French Leave (13 page)

Madame Gabbot was slow to follow. She looked around the studio as if she expected to find other servants hiding beneath the sparse furniture. Ma’mselle Foliot’s family had sent this one? Madame Gabbot took leave to doubt. On the threshold she paused and emitted a scornful sniff.

Tibble closed the door. Barbary set down the brush. “I shall never ever call you chicken-hearted again! You have pulled our coals out of the fire.” She moved to the divan and adjusted the Duc’s laurel wreath. “Still, he sleeps. I cannot think it natural, although we must be grateful for it, because I was terrified that he would wake up when the police were here.”

Tibble, too, approached the divan and bent over the Duc. “This one won’t wake up for a while yet. He’s been drugged.”

“Drugged!” Indignant, Barbary let the Duc’s head fall back on his pillows. “Tibble, how dare you accuse me of such a thing?”

Of what had he accused his mistress? Nothing that he could recall. “Not you, Miss Barbary. It was Miss Mab.”

Barbary thought it very bad of Tibble to present her conundrums in this particular moment. “What the devil are you talking about? Mab wasn’t even here!”

“No, but she was here earlier.” Tibble’s mental faculties were working excellently well, or so he thought, as result of his enforced rest. “The Duc woke up, and she told me to fix him some chocolate well laced with laudanum, which I did and then left in the pan on the stove. The pan is empty now. Don’t fret yourself, Miss Barbary. His lordship will be right as rain in no time.”

His lordship would, perhaps, but what of the rest of them? Barbary’s heart leapt into her throat when she heard another knock on the door. She darted across the room and grasped the palette and paintbrush. When she was safely wrapped up in Mab’s persona, Tibble opened the door.

Not the Gendarmerie crossed the threshold, but Mab herself. She was wearing a black cloak, its hood pulled over her bright hair. “Quickly!” she said. “Close the door.”

Tibble had already done so. “Miss Mab! Were you seen? Because the police were here, and they saw Miss Barbary and thought it was you. If they saw you now, the cat would be out of the bag.”

“They didn’t see me. I waited until they were gone and then I sneaked up the back stair.” Mab dropped the cloak on the floor.

Barbary stared at her cousin, whose left arm was caked with blood. “I think I may go into hysterics!” she remarked, and sank down into the armchair. Tibble tsk’d and filled the pot with water and set it on the stove.

“It is nothing serious, I think. The bullet seems to have gone straight through.” Mab walked to the easel. “Is this how you convinced them you were me? Let us hope that none of them realize it is almost evening and that no artist would paint in such poor light.”

Here was ingratitude. Barbary reminded herself that her cousin was not well. Not that she was like to forget it, with Mab thrusting her bloody arm practically under Barbary’s very nose. “Where,” she asked faintly, “did you get that horrid cloak?”

Mab grimaced and leaned against a stool. “Off a clothesline.”

Barbary offered her the vinaigrette. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell us how you came to be shot?”

Tibble brought a basin of warm water and some toweling, and set them on the table by Mab. She winced as he touched her arm. “It was that accursed packet. The one you’d hidden in your portmanteau.”

“Oh, mercy! Jacques!” Guiltily, Barbary recalled the packet, which she had thrust into her portmanteau and then promptly forgot. She had meant to look at it, but so many other things had happened to crowd it from her mind. Yes, and she was glad now that she
hadn’t
looked at it, if that was why Mab had been shot.

Tibble was trying hard to be gentle. Still, sweat beaded on Mab’s brow. “I wished to see what you had done with Edouard.”

Could Mab be jealous? Barbary considered this a healthy sign. “I suppose I should tell you how I came by the packet.” She proceeded to do precisely that.

“How very curious!” Mab kept her head resolutely turned away from the sight of Tibble’s ministrations to her arm. “One hopes the thing has gone now to where it may do the most good. Unless Gabriel is arrested, and surely he is sufficiently clever to avoid the Gendarmerie. What is the verdict, Tibble? It is not so very bad?”

Tibble shook his head and picked up the basin of bloody water. “As you said, it’s a clean wound. The bullet went straight through. All the same, you won’t be using that arm for some time.”

Tibble removed the bloody basin. Barbary sighed with relief. “Then that’s all right! We’ve had a close shave, granted—but all’s well that ends well, as they say.”

