Chapter 21
Madame Paillard’s declaration rang into sudden silence.
Here was a woman would could be aggressive when need be, I decided, taking in her rapid breathing, her brown eyes flashing fire.
A placid matron, she was not.
I hoped she did not mean she’d murdered Gallo herself—in a fit of rage, perhaps encountering him on the bridge early on the morning of his death. This would fit my theory of a person killing him in fury, then fleeing in shock at what they’d done.
I saw the same idea occur to Moreau, or it might have already done so when he’d stumbled across Gallo’s body.
Madame Paillard removed a thin handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her cheeks with it. “Forgive me, gentlemen. I am a bit distressed over all this, as you can imagine.”
“We will find your letter,” I assured her. “We are leaving no stone unturned. I have the best thief in Christendom to help me.”
Madame Paillard started, lowering the handkerchief. “Good heavens. Do you mean that large man Nico has told me about? Is my silver safe?”
“He long ago gave up that way of life.” More or less, I added silently.
“He is welcome to all my plate if he can find my letter,” she proclaimed. “Except for the largest platter in the dining room. That was given to my great grand-mère by Louis the Fifteenth.”
When I raised my brows, uncertain whether she was serious, Madame Paillard laughed.
“She was not his official mistress, by any means. Great grand-mère struck the king’s fancy when she visited Versailles, and she was wise enough to gain what she could from his brief infatuation.
She bought this house from the proceeds of what he gave her and left it to my mother, who left it to me. ”
I lifted my coffee cup. “To the sagacity of your great grand-mère.”
“Thank you.” Madame Paillard said. “I do not come from a long line of courtesans, Captain, in spite of my unfortunate affaire when I was younger. Just resourceful women who knew their own minds.”
“Enchanting ones, as well,” I said.
“He is kind,” Madame Paillard said to Moreau. “Kind and charming. What a remarkable gentleman.”
I could well understand why Moreau highly regarded her.
He’d told me that Madame Paillard’s father had been killed by Potier and that she and her mother and others of her family had fled the city for a time. This house had obviously been spared the threatened destruction—perhaps because of Comtesse Lejeune’s intervention.
“I am sorry for your earlier troubles,” I said. “The colonel explained the heinous things Potier did.”
Madame Paillard gave me a nod. “I asked him to tell you, so you would understand. No one in Lyon speaks of him, because the memories are too fresh. Twenty-five years is not so long a time.
I agreed. I had realized, as I grew older, that decades could pass in the blink of an eye.
“I will say nothing more about him,” I promised. “I have no wish to be ejected from town, with my daughter’s wedding approaching.”
“Yes, you cannot miss that,” Madame Paillard said. “Marrying a Devere will see her well cared for. They have more put by than most people know. They are worth far more than the aristocrats on the hill, but those are the times now.”
“I am glad to hear it,” I said. “I would not like Gabriella to live in poverty.”
“She certainly will not, as long as the Deveres behave themselves. They can sometimes be a bit arrogant, knowing not many will oppose them, though Fernand keeps them reined in well.”
“I think I have blundered with Fernand,” I confessed. “His friendliness toward me has vanished, but I made the mistake of mentioning Monsieur Potier.”
“He will come around,” Madame Paillard decreed. “Once he regains his temper and realizes you spoke from ignorance.”
Fernand’s reaction troubled me even more in light of Grenville’s revelation that Potier had never reached Paris.
I had written an inquiry about Potier myself a few days ago, to a man who seemed to know everything about everyone, everywhere.
Even if Denis had never heard of Potier, he had the resources to discover all information about him.
“Humble yourself to Fernand Devere,” Madame Paillard suggested. “If you wish to keep the peace. He likes to rule his own world.”
“I have noted that,” I said. “Those in the ironworks seem devoted to him.” I thought of Michel, who watched me so closely whenever I appeared.
“They are,” Madame Paillard agreed. “It is one reason why they’ve been so successful. That and selling their wares to everyone in Lyon.”
“As well as England and Stuttgart,” I added. “Fernand travels much.”
“He does.” Madame Paillard said the words quickly, as though she no longer wanted to speak of him. “You did not finish telling me what you thought of Lyon, Captain. I am always interested in an outsider’s opinion.”
