THE LOCKED ROOM
The carriage stood waiting for them a little way ahead. They had sat
down by the roadside on reaching the upland at the top of the ascent.
The green, undulating valley of the Liseron opened up before them, with
its little winding river escorted by two white roads which followed its
every turn. Behind them, under the setting sun, some three hundred feet
below, lay the clustering mass of Corvigny. Two miles in front of them
rose the turrets of Ornequin and the ruins of the old castle.
Terrified by Paul's story, Élisabeth was silent for a time. Then she
said:
"Oh, Paul, how terrible it all is! Were you very badly hurt?"
"I can remember nothing until the day when I woke up in a room which I
did not know and saw a nun and an old lady, a cousin of my father's, who
were nursing me. It was the best room of an inn somewhere between
Belfort and the frontier. Twelve days before, at a very early hour in
the morning, the innkeeper had found two bodies, all covered with blood,
which had been laid there during the night. One of the bodies was quite
cold. It was my poor father's. I was still breathing, but very slightly.
. . . I had a long convalescence, interrupted by relapses and fits of
delirium, in which I tried to make my escape. My old cousin, the only
relation I had left, showed me the most wonderful and devoted kindness.
Two months later she took me home with her. I was very nearly cured of
my wound, but so greatly affected by my father's death and by the
frightful circumstances surrounding it that it was several years before
I recovered my health completely. As to the tragedy itself. . . ."
"Well?" asked Élisabeth, throwing her arm round her husband's neck, with
an eager movement of protection.
"Well, they never succeeded in fathoming the mystery. And yet the police
conducted their investigations zealously and scrupulously, trying to
verify the only information which they were able to employ, that which I
gave them. All their efforts failed. You know, my information was very
vague. Apart from what had happened in the glade and in front of the
chapel, I knew nothing. I could not tell them where to find the chapel,
nor where to look for it, nor in what part of the country the tragedy
had occurred."
"But still you had taken a journey, you and your father, to reach that
part of the country; and it seems to me that, by tracing your road back
to your departure from Strasburg. . . ."
"Well, of course they did their best to follow up that track; and the
French police, not content with calling in the aid of the German police,
sent their shrewdest detectives to the spot. But this is exactly what
afterwards, when I was of an age to think out things, struck me as so
strange: not a single trace was found of our stay at Strasburg. You
quite understand? Not a trace of any kind. Now, if there was one thing
of which I was absolutely certain, it was that we had spent at least two
days and nights at Strasburg. The magistrate who had the case in hand,
looking upon me as a child and one who had been badly knocked about and
upset, came to the conclusion that my memory must be at fault. But I
knew that this was not so; I knew it then and I know it still."
"What then, Paul?"
"Well, I cannot help seeing a connection between the total elimination
of undeniable facts--facts easily checked or reconstructed, such as the
visit of a Frenchman and his son to Strasburg, their railway journey,
the leaving of their luggage in the cloak-room of a town in Alsace, the
hiring of a couple of bicycles--and this main fact, that the Emperor was
directly, yes, directly mixed up in the business."
"But this connection must have been as obvious to the magistrate's mind
as to yours, Paul."
"No doubt; but neither the examining magistrate nor any of his
colleagues and the other officials who took my evidence was willing to
admit the Emperor's presence in Alsace on that day."
"Why not?"
"Because the German newspapers stated that he was in Frankfort at that
very hour."
"In Frankfort?"
"Of course, he is stated to be wherever he commands and never at a place
where he does not wish his presence known. At any rate, on this point
also I was accused of being in error and the inquiry was thwarted by an
assemblage of obstacles, impossibilities, lies and alibis which, to my
mind, revealed the continuous and all-powerful action of an unlimited
authority. There is no other explanation. Just think: how can two French
subjects put up at a Strasburg hotel without having their names entered
in the visitors' book? Well, whether because the book was destroyed or a
page torn out, no record whatever of the names was found. So there was
one proof, one clue gone. As for the hotel proprietor and waiters, the
railway booking clerks and porters, the man who owned the bicycles:
these were so many subordinates, so many accomplices, all of whom
received orders to be silent; and not one of them disobeyed."
"But afterwards, Paul, you must have made your own search?"
"I should think I did! Four times since I came of age I have been over
the whole frontier from Switzerland to Luxemburg, from Belfort to
Longwy, questioning the inhabitants, studying the country. I have spent
hours and hours in cudgeling my brains in the vain hope of extracting
the slightest recollection that would have given me a gleam of light.
