“Indeed, I noticed.”
“Where to now, guv?”
“We ought to take a brisk walk after our repast, but I more have in mind a saunter home to rest.”
“Aye,” Brewster agreed with a short laugh. “Below stairs all worship the mistress of the house,” he reported as he fell into step beside me. “Didn’t like me asking too many questions.”
“She is a congenial lady,” I said with sincerity. “I quite liked her.”
“They didn’t think much of her husband. Threw in his lot with the new regime after the siege, probably so they wouldn’t kill him. Lady and the rest of her family got out of the city, but he stayed. Servants didn’t like to say so, but they hinted he had a hand in some of the arrests. He died right after Bonaparte came through, but not because he was punished for his sins. He caught a fever that carried him off.”
“Perhaps he was being punished for his sins.”
“Could be.” Brewster shrugged. “They’re happy with that colonel, though. Say everything got cheery again when he came back from war.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “Peace is a fine thing.”
“Never understood you gents’ way of shaking hands with your enemy. I beat mine down, and they leave me be.”
“But they respect you, do they not? It is much the same thing.”
“Suppose.” Brewster shook his head but did not press the matter.
When we reached the square, I caught sight of Captain Vernet striding through it. He likewise spied me and approached. Pedestrians drifted from his path without appearing to, opening a way between us.
“Captain,” Vernet greeted me with a tip of his hat.
“Captain,” I said in return, keeping to French. “A fair afternoon, is it not?”
“Bit warm for my taste,” Vernet said. “I hear you have been wandering Lyon, searching rooms and houses and the like.”
His tone remained pleasant, but I heard a note of irritation in it.
“I have no intention of treading on your toes, Captain,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I was trying to make certain you cleared young Monsieur Devere of any suspicion.”
“I released him immediately,” Vernet sounded annoyed that I’d not believe he did. “Claude Devere is an impetuous young man, but no killer, I think. You can cease making a case for him. I am looking elsewhere.”
The way Vernet clamped his lips shut told me he was not going to tell me who he suspected of the murder now.
“I am amazed there were no witnesses to Gallo’s death,” I said. “It was very late—or early—so the streets might have been deserted, of course. But surely someone must have seen who killed the man. A chance glance out of a window, perhaps.”
Vernet snorted a laugh. “There might have been a hundred witnesses, but none are going to come forward, are they? Look around you.”
A glance showed me that the people in the square had cleared a wide circle around us, none wanting to have anything to do with the gendarmes. Brewster himself had wandered away, keeping an eye on me while ostensibly examining wares at a vendor’s cart on the edge of the square.
“Gallo was an outsider,” I said. “You believe that, if they pull together to protect the killer, then it must have been committed by a resident of this city, not a foreigner who followed him from La Guillotière.”
“Depend upon it, the murderer was Lyonnais,” Vernet said. “And I have little chance of uncovering him without the townspeople’s aid. So anything you have found out, Captain Lacey, you will tell me, no?”
When I entered the dining room at the villa after returning home, I found a light meal for me on the sideboard and letters at my plate. I had no need for a repast after stuffing myself at Madame Paillard’s, but I downed bread and cold meat to counteract the sweets as I read my correspondence.
One letter was from Leland Derwent, a young man I’d grown quite close to, with news of his family. His mother, unfortunately, was doing poorly, and they did not expect her to last the summer. I folded the missive away, despondent. Consumption was a devastating disease that consumed the lives of so many.
It took the youthful breeziness of the next letter, from my stepson Peter, to ease my sadness about Lady Derwent. Peter was having a splendid time in Oxfordshire with his grandparents, riding, walking, and fishing. Grandfather Pembroke carried Anne out to see the horses most days, and she was very interested in the ponies.
She’d be an avid horsewoman, I thought with a frisson of pride. I’d teach her to ride as soon as I could.
I felt a wrench of longing when I set aside Peter’s letter. I missed the pair of them so.
