Game of Patience by Susanne Alleyn Read Free Book Online Page A

candlelight on the empty glass. “My father has probably presided over more executions than any man in history,” he said. “For forty years he’s watched felons expire on the wheel, or at the end of a rope, and he saw plenty of the innocent die as well, in ’ninety-three and ’ninety-four. He’s seen enough to know how a man with a clear conscience dies. When it was over, this time, he said to me, ‘We’ve executed an innocent man.’”
    “And you, you believe that as well?”
    Sanson nodded. “Lesurques didn’t look like a felon; he looked like one of the poor sods sent to the guillotine for no good reason during the Terror. Stunned, resigned, scared maybe; but not cocky like some cold-blooded ruffian, or whining and blubbering like a worm who knows he deserves what he’s about to get.”
    “Thank you,” said Aristide. “Though I wish you’d been able to say you believed he was guilty.”
    “What the devil can you do about it now?”
    “Nothing at all. But I hope to do my best to ensure that such a thing never happens again.”
    The wine arrived and Aristide poured out a glass for Sanson. He splashed a token swallow into his own glass, preferring the stimulation of coffee to the intoxication of alcohol, and paused for an instant, wondering whether or not he ought to toast his companion.
    “I’ll save you the trouble of scrambling for a tactful toast,” said Sanson. “To the health of the ladies who are dearest to our hearts. That’s a safe one, don’t you think?”
    Aristide nodded and repeated “To the ladies,” though in truth there was no one, at present, dear to his heart.
    “You married?” inquired Sanson.
    “No.”
    “I am. Three months ago. Gave up my mistress and my dissolute bachelor ways, and let my mother find me a respectable girl who’d overlook our profession for the sake of our fortune.” He fell silent again, glowering into the garnet depths of his glass.
    It was a cruel twist of fate, Aristide mused, that had condemned the fine young man before him to a distasteful trade and the life of an exile in his own land.
    “Why should the police give a damn how an affair turns out, once it’s tied up and handed over to the public prosecutor?” Sanson suddenly demanded. “Why do you care?”
    “Isn’t it just as much the duty of the police to free the innocent, as to bring the guilty to justice?”
    “I don’t imagine many think of it that way. Usually it’s nothing more than ‘Do your duty, and leave the issue to Heaven.’”
    “But you believe as I do,” Aristide said, concealing his surprise that the public executioner should quote a classic dramatist like Corneille. But then again, he thought, performing a distasteful duty ought not to prevent a man from being a scholar or a gentleman.
    “I have to, or I’d run mad. I have to believe the law doesn’t make mistakes. Most of the time.” Sanson poured himself another glass and drained it. Aristide sipped at his own wine, shaking his head when Sanson made a move to refill his glass. “Of course there are times, too, when the law doesn’t give a damn who gets caught beneath its wheels. What were you doing during the Terror, citizen police spy?”
    “Nothing connected with the Revolutionary Tribunal, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Aristide said mildly, refusing to be goaded by his companion’s acrimony. “I told you, I’m no informer.”
    “Plenty deny it now, who were proud of it three years ago.”
    “I was never a talebearer,” he repeated, “for the public prosecutor’s office or the Committee of Security or anyone else.” That was not entirely the truth, though he had preferred to call himself an “agent” of Danton in 1792 and 1793, when the ill-conceived war against Prussia and Austria had proved disastrous for France and many people had whispered of foreign plots to undermine the Revolution. Rumors and hysteria, most of the whispers, while distrust and uncertainty had been at their height;