The Oracle Glass Part 40

"Christian forgiveness is to be commended," replied Desgrez, but his eyes, which never left me, seemed to cut through to my backbone.

"Let me go closer; I must see her face to know for certain," I said in the thick, lower-cla.s.s accent of the Parisian streets.

"I do know you-the lingere's apprentice."

"I got me a better place now-plenty better food and less work." d.a.m.n his excellent memory. A walking police-records office.

"With the house of...?"

"...Pasquier," interjected the sergeant. Desgrez raised an eyebrow.

"Interesting, Sergeant. That explains the lace on the linen. I am surprised she was ever found at all. Tell me, little lingere-"

"Annette, sir-"

"Tell me, Annette, would this woman here be the celebrated La Pasquier?"

"I don't know nothing about that. She's just my master's sister."

"And how, pray tell, did you end at the house of Pasquier?" I didn't like his questioning at all. It was taking a wrong turn.

"My 'fiance'...he knew someone and fixed it for me to get the place-" I winked. Desgrez looked at me a long time, up and down. I could see his eyes taking in the gaudy, cheap tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs on the lower-cla.s.s dress. A fastidious look of disgust crossed his face. Evidently, s.e.xual social climbing among the lower elements didn't please him. I wonder what you think of the same thing among the rich, I thought. Did you bow to La Pasquier when she pa.s.sed you in her carriage? Do you bow to La Montespan?

He drew the sergeant aside, and I could hear him say softly, "...not a word about today...this case involves bigger game than we thought...dangerous to meddle, must go to La Reynie..." I took advantage of their inattention to slip to Marie-Angelique's bedside.

"Did she tell you anything?" The sergeant's question to Desgrez carried in spite of his whisper. I knelt down beside her and put my hand on her forehead. She was burning up with fever. Desgrez's voice was low in response, but I could catch a few words from my place by the bed.

"...incoherent since the priest sent for me...not a word since the confession of abortion...he couldn't get the name from her, either...but now she's identified, I have my suspicions..."

"It's me, it's me," I whispered urgently to Marie-Angelique. "I've come for you. Don't die, please. You must get well. How can I live if you die?"

"You, there!" Suddenly I heard the voice of Desgrez above me and looked up with a start of pure fear. Suppose he had been there awhile, silent, and heard the shift in my accent? "Maybe a woman can get it out of her." His voice was brisk. "Ask her who the abortionist was."

I embraced the sweating body on the bed and whispered in her ear the one thing I knew she wanted to hear above anything else. "G.o.d has surely forgiven you, Marie-Angelique." Her eyes half opened. "Live for my sake, for those who love you." For a moment, she seemed to speak. I put my ear close but couldn't hear a thing.

"Well?" Desgrez's voice above me sounded harsh.

"Oh, Sir, she says a name sounds like 'Longueval.'"

"The Comte de Longueval, eh? Well, well. The old pander. I thought he was confining himself to alchemy since his last interrogation. Lebrun, we need to pay a call on the comte as soon as possible." He strode from the bedside and was on his way, but not before I'd heard him take the sergeant aside and whisper, "Follow that servant girl when she leaves here. I want to know where she goes, whom she sees." My heart stopped nearly as still as Marie-Angelique's.

"You needn't sit there anymore. She's dead." The voice of the old-woman attendant roused me. She leaned over me and whispered confidentially from between rotted teeth, "Now, if the family wants to claim the body to save themselves from the disgrace of having it exposed on the street, I can arrange for it to disappear for a consideration..."

"Of course they will want it-Are you sure you can?"

"It's not easy, you know...the body of a criminal...there's lots as has a claim on them...the surgeons, for example..."

"For G.o.d's sake, how much?"

"Not a sou less than twenty ecus." The old woman looked sly.

"You'll have it. Just swear you'll keep her safe till they return for her."

"Oh, I does it often enough...I have my ways. Don't let them dillydally, though. Tell them to send to old Marie before tomorrow night. Remember, old Marie in the Salle du Rosaire."

As I left the hospital ward onto the rue du Marche Palu, I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. Alarmed, I fled on foot toward the Parvis Notre-Dame, and the sound of the following footsteps was lost in the street cries and noise of carriages. But the eerie p.r.i.c.king in my scalp still told me that someone was behind me. There was no doubt about it; I was being followed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I knew I couldn't run, so instead I walked confidently through the crowd of shouting bearers on the square before Notre Dame to the spot where the drivers of fiacres lounged, waiting to hire their little carriages. Loudly, I engaged the driver with the st.u.r.diest-looking horse for the long trip to the Faubourg Saint-Honore. My voice carried well, though I could barely hear it over the thumping of my heart. I've misled that policeman, I thought; now he'll go back and report. But as I mounted the little fiacre, I turned to see the red-stockinged sergeant of the Salle du Rosaire mount another carriage. My driver pa.s.sed rapidly enough to the Pont Notre-Dame, only to be entangled there among the crowd of chairs and foot travelers in the narrow way between the elegant shops that lined both sides of the bridge. I peered out behind us to note with relief that the pursuing carriage was equally entangled in a knot of dandies leaving a gallery of paintings.

