“Assuredly,” sighed Benedict Masson, when they read him this testimony— “assuredly it was rough on the poor child. She did not deserve that.”
“You wretch!” the judge could not resist saying. “You foresaw that she might catch you in the midst of your crimes when you forbade her to come to see you at Corbillieres-on-the-Water.”
“No, my lord,” exclaimed Benedict Masson. “No, I did not, to quote your own words, foresee my crimes — a phrase which is no longer used by the nobility except in classic tragedies. If I did not invite Mlle. Norbert to visit me in Corbillieres-on-the-Water, it was because the scenery is not pretty, not at all pretty.”
CHAPTER XXXV
LAST NEWS OF THE MARCHIONESS
SUCH CYNICISM, SUCH ferocity, and such painstaking to increase in every detail the horror inspired by the series of murders of which Benedict Masson only declared himself innocent in mere words, giving his statements in such a tone that they were robbed beforehand of all value, and as if he himself did not take them seriously — this had the result of inspiring thoughts in the mind of Jacques Cotentin, which could only take root in a mind so scientific, in a mind so logically open, and so prepared by severe methods that it could not be influenced by contingencies.
“This man races to death as a deliverance,” thought the prosecutor to himself. “That, above all, is what his replies prove. If he could prove that he had committed these crimes, he would do it. Not being able to do so, he is unchaining upon himself the fury of the judges and the public, whom he disdains, by his own attitude.
“But, at the same time, he is avenging himself beforehand for the error which will hand him over to the executioner, by declaring: ‘I am innocent.’ That would be quite just, if he did not add: T defy you to prove me guilty.’ All Benedict Masson’s words are true.
“And, in the meantime, they have not found any trace of the other six victims. As for the seventh, he was right when he said: ‘Because a man cuts a woman in pieces and puts her in his stove, that is no proof that he has killed her.’”
But Jacques Cotentin kept these thoughts to himself. He did not like useless arguments. He knew that he could not change the minds of the people in regard to the facts of the man’s guilt, which were apparently so evident. He took, above all, the greatest care to hide his secret thoughts from Christine. She had seen too much to have one minute’s doubt about Benedict Masson being a most abominable criminal.
In the meanwhile the watchmaker’s daughter received a brief message from Coulteray.
Adieu, Christine. All is finished.
The great tragedy which had befallen her at Corbillieres, and the physical and moral prostration which had followed in its train, had made her forget the other tragedy which was no less somber, no less ghastly, that was taking place in another corner of France, and which had been the determining cause of her visit to Masson.
Jacques Cotentin also, fearing for a time for Christine’s life and reason, gave no more thought to the marchioness and her desperate appeal.
A great sorrow present is selfish. It exacts your every care and gives you no opportunity to look around you until its wounds are closed up. Besides, we must not forget that, on the whole, the reality of the marchioness’s misfortunes had still to be proven, even though it is true the “trocar” had produced some effect. It still remained to be proved if the marchioness had not exaggerated or endeavored to pass upon some one else the madness which was hers.
However this was, during the horror of the affair at Corbillieres the trocar, which Christine had taken in her bag to show to Benedict, had disappeared. Where? When? How?
Probably at the moment when Christine, carried away by her terror and the wind, began to run in the marsh. The bag might have come open and the little surgical pistol could easily have fallen out.
Christine and Jacques did not ask themselves these questions until the marchioness’s brief, mournful message came to them.
Benedict Masson’s ghastly crimes had so effaced everything which did not have a direct relation, or seem to have a direct relation, to these crimes at Corbillieres, that Christine had not spoken of the odd trocar to any one.
But it had not been found by any one, despite the investigations of the judges, who searched all Corbillieres and its swamps thoroughly, in the hope of finding the remains of the six victims. If the detectives had found such a curious object, they certainly would have reported it.
“Let us go down there,” Christine said suddenly to the doctor. “We have waited too long. Perhaps I shall have caused the death of this unfortunate creature by my skepticism, my pride, and my self-assurance. If we still have a chance to save her, don’t let us miss it. I am already overcome with remorse. I thought myself so intelligent, when I’m nothing but a stupid creature.
“My coolness in judging people and things, my much-talked-of poise, only covered a stupidity which frightens me. Are you calm, you Jacques? Yes, perhaps in the eyes of the imbeciles; But I have always seen your disturbed mind. Nothing ever appears impossible to you. I was astonished that you didn’t laugh the first time that I mentioned the malady of vampirism which raged in the Coulteray home.
“When I, in a tone which might have made all the wise men of the earth envious of me, said ‘Science,’ you replied ‘Mystery.’ I looked upon father as a monomaniac, while he is really a genius. I have loved Gabriel without believing it. Perhaps I love him still without believing it.”
“Oh, Christine!” protested Jacques, with infinite sadness.
“Forgive me, Jacques, but I don’t want to hide anything from you. You all have been too much on your knees to me. I have seen the marquis on his knees. I have seen Benedict Masson on his knees. But what I have not seen — I, who thought I knew all and could divine all — is that they were monsters, those two. Jacques, let us hurry to Coulteray.”
