‘You noticed.’ He chuckled, relaxed with the sound. ‘Sometimes I also think I’m from another epoch too or indeed from our own but have landed in the dark, feudal past. Even stethoscopes, which our great Laennec invented as long ago as 1816, seem like magic to some of my patients. They refuse to believe that I can hear their chests and diagnose. You’re probably not privy to the superstitions the locals hold. It all makes me a little thin-skinned … my temper … I’m sorry.’
Marguerite rescued him again from his floundering. ‘Your apology is accepted, Doctor. Please.’ She gestured him towards the leather armchair. ‘Have the police made any progress with the identity of your cadaver?’
He examined his shoes as if they might reveal a secret. ‘It’s one of the reasons I came. The police have grown rather lazy over the matter. And I … well I suspect there really is foul play involved, not only of the self-murdering kind. I thought, since you mentioned a friend in the police, you might try to use your influence with the force here to ensure a more complete investigation.’ He paused, looked down at his feet, which were long and heavily booted. ‘I went to enquire of the travellers.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Well, they weren’t altogether helpful. They don’t trust outsiders.’
‘Just like the good people of the region then. And perhaps with more reason?’
He nodded. ‘They said none of their group had gone missing. Nor had anyone left them since they’d set off on their travels from Marseilles.’
‘I see. From Marseilles.’
‘The thing is I didn’t believe their denials.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t quite know.’
‘You don’t think these people are capable of the truth?’
‘Perhaps. I’m not free of prejudice, it’s true. But there was something else.’
‘Oh?’
‘They were made nervous by my enquiry in a way I can’t pin down. Particularly one of the women. Her eyes … They had a particular kind of brightness. I don’t know. There was something. When she looked at the picture.’
‘The picture?’
‘Yes, I showed them the photographs.’
‘I would be interested in seeing them.’
‘That won’t be difficult.’ He rose to rifle through the bag he had left at the far side of the room. ‘I made two copies of the best of them. Things can go missing in our magistrates’ offices.’
He brought the pictures to her and displayed them with all the enthusiasm of a man engaged in sharing a passionate hobby.
Marguerite gazed at the shadowy, pockmarked face of the dead man. There was a brutishness in the angles, yet it was strangely peaceful despite cuts and bruises. Both eyelids were closed so it was not obvious which eye was missing, which perhaps accounted for the odd serenity of the expression. Like the frescoes of the saints in the church.
There had been photographs of poor, dear Olympe, too, but those had borne no relationship to the living woman.
The photograph dropped from her hand. She grasped the back of a chair.
‘I’m sorry. How stupid of me. This is distressing for you. I don’t know what I can be thinking of…’
‘No, no please. A moment’s clumsiness.’ Marguerite took a deep breath. ‘I’d like to look again. Have you learned anything more from your examination of the body?’
‘Oh yes, Madame. To make the body speak. To make it reveal its secrets. That is what scientific medicine is all about. You see here…’
He pointed to a bloated darker area around the left eye and forehead. ‘This is a contusion. Bruising. The vessels ruptured after some kind of fall or attack and blood spread making a discoloration. Therefore, it must have happened before the man died. Now here and here,’ he pointed to lines on the cheek and forehead and around the right eye, the one that was no longer there, ‘these are distinct scrapes, and cuts, where the face landed on the rails. But there is no discolouration, no bruising around them. Therefore it is likely that the blood was no longer flowing. The man, as I suspected, was already dead.’
‘And here?’ Marguerite pointed to some marks on the neck, evenly positioned, as if small buttons, or bites, or perhaps even a rope had left traces.
He stared, moved the photograph closer. ‘I shall have to look at that under the magnifying glass. I hadn’t noticed it before.’ He paused. ‘This is not really a suitable subject for a lady. Your husband will…’
Marguerite cut him off. ‘Do you have any idea how the poor man died, if it wasn’t by doing away with himself on the railway tracks?’
‘That’s just it. I can’t be sure.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I suspect there was poison in his system. The liver was irregular.’
‘From drink, perhaps.’
‘No, no. Not just that.’
