We both stilled when a man abruptly straightened from an open trunk in the middle of the floor to gaze back at us.
It was Colonel Moreau, my old enemy from the wars, the man I’d supposed myself finished with.
Chapter 12
Moreau regarded us for a long moment, saying nothing.
The three of us might have frozen there for an age, waiting for one another to break the silence, if Emile had not popped around me to see what was happening.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Emile said to Moreau in true ingenuousness. “We did not mean to disturb you. Are you thinking of taking the rooms?”
I ended my unmoving stance. “I’m certain the colonel already has much better accommodation.”
“What’s he want here?” Brewster demanded of me in English. “Is that Gallo’s things he’s pawing through?”
“Perhaps the colonel will tell us,” I said, not bothering to translate to French. I knew Moreau understood me well enough.
To Moreau’s credit, he did not try to invent an excuse or an obvious lie. He quietly closed the lid of the trunk and faced us without flinching.
“I am looking for something that belongs to me.”
“Oh, dear,” Emile said. “Was Signor Gallo blackmailing you as well?”
Moreau stared at him, clearly uncertain how to respond.
“We have learned Gallo tried his hand at extorting money from others,” I told him. “A dangerous undertaking.”
Moreau flicked his gaze between me, Emile, and Brewster once more. “It is as you say,” he admitted in English. “He had a letter that I should not like to be read by the wrong person. Or, at least, he claimed to have it. I’ve found nothing here.”
“The gendarmes must have already searched,” I said.
“They did but only cursorily.” At my surprised expression, Moreau continued. “I was Sergeant Dubois’s commanding officer for a time during the war. He told me that Vernet sent them to make a quick search, looking for obvious things, such as a sign the murderer had been here, or indication of who Gallo might have met that night.”
“Good, then there might be summat to find,” Brewster said. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything,” I replied. “Letters, papers, ledgers, books. Who knows what information Gallo collected?”
“Right.” Brewster moved past Moreau, who pivoted to keep a close eye on him. “Give me a hand, lad.”
Emile had remained bewildered during the exchange, but he readily went to Brewster’s side. Brewster ignored the sitting room’s sparse furnishings—table and chair, plain armoire, settee with sagging cushions, and the trunk Moreau had been searching, and went to the wall nearest the single window.
There he began softly tapping the window’s wooden molding and pushing at the looser bricks in the wall next to it. Emile caught on and did the same on the opposite side of the window.
Moreau watched them a moment before he turned back to me. “I cannot reveal to you what I am looking for, or show you if I find it.”
“I would not expect you to,” I said. “A man’s private correspondence is his business.”
Moreau frowned, as though wondering if I needled him, but he pressed his lips together and opened the trunk once more.
I bent over it myself, curious. Gallo’s belongings were meager—a few pairs of boots, a heavy coat tucked away for summer, and trinkets he must have obtained on his travels. Moreau turned up snuffboxes with rusting hinges, a flask to hold brandy or other liqueur, and one small, paper-covered tome that proved to be a book of devotions in Italian.
Moreau opened a square wooden box he found in the bottom of the trunk and drew a sharp breath.
Inside lay jewels, small pieces like bracelets, single earrings, and thin necklaces, most made of gold and studded with glittering stones. None could match the stunning compositions I’d seen on the necks and wrists of ladies at the comtesse’s soiree, but they would be costly nonetheless.
“The man was a petty thief,” Moreau said in distaste.
I felt Brewster behind me, craning to peek inside the jewelry box. “Looks like he were a dipper,” was his conclusion. “Those are things you can slide off a wrist or an ear while you’re chatting with a lady. Nothing she’d notice gone until later, so she might think she dropped it somewhere. Nasty bloke, weren’t he?”
