T.F. Banks - The Emperor's assassin

Morton reached for his wine goblet. Arabella had arrived with a fine, dark Bordeaux-the first of the legal wines to cross the Channel. It was from an admirer, she'd told him, making Morton only slightly uncomfortable. But when a woman had as many admirers as the acclaimed Arabella Malibrant, one must make peace with it. Morton sipped his wine and tried not to think of its source.

“I suppose anything is possible.” Beyond a certain point he found that this kind of speculation offered little return. He needed to speak with the Count d'Auvraye, find out where the man had been during the night of the murder, discover why he had cast Angelique Desmarches aside. Morton needed to take the measure of the man and watch him as he answered questions. There were many things Morton would need to learn before he could begin to speculate.

“Do you know what I do find odd?” Morton said suddenly. “The dressmaker, Madame De le C?ur; she claimed not to know Angelique Desmarches well, though her grief at the news belied this.”

“We both noted that.” Arabella plucked her wine goblet from the small side table that Morton had moved within her reach. He often felt like a creature utterly without grace beside her.

“Indeed we did. But Angelique Desmarches's servants told me that Madame De le C?ur or her daughter came to visit often-at times when they had no business to transact.”

“They might have been collecting bills, or trying to.”

“But Madame De le C?ur said specifically that Madame Desmarches paid her bills on time. Do you remember?”

“I don't, but I would never doubt your memory, Henry.”

Arabella returned her glass to the table in a rustle of silk, enticing Morton's mind for a moment to things more romantic.

“If she was a friend of the poor woman who was murdered, why did she not say so?” Arabella asked.

“I have wondered the same thing.”

“Fear of Bow Street?”

“She did not seem afraid. When first we arrived, I believe she was a little disdainful, as though vexed that a mere Runner would dare disturb her .” Morton closed his eyes and tried to recall the conversation to its smallest detail. After a moment he opened his eyes. “There is something odd there. I believe I shall speak to Madame De le C?ur again.”

“I will do it for you, if you like,” Arabella said. “Perhaps she was less than truthful with you, Henry, but you are more intimidating than you realise.”

“I was a perfect gentleman.”

“Indeed you were-a perfect gentleman of six foot three inches height, twelve plus stone. Not to mention that you represent the law of a foreign land.” She smiled. “Leave Madame De le C?ur to me. I think her daughter was rather pleased to have me appear in their establishment. Do you remember she paid me a very fine compliment?”

“Did she indeed? Odd that you would remember that.”

“ ‘Man can be cured of every folly but vanity. ’ ”

It was a quote, clearly, but not one Morton recognised. He took a guess. “Dr. Johnson?”

“Rousseau!”

Morton nodded and took up his glass again.

“You are in low spirits this evening, my love,” Arabella said.

“Am I? It is this murder, I suppose,” Morton said, knowing it was a lie. The visit to his half-sister was at the heart of his mood, and he knew it. How bold she had been to write him! They had more in common than just appearance-he felt that. Yet they were separated by barriers as invisible as borders, and as real.

He opened his mouth to tell Arabella of the letter he had received and the subsequent meeting with his halfsister. But for some reason he could say nothing.

Before knocking at the door of the Count d'Au-vraye's house in Spanish Place, Henry Morton and Jimmy Presley had words with their watcher. Harold Farke had spent the dark hours in the shadows of an elm tree a discreet distance up the way, in Manchester Square. The shutters of most of the houses were closed, their inhabitants gone to the country for the summer, and there was little chance of him being observed or troubled. And Farke was a man who made a fine art of seeming a nondescript but somehow natural prop to almost any scene.

“An old cove came in p'raps an hour after Mr. Presley left me. I figure him to be your count. Came in his coach and didn't go out again. He ought still to be there.”

“Good. Were there others?”

Farke hardly moved as he spoke, lounging against his tree, eyes still coolly fixed on the house across the way. He merely shifted the splinter of wood he was chewing from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Oh, aye. Several folk came, and a few went again.

Gennl'men mostly, and two young ladies. They stayed, and a couple of the other gennl'men stayed, too. Lights on till nigh on one o'clock in the morn.”

Morton dropped a couple of shillings into the man's jacket pocket and murmured, “Commendable, thorough work, Harold. Off you go, now.”

“Ye know where to come at me, if ye need me.”

“How many young ladies does the fellow need?” grunted Jimmy Presley, as Farke drifted away and the two Runners turned to contemplate the count's house.

Morton laughed. “I wouldn't expect they're mistresses, Jimmy. Not openly, here, in his town dwelling. After all, there are other explanations. Besides, I'm reliably informed he has his daughters living here as well as his countess.”

“Bloody French hareem.”

“Nay, that's the Turks you're thinking of. All foreigners are not the same, whatever they may have told you in Cheapside. Let's go have a word.”

Morton had half-expected the Comte d'Auvraye to treat the Bow Street Runners as a kind of tradesmen, to be let in at the servants' entrance, then ushered discreetly through to his office, the way the squire of an English country manor did his tenants. But apparently the police had a different kind of status in the France that d'Auvraye wanted to keep alive. If gentlemen of the police came to call, on the king's business, a certain formality was in order, and the household was expected to present itself.

And they did. After a brief interval waiting in a small gilt-and-white retiring room off the front hall, Morton and Presley were ushered into a salon-red-carpeted, richly furnished-in which the count stood amidst his family, as if posing for a group portrait. He bowed, and the two Runners responded in kind, awkwardly enough. There were no handshakes. Morton's quick glance took in some large bright paintings in what looked to be the style of Watteau, and a couple of small marble statues on wooden stands.

“Monsieur Morton, Monsieur Presley, I am Gerrard d'Auvraye. Permit me to introduce my intimates.” His voice was gravely polite, slow, and only slightly accented. The man himself was above fifty years of age and dressed with subtle splendour in a costume in which silver predominated and that would not have looked out of place in a royal court. He wore a full powdered wig and a short goatee. “May I present Madame la comtesse d'Auvraye.”

Morton bowed in the direction of a small, black-eyed lady, also sumptuously dressed in blue silks. She barely raised an eyebrow in response, her face a rigid, powdered mask. If le comte felt that he must present his family to the men from Bow Street, Morton had the distinct impression that his countess felt differently.

“My daughters, Mademoiselle Honoria and Mademoiselle Celestine.”

Two rather fine-looking young ladies, both taller than their mother and dressed in English fashion, performed curtsies.

“I believe you have a box at the theatre, Mr. Morton,” the dark-haired one offered.

“I regret to say that I do not, Mademoiselle Honoria, but I attend often.”