The next day but one after the crime, on the Friday, Louise the cook,
who was still terribly upset by the dreadful death of the good mistress
in whose service she had been for fifteen years, came down to her
kitchen early. It was scarcely daybreak, and the good woman was obliged
to light a lamp to see by. With her mind anywhere but on her work, she
was mechanically getting breakfast for the servants and for the visitors
to the château, when a sharp knock on the back door made her jump. She
went to open it, and uttered a little scream as she saw the cocked hats
of gendarmes silhouetted against the wan light of the early morning.
Between the gendarmes were two miserable-looking specimens of humanity.
Louise had only opened the door a few inches when the sergeant, who had
known her for many years, took a step forward and gave her a military
salute.
"I must ask your hospitality for us and for these two fellows whom we
have taken up to-night, prowling about the neighbourhood," he said.
The dismayed Louise broke in.
"Good heavens, sergeant, are you bringing thieves here? Where do you
expect me to put them? Surely there's enough trouble in the house as it
is!"
The gendarme, Morand, smiled with the disillusioned air of a man who
knows very well what trouble is, and the sergeant replied:
"Put them? Why, in your kitchen, of course," and as the servant made a
sign of refusal, he added: "I am sorry, but you must; besides, there's
nothing for you to be afraid of; the men are handcuffed, and we shall
not leave them. We are going to wait here for the magistrate who will
examine them."
The gendarmes had pushed their wretched captives in before them, two
tramps of the shadiest appearance.
Louise, who had gone mechanically to raise the lid of a kettle beginning
to boil over, looked round at his last words.
"The magistrate?" she said: "M. de Presles? Why, he is here now--in the
library."
"No?" exclaimed the sergeant, jumping up from the kitchen chair on which
he had seated himself.
"He is, I tell you," the old woman insisted; "and the little man who
generally goes about with him is here too."
"You mean M. Gigou, his clerk?"
"Very likely," muttered Louise.
"I leave the prisoners with you, Morand," said the sergeant curtly;
"don't let them out of your sight. I am going to the magistrate. I have
no doubt he will wish to interrogate these fellows at once."
The gendarme came to attention and saluted.
"Trust me, sergeant!"
It looked as if Morand's job was going to be an easy one; the two
tramps, huddled up in a corner of the kitchen opposite the stove, showed
no disposition to make their escape. The two were utterly different in
appearance. One was a tall, strongly built man, with thick hair crowned
by a little jockey cap, and was enveloped in a kind of overcoat which
might have been black once but which was now of a greenish hue, the
result of the inclemency of the weather; he gnawed his heavy moustache
in silence and turned sombre, uneasy looks on all, including his
companion in misfortune. He wore hobnailed shoes and carried a stout
cudgel. He was more like a piece of the human wreckage one sees in the
street corners of great cities than a genuine tramp. Instead of a
collar, there was a variegated handkerchief round his neck. His name, he
had told the sergeant, was François Paul.
The other man, who had been discovered at the back of a farm just as he
was about to crawl inside a stack, was a typical country tramp. An old
soft felt hat was crammed down on his head, and a shock of rebellious
red and grey hair curled up all round it, while a hairy beard entirely
concealed all the features of his face. All that could be seen of it was
a pair of sparkling eyes incessantly moving in every possible direction.
This second man contemplated with interest the place into which the
police had conducted him. On his back he bore a heavy sort of wallet in
which he stowed articles of the most varied description. Whereas his
companion maintained a rigid silence, this man never stopped talking.
Nudging his neighbour every now and then he whispered:
"Say, where do you come from? You're not from these parts, are you? I've
never seen you before have I? Everybody round here knows me:
Bouzille--my name's Bouzille," and turning to the gendarme he said:
"Isn't it true, M'sieu Morand, that you and I are old acquaintances?
This is the fourth or fifth time you've pinched me, isn't it?"
Bouzille's companion vouchsafed him a glance.
"So it's a habit of yours, is it?" he said in the same low tone; "you
often get nabbed?"
"As to 'often,'" the garrulous fellow replied, "that depends on what you
mean by the word. In winter time it's not bad business to go back to
clink, because of the rotten weather; in the summer one would rather go
easy, and then, too, in the summer there isn't so much crime; you can
find all you want on the road; country people aren't so particular in
the summer, while in the winter it's quite another thing; so they have
done me down to-night for mother Chiquard's rabbit, I expect."
The gendarme, who had been listening with no great attention, chimed in.
"So it was you who stole the rabbit, was it, Bouzille?"
