CHAPTER 1
Sandringham, May 1899 Paris.
Paris.
Paris.
No good at all. Do you notice how the pen twitches each time I form the word? I suppose not, if you are reading these memoirs of mine in print, but you can take it from me that in my own fair hand the effect is just as if a spider had walked through the ink.
It is hardly surprising.
I’ll try once more.
Paris in 1891 was the setting for one of the most audacious adventures in my secret career as an amateur detective.
That, I think, is legible.
Eighteen ninety-one, the year I saved the Sûreté from obloquy. I must guard against embroidering the account, for these things sometimes grow in the telling, and I was so occupied in the drama that I kept no journal. Fortunately, certain other documents have survived, including several letters to my dear wife, Alexandra, the
Princess of Wales (who was visiting her family in Copenhagen at the time), and I shall refer to these to curb excesses of the imagination.
The start of the adventure is sharp in my memory. Picture me at breakfast in my suite at the Hotel Bristol in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, where I arrived the previous evening with my faithful Irish terrier, Jack, and thirty-odd servants. Only the delights of Paris could tempt me year after year, each March, across the freezing Channel. It is the most enchanting of all cities. A surprising claim, you may think, from a future British sovereign, but I must be truthful. London is not in the business of enchantment, for it is the capital of the world, a masculine metropolis, soberly dressed, commanding respect, not adoration. I suppose of all our native cities, Edinburgh holds the most appeal, but for all its Caledonian charm, Edinburgh will never let you forget that it is built on granite. I definitely prefer Paris. I remember vividly toward the end of my first visit there, at thirteen, pleading with the Empress Eugénie (I adored her) to allow my sister and me to remain. She said she fancied that my mama and papa could not do without us, to which I retorted, “Not do without us? Don’t fancy that, for there are six more of us at home, and they don’t want
us.”
My secretary, Francis Knollys, ever the brake on my spirit of adventure, but a good fellow for all that, put his grizzled head around the door. His timing is uncanny, for I had just finished the last croissant in the basket.
“What is it, Francis?” I inquired as I shook the crumbs off the napkin.
“Your engagements for the day, sir.”
“Not many, I trust?” One of the problems with Paris is that it’s a honey pot for royal visitors, and if I don’t watch out, I find myself doing nothing but visiting and receiving cousins and nephews.
“The Duc de Rheims will call at ten.”
“That, I can endure, so long as he doesn’t insist on standing beside me.” (I should explain that the duc is a beanpole at least six feet six inches tall.)
“Madame Bernhardt is coming at eleven.”
“Sarah! Now
she’s in proportion, charmingly in proportion.”
“And luncheon with the Comte d’ Agincourt has, unfortunately, been canceled at his request.”
“Canceled, Francis?” This news surprised me. I didn’t have any objection to time in hand, so to speak, with the bewitching Bernhardt, but Jules d’Agincourt was an old friend who wouldn’t lightly have broken a luncheon engagement. “Did he offer a reason?”
“He apologizes profusely, sir.”
“Of course he does, but what is behind this?”
“He characterizes it as a family crisis.”
“Is that all? My family is permanently in a state of crisis.”
“That was all he said, sir.”
The matter continued to exercise me until the lady known across Europe as the Divine Sarah arrived to pay her compliments, wrapped in a cloak of gray velvet. My friendship with this peerless scrap of flesh and bone goes back more years than I care to name, to a first night at the Odéon, when she played the Queen of Spain in Hugo’s
Ruy Bias, with an exquisite coronet of pearls and lace fastened high on her red hair. She mesmerized me. I think it was, above all, the voice, that incomparable sound that ranged from the purity of a blackbird’s song to the power of the great bell of Notre Dame. You may think I exaggerate; that, I promise you, was the effect on me that night. I fell in love with Bernhardt. All Paris fell in love with her. Such is my devotion that one evening I actually joined her on the stage to play the part of the corpse of her murdered lover in Sardou’s
Fédora—a splendid lark that only the French could appreciate, Sarah weeping over me as I lay in my shroud longing for a cigar and trying not to cough.
