Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

With a tight throat, Charles blessed them. Then people began to come out of the church, and the paupers drifted toward the door at the side of the church to meet Martine Mynette’s coffin. Charles stepped back, close to the wall, to watch unnoticed for Isabel.

She was quick to emerge, followed by her awkward manservant. She saw Charles before he could speak and pushed her black veil back. Her eyes were red with weeping, her warm coloring turned almost sallow.

“The priest told Uncle Callot that you would be here to see me home. Uncle Callot and my brother are going on to the burial. And Monsieur Morel, too.” A faint blush warmed her skin as she named the dancing master. “I felt that I could not go. I should, but-” She lifted her small gloved hands and let them fall.

“You bear a heavy burden of grief, mademoiselle, no need to try yourself harder.” Charles offered her his arm to help her down the steps slippery with patches of ice. “Please allow me to say how very sorry I am about your father’s death. Especially coming in the way it did, and so soon after the death of your friend.”

She nodded silently, pulling her veil down over her face, and took delicate hold of his proffered arm. “To tell you the truth, maitre, I feel Martine’s death even more than my father’s. Which I know is very wrong of me.”

“Mademoiselle Mynette shared much with you. Fathers do not often do that,” Charles said, as they reached the bottom of the stairs and set off toward the rue Perdue, followed closely by the servant.

Ruefully, she shook her head. “Poor Papa, always busy with a new scheme for growing rich.”

“Yes?” Charles was watching her closely now, wondering if she knew about the silver.

She tried to laugh. “In truth, more money would be welcome in our house. Papa spent too much money on things like our clothes. But he often spent nothing where he should have spent something. You see how our servants are dressed.” She sighed. “He was kind to me, though,” she went on, “and he tried to be kind to Martine. I wish he hadn’t been trying to make her live with us, though. She hated that.”

As they walked, a few people scowled at Charles and one called insults from a distance. Mlle Brion seemed not to hear, but Charles memorized the hostile faces and made sure no one came too close. When a passing couple slipped and fell briefly against him, he was poised to defend Mlle Brion and himself before he registered the couple’s apologies. He caught himself just in time, joined in the little flurry of politeness, and everyone walked on. This kind of overquick reaction to threat, even when there was none, had plagued him since the army. It was sometimes useful, but more often embarrassing.

They arrived without further incident at the Sign of Three Ducks, and Mlle Brion crossed the threshold with a sigh of relief.

“Please bring wine to the little salon, Bon,” she said to the servant, as he followed them in and shut the door. Pushing her veil back again, she turned to Charles. “My father’s coffin is in the large salon. My maid is there, too; someone is always with him. If you will sit with me in the little room across the landing, maitre, I have something to tell you.”

“With pleasure, mademoiselle.” Charles stood aside and then followed her up the stairs.

The door of the salon where the Brions had received him before was open, and he saw that the room had been turned into a mourning chamber. The shutters were closed and the walls hung with black. In the center of the room, candles burned around the open coffin resting on trestles. The maid sat in a chair against the wall, rubbing at her eyes as though she’d been roused from dozing.

“Will you come in with me, maitre?” Mlle Brion asked hesitantly.

Charles bowed his acquiescence and they went to stand beside the coffin. Isabel rested her hand on her father’s chest and bowed her head. Helped to greater feeling for the dead man by his resemblance to his daughter, Charles prayed for him and then gazed at his still face. Where did you go from Procope’s? he asked silently. Did one of your unhappy investors come at you with the knife? Or did you die looking into the face of your even more unhappy son?

Isabel Brion stirred and sighed, and Charles made the sign of the cross over the coffin. They went out onto the landing, where the manservant had just arrived, balancing two glasses on a tray.

“There’s only the local wine left,” he said, thrusting the tray at Mlle Brion as if he expected her to take it.

She frowned repressively at him. “No need to describe the wine, Bon, what I asked for will do very well. Take it in, please, and put it on the little table.” She rolled her eyes at Charles and dropped her voice. “He is only seventeen and very raw, but he means well. He was all we could afford when our old Albin left us.”

“Willingness to learn is everything,” Charles said politely.

Bon sidled out of the little salon and stumbled down the stairs, looking over his shoulder at them, and they went in. Charles, as a Jesuit scholastic, should not have been alone with a woman, especially a young woman. And the young woman should not have been alone with him. But both of them had much to say, Charles told himself, and none of it threatened their virtue. The window’s light was welcome, but the little salon had no fireplace and the chill struck through Charles’s cloak and cassock. Several chairs were set against the walls. Two of them flanked the carpet-covered table where the servant had put the tray.

“Please sit.” She went to the table and gestured Charles toward the cushioned and fringed chair on its other side. When they were both seated, she stripped her black gloves from her hands and Charles sniffed appreciatively at the scent of jasmine her hands’ warmth had released into the air from the soft leather. She untied the strings of her manteau, pushed her veil farther back from her face, and held a glass out to Charles. “As Bon said, it’s only local, from Suresnes, but it will serve to warm us.”

When they had drunk in silence for a moment, she said, “I want to tell you something about Martine. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, but it troubles me. And it may help you find her killer.”

“The police are searching for the killer, mademoiselle,” Charles said gently. “My rector has only ordered me to keep track of what is done, because of what is being said in the streets about Jesuits having a part in her death.”

“But you care that justice is done for her. I see it in your face, I hear it in your voice when we speak of her.”

“Yes. I care very much about justice for her. What is it that you want to tell me about her, mademoiselle?”

Isabel Brion set her glass down. “When her maid and I were caring for her body-” She bit her lip and picked up her gloves from her lap, smoothing their soft leather and sending more sweetness into the air. “When we had undressed her and started to wash her, I saw that the little necklace she always wore was gone. It was nothing valuable, just a little red enameled heart on a pretty embroidered ribbon. But it was the most precious thing in the world to Martine. I looked everywhere-where we were working, in her chamber, and at the foot of the stairs where she was found, but it wasn’t there.”

Trying to hide his disappointment that the great secret was only a lost keepsake, Charles said, “Perhaps the ribbon broke one day when she was in the street and the necklace dropped without her notice.”

“No! She was so careful of it and she wore it under her clothes. It couldn’t have fallen all the way to the ground, you know.” She blushed suddenly. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

Charles felt himself blush, too-ex-soldiers did know these things. “But if she wore it under her clothes, how can you be sure that she still had it?”