They inspected the condition of the locks and bolts. Nothing had moved.
That day again, the contents of the letter made some amends for the
really extraordinary manner of its delivery. It completely dispelled
all the doubts that still enshrouded the double murder on the
Boulevard Suchet.
Again signed by the engineer, written throughout by himself, on the
eighth of February, with no visible address, it said:
"No, my dear friend, I will not allow myself to be killed like a sheep
led to the slaughter. I shall defend myself, I shall fight to the last
moment. Things have changed lately. I have proofs now, undeniable proofs.
I possess letters that have passed between them. And I know that they
still love each other as they did at the start, that they want to marry,
and that they will let nothing stand in their way. It is written,
understand what I say, it is written in Marie's own hand; 'Have patience,
my own Gaston. My courage increases day by day. So much the worse for him
who stands between us. He shall disappear.'
"My dear friend, if I succumb in the struggle you will find those letters
(and all the evidence which I have collected against the wretched
creature) in the safe hidden behind the small glass case: Then revenge
me. Au revoir. Perhaps good-bye."
Thus ran the third missive. Hippolyte Fauville from his grave named and
accused his guilty wife. From his grave he supplied the solution to the
riddle and explained the reason why the crimes had been committed: Marie
Fauville and Gaston Sauverand were lovers.
Certainly they knew of the existence of Cosmo Mornington's will, for they
had begun by doing away with Cosmo Mornington; and their eagerness to
come into the enormous fortune had hastened the catastrophe. But the
first idea of the murder rose from an older and deep-rooted passion:
Marie Fauville and Gaston Sauverand were lovers.
One problem remained to be solved: who was the unknown correspondent to
whom Hippolyte Fauville had bequeathed the task of avenging his murder,
and who, instead of simply handing over the letters to the police, was
exercising his ingenuity to deliver them by means of the most
Machiavellian contrivances? Was it to his interest also to remain in the
background?
To all these questions Marie Fauville replied in the most unexpected
manner, though it was one that fully accorded with her threats. A week
later, after a long cross-examination at which she was pressed for the
name of her husband's old friend and at which she maintained the most
stubborn silence, together with a sort of stupid inertia, she returned to
her cell in the evening and opened the veins of her wrist with a piece of
glass which she had managed to hide.
Don Luis heard the news from Mazeroux, who came to tell him of it
before eight o'clock the next morning, just as he was getting out of
bed. The sergeant had a travelling bag in his hand and was on his way
to catch a train.
Don Luis was greatly upset.
"Is she dead?" he exclaimed.
"No. It seems that she has had one more let-off. But what's the good?"
"How do you mean, what's the good?"
"She'll do it again, of course. She's set her mind upon it. And, one day
or another--"
"Did she volunteer no confession, this time either, before making the
attempt on her life?"
"No. She wrote a few words on a scrap of paper, saying that, on thinking
it over, she advised us to ask a certain M. Langernault about the
mysterious letters. He was the only friend that she had known her husband
to possess, or at any rate the only one whom he would have called, 'My
dear fellow,' or, 'My dear friend,' This M. Langernault could do no more
than prove her innocence and explain the terrible misunderstanding of
which she was the victim."
"But," said Don Luis, "if there is any one to prove her innocence, why
does she begin by opening her veins?"
"She doesn't care, she says. Her life is done for; and what she wants is
rest and death."
"Rest? Rest? There are other ways in which she can find it besides in
death. If the discovery of the truth is to spell her safety, perhaps the
truth is not impossible to discover."
"What are you saying, Chief? Have you guessed anything? Are you beginning
to understand?"
"Yes, very vaguely, but, all the same, the really unnatural accuracy of
those letters just seems to me a sign--"
He reflected for a moment and continued:
"Have they reëxamined the erased addresses of the three letters?"
"Yes; and they managed to make out the name of Langernault."
"Where does this Langernault live?"
"According to Mme. Fauville, at the village of Damigni, in the Orme."
"Have they deciphered the word Damigni on one of the letters?"
"No, but they have the name of the nearest town."
"What town is that?"
"Alençon."
"And is that where you're going?"
"Yes, the Prefect of Police told me to go straightaway. I shall take the
train at the Invalides."
"You mean you will come with me in my motor."
"Eh?"
"We will both of us go, my lad. I want to be doing something; the
atmosphere of this house is deadly for me."
