CHAPTER 83
After Constant had fled, the glade quickly cleared.
With Pascal’s help, Marieta led the barely conscious Isolde to Denarnaud’s carriage to take back to the house. Although the wound on her arm was not serious, she had lost a lot of blood. Léonie spoke to her, but Isolde made no answer. She allowed herself to be led, but she seemed to know no one, recognise nothing. She was yet in the world, but removed from it.
Léonie was cold and shivering, her hair and clothes infused with the stench of blood and gunshot and damp earth, but she refused to leave Anatole’s side. The gardener’s boy and ostlers from the stables constructed a makeshift bier with their coats and the wooden handles of the weapons with which they had driven off Constant and his men. They carried Anatole’s prostrate body on their shoulders back across the grounds, torches burning fiercely in the cold black air. Léonie followed behind, a solitary mourner at an unannounced funeral.
Behind them was fetched Dr Gabignaud. The dogcart would be sent to bring the bodies of the old soldier and the traitor Denarnaud.
News of the tragedy that had overtaken the Domaine de la Cade had spread by the time Léonie regained the house. Pascal had dispatched a messenger to Rennes-le-Château to inform Bérenger Saunière of the catastrophe and to request his presence. Marieta had sent to Rennes-les-Bains for the services of the local woman who sat with the dying and laid out the dead.
Madame Saint-Loup arrived with a small boy, carrying a large cotton bag, twice his size. When Léonie, remembering herself, tried to agree rates with the woman, she was informed that costs had been met already by her neighbour, Monsieur Baillard. His kindness, so generously given, brought tears to Léonie’s numbed eyes.
The bodies were placed in the dining room. Léonie watched in mute disbelief as Madame Saint-Loup filled a china bowl with water from a glass bottle she had brought with her.
‘Holy water, Madomaisèla,’ she muttered in response to Léonie’s unasked question. Into it she dipped a sprig of boxwood, then lit two scented candles, one for each, and began to recite her prayers for the dead. The boy bowed his head.
‘Peyre Sant, Holy Father, take this thy servant …’
As the words washed over her, a mixture of old and new traditions, Léonie felt nothing. There was no moment of grace descending, no sense of peace in Anatole’s passing, no light entering the soul and drawing together in a common circle. There was no consolation, no poetry to be found in the old woman’s offerings, only a vast and echoing loss.
Madame Saint-Loup stopped. Then, gesturing to the boy to pass a pair of large-bladed scissors from her bag, she began to cut away Anatole’s blood-sodden clothes. The cloth was matted and filthy with the forest and his jagged wounds, and the process was painstaking and difficult.
‘Madomaisèla?’
She handed Léonie two envelopes from Anatole’s pockets. The silver paper and black crest of the letter from Constant. The second, with a Parisian postmark, was unopened. Both were edged in rust-red, as if a border had been painted across the thick weave of the paper.
Léonie opened the second letter. It was formal and official notification from the gendarmerie of the 8th arrondissement informing Anatole of their mother’s murder, on the night of Sunday 20th September. No criminal had yet been apprehended for the crime. The letter was signed by an Inspector Thouron and had been forwarded via a number of addresses before finally finding Anatole in Rennes-les-Bains.
The letter requested him to make contact at the earliest convenience.
Léonie screwed the page in her chilled fist. She had not doubted for a moment Constant’s cruel words, thrown at her in the glade but an hour previously, but only now, with the black and white official words, did she accept the truth of the matter. Her mother was dead. And had been for more than a month.
This fact – that her mother had been unmourned and unclaimed – twisted at Léonie’s bereaved heart. With Anatole gone, such matters would fall to her. Who else was there?
Madame Saint-Loup began to clean the body, wiping Anatole’s face and hands with such tenderness that it pained Léonie to witness it. Finally she pulled out several linen sheets, each yellowing and criss-crossed with black looped stitching, as if they had done service many times before.
Léonie could no longer bear to watch.
‘Send word when Abbé Saunière comes,’ she said, quitting the room and leaving the woman to the grim process of sewing Anatole’s body into his shroud.
Slowly, as if her legs were weighted down by lead, Léonie climbed the stairs and made for Isolde’s chamber. Marieta was at her mistress’ side. A doctor Léonie did not recognise, in a high black top hat and a modest tipped collar, had arrived from the village, accompanied by a matronly nurse in a white starched apron. Resident staff from the thermal spa, they too had been engaged by Monsieur Baillard.
As Léonie entered the room, the doctor was administering a sedative. The nurse had rolled up Isolde’s sleeve and he pushed the needle of the thick silver syringe into her thin arm.
‘How is she?’ Léonie whispered to Marieta.
The maid gave a small shake of her head. ‘She struggles to stay with us, Madomaisèla.’
Léonie stepped closer to the bed. Even to her untrained eyes, it was clear how Isolde hovered between life and death. She was gripped by a fierce, consuming fever. Léonie sat down and took her hand. The sheets beneath Isolde became sodden and were changed. The nurse laid strips of cold linen cloth across her blazing forehead that cooled her skin for no more than a moment.
