The Woman of Mystery

by Maurice Leblanc

  "Let us go now, Elisabeth."

  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 Elisabeth.

  Her voice shook as she spoke. She handed him the key. He removed the padlock and seized the door-handle. But Elisabeth 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, Elisabeth had walked across the room and was standing in front of the picture. Her mother's face was in the shadow and[Pg 38] 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. Elisabeth 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," Elisabeth entreated, "what is it? What are you trying to say?"

  "That… that is the woman who killed my father!"

  [Pg 39]

  CHAPTER III

  THE CALL TO ARMS

  The hideous accusation was followed by an awful silence. Elisabeth was now standing in front of her husband, striving to understand his words, which had not yet acquired their real meaning for her, but which hurt her as though she had been stabbed to the heart.

  She moved towards him and, with her eyes in his, spoke in a voice so low that he could hardly hear:

  "You surely can't mean what you said, Paul? The thing is too monstrous!"

  He replied in the same tone:

  "Yes, it is a monstrous thing. I don't believe it myself yet. I refuse to believe it."

  "Then-it's a mistake, isn't it?-Confess it, you've made a mistake."

  She implored him with all the distress that filled her being, as though she were hoping to make him yield. He fixed his eyes again on the accursed portrait, over his wife's shoulder, and shivered from head to foot:

  "Oh, it is she!" he declared, clenching his fists. "It is she-I recognize her-it is the woman who killed my-"

  [Pg 40]A shock of protest ran through her body; and, beating her breast, she cried:

  "My mother! My mother a murderess! My mother, whom my father used to worship and went on worshiping! My mother, who used to hold me on her knee and kiss me!-I have forgotten everything about her except that, her kisses and her caresses! And you tell me that she is a murderess!"

  "It is true."

  "Oh, Paul, you must not say anything so horrible! How can you be positive, such a long time after? You were only a child; and you saw so little of the woman… hardly a few minutes…"

  "I saw more of her than it seems humanly possible to see," exclaimed Paul, loudly. "From the moment of the murder her image never left my sight. I have tried to shake it off at times, as one tries to shake off a nightmare; but I could not. And the image is there, hanging on the wall. As sure as I live, it is there; I know it as I should know your image after twenty years. It is she… why, look, on her breast, that brooch set in a gold snake!… a cameo, as I told you, and the snake's eyes… two rubies!… and the black lace scarf around the shoulders! It's she, I tell you, it's the woman I saw!"

  A growing rage excited him to frenzy; and he shook his fist at the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville.

  "Hush!" cried Elisabeth, under the torment of his[Pg 41] words. "Hold your tongue! I won't allow you to…"

  She tried to put her hand on his mouth to compel him to silence. But Paul made a movement of repulsion, as though he were shrinking from his wife's touch; and the movement was so abrupt and so instinctive that she fell to the ground sobbing while he, incensed, exasperated by his sorrow and hatred, impelled by a sort of terrified hallucination that drove him back to the door, shouted:

  "Look at her! Look at her wicked mouth, her pitiless eyes! She is thinking of the murder!… I see her, I see her!… She goes up to my father… she leads him away… she raises her arm… and she kills him!… Oh, the wretched, monstrous woman!…"

  He rushed from the room.

  ____________________

  Paul spent the night in the park, running like a madman wherever the dark paths led him, or flinging himself, when tired out, on the grass and weeping, weeping endlessly.

  Paul Delroze had known no suffering save from his memory of the murder, a chastened suffering which, nevertheless, at certain periods became acute until it smarted like a fresh wound. This time the pain was so great and so unexpected that, notwithstanding his usual self-mastery and his well-balanced mind, he utterly lost his head. His thoughts, his actions, his attitudes, the words which he yelled into[Pg 42] the darkness were those of a man who has parted with his self-control.

  One thought and one alone kept returning to his seething brain, in which his ideas and impressions whirled like leaves in the wind; one terrible thought:

  "I know the woman who killed my father; and that woman's daughter is the woman whom I love."

  Did he still love her? No doubt, he was desperately mourning a happiness which he knew to be shattered; but did he still love Elisabeth? Could he love Hermine d'Andeville's daughter?

  When he went indoors at daybreak and passed Elisabeth's room, his heart beat no faster than before. His hatred of the murderess destroyed all else that might stir within him: love, affection, longing, or even the merest human pity.

  The torpor into which he sank for a few hours relaxed his nerves a little, but did not change his mental attitude. Perhaps, on the contrary, and without even thinking about it, he was still more unwilling than before to meet Elisabeth. And yet he wanted to know, to ascertain, to gather all the essential particulars and to make quite certain before taking the resolve that would decide the great tragedy of his life in one way or another.

  Above all, he must question Jerome and his wife, whose evidence was of no small value, owing to the fact that they had known the Comtesse d'Andeville. Certain matters concerning the dates, for instance, might be cleared up forthwith.

