Sangor acknowledged them with a dignified salute and Sing-Sing, who was clinging to the steering wheel, playing games with it like a little monkey would, emitted a squeaking farewell.
Then they disappeared.
Drouine watched them leave.
“It’s all over,” he said, “there was not the slightest difficulty... he had brought a sabre with him... he made me a gift of it. Then I gave him all of the jewels. Good riddance!” Christine sighed a deep sigh. Then she repeated:
“May the Marchioness forgive us!”
They were standing in front of the garage... suddenly, she caught sight of the last motor car that had been left there. It was the one she had seen sometimes in Paris outside the Coulteray mansion on the Béthune quays. It was the car that had served the Marchioness when she was taken out for a drive in the park or the surrounding suburbs. She went over and examined it closely. It was a sturdy limousine with a solid body and an upholstered interior. Christine examined the doors and the windows. Jacques realized what her idea was and also began to examine it. Next to the driver’s seat, they found a small button that closed the shutters automatically and transformed the car into a hermetically sealed cage.
Drouine watched them.
“Is this the car in which she arrived?” asked Jacques.
“Yes,” Drouine replied, “that poor woman!”
“What a martyrdom,” sighed Christine once more, with tears in her eyes.
“The Good Lord has taken pity on her,” replied Drouine, nodding his head, “now she rests in peace!”
When Jacques and Christine arrived at the Fairy Grotto Inn, they were surprised by the general atmosphere of good cheer that reigned there. They did not understand the culture of the people. Nor did they understand that there is nothing that gives such an appetite... or a thirst... as a burial. By means of a natural inclination of the spirit, the living compare themselves with the dead, whom they have just conducted to their final resting place, inwardly congratulating themselves that they can still enjoy the pleasures of life, then hasten to enjoy them all the more since the example that so recently moved their eyes, to tears in most cases, forces them to measure the brevity of their days.
The feasting that had started after the funeral ceremony had not yet ceased. Some had risen from the table for a game of boules, only to return after a short time to continue their meal, which seemed to be endless. The waitresses, doubled in number for the occasion, were on edge. Even the widow Gérard served as an extra hand. She had heard some jokes being told about her adventure that morning, when the gesture of the Marquis had made her run away:
“That’ll teach her to tell stories about the Empouse!”
They wanted her to drink with them.
“Let’s drink to the new vampire, Mother Gérard! If you don’t want her to come and drag you down by the feet!” She said nothing in reply; her face was obstinate, her eyes full of anger, her teeth clenched...
“Don’t tease her any more,” someone said at last, “she’s going to give us the evil eye!”
In Coulteray, they truly believed in the evil eye. So they left her alone and began to sing old rustic folk songs...
“They’ll carry on like this until tomorrow morning,” said Jacques as Christine and he finished their dinner in a corner of the arbour, “you had good reason to accept the Marquis’ hospitality. Here, we would not have slept a wink!”
They returned to the chateau, kissed, and wished each other a good night. Jacques went to bed and fell asleep immediately.
Christine did not go to bed... she let herself fall into an armchair, deep in thought. Her window was still open... a lunar landscape spread out beneath her, on a grand scale and with great beauty: the buildings of the chateau cast their shadows onto the deserted earth, in a silence that no noise came to disturb... the long, black chasm of the moat that separated the Court of Honour from the bailey, the vast white expanse of the bailey itself and, at the extremity of the plateau, beyond a low wall, the cemetery with all its crosses, crooked and straight... some of its gravestones were covered with moss, while others reflected the moon’s light like mirrors... while the elegant 14th Century chapel, where poor Bessie-Anne-Elizabeth slept peacefully forever, cast its elongated silhouette over everything...
How long did Christine sit there, dreaming? Dreaming of what?
Suddenly, she sat up, startled... down in the valley below, the old Roman church of Coulteray tolled the twelve strokes of midnight.
Christine got up, closed the window because she was cold, and began to undress.
She returned to the window to draw the curtains... then uttered a suppressed exclamation and clung to the wall to prevent herself from falling.
She had seen... very clearly... down there, among the tombs in the cemetery, a white form… completely white… that floated... that moved with the light agility of a ghost... This indistinct, floating form, that seemed to traverse the rays of the moon like a crystal, made a circuit of the chapel then disappeared in the direction of Drouine’s residence.
Christine wanted to cry out, but she was unable. Her throat refused to allow a single sound to escape. Terror, the mistress of her senses and her organs, held her there, annihilated, in a corner between the wall and the window... then, suddenly, she slipped; her legs gave way beneath her… her head hit the floor abruptly... and the pain that she felt returned to her the physical force necessary to cry out. She called out for Jacques in despair, ominously, darkly, in a voice like a drowning woman’s death gurgle.
