Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [371]
“It just now came to me.” Tocquet dropped the stub of his cheroot and crushed the spark out with the toe of his boot, then raised his nose to the scent of roast pork that wafted out of the house behind them. The brass jingle of the bell sounded once again.
“Come on,” Tocquet said, getting to his feet. “You’d better feed up— you’ve gone thin as a rail since we last met.”
Zabeth opened the front door of the Cigny house and held her candle high to illuminate the faces of Daspir and Guizot, who squinted in the sudden flare. With a quick sly smile at Daspir, she stepped aside and beckoned them in.
“A beauty, that one,” Guizot said, with a somewhat exaggerated connoisseur’s air. Daspir did no more than nod. There was, perhaps, an extra swing in Zabeth’s step as she led them up the stairway toward the second-floor salon, but he thought that Guizot had spoken a little too loudly, and he was aware that Michau had appeared to stand silently in a doorway on the passage below.
Major Maillart was on his feet the moment Zabeth had opened the door for the two captains, moving quickly to halt them on the threshold. Over his shoulder, Daspir caught a glimpse of Elise and Isabelle sitting together on a striped divan. It might have been a trick of the quavering light, but both of them looked a little guilty, as if they had been caught in some conspiracy. Isabelle’s mouth pulled tight around her teeth and though she had certainly recognized Daspir, there was no particular warmth in her regard.
“Come, gentlemen,” Maillart was saying. “You need not bring your business here. I would have come to find you, in another hour.” He backed them over the threshold, pulling the door shut behind them. Zabeth had vanished from the scene, but still there was not space enough for the three of them on the narrow landing. Daspir stumbled down to a lower step, and had to catch himself on the rail. He did not at all like the way Maillart’s long shadow loomed over him.
“Let us go down to the street, shall we?” Maillart said. “The matter is better discussed in the open air.”
Daspir turned and started downstairs, grateful for the darkness of the stairwell, which covered his angry blush. Michau still stood in the doorway on the ground-floor passage, watching impassively as they went by. On the street Maillart stood facing them, casual, almost uninterested, as if his only real concern had been to herd them out of the house. Was it possible, Daspir thought, that Isabelle no longer wanted to receive him? If so, he had Paltre to thank for it—it was Paltre who forced Isabelle to side with her friends, her house guests, in the quarrel he’d provoked. Or Daspir could blame himself, to a degree, for under the present circumstances he and Guizot would have done better to send up their names and wait below, instead of bursting in as they had done. But he had been too eager—too anxious, he might even say—for maybe it was Major Maillart who presumed too much, who might have particular reasons of his own to put himself between Daspir and Isabelle.
“As you are here,” Maillart said, “I may as well let you know that Doctor Hébert prefers to settle this affair tomorrow, and hopes that Captain Paltre will accommodate him.”
Guizot shifted his feet and cleared his throat. “We are charged to tell you that Captain Paltre regrets his impetuous remark and will offer an apology, if it were acceptable.”
“Really?” said Maillart. “It is very unusual.” There was a touch of sarcasm in his tone, but he also seemed to have been genuinely startled.
“Look,” said Guizot, dropping his formal manners. “We all stood shoulder together at La Crête à Pierrot. In the larger struggle we must stand together still. Surely there is some way to resolve the quarrel without bloodshed. The waste of it all is appalling to me.” His voice cracked. “If not for your friend I’d have lost my arm, and maybe my life along with it.”
“Yes, all right,” Maillart said. “I’ve nothing against the two of you.” He put a hand on Guizot’s shoulder and glanced at Daspir a trifle more