"Tell me, Madame," I asked lightly, as if it were nothing to me, "why do you favor Pradon, when the common opinion is for Racine, and he has as his patroness Madame de Montespan?" Her face grew dark with remembered hate.

"In this, I am with the Mancinis. Out of envy he poisoned his mistress, the actress La Du Parc, who had been my friend since childhood. Her children are being raised at the Hotel Soissons. I still visit them on occasion, but thanks to the generosity of the countess, they lack for nothing. The Mancinis, they have long memories; just as I do." She swept off to oversee the dancing, which had begun. As I turned to watch the figures in graceful motion before the wide tapestry of the Repentance of the Magdalen, Brissac, standing behind me, spoke softly into my ear.

"You do not dance, do you, Madame?"

"No, Monsieur, it is an old infirmity with me."

"Well then, Terpsich.o.r.e's loss is my gain. I will offer you one of those lovely little sweet pastries there, and we shall discourse on philosophy, which I hear is an interest of yours." The confident, intimate tone disgusted me. That old witch has prompted him on how best to approach me, I thought. She has a.s.sured him that he will win in the end. The laughter and music rattled shrilly in my ears as he found me a place on a narrow love seat and sent Monsieur de Vandeuil threading through the crowd to the refreshment table.

The masked woman behind me laughed again as she recounted a tale of amatory adventures. A cavalier with a star-shaped patch laughed with her. Brissac was silent, but his eyes rolled with amus.e.m.e.nt as he took in the conversation. He was seated so close as to be repulsive.

"Why do you hesitate, my dear Marquise?"

"Oh, a sudden faintness. The heat in the room. We are so close to the fire here. Tell me, how go your researches in the...ah...occult sciences these days?"

"By a most extraordinary coincidence, that old alchemist, the Comte de Bachimont, has revealed to me an entirely novel method for calling up the demon Nebiros to reveal hidden treasures."

"Nebiros? But he is only of the rank of field marshal. Surely, you should deal only with infernal spirits of higher rank. Now Astaroth, for example, has the rank of grand duke and is the commander of Nebiros..." We continued in this vein until the great amounts of wine he had drunk caused him to need to absent himself temporarily. The moment he got up, I fled, my train clutched in my hand, with Gilles close behind. Mustapha and Sylvie had brought up the carriage to the front door, as if they had read my mind. Inside the house, the crash of bottles and s.n.a.t.c.hes of drunken song signaled that the party was growing wilder. Outside, in the dark, the snow had begun to fall again. Sylvie brushed the melting flakes off my cloak as I seated myself in the safe darkness of the carriage.

"Madame, what is wrong?"

"Brissac-I think he's going to propose, and I don't dare refuse."

"Oh, think of the advantages, Madame. And besides, there are plenty of people in this city worse than Brissac."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A closed, bra.s.s-bound coffer, the lock smashed open, lay on La Reynie's desk. Desgrez stood beside the desk and watched as La Reynie opened the box and leafed through the papers inside. He picked out from the rubble of receipts and memoranda a bundle of greasy, unsealed letters written on cheap paper. He read one or two of them through.

"Interesting, Desgrez. A correspondence between Monsieur Geniers and this Chevalier de Saint-Laurent, who appears to have been consigned to debtor's prison by Monsieur Geniers. He complains of the food, he asks for blankets, for money, for wine...he begs, he bl.u.s.ters, then threatens..."

"I thought you would see it immediately, Monsieur de La Reynie. Our suspect."

"And...?" The Lieutenant General of the Paris Criminal Police raised an aristocratic eyebrow.

"We have made inquiries about this Saint-Laurent, Monsieur de La Reynie. His last address was the House of the Marmousets in the Quartier de la Cite. Madame de Paulmy paid for his release last month with her lottery winnings." La Reynie's curiously sensuous smile showed Desgrez that he had caught his chief's interest.

"I am surprised the marquis tolerated this, Desgrez. His temper and his jealousy are both notorious."

"You are, of course, entirely correct. According to the servants of the de Paulmy household that I interviewed, he hired bravos to waylay the man and crop his nose and ears."