Jacques ran in and found her crawling across the floor, in such a state of disorder that she would have appeared half-naked had it not been for her admirable hair, that had fallen around her and enveloped her in a protective wave. He thought that she must have rolled out of the bed, in the grip of some hideous nightmare that still pursued her. He had no doubts about it all when, between two gasps of terror, her rigid arm pointed at the distant lunar landscape outside the window and he heard her say:
“It’s her! It’s her! I’ve seen her... she’s walking in the cemetery! My God! What is she going to do? What is she going to do?”
He wrapped Christine in a coat and, chastely, laid her down on the bed.
He tried to calm her with reassuring words.
“Come now, Christine, wake up, my love! It’s just a bad dream!”
Fiercely, she replied:
“But I’m not asleep... I’m not dreaming! I tell you I have seen her... as clearly as I see you! I saw her floating along the chapel wall... then she went into Drouine’s house... I’m sure of it!”
A few minutes passed, while each of them tried to convince the other.
“This was to be expected... it had to end like this,” Jacques growled, “from the moment we decided to stay here, with you in the impressionable state that you are now! This episode is as logical as the development of a blister.”
He had barely finished saying this when the sound of repeated, muffled knocking came from the ground floor. He wanted to run over to the window, to open it and to know once and for all what was going on... but she had thrown her arms around his neck and held him back with an irresistible force.
“No! No! Don’t do it ! Don’t do it! It’s her! I’m sure it’s her!”
Then they fell silent, until the knocking had ceased. It seemed that, now, they could hear a noise inside the chateau itself. A door or a window had been opened... another door slammed... footsteps could be heard... running... they seemed to bound up the staircase... Jacques stood upright... she buried her head in his chest...
“Don’t open it! Don’t open it!”
“At least let me lock the door, I’ve got the key!”
She let him go for a moment, wearing a dying woman’s smile on her face. He ran to the door and opened it. He found himself face-to-face with the figure of a revenant, whose immense shadow swayed in front of the projection of a lamp... it was Drouine...
He entered the room, threw his back against the
door and held it closed, with all his weight, until he regained his balance, so that finally he was able to breathe, or rather to struggle for breath, at ease.
Then he saw Christine, lost in the same expression as his own.
“Did you see her? Did you see her, too?” he rasped.
Christine nodded her head. She had seen her... yes... yes! And he, had he also seen her?
Then he told his tale, in bits and pieces, with his breath coming in gasps, from his terrified soul, as if from the depths of an internal furnace:
“I was asleep... I’d just fallen asleep... that’s what I thought, anyway... I heard a voice... calling me... I wasn’t afraid of it, at first... such a sweet voice... so sweet... that I thought I was dreaming... but then someone threw a pebble against my window... and I realized I wasn’t dreaming... and I started trembling... I went over to the window... and I saw nothing at first... the cemetery seemed so peaceful... I opened the window... and then I heard the voice, getting louder and louder: ‘Drouine, Drouine!’ Then I saw her standing there, against the rampart walls... ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ she said, ‘I am your mistress, the Marchioness of Coulteray, the vampire’s wife. What have you done to me, Drouine?’
“I fell down on my knees and made the sign of the cross... ah, it was her!... it really was her... it really was her voice, her voice so sweet and so sad... and everything... she said ‘what have you done to me, Drouine... what have you done to me? Why didn’t you deliver me to Sangor? My throat was waiting for him! And now my throat is parched with thirst!’ Yes, she said that, I’m sure that’s what she said! She had a distinctive way of speaking... her voice was like a little silver bell singing in the night... her voice was not disagreeable, but what she said was terrifying: ‘You have made me the wife of Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome for all eternity!’ After that, she vanished through a gap in the wall... she floated across the lawn... turned back towards me for a second, as if to wave goodbye, and then entered the woods... may Orfon take my soul if I’m lying!”
Drouine went down on his knees, made the sign of the cross, and beat on his chest with his large hands for his mea culpa, as if everything that had happened was his fault. He spoke in a sob:
“It’s horrible! I’m the one who gave her to the demon... may Jesus have mercy on us all!”
Christine wept like Mary Magdalene. Jacques had gone to the window to look out over a peaceful landscape, which seemed immutable in its material solidity, under clear skies and the cold gaze of the astral night... a landscape without ghosts.
“You’re all going mad, in this place, with all these stories of vampires,” he said, “here’s what we’re going to do, Drouine: you’re coming with me... we’re going down into the crypt!”
“No! No! I’ve just come back from there!”
“What do you mean, you’ve just come back from there?”