“I like many things about it.” I realized she wanted to change the topic, and so I relayed how I enjoyed the markets and taking coffee and breakfast in Beaumont’s shop. I also admired the views from our villa, and the Roman ruins so casually strewn over the Fourvière hill.
“We are proud of our history,” Madame Paillard said when I’d finished. “We were a thriving civilization when Paris was only a barbarian settlement on a little island in the Seine.”
“London wasn’t even that,” I said. “According to my friend Grenville, who is an avid historian, even our native Celts did not live in London until the Romans came.”
The conversation turned to history, of which Madame Paillard knew much, and I knew a little. Colonel Moreau occasionally put in an opinion or pointed out a fact, but he was content to listen to his lady.
I recalled what he’d said to me when I’d asked why they hadn’t married. Our arrangement, it suits us. I could see that it did.
The pair were comfortable with each other, each putting in words when the other ran out of them. They exchanged fond looks when they did.
This house was decidedly Madame Paillard’s home, one she allowed Moreau to share with her when he was not in his own lodgings.
She did not mention a husband, though a small painting of a man in military uniform, who was not Moreau, reposed on the mantelpiece.
He could not be one of her sons, because the style of hair and uniform were ones from decades past.
In any case, Moreau was content for Madame Paillard to have her place, which he visited as he wished. They had closeness and their own lives at the same time.
I spent a pleasant afternoon in the cozy abode, finding myself glad for Moreau that he’d found such contentedness after the horrors of war. There had been far too much bleakness to go around.
When it was time to depart, I found myself reluctant to go. I was relaxed, filled with coffee and pastries, and wanted nothing more than to lean back and nap.
I bowed over Madame Paillard’s hand when she rose to say her farewells, thanked her for her hospitality, and let Moreau lead me to the door.
“I wonder that you were in a hurry to become an officer,” I told him as we paused on the house’s doorstep. “But not surprised you wished to return home.”
Moreau gave me a nod. “She had married the man arranged for her just before I left Lyon, which is why I so readily departed.”
“I congratulate you on your current happiness,” I said. “We all deserve such a thing.”
“As you say, Captain.” Moreau bowed to me, and I returned the bow with more respect. “Good afternoon.”
“Bonne journée,” I responded. I tipped my hat and stepped into the street, leaving Moreau to withdraw to the pleasantness within.
Brewster joined me as I neared the square, noticeably without the ledger. I trusted that he’d found a safe place for it, but I did not offend him by asking him where.
“I stepped into the downstairs of the lady’s house while you was learning things upstairs.” Brewster patted his belly. “I stayed in that kitchen any longer, I’d not have been able to fit out the door. Their cook is a dab hand.”
“Indeed, I noticed.”
“Where to now, guv?”
“We ought to take a brisk walk after our repast, but I more have in mind a saunter home to rest.”
“Aye,” Brewster agreed with a short laugh. “Below stairs all worship the mistress of the house,” he reported as he fell into step beside me. “Didn’t like me asking too many questions.”
“She is a congenial lady,” I said with sincerity. “I quite liked her.”
“They didn’t think much of her husband. Threw in his lot with the new regime after the siege, probably so they wouldn’t kill him.
Lady and the rest of her family got out of the city, but he stayed.
Servants didn’t like to say so, but they hinted he had a hand in some of the arrests.
He died right after Bonaparte came through, but not because he was punished for his sins.
He caught a fever that carried him off.”
“Perhaps he was being punished for his sins.”
“Could be.” Brewster shrugged. “They’re happy with that colonel, though. Say everything got cheery again when he came back from war.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “Peace is a fine thing.”
“Never understood you gents’ way of shaking hands with your enemy. I beat mine down, and they leave me be.”
“But they respect you, do they not? It is much the same thing.”
“Suppose.” Brewster shook his head but did not press the matter.
When we reached the square, I caught sight of Captain Vernet striding through it. He likewise spied me and approached. Pedestrians drifted from his path without appearing to, opening a way between us.
“Captain,” Vernet greeted me with a tip of his hat.
“Captain,” I said in return, keeping to French. “A fair afternoon, is it not?”
