THIRTEEN
Inspector Moreau was taken aback when he saw the cluster of carriages and chairs crowded in the street around the widow Bailly’s modest establishment. He had spent the morning checking the new residents of the boardinghouses and rented rooms of his quarter for escaped criminals, soldiers absent without leave, and foreigners of dubious occupation. But interviewing this new resident would obviously take much longer. The respectable widow had notified him immediately of her mysterious new resident. Inquiries of the neighbors and of the widow’s sullen, spotty-faced younger daughter had assured him that the mysterious woman was not a prostitute. In fact, she had no after-hours male visitors at all, and those who did consult her were confined to the parlor, their privacy barely assured by a screen that concealed two chairs and a large, ornate water vase that the widow referred to with great respect as “Madame’s oracle glass.”
As long as it was only fortune-telling she was doing, it was legal. But Inspector Moreau carried concealed in his coat a half dozen spoons ornamented with the crest of a prominent family and had omitted to wear the blue suit and white plumed hat of his police livery.
After a long wait, during which he occupied himself by inspecting the ghastly colored tumors on the screen, which some amateur artist had obviously considered to resemble flowers, he finally was able to take a seat beside the table with the oracle glass. The woman opposite him was tiny, neat, and expensively clad in a black silk mourning gown.
“You, too, have experienced a tragic loss?” he began, taking out his handkerchief.
“My dear husband, the marquis, in a hunting accident. It seems like only yesterday, but it was, in fact, August sixth. The day is burned into my grief-stricken memory.” Her accent was refined, her mode of speech, educated. She could only be from the upper classes. But it was impossible to have been both married and a convent boarder this past August. Moreau felt it was time to make subtle inquiries.
“So recently? How stricken you must be to lose your beloved life partner only this past August.” The marquise looked at him from behind her long dark lashes. Her face was quite white with heavy makeup. It was hard to tell how old she was. Her gray eyes glittered.
“Monsieur Moreau, my profound sensitivity leads me to feel as if it were only yesterday,” she sighed. “But my poor, dear Louis met his unfortunate end on August 6, 1548.” She dabbed at her eyes delicately with a lace-embroidered handkerchief. Moreau was impassive, but inside he had a powerful desire to chuckle with appreciation. A magnificent charlatan, this fortune-teller. He unfolded a lengthy false tale of woe, pausing at those places where the more sinister sort of fortune-teller might offer a quack potion, an illicit and criminal Mass, or, possibly, worse. Madame de Morville heard him out, her eyes sympathetic, and then went into an odd sort of semitrance, staring into the depths of the glass. She seemed to be amused at what she saw, then looked at him with the oddest smile and said,
“Monsieur Moreau, all these troubles you are burdened with will soon vanish as if you had only imagined them. You will receive a commendation from one you respect and experience an increase in your income.”
“But I need the money now,” insisted Moreau, feigning a desperate tone. “If I can’t repay the loan, I’ll be imprisoned. Tell me, can you recommend someone to pawn these?”
Madame de Morville looked over the obviously stolen spoons.
“You are required by fate to take them back to where they came from,” she said in a quiet voice. “If you succeed in pawning them, your fortune will take a very negative turn.”
True enough, thought Moreau. So far, her advice has been eminently sensible and quite within the law. He paid her fee and departed to write up his day’s report.
Marquise de Morville, rue du Pont-aux-Choux at the house of the widow Bailly. The marquise is a woman of indeterminate age and good understanding, who dispenses intelligent advice to the besotted and the silly for a modest fee. She does not sell love powders, deal in substances passed under the chalice, or provide referrals for other illegal activities. Safe. As he poured sand across the paper to dry it, he couldn’t help wondering, even though he knew it was foolish, just when he would receive that commendation from Monsieur de La Reynie.