T.F. Banks - The Emperor's assassin

Morton shifted now on his hard seat in the top-floor darkness, as he mused. There were connections between Boulot, d'Auvraye, and the woman buried beneath the snowdrift on Surgeon Skelton's bloodstained table. Boulot had not fired his pistols at a phantom, and he had not made that visit to the count by chance, not the very day, the very hour the French aristocrat had turned against his mistress. But what were they? What actually linked these men?

His thoughts were interrupted, however, by sounds in back of him, the opposite direction from Boulot's room. From behind the thin wall against which he leaned, the moans, the cadenced gasps… the age-old sounds of a man and a woman. Morton could not help but listen, his blood stirred a little in mere animal sympathy. But pitifully soon a slight speeding up, the single louder grunt. And then silence. One low mutter, and silence again. Was this how it was, then, in a place like Paul's Court? The joy that ought to be equal for all, in castles and hovels alike-was it not, in fact, smaller and nastier and shabbier for the poor, the miserable, the denizens of narrow tenements and narrow lives? Henry Morton could well believe it. He had been raised on a steady diet of the improving works of Hannah More and Elizabeth Hamilton, forced down his throat by his Evangelical “aunt.” But it was a food he had hated and resisted with every particle of his young soul. He would never, ever accept that anything was better in poverty, the way the lady authors and their moralizing ilk constantly claimed. Because nothing was. Not love or friendship, not character, virtue, or human-kindness, not wisdom, nor the simple pleasures. Nothing. The only good poverty ever produced-and then only sometimes-was the passionate desire to get out of it.

In the midst of these morose reflections, he heard, below, the staircase begin its wailing. Morton stood quietly and pulled himself back farther into concealment, listening intently. Slowly they came up. He tried to guess how many. Three at least, perhaps four. At the top of the stairs there was no hesitation-they turned directly toward Boulot's chamber. They'd been here before.

Morton risked a careful glimpse around the flue. But in the dimness of the unlit hall, he could barely see a little cluster of people at the far end. The knock on Boulot's door was quick, soft, confidential.

“Ouvrez. C'est nous.”

The demand that he open was also quiet, discreet, although Morton heard an urgency in the tone of the speaker. There was only silence in response.

“Boulot, c'est nous. Ouvrez.”

Now one of the other men in the hall-for those who spoke, at least, were certainly men-took it up. But his voice was more husky, and Morton could not follow what he said, except to know that it, too, was a remonstrance, accompanied with more rapping at the door.

Now came the sound of a voice from within-Boulot, low, muffled, maybe still drunken, and too far off for Morton to understand either.

“Non, non,” replied the first man in the corridor, his voice rising a little in impatience. “Il n'y a pas de cause. Pas de danger. Ouvrez!”

Boulot must have been convinced that there was indeed no danger. After a short hesitation, there was a squeak of hinges, and the visitors all went in. Their voices continued inside, as the door closed behind them. Morton immediately left his place of hiding and went as quietly as he could to Boulot's door.

Within the room they were speaking quickly, intensely. He had almost to press his ear to the door to hear anything. At Bow Street Morton was thought fluent in French, but the truth was, he did better when he could see the speaker, hear clearly what that person was saying, when he could slow the sounds down, hearing them again in his mind. Standing in this dark hallway with his ear almost to the door, trying to follow this rapid babble of foreign voices, angry, voluble, interrupting one another-this was a different matter. It was maddening-he could grasp only fragments, parts of sentences, make out some speakers better than others. They were arguing, he could tell that. Boulot was defending himself, but oddly, his visitors did not seem to be accusing him. They seemed to be trying to mollify him, reassure him of their trust.

But the drunken Boulot kept repeating, “Ce n'est pas ma faute!” It was not his fault! He claimed to have had nothing to do with it.

Another voice, lower, impossible for Morton to hear. Calming, reassuring.

Finally Boulot seemed to understand and fell silent. Then the sound of a man weeping-Boulot. No one spoke for a long moment, and then a calm deep voice, almost impossible to hear.

They could not do it without him. Assassiner , another said. Assassinate. “They would assassinate him,” or something like. Morton felt a growing sense of alarm. Perhaps Boulot was not quite so pathetic as he seemed. But then, he remembered, the word in French was not quite the same as in English. It could mean plain “murder,” and perhaps, in the manner of all excitable continentals, they were just flinging their words about loosely, carelessly. Perhaps nothing so serious as assassination was at issue, or even killing of any kind.

Boulot spoke again, his words slurred one into the other. Oui , Morton heard. Un botiment. Berman sur le quai. Ratton-berri. Words Morton could not understand. Nancy. “He could do no more. Leave him in peace.”

The door Morton held his ear to swept suddenly open, so that Morton all but fell into the room. The pale blur of five surprised faces, and then the largest of them charged him, catching him before he'd regained his balance and throwing him across the hallway and almost over the banister into the stairwell.

The others shot out the door in a panic. Morton made a grab for one, his fingers grasping futilely at the coarse buckram of a jacket. Cursing, he lashed out with his foot, half-tripping one of them, who careened into the stairwell after his fellows. Making a sprawling dive, Morton stabbed his hand though the banister posts, briefly catching the man's shoe, upsetting him completely and sending him spilling head over heels down the groaning stairs. A voice cried in panic, then grunted with an impact, thumping sounds, and other voices shouting out in fear, as he must have fallen onto them. In an instant Morton had regained his feet, scooped up his baton, and pulled himself round the newel post to give chase down the staircase. But his quarry seemed all to have managed to regain their balance and resume their own descent. He charged after them, bellowing out to the inhabitants of the house to stop the thieves in the name of the king.

Down they all went, thumping and clattering in the lightless shaft, taking three and four steps at a bound, causing the flimsy staircase to shake and scream. By the time they reached the bottom hall, Morton had almost caught them up. They were just ahead of him, struggling through the front vestibule. Reaching out as he surged forward, he was just about to seize the hind-most-when he fell over something solid and went sprawling face-first. He had been tripped by a booted foot, thrust deftly out from one of the rooms. It withdrew in a trice, and the door of the room clapped closed again. The “traps” had no friends here.

Henry Morton had fallen hard. For a moment he lay stunned, wheezing and gasping to regain his breath. Then slowly, painfully, he pulled himself to his feet again. His knee throbbing, he pushed through the front door and stumbled out into the cooler air of Paul's Court. But from the darkness there came only the echo of receding footfalls.

Morton went a few paces down the almost black street, then gave it up and hobbled back. Boulot would not proclaim his innocence now. Assassiner , they had said, whatever the specific meaning of the word. Morton would drag the drunkard down to Bow Street and keep him from his bottle until he'd told everything he knew.