"Well done, Desgrez. We have our man with no face. But what is this I see here?" From the bottom of the sheaf of letters and papers, he removed a slip of paper.

"The address of the Marquise de Morville, written in Monsieur Genier's hand. I thought you might find that interesting, Monsieur."

"The Marquise de Morville-have you any idea how much that woman irritates me? She swept past me at the marechale's reception last month in the most offensive manner, almost daring me to uncover her charlatanry. I suspect her...I don't know what of, but I suspect her. Follow this up, Desgrez; bring her in and question her about this murder."

"Monsieur, she has protectors in the very highest circles."

"Then proceed carefully, but proceed. I mistrust mountebanks-especially of the female variety."

Desgrez's expression never changed from the eager, attentive look he wore in Monsieur de La Reynie's presence, but inside, he concealed a certain amus.e.m.e.nt. It took a great deal to irritate the impeccably controlled Lieutenant General of Police. He wondered exactly what the impertinent little marquise had said to his chief.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

"Take them out and lay them on the bed, Sylvie. I just can't choose." I've always found it hard to select a gown when I am going out with someone I don't like. A person wants to look devastating but still not spoil a favorite dress with a bad a.s.sociation. Which gown would I sacrifice to this evening with Brissac? I inspected the embroidered mounds of silk and velvet on the bed. Too nice, all much too nice for that grotesque Brissac, duke or not.

"Madame, someone is at the door. Brissac is early. He must be eager."

"Eager to see me in my dressing gown, you mean. Have Mustapha go down and make him wait. Don't show him up until you've finished my makeup."

"Very well," answered Sylvie as she tied my hair away from my face with a wide blue satin ribbon, and began to apply the heavy white cream that gave my face its unique ghostly pallor. But she had hardly finished when the bedroom door was flung open with a crash.

"Madame, I swear, they wouldn't wait," cried Mustapha. I turned to face Brissac, eyes cold, eyebrows raised. But it was not Brissac who stood in the doorway. It was Captain Desgrez, with two a.s.sistants in the baggy blue breeches and plain blue wool jackets of the police. Desgrez himself, his narrow face unshaven, bowed and removed his white-plumed hat. Thank goodness my face is unrecognizable, I thought.

"Madame de Morville, I am Captain Desgrez of the police," he said.

While my mind raced through a list of reasons he might be there, I could hear my voice saying, "Monsieur Desgrez, please pardon my deshabille and do me the honor of taking the armchair over there." He sat, his a.s.sistants standing on either side of the armchair that stood outside the screen in my ruelle. Somehow he managed to make himself look like a magistrate, finding me guilty even before I had opened my mouth.

"h.e.l.lfire and d.a.m.nation!" announced the parrot. Desgrez looked toward the bird's perch, and the bird looked back, fixing him with a beady eye. As his a.s.sistant stifled his amus.e.m.e.nt in a cough, Desgrez looked suspiciously at me.

"Curious vocabulary for a bird."

"I got him from someone else who taught him to speak. I am thinking of hiring a tutor to teach him better manners," I answered.

"Madame, I have come to ask you a few questions," he said, while the man standing beside him took out a little notebook.

"I will be delighted to answer any of which I have knowledge," I responded, with a condescending nod of my head.

"Your dressing-table mirror is shrouded in muslin, Madame de Morville. Why have you hidden the chief delight of women?"

"Monsieur, I have the unfortunate gift of seeing images of the future in reflections. My own future is a skull. I do not wish to see it."

"You are aware, of course, of what they say about those who sell themselves to the Devil. They have no reflection. Would you mind, Madame?" As I nodded silently, one of his a.s.sistants drew off the muslin shroud. I turned my head away from the mirror, hiding my eyes with my hands.

"You have a perfectly normal reflection, Madame," he announced, sounding vaguely relieved, "so why do you hide your eyes? What is it you see?"

"Blood, Captain Desgrez. Blood like a river, dripping across the face of the mirror." He got up, came close, and pa.s.sed his hand between me and the mirror.