Extract from Death in Champagne

On his way back from the war in the Rhineland in 1735, Brigadier-General the Duc de Richelieu is escorted by Victor Constant, mounted military policeman, to a chateau at some distance off a highway in the Champagne region.

There were occasional travellers on the highway, going in both directions, and Constant greeted some as they passed by, with a touch of a gauntleted hand to his tricorne hat. Shortly after Vignory, Richelieu was glad to spy a crossroads up ahead. From it a rough road led west and uphill onto a plateau where they would eventually find Cirey.

He said in a carrying voice, to Constant’s back, ‘We turn off, up ahead?’

‘Yes, monseigneur.’

‘How far to the Château de Cirey?’

‘About an hour and a half’s ride, monseigneur.’

Richelieu peered ahead. There was a large milestone at the crossroads, which a number of people were approaching: a cart piled with hay, a stout man on a cob and, in the further distance, a rider crouched over the neck of a galloping horse.

‘Is Cirey-sur-Blaise marked on that milestone?’

‘I’ve never noticed it, monseigneur. But there may be a pointer further up the hill.’

Richelieu said to his valet, ‘You’ll have to get up there and check. If there’s no indication, you’ll wait on the road to guide the coach when it gets here.’

The valet’s horse sprang away and thus it happened that several travellers converged on the crossroads at the same time. The valet’s eager approach startled the stout cob house pulling the cart and it stopped in its tracks, then backed the cart up on an angle, slewing it across the thoroughfare. The man on horseback coming at breakneck speed from the other direction yelled angrily, slowed his mount and made a theatrical job of swinging around to avoid the cart.

Cavalier Constant, annoyed, let out a roar. ‘Halt! Maréchaussée!’

‘We are stopped, damn your hide!’ yelled one of the men on the cart.

The rider of the fast horse made to trot by, but in an instant Constant’s big, alert stallion was in his way. The man pulled up, his horse’s hooves raising a cloud of white dust. ‘Maréchaussée indeed! I’m on your cursed business, so let me through.’

‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’

‘Chaumont, with a despatch for the Prévôt-Général.’

He was a small man, short-backed like his mount, and chafing to be gone, but he was not going to get past Constant, who waved off the valet and the men with the cart and then turned on him. ‘What’s in the despatch?’

‘There’s been another murder at Sainte-Anne, that’s what! Another woman killed. It’s all here’—the man pulled a folded letter from the front of his coat—‘with the seal of the town clerk of Joinville upon it, and no one’s to read it but the Prévôt-Général.’

Richelieu, spurring forward, saw to his surprise that Constant’s face had lost a little colour.

Constant said, ‘A woman! Who?’

‘One of the workers at the mayor’s glass factory.’

‘Was she a beauty?’ Constant’s voice was not quite steady as he went on, ‘Was she marked?’

‘Marked? Who are you, to ask me all these questions?’ The rider’s confused gaze moved from Constant to the duke, who had come to a halt at the cavalier’s side—a formidable figure, as Richelieu fully intended.

‘Monseigneur le Duc de Richelieu,’ Constant said repressively, and they both watched the man’s mouth gape open.

Richelieu reached over and took the despatch from the rider’s hand. Ignoring the gasp of protest, he broke the seal and ran his eye over the neatly written pages, signed by the town clerk of Joinville. Immediately after the details of the murder came a strong request for the Maréchaussée to take over its investigation. The main reason cited was that the girl’s body had been found on a public byway.

He said to Constant, ‘Can you read?’

‘Yes, monseigneur.’

He held it out. ‘Take it, while I give it some thought.’ He bent his mind to the despatch. At some time during the previous night, a young woman had had her throat cut in the cellar of a glass works owned by the mayor of Joinville, Valmartin. She had then been dragged into a lane leading to the riverside, where she was found in the morning when Valmartin’s workers reported for duty. The body was covered in cuts from shards of glass that littered the cellar where she had been killed. And there was more, a macabre detail that stuck in Richelieu’s mind: a cross had been sliced into her back. She was found face-down and her blouse had been torn open to expose the cross. Marked, as Constant had said.

The scene at the crossroads was tranquil. The valet had returned, and with the groom he patiently awaited the duke’s orders, the men with the hay cart were disappearing towards Vignory, the courier lingered in awed silence and Constant was reading the despatch.

It suddenly struck Richelieu that Constant must be the cavalier to whom Voltaire had alluded just once, in a letter that referred to a murder investigation in June. In his facetious way, Voltaire claimed that his advice and Émilie’s had been essential to the ‘young colossus of a cavalier’ who finally identified the culprit. Richelieu had detected a certain satisfaction behind the self-mockery—Voltaire piqued himself upon helping to hunt down a killer.

Richelieu said to his valet, ‘I need to add a note to that despatch. You have your writing gear handy?’

‘Yes, monseigneur!’ The valet twisted in the saddle to extract a writing case from his saddle bag and extracted a pen and a bottle of ink, which he handed carefully to the duke.

Richelieu spurred over to Constant, who was folding up the despatch. ‘Give me that and take the ink. Unstop it, if you please, and hold it steady.’ He opened the last page of the despatch on his thigh, dipped the pen in the ink and wrote a peremptory note at the bottom. He took no care over the spelling—he never did—but signed with meticulous flourishes.

‘You,’ he said to the despatch rider, holding out the papers, ‘take this to the Prévôt-Général. Well’—he snapped when the man thrust the despatch into his coat but failed to move—‘what are you waiting for? An order from the king?’

The rider took off with another flurry of dust and Richelieu beckoned the valet across to relieve him of pen and ink. He could feel Constant’s gaze on his face: his eyes, of a metallic blue, betrayed no curiosity, though he must have guessed Richelieu’s decision. If Cavalier Constant was ambitious, he had no intention of showing it, even to a brigadier-general.

The air of impenetrability amused Richelieu and it was with a slight smile that he said, ‘In my experience, there are affairs to which only the military can enforce the right conclusion. This is one of them. I’ve informed your Prévôt-Général that the Maréchaussée is in charge of this case. Your investigation starts now. You’ll go at once to the scene of the murder and the first person you need to question is the mayor of Joinville.’

There was a flicker in the man’s glance but he said smoothly enough, ‘And after that, monseigneur?’

‘You’ll proceed with the investigation and fill out the military journal in the usual way. I’ve commanded that the Prévôt write back to me at Cirey and send further orders for you. Report to me there tomorrow afternoon.’

There was a faint flush along the cavalier’s cheekbones that the duke failed to interpret. ‘At what hour, monseigneur?’

The duke waved a hand. ‘Devil take it, just turn up at, let us say, two o’clock.’

‘With respect, monseigneur, today I was ordered to escort you as far as the château and—’

The duke’s voice was silky. ‘Those orders have been superseded. You have another task and I expect you to give it your full attention.’

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