Chapter 12
Moreau regarded us for a long moment, saying nothing.
The three of us might have frozen there for an age, waiting for one another to break the silence, if Emile had not popped around me to see what was happening.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Emile said to Moreau in true ingenuousness. “We did not mean to disturb you. Are you thinking of taking the rooms?”
I ended my unmoving stance. “I’m certain the colonel already has much better accommodation.”
“What’s he want here?” Brewster demanded of me in English. “Is that Gallo’s things he’s pawing through?”
“Perhaps the colonel will tell us,” I said, not bothering to translate to French. I knew Moreau understood me well enough.
To Moreau’s credit, he did not try to invent an excuse or an obvious lie. He quietly closed the lid of the trunk and faced us without flinching.
“I am looking for something that belongs to me.”
“Oh, dear,” Emile said. “Was Signor Gallo blackmailing you as well?”
Moreau stared at him, clearly uncertain how to respond.
“We have learned Gallo tried his hand at extorting money from others,” I told him. “A dangerous undertaking.”
Moreau flicked his gaze between me, Emile, and Brewster once more. “It is as you say,” he admitted in English. “He had a letter that I should not like to be read by the wrong person. Or, at least, he claimed to have it. I’ve found nothing here.”
“The gendarmes must have already searched,” I said.
“They did but only cursorily.” At my surprised expression, Moreau continued.
“I was Sergeant Dubois’s commanding officer for a time during the war.
He told me that Vernet sent them to make a quick search, looking for obvious things, such as a sign the murderer had been here, or indication of who Gallo might have met that night. ”
“Good, then there might be summat to find,” Brewster said. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything,” I replied. “Letters, papers, ledgers, books. Who knows what information Gallo collected?”
“Right.” Brewster moved past Moreau, who pivoted to keep a close eye on him. “Give me a hand, lad.”
Emile had remained bewildered during the exchange, but he readily went to Brewster’s side. Brewster ignored the sitting room’s sparse furnishings—table and chair, plain armoire, settee with sagging cushions, and the trunk Moreau had been searching, and went to the wall nearest the single window.
There he began softly tapping the window’s wooden molding and pushing at the looser bricks in the wall next to it. Emile caught on and did the same on the opposite side of the window.
Moreau watched them a moment before he turned back to me. “I cannot reveal to you what I am looking for, or show you if I find it.”
“I would not expect you to,” I said. “A man’s private correspondence is his business.”
Moreau frowned, as though wondering if I needled him, but he pressed his lips together and opened the trunk once more.
I bent over it myself, curious. Gallo’s belongings were meager—a few pairs of boots, a heavy coat tucked away for summer, and trinkets he must have obtained on his travels.
Moreau turned up snuffboxes with rusting hinges, a flask to hold brandy or other liqueur, and one small, paper-covered tome that proved to be a book of devotions in Italian.
Moreau opened a square wooden box he found in the bottom of the trunk and drew a sharp breath.
Inside lay jewels, small pieces like bracelets, single earrings, and thin necklaces, most made of gold and studded with glittering stones. None could match the stunning compositions I’d seen on the necks and wrists of ladies at the comtesse’s soiree, but they would be costly nonetheless.
“The man was a petty thief,” Moreau said in distaste.
I felt Brewster behind me, craning to peek inside the jewelry box.
“Looks like he were a dipper,” was his conclusion.
“Those are things you can slide off a wrist or an ear while you’re chatting with a lady.
Nothing she’d notice gone until later, so she might think she dropped it somewhere. Nasty bloke, weren’t he?”
“It seems so,” I agreed. “If there was some way to identify these pieces, we could return them to the ladies in question.”
Brewster gave me one of his disbelieving stares.
“You plan to lay them out at your lady wife’s next gathering and ask her guests to pick up which are theirs?
They’d have to admit they let this Gallo cove get close enough to them to steal it.
