by Joan Aiken
“On the quai? Good God no,” Ellen objected. “We should be drenched.”
Last night’s storm had dwindled to a steady, penetrating summer rain which appeared likely to continue all day.
Germaine shrugged. “Eh bien, then let us go to the Café Thiémet; if you have some money on you, that is. I have none.”
Ellen had money and agreed; she did not like the Café Thiémet, a large, crowded, noisy place, but did not wish to stand arguing in the rain with Germaine, who looked haggard and hollow-eyed; her normal bisque pallor had turned to the damp yellow-white of fishmonger’s marble.
They walked the few blocks to the café, both sheltered under Ellen’s umbrella, Ellen devoutly hoping that no one would see and recognize her apparently promenading with a young ouvrier; but she herself was wearing an old black mantle and hat remaining from her months of mourning for her mother, and could have been mistaken for any shabby dressmaker or ladies’ maid.
But who, on this dismal day, would give them a second glance? The streets were full of dispirited horses slipping on the wet cobbles, and impatient coachmen lashing and swearing; no one who could help it was on foot in such weather.
The Café Thiémet was packed with steaming, dripping customers; but Germaine, with her customary vigor and tenacity, thrust a path to the back and secured a table under the noses of two affronted matrons, who shrugged indignantly and moved elsewhere.
“Deux café cognacs,” she ordered the garçon.
“No cognac for me,” said Ellen, but he had gone.
“Alors, I will drink them both,” said Germaine impatiently. “You, I daresay, had breakfast; I did not; I have been walking about the streets all night.”
“Germaine—what happened?” burst out Ellen. “Did she—did you—was it an accident?”
“Hush! Not so loud! The flics are certainly looking for me, and I daresay this place is full of their informers. No—how stupid you are! Of course it was no accident. She was bent, poor idiot, on self-destruction. I came home last night and found her there, with the child, my pistol beside her, writing me a letter full of condemnation and commination. I argued with her—naturally—did my best to dissuade her—but she was crazy—imbecile—quite beyond reason. Her only retort was to threaten to shoot me. And I value my life, I assure you! I had no intention of being snuffed out by such a poor-spirited creature.”
Germaine lifted her head arrogantly. In the shabby workman’s clothes she looked young, rough, and intractable; her nostrils spread, her wide mouth tightened.
The boy returned with their two cups of coffee, and she gulped one down hungrily.
“Ah! That’s better. I was hollow as a drum.”
“So what happened?”
“So—despite all my arguments—she carried out her threat; shot first the child, then herself.” Ellen shuddered, her imagination flinching from the scene. “Well, what could I do?” said Germaine. “I could not prevent her. She had the pistol. I removed the letter she had written—which uttered all sorts of idiocies and blamed me for every ill in her life. Bad enough she should be found in my place, no need to have it all spelt out for the popular press. Then I climbed out of the window onto the roof, for I knew old Madame Pelletier downstairs would have raised the alarm when she heard shots; I dared not go down the stairs. Luckily Madame had not seen me come in—she was in the wineshop. I crawled along the roof and in through Matthieu Rotrou’s attic window; he always leaves it open and is dead drunk by that time of night. And I walked the streets till morning, as I told you. By bad luck there was no cash in my room. Only afterwards I thought that she probably had some on her; I could have kicked myself.”
Ellen shivered at this ruthlessness.
“But, Germaine—”
“Hush! Not so loud!”
“Why do you not go to the police? If—if your story is true, they will believe you. Show them her letter.”
“I tore it up.” Germaine’s lip curled. “Whining, self-pitying—it disgusted me.”
“But you cannot live like—like a fugitive—for long. It will only make them suspect you. And they are bound to catch up with you.”
“You talk folly. I would make the perfect scapegoat. Why should Louise de la Ferté—with everything in the world—make away with herself? What a shocking idea! No, it is by far more likely that I—hungry, jealous, disappointed—dispatched her in some fit of passion and despair. Think what a fine headline that would make for Le Siècle on the railway bookstalls! A Sapphist murder!”
