She handed him an envelope.
He glanced at it but did not open it. “When?”
“What, monsieur?”
“When were you given the message?”
“This morning. About eight hours. A woman—”
But he knew then. He closed the door and turned and opened the message.
IF YOU WILL GO TO THE PLAZA AT THE GRAND TRIANON AT NOON, YOU WILL FIND YOUR EVIDENCE AGAINST SIMEON.
JEANNE
Ten minutes later, Devereaux was in the lobby of the small hotel without his bag in hand. “I think I will stay another night,” he said to the desk assistant. “Will you tell me where is the Grand Trianon?”
“Do you mean at Versailles?” she asked. “I don’t know of any bistro that—”
Versailles, Devereaux thought. He understood then. At noon it would be resolved.
From a distance along the canal, despite the pelting rain, Simeon saw her standing alone at the stone railing of the piazza. She watched him advance alone toward her.
It was just eleven.
Jeanne Clermont wore a tan coat but she was bareheaded against the elements. Her light brown hair was streaked with rain and matted against her face. The wounds inflicted upon her by Le Coq and the other terrorists had mostly healed. Drawing closer, Simeon saw that her eyes were extraordinarily clear, as though they revealed all her thoughts and all her secrets.
He touched the cold stock of the Walther PPK in the pocket of his trenchcoat. He felt the burden of the rain soaking into the heavy fabric.
There was no one around her. His eyes had carefully swept the formal woods as he walked alone in the rain across the transverse of the watery cross. Not even the gardeners employed by the State to keep Versailles as a monument were out in the rain. Lightning broke across the foul-tempered sky, and thunder rumbled through the woods.
She had chosen such a day, he thought then; a day when they would be alone, when she could lure him to this open place and kill him.
He stopped at the bottom of the stone stairs that led up to the square.
“Madame Clermont, I have come,” he said, smiling still in his vaguely comic way. His eyes glittered beneath the brim of his trilby hat, stained dark by the rain.
“And alone, as I am,” she said without tone.
“What did you wish?”
“I want to know why you killed William.”
He produced the pistol with a single smooth movement of his right hand. He did not look at the weapon but at her. But she did not flinch at the sight of the gun; it was as though she had expected this.
“Do you so love to die, madame? To suffer for your lover?” The comic voice drawled slowly over the ironic words.
“I betrayed him,” she said.
“To return his own betrayal of you fifteen years ago, madame,” Simeon said. “It was a fair exchange.”
“It is not something you would understand.”
“You must die now, madame,” he said gravely.
“Yes.”
Simeon stared at her in the rain, in the midst of the reminders of an empire and another age. A vague uneasiness came over him. “Why do you choose to die?”
“Because I choose not to live,” Jeanne Clermont said. “I am surrounded by death.” Her voice was low, speaking to him from her own grave. “I have died and died again with my husband and with my lover and with those whom I betrayed. My death will be an answered prayer.”
“If it was only death you wanted, madame, you should have taken your life.”
But she shook her head slowly back and forth; the rain on her cheeks glistened like tears, but her eyes were calm; she was not distraught.
“Then if your prayers are not answered by God, I shall answer them for you.” He smiled at her.
“Why did you kill William?”
“Don’t you understand even that?” he said.
She waited.
“He would not betray you, madame, not again. And that made him too dangerous.”
She groaned then, a groan from her own grave, a sound muted by the thunder rumbling across the vast gardens.
Simeon fired then. He was very close and the shot was very sure. Jeanne Clermont fell behind the balustrade and her body slumped in the folds of the raincoat on the stone floor of the piazza.
She did not move. Simeon started up the steps toward her fallen body. He did not see the man behind him, running along the gravel path of the little canal, who now stopped and removed a black object from his raincoat.
Simeon only heard the shot.
He turned in the rain and fired instinctively at the other man, who was nearly one hundred fifty feet away, obscured by the rain and the gloomy morning light.
They fired again, at the same time, and stood still.
And again.
The fourth shot struck Simeon full in the chest, and he was flung back by the force of the bullet. His chest felt crushed beneath the force of the slug. He grasped at the slippery stone of the balustrade and then lurched forward. He could not breathe. He took another step down the staircase and felt his fingers slipping off the railing: He raised his pistol, but he could find the strength to fire it. He looked down, and saw that his chest was soaked in blood and rain.
And then he tumbled down the steps to the base of the walk that led back to the Grand Canal. He was dead as he struck the ground.
36
The sweltering day had descended to a cool, refreshing evening. The last of the sun lingered in the glow of the buildings that formed the sheltered sides of the place Dauphine on the Île de la Cité.
They sat at the same table at the Rose de France where she and William had met fifteen years before and where they had dined again during their last spring. The last spring of his life; the last spring of her love.
She was much older now, it seemed to Devereaux. Her eyes no longer changed in the fading light; her eyes revealed nothing of her. Everything seemed hidden in her, as though all the moments of grief and tragedy had finally built a wall inside her that could no longer permit the windows of her eyes to let light within.
Jeanne Clermont had nearly died, they said at the hospital. It was a miracle that she had survived Simeon’s bullet.
The president of France had been chagrined by the events of that morning in the gardens of Versailles. Le Canard Enchaîné, the irreverent Paris weekly, had revealed the secret role of Madame Clermont in the breakup of the terror network. The president of France and the director of the Deuxième Bureau suspected the information in the newspapers had come from certain American sources, but there was nothing to be done, and so they gave Madame Clermont a medal and asked her, on behalf of her country, to say nothing more to the press. She listened and agreed when they asked her to agree; she recovered from her wounds despite her wishes.
She could not tell them that she had intended to die on June 19; she could not speak to them of William; she could not tell them that she regretted that Devereaux had come too soon, or that he had saved her life when she did not want it saved.
Devereaux had remained.
He had come to her, in her rooms on the rue Mazarine, after her release from the hospital. For a long time he had sat with her, in the afternoons, as the warm winds of July stirred the dust in the parks of the old city and obscured the heavy sunlight that seemed to oppress the place. Paris was a city of springs and autumns, a city of intense emotions in the seasons. The oppression of summer and the cold, stabbing heart of winter were only endured, like growing old or growing out of love.
“I wish you had not come too soon,” she had said once to him, but her voice had been gentle, as though she had forgiven him for saving her life.