CHAPTER 82
A howl split the air. Léonie heard it, but was at first unaware that the cry had issued from her own lips.
For a moment, she stood rooted to the spot, unable to accept the evidence of her own eyes. She fancied she looked at a stage set, the glade and each person captured in time with brush and paint or the shutter of a lens. Lifeless, motionless, a postcard image of their real, flesh-and-blood selves.
Then, with a kick, the world rushed back. Léonie cast her gaze into the darkness, the truth imprinting its bloody handprint upon her mind.
Isolde, lying upon the damp earth, her grey dress stained red.
Anatole, struggling to raise himself on one arm, his face creased with pain, before collapsing back to the ground. Gabignaud crouched at his side.
Most shocking, the face of their murderer. The man who Isolde so feared and Anatole so detested, revealed in plain sight.
Léonie turned cold, her courage ripped from her.
‘No,’ she whispered.
Guilt, sharp as glass, pierced her defences. Humiliation, then anger, following on its heels, swept through her like a river bursting its banks. Here, but a couple of steps away from her, was the man who had taken up residence in her private thoughts, about whom she had dreamed since Carcassonne. Victor Constant.
Anatole’s assassin. Isolde’s persecutor.
Was it she who had led him here?
Léonie raised her lamp higher until she could clearly see the crest on the side of the carriage standing some way off to the side, although she did not need confirmation that it was he.
Rage, sudden and violent and all-encompassing, swooped down over her. Insensible of her own safety, she charged out of the shadows of the trees and into the glade, running forward towards the knot of men standing around Anatole and Gabignaud.
The doctor seemed paralysed. Shock at what had transpired had stolen from him the ability to act. He lurched up, nearly losing his footing on the hardening ground, looking wildly to Victor Constant and his men, then in bewilderment at Charles Denarnaud, who had checked the guns and pronounced that the conditions for the duel had been met.
Léonie reached Isolde first. She threw herself down on the ground beside her and lifted her cloak. The pale grey material on the left side of her dress was soaked crimson, like an obscene hothouse bloom. Léonie pulled off her glove and, pushing Isolde’s cuff higher up her arm, felt for a pulse. It was faint, but there. Some slight measure of life remained. Quickly she ran her hands over Isolde’s prostrate body and realised the bullet had hit her arm. Provided she did not lose too much blood, she would survive.
‘Dr Gabignaud, vite,’ she cried. ‘Aidez-la. Pascal!’
Her thoughts leapt to Anatole. The slightest frosting of white breath around his mouth and nose in the twilight gave her hope that he too was not mortally wounded.
She stood up and took a step towards her brother.
‘I will thank you to stay where you are, Mademoiselle Vernier. You too, Gabignaud.’
Constant’s voice stopped her in her tracks. Only now did Léonie register that he was still holding his weapon raised, finger upon the trigger, ready to squeeze, and that it was not a duelling pistol. In fact, she recognised Le Protector, a gun designed to be carried in the pocket or a purse. Her mother possessed just such a weapon.
He had more shots.
Léonie was disgusted at herself, for the pretty endearments she had imagined him whispering in her ear. For how she had encouraged – with no modesty or care of her reputation – his attentions.
And I led him to them.
She forced herself to hold her nerve. She raised her chin and looked him straight in the eye.
‘Monsieur Constant,’ she said, his name like poison on her tongue.
‘Mademoiselle Vernier,’ he replied, still holding the gun on Gabignaud and Pascal. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. I had not thought Vernier would expose you to such ugliness.’
Her eyes darted to where Anatole lay on the ground, then back to Constant.
‘I am here of my own accord,’ she said.
Constant jerked his head. His manservant stepped forward, followed by the filthy soldier whom Léonie recognised as the same creature who had followed her with his impertinent eyes as she walked into the medieval Cité of Carcassonne. With despair, she realised how complete had been Constant’s planning.
The two men seized Gabignaud and pulled his arms back behind his back, throwing his lamp to the ground. Léonie heard the glass smash as the flame was extinguished with a hiss in the damp leaves. Then, before she realised what was happening, the taller of the men drew a gun from beneath his coat, put it to Gabignaud’s temple and pulled the trigger.
The force of the shot lifted Gabignaud from the ground.
The back of his head exploded, showering his executioner with blood and bone. His body twitched, jerked, then lay still.
How little time it takes to kill a man, to sever soul from body.
The thought swooped in, then out of her mind. Léonie clamped her hands to her mouth, feeling the nausea rising in her throat, then doubled over and vomited on the damp ground.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pascal taking a small step backwards, then another. She could not believe he was preparing to flee – she had never had doubt to question his loyalty and his steadfastness before – but what else could he be doing?
Then he caught her eye and glanced down to signal his intention.
Léonie straightened up and turned to Charles Denarnaud. ‘Monsieur,’ she said loudly, creating a diversion, ‘I am surprised to find you an ally of this man. You will be condemned when news of your duplicity is reported.’
He gave a complacent grimace. ‘From whose mouth, Mademoiselle Vernier? There is none but us here.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ commanded Constant.
‘Do you care nothing for your sister,’ Léonie challenged, ‘your family, that you would disgrace them in such a manner? ’
Denarnaud patted his pocket. ‘Money speaks louder and longer.’
‘Denarnaud, ça suffit!’
Léonie glanced at Constant, noticing for the first time how his head seemed to tremble in permanent motion, as if he had difficulty controlling his movements.
But then she saw Anatole’s foot twitch on the ground.
Was he alive? Could he be? Relief bubbled up, replaced immediately by dread. If he was yet alive, he would remain so only as long as Constant thought him dead.