“What do you plan to do?”
“Oh, I will go and live quietly in the country for a while, in the Bocage, maybe, or the Camargue—somewhere they’ll never think of looking—till the brouhaha is over. But I shall need cash, and this is where you, my dear Callisto, can be helpful.”
“I am afraid I have no more than two hundred francs on me,” said Ellen, beginning to dig in her reticule.
“Thanks—that will be useful.” Germaine took the money without demur. “But what I really need is for you to act as emissary for me. Will you take this letter to my publishers? I can’t go myself, the flics may be watching the place. Villedeuil owes me four thousand francs, and I’ll ask him to give you the money; on that I can live for months, till the furore has died down. If they can’t get hold of me, very likely they will fall back on Raoul and arrest him. The idea of a husband killing his wife is always popular, specially if he is young, rich, and handsome. The public love that.”
“How can you be so heartless?”
“Oh, you are such a self-centered little English prig.” Germaine gulped down Ellen’s coffee and ordered two more; she had an unerring knack of catching the waiter’s eye. “Will you go to Villedeuil for me?” she demanded. “His office is in the rue d’Aumale.”
“Yes; very well; I will go.” Ellen was not at all sure that she ought, but she had been stung by that “self-centered English prig”; she had failed Louise, but she wanted to demonstrate to somebody—herself perhaps—that she could be useful to somebody in this tragedy.
“Good. In that case I’ll be obliged if you will go directly; the sooner I leave town, the better. I should like to set off tonight.”
“Will the publishers be able to obtain the money so fast?”
“Certainly; old Villedeuil does excellently out of my work; he will not want me sent to the guillotine. I have explained the whole matter in this.” She handed a letter to Ellen. “Now, where shall we meet? We should not return here. I will see you at the Sainte Chapelle, upstairs, at four o’clock. Now you had better run along—but stay, you will need a little cash for a fiacre. There—that should be sufficient. By the bye, have you finished translating my Contes Tristes?”
“No, I am only halfway through.”
“Well, we will talk about that later; adieu for the present.”
Rather indignant at being thus coolly dismissed, Ellen took a fiacre to the publisher’s office (not without difficulty, the wet weather had rendered transport very scarce); during the twenty-minute drive she had leisure to reflect on Germaine’s story. Was it true? It had an air of probability—but that, for a practiced storyteller, would be easy to contrive. Still, what benefit would there be for Germaine in killing Louise? She had just demonstrated—if demonstration were needed—her total, cold-blooded practicality. It seemed wholly improbable that she would commit a crime of passion or impulse—or kill a child who meant nothing to her—let alone perform the deed in her room, where suspicion would instantly fall on her.
No, it had been the last vengeful act of Louise, who intended that the finger of blame should point at her heartless friend.
More in charity with Germaine after arriving at this conclusion, Ellen alighted at the publisher’s office, and asked the cab to wait. She sent Germaine’s letter in to the editor, who soon appeared looking alarmed. He was a short, fat man with a sallow complexion—the last
person, Ellen thought, in whom one would have expected to find an appreciation of literary merit; but he seemed genuinely appalled at Germaine’s predicament.
“Such a remarkable talent! Such a terrible blow!” he kept repeating. “I have sent my head clerk to the bank for the money, mademoiselle; he will be back very soon. Oh, it is deplorable that a writer such as our friend should be subjected to such shifts and difficulties. I think she bids fair in time to rival Madame Sand—if only she had the income to support herself while she writes, if she did not lead such a hand-to-mouth existence! What a disaster that the Comtesse is dead—the papers are full of it—where will our friend find such a patron again?” He glanced nervously out of the window. “Is that a police agent across the road?”
“I have no idea,” said Ellen.
