A Man in Uniform (8 page)

Madeleine laughed. “I really don’t go out much, my dear. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the means.”

“Why should it cost anything? Your friends will always entertain you.”

“That’s so typical of a man. You buy the dinner, you pay for the glass of wine, you don’t realize that I have to wear a dress. And how am I to get to the café? Am I to walk alone in the dark?”

“Well, no, of course not, my sweet.” He was surprised and a little hurt by her tone and responded quickly to quell any threat of discord between them. “I can give you more if that’s what you need … a little increase …”

“I don’t like to trouble you …”

“Perhaps an extra fifty? No, not enough for all these cafés and dances you are planning on attending? One hundred it is.”

“No, no really. It isn’t necessary.”

“I’ll pay a call on the bank manager tomorrow.”

“Oh, don’t bother. You don’t need to.”

Dubon looked at her. She had got her way but was now retreating, as though she did not wish to appear to have asked. Such social squeamishness was quite unlike her.

“It’s no trouble,” he said.

“No, my dear. Please don’t bother.”

Did she not want the money after all? What was her game? Angered, he persisted, “This is ridiculous, Madeleine. I will go to the bank tomorrow.”

“Well, if you insist …”

About a quarter of an hour later, Dubon rounded the end of Madeleine’s street and started down the boulevard des Italiens, thinking he would find a free cab on the busy boulevard before he got as far as the Opéra. As he passed the café on the corner of the rue Grammont, a small but tidy establishment frequented by some of the local journalists and businessmen, he saw with surprise that Masson was sitting at a table near the window. Hardly seems like his neighborhood, Dubon thought. This was the business district at the heart of the bourgeois Right Bank. Masson was a man of the Left Bank, the seat of government and learning, the home of the aristocracy. As though sensing his friend’s stare, Masson looked up from his newspaper and caught Dubon’s eye. He mimed a jolt of surprise and beckoned him inside. Dubon had better not be long about it; he needed to get home. Masson, on the other hand, seemed in an expansive mood.

“Greetings. Good to see you. Are you going to join me for a drink?”

Dubon pulled out his pocket watch. He could afford about ten minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour. It would be nice to have a little glass of something.

“I can’t stay long. You know it’s my policy never to be late for dinner. It keeps Madame Dubon happy.”

“Yes, the ladies. Have to keep them happy. You have a lot more experience there than I do, Dubon. An old bachelor like me can eat whenever he wants, but in truth longs only for your cozy family dinners.”

A waiter appeared at Dubon’s side.

“A red wine,” Dubon said. “And not any of your Beaujolais. A Bordeaux.”

“What are you doing in these parts?” he inquired of Masson. “Slumming it with the press and the stockbrokers, eh?”

“I might ask the same of you.” Masson laughed. “But, of course, your office is not that far away, is it. Your clients behaving themselves today?”

“Oh yes, my clients always behave themselves.”

“How dull. No revolutionaries who need defending?”

“You know I gave up that stuff long ago. Nothing to report except wills and contracts, wills and contracts.”

“We all rely on you, but it must be horribly technical,” commiserated Masson.

His sympathy irritated Dubon. He was, after all, a moderately successful solicitor with a solid practice. If he had once entertained dreams of being a legal crusader, he was hardly the first person who could be accused of growing more sensible with age. Somebody had to look after the nuts and bolts of legal affairs.

“Well, I enjoy my work,” he said a bit defensively. “And it is not all routine. I have an unusual client at the moment—rather delicate case, in fact.”

Masson said nothing, only allowing a little
hmm
, which Dubon read as skepticism, to pass his lips.

“Yes, a client has come to me on behalf of friends who have some disagreement with a military court,” Dubon said.

“And you know your way around the military establishment, no doubt there,” Masson contributed.

Dubon registered the slight, although he knew perfectly well Masson was right and was honest enough to admit it to his face.

“I expect that’s why the client chose me. The case might test some precedents if I can get to the bottom of it.” Dubon, who until that moment had not the least notion of getting to the bottom of the widow’s case, allowed himself a self-important shake of his head.

Masson said nothing and the silence emboldened Dubon, who was not usually a proud man but felt the sting of judgment.

“Yes, the military tribunals can be sloppy, you know, not as experienced as the real judiciary, disregarding proper procedure. It’s a full court martial they want me to overturn.”

“And your client doesn’t need a litigator, then?” Masson inquired blandly.

“Well, yes, I am sure the client will, eventually. I am just laying the groundwork, bit of investigation as it were.”

“Your client can be sure his business is in good hands. Is one permitted to ask his name?”

“She’s a lady actually,” Dubon said, and instantly regretted it.

“A lady?
Tout s’explique
!” said Masson grinning. “It isn’t fair. You have a lovely wife, you should leave some for the rest of us.”

It was as though Masson thought there was something ridiculous about Dubon’s success with the opposite sex. As a youth, Dubon had casually assumed that his own easy popularity trumped Masson’s aristocratic antecedents, but he now sometimes found to his surprise that his friend made him feel socially inadequate.

“She’s a perfectly respectable lady, I assure you. And I would never breach the solicitor–client relationship in that way,” Dubon protested with some heat, perhaps because his recent fantasies involved just such a breach.