No, they’ll be happier to have them stay lost, I’ll wager. ”
“You might be right,” I said with a sigh. “A pity to let him get away with it, though.”
Moreau studied me with some reassessment. “It seems the man ‘got away’ with much, as you say.”
“Which broadens the number of people who might have murdered him,” I said.
“A jealous husband to one of the ladies whose earring lies here? One of the ladies herself, not best pleased with him? Another man or woman whose letters he stole? Might be the whole of Lyon, or anyone who followed him from the last city he was in.”
“Does it matter?” Moreau asked me, as Brewster went back to poking at the walls. “A greedy and cunning man is dead and can no longer cause trouble. Why should you worry about which of his victims killed him?”
“To prevent the wrong person from being convicted and executed for the crime,” I stated.
“Emile’s cousin nearly went down for it , and I will do my best to keep another innocent from paying.
Besides, it might have been a madman, randomly stabbing people on the Pont Tilsit. Should we not stop him, if so?”
Moreau frowned. “That is what the gendarmes are for.”
“Give up trying to argue with him, mate,” Brewster advised from the window. “He’ll go on and on about honor and lending a hand-up to those what need it, whether they want said hand-up or not.”
“Thank you, Brewster,” I said in a mild tone. “Let us continue searching for what we need to find, shall we?”
Brewster shook his head, muttering under his breath.
“Ah.” Emile exclaimed in satisfaction. “This one is moving.”
Mortar grated as Emile jerked at a brick, debris flaking from it to the floor.
“Easy lad.” Brewster brushed Emile’s hands aside, wrapped his giant fingers around the brick, and gently eased it out of the wall.
Once it came free, Brewster set it carefully on the windowsill then leaned to peer into the crevice.
“Huh,” he said. “Nothing.”
Emile crouched to peer inside. “He is correct,” he said in disappointment.
I believed them, but for some reason I had to limp to the wall and look for myself. The niche was the same depth as the window embrasure next to it, but it held nothing, not even dust or scattered mortar.
“Something must have been inside,” I observed. “Taken out, probably recently, or it would not be so clean. But by whom? Gallo himself? The gendarmes? Or people like us, searching for the secrets he collected?”
None of the three could answer me.
Emile continued to wriggle bricks on the other side of the window, hoping for another hollow, but Brewster abandoned it and moved to the fireplace. He tested bricks there, his gloves soon covered with soot.
I opened the interior door that stood next to the armoire, and entered the bedchamber.
This room was very small, with a tiny window high in the wall, more for ventilation than light. There was only enough space here for the bed and a table beside it.
Dusk had completely faded by now, rendering the room dark.
I found a candle on the bedside table, but I had no way to light it.
In past days, I’d have carried a small piece of flint and a steel with me, in case I needed to strike a spark.
I’d gone soft, I realized, living in homes where candles and fires were always lit for me.
I returned to the outer room, where Moreau, more practical than me, had managed to light three candles, filling the air with the rancid odor of tallow.
I took one without a word and continued my search of the bedchamber.
What I turned up was not helpful. The gendarmes had obviously rifled the bedside table, which was where Gallo had kept his small clothes and a chamber pot.
The last had been emptied, mercifully, but his underthings had been tossed about and then left haphazardly in the drawer.
I went through them, but found nothing tucked underneath or inside any of the clothes.
The rumpled state of the bed told me that the gendarmes had likely thrown back all the covers and searched under the straw mattress. I did the same, and even went so far as to go lower myself painfully to the floor and slide under the bed.
I found no interesting books or papers tucked under the bed’s slats or behind the headboard.
I was still lying in the dust under the bed when Brewster called out.
“Found summat.”
I shoved myself into the open, climbing stiffly to my feet. Emile popped inside to find me and help me stand.
“Thank you,” I told him as I brushed off the coat Bartholomew would shake his head over. “Nothing in here that I can see.”
“Not much here either,” Brewster said as I emerged. He held out two folded papers, their creases soiled. Each had once been sealed with wax, but those seals had been broken.
