Calling on her old talents as an actress, she asked with all sincerity in her voice “What was what?”

The black mouse’s ear’s flicked back for a moment, trying to decide whether he could believe in Lady Blakeney’s innocence or not. “It sounded like a twig snapping.”

Marguerite laughed. “You’re over working yourself, my friend. You jump at every little thing. A twig could be any number of different things.”

“Oh really?” asked he sarcastically, turning around and walking back toward the lady. Inwardly, Basil breathed a slight sigh of relief and made sure his newly selected branch would most certainly hold his weight. “Such as?”

“Oh, Dieu, I don’t know!” she exclaimed, taking his ebony paw and gently pulling him closer to her. “A bug, a cat, the wind; there’s a million explanations for it, none of them sinister or supernatural. Well, all except the cat, that is.”

Still, he stole a cautious look over his shoulder, half not trusting her, half his senses telling him “Be alert!” Quickly, her auburn paw reached up and gently rested against his cheek, pushing his head to look back at her.

“It’s nothing,” she promised with a smile. Transfixed by her, he stood motionless for a few moments. “If you have such faith in me, then you ought to be able to trust me on this. We should be able to trust each other, since we’re both dealing with a delicate situation. Trust is a key element in all relationships.” And that was the exact reason her marriage was terrible: A lack of trust.

“Yes….” he agreed slowly. “Yes, of course you’re right.” He relished in the feeling of her hand, and it took all his self control to not take her up on her previous offer. “I’m afraid the hour grows late, and you and I must go back inside.”

“But…we haven’t had much time to talk!” she protested.

“A situation I shall remedy,” agreed he. “Fluerette wishes to see you. When may I visit?”

Reluctantly, she allowed “Any time next week.”

“Excellent,” he agreed, brushing a loose lock of her auburn hair behind her ear, gazing at her adoringly. “I’m free on Thursday.”

“And so am I. You will come?” She wished he wouldn’t.

“I will come.”

With that, he kissed her petite paw and strode back into the house. Shivering from terror rather than from cold, Marguerite remained outside for a moment, pacing back and forth, her mind waging a war with itself. Finally, she turned to go.

Before she could do so little as to scream, a hand had clamped itself around her mouth and grabbed her wrist. Terrified, she was spun around to see the angry face of none other than Basil of Baker Street. Instantly she relaxed as he took his hand from her mouth.

“Mon Dieu, monsieur, but are you trying to frighten me out of my mind?”

“I’m wondering if you’re still in your mind, madame!” he angrily hissed.

“What?”

“You hid information from me!”

Her ears drooped, her heart sank. “Oh…you mean about what just transpired….”

“Yes, of course, what else! Did I not make it perfectly clear to you that I needed to know every last detail? Do you wish your brother’s head to be separated from his neck?”

“Don’t say that!” she shouted, turning away from him. “Of course I don’t want that! That’s why I came to you for help.”

“Then why did you not tell me the whole truth?”

“I thought….Well, partially, I didn’t think that it was important.”

“Obviously you were mistaken,” seethed he.

“And partially it was out of pride,” she admitted.

“Praise God, Lady Blakeney, that none of this is yet serious enough for any sort of plan to be ruined. But now you must do as you advised Citizen Chauvelin; you must trust me. I am not the one who wants your brother’s head on a platter!”

She began to cry slightly, and she quickly whipped away a tear. “No, I know that, of course not…. I seem to not be doing anything right as of lately.”

Sighing, he drew from his pocket a spotless handkerchief and handed it to her. She did not use it, but instead wrung it between her two delicate auburn paws. “We can still remedy this situation, there is still time. Do you think you can be at my office tomorrow?”

Silently, Lady Blakeney thought. “Yes, I believe so. Percy will want to leave soon, I’ve got to get inside.” She thrust the kerchief back into the detectives hand and said “Merci, monsieur, I’ll be in your office tomorrow by one o’clock. I swear, and I shall tell you everything this time.”

He did not have time to remind her how serious the situation was, for she raced back inside before he could say a word. Well, it was late, after all. He’d better round Dawson up and sneak out and home.

“Now,” instructed the detective. “Start from the very beginning.”

