Authors: Anne Perry
Menou was waiting.
Célie felt her flesh prickle. His eyes seemed to stare through her.
Madame Lacoste answered for her,
‘There was a great deal of noise and confusion,’ she said levelly. ‘The smoke from the torches out in the street was blowing in and stinging our eyes. It was very difficult to see. I was looking at the men in the doorway: they were the threat, not we who were in the room. I imagine Citizeness Laurent was as well.’
‘I see,’ Menou nodded, frowning. He turned away from Célie and Madame Lacoste to St Felix. ‘Where were you when the rioting in the street disturbed you?’
St Felix was startled, as if he had not expected to be addressed.
‘I ... I was in the other chair, opposite Citizen Bernave. I think I stood up. I don’t remember. We were all alarmed, it was so close.’
Menou nodded. ‘Tell me exactly what you recall.’
Célie glanced around. Everyone was watching St Felix. Monsieur Lacoste was frowning. He looked worried. Fernand seemed more concerned for Marie-Jeanne. He moved closer to her, defensively. It was only a step or two, but the emotion which drove him was unmistakable. The children were silent, aware of the fear without understanding it.
Amandine was rigid, her hands on the table locked till her knuckles were white. Had Menou been looking at her, rather than St Felix, he could not have helped noticing. Célie ached to protect her, warn her that she was allowing her face, her body, to betray her. But there was nothing she could say without making it worse. She realised her nails were digging into her own palms.
Madame Lacoste was staring at St Felix also, her expression sombre, her dark eyes unreadable.
‘Citizen ...?’ Menou prompted.
‘I’m trying to be exact,’ St Felix excused his silence. Célie could hear the tension in his voice; it was higher than usual, sharper. But Menou would not know that. The difference was slight, and his diction was as perfect as always.
‘It happened very quickly,’ he answered. ‘There was shouting, movement, shots. The window broke. The candle went out. There was smoke from the torches. It was difficult to see. People were breaking into the house from the street. They were very angry and threatening. They wanted food. Citizen Bernave went towards them and told them we had no more than our own rations for the day. They did not believe him. The mood became very ugly.’
‘Did they come forward?’ Menou asked.
There was silence. Everyone understood the importance of the answer.
Célie did not mean to, but she could not help glancing at Amandine. There was tension in her face, but not the fear there would have been had she believed St Felix could have been guilty, whatever the provocation.
Célie felt sick for her. Please God she was right!
‘No,’ St Felix said at last. ‘Not that I saw.’
‘And did you go forward to assist Citizen Bernave?’ Menou asked. ‘No one else seems quite certain if you did or not.’
Again the slight hesitation, the understanding of what either answer would mean. ‘Yes.’
‘Of course,’ Menou agreed. ‘One would. And did Citizen Lacoste? And Fernand Lacoste?’
‘There was great confusion, and it was dark. I believe so.’
Menou looked at both of the other men.
They each nodded.
Menou considered for some time before he spoke again. They all watched him, wrapped in their own fears—for themselves, and for each other.
‘It seems it could have been any one of you who killed Citizen Bernave,’ he said finally. ‘I shall, of course, continue to look for the knife.’ He put down his empty mug. ‘It is possible all of you are aware of what happened, and are concealing the truth, for your own reasons.’
Amandine drew in her breath sharply, and then said nothing.
‘Yes, Citizeness?’ Menou prompted.
‘I thought I was going to sneeze,’ Amandine lied quickly.
There was no way to tell if Menou believed her or not. He rose to his feet and started to walk slowly round the kitchen, regarding each of them as he passed.
They grew gradually more and more uncomfortable. Finally Menou broke the silence again.
‘Citizen Bernave asked you to go to the Convention and observe the debates,’ he said to Célie.
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘And then to report to him?’
‘Yes.’ She had an increasingly uncomfortable feeling that he was leading to some kind of ambush, but she could not see it. She had no idea which way to sidestep. She knew Amandine was watching her, and she could sense St Felix’s tension.
Menou frowned. ‘Then what did he send Citizen St Felix for? It must have been something very dangerous, must it not? Something that was too dangerous for you.’
‘More likely something I wouldn’t understand!’ she said quickly.
Menou raised his eyebrows and turned to St Felix.