"What are you talking about, Chief?"
"Nothing. I know."
Half an hour later they were flying along the Versailles Road. Perenna
himself was driving his open car and driving it in such a way that
Mazeroux, almost stifling, kept blurting out, at intervals:
"Lord, what a pace! Dash it all, how you're letting her go, Chief! Aren't
you afraid of a smash? Remember the other day--"
They reached Alençon in time for lunch. When they had done, they went to
the chief post-office. Nobody knew the name of Langernault there.
Besides, Damigni had its own post-office, though the presumption was that
M. Langernault had his letters addressed _poste restante_ at Alençon.
Don Luis and Mazeroux went on to the village of Damigni. Here again the
postmaster knew no one of the name of Langernault; and this in spite of
the fact that Damigni contained only about a thousand inhabitants.
"Let's go and call on the mayor," said Perenna.
At the mayor's Mazeroux stated who he was and mentioned the object of his
visit. The mayor nodded his head.
"Old Langernault? I should think so. A decent fellow: used to run a
business in the town."
"And accustomed, I suppose, to fetch his letters at Alençon post-office?"
"That's it, every day, for the sake of the walk."
"And his house?"
"Is at the end of the village. You passed it as you came along."
"Can we see it?"
"Well, of course ... only--"
"Perhaps he's not at home?"
"Certainly not! The poor, dear man hasn't even set foot in the house
since he left it the last time, four years ago!"
"How is that?"
"Why, he's been dead these four years!"
Don Luis and Mazeroux exchanged a glance of amazement.
"So he's dead?" said Don Luis.
"Yes, a gunshot."
"What's that!" cried Perenna. "Was he murdered?"
"No, no. They thought so at first, when they picked him up on the floor
of his room; but the inquest proved that it was an accident. He was
cleaning his gun, and it went off and sent a load of shot into his
stomach. All the same, we thought it very queer in the village. Daddy
Langernault, an old hunter before the Lord, was not the man to commit an
act of carelessness."
"Had he money?"
"Yes; and that's just what clinched the matter: they couldn't find a
penny of it!"
Don Luis remained thinking for some time and then asked:
"Did he leave any children, any relations of the same name?"
"Nobody, not even a cousin. The proof is that his property--it's called
the Old Castle, because of the ruins on it--has reverted to the State.
The authorities have had the doors of the house sealed up, and locked the
gate of the park. They are waiting for the legal period to expire in
order to take possession."
"And don't sightseers go walking in the park, in spite of the walls?"
"Not they. In the first place, the walls are very high. And then--and
then the Old Castle has had a bad reputation in the neighbourhood ever
since I can remember. There has always been a talk of ghosts: a pack of
silly tales. But still--"
Perenna and his companion could not get over their surprise.
"This is a funny affair," exclaimed Don Luis, when they had left the
mayor's. "Here we have Fauville writing his letters to a dead man--and to
a dead man, by the way, who looks to me very much as if he had been
murdered."
"Some one must have intercepted the letters."
"Obviously. But that does not do away with the fact that he wrote them to
a dead man and made his confidences to a dead man and told him of his
wife's criminal intentions."
Mazeroux was silent. He, too, seemed greatly perplexed.
They spent part of the afternoon in asking about old Langernault's
habits, hoping to receive some useful clue from the people who had known
him. But their efforts led to nothing.
At six o'clock, as they were about to start, Don Luis found that the car
had run out of petrol and sent Mazeroux in a trap to the outskirts of
Alençon to fetch some. He employed the delay in going to look at the Old
Castle outside the village.
He had to follow a hedged road leading to an open space, planted with
lime trees, where a massive wooden gate stood in the middle of a wall.
The gate was locked. Don Luis walked along the wall, which was, in fact,
very high and presented no opening. Nevertheless, he managed to climb
over by means of the branches of a tree.
The park consisted of unkept lawns, overgrown with large wild flowers,
and grass-covered avenues leading on the right to a distant mound,
thickly dotted with ruins, and, on the left, to a small, tumbledown house
with ill-fitting shutters.
He was turning in this direction, when he was much surprised to perceive
fresh footprints on a border which had been soaked with the recent rain.
And he could see that these footprints had been made by a woman's boots,
a pair of elegant and dainty boots.
"Who the devil comes walking here?" he thought.