“If only they do not come to question me! Ah, here is Charpentier, at last, with the money; and I have given Mademoiselle double what she asks; her new novel, La Religieuse, is just printed; the clerks are doing up the bundles now; I have printed six thousand, and with the publicity over this case, I am certain to have demands for another six thousand, very likely more! It will be a succès fou! Tell our friend, when she has an address in the country, to write to me—not here, but at an accommodation address”—he gave Ellen a card—“and I will keep her supplied with funds.”
“Thank you, monsieur.”
Ellen left the office, glancing warily at the man leaning against a lamppost—who did resemble a police spy—and told the driver of the fiacre to take her to Notre-Dame. There she paid him off, went into the cathedral, and knelt in prayer in the candlelit dimness. She felt troubled, confused, and grief-stricken; for whom, she could hardly have said; for all the parties in this tragic affair, herself not least.
What will become of me now? she wondered.
The cathedral clock struck the half hour and she rose stiffly from the chill stone floor. Leaving by a side door, she walked slowly in the direction of the Sainte Chapelle, glancing cautiously about her. Nobody seemed to be taking any interest in her movements. The rain had stopped at last, and walkers thronged the streets.
At the Sainte Chapelle she climbed to the upper floor, which was dusty and deserted, except for one slight, shabby figure.
“You got it without difficulty?” said Germaine eagerly. “Thanks, Callisto!” For the first time that day she smiled—her full, fascinating smile. Already she looked revived—less haggard, her eyes brighter.
“What do you wish me to do about the translation?”
Ellen felt her sympathy sink, in inverse ratio to this recovery; she spoke rather coldly.
“Let me think! Why do you not send it, when it is finished, to the English publisher Longman? I have the address—here.” Germaine scribbled on a small tablet she carried. “If they like it—if they wish to print it—tell them to send any moneys to M. Villedeuil; he can act as my agent. He is an honest fellow—as publishers go.”
“Very well,” said Ellen. “And—I wish you luck.”
“Thanks, mon amie, I wish you the same,” said Germaine absently. “I suppose you must now be looking for another situation? It is a pity. If Raoul is not arrested, you could do worse than marry him.” She tossed off this suggestion carelessly, as a joke, but then, struck by her own percipience, added, “Yes! Marry him, why don’t you? He has a penchant for English girls, he is quite ready to fall in love with you; I have seen it in his eyes. And you are everything she was not: rational, gentle, kind. She had seen his interest too—that contributed more fuel to her melancholia. Accustomed to his helpless devotion, she was quite shocked to see it withdrawn and conferred on another—even though she despised him.” Germaine spoke rapidly and authoritatively, as though she had already made notes on the matter, for fictional purposes. She went on, “But if you were married to Raoul, I am sure you could handle him a thousand times better. In fact we might—”
She grinned almost her old urchin grin at Ellen, who broke in, utterly scandalized, “Oh, hush! How can you say such things at such a time. If you could have seen that poor man! Has he not been cheated enough? Leave him alone, you have done him enough harm already. He is not a fit subject for jokes.”
Germaine raised her classic brows.
“Oh, oh, touchy, are we? Mademoiselle Fine-Airs considers herself above such tawdry calculations, eh? Well, let me tell you, my dear”—her lips drew back, her tone was suddenly guttural, vicious, hostile—“I may do harm, as you put it in your censorious way, but I do good too, to my friends; I live, I love, I create, I give devotion and admiration where they are deserved. But what do you do, you coldhearted hypocrite? I used to watch you, nose in air, at those salons. You think yourself so much above us low-class writers! Nor did you make the least push to befriend or advise Louise—though I daresay you could have done so. You did not comfort Raoul, though if you had given him the least encouragement he would have turned to you and left off pestering Louise. All you did was walk about with your chin up, studying only what impression you were making on other people, or dreaming of that narcissistic professor in Brussels. You have no red blood in you. You work so hard at perfecting yourself that you never turn aside to look at other people. Your veins are full of fish glue!”
“Oh,” exclaimed Ellen, hurt and outraged at this tirade. “How dare you?”
But Germaine had spun round on her heel and, with her free, supple stride, walked to the end of the chapel and ran down the stair. By the time Ellen had followed to the lower room, the cap, blue blouse, and black corduroys were nowhere to be seen.