Marguerite puzzled over where exactly to begin for a moment, before speaking: “When my brother Armand and I were small, I was twelve and he was sixteen, our mother and father died. We were a middle class family, so the situation wasn’t dire, but we stayed with my aunt and uncle for the most part. Armand eventually got work, and I was sent off to school. That is where I met my friend-”

“Suzanne de Tournay,” interrupted Basil.

Lady Blakeney nodded. “Yes, I see that you remember. I studied to be an actress, and returned to Paris to live with my brother. He had good, steady work and could support the two of us now. I soon began my career as an actress. Small parts to begin with, of course; the chorus, maybe a line. But I began to get bigger and bigger parts in productions, and I became something of a small celebrity around Paris.

“It was around this time that I met Citizen Chauvelin, who had just been appointed as an agent of the Committee of Public Safety. He saw a performance I starred in and became smitten with me. So, he began to call on me and take me places. The world was brand new in France, and I was caught up in the tide. It made sense to have someone a little older, and wiser, to help and guide me through it. It wasn’t long before….we became lovers, he and I.” She paused to sigh, trying to continue. “It was only a few months later that everything changed for me.

“My brother had fallen in love with the daughter of the Marquis de St. Cyr. Since he was only a Plebian, St. Cyr did not deem Armand worthy enough to breath the same air as his daughter, and had him thrashed within an inch of his life.” Here she began to cry again, taking out her own lacy handkerchief. “Oh, my poor brother! He was lucky to be alive!

“Naturally, I wanted some form of revenge. Not long after words, chance gave me the opportunity. I stumbled onto information that St. Cyr was conspiring with the Austrians. I thought only to have St. Cyr humiliated, nothing more. Try to understand, Monsieur Basil, I was only just nineteen, and was naïve. I regret what I did with all my soul now, but then…. Oh then, it seemed the best thing in the world!

“I took the information to Chauvelin, who was thrilled. Apparently, he’d had lower ranking agents trying to dig up dirt on St. Cyr for weeks now, and none of them were successful. Now you understand his faith in me. I did not think, at the time, that they might have St. Cyr executed, mostly because Chauvelin didn’t tell me that it was a possibility. For weeks, nothing happened. Chauvelin wanted to know how deep his treachery to the Republic sank, so he merely had him followed, watched.

“As for me, I became his favorite accomplice. We soon became quite the secretive little team, bringing corrupt aristocrats their just deserts. What changed everything was when I found out that, because of information I had given to Chauvelin, the Comte de Firmin was executed by Madame la Guillotine. Since I was such a foolish, naïve little child, I was shocked, horrified. I quickly realized that it was of my doing, and that St. Cyr would be soon to follow.

“Not knowing what else to do, I confronted Chauvelin about it. He was quite surprised that I hadn’t known that, in giving him that information, St. Cyr was guaranteed to die. I begged and pleaded with him to do something, but he refused, for a number of different reasons. For one, there was nothing he could do about it, in reality. For another, he didn’t give two straws if St. Cyr lived or died.

“So, I did what I could alone, begging and pleading with whomever could change St. Cyr’s fate. I have no doubt that while I was trying to cover St. Cyr’s guilt, Chauvelin was doing everything to cover my own.”

Basil leaned foreword, his pipe clenched between his teeth, puffing steadily on it. “Please, Lady Blakeney, explain that part in more detail.”

She dabbed at her blue eyes, still haunted by the Marquis’ death. “It looked suspicious, you see, for a young revolutionary girl to try and save an aristocrat who had so obviously attempted to betray the Republic. For those suspicions alone, I might have lost my head. Citizen Chauvelin made sure that everyone ignored the suspicions, made sure that there was absolutely no chance of me being arrested as a traitor. While that kept me alive, it helped to seal St. Cyr’s fate.”

“But why would Citizen Chauvelin go to such great lengths to protect you?” the doctor asked.

“There are two reasons that I can think of, and only one of them works. The first is that he was doing it to protect himself as much as he was doing it to protect me. Guilt by association, you understand.”

“If that were the case, why didn’t he simply break off all ties he had to you? It would require far less work than he did,” asked the detective.

“Yes,” agreed Lady Blakeney. “That is why that reason doesn’t work. The next one, and I think you’ll agree, does. You see, Chauvelin was in love with me, and I think he might have even been making plans to marry me. He wanted a mother for his child – I had been taken to Brittany to visit Fluerette twice, by that time. On both occasions the trip was wonderful, and Fluerette and I were splendid company for each other. He wanted to live a normal, happy life, with his child, a wife, a family.