“You are still very weak, Christine.”
“That is a very good reason for a trip to the country. The doctor has advised a trip to the mild climate of Touraine to set me up again. No one will be astonished at my absence, and the magistrates cannot object to it. Besides, the investigations are about over. They will not find the other six victims, because he made smoke of them. Oh, the wretch, when I think that he dedicated verses to me and that he wept over my hands — You will come, Jacques?”
“You know very well that I will do all that you wish. And then, perhaps you are right — we may be of some use down there.”
“May Heaven hear you! But, alas — she writes that it is all over.”
“It was not over, as long as she was able to write, Christine.”
“Well, tell father. Gabriel will not suffer by your absence?”
“No. I can leave now. I can be away for any length of time, providing your father stays and watches.”
“Oh, he won’t leave him. Did you notice that he could scarcely leave him to come and see me from time to time, and how quickly he returned. No other being in the world has been cared for like Gabriel. Poor, dear papa — Gabriel is a part of his life, and yours also, Jacques.”
“No. My life is all yours, Christine!”
“Well, now let’s be off. Let us get away from this place, this isle, where I still seem to hear that wretch prowling around me, with his frightfully melancholy smile and his verses — his verses which he whispered in a liturgical tone: ‘For the love of God, avert not your brows when you pass near me. Let your glance remain cold in this motionless lake,’ et cetera, and others on the same order which filled me with ease under my statuelike surface — for underneath it all I am a sentimentalist, yes, truly, something like Jenny the working girl — only, it’s not flowers that I need, it is poetry.”
“Do not joke — do not joke, Christine; you are a sentimentalist — one is only great by sentiment and by kindness, and you have been kind.”
“Kind to you — kind to him — kind to everybody — and, yet, I make you all suffer. Do I know what I want?”
She ended with a
great cry that finished in a sob.
That same evening he took her away. Yes, she had to leave Paris. And he determined, once they were in Touraine, that he would look after her as if she were a child; he would tend her down there amidst the fields and flowers, in the soft radiance of the passing summer.
And he was pleased, in spite of himself, to read in the newspapers, when they arrived in Tours, of the death of Bessie Annie Elizabeth, Marchioness of Coulteray.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE CHATEAU OF COULTERAY
HIS HAPPINESS WAS of short duration. Christine, from whom he could not hide the news, wanted to start immediately for Coulteray. All her weariness had disappeared.
“If she died through my fault,” she said, “if she died because I did not listen to her, I will avenge her. At least, I owe her that. I feel that her spirit will never forgive me unless I do.”
She was in a highly agitated state, which did not abate until the early hours of the morning, when she found herself beside Jacques in a motor, which would get them to Coulteray at ten o’clock in the morning.
“I must be more calm,” she said, “for we must take him by surprise. He must not have any suspicions.”
All that Jacques could say to her was of no avail. She no longer listened to him. All her thoughts were centered on the marquis. She did not utter ten words all the way to Coulteray.
Under different circumstances the trip would have been a delightful one for lovers. Jacques thought of this, but always at the moment when he seemed closest to her, Christine, for one reason or another, seemed farthest away from him.
Never had Nature been so beautiful, nor so mild.
It was toward the end of September. A golden sun sent out its vaporous caress on the kingdom of the Loire. Corot could not have done better. Jacques placed his hand on Christine’s, but she was very cold. In all this happy, pleasant journey, he was only thinking of life, while she was thinking only of that death toward which they were hastening at forty miles an hour.
When they arrived at Coulteray, the bells of the little village church and the bells of the chapel at the château were tolling dismally.
“They are evidently going to bury her to-day,” said Christine, her eyes filling with tears.
“I want to see her for the last time. I know what I want to whisper in her ear, if we can only get there before the ceremony.”
As for Jacques, it seemed to become more and more impossible for him to unite himself with her sad thoughts. He would have liked to have stolen the charm of this hour from the dead woman.
The sight of the little village on the side of the hill, looming out of the verdure and showing its white walls, its pointed roofs, its fields and vineyards; the beautiful, scintillating stretch of water, which emptied itself, or, rather, was lost, in the Loire a little further on; the welcoming smile on the faces of those they met by the wayside, beheld on the doorsteps of the little houses which opened frankly on their domestic happiness; had not prepared him to listen to this doleful litany of bronze, which the bells were sending forth; he would have preferred to have heard them announcing a wedding or a baptism.
The motor passed over the brick bridge, from where the road branched out and wound under the trees and through beds of flowers to the château facing them on the hill.
Buildings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance abounded in this part of the country, and enhanced the beauty of the landscape on every side.
There was not a voyager who would not have stopped with a feeling of admiration before the imposing ruins, the magnificent fragments of the ancient Château of Chatelier, or of that of Guerche, or of that of Roche-Corbon of the Isle Bouchard, or of that of De Montbazon, or of that of Chinon. The Château de Coulteray did not suffer by comparison with any one of this collection.