“Sarah, my dear!”
“Bertie.” We embraced. The French are terribly demonstrative, so don’t let your imagination run riot over a bear hug from Sarah. For some unfathomable reason, she had never entirely capitulated to my charms. Being French, she didn’t mind everyone believing she had—which made my situation all the more frustrating. But I still adored her and looked to the future with confidence.
“So kind, so kind.” I spoke in French, of course. I have spoken the language since my youth.
“What is it you are saying?” she asked.
“You are so kind.”
“Ah—but why?”
“Why, your coming to see me here. You know I’m not too comfortable visiting your house.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “In Paris, it’s no scandal. It’s nothing.”
“I know that, Sarah. There’s another reason. The last time, if you remember, a monkey sat beside me on the sofa.”
She threw back her head and laughed at the memory.
I inquired charitably, “Do you still have the little creature?”
“Darwin? Yes. He’s very friendly.”
“I would rather be friends with you. And is the lion cub still in residence?”
She shook her head. “Stupid people complained about the smell when he got large. He wasn’t smelly. It was hardly noticeable. I donated him to the Jardin des Plantes. But I still keep a cheetah and the parrots.”
The sure way to charm Sarah is to talk about her menagerie, all of which, believe it or not, is housed in domestic rooms at her house in the boulevard Pereire. I don’t mind talking about our dumb friends (my wife, Alix, is dotty about them and keeps a cockatoo in her rooms), but I draw the line at sharing a sofa with a monkey.
With nice timing, Jack trotted in and sniffed La Bernhardt’s boots. For this understandable curiosity, my terrier was snatched up and hauled to her bosom. He endured it philosophically.
“What is the gossip?” I asked, steering the conversation into more familiar waters.
“About you—or me?” asked Sarah.
“About everyone else, of course. Is there anything I should be told about the Agincourts?”
She gave me a penetrating stare with those Cleopatra eyes. “When did you arrive?”
“Last night.”
“Haven’t you heard about the man who was shot at the Moulin Rouge last week?”
“A man shot?” I spoke so sharply that Jack gave a yelp and leapt from Bernhardt’s arms. “Not Jules d’ Agincourt?”
“No, not Jules.”
“Thank God for that. You’d better tell me, Sarah. Jules was due to call on me today and has canceled. There was some message about a family crisis.”
“A family crisis!” This innocuous phrase caused a hoot of laughter. The refinements of polite conversation are quite foreign to Bernhardt.
“Come, come,” I said. “If someone was shot and it concerns the Agincourts in some way, I demand to be told.”
She said, “Do you remember Rosine?”
“The child?”
“A child no longer, Bertie.”
“Little Rosine was the victim? That’s dreadful! She used to sit on my knee and play with my watch chain.”
“Stop leaping to conclusions, Bertie. I’m trying to tell you that Rosine blossomed into the most beautiful woman in Paris.”
Coming from Bernhardt, this was uncommonly altruistic, and I told her so.
She angled her head in a pose that emphasized her flawless neck and said, “I’m a grandmother now.”
I said—and meant it, “That, I refuse to believe, Sarah.”
Having fished for her compliment and landed it, she returned to the sinister matter under discussion: “Rosine became engaged. It was her fiancé who was killed.”
“At the Moulin Rouge?”
She nodded. “The papers are full of it. I’m surprised you haven’t heard.”
“I haven’t looked at a paper since I got here. An accident?”
“Accident, my aunt! In a dance hall? It was cold-blooded murder, Bertie.”
“My word. That would certainly explain why Jules felt unable to call on me.” I stood up, my sleuthing sense alerted. “Have they arrested the assassin?”
“The Sûreté?” She rolled her eyes upward.
“Then I must find out whether I can be of assistance.”
Sarah now introduced a note of caution. “It may not be exactly as I described it. You know what the newspapers are like.”
“You don’t have to tell me, of all people, about the newspapers, my dear.”
“Everyone likes to dramatize a little.”