‘His eye, too, strangely a single eye, the other having been ripped by a scavenging bird, I imagine. Or some particularly ruthless murderer. Well, the single pupil was contracted into a tiny point, which indicates opium use of some kind. I tried running some laboratory tests, but so far have found nothing conclusive. It has been cold. From one point of view the relative lack of decomposition is helpful. From another…’
‘There you are, Marguerite.’ Olivier strode in, stopping the doctor’s flow. The look he cast over Labrousse was one of haughty disapproval. It moved openly from the poor cut of his blue jacket, the frayed cuffs of his shirt and mismatched waistcoat, to the straggly lines of his beard and hair.
‘I don’t believe we’ve met properly, Monsieur.’
Dr Labrousse hastened to put the photographs away, his gestures clumsy with nervousness.
‘Have you not?’ Marguerite soothed. ‘I would have thought you were already acquainted with the medical examiner in the region, Olivier. But it’s true, Dr Labrousse has not been all that long in the area. I am sure you will interest each other.’
‘I dare say.’ Olivier couldn’t have been less polite if he had caught them in an embrace.
‘I don’t quite know how the doctor votes, but perhaps his influence…’
Olivier moderated his expression slightly, cleared his throat. ‘He’s very welcome, of course.’
‘I didn’t know Monsieur le Comte had announced his candidature?’
‘In three days’ time. I haven’t mentioned it yet, Marguerite, but there’s to be a little ceremony here. In the morning.’
‘I shall try and be here, Monsieur.’ The doctor was disarming. Marguerite wondered if he had heard what party Olivier was standing for.
Olivier nodded and turned back to Marguerite. ‘I thought you’d want to know, my dear. There’s some post for you. From Paris.’
Labrousse looked quickly at his pocket watch and picked up his case. ‘I must go now in any case. Madame, Monsieur le Comte.’ He bowed.
‘I trust I shall see you very soon, Doctor,’ Marguerite called after him. ‘We must continue our discussion. And I’ll see what I can do.’
Dressed in the full splendour of his blue and gold-braided livery, Georges conveyed her to the Tellier house in good time. On their last visit with Martine, the time he had spent at the inn had yielded only a little information. He had learnt that the family was considered rich, owned a good deal of property in the area, spent a substantial amount of time in Tours, and wasn’t much loved. Madame, in particular, thought herself too good for her neighbours. As for Yvette, no one seemed to remember her. She had evidently never gone to the inn.
Marguerite decided that on this visit, it would be best if the carriage took her all the way to the house. Having reason to believe that Madame Tellier might be impressed by such niceties, she had Georges deliver her card ahead of her.
The woman came to greet her almost as soon as Marguerite was through the door. She had a singular face, long and irregular, mismatched of feature, with protruding yellow teeth and a pronounced nose beneath which the dark shadow of a moustache cupped her bow-shaped upper lip
. The masculine features were in stark contrast to her hair, which was arranged in the same girlish Empire curls that Marguerite had noticed through her carriage window. Her wine-red dress, with its white stripe and lavish displays of lace at sleeves and bodice, had more flounces than her girth called for. But it was her eyes that trapped the attention. They darted. They leapt. They bulged with appreciation, envy and malice in rapid succession.
‘Madame, this is indeed an honour. I am most gratified.’
Marguerite returned the compliment. ‘It is kind of you to receive me at such short notice.’
She had a sense the woman needed to be treated with circumspection, like some poodle whose coif pretended to a civilisation that might at any moment drop away into a yapping and biting. Or a wild horse that had been left too long and only been partially broken. Looking at her, Marguerite instantly felt certain that the woman held the secret of Yvette’s whereabouts.
Madame Tellier ushered her through a hall filled with portraits and an assortment of rifles and revolvers into an over-furnished drawing room. Her deluge of words, evoking a crowded life in Tours from where her husband ran his business, matched the excesses of the room. It was packed with bric-a-brac from the far corners of the world. There were tables inlaid with ivory. Others sporting vast bronze trays with leather thongs. There were elephant tusks hung on the walls, rugs with an assortment of rich patterns and peacock feathers protruding from urns. There were armchairs with clawed feet and a vast bergère, and some heavy, carved benches. There were glazed boxes replete with giant shells and others containing rocks in outlandish colours. On the mantel of the blazing fireplace there were stuffed birds, and on the wall some grey, furry creature with an arc of whiskers.