Mab looked abstracted. “I’m sure I don’t wish to be a Job’s comforter, but it is not so simple as all that. I cannot go out with my arm in a bandage, and yet I cannot simply disappear.”

Barbary did not like the sound of this. She retrieved her vinaigrette. “What have you got us into now?”

“It was stupidly done of me, I admit it.” Mab stood up and walked across the room to look down at the sleeping Duc. Very handsome he looked in that toga. She was not, despite her profession, accustomed to seeing men in a state of near-undress. She wondered how he had got that way but didn’t care to ask. “Now I must abide the consequence. As must you, because of an unlucky mischance. I did not think I had been recognized in the cafè, but apparently I was mistaken.”

Barbary felt as though she had drunk some of Tibble’s doctored chocolate.
“What
cafè?” she asked. “You still have not told us why you were shot. Nothing could be more provoking, Mab!”

In that, Barbary was mistaken. She was about to be provoked further still.

“So you see,” said Mab at the conclusion of her account, “if I was recognized in the cafè, then only
your
continued good health may allay any suspicions held by the Gendarmerie.”

Chapter Fifteen

Not only the Gendarmerie nourished suspicions. The majority of Inspecteur Ollivant’s waking hours were given over to pondering the matter of the missing Duc. Other duties, unfortunately, had interfered with his investigations, such as an involvement in the hunting down of pamphleteers and the suppression of
libelles.
Following that had been the two officers of dragoons who created a minor riot when they went into a bookshop that exhibited a collection of anti-Bonaparte pamphlets and scattered its stock to the winds.  One officer had damned the whole race of Bourbons to perdition, while the other took the more direct approach of spitting on miniature engravings of “Monsieur”. And now Inspector Ollivant was trying to talk two indignant
touristes
out of fighting a duel.

“Come, come!” said the inspector in his most soothing manner. “Violence solves nothing,
mes amis
.”

“The devil it don’t!” responded one of the combatants, who wore a eye-catching puce waistcoat over a stomach that had been the recipient of far too much good food.  “I’ll give him his bastings, I will.”

The second combatant snorted. Considerably less stout, he was distinguished by thick side-whiskers. “That’s the way it is to be, is it? I’ll crack your napper for you then. Give you a clout on your jolly nob. And if I had a cheese-toaster, I’d give you two inches of cold steel!”

Inspecteur Ollivant cleared his throat. “May one inquire what this disagreement is about?”

“One may inquire.” Waistcoat looked down his bulbous nose. “Whether one gets an answer remains to be seen.” Whiskers snorted appreciation of this sally, and Waistcoat scowled at him. “This ninmenog used Billingsgate language in front of my wife.”

“How was I to know she was your lawful blanket?” protested Whiskers. “Last time I seen you you’d raised an elbow or two in a certain house of civil reception, and was wishful of dancing the featherbed jig.”

Waistcoat’s cheeks were ruddy. “No need to bring that up.”

 “You were chirping merry enough, then.” Whiskers flicked a speck of dust off his sleeve. “Look here, I didn’t mean offense to your old wife.”

“No offense!” echoed Waistcoat. “You hinted that she was no better than she should be. Brought on a spasm, it did. I promised her I’d call you out.”

Inspecteur Ollivant thought this an excellent moment in which to intervene. “Perhaps this matter may be settled amicably.”

Waistcoat looked unhappy. “Easy enough for you to say! You don’t know my wife. Mad as hornets she is. She’ll have my head on a platter if I don’t do as she says.”

“
Eh bien!”
commiserated Inspecteur Ollivant. “Perhaps if you were to tell the little white lie and pretend that you had fought the duel—”

The two gentlemen looked at one another. Said Whiskers, “Have to admit he’s got something in his idea-pot.” The two combatants went off together, united in their resolution to circumvent the wishes of Waistcoat’s wife.

A duel, indeed. Inspecteur Ollivant shook his head. Dueling had fallen into disfavor with the counter-revolutionary movement under the Directory. The practice had revived during the Empire, although Napoleon had disapproved. The Allied occupation had seen so many squabbles between foreign officers and those of the disbanded French army that rumor claimed the French spent their days and nights fencing in preparation for those conflicts. Then, with the departure of the occupying troops, the French had taken to quarreling among themselves. Just this day Inspecteur Ollivant had heard of a duel fought in the Champs-Elysées between two officers naked to the waist, before an attentive audience of passers-by.