“When I failed to be able to prevent St. Cyr’s death, I tried to be at the Place de la Greve to bear witness to the execution, and beg God for forgiveness. I will have that poor mouse’s blood on my hands for as long as I live. However, worried for me – I suppose he thought I would do something rash – Chauvelin detained me, refused to let me go. I can understand his reasons better now, but then, I was furious at him! We had a terrible fight, and for weeks I refused to see him.”

She now faintly smiled as she continued, a pleasant memory returning. “It was about that time that I met my husband. Like Chauvelin, he too saw me perform. It all started out exactly the same as Chauvelin. Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose. Percy was nothing like Chauvelin. Percy worshiped me the way a dog does it’s master. He loved me, was the perfect gentleman, would have done anything I asked of him. A courtship began between the two of us, and Chauvelin was quick to find out. He was terribly jealous, you understand, though it had been a month and a half since I’d allowed him to visit. He was still very much in love with me, and began to remind me of what Percy was: An Englishman, and idiot, a fop. Oh, he tossed out a dozen different names to try and sway me, but it did nothing. The two despised each other, could hardly stand being in the same room for more than a few minutes. Percy pretended to be stupider than he was around Chauvelin, mocking him, irking him. I was almost worried Percy would push the limits too far and Chauvelin would retaliate in a very bad way. Whenever I voiced this concern to Percy, however, he laughed and brushed it off as though it were nothing. ‘That demmed little frog eater, m’dear? Is that whom you’d have me be worried about? Nonsense!’

“However, Chauvelin’s jealousy did take a nasty turn, one which I still don’t think I can forgive him for. It started with his trying to cajole me into admitting something that wasn’t true: ‘The brightest star in Paris is to marry the greatest idiot in London? No one would believe it! But then, one must also take into account that he is the richest man in England.’ I was furious with him, told him to get out of my sight immediately. He reluctantly obeyed, but the seed of doubt had been planted, and that was what he wanted. I began to wonder if I was marrying Percy for his title and his money, not because I loved him. I managed to get over this; Percy made it quite easy, since he loved me so innocently and entirely.

“However, Chauvelin was not yet done. A few weeks later, when he realized he’d not been as successful as he hoped, he sent a deadly ultimatum: ‘I can very easily throw a wrench into these wedding plans of yours, my dear. Do not forget, I know your secrets just as you know mine, and we share a common one. Would your British Turkey want to marry a free woman, one whom had not always stayed on the straight and narrow? Would he believe that you’d be faithful to him?’ That did get it’s desired effect for a few days. I demanded to know if he intended to blackmail me about our previous liaison, and he responded that he did not. He began to loose ammunition for his attacks once he realized that I would not waver; I intended to marry Sir Percy, and that’s precisely what I would do. He did what he could: Question my loyalty to my country, tried to remind me of the happy life I’d lived in Paris. Nothing worked. It was hard for him, but he eventually gave up.”

“You mentioned on your previous visit,” Basil slowly thought aloud, “that you and your husband were estranged, madame. Would you please elaborate on that?”

“Yes, of course, monsieur,” she replied. “It was on the night that Percy and I were married that one of his friends, I believe it might have been Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, got wind of my part in the Marquis de St. Cyr’s execution. Reluctantly, for he wasn’t sure if he was true or not, he told Sir Percy. After the guests had gone, he confronted me about it. What we did was a mistake on both parties, I think. He demanded to know the truth, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of telling him the whole truth, much as it was with you, Monsieur Basil. He did not believe the explanation I gave him. It wasn’t completely true, but neither was it false. On my own part, I told him that he ought to believe me if he loved me. He was crushed, and so was I. We’ve barely spoken since then.”

She looked down at her hands, folded delicately in her lap. Twisting the wedding ring around her finger, she sniffled slightly. She hadn’t wanted to think of Percy, hadn’t wanted to remember…..

Basil allowed his client a moment of quiet, let her gather up her courage and defense. “This reveals quite a lot, Lady Blakeney, but I still do not think that it is the full story.”

“No, you’re right,” she agreed. “The story isn’t over yet.”

Next Chapter