‘A veritable empire of a room,’ Marguerite murmured.
Madame Tellier beamed with pride. ‘My forebears were ships’ captains and merchants who travelled the world. Far and wide. Far and wide.’
‘How lucky for you to have inherited such a varied collection. And for your daughters. Will they join us?’
‘You know my daughters?’
‘I have heard about them. Charming girls, I’m told.’
Marguerite wondered if she was overdoing her brief. The woman’s face had turned sceptical. She was not devoid of intelligence.
‘They will be down in a moment, if you like.’ She bared her prominent teeth in what was not altogether a smile, picked up a bell from a side table and shook it back and forth.
Madame Molineuf appeared so quickly that Marguerite was certain she had been listening at the door.
‘Bring tea, Huguette, and ask the girls to come down.’
‘Oui, Madame.’ The woman gave Marguerite a conspiratorial grin she couldn’t quite interpret.
‘And what brings you to us in Troo?’ Madame Tellier leaned back into her chair. They were sitting opposite each other at a small table in the half alcove formed by a window.
‘A double errand, Madame.’ Marguerite made up her mind on the instant. ‘My husband is hosting a party in some weeks’ time, which I hope you and Monsieur will be free to attend. I wanted to alert you in person, before the invitation came, since we haven’t had the occasion to meet before.’
‘Thank you, Madame.’ The woman bowed her head with due decorum.
‘The second thing is, I wanted to ask you about the sister of a young secretary of mine who was in service with you and who has disappeared. We’re all worried about her. Her name is Yvette Branquart.’
‘Yvette Branquart?’ The woman’s face stiffened into an equine mask. ‘A dangerous girl. I had her leave months ago now. Violent, she was. And wholly unreliable. Why one day I caught her in her room with a riding crop in her hand. It was bloodied. Can you imagine? And the minx wouldn’t tell me how it had got that way. There was blood on the floor, too.’
Marguerite sat up very straight. ‘You have no idea where the blood came from?’
‘No. I can only imagine she had vented her violence on some animal or…’ Her gaze flew to the window.
Marguerite followed it. In the distance swinging from the overhanging branch of a tree was the lumbering youth she now recognised as P’tit Ours. He was lowering himself on to a high wall, his eyes fixed on a woman below who moved slowly towards him. Then he leapt into the neighbouring property. Marguerite held her breath. The woman standing there was regal in her proportions. Like the high priestess of some antique cult, she handed him a cup, watched him drink. She stroked his hair and the youth preened, his grin as big as his face. From the depths of his jacket, P’tit Ours brought out a jar and, like some chivalric knight offering a precious tribute to his lady, handed it to her with a flourish.
Even from where she sat, it was clear to Marguerite that the woman was dark, a mulatto, with an intricate coiffure of gleaming oiled hair. She thought of Baudelaire’s mistress, Jeanne Duval. She thought of the stone-throwing children she had encountered the last time she was in the village. They had probably never seen an African before.
‘Is that the woman the children call the witch?’ she heard herself ask Madame Tellier.
‘I have no idea.’ The woman was fuming. ‘She has no business being here. None at all.’ In a second, she was up from her chair and out of the room without a word of apology. Through the half-closed door, Marguerite could hear her screaming at Madame Molineuf about her degenerate son.
The stout servant seemed immune to her screams. She appeared at the door bearing a tray and deposited it on the table in front of Marguerite, poured tea and grumbled a litany of plaints.
‘Trouble. Only trouble ever since he came on to this earth. And now he wants a woman, doesn’t he? Somewhere to stick it in, like all of them. What am I to do? It’s not as if he hasn’t had plenty of people to learn from around here. All right, so I’ll beat him again, for all the good it’ll do.’ Madame Molineuf paused to look out of the window. ‘He’s gone now in any case. What’s the use? No discipline. And the old master’s as drunk as a ship’s captain on a stormy night. Only the storm’s gone on for days and days.’
