T.F. Banks - The Emperor's assassin

“Ce n'est pas comme vous pensez! Fichez-moi la paix! ” someone howled, from within the chamber.

The Runners waited, listening intently.

“Ce n'est pas moi! Je sais rien de tout!” The voice subsided now to a mournful wail. “C'est vrai, c'est vrai.”

Presley looked questioningly at Morton, but Morton held up his finger to be patient.

The voice now let out a long torrent of slurred French, only some of which Morton could follow. It's true, it's true , it said, again and again, they…she…it wasn't me…I told them nothing… and other incoherent protestations that the Runner lost entirely. Then whoever it was began to weep. “Je suis en enfer!”

There was a solid thump, as of an object being tossed down on the wooden floor. And the clink of a bottle against the rim of a metal cup.

When nothing more came for several long moments, Morton shrugged at Presley and raised his voice. “Bow Street! You, within there! Open this door and throw your weapon out!” Presley stepped quickly over to the other side of the doorway.

“ Bow Street?” asked the unseen man, groggily.

“Your firearm!” repeated Morton. “Heave it out to us.”

“I meant no harm,” muttered the voice, now in passable but also slurred English. “It fire… par hasard. By accident. I meant you Anglais no harm. Why-why are you here?”

“Your weapon !” bellowed Jimmy Presley. “Throw it out here before we break down this bloody door and smash your pate!”

A pause, and the door swung open, inward. Morton glanced cautiously around the jamb and saw a booted foot kicking ineffectually at a pistol on the floor. He stepped swiftly into the room and bent and picked up the gun.

The place was dim, its single window shuttered tightly. There was an even more powerful mixture of odours here, the acrid smell of gunsmoke drifting above a deeper layer of food and stale air and urine. The room was larger than Morton expected and piled with small wine and brandy casks and other boxes, most with their tops pried off and apparently empty. A disorderly bed was heaped up with clothes and books and other matter, but the man, dressed in a filthy linen shirt, was slumped on the floor beside it, his back against the wall. Ranged around him was a little thicket of brandy bottles, mostly empty, and several plates, on which lay old breadcrusts and dried-up scraps of cheese. A second pistol lay amongst them. The man watched impassively as Jimmy Presley took that as well and gently let the cock down.

“Loaded and primed,” he said to Morton.

“Monsieur Boulot, I think?” asked Morton with sarcastic politeness, as the two Runners peered down at him.

The man bent over as he struggled slowly to get to his feet, and in the glint of light from the corridor Morton could see the irregular red blotch on his half-bald head. Short but powerfully built, perhaps in his early thirties, he had not shaved in days. “C'est moi,” he groaned, and tottered as he came upright, so that the Runners reached out to steady him. “I must… apologise, messieurs , but I have no chair to offer you. But you could sit here on my bed.”

He sat on it himself, heavily, and something, perhaps made of china, cracked audibly beneath him. The two Bow Street men remained standing.

“What in hell do you mean, shooting at us?” Presley demanded.

“I am… sincerely… desole amp; sorry, for that,” Boulot pronounced with drunken care. “It were… purely accidental, je vous assure . I think, you know…I think I drink too much, and I get ideas, so I have…my pistols, by me. I shoot at phantom. But if you must take me…to prison, for this. Then, I am ready.”

“Maybe we will,” said Presley gruffly.

“Whom were you expecting?” Morton wanted to know. Boulot raised bloodshot eyes to him.

“It was a dream, monsieur la police . Or…I should say, un cauchemar . A nightmare. Comme ma vie ,” he added in a bitter undertone.

“It was no nightmare, monsieur. You expected someone. You were crying out something about a woman, about you not saying anything to someone. What did you mean?”

Boulot blinked at him a moment, as if registering the fact that Morton understood French, or perhaps just trying to remember what he had said. “I was raving,” he replied. “Nothing is real.”

“I think you were talking about Angelique Desmarches,” Morton said. “You know she's dead, don't you?”

Boulot's eyes went empty. He seemed to be more in control of himself now, however much he had imbibed. He wiped his wet cheeks with the back of one thick hand and slowly shook his head. “It was not 'er.”

“But you do know who she is?”

“If you want to… arrest me, gennlemen,” he replied with a kind of weary, theatrical, drunken self-pity, “do it. I am guilty, oui, oui , I am a man of a thousand crimes! Just tell me which ones I must confess to.”

“The murder of Angelique Desmarches.”

“That I did not do.” A grimace ran quickly over his pale face. He looked up at Morton and shook his head emphatically. “It is true what I say: I am not a good man. In my life I have cheated, and lied, and abandoned the people who loved me. But that, non, jamais , never.”

“So you have not that on your conscience? But you say you are in hell, monsieur. ‘ Je suis en enfer .’ Why is that?”

“Does this look like heaven to you?”

“You visited the house of the Count d'Auvraye the same day Madame Desmarches died. What were you doing there?”

Instead of answering, Boulot watched Jimmy Presley, who had put the pistol in a pocket and was unfastening the shutters. He flung them open, letting in a flood of evening light and making the Frenchman squint and shy away in pain. The younger Runner began rooting about in the disorder of the room, searching.

“What were you doing there?” demanded Morton again, more sharply.

“I had some… things. I thought le comte might be interested.”

“You sell smuggled French goods, Monsieur Boulot, but I don't think that is why you visited the count.”

The man gazed up at Morton, his eyes unfocused.

“Pardon, monsieur?”

“After your visit, the count cast off Madame Desmarches. What did you say to him? Did she have another lover? Were you her lover?”

“Was I ?” Jean Boulot laughed, a harsh, barking explosion, his mood suddenly shifting. “Eh, monsieur la police , do I look like I could possess a woman like that?” He bent over in sardonic hilarity. “Ah, oui , I had somuch to offer her! My fortune, my reputation”-he gestured fancifully around the room-“ mon chateau .”

“So you knew her. You knew her looks, her character, her connections.”

“Knew her? From afar,” replied Boulot. “Let us say that.” His little outburst of merriment subsided.

“What did you tell the count, dem you! Do you want us to haul you into Bow Street and see what you have to say to the Beak?”

“Oui,” said Jean Boulot. “I want that.”

Morton folded his arms and frowned at the man. Presley concluded his hunt, getting up from looking under the bed, his face a perfect mask of fastidious working-class disgust. His eyes indicated the slovenliness on all sides.

“Pig,” he said bluntly to Boulot.

“Call me name” was the listless reply. “Arrest me.” Boulot leaned his head in his hands, as if he were trying to keep it from spinning, and stared blankly ahead.

“I think you are a Bonapartist,” said Henry Morton. “I think you hate the count and resented him his beautiful mistress.”