No one moved.
St Felix remained silent, avoiding Menou’s gaze.
‘I don’t know what it was,’ Lacoste interrupted. ‘None of my business. But St Felix often enough came back filthy and covered in blood and bruises.’ He said it with a touch of defiance, knowing the implications. ‘So perhaps it was dangerous.’
Célie wanted to laugh at the ‘perhaps.’ It welled up inside her hysterically, and she stifled it with her hand over her mouth.
Menou looked round the rest of them, to see if they confirmed or denied it. He read the admission in their faces, willing in Fernand’s case, reluctant in Marie-Jeanne’s, and terrified in Amandine’s. Madame Lacoste was guarded, but Célie caught an instant of intense dislike for St Felix, then it was gone again, masked so completely it might have been no more than an illusion of the light on her dark eyes and the shadows beneath them.
Menou swung right round to St Felix again. ‘Why were you prepared to endure such treatment at the hands of a man who seemed to have so little consideration for you, Citizen? Did you not dislike him for it?’
Again Amandine was on the edge of speaking, but just in time realised she might only make matters worse. She stared pleadingly at St Felix, as if willing him to defend himself. Célie ached to be with her, to give her any kind of support, but she dared not. Menou would see and understand.
‘No, I did not dislike him, Citizen,’ St Felix answered quietly. ‘He did what he did, and asked as much of others, because he believed in his cause. One does not dislike a man for that, one admires him.’
‘Ah! So you knew he was working for the Commune! You did not say that before!’ Menou accused.
‘I knew he was working for the revolution,’ St Felix corrected. ‘For the good of France.’
A very slight frown puckered Menou’s forehead.
‘If he believed in his cause so powerfully, why did he not go on these dangerous errands himself?’ he asked ingenuously. ‘It seems the belief was his, and the sacrifice was yours.’
‘I presumed he went on equally dangerous errands himself,’ St Felix argued. ‘He went out often.’
Well answered, Célie thought, with a lift of surprise and relief inside her. Perhaps St Felix would defend himself after all. If Bernave trusted him as he had, then he must have some steel in his soul.
Menou looked at Marie-Jeanne, the question in his face.
‘That’s true,’ she nodded.
Madame Lacoste added her agreement.
‘And came back injured?’ Menou pursued.
There was silence.
Amandine took a deep breath. She was very pale. ‘Yes—’
‘Not seriously!’ Célie interrupted. For heaven’s sake, they could look at the body and see! There was not a recent mark on him. Had Amandine not thought of that? ‘Mostly dirty, cold and exhausted,’ she added.
‘You know something about it?’ Menou turned to her.
‘Of course,’ she said, trying to sound convinced. ‘I think he sent Citizen St Felix to the Commune, with what he had discovered of the royalist plans, but he did not tell me that, of course. And went to the royalists himself, which was far more dangerous. If they were to have discovered what he was really doing, then he would not have come back at all!’
‘That’s right,’ St Felix put in, his voice suddenly certain, as if he realised Célie’s line of thought might rescue him.
Menou’s reply was instant, his eyes narrow and bright. ‘How do you know? He confided in you? You believed what he told you?’
St Felix hesitated. To admit that might be dangerous, especially since Célie was almost certain it was not true. Bernave had trusted no one with information of that kind. Menou might know that. It all depended which side Bernave had really served. St Felix might be making things worse for himself.
But for the matter, which side did St Felix really serve? The King, of course—some kind of order from the ashes of the old tyranny and waste. Nothing about him was naturally sympathetic to the violence and vulgarity of the Commune.
Menou smiled. ‘You read the messages he entrusted to you?’ he said, regarding St Felix curiously.
St Felix hesitated yet again.
Célie wondered if he had read them. Did he alone know what Bernave was really doing? And was that why he had killed him: not because of the personal abuse, but because he had discovered his betrayal of the plan of rescuing the King from execution, and France from drowning in blood?
Célie caught herself with horror. She was seriously considering his guilt! She hated the thought! It could not be true ... not St Felix, the man who forgave so easily, bore fear and danger with such quiet fortitude. He had too much sensitivity to others, too much humility to be an aristocrat; too much gentleness and too little hate to be a revolutionary; too much compassion to be either.
