“That,” said Stevens, “is undoubtedly one way of looking at it.”
“There was one drawback. It was, I think you will admit, a social hindrance afterwards, especially when I began to write. I had served my sentence under the—you acknowledge—unusual name of Gaudan Cross. I flew my own banner. I did not become Alfred Mossbaum again when it became necessary to hide my head. But the name was easily remembered. I did not wish too many people to connect Gaudan Cross, the new and brilliant literary figure, with the Gaudan Cross who had gone to prison for murder in the year 1895. That is why my age is firmly given as forty, and a photograph so early as to be indistinguishable is on every book.”
“It was murder, was it?”
“Naturally,” answered Cross, with a simplicity of evil which startled his guest. Cross’s gloved hand brushed ash off his coat. “But I wished you to understand why I wrote with authority. You ask me why your wife came to me? I will tell you. Because, as she was aware from a glance at the first chapter of my new book—there is not one paragraph which is not annotated with documentation—I knew the facts. And she did not.”
“The facts about what?”
“About Marie D’Aubray in 1676. About Marie D’Aubray in 1861. About her ancestry; or, more properly, what she thinks is her ancestry.”
“You seem to know, or to follow,” Stevens began, slowly, “a good deal of what I’m thinking. I am thinking something now… not only about the present, but about the past and the long past… about the dead and the non-dead. Is there any truth in it?”
“There is not—I regret to say,” snapped Cross. “At least, in her own case.”
Stevens’s thoughts were something like this: I am sitting in a comfortable limousine, smoking a very good cigar, with a self-confessed murderer whom I both trust and distrust. Yet the very presence of this engaging little mummy has done more to lift a weight off my mind, and make me see things in decent perspective, than all those explanations in the undertaker’s parlor. He looked out of the window of the car, where grey rain was beginning to shroud the Lancaster Highway.
“You have been married three years, I understand,” said Cross, blinking, “Do you know anything about her? No, you do not. Why don’t you? All women chatter. If you mention an uncle of yours, she mentions an uncle of hers. If you tell how a respected great-aunt of yours once threw a tomato at a cat and hit a policeman instead, she will reply with a family anecdote of a similarly improving nature. Why didn’t you hear any family anecdotes? Because she had something locked up inside. Why was she always condemning certain things as morbid? Because she was afraid of them herself. Bah! I got the whole story out of her in ten minutes. And I was naturally in a position either to confirm or dispel her notions.
“Listen to me. At a place called Guibourg, which is a dismal hole in north-western Canada, there really is a family of D’Aubrays which is remotely descended from the D’Aubrays who hatched the Marquise de Brinvilliers. They also hatched the Marie D’Aubray whose picture you have there. So far, so true. I know this because, in preparation for the essay in my new book, I underwent the martyrdom of spending two weeks in Guibourg, tracing the family records. I wished to see whether there were any more examples of this ‘non-dead’ legend. I do not listen to legends: I examine birth certificates and parish registers. Your esteemed wife is not even connected with the family, although she thinks she is. She was adopted, at the age of three, by Miss Adrienne D’Aubray, the sole remaining branch of a rotten tree. Her name is no more D’Aubray than mine is Cross. Her mother was a French Canadian and her father a Scotch laborer.”
“I don’t know,” muttered Stevens, “whether we’re now in the province governed by the laws of witchcraft or the laws of sense. But look at that picture. There’s an amazing resemblance, even to——”
“Why,” said Cross, “do you think she was adopted at all?”
“Adopted at all?”
