Judith Rock - The Eloquence of Blood

“A little fasting will loosen his tongue.”

Charles regarded the lieutenant-general with distaste. “He did not kill his father. I am certain of it. And I don’t think he killed the girl.”

“Oh? Who had a better motive than he to kill both of them?”

“I wish I knew.” Charles stopped in the small light of a lantern beside the worn stone stairs. “Brion truly wants to be a monk.” And when, Charles’s mind said cynically, did you decide his vocation is real? Just now in that cell, he told it. So please shut up. “Monsieur La Reynie, no one with a real religious vocation would kill to get it.”

“I agree that the sin of murder to gain monastic life would twist that life out of all rightness. But this Gilles Brion does not strike me as a humbly judging intellect. He strikes me as a weak young man floundering in tempests of emotion.”

Lips pressed together to keep what he wanted to say behind his teeth, Charles hitched his cassock skirts impatiently out of the way and started down the stairs.

“That was well done to remind him of the penalty for sodomy,” La Reynie said behind him.

“You cannot prosecute him for sodomy,” Charles said curtly. “You have no evidence.”

“No. I haven’t. But threats about one thing have been known to elicit what I want to know about other things.”

A wave of anger and disgust rose in Charles. Especially since he’d just done virtually the same thing in his talk with Gilles. “How you can bear your job, I cannot fathom.” He turned abruptly toward where he thought the street door might be, suddenly unwilling to ask the way, or anything else, of La Reynie.

“Oh, I think you can fathom it.” The ancient stone vaulting enlarged La Reynie’s voice so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once. “There is little to choose between us. You and your brother Jesuits are accused every day of twisting questionable means to reach admirable ends. Come to my office. I have other things to tell you.”

“No, thank you.” Charles kept walking.

“Going back on your vow of obedience, are you?”

Charles stopped, but didn’t turn around. “What does that mean?”

“Your rector told you to keep track of my inquiry into these deaths. So come to my office and keep track. Or are you simply another weak young man floundering in tempests of emotion?”

Speechless with fury, Charles turned slowly. He fixed the lieutenant-general with an unblinking stare, and then his eyes dropped to the sword at La Reynie’s side.

“I could take it off, you know,” the lieutenant-general said earnestly. “Then it would be just hand-to-hand combat. Will that do for a young man floundering-”

Charles’s swelling anger deflated as suddenly as a punctured bladder in a boys’ ball game. “… floundering in a tempest of emotion,” he finished, with a snort of rueful laughter. “No, it won’t do. Shall we go to your office?”

La Reynie made him a mock bow. “I am relieved that we’re not dueling, because I have quite a lot to do today. And also because you are younger and would probably win.”

“I would most certainly win.”

Smiling, La Reynie led him into an office that proclaimed his exalted place in the realm. Wool hangings of the weaving called moquette, patterned in red and blue and yellow, softened the stone walls. A portrait of the king hung behind the wide walnut desk. A fire burned in a wide, stone-hooded fireplace, and a dark blue-and-yellow carpet with medallions representing Fame and Fortitude lay in front of it. The armchairs on either side of the fireplace were upholstered in garnet leather tacked with gilt nails and fringed in gold. La Reynie gestured Charles to one of the armchairs, spread his coat’s thick skirts, and seated himself in the other one. He poured wine from a pewter pitcher standing on the table and held out a glass to Charles.

“I have first to thank you for the information about the silver smuggling. There was a report about it here when I returned, but it was useful to have it sooner. Monsieur Bizeul and a jeweler called Robert Cantel walked Brion out of the coffeehouse. Bizeul denies any part in either Brion’s smuggling or death. I have not yet talked to Cantel for the good reason that I cannot find him.”

“He’s fled? Then there’s your man! You can-”

“I know only that the man has disappeared. For all I know, he, too, is dead. Never fear, I am searching diligently for him. And looking closely into the financial affairs of both Bizeul and Cantel. I am nearly sure that Bizeul is involved in the smuggling. Which means that Cantel probably is, too. About Monsieur Brion, Bizeul says that he left Procope’s with him and Cantel on Thursday night, all friends together, and stopped in a tavern. Then they apparently went on to Bizeul’s house, because an oublieur finishing his rounds saw Brion and Cantel-who lives only a few streets from Bizeul-leave Bizeul’s house together.” Oublieurs were evening street vendors who sold their delicate pastry wafers, called oublies, for after-dinner treats at houses hosting parties. “The oublieur said they were arguing, but he couldn’t say whether Brion went with Cantel willingly or not. Interestingly, I found a little room off Cantel’s courtyard in which there was a pile of straw, blankets, half a loaf of bread, a pewter cup, and a length of rope, cut through. Madame Cantel says that she had a drunk, unruly servant put there overnight. I think that Monsieur Cantel put an unruly notary there. And meant to leave him there until Brion covered his and Bizeul’s losses. I think a servant took a bribe and let him escape, probably shortly before he was killed. When we undressed him here at the Chatelet, there was straw under his cloak, on his coat. I think he was on his way home-your Monsieur Morel said that those streets were a back way to the Brion house.”

Charles stared at La Reynie. “You’ve talked to one of the men who seem to be the last who saw Brion alive. You know that they abducted and imprisoned him. You know that the second man has fled! So why in the name of all hell’s devils have you arrested Gilles Brion for that murder?”

“I don’t think those two men killed Brion. Oh, I have not stopped making absolutely sure of that. But I think that they abducted him because they were furious over the failure of his smuggling scheme and the money they lost. I imagine that they thought they could force him to pay them some part of it. Which is a very good reason to think they didn’t kill him. Dead, he would be able to pay them nothing. And I cannot see why they would follow and kill him after he escaped. He certainly would not have come to the police over his imprisonment; he was in far too much trouble himself. I agree that, of the two, Cantel has made himself far more suspect by disappearing. When I find him, he will find himself housed here until he explains himself to my satisfaction. But, again, why kill the man from whom you hope to get a large sum of money? So, until I know more, I am left with your devout friend upstairs.”

“If Gilles Brion wanted to kill his father, why would he do it at that noisome ditch where his father was found? How could he know his father would be there? Why would he be there?”

“I have no idea.”

“But you think he did it.”

“On the whole, no.”

Charles breathed slowly in and out, metaphorically clutching his temper with both hands. “Good. At least we agree about that. So what are you playing at?”

La Reynie rose from his chair, shaking his head in exasperation, and picked up the iron poker to stir the fire. “I am trying to shake loose from someone-him-anyone-what I need to know. Young Brion does not seem to me to have the stomach for killing either his father or the girl. But he is the only one we have clear evidence against, and I have to know for certain. The evidence against him in the girl’s murder is damning enough. If he killed either of them, though, I would say he’d be more likely to kill his father. Sons so often seem to be, don’t they, whether they really do or not.” His voice was suddenly bleak and his shoulders rose and fell in a soundless sigh. “But I agree with you that both time and place speak against his guilt where his father is concerned. I heard what he told you about where he was on Thursday night and early Friday-before he went to the Mynette house-and I heard the conclusion you drew from what he said.” He glanced over his shoulder at Charles. “This may shock you, maitre, but if Gilles Brion did not kill his father-or the girl-I don’t care what else he was doing, whether he was with his ‘beau ami’ or the village goat or weeping the night through by himself in prayer. Though if you quote me, I will deny having said so.”