Musketeer's Mysteries - 02 - The Musketeer's Seamstress by Sarah D'Almeida

Author:Sarah D'Almeida
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780425214893
Publisher: Berkley Pub Group
Published: 2007-04-03T10:32:07+00:00

Cardinals and Passageways; The Slowness of the Quick; Porthos’s Wisdom

“SO there is no passage into the room?” Athos asked.

Porthos shrugged. “It is not as simple as that,” he said. He’d come with his friends, reluctantly, having been pulled from watching street acrobats. Athos had said that the street was no place to discuss such secret matters. This seemed to Porthos very foolish indeed. If he watched people and saw them going into a house together to talk, he would be far more likely to think they were talking of forbidden matters than if they stood around, on a street corner, watching acrobats and jugglers and discussing the matter.

Besides, Porthos liked acrobats and jugglers and since they had taken the trouble to perform on the street outside Athos’s home, all of them somersaulting and walking on wires and who knew what else, he felt the least he could do was watch them.

But no, they must go within to the dark and dreary interior of Athos’s home and there—with serious eyes and serious voices—discuss the matter while a serious Grimaud circled around filling their cups with wine.

At least the wine was the best Athos—who usually served the best wine of them all—had ever served. Two bottles, he said, given to him by his friend Raoul. Porthos was grateful that Athos shared the wine—too good for one of Athos’s solitary drunks. But he was less amused at Athos’s words, Athos’s implication that Porthos had found nothing.

“It’s not that simple,” he said, and, searching his mind for the right word, the kind of word Aramis might well have used, he added, “There are . . . implications to what I discovered that you’re not taking into account. Mousqueton tells me that Hermengarde, the palace maid, says that the Cardinal himself wanted Aramis’s Violette placed in that room. Because he was afraid she conspired with Anne of Austria in favor of Spain. And she said that the Cardinal often stood in that secret hallway and listened to them.”

“And what would you have that mean?” Athos asked. “That the Cardinal actually saw our friend murder his lover?”

Porthos shook his head. Sometimes Athos could be exasperating. Porthos was as appreciative as anyone else of Athos’s admirable qualities—his noble looks which in truth translated a matching nobility of mind, one that few people could match. But with it all came the conviction that his true superiority to the mass of men meant that his thought was always, perforce, correct.

It seemed to Porthos as though Athos had early on decided that Aramis must be guilty of the murder and, once having decided it, kept right on repeating it, unable to change his mind. Or if he hadn’t he still reverted to this point of view when the investigation didn’t go as he expected. “Athos,” he said. “Aramis didn’t kill anyone.”

Athos waved his hand exasperatedly, as if to sweep the comment away. “No, Porthos, I believe he might not have, but don’t you see those would be the only circumstances

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