“Yes. Because of that resemblance. No other reason. Because Miss Adrienne D’Aubray, figuratively speaking, is an old witch herself. If I lived all the year round in Guibourg, I should begin to believe she was a real one. Listen. In Guibourg the sky is dark, and it snows a good part of the year. Do you know where even the name Guibourg comes from? In the seventeenth century the Black Mass was known as La messe de Guibourg. The family lives in a long low house against a hill with fir trees on it. They own timber, and they are well-off, but they do not go out much even if there were anywhere to go. The weather shuts them in to look at pictures in the fire. Miss Adrienne D’Aubray adopted the child of a Scotch laborer for the sole purpose of bringing her up to think she had the blood of the non-dead, and that one day the non-dead would creep into her skin. She showed her pictures. She told her stories, and pointed out things among the fir trees. When the girl was punished, she was punished as her alleged ancestress was, with a funnel and water. She was burnt, to show what it would be like. Do I need to elaborate?”
“No,” said Stevens, and put his face in his hands.
Cross had an extraordinary animation, as though he admired all this as a work of art. Then he sat back and puffed his cigar complacently. The cigar was too big for him; it destroyed any effect at the Mephistophelian on his part.
“That, young man, is the girl you have been living with,” he said, more gently. “She kept the secret well. The trouble was… I gather it was this. Her marriage to you, it appears, almost succeeded in getting the past out of her system. Then, through your association with this Despard family, it seems that a few accidents began to bring it back again. Mrs. Mark Despard, one Sunday afternoon, started a conversation about poisons in the presence of a nurse who was taking care of a sick uncle—” Cross looked at him sharply.
“I know.”
“Oho! You know? Well, your spouse had been repressing the goblins too long, putting them in a box and shutting the lid on them; and all of a sudden they got out. The talk about poisons did it. In her own hardly descriptive phrase, ‘she felt queer all over.’ ‘The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott,’ ” said Cross, disgustedly, and spat smoke at the glass partition. “Good God! She was even foolish enough to run out of the room after the nurse and gabble something about poison. She informs me that she can’t think why she did it. A brain specialist could tell her. Actually, there is nothing in the least the matter with her. She is too fundamentally normal and sound. If she had not been, I dare say Aunt Adrienne’s teaching might have produced a weird graduate. However, it appears that—not three weeks after this conversation about poisons—the old uncle of the family died. On top of that, you walked in with my manuscript and uttered sinister sounds. On top of that, this Mark Despard entered with a tame doctor, and informed you (while she was listening at the door), first, that he had positive proof his uncle was poisoned, second, that a woman in a Marquise de Brinvilliers dress had been seen in the uncle’s room. He didn’t do much explaining, but he hinted at many extra-normal things. If you are unable to imagine her state of mind at this point in the business, you are even duller than I think you are. She had to know the facts about her own ancestry.”
Stevens remained with his head between his hands, staring at the grey carpeting on the floor of the car.
“Tell the chauffeur to turn back, will you?” he requested, after a pause. “I want to get back to her. So help me God, I’ll see that she never has the hobgoblins again as long as I live.”
Cross gave an order into the mouthpiece, “This is a most interesting study,” he observed, with monkey-like lordliness. “The role of soother of the waters is new to me; and one, I may inform you, which pains my neck insufferably. However, I—a complete stranger—have been delegated to tell you all this before she faces you, because she does not seem to like the task. It seems, for some reason wholly inexplicable to me, that she loves you. Is there anything else you would like to ask?”
“Well, yes, if she said anything about it… did she say anything about morphia tablets?”
Cross was irr
itable. “Yes. I forgot that. Yes, she stole morphia. Do you know why? No, don’t answer; you do not know why. But carry your mind back. You and she were at this famous (and to me painful) Despard Park on a certain night. Do you remember the date?”
“Without any trouble. It was the night of Saturday, April 8th.”
“Yes. Do you remember what all of you were doing at Despard Park?”
“Why, we went up to play bridge, but—” He stopped. “But we didn’t. The evening was devoted to telling ghost stories.”
“That’s true. You were telling ghost stories, and I gather some highly unpleasant ones, in the dark, before a woman already half insane with a fear she could not reveal to anyone.