Moreau tried to snatch them from Brewster’s hand, but Brewster sidestepped him and opened one. The three of us crowded around to see what he unfolded.
It was a letter, written in a neat hand, but I couldn’t read the words from my vantage point.
“It’s foreign,” Brewster announced. “But not French.”
“Italian, perhaps.” I held out my hand and Brewster relinquished the letter.
The language was indeed Italian, I saw, recognizing some words. I’d learned more of it during my recent journey to Rome, but I wasn’t fluent.
Moreau nearly breathed down my neck as he read over my shoulder. He must have been more familiar with the language, because he soon shook his head and turned away.
“Not what I am searching for,” he said. “What is the other paper?”
I slid the letter into my pocket. Vernet’s men had missed it—I saw the bricks Brewster had pulled out of the back of the fireplace scattered on the hearth.
I pondered whether I should turn it over to the gendarmes, but I decided I’d see what was in it first. Grenville could read and speak Italian well, though the letter might be written in a dialect neither of us knew.
Brewster had already unfolded the other paper. It was much crumpled, as though someone had scrunched it up in fury, then either they or someone else had carefully smoothed it again. Brewster frowned at it then handed it to me.
The page was blank except for two printed words, which I read out: “Lucien Potier.” The name was underlined heavily, three times.
“Who’s that bloke when ’e’s at home?” Brewster asked.
“No idea,” I said. “Emile?”
Emile shook his head. “I’ve never heard the name, that I recall, anyway.”
Moreau was frowning, but he gave no indication that he knew the name either.
I tucked this paper into my pocket as well. “I’d like to learn more before I give these to Vernet,” I said. “I’d hate to drop someone in it, if Gallo was blackmailing them for an embarrassing sin.”
“Might have killed Gallo for it,” Brewster reminded me.
“Possibly, but if every blackmail victim had run after Gallo and stabbed him, there would have been quite a crowd on that bridge. Let me find out if whoever these belong to are dangerous people or simply unlucky, before I consult Vernet.”
Brewster found this perfectly reasonable, as did Emile.
Moreau remained more uncomfortable. I wasn’t certain whether Frenchmen more readily left things to the authorities than we did in England, or if they, like Londoners, were perfectly happy to chase down a thief and haul him to a magistrate themselves.
Moreau finally gave me a nod. “It shall be as you say. If someone found what I am looking for, I’d be grateful if he returned it to me instead of reporting to the gendarmes.”
“Will you now tell me what you seek?” I asked. “It might help me to know what it is if I come across it.”
“I doubt you will, but very well. It is a letter, in French. Not from me or about me—I am here on behalf of a friend.”
Moreau must think highly of this friend if he risked being caught searching a dead man’s rooms. The fact that he decided to trust me, more or less, told me he was growing desperate enough to enlist help.
“I will bring you anything I find,” I promised. “Where do you reside?”
“In the Rue Saint-Jean in Vieux Lyon,” Moreau told me. “I have rooms in a house near the cathedral.”
“You may send word to me at Beaumont’s wine shop, where I breakfast every morning.
Or find me at the villa my wife hired,” I added with a self-disparaging smile.
“I had the good fortune to marry a wealthy lady who wishes to travel in comfort. I at one time lived in something very like the rooms in which we stand.” I glanced at the bare and mold-flecked walls.
“Our fortunes ebb and flow,” Moreau said without changing expression.
I wondered if he meant his fortunes had also ebbed and flowed or if he made a polite observation.
“Nothing else here,” Brewster said with conviction. “Found other hidden nooks and crannies, but except for those two papers, they were empty.”
“Which means the gendarmes were more thorough than we thought,” I said.
“They missed the box of jewels,” Emile pointed out.
“They must not have thought them important,” I said.
Brewster shook his head. “None’s as thorough as me. What it means, guv, is that our Signor Gallo had another hiding place, one that the gendarmes won’t know nothing about.”