Night had fallen. Though the doctor’s lamp was broken, the remaining lanterns cast uneven pools of yellow light on the ground.
Léonie forced herself to take a step towards the man she had thought she might love.
‘Is it worth it, Monsieur? Damning yourself? And for what root cause? Jealousy? Revenge? For it is certainly not for honour.’ She took another pace, a little to the side this time, hoping to shield Pascal. ‘Let me tend to my brother. To Isolde.’
She was now close enough to see the look of contempt on Constant’s face. She could not believe she had ever thought his features distinguished, noble. He seemed so evidently vile, his mouth cruel and his pupils no more than pinpricks in his bitter eyes. He repelled her.
‘You are hardly in a position to issue orders, Mademoiselle Vernier.’ He turned his head to where Isolde lay folded within her cloak. ‘And the whore. A single shot was too good for her. I would wish that she had suffered as she has made me suffer.’
Léonie met his blue eyes without flinching. ‘She is beyond your reach now,’ she said, the lie coming without hesitation to her lips.
‘You will forgive me, Mademoiselle Vernier, if I do not take your word for that. Besides, there is not a single tear on your cheek.’ He glanced at Gabignaud’s body. ‘You have strong nerves, but I do not believe you are so hard-hearted.’
He hesitated, as if preparing to deliver the coup de grâce. Léonie felt her body tense, waiting for the shot she thought must surely now find her. She realised Pascal was almost ready to act. It took great effort of will not to look in his direction.
‘In point of fact,’ Constant said, ‘in character you remind me much of your mother.’
Everything stilled, as if the world was holding its breath. White clouds, cold on the evening air, the shivering of the wind in the bare branches of the trees, the rustling of the juniper bushes. At last Léonie found her tongue.
‘What do you mean?’ she said. Each word seemed to drop like lead into the cold air.
She could sense his satisfaction. It rose from him like the stench from a tannery, acrid, pungent.
‘You still do not know what has befallen your mother?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It has been quite the talk of Paris,’ Constant said. ‘I am told, one of the worst murders the pedestrian minds of the gendarmes of the eighth arrondissement have been obliged to deal with for some time.’
Léonie stepped back as if he had struck her. ‘She is dead?’
Her teeth started to chatter. She could hear the truth of what Constant claimed in the quality of his silence, but her mind could not let her accept it. If she did, she would falter and fall. And all the time, Isolde and Anatole both were growing weaker.
‘I do not believe you,’ she managed to articulate.
‘Ah, but you do, Mademoiselle Vernier. I can see it in your face.’ He let his arm drop, taking the gun off Léonie for an instant. She took a step backwards. Behind her, she felt Denarnaud shifting, moving closer, blocking her path. In front of her, Constant stepped towards her, quickly covering the distance between them. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw Pascal crouch, snatch up the spare pistols from the box they had brought from the house.
‘Attention!’ he shouted to her.
Léonie reacted without hesitation, throwing herself down to the ground, as a shot whistled over her head.
Denarnaud fell, struck in the back.
Constant retaliated instantly, firing into the darkness but going wide of his target. Léonie could hear Pascal in the undergrowth and realised he was moving round behind Constant.
On Constant’s command, the old soldier was advancing on where Léonie lay on the ground. The other man was running towards the edge of the glade, looking for Pascal, firing at random.
‘Il est ici!’ he shouted to his master.
Constant fired again. Again the shot went wide.
Suddenly, the vibration of running feet echoed through the ground. Léonie raised her head in the direction of the noise and heard shouting.
‘Arèst!’
She recognised Marieta’s voice, calling through the darkness, and others too. She narrowed her eyes and now could make out the glow of several lanterns getting closer, larger, jolting in the darkness. Then the gardener’s boy, Emile, burst into sight on the far side of the clearing, holding a flaming torch in one hand and a stick in the other.
Léonie saw Constant take in the situation. He fired, but the boy was quicker, and stepped back behind the shelter of a beech tree. Constant raised his arm, dead straight, and fired again into the darkness. Léonie saw that his face was twisted in madness as he turned the gun and sent two bullets slamming into Anatole’s torso.
Léonie screamed. ‘No!’ she cried, crawling desperately on her hands and knees over the muddy ground to where her brother lay. ‘No!’
The servants, some eight of them including Marieta, rushed forward.
Constant delayed no longer. Tossing his coat behind him, he strode out of the glade and into the shadows, heading to where his fiacre still stood in readiness to depart.
‘No witnesses,’ he said.
Without a word, his manservant turned and fired a bullet into the old soldier’s head. For a moment, the dying man’s face was fixed in an expression of bewilderment. Then he dropped to his knees, and fell forward.
Pascal stepped out of the shadows and fired the second pistol. Léonie saw Constant stumble, his legs nearly buckling under him, but he kept walking, limping, away from the glade. Through the mayhem and chaos, she heard the slamming of the carriage doors, the rattling of the harness and the chink of the lamps as the conveyance vanished uphill into the woods, in the direction of the rear gate.
Marieta was already tending to Isolde. Léonie felt Pascal run and crouch beside her. A sob slipped from her lips. She struggled to her feet and stumbled across the last few yards to her brother.
‘Anatole?’ she whispered. Her arm tightened around his broad shoulders, shaking him, trying to wake him. ‘Anatole, please.’
The stillness seemed to deepen.
Léonie grasped the thick material of Anatole’s greatcoat and rolled him over. She caught her breath. So much blood, pooled on the ground where he had been lying, the holes in his body where the bullets had penetrated. She cradled his head in her arms and brushed his hair back from his face. His brown eyes were wide open, but the life was extinguished.