But all without result. There was not one fresh glimmer amid all that
darkness. Only three pictures showed through the dense fog of the past,
pictures of the place and the things which witnessed the crime: the
trees in the glade, the old chapel and the path leading through the
woods. And then there was the figure of the Emperor and . . . the figure
of the woman who killed my father."
Paul had lowered his voice. His face was distorted with grief and
loathing.
"As for her," he went on, "if I live to be a hundred, I shall see her
before my eyes as something standing out in all its details under the
full light of day. The shape of her lips, the expression of her eyes,
the color of her hair, the special character of her walk, the rhythm of
her movements, the outline of her body: all this is recorded within
myself, not as a vision which I summon up at will, but as something that
forms part of my very being. It is as though, during my delirium, all
the mysterious powers of my brain had collaborated to assimilate
entirely those hateful memories. There was a time when all this was a
morbid obsession: nowadays, I suffer only at certain hours, when the
night is coming in and I am alone. My father was murdered; and the woman
who murdered him is alive, unpunished, happy, rich, honored, pursuing
her work of hatred and destruction."
"Would you know her again if you saw her, Paul?"
"Would I know her again! I should know her among a thousand. Even if she
were disfigured by age, I should discover in the wrinkles of the old
woman that she had become the face of the younger woman who stabbed my
father to death on that September evening. Know her again! Why, I
noticed the very shade of the dress she wore! It seems incredible, but
there it is. A gray dress, with a black lace scarf over the shoulders;
and here, in the bodice, by way of a brooch, a heavy cameo, set in a
gold snake with ruby eyes. You see, Élisabeth, I have not forgotten and
I never shall forget."
He ceased. Élisabeth was crying. The past which her husband had revealed
to her was filling her with the same sense of horror and bitterness. He
drew her to him and kissed her on the forehead.
"You are right not to forget," she said. "The murder will be punished
because it has to be punished. But you must not let your life be subject
to these memories of hatred. There are two of us now and we love each
other. Let us look towards the future."
* * * * *
The Château d'Ornequin is a handsome sixteenth century building of
simple design, with four peaked turrets, tall windows with denticulated
pinnacles and a light balustrade projecting above the first story. The
esplanade is formed by well-kept lawns which surround the courtyard and
lead on the right and left to gardens, woods and orchards. One side of
these lawns ends in a broad terrace overlooking the valley of the
Liseron. On this terrace, in a line with the house, stand the majestic
ruins of a four-square castle-keep.
The whole wears a very stately air. The estate, surrounded by farms and
fields, demands active and careful working for its maintenance. It is
one of the largest in the department.
Seventeen years before, at the sale held upon the death of the last
Baron d'Ornequin, Élisabeth's father, the Comte d'Andeville, bought it
at his wife's desire. He had been married for five years and had
resigned his commission in the cavalry in order to devote himself
entirely to the woman he loved. A chance journey brought them to
Ornequin just as the sale, which had hardly been advertised in the local
press, was about to be held. Hermine d'Andeville fell in love with the
house and the domain; and the Count, who was looking for an estate whose
management would occupy his spare time effected the purchase through his
lawyer by private treaty.
During the winter that followed, he directed from Paris the work of
restoration which was necessitated by the state of disrepair in which
the former owner had left the house. M. d'Andeville wished it to be not
only comfortable but also elegant; and, little by little, he sent down
all the tapestries, pictures, objects of art and knicknacks that
adorned his house in Paris.
They were not able to take up their residence until August. They then
spent a few delightful weeks with their dear Élisabeth, at this time
four years old, and their son, Bernard, a lusty boy to whom the Countess
had given birth that same year. Hermine d'Andeville was devoted to her
children and never went beyond the confines of the park. The Count
looked after his farms and shot over his coverts, accompanied by Jérôme,
his gamekeeper, a worthy Alsatian, who had been in the late owner's
service and who knew every yard of the estate.
At the end of October, the Countess took cold; the illness that followed
was pretty serious; and the Comte d'Andeville decided to take her and
the children to the south. A fortnight later she had a relapse; and in
three days she was dead.
The Count experienced the despair which makes a man feel that life is
over and that, whatever happens, he will never again know the sense of
joy nor even an alleviation of any sort. He lived not so much for the
sake of his children as to cherish within himself the cult of her whom
he had lost and to perpetuate a memory which now became the sole reason
of his existence.