"What's the good of your asking me that, M'sieu Morand?" protested
Bouzille. "I suppose you would have left me alone if you hadn't been
sure of it?"
Bouzille's companion bent his head and whispered very low:
"There has been something worse than that: the job with the lady of this
house."
"Oh, that!" said Bouzille with a gesture of complete indifference. But
he did not proceed. The sergeant came back to the kitchen and said
sternly:
"François Paul, forward: the examining magistrate will hear you now."
The man summoned stepped towards the sergeant, and quietly submitted to
being taken by the arm, for his hands were fastened. Bouzille winked
knowingly at the gendarme, now his sole remaining confidant, and
remarked with satisfaction:
"Good luck! We are getting on to-day! Not too much 'remanded' about it,"
and as the gendarme, severely keeping his proper distance, made no
reply, the incorrigible chatterbox went on merrily: "As a matter of fact
it suits me just as well to be committed for trial, since the government
give you your board and lodging, and especially since there's a really
beautiful prison at Brives now." He leaned familiarly against the
gendarme's shoulder. "Ah, M'sieu Morand, you didn't know it--you weren't
old enough--why, it was before you joined the force--but the lock-up
used to be in an old building just behind the Law Courts: dirty! I
should think it was dirty! And damp! Why once, when I did three months
there, from January to April, I came out so ill with the rheumatics that
I had to go back into the infirmary for another fortnight! Gad!" he went
on after a moment's pause during which he snuffed the air around him,
"something smells jolly good here!" He unceremoniously addressed the
cook who was busy at her work: "Mightn't there perhaps be a bit of a
blow out for me, Mme. Louise?" and as she turned round with a somewhat
scandalised expression he continued: "you needn't be frightened, lady,
you know me very well. Many a time I've come and asked you for any old
thing, and you've always given me something. M'sieu Dollon, too:
whenever he has an old pair of shoes that are worn out, well, those are
mine; and a crust of bread is what nobody ever refuses."
The cook hesitated, touched by the recollections evoked by the poor
tramp; she looked at the gendarme for a sign of encouragement. Morand
shrugged his shoulders and turned a patronising gaze on Bouzille.
"Give him something, if you like, Mme. Louise. After all, he is well
known. And for my own part I don't believe he could have done it."
The tramp interrupted him.
"Ah, M'sieu Morand, if it's a matter of picking up trifles here and
there, a wandering rabbit, perhaps, or a fowl that's tired of being
lonely, I don't say no; but as for anything else--thank'ee kindly,
lady."
Louise had handed Bouzille a huge chunk of bread which he immediately
interned in the depths of his enormous bag.
"What do you suppose that other chap can have to tell Mr. Paul Pry? He
did not look like a regular! Now when I get before the gentlemen in
black, I don't want to contradict them, and so I always say, 'Yes, my
lord,' and they are perfectly satisfied; sometimes they laugh and the
president of the court says, 'Stand up, Bouzille,' and then he gives me
a fortnight, or twenty-one days, or a month, as the case may be."
* * * * *
The sergeant came back, alone, and addressed the gendarme.
"The other man has been discharged," he said. "As for Bouzille, M. de
Presles does not think there is any need to interrogate him."
"Am I to be punted out then?" enquired the tramp with some dismay, as he
looked uneasily towards the window, against the glass of which rain was
lashing.
The sergeant could not restrain a smile.
"Well, no, Bouzille," he said kindly, "we must take you to the lock-up;
there's the little matter of the rabbit to be cleared up, you know. Come
now, quick march! Take him to Saint-Jaury, Morand!"
The sergeant went back to the library to hold himself at the
magistrate's disposal; through the torrential downpour of rain Bouzille
and the gendarme wended their way to the village; and left alone in her
kitchen, Louise put out her lamp, for despite the shocking weather it
was getting lighter now, and communed with herself.
"I've a kind of idea that they would have done better to keep that other
man. He was a villainous-looking fellow!"
The sad, depressing day had passed without any notable incident.
Charles Rambert and his father had spent the afternoon with Thérèse and
the Baronne de Vibray continuously addressing large black-edged
envelopes to the relations and friends of the Marquise de Langrune,
whose funeral had been fixed for the next day but one.
A hasty dinner had been served at which the Baronne de Vibray was
present. Her grief was distressing to witness. Somewhat futile to
outward seeming, this woman had a very kind and tender heart; as a
matter of course she had constituted herself the protector and comforter
of Thérèse, and she had spent the whole of the previous day with the
child at Brives, ransacking the local shops to procure her mourning.