When the doctor’s medicine took effect, heat turned to cold and Isolde’s frame shook beneath the covers, as one afflicted with St Vitus’ dance.
Léonie’s feverish flashbacks to the violence she had witnessed were kept at bay by her fears for Isolde’s health. So, too, the weight of loss threatening to overwhelm her if she thought too hard. Her mother, dead. Anatole, dead. Isolde’s life and that of her unborn child hanging in the balance.
The moon rose in the sky. The Eve of All Saints.
Shortly after the clock had struck eleven, there was a knock at the door and Pascal appeared.
‘Madomaisèla Léonie,’ he said in hushed tones. ‘There are . . . men here to see you.’
‘The priest? Abbé Saunière is here?’ she queried.
He shook his head. ‘Monsieur Baillard,’ he said. ‘And, also, the police.’
Taking her leave of the doctor, and promising Marieta she would return as soon as she could, Léonie quit the chamber and quickly followed Pascal along the passageway.
At the top of the staircase, she halted and looked down at the collection of black top hats and greatcoats in the hall. Two wore the uniform of the Parisian gendarme, a third a shabby provincial version of it. In the forest of dark and sombre clothes, a pale suit on a lean figure.
‘Monsieur Baillard,’ she cried, running down the stairs and taking his hands in hers. ‘I am so glad you are here.’ She looked at him. ‘Anatole …’
Her voice broke. She was unable to pronounce the words.
Baillard nodded. ‘I have come to pay my respects,’ he said formally, then lowered his voice so that his companions could not overhear. ‘And Madama Vernier? How goes it with her?’
‘Badly. If anything, the state of her mind is of more concern to the doctor at present than the consequences of her wound. Although it is important to ensure her blood does not become infected, the bullet only nicked the inside of her arm.’ Léonie stopped abruptly, only now realising what Monsieur Baillard had said. ‘You knew they were married?’ she whispered. ‘But I did not … How—’
Baillard put his finger to his lips. ‘This is not a conversation to be had now and in such company.’ He threw her a smile, then raised his voice. ‘By happenstance, Madomaisèla Léonie, these gentlemen and I found ourselves travelling the drive to the Domaine de la Cade. A coincidence of timing. ’
The younger of the two officers removed his hat and stepped forward. He had black smudged rings under his eyes, as if he had not slept for days.
‘Inspector Thouron,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘From Paris, the commissariat of the eighth arrondissement. My condolences, Mademoiselle Vernier. And I regret I am also the bearer of bad news. Worse still, it is old news. For some weeks, I have been seeking your brother to inform him – indeed, you yourself also – that—’
Léonie withdrew the letter from her pocket. ‘Do not distress yourself, Monsieur l’Inspecteur,’ she said dully. ‘I know of my mother’s death. This arrived yesterday, albeit by a most circuitous route. Also, this evening, Vic—’
She broke off, not wishing to speak his name.
Thouron’s eyes narrowed. ‘You and your late brother have been most difficult to locate,’ he said.
Léonie was aware of a quickness and intelligence behind the dishevelled appearance and exhausted features.
‘And in the light of the . . . tragedy of this evening, it leads me to wonder if perhaps the events of Paris a month ago and what happened here tonight are in some way connected? ’
Léonie darted a glance at Monsieur Baillard, then at the older man standing beside Inspector Thouron. His hair was flecked with grey and he had the strong, dark features characteristic of the Midi.
‘You have not introduced me, as yet, Inspector Thouron, to your colleague,’ she said, hoping to delay a little longer the formal interview.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘This is Inspector Bouchou of the Carcassonne gendarmerie. Bouchou has been assisting me in locating you.’
Léonie looked from one to the other. ‘I do not understand, Inspector Thouron. You sent a letter from Paris, yet have come in person also? And you are here tonight. How is this?’
The two men exchanged a look.
‘May I suggest, gentlemen,’ Audric Baillard said quietly, but in a tone of authority that invited no disagreement, ‘that we continue this conversation in some more private setting?’
Léonie felt the touch of Baillard’s fingers on her arm and realised a decision was required of her.
‘There is a fire in the drawing room,’ she said.
The small group crossed the chequerboard hall and Léonie pushed open the door.
The memory of Anatole held within the drawing room was so strong that she faltered. In her mind’s eye, she saw him standing before the fire, his coat tails held up to let the heat of the flames warm his back, his hair glistening. Or by the window, a cigarette wedged deep between his fingers, talking to Dr Gabignaud the night of the supper party. Or leaning over the green baize card table, watching while she and Isolde played vingt-et-un. He seemed to have written himself into the fabric of the room, although Léonie had never known it until this second.
It was left to Monsieur Baillard to invite the officers to take a seat and to steer her to a corner of the chaise longue, where she sat, as if half asleep. He remained standing behind her.
Thouron explained the sequence of events, as they had pieced them together, of the night of her mother’s murder on 20th September, the discovery of the body, and the small steps the investigation had taken to lead them to Carcassonne, and from there to Rennes-les-Bains.