“Bit warm for my taste,” Vernet said. “I hear you have been wandering Lyon, searching rooms and houses and the like.”
His tone remained pleasant, but I heard a note of irritation in it.
“I have no intention of treading on your toes, Captain,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I was trying to make certain you cleared young Monsieur Devere of any suspicion.”
“I released him immediately,” Vernet sounded annoyed that I’d not believe he did. “Claude Devere is an impetuous young man, but no killer, I think. You can cease making a case for him. I am looking elsewhere.”
The way Vernet clamped his lips shut told me he was not going to tell me who he suspected of the murder now.
“I am amazed there were no witnesses to Gallo’s death,” I said. “It was very late—or early—so the streets might have been deserted, of course. But surely someone must have seen who killed the man. A chance glance out of a window, perhaps.”
Vernet snorted a laugh. “There might have been a hundred witnesses, but none are going to come forward, are they? Look around you.”
A glance showed me that the people in the square had cleared a wide circle around us, none wanting to have anything to do with the gendarmes. Brewster himself had wandered away, keeping an eye on me while ostensibly examining wares at a vendor’s cart on the edge of the square.
“Gallo was an outsider,” I said. “You believe that, if they pull together to protect the killer, then it must have been committed by a resident of this city, not a foreigner who followed him from La Guillotière.”
“Depend upon it, the murderer was Lyonnais,” Vernet said. “And I have little chance of uncovering him without the townspeople’s aid. So anything you have found out, Captain Lacey, you will tell me, no?”
When I entered the dining room at the villa after returning home, I found a light meal for me on the sideboard and letters at my plate. I had no need for a repast after stuffing myself at Madame Paillard’s, but I downed bread and cold meat to counteract the sweets as I read my correspondence.
One letter was from Leland Derwent, a young man I’d grown quite close to, with news of his family.
His mother, unfortunately, was doing poorly, and they did not expect her to last the summer.
I folded the missive away, despondent. Consumption was a devastating disease that consumed the lives of so many.
It took the youthful breeziness of the next letter, from my stepson Peter, to ease my sadness about Lady Derwent.
Peter was having a splendid time in Oxfordshire with his grandparents, riding, walking, and fishing.
Grandfather Pembroke carried Anne out to see the horses most days, and she was very interested in the ponies.
She’d be an avid horsewoman, I thought with a frisson of pride. I’d teach her to ride as soon as I could.
I felt a wrench of longing when I set aside Peter’s letter. I missed the pair of them so.
The third letter, I’d deliberately left for last, uncertain what I wanted to learn.
Pushing aside my plate, I broke the seal on the thick paper and found James Denis’s spare and slanting handwriting inside.
I made inquiries about the name you sent me, he began without preamble.
Lucien Potier began life in a village north of Paris and served a few years in the army of Louis the Sixteenth.
After the more radical of the national governments took power, he joined their number, helping to round up the king and his family as well as others slated for execution.
After Lyon’s surrender in 1793, he was sent to help coordinate the quelling of that city, arresting and executing anyone considered a traitor.
He curated a list of names for arrest that covered almost every aristocrat or any person with means in and around Lyon.
Some of those were forewarned by friends and managed to escape, but Potier and others had many people rounded up and dispatched, including Christian Devere, grandfather of your soon-to-be son-in-law.
Potier kept careful records, which he sent back to Paris, documenting the deaths. The names on his lists who were not aristocrats, or wealthy men, or even attempting to aid the accused, he brushed aside as necessary casualties. It was war, he claimed, and civilians sometimes got in the way.
The officers in charge did complain about his heavy-handed tactics, one sending a plea to his superiors in Paris that Potier be recalled.
This officer claimed that Potier was detrimental to order rather than helping to restore it.
I have noted that this officer was soon reassigned to another regiment.
The last communication from Potier was in April of 1795. He sent in his lists of those he’d executed that week along with detailed information on property and money he’d seized.
The letter also mentioned his next targets. Potier had become highly suspicious of a family’s continuing treachery, even though their ringleader had already been dispatched. Potier decided they were covertly plotting their revenge, and so he would pay them a visit.
That family’s name was Devere.