fact that his mistress bestowed handsome gifts on him, which probably came originally from her comte lover.”
“Gallo was at the Comtesse Lejeune’s chateau last evening,” I said as Vernet began to turn away.
Vernet swung smartly back to me. “Was he? And how do you know this, Captain?”
“I was there myself. He caused a scene at the door, before several guards, including my man here, escorted him out the gates.” I indicated Brewster, who was pretending to be a stone.
“Did they?” Vernet’s eyes lit with interest. “How far did you escort the gentleman?” he asked Brewster.
I translated, and Brewster scowled. “I didn’t kill the bloke. What for? We dragged him to the edge of the path that led down the hill and pushed him onto it. He took to his heels right quick. Couldn’t get away from us fast enough.”
I relayed this to Vernet, whose eyes narrowed as he listened. Then he shrugged. “I will speak to the comte’s guards. I am sure it happened as your man says.”
He pretended nonchalance, but I detected the shrewdness in him. Vernet was not a man who would brush off this murder, write by unknown cutpurse in his report, and go home to put up his feet.
“Good day to you, Colonel. Captain.” Vernet saluted each of us in turn, nodded at Brewster, then turned and walked briskly in the direction his men had taken.
People drifted out of his way, a few greeting him reluctantly when he acknowledged them.
Brewster scowled at me. “I hope you haven’t landed me in it, guv. There were no need to bring up the man being at the comte’s palace or me giving him a hard shove down the hill.”
Moreau answered before I could. “There was need. Someone could have followed Gallo from the comte’s villa and decided to end his life.”
“The footmen and guards were happy to be rid of him,” Brewster said. “But none followed him. They had good drink in their barracks. Decent ale. I thought all Frenchies drank wine.”
“There are several fine breweries near Lyon,” Moreau answered without inflection. “Captain, perhaps we can have a word?”
The hesitation in his voice told me he’d had to work himself up to the suggestion.
“Of course,” I said. “There is a coffee house yonder.” I pointed across the bridge in the direction of Beaumont’s tavern.
“No,” Moreau answered decidedly. “In the Place.”
On a wide open ground where all could see us, he meant.
“Of course,” I said, and gestured for him to lead the way.