"And were you the last person to see him alive?"
"No," she said flatly. "The last to leave him alive, perhaps, but not the last to see him. That privilege belonged to his killer, not to me. To the Vicomte de Barsac, if your lumps of mayor's men are correct."
"Then perhaps madame la comtesse would have the kindness to tell me about her last encounter with his late royal highness," Hoare whispered.
"What, here?" she asked. "In this place, and in this frigid air? No indeed, monsieur. You may escort me to my lodgings if you will, such as they are, and interrogate me there."
"It would be an honor, madame."
She took his arm, summoned her dragon, and steered him down through the town's icy streets, to bring him up all standing before the staring guardian of The Three Suns' majestic door.
The Three Suns bore the reputation of housing only Britain's highest and their very good friends when those friends were not such as to be announced to the world. Hoare's only previous visits there had been as a message-bearer from the port admiral to these personages. But after suppressing a raised eyebrow upon sighting him, the porter flung the door open with a flourish. He greeted madame la comtesse in execrable French, and added, "Good morning, Mr. 'Oare. And a fine, frosty morning it is, Mr. 'Oare."
"Good morning, Pollard."
Pollard's eyes and ears were always open wide, and his mouth as well, at least for those who paid him to open them and for those, like Hoare, of whom he walked in dread. To Pollard and his cronies Hoare was The Whispering Ferret.
The comtesse and her abigail mounted the wide stair, leaving Hoare to follow. At the door to what must be her chambers she stood aside for the woman to unlock and open it. The salon within had been refurnished since '98 when Hoare had last seen it; chairs, sofas, and accessories, aglow in the low morning sun of winter, were all in the chaste Directoire style, fresh from Paris. The French government in exile, Hoare mused, might have its pockets to let, but its members still managed to eat cake.
The comtesse let her woman relieve her of her heavy cloak. Beneath it she stood lightly clad as if for summer, in a pale, nearly transparent figured silk, tucked demurely just beneath her breasts. Hoare handed the dragon his own cloak and cocked hat. The comtesse seated herself, semi-reclining, on a chaise longue and gestured to Hoare to take a matching chair. She began without preamble.
"As I said, I was the last person to see the late duc except for the person who killed him. You evidently did not know that, very conveniently, the Comte de Montrichard and I live apart. We do not-er- suit. Until his death, his royal highness occupied these premises. With me."
Equally evidently, Hoare thought, the comtesse wanted him to understand this relationship without any doubt at all.
"Why are you telling me these things, madame la comtesse?"
"Because you asked, monsieur. And because I find your whisper intriguing. Why do you whisper, by-the-by?"
"A French bullet, madame la comtesse," he whispered.
"Je suis desolee," she said dismissively.
"Will you tell me what took place between you and the duc yesterday evening?"
"What leads you to believe it was yesterday evening, Monsieur 'Oare?"
"I hardly know," Hoare admitted. He felt his face redden.
"It was not yesterday evening, monsieur, but yesterday noon, after the morning post came from 'Artwell. He had withdrawn into his workroom to read it. It was when he emerged that he gave me my conge."
"Tout court? Just like that?"
"No. He was gentlemanly, I admit-and gentle." The comtesse winced; she looked away.
"Tell me what he said, please," Hoare whispered.
"I… he told me that his brother had ordered him to return to his duchesse, in 'Artwell. He must obey, of course; after all, Louis is the head of the family. So… that was that, monsieur." She shrugged expressively. "He bade me adieu, kissed my hand, and left."
"No-ah-farewell gift?"
"No. He merely said, and I think I remember his exact words, 'You will know soon the extent of my gratitude.' "
"Do you know what he meant?"
"No, monsieur."
"And then?"
"That was all. I intend, monsieur, to bring his murderer to justice. Provins may have given me my conge last night, but that was his good right as one of our royal family. He was kind to me and generous, and I respected him. We even took some of his long walks together."
So the duc often took walks, sometimes with his mistress, sometimes not. She would have had nowhere to go now, save to a husband whom she detested and whom she could no longer support. Rejected and desperate, she could, Hoare thought, have appealed for a last promenade in the moonlit snow and, upon receiving her final dismissal, drawn the broken sword from beneath her cloak and dispatched her royal lover.
"And then?" he repeated.
"My husband arrived in the afternoon with a lackey, to remove Guillaume's-the duc's-belongings. That was all."
Hoare was silent for a spell, then rose to take his leave. "Permit me to offer my condolences, madame la comtesse," he whispered.
"None are necessary, Monsieur 'Oare. After all, it was une affaire du cour, pas une affaire de coeur." She smiled bitterly.
By this feeble pun the comtesse told Hoare that it was an affair of the court and not of the heart. She would not meet his eyes nonetheless but stared out the window as he made his bow and departed.
Hoare went in search of the combative cits who had discovered the duc's body. It took him nearly the rest of the day to find them, their seconds, and the surgeon who had pronounced the corpse a corpse, and interrogate them. None had anything useful to tell him. Both principals were suffering from fresh hangovers; all members of the party would prefer to put the whole matter out of their minds. So, after stopping at a food shop for a piece of roast beef slapped between two slices of bread (Lord Sandwich's recent invention) Hoare proceeded to the Portsmouth bridewell. He was known here.
"Friend of yours, Mr. 'Oare, I suspects," said the port-faced bailiff on duty when Hoare asked to see De Barsac. "Decent man for a Frog, I'd say, even if 'e did do 'is lordship in. 'Ere you are, sir. Thanky, sir."
The prisoner was small, leathery, gloomy looking. He looked up as Hoare hove into sight. "You! I might have known. I did not kill him, you know." De Barsac's English was precise though heavily accented.
"I am sure you did not," Hoare whispered. "But the evidence is strong against you. After all, you and Provins-" he stopped for breath "- had words the other day, and all the world saw it. Then, sometime last night, he was killed by one of the swords you keep for your students."
"Your first point is true," De Barsac said. "We had very harsh words. As to your second point, I must believe what you say. But I was not present at the event, so I can tell you nothing of the weapon used."
"Tell me about your contretemps with the duc."
"I was surprised, 'Oare, at the news he gave me. I would have expected better of him, for he had the reputation of being a man of his word. More so at least than some others of his family."
"What was the news that surprised you so?"
"That I was not to have Vendee. She had been promised me as soon as your admiralty released her to ours. She was to go to Dominique Montrichard."
Hoare was about to ask him what Vendee might be, besides the rebellious, royalist French province, but then remembered. By some back room arrangement among the French court-in-exile, the admiralty, and the Foreign Ministry, a few old decayed vessels of the Royal Navy, instead of being laid up in ordinary or broken up, were to be sold to Louis XVIII at pence in the pound. Once again the lily banner of the ancien regime could fly at sea. For a monarchy without a country to rule, it was a matter of pride.
Hoare remembered too, ruefully, that Vendee had once been the Eole frigate from whose main top a French marine had fired the shot that broke his larynx and his career. Since his Staghound had taken her in the same action, Hoare would have been put into her as commander as a matter of course, and he would have been made instead of broken. Now the French navy was to have her back. It was bitter.
"Forgive me, my friend," Hoare said, "but the gods of our admiralty, at least, are capricious. Like your seamen, we English sailors must learn to weather that kind of blow."