Imbéciles,
the lot of them. The more things changed, the more they remained the same.

These reflections brought Inspecteur Ollivant to his destination. He stepped into the cluttered courtyard. Inevitable, that an already unpleasant day should be compounded by an encounter with Madame Gabbot.

The concierge popped out of her doorway like a singularly ill-featured jumping jack. “
Bonjour
,” she said, sarcastically. “It took you long enough.”

She sounded like his mama. Inspecteur Ollivant struggled to keep the distaste off his face. “I have been very busy, madam.”

“So have we been busy!” Madame Gabbot clutched at his sleeve.  “The Gendarmerie have been here.”

Inspecteur Ollivant frowned. The Gendarmerie were most often to be seen lounging about the city or galloping to arrest some miscreant. What had they been doing at this house? His experience with ladies of a certain age and temperament was such that he did not ask outright.

“It is true!” insisted Madame Gabbot. “A Colonel Laveran and his troops.”

Colonel Laveran had an enviable talent for being in any given moment where it would do him the most good. What had brought the supremely self-serving Laveran to this house? “Perhaps, some coffee?” the inspector said. Madame Gabbot led him into her cluttered drawing-room, indicated that he should sit down. He perched gingerly on the couch. Madame’s fat tabby cat leaped up beside him and began to bathe.

Inspecteur Ollivant drummed his fingers on his thigh. The cat stretched out a lazy paw and clawed at his wrist. He swatted at it.  The cat immediately and indignantly yowled.

Madame Gabbot popped her head back into the room. “
Hein?”

Inspecteur Ollivant regarded his bleeding hand. “It is nothing. The merest scratch.”

Madame Gabbot wiggled an admonitory finger. “Shame, Fifi! A thousand apologies, Inspecteur. It is perhaps her age. She has even taken to snarling at Ma’mselle Foliot, of whom she once was fond.” She brought forth the coffee pot and poured. “So! What excitement you have missed.”

And you enjoyed every moment of it, thought the inspector. “I regret that I was not present. A fellow police officer on the premises—”

“Precisely. But you were not here and that man, he searched the house.”

“Searched? For what?”

“Well you may ask.” Madame handed him a coffee cup.  “Jacobins!”

Inspector Ollivant had suspected that Colonel Laveran sought to usurp his investigation regarding the mysteriously vanishing Duc. This information, therefore, left him at a loss. “Colonel Laveran conducted a search for
Jacobins
?”

Madame Gabbot nodded. “It is the fault of Ma’mselle Foliot, who brings strangers into the house. And English manservants as well.”

Inspecteur Ollivant’s confusion increased. “Colonel Laveran thinks Ma’mselle Foliot is involved with Jacobins?”

“Who knows what that one thinks? He searched everywhere, including this very room. Fifi scratched him.” Madame Gabbot looked fondly at the cat.

Inspecteur Ollivant looked at the cat also. It lifted one leg and began to bathe its nether parts. “Perhaps you would like me to speak with this ma’mselle? It is a matter of great responsibility, overseeing the running of this house.”

So it was. The inspector did not realize. Nor did he realize that, try as he might, Madame Gabbot would not be charmed. Far more persuasive gentlemen had tried and failed, in days gone by. “You can’t speak with Ma’mselle Foliot; she’s not in. I saw her leave myself. But if you wish to wait, perhaps she will return before long.” She gestured toward his cup. “You require more coffee?”

He nodded. She poured. Inspecteur Ollivant lifted his cup to his lips and sought to gather his thoughts. He had several pieces of a puzzle, and yet could not see the whole. Ma’mselle Foliot was in some way involved in all this, but how? He himself had followed her to a certain hotel, seen her disappear inside for a considerable time. Discreet inquiries had revealed, however, that no Duc de Gascoigne was sequestered there, but one Conor Denison instead.

It was of a perplexity. If Colonel Laveran was in search of Jacobins, why had he come to this house?
Morbleu!
Could it be possible that these strange matters had something to do with the mystery of the missing Duc?

Chapter Sixteen

Barbary looked doubtfully at the exterior of Maurice’s studio. She would rather do almost anything than be there. But Mab had insisted, and the traitorous Tibble had agreed, and now once again Barbary was taking her cousin’s place. Nothing would be accomplished by standing in the street. Barbary took a deep breath and walked through the doorway and up the stairs.