And the money was gone. Who could have known the money had been there at all? “When did you see the money last, Amelie?”

“At night, when I went into the stable to sleep,” she said.

“Could anyone else have heard it or seen where the money was?”

“No,” Amelie said. “No. Guillaume made sure all the grooms were asleep. They slept elsewhere, anyway, in a room at the back. All of them were asleep, and we were all alone.”

“No one could have come or gone?” Porthos asked.

Amelie thought. “No. No one. The part of the stable we sleep in is a division at the back. The hay is kept upstairs, and that’s where we sleep. On the bottom there’s only one horse, and that’s Martin’s own horse.”

“And could Martin have come in?”

“No, because when Guillaume showed me the money, the horse wasn’t there yet, and the horse still wasn’t there when we went to sleep.”

Porthos looked at Athos and Athos back at Porthos. Athos was frowning. “Was it very late?”

“Oh, yes. So late.”

“Does Martin often stay out very late?” Athos asked.

The girl nodded. “He’ll leave after he’s done serving in the tavern, and he’ll stay away for hours and hours and hours.” She frowned. “Madam says he goes to the whores, but then she calls me a whore, too, so I’m not sure what she means or if she knows where he goes.”

Madam. In Porthos’s head, an idea was forming, but he didn’t know how to prove it, even if it were true. He looked up, meeting Athos’s gaze and realizing that both of them were thinking the same thing.

Aramis and D’Artagnan, the cunning ones, looked blank for once. Perhaps, Porthos thought, it was that he and Athos were the two older ones here, and had had more time to observe the workings of unhappy marriages.

“Softly,” Athos said. “Softly, Porthos. I’ll go and get mine host out on some pretext.”

“But… how can we prove it?” Porthos said and it came out half as a complaint and half as a wail of protest.

“With luck,” Athos said. “With a lot of luck.”

A Husband’s Knowledge; A Wife’s Rage; A Daughter’s Duty

^“BUT… I don’t understand any of this,” the hosteler, Martin said, as he stood before them, in the afternoon sun, rubbing his head as if it hurt him. He looked from one to the other of them. “I’m sorry, but are you gentlemen amusing yourselves at my expense? It is a fantastical story.”

“And yet it is true,” Porthos said.

“But… Guillaume… dead?”

Porthos looked down at Amelie, who had given a sudden shout at first hearing of her brother’s death and who was now crying silently. He put his hand on her head, and his hand more than covered her small head. He petted her gently, as one would pet a disturbed animal. He looked back up at the hosteler, and nodded.

“And what’s all this of five hundred louis d’or? It can’t be. How could he gets his hands on that much money?”

“It was-” Porthos started to say.

“A legacy,” Aramis interrupted. He looked at Porthos. “A distant relative who had no need for them any longer had her jewels sold and left the money to Guillaume.”

“Oh. But then… Guillaume found his family?”

Porthos sighed. He transferred his hold from Amelie’s head to her shoulders, and rested his hand there. “I was Guillaume’s father,” he said.

“Oh,” Amelie said, looking up. “He said you were a musketeer and the most wonderful sword fighter in the whole world. And he said you could never support him in style, but he was sure you would recognize him, because he’d been to your native village and you… not all your… uh-” she came to a sudden stop and blushed dark.

“Not all my-?” Porthos prompted.

“I’m afraid you’ll be angry,” Amelie said.

“With Guillaume’s sister?” Porthos said. “Never.”

“Oh. Then. He said not all of your grandfather’s grandfather’s were noble, and that you would recognize him even though he was the son of… even though mother wasn’t noble.” She looked at Porthos, attentively. “Would you have?”

“Yes,” Porthos said. “Yes, I would have.” On impulse, he picked the little girl up. She was, he was sure, the hosteler’s daughter. At any rate, being years younger than Guillaume, she could never be his own. But she was all he had left of the love of his youth and of his son. The daughter of one, the sister of the other.

“I still don’t understand,” Martin said, looking from the little girl to Porthos, then back at the little girl. “You say someone poisoned Guillaume and took his money, but this I can’t understand. Because the stable boys wouldn’t have given Guillaume any food, save maybe if they put the poison in his drink when he went drinking with them, which I think he did once or twice.”

“Not that day or the night before that day,” Amelie said. “He didn’t go anywhere. He talked to me and that was all.”

“But then… who can have killed the child and stolen the money?” Martin asked, scratching at his head, his face the picture of astonishment. He looked at them, one at a time again. “Are you sure this is not a joke you’re playing on me?”

“Sangre Dieu,” Porthos said. “How can it be a joke when a child is dead? No. It is not a joke and none of us is laughing.”

“Perhaps…” Athos said. “Perhaps you can do me a very great favor?”

Martin blinked. “Anything, Monsieur Musketeer, but…”

“Is there a place your wife hides money? A place she thinks you don’t know about?”

Martin looked blank for a moment, but then a fleeting smile crossed his lips. “Oh yes,” he said. “Provided I remember not to take too much or too suddenly, she just thinks she forgot how much she had.”

Porthos had seen this sort of arrangement many times and now kicked himself for not having thought of it before Athos did. Of course the wife would have a place to hide money that she considered secure. All the wives of profligate husbands given to drinking and consorting with women of easy virtue did. And of course her husband would have found it out years ago. All the husbands did. As long as you were careful to only milk the cow a little, the game could go on for years.

“Have you taken any money out of there recently?” Porthos asked.

Martin shook his head slowly. “Oh, not in a month, at least,” he said. “I try, you see, not to hit it too often, or she would find out.” He sighed. “It’s not that she’s a bad woman, you know, but she is, of herself, so cheerless and so little in need of company that she doesn’t understand that I require every once in a while to go elsewhere and to be with people who laugh and drink.” He frowned. “But what can any of this have to do with the boy and his money?”

“I would like you to go to that place now, with all of us attending, all of us watching,” Athos said.

“But… why? It’s in the tavern, you know? If she sees me go there and sees that I know her place she’ll only change it.”

“That…” Athos shook his head. “It won’t matter. Trust me. It’s the only way for you to understand and the only way for us to know for sure what happened.”

At this, Martin’s eyes flew wide, and he stared at Athos. “Here, what are you saying? Are you saying that Josiane murdered the boy? For money? It’s monstrous. She’s been my wife for twenty years. She would never-”

Athos straightened his back, his face a mask of perfect gravity. “If we go to the hiding place and you find nothing, I will accept I was wrong and I will apologize for having slandered your wife.”

Martin’s face hovered between shock and anger, but anger won out. “Oh, you will, by God,” he said. “You will beg my pardon and Josiane’s too. I know she has a temper and that, for reasons I don’t understand, she doesn’t like poor Amelie, but just for that, it is no reason to think that she would murder Guillaume. And Guillaume, yet, whom she didn’t care about one way or another, save that he helped bring heavy things into the tavern and looked after the guest’s horses.”