* * * * *
Half an hour in a fiacre brought them across the city to the fashionable faubourg St. Honor?, a suburban district of comfortable stone houses belonging to the prosperous bourgeoisie and lesser aristocracy. Here and there, amid the private houses, stood the reception rooms and workshops of a fashionable dressmaker, milliner, or tailor, or an elegant apartment house, or the high walls surrounding a wealthier nobleman's mansion with cobbled front courtyard and spacious gardens and stables at the rear.
They found Noguier's shop without difficulty. At the front door a footman clad in powdered wig and velveteen coat gazed haughtily upon them, ready to suggest that two such unimpressively dressed individuals could not possibly be seeking the services of the great Noguier. Brasseur's police card, however, as he had foreseen, startled the lackey into silence.
Withindoors, the establishment seemed in a perpetual state of barely controlled pandemonium. In a small chamber at the left of the foyer, a languid, exquisitely dressed young man lounged on a sofa while inspecting colored fashion plates, occasionally making a comment to the thin, harassed-looking man hovering over his shoulder. In another room farther down the central hallway, a brisk male voice related snippets of court gossip in an endless stream of patter, frequently punctuated with "Now if you would raise your left arm so, monsieur le vicomte," "I believe we'll have to add just one or two more stitches to that buttonhole," and "If you would be so good, monsieur, as to walk a few paces-but mind the pins, if you please." Far down the hall, a subdued murmur rose from the journeymen busily stitching in the workroom, interspersed with the treble voices of boy apprentices running errands back and forth.
The haughty footman vanished into the left-hand chamber and shortly the harassed-looking man emerged. "Messieurs?"
"Monsieur Noguier?" said Brasseur.
"I am he."
"It's likely a certain piece of clothing we have here, evidence in a crime, was a creation of yours. If you'd kindly take a look at it, monsieur."
Noguier led them into an empty reception room and shut the door. "Well?"
"This waistcoat, Monsieur Noguier."
"That's not one of mine," the master tailor said, as soon as Brasseur had lifted it out of its muslin wrapping and laid it on a side table. "Gracious God, what happened to it? It's scarcely fit to pass on to a kitchen boy."
"Are you sure it wasn't made here in your workshop, monsieur?" Brasseur inquired, ignoring Noguier's questions.
"Of course. I'd recognize the fabric, and I know every item we've sewn in the past two years, at least. If you wish proof, I'll show you." He summoned the lackey and told him to fetch the order book. "You see?" he continued, when the thick folio, a foot wide and half again as high, had been presented. He opened the book in the middle and leafed past a few pages. "Now this waistcoat of yours is in the latest style-it certainly wasn't cut before late summer."
He stabbed a finger down on a page containing a pair of rough sketches, several paragraphs of notes, measurements, and calculations, and half a dozen fabric samples. "Ah, yes, here are the two dress suits, with embroidered waistcoats complementing them, for Monsieur de Gamache, delivered on the eighteenth of September; our first order of the autumn. We might have cut this waistcoat of yours any time after that, but we didn't. Look through the orders for yourself."
"We'll have to take your word for it, monsieur," Brasseur said, after Aristide had leafed through the massive book for several minutes, shaking his head. "But if you didn't create this suit of clothes, then who did?"
"A gentleman assured us," Aristide added, "you made the best waistcoats in Paris."
Noguier permitted himself a dry smile. "I don't flatter myself that I stand entirely alone in the tailors' guild, above the rest. Monsieur Yvon could have made this waistcoat, I admit. He's the only other master tailor whom I would consider my equal, at least in the matter of waistcoats. His establishment is on Rue de Beaujolais, near the Palais-Royal."
Armed with a note of introduction from Noguier, they flagged down another fiacre and set back eastward along Rue St. Honor?. Rue de Beaujolais, bordering the northern edge of the Palais-Royal, was a short street and they quickly found the tailor shop. Inside, they encountered the same sort of wealthy and aristocratic customers and deft, glib fitters, but the chatter of the cutters and sewers was upstairs, rather than at the back of the building, and more muted. Yvon, a brisk, gray-haired, middle-aged man, recognized the waistcoat immediately and seemed almost ready to break into tears at the sight of his creation.