And yet the suspicion would not go.
‘You read them?’ Menou repeated.
‘No,’ St Felix replied. ‘Bernave told me, and I believed him.’
Menou smiled. ‘I see.’ His voice conveyed neither acceptance nor denial. ‘I have men outside. We will look again for the knife. It must be in this house somewhere. You will all remain here while we search. I would not like to think it was moved ahead of us all the way. You understand?’ It was not a request, it was an order. Something in him liked to retain a semblance of the courtesy of a past age. He could not altogether hate the
ancien régime.
Willingly or unwillingly, he admired something in it, hungered for its elegance.
He went to the back door and gestured for half a dozen guardsmen to troop in.
‘Did you search the shed and the workshops?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Citizen,’ the sergeant answered, then shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ Menou insisted.
‘Certain. Went through all the metal out there, and the wood. No knife.’
‘Then take the men and look through the house,’ Menou directed him. ‘Look through everything. You, Lavalle, stay here and see no one leaves the kitchen.’ He followed the other men out.
Amandine asked permission to clear the table and continue with her duties, and it was granted.
Célie asked the same, and it was granted also.
‘Then may I go for bread?’ she asked. ‘If I don’t, it will be too late.’
The guard gestured refusal. ‘Then tell us who killed Bernave, Citizeness, and you can.’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘If I did, I’d have told you already.’
A sneer twisted his face.
‘Maybe! Maybe it was your lover? Or maybe you did, eh? Did he try to rape you? You didn’t want an old man—’
‘He wasn’t old, and he didn’t force himself on anyone!’ Madame Lacoste snapped. ‘Watch your tongue, fellow, or I’ll report you to Citizen Menou. It is a hero of the revolution you are talking about!’
The man coloured hotly, but he did not answer back. He glared at her, then turned away. ‘Get on!’ he said sharply to Célie. ‘Get on with the cooking, or the laundry, or whatever it is you do!’
‘I do the shopping!’ she returned, meeting his eyes angrily.
‘Not now you don’t!’ he said with satisfaction. ‘You don’t do anything unless I tell you to!’
She went to help Amandine with clearing the table. Amandine glanced at her; their eyes met for a moment. Célie saw the fear in her. There was nothing to say which would make it any better. Lies would not help. She smiled at her, and slipped her arm round her for an instant as she passed. She felt a moment’s answering pressure, then moved on.
She then asked permission to draw water from the pump in the yard. The guardsman stood in the doorway watching her, and keeping an eye on everyone in the kitchen at the same time.
She returned and went over to pour half the water into the sink for Amandine. Everyone else remained around the table.
‘Do you think they’ll find the knife?’ Amandine whispered. ‘If they do, it won’t prove anything!’
‘Of course not,’ Célie agreed under her breath. The same thoughts must have been racing through Amandine’s mind too. She looked at her and could see the doubt in her face as she bent over the vegetables, trying to sort the good ones from the rotten, her mind not on it. Was she at least entertaining the unthinkable—that St Felix was guilty, because he knew Bernave had betrayed them—and she was preparing to defend him?
‘It won’t mean anything,’ Célie repeated. ‘Unless it’s somewhere only one person could get to.’
Amandine did not look up. ‘Like where?’ she asked, cutting the bad out of a potato and throwing it into the rubbish.
‘Like the Lacostes’ rooms upstairs, the children’s rooms,’ Célie replied. Anyone outside the family would have been seen there.’
‘If Madame is here while they search the kitchen, she may notice the food is low,’ Amandine said anxiously. ‘What did you take for Georges yesterday?’
‘Chocolate. I bought the bread and onions. Oh ... I took cheese as well, the day before.’
‘Damn!’ Amandine swore under her breath and threw away another potato.
The guard shifted his position, feet shuffling on the floor.
‘She may not notice the chocolate,’ Amandine went on. ‘I don’t suppose she knew how much was in the tin, but she remembered the cheese. Said we’d have it today. She wouldn’t believe me if I said it went off and I threw it out.’
‘Hardly,’ Célie agreed, trying to make more work out of piling the dishes, to justify remaining there. ‘When did you ever throw cheese away? Even if it were green, we’d have eaten it.’