A young man in a stiff uniform guarded the door. When I asked if I could speak to Captain Vernet, he only gave me a sneer.
“Go home, foreigner,” he said in thickly accented English.
Brewster, who’d halted at the end of the lane, exercising his usual distrust of police, turned and glowered at the young man.
I might never have been admitted to the house had not the sour-faced sergeant who’d helped carry away Gallo’s body happened by.
He snarled a few words at the guard and nodded to me. “Captain?” he addressed me in French. “Why do you wish to see Captain Vernet?”
“Is it true he’s arrested Claude Devere?”
The sergeant’s face clouded. “Oui, and we’ve had the whole pack of Deveres threatening us. Are you here to do the same?”
“No, indeed, but I believe the lad is simply unfortunate, not guilty. Does Captain Vernet have evidence to the contrary?”
The sergeant continued to scowl at me, then I saw him conclude that such decisions did not rest with him.
“Come,” he said, gesturing me in. “I will have the captain informed you are here.”
The guard stood ungraciously aside as I followed the sergeant into the interior. A glance behind me showed that Brewster had vanished.
I was used to the Bow Street Magistrate’s house, with its famous Runners clumping in and out, patrollers milling, and young barristers or their clerks loitering in the halls to drum up business with the accused. Those arrested in the night queued to see the magistrate, who would decide their fate.
This building reminded me of an army headquarters, with men of lower ranks darting about to serve the higher, many of the underlings with sheafs of papers in hands or tucked under arms.
Bonaparte’s reforms had made record-keeping more precise, from what I understood, but such bureaucracy took time and mountains of paper. Offices with open doors showed me rows of shelves with niches for all these documents and tables piled with wooden boxes of the same.
The sergeant took me up a flight of stone steps, which were worn in the center from so many feet over the years, and to the next floor.
Here windows let in light and air, refreshing after the close bustle of the lower hall.
The sergeant paused before a plain wooden door that looked like all the others we’d passed and knocked. To a sharp, Entre! he pushed it open.
We stepped into an office that was small, cramped, and dingy. Its appearance thwarted the myth that officers lived lavishly at the expense of the lower ranks. Some British officers during the war had brought luxury with them, it was true, but it was family wealth, nothing provided by the army.
The military of France must be as austere, I decided. Vernet glanced up from a simple wooden desk overflowing with papers and the slim wooden boxes of the sort I’d seen downstairs. A shelf along a wall held more boxes. The walls had once been painted a soft yellow, but time and dirt had rendered them a brownish gray.
“Captain Lacey.” Vernet rose politely, looking not at all put out that I’d interrupted him. “Welcome. Please, sit.”
He waved at a straight-backed chair whose white paint flaked in places to show the wood’s natural hue beneath. As its seat was stacked with more papers and ledger books, I had to wait for the sergeant to clear it off before I could rest upon it.
The sergeant, his tasks completed, shuffled out of the room, closing the door noisily behind him.
“How may I assist you, Captain?” Vernet asked. “Have you come to tell me something you recall about Signor Gallo’s murder?”
I perched awkwardly on the rickety chair, steadying myself with my walking stick. “You have arrested Claude Devere.”
“Ah.” Vernet leaned back and drummed his fingers on the only bare surface on the desk. “Yes, you are connected with the Deveres, or soon will be. As I said before, my felicitations on the nuptials.”
“Thank you,” I answered, a trifle impatiently. “Do you have evidence against Claude? Or was he brought in because of his infatuation with Signora Ruggeri?”
“You are well informed.” Vernet ran fingertips along the desk’s edge and shook his head. “Since that woman came to Lyon, I have had nothing but trouble. Fights that come to weapons drawn in back streets. Duels between higher-born men—which fortunately have come to nothing. Young Claude is a good lad, as far as I can see, but even he was once brawling in the plaza with another young man who claimed to have the lady’s favor.”
“Did you arrest the other young man?” I asked.
“No, because he left Lyon soon afterward and has not been seen since. That was months ago. No one has noted him returning, before you ask, so I do not believe he is the culprit.”
“Once Signora Ruggeri caught Comte Lejeune’s eye, Claude would have given up,” I pointed out. “The son of a factory owner could hardly compete with a comte.”