"What fool washed this? The very best Lyon silk-it's a crime, monsieur, a crime!"
"You wouldn't have wanted to see it before it was washed, monsieur," Aristide said dryly. "You can take Inspector Brasseur's word for it that it was already ruined."
"Now, Monsieur Yvon," Brasseur said, "you definitely acknowledge this article as one made in your workshop? Yes? Could you then, if you please, give us some particulars?"
"Yes, to be sure. The bolt of silk was new?arrived in August or September?so let me see?" Yvon fetched his own order book and pored through it for a moment. "We've made six waistcoats with that fabric, and another's still back being stitched?popular pattern. Now?hmm?this certainly isn't Monsieur Latouraille's waistcoat, it's far too small. And Monsieur d'Inville likes his waistcoats cut long. So it must be one of the other four." He turned a few pages and jotted down some notes. "These, with their addresses in town, are the four gentlemen to whom this waistcoat might belong: Messieurs Wendelin, Saint-Landry, Leforestier, or de Beaupr?au. They are all frequent customers of mine."
"You haven't seen any of them in the past few days, perhaps?" Aristide inquired.
"No, no, the last one to call was Monsieur Leforestier, when he came in for final fittings on?let me see?Tuesday the eleventh of October. Monsieur de Beaupr?au's valet came in a fortnight ago, or so, with an order for four shirts, but that's all. What's this about, messieurs?"
"Police business, I'm afraid," said Brasseur, "but I expect you'll find out eventually. Are all four of these gentlemen naturally dark-haired?"
"Yes, I believe so?except for Monsieur Wendelin; I fear he's quite bald, though he can afford an excellent wigmaker, of course."
"You can scratch Wendelin off your list, then. What about the other three? Can you describe them?"
"Their persons? Average build, all three. I can provide you with their measurements, if you wish."
"We were hoping for something a bit more individual than their measurements," Brasseur said gently. "What do they look like?"
"Oh." Yvon rubbed his nose. "I'm more concerned with their figures than their faces, understand. I would say that none of them, either in beauty or in ugliness, is a particularly striking individual, though Monsieur de Beaupr?au is, I suppose, a good-looking young gentleman."
Aristide sighed. "At least their ages, monsieur?"
"Oh?thirty to forty, all of them, more or less; medium height or a little over; dark hair, though Monsieur Leforestier often wears a wig in public. They are, of course, more individual when wearing a fine suit of clothes cut to measure." Yvon smiled slightly, with a dubious sideways glance at Aristide's coat. "If I might interest you gentlemen?"
Aristide nearly laughed. They escaped, after assuring Yvon that their fortunes were far too humble to allow them to patronize his establishment. It was nearing midday and Brasseur led Aristide to a modest eating-house a few streets to the north, away from the high-priced district surrounding the Palais-Royal, for a dish of pot-au-feu and a glass of rough red wine.
"What now?" Aristide asked, after wolfing down most of his portion of the stew. "I suppose we have to visit all these addresses."
"Of course," said Brasseur, crumbling the last of his slab of black bread into his bowl. "Only three of them; that's nothing."
"Is this your usual police work, then? Endless rounds of asking the same questions over and over?"
"Afraid so," Brasseur said pleasantly. "Consider yourself lucky; we might be working
something tricky like a poisoning, in which case we'd be wearing out our shoes and our voices asking the same very dull questions of every apothecary in Paris, until we found the one who admitted to selling the stuff. But that's the only way it gets done: patient, methodical investigation. Eventually, with common sense and enough shoe leather, you'll find the answers you need."
Aristide looked at the last few swallows of wine in his glass and decided against finishing it; he preferred the alertness that coffee brought, and the wine, in any case, was nearly undrinkable.
Brasseur, oblivious, tossed off the last of his own wine. "Are you done, then? Brace yourself, Ravel. One of these three on Yvon's list is probably our corpse, and breaking the news to the family is never a pleasant job."