‘What you mumbling about, woman?’
The wreck of a giant Marguerite had glimpsed on her first visit appeared in the doorway and came in with a lunge. ‘Is that my breakfast then?’ he pointed a gnarled finger at the tray. ‘Don’t stretch to much these days, do we?’ His face might be a mass of ruptured veins and jowls, his walk a slippered shuffle, his thick, velvet robe and knotted scarf spotted with the remains of she didn’t know what substances, but the eyes he directed at Marguerite had a dark lustre about them that made her sit up in her chair as soon as they pinioned her.
‘Or is she my breakfast?’ A malicious laugh broke from the man, as he patted and pummelled the red setter who trailed him. He relished Marguerite’s discomfort.
Madame Tellier came racing into the room after him. ‘You’re up, Papa,’ she said in a small girl’s piping voice. ‘That’s good. That’s good.’ The sound altered her face, her gestures. The large, middle-aged woman was transformed into a skittish maid.
‘Here, sit down here. You’ll be comfortable here.’ She plumped pillows and tended to him. ‘Huguette will bring you a proper breakfast.’
She seemed to be in a trance, as if the man Marguerite had mistaken for her husband were a mesmerist rather than her father.
‘What’s that one doing here?’ He pointed his stick at Marguerite as he lowered his bulk into an armchair. Madame Tellier propped a footstool under his leg and placed a tray table in front of him.
‘Pay no attention to her, Papa. She’s only come for me. She wanted to know about Yvette. You remember Yvette, don’t you? A cheat, you called her.’
‘A bribing, blackmailing strumpet is what I called her.’ The old man leered at Marguerite. ‘Friend of yours, is she? You here for money too? Everybody wants money from old Napoléon. Everybody. Even the puffed-up priests. Bribing, cheating, blackmailing. What do you cost?’
Marguerite rose. ‘Best if I go now, Madame, and leave you
to your duties.’
The woman whipped round to face her. Marguerite stepped back, suddenly afraid. There was violence in the air.
‘You know what that girl did? That Yvette you’re looking for. She knocked him out. Knocked him cold. A helpless old man. Dangerous, like I told you. Good riddance to her. An animal.’
‘Do you know where she might have gone? Where she might be now?’
The old man cackled, as if she had addressed him. ‘If someone hasn’t done her in, she’s in a brothel, I imagine. Playing a tasty little virgin.’
‘Now, Papa,’ Madame Tellier chided him in her little girl’s voice, a coy look on her face. ‘You don’t care a fig for all that. You know you don’t.’
‘Thank you, then. Goodbye.’
Marguerite’s mind reeled. She had to get out of the house quickly. The Telliers filled her with a kind of clammy shame, as if she had walked into a house of ill repute thinking it was an ordinary family home and was now covered in some kind of invisible pigswill.
As she settled into the carriage, she tried to separate out atmosphere from information and make sense of what she had heard. Yvette Branquart had a bloodied riding crop. Yvette Branquart was dangerous. She was a strumpet and a cheat, a blackmailing, bribing strumpet.
She thought of Martine, who said she looked like her sister, a frail, rather innocent slip of a girl, and the words on the lips of that repulsive man filled her with disbelief and rage. It must have been the other way around. Of course. The man had tried to force himself on Yvette, perhaps even tried to bribe her into performing sexual favours, and she had pushed him away, perhaps used a riding crop. What then?
Marguerite imagined a scene of violence. The giant of a man would certainly have emerged the winner. And Yvette? Could the girl be lying dead somewhere in a shallow grave, victim of that monster’s rampant desires? Or of that huge simpleton’s she had spied in the garden? Always wanting to stick it somewhere, his mother had said, not mincing her words.
Marguerite shivered. She looked through the carriage window and above her in the distance saw a curtain move and a large head fill the space. The woman from the garden. The witch. Once more, Marguerite saw the woman beckon to her with a gracious yet incomprehensible gesture. It occurred to her that she should ring her bell. But it was too late today. She would come back.
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