The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dawn had barely broken over the spires of Notre Dame. In the twisted streets of the city, fires remained unlit and responsible citizens slumbered soundly in their beds. But in the Ministry of Police, Gaston Delaroche was already at his desk.

Outside his office, four people stood waiting. One wore the clothes, and bore the reek, of an onion seller. He juggled three onions as he waited. Another was dressed for travel in spurs, cape, and hat. He feigned interest in the pattern of tiles on the floor, ducking the occasional flying onion. The third was female, a burly woman in brown wool with her hair piled atop her head, examining her nails in the flicker of the torches on the wall. The final member of the quartet was the sort of street urchin one might encounter on any street on any day in any major city, a skinny thing held together by dirt and rags. He stood picking at the specks on his arms.

The silent denizens of the hallway possessed two things in common. The first was a certain blandness of expression. Despite their varied costumes, anyone walking down the hall would be hard-pressed, upon being asked, to remark upon the particulars of any one of them.

The second common element was Delaroche.

Each waited for admission to the inner sanctum, as they had waited each morning since he had summoned them. As they would continue to wait each morning until he gave them leave to go.

They were his . . . ah, but spy was such a nasty word. They were his intelligence gatherers, his eyes, his ears, his pursuers of the elusive and the dangerous. Each had come to him through paths so shadowed that not even his extensive files bore the record of their existence. Each owed him a bond of obligation as deep as life or death.

By courtesy, the lady, however dubious her claim to that title, was summoned first, by a red-eyed sentry who opened the door at Delaroche’s command, and closed it again behind. It amused her to vary her accent as she spoke: one moment the purring tones of a polished courtesan, the next the shrill shriek of a fishmonger’s wife. In this patchwork way, she reported that Augustus Whittlesby had spent the past day prostrate at the feet of a minor statue of Pan, and the past evening pursuing his muse in the arms of one of the girls of Mme Pinpin’s house of pleasure.

“Not enough. Not enough,” muttered Delaroche, and waved her away.

The onion seller entered next. He informed the assistant to the Minister of Police that Sir Percy Blakeney had passed the previous day reading in his library, playing picquet with his wife, and entertaining his brother and sister-in-law. No unknowns had entered the house nor had Sir Percy gone out.

Third came the traveler, spurs clicking with authority against the tiled floor. His voice, when he spoke, failed to match his stride. Hesitant and apologetic, he confessed to losing Georges Marston at Mme Rochefort’s party, and only finding him again lying senseless in a cul de sac in the Latin Quarter.

“Fool!” Delaroche hissed, slamming his palm upon his desk. “Careless fool!”

The traveler slunk out of the office, spurs grating against stone as he dragged his feet. The others drew back from him as if from one with the plague. One never knew how the taint of displeasure might spread.

Last entered the street urchin, slipping through the door with the beggar’s ragged grace. In the harsh light of the candles on Delaroche’s desk—both illumination and weapon—the urchin’s begrimed face hovered uncertainly between youth and age.

In a light voice that could have been a boy’s treble or a man’s tenor, he reported that Lord Richard Selwick seemingly had done nothing but engage in amorous endeavors. Two nights previous, Selwick had undertaken an assignation with a young woman in the Balcourt household.

“And last night?” Delaroche’s eyes narrowed.

Last night, explained the urchin, Selwick had engaged in a brawl with Georges Marston over some wench in the Luxembourg Gardens—the urchin’s smudged face cheered somewhat at the mention of bloodshed—but once Marston had been knocked cold, not much of a fight at all, Selwick had gone off with the girl, engaging in activities better conducted behind closed shutters.

“So Marston was felled by Selwick.” Two suspects disqualified by a chit of a girl! Marston’s crumpled body in the park had seemed so promising, but to hear that his state was brought on by nothing more significant than a fracas over a female . . . Delaroche’s nostrils flared with ire. That left him, once again, with Sir Percy and Whittlesby. Delaroche’s mind sped feverishly back over the testimony of his agents. There must be something there. Some clue.

The urchin’s lips twisted in the flickering candlelight into a fey smile. “Lord Richard Selwick,” he added softly, “was hooded and masked.”

Delaroche had been on the verge of dismissing his last and youngest agent; the boy’s words stayed his hand.

“Masked.”

“Lord Richard returned to his lodgings prior to both assignations. He emerged wearing a black cape, a black hood, and a black mask. A cape, hood, and mask such as are worn by the Purple Gentian.”

“It’s not enough,” Delaroche muttered to himself. “Anyone might wear a black cloak. Even the mask might be explained. We need more. We need . . .” Delaroche fixed his ferocious gaze on his agent. “Two women, you say? One each night?”

“Yes.” The agent had learned that it was best to answer simply.

“Ah.” Delaroche leaned back in his chair with a nasty smile, a smile akin to that bestowed by the spider upon the fly. “Therein lies the answer to our riddle.”

“Sir?”

“But isn’t it obvious?” Delaroche barked with humorless laughter. “Come! Even you must see the fatal flaw in his alibi! Selwick is . . . English!”

“English.” Understanding began to dawn in the agent’s eyes.

Delaroche rubbed his palms together in an orgy of self-congratulation. “If Selwick were French, the tale would be believable. We could dismiss him now. But he is English! And everyone knows that the English are a cold, passionless people, incapable of grand stirrings of the blood. For an Englishman to have seduced two women in as many nights is inconceivable.”

Rising from his chair, slowly, deliberately, Delaroche strolled to the window. “You,” he said in a voice so pleasant that the boy-man, who had faced the point of a knife more than once without a wince, trembled with fear. “You are to watch Lord Richard Selwick day and night. Keep a detail of soldiers within call. Do not let him leave your sight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Delaroche turned abruptly on one heel. “I said watch him! Go, damn you!”

Without another word, the boy fled the room.

Delaroche’s nose quivered like a dog scenting blood. The Purple Gentian was growing careless. One could tell by the foolish mistake he had made of trying to disguise his meetings with agents as affairs of the heart.

Lord Richard Selwick had powerful friends in the government, friends no less formidable than the stepchildren of the First Consul. It was said that the First Consul himself was unaccountably fond of the man. But how fond would the First Consul remain of his director of Egyptian antiquities once his less-scholarly activities came to light?

Delaroche’s lips curved into the shape of a scimitar. “One more mistake, Selwick. All it will take is one more mistake.”