FORTY-NINE

As the wine went around the table again, Maître Perrin, avocat and dabbler in the occult, helped himself to another immense slice of the leg of lamb. “And some more of that excellent sauce, please, Madame Vigoureux!” he exclaimed happily, patting his mouth with his napkin. A splendid supper, the guests pronounced it, uniting good food, good wine, and those intelligent souls who had an interest in treasure hunting by occult means. So many fortunes, buried in the earth and forgotten during the Fronde, just waiting for the correct incantation, magnetic dousing rod, or diabolical assistance to cause them to rise to the surface! It was a topic of near-universal interest. Maître Perrin himself, although an avocat au parlement, expected to enrich his patrimony considerably during the next few months, but by means of a rare parchment recently purchased from a woman called Marie Bosse, who seemed to have many valuable connections.

La Bosse herself had become quite red in the face with wine, and her son the soldier was becoming ever more raucous. The little tailor who was his host was quietly drunk at one end of the table, humming a tune to himself. Even Maître Perrin was decidedly more mellow than usual.

“Ah, Madame Vigoureux, what a wonderful table you set!” he cried. “Who could be a finer hostess than you. Such lavish hospitality! I bow to your knowledge of the occult!” He stood and bowed to the accompaniment of much laughter.

“Here’s to wealth without work!” Monsieur Mulbe raised his glass.

“What do you amateurs know about that?” La Bosse said, to the general amusement of the guests. Someone had spilled wine on the white tablecloth; the candles were burning down. It had been a long night already. “Why, if you knew what a racket I’ve got!” boasted the old witch. “And what a classy clientele! Duchesses, marquises, princes! Why, only three more poisonings and I plan to retire with my fortune made!”

La Vigoureux cast a warning glance across the table, which Maître Perrin intercepted. A convulsion seemed to pass through his midsection. With whom, and with what, had he become associated? All thought of buried treasure fled from his mind. The company laughed heartily, as if it were all a joke, and Maître Perrin laughed too. When the party ended, he departed in a flurry of cheerful compliments. And even though it was past midnight, he went directly to the house of Captain Desgrez of the Paris Police. As Desgrez’s wife and servants bustled about lighting candles, Desgrez himself, still clad in nightshirt and slippers, showed Maître Perrin to his private study. He did not seem to mind being awakened at all.

“Well,” said Monsieur de La Reynie the following morning, “I find your scent much improved. To what do we owe this honor?” The Marquise de Morville, clad in black silk and onyx mourning jewelry, had taken an armchair at the far end of a table in the Lieutenant General of Police’s book-lined study. With a flick of her wrist, she snapped open her ebony-and-black-lace fan. Somehow, the gesture irritated La Reynie. Maybe he preferred the fishwife disguise after all.

“To your sergeant there, who dragged me from a card reading at the maréchale’s in the most precipitous manner,” she answered in a sharp-edged tone.

“Our business would not wait,” said La Reynie, gesturing to Desgrez and two grim-looking undercommissioners who sat at the other end of the table. “We have a few questions about the, ah, fortune-telling industry, if we may call it that.” The Marquise de Morville nodded slightly, as if to say, Go ahead, if you are capable of asking anything intelligent.

“Let us skip the preliminary formalities. First of all, who is the finest fortune-teller in the city?”

“Myself, of course.” The jewels on the marquise’s hand caught the light as she gave her fan a little flourish.

“Ah, of course. And where would you place Marie Bosse?”

“La Bosse? She is a dreadful, vulgar, illiterate woman who has a certain skill at deceiving people with cards. That is all. Nice people don’t go to her.” The undercommissioners leaned forward with uncharacteristic interest.

“A rival,” muttered Desgrez.

“Evidently. That’s good—we’ll hear more,” responded an undercommissioner in a low tone.

“And who is the woman known as La Vigoureux?”

“Another fortune-teller—her specialty is reading palms.”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes, of course. She is the wife of the ladies’ tailor where I’m having a dress made up. But I wouldn’t associate with a woman like that professionally. She’s an amateur.” A narrow smile appeared beneath La Reynie’s moustache when he caught the condescension in the marquise’s voice.

