The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Chapter Thirty-Three

In a dark house in a dark street in the predawn blackness of the Ile de la Cité, a single candle burned. The grudging light of the candle illuminated a chamber as meager as the single flame itself. A narrow bed, unwelcoming and unslept in, stood against one wall, flanked by a barren nightstand. A pair of ancient leather slippers lay at uneven angles on the scarred wooden floor. In a straight-backed chair by the room’s sole window sat Gaston Delaroche.

At half past two the signal came, the sound of an owl hooting in the alleyway behind the window. The Assistant Minister of Police raised the sash of the window, and a slight, dark figure joined the shadows under the crooked overhang of the second story of the old house. If words were whispered, the sound was submerged under the million nighttime noises of the crowded street. The abrupt snuffle and hiss of snoring men, the creak of rope beds, and the rustle of feather ticks created a monotonous hum. From the upper reaches of Delaroche’s boardinghouse came the sharply muffled cry of a small child, and a man’s irritated grumble. The sash of Delaroche’s window slid silently closed. The shadows were once again merely shadows.

The warped table tottered as Delaroche seated himself again in the rickety chair. The candle flame flickered, threatening to go out. Delaroche appeared not to notice.

Twice. Lord Richard Selwick had been seen twice in the company of Mlle Amy Balcourt. They had been seen first in the courtyard of the Tuilleries. Later, Selwick had been spied entering the gates of Balcourt’s town house with a larger party, consisting, Delaroche’s spy informed him, of the Englishman’s family.

What drove a man to see a woman twice in one day?

Delaroche rapidly dismissed the possibility that the Balcourt girl might be an agent. Her brother was well known as a hanger-on at the First Consul’s court. That in itself was no guarantee of the girl’s innocence. Family ties, ha! Blood might be thicker than water on the floor of the interrogation chamber, but Delaroche had long since concluded that the truism had few other applications. Family ties were an impediment. A prop for the weak, an encumbrance for the strong.

But Delaroche would have heard long since had a new spy been in operation in Paris. There would have been ripples and reverberations across the dark pools of his subterranean world, whispers and rumors. There had been none. The Balcourt chit was innocent—of spying, at least.

Which brought Delaroche back to his initial question: Why would the Purple Gentian waste precious hours on a chit of a girl?

It was at the Balcourt town house that Lord Richard had first been spotted in amorous embrace with an unnamed female two nights previously. Delaroche himself had observed them in flirtation at one of Mme Bonaparte’s salons. A slow, contemptuous smile broke across the face of the Assistant Minister of Police.

Every man had a weakness, even the oh-so-intrepid Purple Gentian.

“One mistake, Selweeck,” Delaroche crowed softly in the darkness. “All it takes is one fatal mistake.”

To snare the man, one need only lay hold of the girl.

Delaroche snuffed the candle.