Thérèse was terribly shocked by the dreadful death of her grandmother
whom she adored, but she displayed unexpected strength of character and
controlled her grief so that she might be able to look after the guests
whom she was now entertaining for the first time as mistress of the
house. The Baronne de Vibray had failed in her attempt to persuade
Thérèse to come with her to Querelles to sleep. Thérèse was determined
in her refusal to leave the château and what she termed her "post of
duty."
"Marie will stay with me," she assured the kind Baronne, "and I promise
you I shall have sufficient courage to go to sleep to-night."
So her friend got into her car alone at nine o'clock and went back to
her own house, and Thérèse went up at once to bed with Marie, the
faithful servant who, like Louise the cook, had been with her ever since
she was born.
* * * * *
After having read all the newspapers, with their minute and often
inaccurate account of the tragedy at Beaulieu--for everyone in the
château had been besieged the previous day by reporters and
representatives of various press agencies--M. Etienne Rambert said to
his son simply, but with a marked gravity:
"Let us go upstairs, my son: it is time."
At the door of his room Charles deferentially offered his cheek to his
father, but M. Etienne Rambert seemed to hesitate; then, as if taking a
sudden resolution, he entered his son's room instead of going on to his
own. Charles kept silence and refrained from asking any questions, for
he had noticed how lost in sad thought his father had seemed to be since
the day before.
Charles Rambert was very tired. He began to undress at once. He had
taken off his coat and waistcoat, and was turning towards a
looking-glass to undo his tie, when his father came up to him; with an
abrupt movement M. Etienne Rambert put both his hands on his son's
shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. Then in a stifled but
peremptory tone he said:
"Now confess, unhappy boy! Confess to your father!"
Charles went ghastly white.
"What?" he muttered.
Etienne Rambert kept his eyes fixed upon him.
"It was you who committed the murder!"
The ringing denial that the young man tried to utter was strangled in
his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to
find something to support him in his faintness; then he pulled himself
together.
"Committed the murder? I? You accuse me of having killed the Marquise?
It is infamous, hateful, awful!"
"Alas, yes!"
"No, no! Good God, no!"
"Yes!" Etienne Rambert insisted.
The two men faced each other, panting. Charles controlled the emotion
which was sweeping over him once more, and looking steadily at his
father, said in tones of bitter reproach:
"And it is actually my own father who says that--who suspects me!"
Tears filled the young fellow's eyes and sobs choked him; he grew whiter
still, and seemed so near collapse that his father had to support him to
a chair, where he remained for several minutes utterly prostrated.
M. Rambert paced up and down the room a few times, then took another
chair and sat down in front of his son. Passing a hand across his brow
as if to sweep away the horrible nightmare that was haunting him, he
spoke again.
"Come now, my boy, my poor boy, let us talk it over quietly. I do not
know how it was, but yesterday morning when I saw you at the station I
had a presentiment of something: you were haggard, and tired, and your
eyes were drawn----"
"I told you before," Charles answered tonelessly "that I had had a bad
night: I was over-excited and did not sleep: I was awake the whole
night."
"By Jove, yes!" his father rapped out: "I can believe that! But if you
were not asleep, how do you account for your not hearing anything?"
"Thérèse did not hear anything either," said Charles after a moment's
reflection.
"Thérèse's room was a long way off," M. Rambert replied, "while there
was only a thin wall between yours and that of the Marquise. You must
have heard: you did hear! More than that----, oh, my boy, my unhappy
boy!"
Charles was twisting and untwisting his hands, and great drops of cold
perspiration beaded his brow.
"You are the only single person who thinks I committed such an awful
crime!" he said, half questioningly.
"The only one?" Etienne Rambert muttered. "Perhaps! As yet! But you
ought to know that you made a very bad impression indeed upon the
friends of the Marquise during the evening before the crime, when
President Bonnet was reading the particulars of a murder that had been
committed in Paris by--somebody: I forget whom."
"Good heavens!" Charles exclaimed in indignation, "I did not say
anything wrong. Do you mean to say that just because I am interested in
stories of great criminals like Rocambole and Fantômas----"
"You created a deplorable impression," his father repeated.