He was unable to return to the Château d'Ornequin, where he had known
too perfect a happiness; on the other hand, he would not have strangers
live there; and he ordered Jérôme to keep the doors and shutters closed
and to lock up the Countess' boudoir and bedroom in such a way that no
one could ever enter. Jérôme was also to let the farms and to collect
the tenants' rents.
This break with the past was not enough to satisfy the Count. It seems
strange in a man who existed only for the sake of his wife's memory, but
everything that reminded him of her--familiar objects, domestic
surroundings, places and landscapes--became a torture to him; and his
very children filled him with a sense of discomfort which he was unable
to overcome. He had an elder sister, a widow, living in the country, at
Chaumont. He placed his daughter Élisabeth and his son Bernard in her
charge and went abroad.
Aunt Aline was the most devoted and unselfish of women; and under her
care Élisabeth enjoyed a grave, studious and affectionate childhood in
which her heart developed together with her mind and her character. She
received the education almost of a boy, together with a strong moral
discipline. At the age of twenty, she had grown into a tall, capable,
fearless girl, whose face, inclined by nature to be melancholy,
sometimes lit up with the fondest and most innocent of smiles. It was
one of those faces which reveal beforehand the pangs and raptures held
in store by fate. The tears were never far from her eyes, which seemed
as though troubled by the spectacle of life. Her hair, with its bright
curls, lent a certain gaiety to her appearance.
At each visit that the Comte d'Andeville paid his daughter between his
wanderings he fell more and more under her charm. He took her one winter
to Spain and the next to Italy. It was in this way that she became
acquainted with Paul Delroze at Rome and met him again at Naples and
Syracuse, from which town Paul accompanied the d'Andevilles on a long
excursion through Sicily. The intimacy thus formed attached the two
young people by a bond of which they did not realize the full strength
till the time came for parting.
Like Élisabeth, Paul had been brought up in the country and, again like
her, by a fond kinswoman who strove, by dint of loving care, to make him
forget the tragedy of his childhood. Though oblivion failed to come, at
any rate she succeeded in continuing his father's work and in making of
Paul a manly and industrious lad, interested in books, life and the
doings of mankind. He went to school and, after performing his military
service, spent two years in Germany, studying some of his favorite
industrial and mechanical subjects on the spot.
Tall and well set up, with his black hair flung back from his rather
thin face, with its determined chin, he made an impression of strength
and energy.
His meeting with Élisabeth revealed to him a world of ideas and emotions
which he had hitherto disdained. For him as for her it was a sort of
intoxication mingled with amazement. Love created in them two new souls,
light and free as air, whose ready enthusiasm and expansiveness formed
a sharp contrast with the habits enforced upon them by the strict
tendency of their lives. On his return to France he asked for
Élisabeth's hand in marriage and obtained her consent.
On the day of the marriage contract, three days before the wedding, the
Comte d'Andeville announced that he would add the Château d'Ornequin to
Élisabeth's dowry. The young couple decided that they would live there
and that Paul should look about in the valleys of the neighboring
manufacturing district for some works which he could buy and manage.
They were married on Thursday, the 30th of July, at Chaumont. It was a
quiet wedding, because of the rumors of war, though the Comte
d'Andeville, on the strength of information to which he attached great
credit, declared that no war would take place. At the breakfast in which
the two families took part, Paul made the acquaintance of Bernard
d'Andeville, Élisabeth's brother, a schoolboy of barely seventeen, whose
holidays had just begun. Paul took to him, because of his frank bearing
and high spirits; and it was arranged that Bernard should join them in a
few days at Ornequin. At one o'clock Élisabeth and Paul left Chaumont by
train. They were going hand-in-hand to the château where the first years
of their marriage were to be spent and perhaps all that happy and
peaceful future which opens up before the dazzling eyes of lovers.
It was half-past six o'clock when they saw Jérôme's wife standing at the
foot of the steps. Rosalie was a stout, motherly body with ruddy,
mottled cheeks and a cheerful face.
Before dining, they took a hurried turn in the garden and went over the
house. Élisabeth could not contain her emotion. Though there were no
memories to excite her, she seemed, nevertheless, to rediscover
something of the mother whom she had known for such a little while,
whose features she could not remember and who had here spent the last
happy days of her life. For her, the shade of the dead woman still trod
those garden paths. The great, green lawns exhaled a special fragrance.
The leaves on the trees rustled in the wind with a whisper which she
seemed already to have heard in that same spot and at the same hour of
the day, with her mother listening beside her.
"You seem depressed, Élisabeth," said Paul.