“I have! When she had gone... I felt better then... I couldn’t see her any more... the cool air in my face... in the end, I said to myself that maybe I had dreamed it all... and I also said to myself that the crypt had been closed all the time... that its walls were very thick... even for a ‘vampire.’ After a while, it grew stronger than my fear: I wanted to know... I pulled on my trousers... I picked up the keys to the chapel and down I went... then I realized that if those big grilles in the crypt, behind the tomb of Iron Arm, were closed, then I had forgotten to lock the small door that opens at the foot of the tower. That’s the way I took you down, you know... well, it was through there that she came out! Oh, there’s no mistake! The stone had been moved... the tomb opened... and the coffin, too... and there was nothing inside!
“Stay here with Christine – wait for me, you two!”
Jacques was already outside, in spite of the young girl’s cries of protest.
Through the window they saw him cross the Court of Honour then, slowing down a little, the full breadth of the bailey.
Evidently, he was trying to master himself... to arrive at the crypt with his composure intact... He would not allow himself to be led astray by this ambience of madness...
Suddenly, Christine and Drouine let out a hoarse groan at the same time... the girl grabbed Drouine’s arm and held it so tightly that he almost cried out in pain... Jacques had entered the cemetery when, at the same time, the floating apparition appeared again, gliding along the chapel wall, returning to the cemetery: the pale phantom of Bessie-Anne-Elizabeth...
She passed in front of the porch, arrived at the little tower, then vanished through the low door that led down to the crypt.
Jacques, who had stopped for an instant, took the same path and entered the monument behind her...
Clinging onto one another, their faces pressed against the glass, neither Christine nor Drouine could utter a single word. All of the life in them, which is to say, all the vital force remaining to them, had taken refuge in their eyes, which did not leave the view of the cemetery, the chapel and the small black hole in the door through which Bessie and Jacques had descended into the land of the dead...
Several long, long minutes went by. Finally, they saw Jacques reappear...Christine let out a long sigh.
She was soaked in an icy sweat and her teeth were chattering.
It seemed as if Drouine had been turned into stone.
Jacques walked out of the cemetery and traversed the bailey with a quiet step. He crossed the Court of Honour, looked up at the window, and waved at them amicably.
When he entered the chamber, they looked at him as if he was something that had returned from another world.
“Well, you are like a pair of children,” he said, “and you’ve been dreaming! You have harboured the same thoughts and have had the same vision! I have just returned from the crypt and, no matter what you say, Drouine, nothing has been moved... the stone is still in its place... no-one has touched the tomb.”
“You’re lying!” cried Christine, “you saw her just as well as we did! You even stopped when you saw her! And you followed her down into the crypt!”
“It’s true,” Drouine added in a rough voice, “it’s God’s truth, and I swear it on my place in Paradise!” Once again, he crossed himself.
“Then you take me for an impostor... Drouine... I thought you were a man! Come with me, then! Come with me to the crypt – you will see that you are in error!”
“No! I’m staying here,” he declared in a most sombre voice, “until tomorrow – there will be daylight!”
He installed himself in the hallway, rolled in a blanket.
Christine would not allow Jacques to leave her and ended up falling asleep in a chair as dawn approached. Jacques had just felt his eyes begin to close when a murmur of voices shook them from out of their somnolence. A group of villagers had gathered outside the chapel. Others had flocked into the bailey, calling for Drouine... and, as soon as they saw him, the peasants came across the fields towards the chateau, with exaggerated gestures...
In order to understand the origin of all this turmoil in the Coulteray countryside, it is necessary to take note of what had taken place in the village during the night while Christine, Jacques and Drouine passed the moments of anguish in the chateau that we have just reported.
The little celebration at the Fairy Grotto Inn had gone on into the night. With this kind of celebration, whether it be for a death or a wedding, there is always an element of ‘the enraged,’ who can never make up their minds when to leave the table. All the more so, it seems, when they are certain to end up losing at cards. This makes them more reluctant to leave than those who ask for nothing more than to be allowed to go to their beds.
At midnight, there were still four such souls left at the table, arguing about their pennies and emptying their jugs of wine.
There was Birouste, the blacksmith; Verdeil, who kept a garage and sold gasoline from a corner of the bridge at the crossroads of the three routes into the village, he was the strong mind of Coulteray; Nicole, the grocer and Tamisier, the biggest wine merchant of the
village and its surrounding area. With these four was Achard, the innkeeper, who had made three generations dance to his tune. Although he had never wanted to hold any kind of office in the parish, remaining a friend to everyone, he was nonetheless the de facto head of the village, as if he held the keys to the community. Here, then, were five strong heads with, as they say in vulgar language, bladders for lanterns.
At approximately a quarter of an hour after midnight, the five men heard widow Gérard let out an immense scream. She had stayed at the inn to offer her help with service and, having finished her shift, was walking across the courtyard towards her home, a little house on a mound at the edge of the village, just before the bridge, opposite Verdeil’s garage.
The scream was so terrible to hear that it made the five men shudder. They all stood up, in a single motion, to find out what was happening...
The Bloody Doll Page 22