Judith Rock - The Rhetoric of Death

“Monsieur-” Charles walked around the table and faced the apothecary. He suddenly realized he didn’t know the man’s name. “What are you called?”

“Called? I am called Monsieur Riviere.”

“Well, Monsieur Riviere, a man died this afternoon at the college of Louis le Grand. I think he died from poison you sold. The day I came asking about sugar, a woman came in as I left. A young woman. She wore a black veil and gown, but with a rose-colored petticoat under it. You greeted her as though you knew her. Who is she?”

The dwarf was carefully examining his pieces of wood and sorting them by size. “Do I remember everyone who comes through my door? And their petticoats?”

“You are required by law to keep a register, with the names of all who buy poison and the reason they give for buying it. You are also required to sell poison only to people you know.”

“And why should you think this rose-petticoated woman bought poison? Are you certain you do not wish a love potion, my beautiful cleric?”

“Are you certain you do not want me to return with Lieutenant-General La Reynie?”

The apothecary sighed and took off his spectacles. “Always such a fuss about death,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes. “So much death, always, and no one gets used to it. Isn’t death the only way to your heaven? You’d think-”

Your heaven? Charles decided he didn’t have time for whatever that meant. “I heard you greet her, monsieur, you know her. Give me her name.” He stepped closer, forcing the little man to crane his neck back and look nearly straight up. “If you can’t remember, go and get your register. If you keep a register.”

The dwarf moved away and rubbed his neck. “I think you mean Mademoiselle La Salle.” His deep brown eyes were full of the sadness Charles remembered from his first visit. “She is a servant in the Place Royale.”

“The Place Royale? You’re sure?”

“The silly chit brags about it. She makes it sound as though the close stools are solid gold and her mistress shits rubies. She goes on about how high and great and rich the woman is, and says that soon she will be rich, too.”

“Who is her mistress? Which house is it?”

The apothecary shrugged. “She told me once that she watched a duel in the Place from her window. But I suppose you could do that from any of those houses.”

“Did she buy aconite?”

“She often buys it. Her mistress uses it to make a salve to ease backache, the girl says. I make the same salve myself, it’s a perfectly good reason for buying aconite. Dangerous to handle, but I tell them how to be careful. Now may I see you out and get back to my work?”

Charles’s inheld anger flared like the phosphorus match. “By all means, monsieur. And as you get on with your work, pray for the soul of Maitre Doissin. Dead from your aconite. Which wasn’t even meant for him. Mademoiselle La Salle meant it for an eight-year-old child.”

He left the dwarf standing there and felt his way through the dark house. Behind him, the dwarf’s voice rose in a strange, minor-keyed lament, sad enough to mourn all the world’s dead, past and to come. Charles shivered as the despairing music coiled around his heart.

La Salle. La Salle. The name beat in time to Charles’s footsteps like a funeral drum. Who was she? If La Salle was really her name, which he doubted. Whoever she was, what was her connection to Antoine Doute? She had a connection, of that he was certain, though his certainty was irrational and fragile, woven from glimpses of her petticoat: red, rose red, bloodred now in his mind’s eye. It was full dark now and the streets were as close to quiet as Paris streets ever seemed to get. Someone’s Nemesis, Le Picart had called him, and Charles felt like Nemesis as he descended on the Place Royale and strode through the south gate beneath the Pavillon du Roi. A carriage rolled in front of him along the gravelled roadway that divided the arcaded, nearly identical houses from the square’s garden. In the garden, a few murmuring, laughing strollers still crisscrossed the paths around Louis XIII’s statue. An outburst of coarse laughter made him turn to see an obvious fille de joie dart from the ground-floor arcade and run like the wind toward the square’s ungated north-west corner. Her bare-scalped customer pounded behind her, yelling for help and pointing to his long, expensive wig, which the girl carried aloft like a trophy.

Charles left them to it and walked along the roadway, past the arcade’s closed shops and the lanterns burning by house gates. He descended abruptly from tragedy to farce: Nemesis didn’t know which house held the poisoner. Or what she looked like, except that she was small and wore a gaudy petticoat. Hoping for inspiration, he kept on doggedly around the square, looking up at the big windows glowing with candlelight and watching the gates. He supposed he could ring at every house, but a strange Jesuit asking for a servant girl would raise a flurry of questions, maybe warn his quarry and give her time to escape by a back way. His frustrated sigh was answered by a gasp from a dark stretch of arcade.

“Who’s there?” he demanded and immediately felt his face grow hot. A gasp in the dark could have reasons that were none of his business. A stifled sob followed the gasp.

“Who’s there?” he said more boldly. “Is something wrong?” Offering help was certainly his business.

Frere Fabre emerged from the arcade, his red hair shining in the light from the windows. His face was a mask of misery.

For a moment neither of them moved. Then Charles grabbed the boy, twisting his cassock into hard knots. “You followed me. Why?” Fabre turned his head away and Charles shook him. “Why?”

“When you went out, maitre, I was afraid you knew, but you went into that house on the bridge. I came here, anyway, but I didn’t warn her, I swear it! I meant to, but I couldn’t!” The boy covered his face and sobbed in earnest.

“Didn’t warn who?”

“Agnes.” Fabre tried to wipe his face on his cassock skirt and Charles released his hold. “When I got here, I kept remembering Maitre Doissin. And that it might have been Antoine. And I-” He shook his head wordlessly.

“Frere Fabre, who is Agnes?”

“My sister. My half-sister, her surname is La Salle. She’s Mme Doute’s maid.”

Charles stared at him, bereft of speech.

“You saw her at Philippe’s funeral, maitre. I was talking to her.”

“Yes,” Charles managed to say, “I remember. I didn’t know she was Mme Doute’s maid.”

Fabre nodded at the nearest gate. “She’s been here most of the summer with her mistress. The house belongs to Mme Montfort, Mme Doute’s sister.”

“Mme Doute didn’t go to Chantilly with Philippe’s body?”

“She said the journey was too much for her. She made M. Doute leave her here.”

“So you knew it was your sister who had left the gaufres. That’s why you were so upset and tried to confuse what Frere Martin said.”

“Forgive me, maitre!” Fabre’s face was full of anguish. “I told myself it had to be an accident, a mistake, she couldn’t have meant to do it!”

“You saw her leave the package?”

“Not leave it, no. I’d just polished the handles and the knocker on the big doors. For Wednesday’s performance. I took most of the cleaning things inside and when I came back for the rest, Agnes was turning away from the postern. Her back was to me and she had on a mourning veil, but I knew her by her red petticoat. She had her overskirt lifted away from the street.” He laughed unsteadily. “She wouldn’t put off that red petticoat if she was mourning a husband, let alone her mistress’s stepson. I didn’t call out to her because I didn’t have time to talk-once you get Agnes started, you’re stuck.” He looked pleadingly at Charles. “Why would she want to hurt Antoine? Maitre, she couldn’t have known the gaufres were poisoned!”