“Found summat.”
I shoved myself into the open, climbing stiffly to my feet. Emile popped inside to find me and help me stand.
“Thank you,” I told him as I brushed off the coat Bartholomew would shake his head over. “Nothing in here that I can see.”
“Not much here either,” Brewster said as I emerged. He held out two folded papers, their creases soiled. Each had once been sealed with wax, but those seals had been broken.
Moreau tried to snatch them from Brewster’s hand, but Brewster sidestepped him and opened one. The three of us crowded around to see what he unfolded.
It was a letter, written in a neat hand, but I couldn’t read the words from my vantage point.
“It’s foreign,” Brewster announced. “But not French.”
“Italian, perhaps.” I held out my hand and Brewster relinquished the letter.
The language was indeed Italian, I saw, recognizing some words. I’d learned more of it during my recent journey to Rome, but I wasn’t fluent.
Moreau nearly breathed down my neck as he read over my shoulder. He must have been more familiar with the language, because he soon shook his head and turned away.
“Not what I am searching for,” he said. “What is the other paper?”
I slid the letter into my pocket. Vernet’s men had missed it—I saw the bricks Brewster had pulled out of the back of the fireplace scattered on the hearth. I pondered whether I should turn it over to the gendarmes, but I decided I’d see what was in it first. Grenville could read and speak Italian well, though the letter might be written in a dialect neither of us knew.
Brewster had already unfolded the other paper. It was much crumpled, as though someone had scrunched it up in fury, then either they or someone else had carefully smoothed it again. Brewster frowned at it then handed it to me.
The page was blank except for two printed words, which I read out: “Lucien Potier.” The name was underlined heavily, three times.
“Who’s that bloke when ’e’s at home?” Brewster asked.
“No idea,” I said. “Emile?”
Emile shook his head. “I’ve never heard the name, that I recall, anyway.”
Moreau was frowning, but he gave no indication that he knew the name either.
I tucked this paper into my pocket as well. “I’d like to learn more before I give these to Vernet,” I said. “I’d hate to drop someone in it, if Gallo was blackmailing them for an embarrassing sin.”
“Might have killed Gallo for it,” Brewster reminded me.
“Possibly, but if every blackmail victim had run after Gallo and stabbed him, there would have been quite a crowd on that bridge. Let me find out if whoever these belong to are dangerous people or simply unlucky, before I consult Vernet.”
Brewster found this perfectly reasonable, as did Emile.
Moreau remained more uncomfortable. I wasn’t certain whether Frenchmen more readily left things to the authorities than we did in England, or if they, like Londoners, were perfectly happy to chase down a thief and haul him to a magistrate themselves.
Moreau finally gave me a nod. “It shall be as you say. If someone found what I am looking for, I’d be grateful if he returned it to me instead of reporting to the gendarmes.”
“Will you now tell me what you seek?” I asked. “It might help me to know what it is if I come across it.”
“I doubt you will, but very well. It is a letter, in French. Not from me or about me—I am here on behalf of a friend.”
Moreau must think highly of this friend if he risked being caught searching a dead man’s rooms. The fact that he decided to trust me, more or less, told me he was growing desperate enough to enlist help.
“I will bring you anything I find,” I promised. “Where do you reside?”
“In the Rue Saint-Jean in Vieux Lyon,” Moreau told me. “I have rooms in a house near the cathedral.”
“You may send word to me at Beaumont’s wine shop, where I breakfast every morning. Or find me at the villa my wife hired,” I added with a self-disparaging smile. “I had the good fortune to marry a wealthy lady who wishes to travel in comfort. I at one time lived in something very like the rooms in which we stand.” I glanced at the bare and mold-flecked walls.