“Well, well, it seems that every housewife with a need for pocket money tells fortunes.” La Reynie’s voice was vaguely genial, but his eyes were cold and probing.

“That’s about right,” answered the marquise, resettling the train of her long black gown around her feet with a rustle of expensive silk. “But most of them are no good. Washerwomen taking in each other’s laundry.”

La Reynie looked at Desgrez, and Desgrez nodded grimly.

“Do La Bosse and La Vigoureux know each other?”

“Of course. They are good friends.” The marquise appeared utterly calm.

“Do they dine often together? Who, would you say, attends their typical dinner parties?” Behind the marquise’s cool gray eyes, the watchers at the table could sense a strong intelligence working. They looked at each other. No, she could not be allowed to leave the building until the business was done.

“I’m sure they do dine often together, but I’m not acquainted with the others of their set: second-class magicians, cardsharps, forgers, false coiners—that sort of people. Not the sort I wish to associate with.” The marquise’s answer was clear and without hesitation. No, she could not be one of those involved, thought La Reynie. But still, he distrusted her command of herself. That alone was suspicious. One of the undercommissioners leaned forward across the table with his own question:

“Would you say that fortune-tellers have…ah…corporations, like the more respectable trades?”

“More or less; the trade tends to be passed down in families, exactly like any other. The difference is that there are even fewer outsiders taken as apprentices, and also, the association is run by women.”

“And what, Madame de Morville, do you know about poudres de succession?” Desgrez broke in smoothly. The marquise, entirely self-possessed, answered without turning a hair.

“What all of Paris knows, that they are rumored to be everywhere.” Her voice was calm and even. “Whenever a death is unexpected, it is said to be caused by poison. I do a good trade in discovering enemies for people fearful of poison, as you know from our…ah…previous discussions. I believe, of course, that this fear is entirely exaggerated, but I certainly would never say so to my clients.” The men at the table looked at each other again.

“And what would you say about the character of La Bosse?” La Reynie continued. “Would you say she is…boastful?”

“I don’t know much about it. Occasionally I see her on the street, but she is not of my type. She is, after all, the widow of a horse dealer.” The marquise’s voice dripped snobbery.

“Has this horse dealer’s widow a taste for the bottle, or for something a little more genteel—say, opium?” La Reynie asked smoothly. He was rewarded with an irritated glance from the marquise. Her fan snapped shut. La Reynie’s eyes glinted with secret pleasure: at last he had broken through that damned woman’s iron self-control.

“If she is like the rest of her type, she probably drinks like a fish.” The marquise bristled.

“That is all, Madame de Morville. I am afraid we will have to ask you to remain in my reception hall with the sergeant here for the rest of the day. But perhaps I can find another volume of edifying sermons to help you pass the time.”

“Monsieur de La Reynie, you are always so graciously hospitable,” replied the marquise.

“And as usual, you may speak to no one about this,” La Reynie responded.

“You know I can’t. Not if I wish to stay in business,” the marquise snapped. La Reynie’s smile was strangely sensual, his eyes caressing.

As the marquise was shown through the door, Desgrez said in a low voice to his chief, “Yes, monsieur, immediately. I’ll have Lebrun send his wife to her.” Madame de Morville paused in the hall, then continued as if she had heard nothing. That afternoon, as the marquise stared out of a back window in the Hôtel La Reynie in utter boredom, Marie Bosse sold a vial of white arsenic to a policeman’s wife who had come to complain of her husband’s brutality.

“You say they were all in bed when you arrested them? How convenient for you, Desgrez.” La Reynie looked up from his desk, where he had just put his signature on his weekly report to the King. Desgrez was standing, holding his hat.

“In the same bed, Monsieur. La Bosse, her grown son, the whole lot of them. It proves—”

“That the race of sorcerers is perpetuated by incest? Desgrez, I do not care in the least about sorcerers; it is poisoners I am seeking. I wish to get to the root of this conspiracy.”

“You will find a good beginning in the contents of these women’s cupboards. There is hardly a poison they don’t possess. That does not even count the black candles, wax figurines, a medallion of the King—”

“The King?” Even La Reynie was taken aback. In this setting, an image of the King could be used for only one purpose. A sorcery to encompass his death.

“Desgrez,” he said quietly, “I believe we have found them.”