Maxim Jakubowski: The Best British Mysteries III

‘No!’ Jean-Jacques took a step forward, his voice high. ‘That’s a lie!’

Carton grabbed his arm as the man with the scar put his hand on the knife at his belt. Jean-Jacques pulled away so hard he lost his balance and fell against Carton’s side. Stumbling.

The man with the scar relaxed his hand. ‘It’s true,’ he said, staring at Jean-Jacques. ‘She attacked Citizen Duclos, then tried to escape. The innocent have nothing to fear.’

Jean-Jacques gave a shrill, desperate cry. It was impossible to tell if it was laughter or pain, or both.

Carton’s lips and throat were dry. ‘Did you get them back?’ He had known this would be hopeless, whatever the truth of it. He should never have come. ‘Maybe she was just…’ He stopped. There was no air to breathe.

The man with the scar shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now, Citizen. She was shot running away. Your job is finished.’

He smiled, showing his gapped teeth again. ‘I guess you won’t get paid!’

Jean-Jacques let out a howl of grief and fury like an animal, the sound so raw even the man with the scar froze, and both the other guards turned toward him, mouths gaping.

‘Murderers!’ Jean-Jacques screamed. ‘Duclos stole the cheeses, and you let him murder her to hide it!’ He snatched his arm away from Carton’s grip and lunged toward the man with the scar, reaching for his knife, both their hands closing on the hilt at the same time. ‘Her blood is on your soul!’ He had forgotten that in Revolutionary France there was no God, so presumably men had no souls, either.

The other guards came to life and moved in.

Suddenly Carton found his nerve. He put his arms around Jean-Jacques and lifted him physically off the ground, kicking and shouting. His heels struck Carton’s shins and the pain nearly made him let go. He staggered backward, taking Jean-Jacques with him, and fell against the farther wall. ‘I’m sorry!’ he gasped to the man with the scar, now holding the knife with the blade toward them. ‘She was his sister. It was his responsibility to look after her.’ That was a stretching of the truth. ‘You understand? He doesn’t mean it.’ He held Jean-Jacques hard enough to squash the air out of his lungs. He could feel him gasping and choking as he tried to breathe. ‘We’re leaving,’ he added. ‘Maybe we didn’t really know what happened.’

Jean-Jacques’s heels landed so hard on his shins that this time he let go of him and he fell to the ground.

The guards were still uncertain.

Philippe Duclos could appear at any moment, and Carton and Jean-Jacques could both finish up imprisoned here. Ignoring his throbbing leg, Carton bent and picked up Jean-Jacques by the scruff of his neck, yanked him to his feet, and gave him a cuff on the ear hard enough to make his head sing – please heaven – and rob him of speech for long enough to get him outside!

‘Thank you, Citizen,’ he called to the man with the scar, and half dragged Jean-Jacques, half carried him, to the entrance and the blessed freedom of the street.

He crossed over, turned right, then left down the first narrow alley he came to before he finally let go of Jean-Jacques. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘But you can’t help.’

Jean-Jacques shook himself. ‘Let me go back and get her.’ His voice was thick with sobs. ‘Let me bury her!’

Carton seized his shoulder again. ‘No! They’ll take you too!’

‘I haven’t done anything!’ Jean-Jacques protested furiously. ‘For what? For coming for my sister’s corpse? What are you, stone? Ice? You English clod!’

‘I am alive,’ Carton responded. ‘And I mean to stay alive. And yes, coming for her corpse would be quite enough for them to blame you, and if you used a quarter of the brain you’ve got, you’d know that.’

Jean-Jacques seemed to shrink within himself.

Carton was twisted inside with pity. He refused to think of Marie-Claire’s bright face, her vitality, the dreams and the anger that had made her so vivid.

‘Come on, friend,’ he said gently. ‘There’s nothing we can do, except survive. She’d want you to do that. Come and have some wine, and we’ll find a little bread, and perhaps someone will have onions, or even a piece of sausage.’

Jean-Jacques lifted up his head a little. ‘I suppose so.’ He sighed. ‘Yes – survive. You are right, she would want that.’

‘Of course she would,’ Carton said more heartily. ‘Come on.’

They started to walk again, crossing the river and turning south for no particular reason, except that neither of them was yet ready to sit still. Finally they came to a wine shop with the door open. The smell of the spilled wine inside was inviting, and there was room to sit down.

The proprietress was a handsome woman with a fine head of black hair, long and thick like a mane. She stared at them, waiting for them to speak.

‘Wine?’ Carton asked. ‘Start with two bottles. We have sorrows to drown, Citizeness. And bread, if you have it?’

“You would feed your sorrows as well?’ she asked without a smile.

‘Citizeness…’ Carton began.

‘Defarge,’ she replied, as if he had asked her name. ‘I’ll bring you bread. Where’s your money?’

Carton put a handful of coins on the table.

She returned with a plate of bread, half an onion, and two bottles. Half an hour later she brought another bottle, and half an hour after that, a fourth. Carton kept on drinking – his body was used to it – but Jean-Jacques slumped against the wall and seemed to be asleep.

Citizeness Defarge remained, and in the early evening brought more bread, but by then Carton was not hungry

Jean-Jacques opened his eyes and sat up.

‘Bread?’ Carton offered.

‘No.’ Jean-Jacques waved it away. ‘I have worked out a plan.’

Carton’s head was fuzzy. ‘To do what?’

‘Be revenged on Philippe Duclos, of course! What else?’ Jean-Jacques looked at him as if he were a fool.

Carton was too eased with wine to be alarmed. ‘Don’t,’ he said simply. ‘Whatever it is, it won’t work. You’ll only get into more trouble.’

Jean-Jacques looked at him with big, grief-filled eyes. ‘Yes, it will,’ he said with a catch in his voice. ‘I’ll make it work…for Marie-Claire.’ He stood up with an effort, swayed for a moment, struggling for his balance. ‘Thank you, Carton,’ he added formally, starting to bow, and then changing his mind. ‘You are a good friend.’ And without adding any more he walked unsteadily to the door and disappeared outside.

Carton sat alone, miserable and guilty. If he had really been a good friend, he would have prevented Marie-Claire from setting out on such a mad plan in the first place. He had spent his whole life believing in nothing, achieving pointless victories in small cases in London, and now here writing pieces that did not change the Revolution a jot. It carried on from one insane venture to another regardless. The Paris Commune, largely ruled by Marat, whatever anyone said, made hunger and violence worse with every passing week. France was at war on every side: Spain, Austria, Belgium, and England. Since the hideous massacres last September when the gutters quite literally ran with human blood, Paris was a city of madmen. Charles Darnay was a prisoner in La Force, and Lucie grieved for him ceaselessly, every day going to wait outside the walls, carrying their child, in the hope that he might glimpse them and be comforted.

And here was Carton sitting drunk in Defarge’s wine shop, sorry for himself, and ashamed that Jean-Jacques called him a friend, because he had no right to that name.

Two days later, on July 12, Carton was back in the Café Procope, taking his usual midday bowl of soup when two soldiers of the Revolutionary Guard came in, red, white and blue cockades on their hats, muskets over their shoulders. They spoke for a moment with the proprietor, then walked over to Carton.