“Speaking of drama,” I said, my thoughts galloping ahead, “what are you playing at the moment?”
“Nothing.”
“Resting—is that the expression?”
“Hardly. A week from today, I embark with the Bernhardt Troupe on a world tour, commencing in New York.”
“Excellent!” I told her. “In that case, my turtledove, you may join me in unraveling this mystery.” Momentous decisions are sometimes taken lightly. Bernhardt had never seen me in fearless pursuit of a murderer. Who could tell what effect Bertie the Detective might have on her? This could be the opportunity I had waited twenty years to grasp.
But she pursed her lips ominously.
“No, Bertie.”
“No, Sarah?”
“I am insulted.”
I stared at her. “But why?”
“I will not be likened to a turtle, even by a prince.”
“A turtledove, my dear. That is something else—a pretty bird renowned for the purity of its note and the constancy of its affection.”
“Tourterelle.” “What did I say?”
“Tortue” A foolish error, particularly as I’ve consumed gallons of turtle soup in my time. “But you will accompany me?”
“Impossible. I have to pack for the world tour, Bertie.”
“How many trunks?”
“Seventy-five.”
I blinked in disbelief “For the entire troupe?”
She opened her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “For my simple needs.”
“You mean the costumes you wear in the plays?”
“No, no, the costumes travel separately, in fifty-six enormous crates. The trunks contain my personal clothes.”
I resisted the impulse to comment; after all, it was her own fortune that funded this more-than-adequate wardrobe. “But you have a maid, surely. She’ll do the packing. Trust her.”
Without committing herself, Sarah asked, “Bertie, how exactly do you propose to investigate this mystery, as you term it?”
“I shall visit the Agincourts and offer my services. I am not without experience as a detective.”
“A surprise visit?”
“Exactly.”
“Royalty on the doorstep—is that fair, Bertie?”
“I shan’t expect a fanfare, if that is what you mean. They’re old friends, Sarah. I’ve known Jules for twenty years. Damn it all, he’s not far short of royalty himself.”
She clicked her tongue at my last remark and said, “We had a revolution, Bertie.”
I refrained from pointing out that since 1789 France had crowned two emperors and three kings. “Well, am I to call a cab?”
“A cab?”
“I’m sure you don’t approve of carriages in your republic.”
She put her tongue out. She can be extremely vulgar on occasion. I informed Knollys simply that I was going for a drive with Madame Bernhardt. Knollys doesn’t regard my detective escapades with unqualified approval. Come to that, he didn’t look overjoyed at the prospect of my sharing a carriage with Sarah. The poor fellow has more than enough worries, so I try not to add to them.
Montroger, the main residence of the Agincourt family, is a short drive out of the city, on the road to Versailles. We used a closed landau and Sarah prattled on so much about her forthcoming world tour that I was beginning to regret recruiting her as my assistant. I was mightily relieved when the main gates of the park came in view, because she had only reached Chicago and there remained at least eighteen months of the itinerary to discuss.
Montroger is probably smaller than Sandringham, but I wouldn’t stake my inheritance on it. These Louis Quinze mansions, all shutters and balconies, can be deceptive. I must say, it looked strikingly like a house in a fairy story, with a glittering patina of frost on the gray slate roof.
Sarah insisted on remaining in the carriage while I went to the door. She was uneasy about our arriving unannounced, and I suppose she was right. The advent of the two of us, the Prince of Wales
and the first lady of the French theater, might have been daunting. I took the view that, if nothing else, our arrival would succeed in distracting the family from their trouble.
When I announced myself, the girl who answered the bell behaved much as I expected, with a touch more Gallic hysteria than one experiences in England. I’m well used to it. I make more informal calls on my friends in France than is generally realized, and the domestics always act as if the Day of Judgment is at hand. It’s to be expected, and I blame nobody, as I always make clear.
That first panic over, the girl admitted me to a reception room where there was a decent fire and a copy of
Le Monde. I found nothing about the murder.
Copyright © 2019 by Peter Lovesey. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