There was only one thing she wanted. She wanted sleep. She wanted sleep beyond the remote possibility of remaining awake an instant after she had gone to bed; she wanted to blot out dreams and hags as you turn out a light. I am not surprised you didn’t notice, but how it escaped the attention of the Despard family is beyond me. The Despards as an influence seem to be bad for both of you. They are great invokers of witches. …”
Outside a faint growl of thunder followed the smooth humming of the car. Rain began to tick more steadily on the windows. Cross, letting down one window to throw away his cigar, swore as the rain blew in. But Stevens felt that his mind had been cleaned and swept—of all except one thing. There remained the problem.
“Invokers of witches,” he repeated. “Yes, that’s just exactly true. Things seem in different focus now, somehow. But still there’s the round, flat, immovable fact of impossibility. A man’s body disappears from a crypt——”
“Oh, it does, does it?” demanded Cross, jumping like a monkey on a stick. He leaned forward. “That’s what I was coming to. I said I was here to advise you, as a favor to your wife, and I insist on knowing what happened. It will take ten minutes before we get back to your house. Tell me about it.”
“Glad to. I was only wondering how much I’m supposed to tell. Of course, the police are there now, so it will have to come out, anyway. Captain Brennan——”
“Brennan?” demanded Cross, and put his hands on his knees with an air of alertness. “Not Francis Xavier Brennan? Foxy Frank? Fellow who’s always telling anecdotes about his father?”
“That’s the man. Do you know him?”
“I have known Frank Brennan,” said Cross, cocking a meditative eye, “since he was a sergeant. I get a Christmas card from him every year. He plays an admirable hand of poker; but he is limited. In any case, they all listen to me. Now go on with the story.”
As he listened, by some illusion Cross’s face seemed to grow alternately younger and older as some point pleased or displeased him. Occasionally he said, “Beautiful!” or gave a fillip to the brim of his rakish hat; but he only interrupted once, which was to tell the chauffeur to go slower.
“And you believed all this?” he asked.
“I don’t know what I believed or still believe. When they brought in that witchcraft business——”
“Witchcraft be blanked,” observed Cross, using a pungent term. “I trust that you will not insult the nobility of the black arts by comparing them to this piece of charlatanism. It’s murder, man! It’s murder: rather well stage-managed, and perhaps with a fine aesthetic conception behind it; but the contriver was of hesitant and bungling mind, and the best part of it was pure accident.”
“Are you going to tell me you have an idea how it was worked and who worked it?”
“Of course I have,” said Cross.
An enormous crash of thunder struck low and rolled in split echoes down the sky; it was followed almost instantly by the lightning, and then the windows grew even darker with driving rain.
“In that case, who is the murderer?”
“A member of that household, obviously.”
“I’ve got to warn you that they all have cast-iron alibis. Except, of course, the Hendersons——”
“I think I may assure you that the Hendersons had nothing to do with this. Besides, this was some one rather more intimately concerned with the death of Miles Despard, and affected by it, than the Hendersons could have been. As for your alibis, do not be impressed. When I murdered Royce (who, I may add, quite deserved death) I had a complete alibi: twenty people, including the waiter, were willing to testify that I was having dinner at Delmonico’s. It was an ingenious and amusing device, which I shall be happy to explain to you when there is more time. The same thing occurred when I committed the robbery by which I obtained my original means of livelihood. In this case there is scarcely an original feature. Even the means by which the body was stolen from the crypt, while executed with some degree of finesse, was improved on by my friend Bastion. Bastion finished his sentence in ’06; unfortunately, when he left us and returned to England, they were compelled to hang him; but in the meantime he did certain things which were, from an artistic standpoint, commendable. However, I see that we are slowing down.”
Stevens was out on the sidewalk almost before the car had stopped at the familiar gate. No lights showed in the house. But at the beginning of the walk leading up to the door stood a familiar bulky figure under an umbrella. The figure stared, so that the umbrella wobbled and rain splashed inside upon the neat overcoat of Captain Brennan.