He found more footprints a little farther, on another border which the
owner of the boots had crossed, and they led him away from the house,
toward a series of clumps of trees where he saw them twice more. Then he
lost sight of them for good.
He was standing near a large, half-ruined barn, built against a very tall
bank. Its worm-eaten doors seemed merely balanced on their hinges. He
went up and looked through a crack in the wood. Inside the windowless
barn was in semi-darkness, for but little light came through the openings
stopped up with straw, especially as the day was beginning to wane. He
was able to distinguish a heap of barrels, broken wine-presses, old
ploughs, and scrap-iron of all kinds.
"This is certainly not where my fair stroller turned her steps," thought
Don Luis. "Let's look somewhere else."
Nevertheless, he did not move. He had noticed a noise in the barn.
He listened and heard nothing. But as he wanted to get to the bottom of
things he forced out a couple of planks with his shoulder and stepped in.
The breach which he had thus contrived admitted a little light. He could
see enough to make his way between two casks, over some broken window
frames, to an empty space on the far side.
His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as he went on. For all that, he
knocked his head against something which he had not perceived, something
hanging up above, something rather hard which, when set in motion, swung
to and fro with a curious grating sound.
It was too dark to see. Don Luis took an electric lantern from his pocket
and pressed the spring.
"Damn it all!" he swore, falling back aghast.
Above him hung a skeleton!
And the next moment he uttered another oath. A second skeleton hung
beside the first!
They were both fastened by stout ropes to rings fixed in the rafters of
the barn. Their heads dangled from the slip-knots. The one against which
Perenna had struck was still moving slightly and the bones clicked
together with a gruesome sound.
He dragged forward a rickety table, propped it up as best he could, and
climbed onto it to examine the two skeletons more closely. They were
turned toward each other, face to face. The first was considerably bigger
than the second. They were obviously the skeletons of a man and a woman.
Even when they were not moved by a jolt of any kind, the wind blowing
through the crevices in the barn set them lightly swinging to and fro, in
a sort of very slow, rhythmical dance.
But what perhaps was most impressive in this ghastly spectacle was the
fact that each of the skeletons, though deprived of every rag of
clothing, still wore a gold ring, too wide now that the flesh had
disappeared, but held, as in hooks, by the bent joints of the fingers.
He slipped off the rings with a shiver of disgust, and found that they
were wedding rings. Each bore a date inside, the same date, 12 August,
1887, and two names: "Alfred--Victorine."
"Husband and wife," he murmured. "Is it a double suicide? Or a murder?
But how is it possible that the two skeletons have not yet been
discovered? Can one conceive that they have been here since the death of
old Langernault, since the government has taken possession of the estate
and made it impossible for anybody to walk in?"
He paused to reflect.
"Anybody? I don't know about that, considering that I saw footprints in
the garden, and that a woman has been there this very day!"
The thought of the unknown visitor engrossed him once more, and he got
down from the table. In spite of the noise which he had heard, it was
hardly to be supposed that she had entered the barn. And, after a few
minutes' search, he was about to go out, when there came, from the left,
a clash of things falling about and some hoops dropped to the ground not
far from where he stood.
They came from above, from a loft likewise crammed with various objects
and implements and reached by a ladder. Was he to believe that the
visitor, surprised by his arrival, had taken refuge in that hiding-place
and made a movement that caused the fall of the hoops?
Don Luis placed his electric lantern on a cask in such a way as to send
the light right up to the loft. Seeing nothing suspicious, nothing but an
arsenal of old pickaxes, rakes, and disused scythes, he attributed what
had happened so some animal, to some stray cat; and, to make sure, he
walked quickly to the ladder and went up.
Suddenly, at the very moment when he reached the level of the floor,
there was a fresh noise, a fresh clatter of things falling: and a form
rose from the heap of rubbish with a terrible gesture.
It was swift as lightning. Don Luis saw the great blade of a scythe
cleaving the air at the height of his head. Had he hesitated for a
second, for the tenth of a second, the awful weapon would have beheaded
him. As it was, he just had time to flatten himself against the ladder.
The scythe whistled past him, grazing his jacket. He slid down to the
floor below.
But he had seen.
He had seen the dreadful face of Gaston Sauverand, and, behind the man of
the ebony walking-stick, wan and livid in the rays of the electric light,
the distorted features of Florence Levasseur!