“No, no, my friend. I was teasing you. I am jealous, that’s all. Your client—I am sorry, you didn’t say her name …” Dubon ignored the hint and Masson did not press him, saying only, “I am sure her case will prove an interesting diversion for you.”

Conversations with Masson could be such slippery affairs, with insinuations of superiority so nuanced that whenever he complained to Geneviève that his friend left him feeling snubbed, she dismissed his
complaint and repeated, as did everyone in their circle, “But the baron is so charming!”

“Yes, it is interesting. Interesting and difficult,” Dubon said. “The charge was … well, let’s just say it was as serious as it gets.”

Masson was still for a moment, staring out beyond Dubon to the zinc countertop where the waiter was lining up clean glasses for the evening patrons now crowding the bar. He then seemed to rouse himself, to brush off a thought, and he said, heartily, “Good luck to you, Dubon. Your clients’ affairs are in trusted hands. I really will get you to draft my will soon. Goodness knows, I don’t have much wealth to distribute, but it is ridiculous not to have something on paper. After what we saw the other night, makes you think.” He grinned, a trifle ghoulishly, Dubon thought.

“Yes, makes you think,” he agreed. “Have you talked to the general since then?”

“A little. Hard to know what to say.”

“Yes. Geneviève went to call on Madame Fiteau today.”

“Did she? Good for her. Madame Dubon is such an admirable character.”

“She said Madame Fiteau won’t really believe that he gambled, or at least, she feels he was ensnared somehow.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“I suppose so. You don’t think there’s more there than meets the eye? I mean, my own brother-in-law organizes card parties, but for someone to kill himself over a debt …”

“Young Fiteau just got in over his head, I guess. I imagine if the debts are that large, the general will settle them now.”

“Yes, that’s what I told Geneviève,” said Dubon, shrugging off the topic, and seeking in his pockets for change.

Masson waved off his attempts to pay. “I’ll settle up when I leave.”

“I’ll see you Friday for dinner, then. Geneviève did say you are coming?”

“I would never miss an opportunity to sit at your table, Dubon. I am honored that you and Madame would include me.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Dubon, Masson’s formality somehow reawakening in him his affection for a man who, however much he
occasionally irritated him, was one of his oldest friends. “It’s only a family dinner.”

Perched in the back of a hansom as the driver directed his horse through the traffic around the place de l’Opéra, Dubon tried to reassure himself that he had not been indiscreet with Masson. He hadn’t given him any real details of the widow’s case nor revealed her name, and the man was hardly a gossip. His profession required discretion; it was in his nature. Not like the journalists, Dubon reminded himself: he had better be careful what he said when he met the military correspondent from Morel’s paper.

It was only after the cab had crossed the place de la Concorde and Dubon was almost home that he recalled his recent encounter with Madeleine. He realized belatedly that two people had asked him for a raise in the space of one day. To be fair he should probably give more to Lebrun, but he would have to review his accounts and do some calculating first. He looked down at the coins in his hand as he paid the driver. Decidedly, the box of chocolates had been a bad idea from the start.

Dubon watched a quartet of Europe’s top thoroughbreds round the final bend of the long course at Longchamp to begin their panting ascent of its notorious hill, and reflected that it was much better, in the end, to have a little female company to dilute all the horseflesh. His wife would never attend the races, which she considered a vulgar pastime fit only for the shameless, a category into which she freely cast the elder of her two brothers. She had always disapproved of gambling, even a little betting at the racecourse. Events at the Fiteaus’ ball had served only to strengthen her long-held conviction. Still, she would have looked grand seated well up in the stands, studying her race card with that air of quiet remove she adopted in unfamiliar settings. Madeleine, on the other hand, would have felt perfectly at home with the boisterous ladies in the first row, cheerfully urging the horses on while leaning across the rail in a way that would have afforded Dubon a nice view down the front of her dress. She was a woman who both gave pleasure and took it with happy ease.

His companion, however, was neither his gracious wife nor his generous mistress. The widow sat tidily beside him a few rows up from the
course watching the third race of the day with interest. She squinted occasionally at the horses, whether because she was puzzled by their behavior or simply nearsighted, Dubon wasn’t sure, but it gave her an appealing, quizzical air. If passersby gave her black dress the occasional sidelong glance, the woman herself seemed perfectly comfortable with her surroundings. She was now discussing with Dubon exactly how the pari-mutuel system worked, having dismissed with some amusement his initial patronizing attempts to explain it.

“I don’t believe you actually know. You said you never go to the races. Think about it—if everybody bet one hundred francs, and say ten thousand people are betting on the tote today …”

“So, the payout would be a million francs … What would you do with a million francs?”

“But, Maître, I wouldn’t win a million francs,” she pointed out, looking up at him. “Divide a million by the number of people who have correctly picked the winner.”

“Of course. I wasn’t thinking.”

“So, say, fifty or even one hundred picked the winner, I would win ten thousand or twenty thousand francs.”

She was quick with numbers, he noted, very quick.

“And how would you spend it?”

“Why, Maître, I would pay your bill!” she announced gleefully.

He smiled back but groaned inwardly. If the bill was on her mind, she definitely couldn’t afford Déon. He had still vaguely been thinking of simply sending her upstairs, but he realized now he needed to find her someone young, eager, and cheap. He would start asking colleagues for names tomorrow.