  [Pg 43]He found them in their lodge, both of them greatly excited, Jerome with a newspaper in his hand and Rosalie making gestures of dismay.

  "It's settled, sir," cried Jerome. "You can be sure of it: it's coming!"

  "What?" asked Paul.

  "Mobilization, sir, the call to arms. You'll see it does. I saw some gendarmes, friends of mine, and they told me. The posters are ready."

  Paul remarked, absent-mindedly:

  "The posters are always ready."

  "Yes, but they're going to stick them up at once, you'll see, sir. Just look at the paper. Those swine-you'll forgive me, sir, but it's the only word for them-those swine want war. Austria would be willing to negotiate, but in the meantime the others have been mobilizing for several days. Proof is, they won't let you cross into their country any more. And worse: yesterday they destroyed a French railway station, not far from here, and pulled up the rails. Read it for yourself, sir!"

  Paul skimmed through the stop-press telegrams, but, though he saw that they were serious, war seemed to him such an unlikely thi
ng that he did not pay much attention to them.

  "It'll be settled all right," he said. "That's just their way of talking, with their hand on the sword-hilt; but I can't believe…"

  "You're wrong, sir," Rosalie muttered.

  He no longer listened, thinking only of the trag[Pg 44]edy of his fate and casting about for the best means of obtaining the necessary replies from Jerome. But he was not able to contain himself any longer and he broached the subject frankly:

  "I daresay you know, Jerome, that madame and I have been to the Comtesse d'Andeville's room."

  The statement produced an extraordinary effect upon the keeper and his wife, as though it had been a sacrilege to enter that room so long kept locked, the mistress' room, as they called it among themselves.

  "You don't mean that, sir!" Rosalie blurted out.

  And Jerome added:

  "No, of course not, for I sent the only key of the padlock, a safety-key it was, to Monsieur le Comte."

  "He gave it us yesterday morning," said Paul.

  And, without troubling further about their amazement, he proceeded straightaway to put his questions:

  "There is a portrait of the Comtesse d'Andeville between the two windows. When was it hung there?"

  Jerome did not reply at once. He thought for a moment, looked at his wife, and then said:

  "Why, that's easily answered. It was when Monsieur le Comte sent all his furniture to the house… before they moved in."

  "When was that?"

  Paul's agony was unendurable during the three or four seconds before the reply.

  "Well?" he asked.

  [Pg 45]When the reply came at last it was decisive:

  "Well, it was in the spring of 1898."

  "Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight!"

  Paul repeated the words in a dull voice: 1898 was the year of his father's murder!

  Without stopping to reflect, with the coolness of an examining magistrate who does not swerve from the line which he has laid out, he asked:

  "So the Comte and Comtesse d'Andeville arrived…"

  "Monsieur le Comte and Madame le Comtesse arrived at the castle on the 28th of August, 1898, and left for the south on the 24th of October."

  Paul now knew the truth, for his father was murdered on the 19th of September. And all the circumstances which depended on that truth, which explained it in its main details or which proceeded from it at once appeared to him. He remembered that his father was on friendly terms with the Comte d'Andeville. He said to himself that his father, in the course of his journey in Alsace, must have learnt that his friend d'Andeville was living in Lorraine and must have contemplated paying him a surprise visit. He reckoned up the distance between Ornequin and Strasburg, a distance which corresponded with the time spent in the train. And he asked:

  "How far is this from the frontier?"

  "Three miles and three-quarters, sir."

  "On the other side, at no great distance, there's a little German town, is there not?"

  [Pg 46]"Yes, sir, Ebrecourt."

  "Is there a short-cut to the frontier?"

  "Yes, sir, for about half-way: a path at the other end of the park."

  "Through the woods?"

  "Through Monsieur le Comte's woods."

  "And in those woods…"

  To acquire total, absolute certainty, that certainty which comes not from an interpretation of the facts but from the facts themselves, which would stand out visible and palpable, all that he had to do was to put the last question: in those woods was not there a little chapel in the middle of a glade? Paul Delroze did not put the question. Perhaps he thought it too precise, perhaps he feared lest it should induce the gamekeeper to entertain thoughts and comparisons which the nature of the conversation was already sufficient to warrant. He merely asked:

  "Was the Comtesse d'Andeville away at all during the six weeks which she spent at Ornequin? For two or three days, I mean?"

  "No, sir, Madame le Comtesse never left the grounds."

  "She kept to the park?"

  "Yes, sir. Monsieur le Comte used to drive almost every afternoon to Corvigny or in the valley, but Madame la Comtesse never went beyond the park and the woods."

  Paul knew what he wanted to know. Not caring[Pg 47] what Jerome and his wife might think, he did not trouble to find an excuse for his strange series of apparently disconnected questions. He left the lodge and walked away.

