He sat on the bed and let the brandy sear his mouth where he’d bit his lip, falling. It didn’t stop the shivering in his muscles. Didn’t clear his head.
“One passport,” she muttered, “in the name of Pierre Thibault, harmless citizen of Rouen. That is you. A handkerchief. One of your knives.”
“I know what I’m carrying. Nothing interesting.” He brought nothing into this house she couldn’t see. Nothing the whole French Secret Police couldn’t print in the newspaper.
“Do you know, you are almost stupid with not sleeping.” She turned the coat over. “Now I find another of your knives. I do not know any man who has such a fascination with knives. A candle stub and a tinderbox. We are prepared for all eventualities, are we not? Playing cards. A set of picklocks. And one book . . . which seems to be a very dull survey of mining sites in France, published in Lyon. I do not suppose this is a clever work of codes.”
“It’s just a book about mines. What you want is in the front of that.”
“Ah.” She came to stand beside him while she opened the letter. “This is in English.”
“It was written by an Englishman. The British embassy is full of them.”
“Do not be facile.” She read the letter quickly, from beginning to end, then looked over the second page more carefully. “There is much about buying a horse and complaints about his mistress. He finishes . . . he has overheard a plot and is it not curious? This Englishman, this John—”
“Millian. The Honorable John Millian, attached to the embassy in Paris.”
“He claims to have overheard a conversation while he is at dinner somewhere—”
“The Palais Royale.”
“He does not say which restaurant or café in the precincts of the Palais Royale, so it is useless. He does not say who spoke, so it becomes more useless. He records only part of what he has heard. He also spells it wrong. Why have you brought me this?”
“Because three days after writing that letter and sending it off to London, Millian fell out a window and splattered his brains across the Rue de l’Aiguillerie.”
“Ah. That is unfortunate.”
“Particularly for John Millian. He took a dozen strands of hair down to the street with him, torn out by the roots, clenched in his fist.”
“He was not alone when he fell.”
“So we assume. The letter got sent to London, and it struck his friend in the Foreign Office as so interesting, he sat on his thumbs for a month before he brought the letter to us. To the Service.”
“Who send you posthaste to deal with it, at last. We are always called in when it is almost too late.”
Three candles lit the room. She went to the closest and studied the effect of light shining through the paper. “There is no writing hidden. You will tell me there is no British code involved.”
“None.”
“I see no French code words. We are left with the dozen words your Monsieur Millian overheard.” She frowned as she read, “‘La Dame est prête.’ That does not tell us so much. Only that the woman is ready.”
“If that’s even what he heard.”
“We must trust it is, or we have nothing at all. Next, one says, ‘À Tours.’ That is the city of Tours, I think. And then, ‘L’Anglais arrange tout.’”
“There’s an Englishman who’ll arrange everything.”
“How nice for them,” she said. “Then we learn, ‘Le fou va aller à Paris.’ The fool is going to Paris. This means nothing.”
“Except we’re about to get another fool in Paris, a commodity with which the city is plentifully supplied.”
“None of this says anything useful. The conspirators in the Palais Royale might as well have remained silent. They end with, ‘Patiente. Napoléon va mourir en août. C’est certain.’”
“He predicts Napoleon will die in August.”
“But he will not. We will make sure of that. Your Monsieur Millian spells French vilely.”
“The least of his faults. He also didn’t speak French very well. There’s no telling what he actually heard.”
“‘The woman is ready.’ So a woman is involved. That is one solid bit of information. Tours is another, as is the Englishman who arranges everything. But the meat of this nut is that Napoleon will be attacked in August.”
“Now you know what we know.”
“It is already August.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. He’d memorized every pen stroke of the letter.
“So slight a messenger, this letter, to tell us of so great a disaster. You know what will happen if Napoleon is attacked by an Englishman.”
“We’ll be at war again.” The treaty patched up between England and France had lasted for a year. It wouldn’t hold forever, but any day men weren’t shooting at each other was a good day for somebody.
“War. Within a week,” Owl agreed.
Armies in the field. Thousands of men dead.
“Casus belli. Doyle called it that.” Always had a way to wrap things up in some dead language, Doyle did. The cause of war. Casus belli.
That was why he was ordered to bring this letter to the French Secret Police. After ten years of fighting, rational men on both sides were sick of it.
“I will copy this.” She folded the letter. “Several times. There are people I must inform. Give me your glass. You are finished with it.”
“What? Oh. Yes.” He put it in her hands. He should stand up and walk around to keep himself awake. Ask what the French knew about the plot, if anything. Put his shirt on. Leave. Find a bed at headquarters. Carruthers would want to talk to him. When he yawned and started to get up, Owl shoved him back to the bed.
“You will wait and not go wandering off into the night. You will probably fall into the Seine and drown.”
He yawned again. Bone-cracking yawn. “I’m not fit to stay here. I should—”
“You should sit and be quiet. I must read this again.” She studied him impatiently. “No. Lie down. You need not go anywhere, and I may have questions for you again. This is all you have? This one letter?”
“One letter. A couple mouthfuls of words spilled out in a Palais Royale restaurant or gaming den in front of a damned idiot who barely spoke French.”
“It is not much to work with.”
“It’s so close to nothing it amounts to the same thing. The gods must love war. They’re making it hard to stop this one.”
He let her bully him into lying down. Let himself fall across the blanket. Let her swing his legs up on the bed. His muscles had turned to jelly and it didn’t seem worthwhile trying to get up. He closed his eyes.
Not a soft bed. Justine didn’t sleep in a soft bed. But the linen was worn silky by the turning of her body, night after night. The pillow smelled of her.
Paper crackled. Owl sat at the table, reading. Checking the words again and again.
She said, “I do not think it possible your Monsieur Millian made a mistake in the word Anglais. He will have heard it often.”
“He probably got that part right.”
“It may be code. ‘The Englishman arranges everything’ may speak of the arrival of some émigré or the storage of spikes and guns in a warehouse in Dijon. There are hordes of disgruntled royalists. This may be yet another band, with no living, breathing Englishman involved at all.”
“Hope so.”
He heard her uncork a bottle. Then the scratch of pen on paper. “August.”
“Today’s the tenth.” He didn’t have to tell her that.
“If it is to be in August, we have no more than twenty-one days.” Her pen continued. “I will be canny in choosing where to place this information. There are men in my service who would like the war to resume, just as there are Englishmen who wish that.”
“Yes.”
She came to him, rising from her chair, crossing the room. Silk slithered like water spilled along his bare arm when she pulled the blanket across him. Like being licked. He was so tired. Too tired to say anything.