“M.? That’s you?” he asked, peering at the girl.
“Yes,” she said with a shrug and a frown as if she couldn’t understand why he was asking such an obvious question.
He continued reading:
Every day that I am away from you seems an eternity, every hour a century. I long to see you. I have been able to think of nothing else since our conversation the other day. Your wish is my command.
Vincent looked up from the letter, and smiled at the girl’s happiness. Her features had softened with a faraway smile, and her brown eyes were alight with hope and dreams.
“Would you like me to read it again?” he asked gently.
“Will it cost more?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Yes, then, if you please.” She closed her eyes to listen better.
He began again at the beginning, and read slowly with feeling. Afterwards, he asked, “Would you like me to write a response?”
She opened her eyes, and for a moment he read joy there before her eyes widened with sudden fear at the sight of something behind him. A shadow fell across his desk, and he turned to see his friend, Monsieur Radnor, under-inspector of the Paris police. Tall and muscular with the upright posture of an ex-soldier, Radnor regarded them with arms crossed, unsmiling, black tricorne pulled low over his black eyes.
“Never mind. I have to go,” she said, her glance darting nervously to Radnor, as she snatched the letter from Vincent’s hand. “How much do I owe you, monsieur?”
“Two sous.”
She hurriedly dug the coins out of a pocket in her skirt, and dropped them on the table. “Mouche!” she said under her breath to Vincent in warning as she fled.
Fly, she’d called Radnor. Slang for the police who some considered to be no more than spies listening for words of treason against the king.
Impervious to the insult, Radnor watched the girl hurry away. “She’s lying,” he said in his low, slightly raspy drawl.
“You think everyone’s lying,” Vincent snapped. “She was simply frightened by you. And no wonder. You look like an undertaker or a Huguenot minister in all that black.” As usual, Radnor was in severe black from head to toe — a black tricorne over black hair pulled into a neat queue, a spotless black coat, waistcoat, britches and stockings, black gloves to disguise the absence of the tip of the middle finger on the left hand, and polished black shoes with paste buckles. Only the snowy white of his cravat and shirt at the neck and wrists relieved the black. “You’ve frightened all my other customers away too,” Vincent complained, standing up.
Radnor tossed a bright silver coin on the table. “I’ll buy you a good meal to make up for it.”
Vincent eyed the coin, undecided. An ecu would buy a very fine meal indeed, but then Radnor would expect information in return. He considered the coin as he began to close up, the work of only a few moments, requiring him to wipe the ink from his quills, cork the bottle of ink, put pens, sand, ink, and paper into the cheap wooden box he used to store his writing implements.
Observing him without offering to help, Radnor continued in his drawl, “I’m an under-inspector for the Paris police. People should fear me. Especially criminals like that young woman.”
“She’s in love. Surely His Majesty Louis XV hasn’t made love a crime. Yet.”
“She’s not in love,” Radnor said.
Vincent snapped the box shut and slipped it under his arm. “Why don’t you wear something more cheerful? A young man like yourself. How do you hope to find a wife?” He suspected it was an affectation on Radnor’s part, intended to be striking and attract attention. Feminine attention.
Radnor smiled humorlessly, but said nothing.
Vincent could imagine the effect the rare flash of white teeth from Radnor had on impressionable girls of easy virtue. He’d lectured Radnor on such matters before. “How do you know she’s lying?” he asked.
“I’ve seen her before. She’s a maid at the residence of a certain Monsieur du Sonton who reported the theft of his wife’s necklace and earrings last week.”
“You think this girl had something to do with it? She seems honest enough to me.”
Radnor rolled his eyes. “Not everyone in Paris is as honest and good-hearted as you are, old man.”
“Nor is everyone as corrupt and cynical as you,” Vincent quipped as he pocketed the coin. His box under his arm, he picked up the portable table and his stool and headed for the entrance of the house above and behind him. He opened the door, then climbed the stairs to his apartment on the top floor.
Without being invited, Radnor followed, still not offering to help. “That letter was no doubt sent to the maid’s mistress, Marie du Sonton. She filched it and intends to use it to blackmail her mistress. The oldest game in the world.”
Vincent stopped in the narrow, dim stairwell, and turned to face his friend. “You’re too young to be so certain of everyone’s guilt,” he reprimanded.
“Though I suspect that you led a sheltered life before you became known as Monsieur de l’Amour, you’re too old to be so gullible,” Radnor shot back.
“Have some faith in humanity.”
“You will find that your faith in the humanity of Paris is misplaced.”
“Not in this case. I’m sure of it.”
With a melodramatic snorting, Radnor asked, “Where would you like to dine?”
Watching Vincent turn toward home and the cemetery after the meal, not for the first time, Radnor thought his friend would make a good priest. Poor deluded Vincent and his misguided attempts to befriend those who were hopelessly lost. Radnor’s fondness for the older man, a fondness he did not quite understand himself, made him worry about Vincent’s blindness to the dangerous and sordid world of Parisian crime. The truth behind the maidservant and her letter would edify him.
Radnor’s instincts told him the maidservant was somehow connected to the theft, and he always listened to his instincts when a generous reward for the return of stolen goods was at stake. He sought out the informer he’d assigned to the Hotel du Sonton. The man’s name was Pierre Abiter, but in his mind, Radnor called the man “the Sniveler,” for he was constantly wiping his running nose and dabbing at his watery eyes.
The Sniveler was a felon paroled from the Bastille on the condition that he turn informer for the police. Though he had wanted to retire from housebreaking, he had been reluctant at first to turn informer. He’d settled into his new profession surprisingly well, however, and now was one of Radnor’s best and most reliable men.
Each day, the Sniveler made his reports to Radnor at the same time at the same tavern. Radnor found him at a table by himself in a corner, surrounded by used, wadded-up rags. Radnor ordered a jar of wine for the two of them.
“Anything to report?” Radnor asked, after they’d been served.
“An inside job for certain. My money’s on the housekeeper.”
“Any chance she had an accomplice?”
“No doubt.” The big fireplace suddenly belched smoke into the room, causing the Sniveler to cough and blink rapidly as he dabbed at his reddened eyes.
Radnor described the maid. “Know the woman?”
“Sounds like Marie Lasourde. One of the upstairs maids. A real slut, they say.”
So her name was Marie like her mistress. That didn’t prove anything. “Does she have a lover?” Radnor asked.
The man sneezed and gave his nose a resounding trumpeting blow. When he was finished, he said, “Several, according to the other servants.”
“Anyone new? A wealthy man?”
The Sniveler nodded with enthusiasm. “So they say.”
Radnor inhaled sharply with surprise. He’d been certain the woman was lying. “His name?”