"Coffee?" Javert asked, busying himself at the apartment's small stove. Leroux grimaced behind his back.
"Thank you, no." Javert had picked up a taste for a strong Turkish blend in his younger days in one of the Mediterranean ports. Consequently, he made a coffee so strong you could stand a spoon in it, as Leroux had found the one time he'd made the error of accepting some of the brew. His colleague didn't even make the concession of serving it in small cups like the Turks did.
"So…the recruitment goes ahead with your new masters," the retired inspector said, settling himself back in what was evidently a favourite chair. The furnishings of the apartment were sparse but comfortable, with one feature that always drew Leroux's eye. A curio cabinet in the corner that held a collection of odd, unmatched items: a rusted chisel; a child's doll; a small book of daily devotions and various sundry other items, intrinsically valueless. They had endless fascination for Leroux though, knowing that each one told the story of a story of a past case. The book of devotions, for example, had been given to Javert by a poisoner he had apprehended. The complex pursuit had lead, after many twists, to a killer who would have been the model wife and boarding house owner if she hadn't dispatched five victims, including two of her own children. Apparently she bore no ill will toward the man who had untangled her complex deceit, as she'd presented him with the prayer book on the way to the guillotine.
"Recruiting, yes…I have passed on your expression of willingness to be considered for the position."
"Good. The winter promises to be another cold one, and a man has need to buffer out the chill."
"M. Dupin's cases not paying well?" Leroux asked, eye still on the cabinet. Javert's retirement had only ever been an official one on paper, as he still continued for the Metropolitan force and even sometimes for the Sûreté through his friend, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, a private gentleman and gifted amateur of crime. The two had met when Javert had put to good use Dupin's observations on the Marie Roget murder, leading to the arrest of her killer, and they had since found their combined skills of use in solving obscure or diplomatically sensitive cases. Javert had never accrued the suspicious sums of money that Vidocq and the others had managed to funnel away in the course of their careers, and with no family connections he was thrown back on his associations to secure his retirement income.
Javert snorted. "They pay well enough, now that he's charging for his services and not making such a ridiculous point of doing it for amusement, but the cases are as erratic as he is."
"No other motive? I've never known you to be motivated solely by pecuniary interests" Leroux prodded, knowing that if Javert were not so rigidly incorruptible he could have lined his pockets long ago.
"Do you mean, other than a desire to escape the sheer tedium of this…this forced domesticity?" Javert asked, gesturing around him. "I've been looking over old cases in the police gazette, just to find some relief from the monotony."
"Well, you might change your mind when you find out who the job entails working for."
"Not one of those moderates who changes his political affiliation with the weather?" He drummed his fingers on the chair arm, leaning back at ease as he swung one leg over the other. "They're worse than those wild-eyed radicals who are calling for war with everyone from Russia to the Ottoman Empire. Almost worse. At least you know where you stand from day to day with a fanatic."
"No…it is someone who gave me the impression that you have more than an acquaintance on paper. M. Enjolras."
Javert gave a short bark of a laugh.
"Ah, and this explains why they've tiptoed around my confirmation in the position! Of course!"
"What on earth could a police inspector done to rile up this darling of the popular press? Did you arrest him during a drunken spree or prevent him from promenading in the gardens when he was earning his advocate's hat and robes?" Leroux queried.
"Discretion forbids me from sharing all the details of how I came to enjoy his hospitality, but they were enough to see me bound to a pole. The champion of the people informed me that, by-the-bye, should the barricades fall I would be improving the floor of the wine shop where they were holed up with the scattered contents of my skull."
Leroux restrained his curses. Damn Allard and his agents for not telling him, or if he didn't know, damn him for not being across his brief and leaving Leroux hanging. A man could be expected to overlook many things in the name of duty and country, but a threatened summary execution was a bit hard to kiss one's hand to and see off.
Leroux considered briefly the rumoured contents of Javert's resignation note and wondered if that, too, tied into this dog's breakfast of a cock up, but thought the better of asking.
"Ah, well, I suppose that must have torn the deal," he said with a careful measure of sang froid. "Can't rightfully expect you to chalk that down to a boyish excess of zeal."
Javert waved away the comment with his hand.
"Out with the rest of it, Leroux. I want to know precisely what powers it is proposed I be given."
"You mean you'll consider it?"
"Not until I've sounded it all out thoroughly. I've been sent into murky situations before. I don't mind the shadows, but I want the situation and my place in it very clear before I walk into the cloaca of an underground war again. I need to know that this government won't push me into it and then wash their hands of it with more alacrity than Pilate ever knew.
"Enjolras suggested that the two of you meet to discuss it. If nothing else, he seems set and determined on this and willing to throw men and materiel at it."
"Oh, he would. A proper fanatic who could stare a cockatrice out of countenance. Well, I shall hear him out."
"So you would consider working for a Republican? I told him you would if you gave your word, but with more optimism than conviction. After all, this government may prove even more of soap-bubble substance than the July monarchy."
"As long as they don't make the sort of mess of things that the Restoration did when they ousted all the experienced men who had the misfortune to be associated with an exiled Emperor." He reached for his snuff box, proffering it to Leroux, who took a pinch. Javert's snuff was invariably excellent. "I'm not concerned so much about the Republic - it may prove to be as ephemeral as its predecessor. What I do care about is those traitors working with foreign powers against France. They're of the same ilk as those émigrés who abandoned the nation when we had the first go-round with government by committee, and those who worked against the Emperor. They have arraigned themselves against their country and its people." His eyes hooded into that strange, listening posture that Leroux remembered, and something of the hunter's smile touched his lips again. It was a look Leroux knew of old, and it betokened no good for the subject that inspired it.
"You may drop M. Enjolras a line and tell him I would be pleased to meet with him."