Léonie heard the words as if they were coming from a long way away. They did not penetrate her mind. Even though it was her mother of whom Thouron spoke – and she had loved her mother – the loss of Anatole had set a wall of stone around her heart that allowed no other emotion to enter. There would be time enough to grieve for Marguerite. For the gentle and honourable doctor too. But for now, nothing but Anatole – and the promise she had made to her brother to protect his wife and child – had any purchase in her mind.
‘So,’ Thouron was concluding, ‘the concierge admitted he had been paid to pass on any correspondence. The maid in the Debussy household confirmed that she too had seen the man loitering around the rue de Berlin in the days leading up to and after the . . . the incident.’ Thouron paused. ‘Indeed, had it not been for the letter your late brother wrote to your mother, I cannot see how we would have found you yet.’
‘Have you identified the man, Thouron?’ enquired Baillard.
‘By sight only. An unfortunate looking individual. A raw and angry complexion, with little or no hair on a blistered scalp.’
Léonie started. Three pairs of eyes looked to her.
‘Do you know him, Mademoiselle Vernier?’ Thouron asked.
An image of him holding the muzzle of his gun to Dr Gabignaud’s temple and pulling the trigger. The explosion of bone and blood staining the forest floor.
She took a deep breath. ‘He is Victor Constant’s man,’ she said.
Thouron exchanged another look with Bouchou. ‘The Comte de Tourmaline?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It is the same man, Constant, Tourmaline. He goes under either name depending on the circumstances or the company he is keeping.’
‘He gave me his card,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘Victor Constant.’
She felt the reassuring pressure of Audric Baillard’s hand upon her shoulder. ‘Is the Count of Tourmaline a suspect in this matter, Inspector Thouron?’ he enquired.
The officer hesitated, then, clearly deciding that there was no benefit to concealment, he nodded. ‘And he too, we discovered, had travelled from Paris to the Midi, some days after the late Monsieur Vernier.’
Léonie did not hear. All she could think about was the way her heart had leapt when Victor Constant took her hand. How she had kept his card safe, deceiving Anatole. How, in her imagination, she had allowed him into her company by day and into her dreams at night.
She had led him to them. Because of her, Anatole lay dead.
‘Léonie,’ Baillard asked softly. ‘Was Constant the man from whom Madama Vernier fled? With whom Sénher Anatole duelled this evening?’
Léonie forced herself to reply. ‘It was he,’ she said in a dead voice.
Baillard walked across the room to the small round drinks table and poured Léonie a glass of brandy, then came back.
‘From your expressions, gentlemen,’ he said, pressing the glass into her cold fingers, ‘I think this man is known to you.’
‘He is,’ Thouron confirmed. ‘Several times his name came up in the enquiry, but never with evidence enough to associate him with the crime. He appears to have nursed a vendetta against Monsieur Vernier, a clever and sly campaign, until these last weeks, when he has become less careful.’
‘Or more arrogant,’ put in Bouchou. ‘There was an incident at a . . . house of recreation in the quartier Barbès in Carcassonne, which left a girl badly disfigured.’
‘We believe his increasingly erratic behaviour is, in part, due to the aggressive acceleration of his . . . illness. It has begun to affect his brain.’ Thouron broke off and mouthed the word so that Léonie would not hear. ‘Syphilis.’
Baillard came round from behind the settee and sat down beside Léonie.
‘Tell Inspector Thouron what you know,’ he said, taking her hand.
Léonie raised the glass to her lips and took another drink. The alcohol burned her throat, but it killed the sour taste in her mouth.
What need for concealment now?
She began to talk, holding nothing back, detailing everything that had happened – from the burial in Montmartre and the attack in the Passage des Panoramas, to the moment she and her beloved Anatole disembarked the courrier publique in the Place du Pérou and the bloody events of this evening in the woods of the Domaine de la Cade.
March, September, October.
Upstairs, Isolde was still held captive by the brain fever that had overtaken her on the instant she saw Anatole fall.
Images, thoughts glided in and out of her mind. Her eyes flickered half-open. For a fleeting, joyful moment, she thought herself lying in Anatole’s arms with the flickering light of the candle reflected in his brown eyes, but the vision faded. The skin began to slip from his face, revealing the skull beneath, leaving only a death’s head of bone and teeth and black holes where his eyes had been.
And always the whisperings, the voices, Constant’s malicious silver tones insinuating themselves into her overheated brain. She felt herself tossing and turning upon the pillow, trying to rid the echo from her head, but succeeding only in making the cacophony louder. Which the voice, which the echo?
She dreamed she saw their son, crying for the father he had never known, separated from Anatole as if behind a sheet of glass. She cried out to them both, but no sounds came from her lips and they did not hear her. When she reached out, the glass shattered in a myriad sharp pieces and she was left touching skin as cold and unyielding as marble. Statues only.
Memories, dreams, premonitions. A mind shaken loose from its moorings.
As the clock ticked down the minutes to midnight, the witching hour, the wind began to whistle and howl and rattle the wooden frames of the windows of the house.
A restless night. Not a night to be abroad.