“Frank,” said Cross, “come here. Get into the car.”
“So it’s you—” said Brennan, “Sorry, Mr. Cross, I can’t stop now. I’ve got business here. Afterwards——”
“You foxy-faced bandit,” said Cross, “I have learned more about this case in fifteen minutes than you have learned in a day. I’ll smarten things up. I’ll make the fur fly and take the watch-springs out of the miracles! Get into this car. I have somewhat to say unto you.”
Brennan, the umbrella flapping inside out, was in some fashion impelled into the car. Stevens, with the rain beating gratefully on his face, watched them drive away. He could not have spoken. His throat was thick, and relief left him almost physically dizzy. But he turned round and went up the walk to the front door, and Marie was waiting for him there.
XIX
They stood presently by a rear window of the living-room, looking out into the garden. He had his arm round her, and upon both of them was peace. It might have been six o’clock. The rain had almost ceased to stir and scamper on the eaves; though it was not yet twilight, there was a white mist in the garden. Dimly through it they could see the sodden grass, the shape of the elm tree, the flower-beds which had lost form and color. Their separate stories had been told.
“I don’t know why I couldn’t tell you,” she said, and her hand tightened round his waist. “Sometimes because it seemed too ridiculous, and sometimes because it seemed too awful. And then you were so—so easy. About everything. But people don’t easily get away from things like Aunt Adrienne. I broke away from her, of course, when I came of age.”
“It’s all over, Marie. There’s no reason to talk about it now.”
“But there is!” Marie said, and lifted her head up a little. Yet she did not tremble; the grey eyes were smiling. “That’s what’s caused all the trouble, not talking about it. I’ve always been trying to find out about it. You remember the first day we ever met each other, in Paris?”
“Yes. Number 16, rue Neuve St. Paul.”
“The house of—” She stopped. “I went there, and sat in the courtyard, and wondered whether I should feel anything. It sounds so completely absurd, now I do talk about it, that Aunt Adrienne must have had horrible powers. You never saw my home, Ted. I don’t want you ever to see it. There was a hill behind. …” She put her head back, so that he could see the full line of her throat, and it quivered, but not with fear. She was laughing. “Now, I’ve a sure cure for all this. If I should ever happen to get the blue devils again, or flinch, or have a nightmare sleeping or waking, I want you to do just one thing. You whisper, ‘Maggie MacTavish’ to me and I’ll be all right.”
“Why Maggie MacTavish?”
“T
hat’s my real name, darling. It’s a lovely name. It’s a magic name. You can’t turn it into anything else, no matter how hard you try. But I wish the Despards weren’t so… so… I don’t know what I mean. That house up there is so much like the one I used to live in that it brought the whole thing back to me when I thought you’d chased it out of my system. It’s funny; I couldn’t keep away from that house. It haunted me, or I haunted it. And listen, Ted, I really did ask about buying arsenic! That was the horrible part. I don’t know what——”
“Maggie,” he said, “MacTavish.”
“Oh, that’s all right. But I think the climax was that Saturday night when they were telling those ghost stories, and Mark told that foul one about… Any minute I thought I was going to start screaming. I felt I had to forget it for a little while or I would go out of my mind. And I did steal those drug tablets, though I put the bottle back next day. Ted, I don’t wonder at what you were thinking! Now the evidence against me is all piled up, it would have convinced myself if I’d thought of all of it. People have been burned at the stake on less.”
He drew her round to face him, and touched one of her eyelids.
“As a matter of academic interest,” he asked, “you didn’t happen to dose both yourself and me on the following Wednesday night, did you? That was the thing that stuck in my head most. I was dog tired that night, and I went to sleep at ten-thirty.”
“No, I honestly didn’t,” she told him. “That’s true, Ted. And, anyway, I couldn’t have, because I only took one tablet, after all, and I cut that in half when I——”
The Burning Court Page 21