"Driver, I have changed my mind. Take me to the Hotel Bouillon, and I will pay you the same. Get me there in half the time, and I will double your fare." The long whip cracked to the left and right of us, sending a crowd of apprentices fleeing, as the driver urged his nag to a swift trot. Again I peered back behind us. My enemy was making no progress against the crowd. I saw him shake his fist at his driver. Good, he's lost, I thought. But I did not breathe easily until I had mingled with a crowd of market women bringing provisions into the kitchen entrance of the vast hotel and crept invisibly by back ways to the apartment of the one man in Paris who might help me.

I found Lamotte in a red silk dressing gown and Persian cap, giving orders to an a.s.sistant cook.

"Now, remember," he was saying, "sh.e.l.lfish gives Monsieur L'Eveque a rash, but the nature of the entertainment is such that Madame will wish something light, terribly light, to be served. We must not weigh down the spirits of our audience, eh?" He was waving his fingers in the air to symbolize the lightness desired. Interesting, I thought. From pet poet and playwright to designer of entertainments and general factotum. A man with a good profile certainly can go far in the right circles.

"Monsieur de la Motte, a servant girl demands to see you with a message from a Mademoiselle Pasquier." The lackey did not seem altogether respectful. Lamotte glanced up and saw me waiting at the tall, double doors of the salon, only one of which was thrown partially open.

"Oho, I know this servant girl, Pierre. And don't go making surmises about Mademoiselle Pasquier that would disturb the idol of my heart. La Pasquier is one of numerous women foolishly and uselessly in love with me, whose favors I scorn for a higher, brighter, n.o.bler flame. No, Pierre, let Madame know that she alone commands my heart, her stellar radiance alone inspires my muse." He accompanied these words by striking the embroidered silk directly above his heart. He had been putting on weight. Even in a few months, he had contrived to look sleeker, and his mustachios had become even grander, if possible. I could not but admire the catlike grace with which he had climbed from one society boudoir to another, until he had arrived at the very highest level, moving into the Hotel Bouillon itself. Only two things seemed to have suffered: his name, which had come apart and added a syllable, and his pa.s.sion for writing tragedy. Since his triumph with Osmin, he had written nothing of note for the Paris stage. But the Chevalier de la Motte was all the rage for his light verse and the charming little scenes that he wrote to be set to music for the ballet. Now he dismissed both the cook and the valet, but I saw his eyes take note of the fact that the latter stood behind the double doors to listen.

"What message have you?" he asked casually, his voice loud so it would carry behind the door.

"Monsieur de la Motte, Mademoiselle Pasquier lies dead in the Hotel Dieu, victim of a dreadful accident. By all that you once held sacred, I beg you to return with me to help claim the body." We both heard the rustle from behind the door as the valet departed. Good. A dead woman was no rival to even the most jealous beauty. The airy complacency fell away from Lamotte's face, and his eyes were suddenly troubled.

"What...what has happened?"

I spoke swiftly and softly now. Who knew how long we would be alone? "Not really an accident...a...a botched abortion. Can you forgive her? She said G.o.d wished her to die." As I wiped my eyes, Lamotte took out a large handkerchief and sneezed noisily into it. "I need you, Monsieur Lamotte; she needs you, for this one last service. I've made arrangements to bribe an attendant for the body. They won't question a man, not if he says he's from the family. But me...they might take me for an accomplice of the abortionist." Lamotte's eyes were troubled. Transporting criminals' bodies was not the work for a rising favorite of an arbiter of artistic taste.

"Her family?" he asked. "What kind of inhuman family is yours, that they won't even bury her?"

"My brother declared her dead years ago. He'll never try to claim her. He's so stingy, he'd begrudge the money for a decent burial even if it wouldn't bring disgrace to him. He's very fond of appearing respectable, Lamotte. But I've got money; you know that. I'll see her remembered, I'll have a stone made-but you must a.s.sist me. Think of what she once meant to you..." At this his face crumpled, and he suddenly looked old.

"My youth is gone, Genevieve. The man I once was has died there with her. My dreams of achieving immortal greatness, of winning the angel in the window-gone, dead, lost. Do you understand? I write poetry for ballets."

"And much acclaimed you are! I saw The Princess of the Enchanted Castle myself at Saint-Germain."

"But my tragedy-I could never finish it. My Sapho. Gone, dried up. And this end...how sordid, how ordinary..." He rubbed his eyes fiercely and blew his nose again. "If I had written of her, she would have stabbed herself n.o.bly with a silver dagger on a precipice above the sea, reciting cla.s.sical verse. Nothing less was worthy of her. But this-bleeding to death in a filthy charity hospital..." He put his head in his hands for a long time, sighing. Then he looked up at me. "What must I do? Become an avaricious little bourgeois for the afternoon? Very well. For you, it is done." He hitched his dressing gown tighter around his embonpoint and stood up. "Pierre! Pierre!" He clapped his hands. "Where is that rascal when you need him?" He went to the double doors and shouted; I could hear the patter of feet. Eventually the lackey returned, breathless.

"Pierre, my smallest day wig. And a suit of mourning. No funeral bands. I go to a.s.sist at a bourgeois funeral. You understand." He waved his hand carelessly, as if annoyed by the dull and trivial duty. Then he vanished into the small cabinet behind his reception room, which I took to be his bedroom, or his dressing chamber. I could hear his voice through the open door. "Tell that servant girl to wait here to show me the way." Always, Lamotte was a man of the theater. If anyone could play a bourgeois avocat to perfection, it would be he.