"So they suspect me too, do they?" Charles enquired. "But you can't make
accusations like that," he said, warming up: "you've got to have facts,
and proofs." He looked at his father for the sympathy and encouragement
of affection. "Listen, papa, I know you will believe me when I swear
that I am innocent; but do you think other people----"
M. Etienne Rambert sat with his head between his hands, wrapped in
thought; there was a short silence before the unhappy father replied:
"Unfortunately there is evidence against you," he said at last; "and
damning evidence, too!" he added with a glance at his son that seemed to
pulverise him. "Terrible evidence! Consider, Charles: the magistrates
have decided, as a result of their investigations, that no one got into
the château on the fatal night; you were the only man who slept there;
and none but a man could possibly have committed such a horrible crime,
such a monstrous piece of butchery!"
"Someone might have got in from outside," the unhappy lad urged, as if
trying to escape from the network in which he was being entangled.
"No one did," Etienne Rambert insisted; "besides, how could you prove
it?"
Charles was silent. He stood in the middle of the room, with trembling
legs and haggard eyes, seemingly stupefied and incapable of coherent
thought, vacantly watching his father. With bent head and shoulders
bowed as though beneath a too-heavy load, Etienne Rambert moved towards
the dressing-room attached to the bedroom.
"Come here," he said in an almost inaudible voice; "follow me."
He went into the dressing-room, and picking up the towels that were
heaped anyhow on the lower rail of the washstand, he selected a very
crumpled one and held it out in front of his son.
"Look at that!" he said in a low, curt tone.
And on the towel, thus held in the light, Charles Rambert saw red stains
of blood. The lad started, and was about to burst into some
protestation, but Etienne Rambert imperiously checked him.
"Do you still deny it? Unhappy, wretched boy, there is the convincing,
irrefutable evidence of your guilt! These stains of blood proclaim it.
Something always is overlooked! How are you to explain the presence of
this blood-stained linen in your room? Can you still deny that it is
proof positive of your guilt?"
"But I do deny it, I do deny it! I don't understand! I know nothing
about it!" and once more Charles Rambert collapsed into the arm-chair;
the unhappy lad was nothing but a human wreck, with no strength to argue
or even utter a word.
His father's eyes rested on him, filled with infinite affection and
profoundest pity.
"My poor, poor boy!" the unhappy Etienne Rambert murmured, and added, as
if speaking only to himself: "I wonder if you are not entirely
responsible--if there are circumstances to plead for you!"
"Do you still accuse me, papa? Do you really believe I am the murderer?"
Etienne Rambert shook his head hopelessly.
"Oh, I wish, I wish," he exclaimed, "that for the honour of our name,
and for the sake of those who love us, I could prove you had congenital,
hereditary tendencies that made you not responsible! Why could not I
have watched over your upbringing? Why has fate decreed that I should
only see my son three times at most in eighteen years, and come home to
find him--a criminal? Oh, if science could but establish the fact that
the child of a tainted mother----"
"Tainted?" Charles exclaimed; "what do you mean?"
"Tainted with a terrible and mysterious disease," Etienne Rambert went
on: "a disease before which we are powerless and unarmed--insanity!"
"What?" cried Charles, growing momentarily more distressed and
bewildered; "what is that, papa? Are my wits going? My mother insane?"
And then he added hopelessly: "My God! You must be right! Often and
often I have been amazed by her strange, puzzling looks and behaviour!
But I--I have all my proper senses: I know what I am doing!"
"Was it, perhaps, some appalling hallucination," Etienne Rambert
suggested: "some moment of irresponsibility?"
But Charles saw what he meant and cut him short.
"No, no, papa! I am not mad! I am not mad! I am not mad!"
In his intense excitement the young fellow never thought of moderating
the tone of his voice, but shouted out what was in his mind, shouted it
into the silence of the night, heedless of all but this terrible
discussion he was having with the father whom he loved. Nor did Etienne
Rambert lower his voice: his son's impassioned protest wrung the retort
from him:
"Then, Charles, if you are right, your crime is beyond forgiveness!
Murderer! Murderer!"
The two men stopped short as a slight sound in the passage caught their
attention. A silence fell upon them that they could not break, and they
stood dumbfounded, nervous and overwrought.
The door of the room opened very slowly, and a white form appeared
against the darkness of the corridor outside.
Robed in a long night-dress, Thérèse stood there, with hair dishevelled,
bloodless lips, and eyes dilated with horror; the child was shaking from
head to foot; as if every movement hurt her, she painfully raised her
arm and pointed to Charles.
"Thérèse!" Etienne Rambert muttered: "Thérèse, you were outside?"
The child's lips moved: she seemed to be making a more than human
effort, and a whisper escaped her lips:
"Yes----"
But she could say no more: her eyes rolled, her whole frame tottered,
and then, without sign or cry, she fell rigid and unconscious to the
floor.