"Not depressed, but unsettled. I feel as though my mother were welcoming
us to this place where she thought she was to live and where we have
come with the same intention. And I somehow feel anxious. It is as
though I were a stranger, an intruder, disturbing the rest and peace of
the house. Only think! My mother has been here all alone for such a
time! My father would never come here; and I was telling myself that we
have no right to come here either, with our indifference for everything
that is not ourselves."
Paul smiled:
"Élisabeth, my darling, you are simply feeling that impression of
uneasiness which one always feels on arriving at a new place in the
evening."
"I don't know," she said. "I daresay you are right. . . . But I can't
shake off the uneasiness; and that is so unlike me. Do you believe in
presentiments, Paul?"
"No, do you?"
"No, I don't either," she said, laughing and giving him her lips.
They were surprised to find that the rooms of the house looked as if
they had been constantly inhabited. By the Count's orders, everything
had remained as it was in the far-off days of Hermine d'Andeville. The
knickknacks were there, in the same places, and every piece of
embroidery, every square of lace, every miniature, all the handsome
eighteenth century chairs, all the Flemish tapestry, all the furniture
which the Count had collected in the old days to add to the beauty of
his house. They were thus entering from the first into a charming and
home-like setting.
After dinner they returned to the gardens, where they strolled to and
fro in silence, with their arms entwined round each other's waists. From
the terrace they looked down upon the dark valley, with a few lights
gleaming here and there. The old castle-keep raised its massive ruins
against a pale sky, in which a remnant of vague light still lingered.
"Paul," said Élisabeth, in a low voice, "did you notice, as we went over
the house, a door closed with a great padlock?"
"In the middle of the chief corridor, near your bedroom, you mean?"
"Yes. That was my poor mother's boudoir. My father insisted that it
should be locked, as well as the bedroom leading out of it; and Jérôme
put a padlock on the door and sent him the key. No one has set foot in
it since. It is just as my mother left it. All her own things--her
unfinished work, her books--are there. And on the wall facing the door,
between the two windows that have always been kept shut, is her
portrait, which my father had ordered a year before of a great painter
of his acquaintance, a full-length portrait which, I understand, is the
very image of her. Her _prie-Dieu_ is beside it. This morning my father
gave me the key of the boudoir and I promised him that I would kneel
down on the _prie-Dieu_ and say a prayer before the portrait of the
mother whom I hardly knew and whose features I cannot imagine, for I
never even had a photograph of her."
"Really? How was that?"
"You see, my father loved my mother so much that, in obedience to a
feeling which he himself was unable to explain, he wished to be alone in
his recollection of her. He wanted his memories to be hidden deep down
in himself, so that nothing would remind him of her except his own will
and his grief. He almost begged my pardon for it this morning, said
that perhaps he had done me a wrong; and that is why he wants us to go
together, Paul, on this first evening, and pray before the picture of my
poor dead mother."
"Let us go now, Élisabeth."
Her hand trembled in her husband's hand as they climbed the stairs to
the first floor. Lamps had been lighted all along the passage. They
stopped in front of a tall, wide door surmounted with gilded carvings.
"Unfasten the lock, Paul," said Élisabeth.
Her voice shook as she spoke. She handed him the key. He removed the
padlock and seized the door-handle. But Élisabeth suddenly gripped her
husband's arm:
"One moment, Paul, one moment! I feel so upset. This is the first time
that I shall look on my mother's face . . . and you, my dearest, are
beside me. . . . I feel as if I were becoming a little girl again."
"Yes," he said, pressing her hand passionately, "a little girl and a
grown woman in one."
Comforted by the clasp of his hand, she released hers and whispered:
"We will go in now, Paul darling."
He opened the door and returned to the passage to take a lamp from a
bracket on the wall and place it on the table. Meanwhile, Élisabeth had
walked across the room and was standing in front of the picture. Her
mother's face was in the shadow and she altered the position of the
lamp so as to throw the full light upon it.
"How beautiful she is, Paul!"
He went up to the picture and raised his head. Élisabeth sank to her
knees on the _prie-Dieu_. But presently, hearing Paul turn round, she
looked up at him and was stupefied by what she saw. He was standing
motionless, livid in the face, his eyes wide open, as though gazing at
the most frightful vision.
"Paul," she cried, "what's the matter?"
He began to make for the door, stepping backwards, unable to take his
eyes from the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville. He was staggering like a
drunken man; and his arms beat the air around him.
"That . . . that . . ." he stammered, hoarsely.
"Paul," Élisabeth entreated, "what is it? What are you trying to say?"
"That . . . that is the woman who killed my father!"