  Eager though he was to complete his inquiry, he postponed the investigations which he intended to pursue outside the park. It was as though he dreaded to face the final proof, which had really become superfluous after those with which chance had supplied him. He therefore went back to the chateau and, at lunch-time, resolved to accept this inevitable meeting with Elisabeth. But his wife's maid came to him in the drawing-room and said that her mistress sent her excuses. Madame was not feeling very well and asked did monsieur mind if she took her lunch in her own room. He understood that she wished to leave him entirely free, refusing, on her side, to appeal to him on behalf of a mother whom she respected and, if necessary, submitting beforehand to whatever eventual decision her husband might make.

  Lunching by himself under the eyes of the butler and footman waiting at table, he felt in the utmost depths of his heart that his happiness was gone and that Elisabeth and he, thanks to circumstances for which neither of them was responsible, had on the very day of their marriage become enemies whom no power on earth could bring together. Certainly, he bore her no hatred and did not reproach her with her mother's crime; but unconsciously he was angry[Pg 48] with her, as for a fault, inasmuch as she was her mother's daughter.

  For two hours after lunch he remained closeted with the portrait in the boudoir: a tragic interview which he wished to have with the murderess, so as to fill his eyes with her accursed image and give fresh strength to his memories. He examined every slightest detail. He studied the cameo, the swan with unfurled wings which it represented, the chasing of the gold snake that formed the setting, the position of the rubies and also the draping of the lace around the shoulders, not to speak of the shape of the mouth and the color of the hair and the outline of the face.

  It was undoubtedly the woman whom he had seen that September evening. A corner of the picture bore the painter's signature; and underneath, on the frame, was a scroll with the inscription:

  Portrait of the Comtesse H.

  No doubt the portrait had been exhibited with that discreet reference to the Comtesse Hermine.

  "Now, then," said Paul. "A few minutes more, and the whole past will come to life again. I have found the criminal; I have now only to find the place of the crime. If the chapel is there, in the woods, the truth will be complete."

  He went for the truth resolutely. He feared it less now, because it could no longer escape his grasp. And yet how his heart beat, with great, painful[Pg 49] throbs, and how he loathed the idea of taking the road leading to that other road along which his father had passed sixteen years before!

  A vague movement of Jerome's hand had told him which way to go. He crossed the park in the direction of the frontier, bearing to his left and passing a lodge. At the entrance to the woods was a long avenue of fir-trees down which he went. Four hundred yards farther it branched into three narrow avenues. Two of these proved to end in impenetrable thickets. The third led to the top of a mound, from which he descended, still keeping to his left, by another avenue of fir-trees.

  In selecting this road, Paul realized that it was just this avenue of firs the appearance of which aroused in him, through some untold resemblance of shape and arrangement, memories clear enough to guide his steps. It ran straight ahead for some time and then took a sudden turn into a cluster of tall beeches whose leafy tops met overhead. Then the road sloped upwards; and, at the end of the dark tunnel through which he was walking, Paul perceived the glare of light that points to an open space.

  The anguish of it all made his knees give way beneath him; and he had to make an effort to procee
d. Was it the glade in which his father had received his death-blow? The more that luminous space became revealed to his eyes, the more did he feel penetrated with a profound conviction. As in the room[Pg 50] with the portrait, the past was recovering the very aspect of the truth in and before him.

  It was the same glade, surrounded by a ring of trees that presented the same picture and covered with a carpet of grass and moss which the same paths divided as of old. The same glimpse of sky was above him, outlined by the capricious masses of foliage. And there, on his left, guarded by two yew-trees which Paul recognized, was the chapel.

  The chapel! The little old massive chapel, whose lines had etched themselves like furrows into his brain! Trees grow, become taller, alter their form. The appearance of a glade is liable to change. Its paths will sometimes interlock in a different fashion. A man's memory can play him a trick. But a building of granite and cement is immutable. It takes centuries to give it the green-gray color that is the mark which time sets upon the stone; and this bloom of age never alters. The chapel that stood there, displaying a grimy-paned rose-window in its east front, was undoubtedly that from which the German Emperor had stepped, followed by the woman who, ten minutes later, committed the murder.

  Paul walked to the door. He wanted to revisit the place in which his father had spoken to him for the last time. It was a moment of tense emotion. The same little roof which had sheltered their bicycles projected at the back; and the door was the same, with its great rusty clamps and bars.

  He stood on the single step that led to it, raised[Pg 51] the latch and pushed the door. But as he was about to enter, two men, hidden in the shadow on either side, sprang at him.

  One of them aimed a revolver full in his face. By some miracle, Paul noticed the gleaming barrel of the weapon just in time to stoop before the bullet could strike him. A second shot rang out, but he had hustled the man and now snatched the revolver from his hand, while his other aggressor threatened him with a dagger. He stepped backwards out of the chapel, with outstretched arm, and twice pulled the trigger. Each time there was a click but no shot. The mere fact, however, of his firing at the two scoundrels terrified them, and they turned tail and made off as fast as they could.