Its wall-like architecture was no less remarkable — its battlements, its moats, its towers, and the remarkable friezes and has-reliefs so delicately carved on the exterior. The legend was that Dian de Poitiers had done much to ornament this formidable building, and that Catherine de Medici had also spent much effort in transforming it into a comfortable dwelling. But in this charming landscape even the Middle Ages seemed gay.
“The poor marchioness must have certainly been ill, if she couldn’t recover here,” said Jacques.
At the door of the first wall to the castle, or rather at the remains of what had been the first walls — stones, climbing plants and flowers — they descended from the car. There was a crowd in the courtyard, the bailiwick. All the countryside had gathered there. They had come to the obsequies through curiosity and superstition — for they are very superstitious in the Coulteray region, perhaps more so than in all the rest of Touraine, and, certainly, as much so as in Brittany, although in a different way.
They had not come to see the dead, but to have a look at the marquis, who was commonly called throughout the country the Vampire, for, without believing very much about it, they did not reject this legend which had been told them to frighten them when they had been little children.
The gruesome adventures of Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, who had escaped from his tomb and roamed about at night, devouring living beings, had been replaced to advantage for the little boys of Coulteray by stories of the werewolves of other countries.
When the owners of the castle were absent the caretaker allowed visitors to see the crypt of the chapel, and he never failed to tell the visitors the story, two centuries old, of this empty tomb.
“But do you believe it?” asked one visitor with a smile.
“Certainly,” replied the keeper, nodding his head. “One believes it and yet one doesn’t believe it.”
What can be more versatile than the Tourainian character, with its petulant good sense, its inconsequence, its keen mind, its mocking philosophy, its skepticism, and its foolish imagination?
What can be more interesting than this type of wonderful versatility, which, at the moment that it is taken seriously, passes, without any effort, from buffoonery to the gravest subjects, from futility to the most serious consideration, sometimes with an audacity quite unexpected?
All this is not a useless digression, as we stand on the threshold of Coulteray, at the moment when the tomb was about to be closed on the waxlike face of Annie Elizabeth, wife of the last of the Coulterays, wife of this Georges-Marie-Vincent, who is none other than Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, the vampire of the legend, as we stand here just a short time before the happening of extraordinary events which will overthrow the whole countryside.
We must not forget that we are in a part of the country where there is an inn called the Fairy Grotto, whose sign is a druid’s stone that is visited by the most amiable goblins. Not far from this druid’s stone is another one of immense proportions, called Gargantua’s Palace, and just a few kilometers from this one there is the long rapier of St. Nicholas coppice — a mound of rough stone belonging to the Celtic times when the Wizard Orfon had amassed immense riches and took great pleasure in making a noise with his treasures on Christmas Night.
All this is charming, pleasing, and poetical superstition peculiar to that part of the country, where one may live happily, and which in no way recalls the terrors of Brittany. But, however, the country is, in the main, still bound by certain customs. There are certain festival days with which the most skeptic would not care to meddle. So, keeping this in mind, we shall not be surprised at what is about to happen.
In the first place, we can give no better approximate account of the moral situation, from this point of view of the inhabitants of Coulteray, than by relating briefly the way they were received by the marquis on various occasions. He did not come to Coulteray until in the prime of his life, and when he did appear it was a great event, let us say at once that it was a most joyful event.
Georges-Marie-Vincent had appeared to be the perfect type of country gentleman of Touraine, a jolly fellow, florid in color, who took great pleasure in countryside festivities. In addition to thi
s, he was not at all proud, he gave rustic entertainments, danced with all the girls, and paid for remarkable banquets at the Fairy Grotto Inn during the annual festivals.
The Vampire, as they continued to call him among themselves with amusement, was very popular. Everyone doted on him. “Our Vampire, is he in good health?” they would ask. “Let us hope that the devil will preserve him for another two or three hundred years.”
Then he had gone away. He returned to foreign lands. They heard nothing of him for many years. Then he came back. He had not changed. He was still the same good fellow, with the same florid face and the same good humor. But the peasants themselves had grown old.
He brought with him from India a young wife as beautiful as the day, worthy of the Fairy Grotto. He was very attentive to her. They appeared to adore each other.
Many great parties were given in his honor and also in honor of the great lords who came from beyond the Manche to visit them, and who did not believe in being melancholy. The gay visitors usually returned to Paris, leaving with many regrets.
Some months later, when Georges-Marie-Vincent returned with his marchioness to Coulteray, he was still the same. There was no change in his person. He was in perfect health, and seemed to look on life gayly. But already it was difficult to recognize his wife.
She had lost her fresh color. Her eyes, which had reflected the blue of the skies, were veiled with dark shadows. She, whom they had seen so swift in movement — as light as Diana, the huntress, running about the woods — now passed by reclining languidly in the depths of her carriage, replying to the respectful greetings of the villagers with a sad and exhausted air.
Meanwhile one of the peasant women, who had been in charge of the laundry at the castle, married a brigadier in the gendarmerie and found herself trying to do something for which she got no thanks.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 400