THIRTY-FIVE

There was still a crowd in the street, even after the body had been removed. Desgrez pressed through the motley assortment of lackeys and passersby to where the elderly servant woman sat on the front step weeping into her apron, surrounded by the mournful household staff.

“I saw it all, I saw it all, Monsieur,” she responded to Desgrez’s questions. “Good, kind, generous Monsieur Geniers had just given something to a beggar, when a hideous man, his face all wrapped in a scarf, stepped out from the alley over there—” She pointed, and all eyes turned to the narrow alley, its gutter running with filth.

“And then?” pressed Desgrez, his voice low and sympathetic.

“Monsieur, the fiend beat my master to the ground right there, where the bloodstain is. He smashed in his head with a big metal-tipped walking stick he was carrying.”

“Can you describe the man you saw?”

“He was a beggar in a shapeless gray coat. But he had a gentleman’s accent. There was no mistaking that.”

“He spoke? What did he say?”

“He shouted something like, ‘Here’s your repayment, you bastard—’ Monsieur, the scarf fell off…and…”

“Yes?” Desgrez was attentive.

“Monsieur, the man had no face.”

“A faceless man, Desgrez? This should not present much of a problem of identification. Did she say if he were a leper?” La Reynie was inspecting the murder report that lay before him on his desk.

“I think it more likely that it was a criminal whose nose and ears had been cropped,” answered his subordinate.

“And yet with a gentleman’s accent. An impossibility, I think. This presents a puzzle, Desgrez.” He shook his head. “A man of Monsieur Geniers’s position, respected, of unblemished reputation, murdered on his own doorstep. It is a scandal. Louvois will doubtless take a direct interest, and possibly even His Majesty. We must give this case the highest priority. Search his house again, Desgrez. Interview his colleagues. Go through his correspondence. There is not a man alive that does not have some hidden enemy.”