Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Ffrog Prince

"As I said, I was the last person to see the late duc except for the person who killed him. You evidently did not know that, very conveniently, the Comte de Montrichard and I live apart. We do not-er- suit. Until his death, his royal highness occupied these premises. With me."

Equally evidently, Hoare thought, the comtesse wanted him to understand this relationship without any doubt at all.

"Why are you telling me these things, madame la comtesse?"

"Because you asked, monsieur. And because I find your whisper intriguing. Why do you whisper, by-the-by?"

"A French bullet, madame la comtesse," he whispered.

"Je suis desolee," she said dismissively.

"Will you tell me what took place between you and the duc yesterday evening?"

"What leads you to believe it was yesterday evening, Monsieur 'Oare?"

"I hardly know," Hoare admitted. He felt his face redden.

"It was not yesterday evening, monsieur, but yesterday noon, after the morning post came from 'Artwell. He had withdrawn into his workroom to read it. It was when he emerged that he gave me my conge."

"Tout court? Just like that?"

"No. He was gentlemanly, I admit-and gentle." The comtesse winced; she looked away.

"Tell me what he said, please," Hoare whispered.

"I… he told me that his brother had ordered him to return to his duchesse, in 'Artwell. He must obey, of course; after all, Louis is the head of the family. So… that was that, monsieur." She shrugged expressively. "He bade me adieu, kissed my hand, and left."

"No-ah-farewell gift?"

"No. He merely said, and I think I remember his exact words, 'You will know soon the extent of my gratitude.' "

"Do you know what he meant?"

"No, monsieur."

"And then?"

"That was all. I intend, monsieur, to bring his murderer to justice. Provins may have given me my conge last night, but that was his good right as one of our royal family. He was kind to me and generous, and I respected him. We even took some of his long walks together."

So the duc often took walks, sometimes with his mistress, sometimes not. She would have had nowhere to go now, save to a husband whom she detested and whom she could no longer support. Rejected and desperate, she could, Hoare thought, have appealed for a last promenade in the moonlit snow and, upon receiving her final dismissal, drawn the broken sword from beneath her cloak and dispatched her royal lover.

"And then?" he repeated.

"My husband arrived in the afternoon with a lackey, to remove Guillaume's-the duc's-belongings. That was all."

Hoare was silent for a spell, then rose to take his leave. "Permit me to offer my condolences, madame la comtesse," he whispered.

"None are necessary, Monsieur 'Oare. After all, it was une affaire du cour, pas une affaire de coeur." She smiled bitterly.

By this feeble pun the comtesse told Hoare that it was an affair of the court and not of the heart. She would not meet his eyes nonetheless but stared out the window as he made his bow and departed.

Hoare went in search of the combative cits who had discovered the duc's body. It took him nearly the rest of the day to find them, their seconds, and the surgeon who had pronounced the corpse a corpse, and interrogate them. None had anything useful to tell him. Both principals were suffering from fresh hangovers; all members of the party would prefer to put the whole matter out of their minds. So, after stopping at a food shop for a piece of roast beef slapped between two slices of bread (Lord Sandwich's recent invention) Hoare proceeded to the Portsmouth bridewell. He was known here.

"Friend of yours, Mr. 'Oare, I suspects," said the port-faced bailiff on duty when Hoare asked to see De Barsac. "Decent man for a Frog, I'd say, even if 'e did do 'is lordship in. 'Ere you are, sir. Thanky, sir."

The prisoner was small, leathery, gloomy looking. He looked up as Hoare hove into sight. "You! I might have known. I did not kill him, you know." De Barsac's English was precise though heavily accented.

"I am sure you did not," Hoare whispered. "But the evidence is strong against you. After all, you and Provins-" he stopped for breath "- had words the other day, and all the world saw it. Then, sometime last night, he was killed by one of the swords you keep for your students."

"Your first point is true," De Barsac said. "We had very harsh words. As to your second point, I must believe what you say. But I was not present at the event, so I can tell you nothing of the weapon used."

"Tell me about your contretemps with the duc."

"I was surprised, 'Oare, at the news he gave me. I would have expected better of him, for he had the reputation of being a man of his word. More so at least than some others of his family."

"What was the news that surprised you so?"

"That I was not to have Vendee. She had been promised me as soon as your admiralty released her to ours. She was to go to Dominique Montrichard."

Hoare was about to ask him what Vendee might be, besides the rebellious, royalist French province, but then remembered. By some back room arrangement among the French court-in-exile, the admiralty, and the Foreign Ministry, a few old decayed vessels of the Royal Navy, instead of being laid up in ordinary or broken up, were to be sold to Louis XVIII at pence in the pound. Once again the lily banner of the ancien regime could fly at sea. For a monarchy without a country to rule, it was a matter of pride.

Hoare remembered too, ruefully, that Vendee had once been the Eole frigate from whose main top a French marine had fired the shot that broke his larynx and his career. Since his Staghound had taken her in the same action, Hoare would have been put into her as commander as a matter of course, and he would have been made instead of broken. Now the French navy was to have her back. It was bitter.

"Forgive me, my friend," Hoare said, "but the gods of our admiralty, at least, are capricious. Like your seamen, we English sailors must learn to weather that kind of blow."

"But she was to go to Montrichard. Montrichard, parbleu!" Barsac breathed scorn like fire. "Dominique Benoit Jean-Baptiste de Montrichard, who could hardly take a skiff out of La Rochelle without putting her on the rocks! Simply because the upstart is a comte and his equerry, while I, Marc-Antoine de Chatillon de Barsac, am a mere vicomte. Or because of his liaison with the lovely comtesse."

"Then why did you not kill Montrichard instead of the duc?"

"I remind you, 'Oare, I killed no one. I was angry at the duc, yes. But not a tuer, mon ami, not angry to kill. I merely protested a decision that I had not expected and did not deserve.

"Why, I had even begun conversations with Marciello, that dancing master of a man, to sell him my academy so that my wife could live decently while I was at sea in Vendee. Now, here I am, immured, without a ship, without my liberty. It is too much, 'Oare, too much. My poor wife…" De Barsac stared vacantly at the wet stone wall a mere four feet from his nose.

"Keep up your spirits, man," Hoare whispered, though he had no tangible support to offer the prisoner.

As he left the lockup, someone pulled at his cloak. The face beneath the shawl, tight-clutched against the cold, was no lady's; her complexion was too coarse. But she looked respectable, so Hoare did not pull free. She might be a lady's maid.

"Zur, zur!" she exclaimed.

"Yes?"

"Would you be Mr. 'Oare, zur?" She blushed. Hoare was long resigned to seeing blushes on young women's faces the first time they used his name. At least they seldom snickered, as did some men who did not know that, while Bartholomew Hoare had yet to kill his man, he had yet to miss whatever part of an opponent he chose for target.

"The same," he whispered, and waited. She gave a little bob.