Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Ffrog Prince

"Aye aye, sir," he whispered to the admiral, and left.

Hands thrust into the pockets of his heavy caped surtout, Hoare trudged up the road along which his late royal highness had preceded him. The watch would surely have lugged the body back down by now. They would not have dropped it at the town's charnel house, of course; the remains of a prince of the blood, since he had been French and therefore popish, would have been taken to the local Catholic church. In any case, Hoare had judged, the corporeal evidence would keep for awhile, while he knew the evidence at the scene of the crime would last only as long as the arctic weather.

He found the spot easily enough. The pool of frozen blood glared up at him from yards away. The snow around it was overwritten by dozens of footprints; it would be far beyond Hoare's feeble tracking ability to determine how many men had been up here last night, let alone who they might have been and their business here. The marks of two sets of wheels lay not far off. The duelists' chaise explained one, of course, but how about the other?

Aha! Hoare cried exultantly to himself before he remembered that the mayor's men would have used a cart to carry away the noble body. He turned and went back down the hill. He might as well find out if the dead duc had anything to tell him.

The dead duc lay in informal state in a small chapel of Portsmouth's only popish place of worship, candles at his head and feet. The place was icy cold as Hoare saw from the state of the stoup of holy water at the chapel door. It would be too soon, of course, for the sorrowing relatives to have arrived from Hartwell; in fact, word of their loss could hardly have reached them. But Hoare was surprised at the absence of any members of the duc's local entourage. A solitary nun knelt at the tiny altar, praying, he supposed, for the soul of the departed.

Except that someone had tied up the duc's jaw and withdrawn the murder weapon, the body must look the same as it had when the duelists stood over it; arms and legs akimbo, it stared glassily toward heaven. The blood had not been fully removed from its face. Below the old fashioned cuffs of Mechlin lace, the fingers were bare. The duc had chewed his fingernails, Hoare noted with mild distaste.

The duc's hat lay on his belly just below the entry wound. It was a gold-braided, plumed admiral's hat, in the old fashioned tricorne shape affected by Lord Nelson in preference to today's fore-and-aft style. The contents of the victim's pockets lay beside their owner, with the murder weapon. The purse was all but empty as Hoare found when he inverted it over one hand; it contained only a few louis d'or. Hoare remembered that nobility seldom stooped to handling lucre, leaving that sort of thing to their underlings. There was a Breguet repeater watch-gold, of course. A fine lawn kerchief bore the duc's crest. That was all.

Something was missing. What could it be?

Hoare picked up the sword. About a third of the way toward the hilt the tip had been broken off, so there was no way he could tell if the point had been buttoned, shielded, or left with its original, lethal sharpness.

In any case, Hoare told himself, it was moot, for the remaining stub was more than sharp enough, he thought, to pierce through the layers of the duc's clothing, through his skin and on between his ribs to the heart. As if in confirmation, most of the remaining blade bore bloodstains. The mayor's men had needed no particular deductive skill to trace the source of the weapon, for the inch-wide brass guard bore De Barsac's distinctive monogram. He knew it well. Now to question the dueling cits.

Upon opening the chapel door to leave, Hoare found himself staring into a pair of huge, cold, violet eyes nearly a foot below his own. Their owner looked him up and down. An elderly, ugly maid hung at the person's heels.

"Alors, m'sieur, qu'est-ce que vous faites ici?"

"I might ask you the same, mademoiselle," Hoare whispered in the same tongue. "Permit me to present myself: Bartholomew Hoare, lieutenant de vaisseau, a votre service. I am here upon the orders of Admiral Sir George Hardcastle-" he stopped to take a breath "-to investigate the death of His Royal Highness the Duc de Provins. And you, mademoiselle?"

"Madame la comtesse, if you please, monsieur. Iphegenie, Comtesse de Montrichard. You may tell your admiral there is nothing to investigate. It is well known throughout the town that De Barsac killed him."

With that, the comtesse swept past him, followed by her dragon. She crossed herself perfunctorily before kneeling at the raised bier. He saw those violet eyes scan the objects beside the corpse as her lips moved. Her expression suggested to Hoare that she was not so much reciting prayers as conversing with the corpse.

In no time she was on her feet again. "Never mind, Jeannette," she said as she shook off the dragon's offered arm. Then she turned to Hoare. "There, you see. He does not bleed, does he? You are my witness, monsieur; how fortunate it is for me that you were here to witness."

Hoare's expression must have revealed his confusion.

"Or perhaps you English do not believe the superstition that a body bleeds again in the presence of its murderer. Eh?" She looked challengingly up into Hoare's long face.

"I fear I lack some piece of information, madame la comtesse, which you believe me to possess. Pray enlighten me."

She snorted in an aristocratic way. "You did not know, then, that in our little French coterie at least I am supposed to have been the last person to see Provins alive? A fine ferret, indeed, that your Admiral Sir Hardcastle picked out to find the one who killed him."

"And were you the last person to see him alive?"

"No," she said flatly. "The last to leave him alive, perhaps, but not the last to see him. That privilege belonged to his killer, not to me. To the Vicomte de Barsac, if your lumps of mayor's men are correct."

"Then perhaps madame la comtesse would have the kindness to tell me about her last encounter with his late royal highness," Hoare whispered.

"What, here?" she asked. "In this place, and in this frigid air? No indeed, monsieur. You may escort me to my lodgings if you will, such as they are, and interrogate me there."

"It would be an honor, madame."

She took his arm, summoned her dragon, and steered him down through the town's icy streets, to bring him up all standing before the staring guardian of The Three Suns' majestic door.

The Three Suns bore the reputation of housing only Britain's highest and their very good friends when those friends were not such as to be announced to the world. Hoare's only previous visits there had been as a message-bearer from the port admiral to these personages. But after suppressing a raised eyebrow upon sighting him, the porter flung the door open with a flourish. He greeted madame la comtesse in execrable French, and added, "Good morning, Mr. 'Oare. And a fine, frosty morning it is, Mr. 'Oare."

"Good morning, Pollard."

Pollard's eyes and ears were always open wide, and his mouth as well, at least for those who paid him to open them and for those, like Hoare, of whom he walked in dread. To Pollard and his cronies Hoare was The Whispering Ferret.

The comtesse and her abigail mounted the wide stair, leaving Hoare to follow. At the door to what must be her chambers she stood aside for the woman to unlock and open it. The salon within had been refurnished since '98 when Hoare had last seen it; chairs, sofas, and accessories, aglow in the low morning sun of winter, were all in the chaste Directoire style, fresh from Paris. The French government in exile, Hoare mused, might have its pockets to let, but its members still managed to eat cake.

The comtesse let her woman relieve her of her heavy cloak. Beneath it she stood lightly clad as if for summer, in a pale, nearly transparent figured silk, tucked demurely just beneath her breasts. Hoare handed the dragon his own cloak and cocked hat. The comtesse seated herself, semi-reclining, on a chaise longue and gestured to Hoare to take a matching chair. She began without preamble.