Ellen made her way into the street. Her cheeks stung as though she had been slapped. Numb, shocked, bitterly wounded, she turned her steps mechanically in the direction of the rue de l’Arbre Vert.
The worst part of her pain consisted in the consciousness that there had been a good deal of justice in what Germaine said.
* * *
When she reached the Hôtel Caudebec she was thunderstruck to find waiting for her a hostile reception committee composed of Princess Tanofski and Lady Morningquest.
“Ma’am!” exclaimed Ellen, curtseying and then embracing her godmother. “I am so relieved to see you—but oh, in what dreadful circumstances.”
Lady Morningquest did not waste time in greetings and exclamations. Her face was ravaged by grief, and ominously severe.
“Where in the world have you been? Why did you choose, on this day of all days, to absent yourself for such a period of time? The Princess has been in great anxiety about you—as indeed have I—”
“I—I am exceedingly sorry, ma’am. I—I went out—”
“To buy black gloves, I can see that. You might have considered that the Princess would have occasion for your services. Now: she and I have been taking counsel together about you. Since the wretched Raoul has been arrested—”
“What is that you say?” gasped Ellen. “They have arrested Monsieur le Comte?”
“Oh, it was bound to happen. They always arrest the husband in such a case. They will probably let him go again, by and by; his high-placed relatives are all at work pulling strings. At all events, he has been taken off in police custody. So there will be no impropriety in your remaining here for a few days more, while you can make yourself useful to the Princess; her dame de compagnie cannot get here until Tuesday. After that you must, of course, come to me, until we can decide what to do with you.”
Lady Morningquest spoke drily; it was evident that she regarded her goddaughter’s predicament as nothing but a nuisance.
Ellen could only repeat, “They have arrested Monsieur le Comte? But how could they? Surely they can have had no reason for supposing that he had anything to do with—with the deaths? Let alone evidence? It is complete injustice.”
Lady Morningquest’s face became even more disapproving. “That is as may be. Apparently Raoul was in the habit of visiting a maison—a house of assignation in the str
eet close to where the murder took place.”
“Oh, heavens—”
“And last night, it seems, he was there; actually there, in the same street, he admitted it himself. So naturally the police assume that he committed the murder.”
Shocked, crushed, Ellen muttered, “But he did not do it. Louise put an end to her own life.”
“How do you know that?” pounced Princess Tanofski.
There was nothing for it—specially after Germaine’s accusation of selfishness and hypocrisy; Ellen could not stand by and see Raoul charged with a crime she knew he had not committed. She said, “Germaine de Rhetorée told me. She was there, she saw it all. Louise came to her room in the Passage Langlade, reproached her bitterly, then shot herself and—and Menispe—”
“You have seen Germaine de Rhetorée?” exclaimed both ladies together. “Where?”
“I met her at the Sainte Chapelle. I brought some money for her, from her publisher.”
Her interlocutresses threw up their eyes to heaven.
“And where is the miserable creature now?” demanded the Princess.
“I do not know. She said she was going a long way off—into the country.”
“You will have to tell all this story to the police,” said Lady Morningquest, very sternly. “Merciful heaven! What the papers will make of it all, I shudder to contemplate.”
* * *
The next few days were exceedingly unpleasant for Ellen. She was subjected to endless interrogations by the police, who treated her with marked suspicion and hostility when they discovered that she had had clandestine dealings with one of the parties in the tragedy who had now disappeared.
For a whole day, Ellen was not even certain whether they believed her, and it seemed highly possible that she, too, might be taken into custody like Raoul. Luckily Villedeuil the publisher substantiated her story and was able to produce Germaine’s letter to him; and the servants at the Hôtel Caudebec bore witness that Ellen had been within doors during the evening when the death of Louise had taken place; this was sourly confirmed by the Abbé and Princess Tanofski. Ellen’s connection with the British Ambassador and his lady also stood her in good stead.