“Ah!” said Charles Rambert: “at last!”
The two porters who, with the stationmaster, constituted the entire railway staff at Verrières, came bustling along the platform, and while the bell continued its monotonous whirring ring, pulled forward trucks in readiness for any possible luggage. Puffing portentously, the engine slackened speed, and the heavy train slowed down and finally stopped, bringing a noisy atmosphere of life into the station of Verrières that but a moment ago was so still.
The first-class carriages had stopped immediately in front of Charles and Thérèse, and on the footboard Etienne Rambert stood, a tall, elderly man of distinguished appearance, proud bearing and energetic attitude, with extraordinarily keen eyes and an unusually high and intelligent forehead. Seeing Thérèse and Charles he seized his baggage and in a twinkling had sprung on to the platform. He dropped his valise, tossed his bundle of rugs on to a seat, and gripped Charles by the two shoulders.
“My boy!” he exclaimed; “my dear boy!”
Although he had hitherto shown so little affection for his child, it was obvious that the man was making a great effort to restrain his emotion, and was really moved when he now saw him again as a grown young man.
Nor, on his part, did Charles Rambert remain unmoved. As if the sudden grip of this almost stranger, who yet was his father, had awakened a world of memories within him, he turned very pale and his voice faltered as he replied:
“Papa! Dear papa! I am so glad to see you!”
Thérèse had drawn tactfully aside. M. Rambert still held his son by the shoulders and stepped back a pace, the better to consider him.
“Why, you are a man! How you have altered, my boy! You are just what I hoped you would be: tall and strong! Ah, you are my son all right! And you are quite well, hey? Yet you look tired.”
“I did not sleep well,” Charles explained with a smile. “I was afraid I should not wake up.”
Turning his head, M. Rambert saw Thérèse and held out his hand.
“How do you do, my little Thérèse?” he exclaimed. “You have altered too since I saw you last. I left a little chit of a child, and now I behold a grown-up young lady. Well! I must be off at once to pay my respects to my dear old friend, your grandmother. All well at the château, eh?”
Thérèse shook hands warmly with M. Rambert and thanked him prettily.
“Grandmamma is very well; she told me to tell you to excuse her if she did not come to meet you, but her doctor says she must not get up very early.”
“Of course your grandmamma is excused, my dear. Besides, I have to thank her for her kindness to Charles, and for the hospitality she is going to extend to me for a few days.”
Meanwhile the train had gone on again, and now a porter came up to M. Rambert.
“Will you take your luggage with you, sir?”
Recalled to material things, Etienne Rambert contemplated his trunk which the porters had taken out of the luggage van.
“Good Lord!” he began, but Thérèse interrupted him.
“Grandmamma said she would send for your heavy luggage during the morning, and that you could take your valise and any small parcels with us in the brougham.”
“What’s that? Your grandmamma has taken the trouble to send her carriage?”
“It’s a long way to Beaulieu, you know,” Thérèse replied. “Ask Charles if it isn’t. We came on foot and the walk would be too tiring for you after a whole night in the train.”
The three had reached the station yard, and Thérèse stopped in surprise.
“Why, how’s that?” she exclaimed; “the carriage is not here. And yet Jean was beginning to get it ready when we left the château.”
M. Etienne Rambert was resting one hand on his son’s shoulder, and contemplating him with an affectionate, all-embracing survey every now and then. He smiled at Thérèse.
“He may have been delayed, dear. I tell you what we will do. Since your grandmamma is going to send for my luggage there is no need for me to take my valise; we can leave everything in the cloak-room and start for the château on foot; if my memory serves me right—and it is a very good memory—there is only one road, so we shall meet Jean and can get into the carriage on the way.”
A few minutes later all three set out on the road to Beaulieu. M. Rambert walked between the two young people; he had gallantly offered his arm to Thérèse, who was not a little proud of the attention, which proved to her mind that she was now regarded as a grown-up young lady. On the other side of his father Charles made answer to the incessant questions put to him.
M. Etienne Rambert enjoyed the walk in the quiet morning through the peaceful country-side. With a tender half-melancholy he recognised every turn in the road, every bit of scenery.
“Just fancy my coming back here at sixty years of age, with a great son of eighteen!” he said with a laugh. “And I remember as if it were yesterday the good times I have had at the château of Beaulieu. Mme. de Langrune and I will have plenty of memories to talk over. Gad! it must be quite forty years since I came this way, and yet I remember every bit of it. Say, Thérèse, isn’t it the fact that we shall see the front of the château directly we have passed this little copse?”
“Quite true,” the girl answered with a laugh. “You know the country very well, sir.”
“Yes,” said Etienne Rambert; “when one gets to my age, little Thérèse, one always does remember the happy days of one’s youth; one remembers recent events much less distinctly. Most likely that means, my dear, that the human heart declines to grow old and refuses to preserve any but pictures of childhood.”
For a few minutes M. Rambert remained silent, as if absorbed in somewhat melancholy reflections. But he soon recovered himself and shook off the tender sadness evoked in his mind by memories of the past.
“Why the park enclosure has been altered,” he exclaimed. “Here is a wall which used not to be here: there was only a hedge.”
Thérèse laughed.
“I never knew the hedge,” she said. “I have always seen the wall.”
“Must we go on to the main gate?” M. Rambert asked, “or has your grandmamma had another gate made?”
“We are going in by the out-buildings,” the girl answered; “then we shall hear why Jean did not come to meet us.” She opened a little door half-hidden among the moss and ivy that clothed the wall surrounding the park, and making M. Rambert and Charles pass in before her, cried: “But Jean has gone with the brougham, for the horses are not in the stable. How was it we did not meet him?” Then she laughed. “Poor Jean! He is so muddle-headed! I would not mind betting he went to meet us at Saint-Jaury, as he does every morning to bring me home from church.”
The little company, Etienne Rambert, Thérèse and Charles, were now approaching the château. Passing beneath Mme. de Langrune’s windows Thérèse called merrily up to them.
“Here we are, grandmamma!”
There was no reply.
But at the window of an adjoining room appeared the figure of the steward, Dollon, making a gesture, as if asking for silence.
Thérèse, in advance of her guests, had proceeded but a few yards when Mme. de Langrune’s old servant rushed down the stone flight of steps in front of the château, towards M. Rambert.
Dollon seemed distraught. Usually so respectful and so deferential in manner, he now seized M. Rambert by the arm, and imperiously waving Thérèse and Charles away, drew him aside.
“It is awful, sir,” he exclaimed: “horrible: a fearful thing has happened. We have just found Mme. la Marquise dead—murdered—in her room!”
III. THE HUNT FOR THE MAN
M. de Presles, the examining magistrate in charge of the Court at Brives, had just arrived at the château of Beaulieu, having been notified of the tragedy by the police sergeant stationed at Saint-Jaury. The magistrate was a young, fashionable, and rather aristocratic man of the world, whose grievance it was to be tied down to work that was mechanical rather than intellectual. He was e
ssentially modern in his ideas, and his chief ambition was to get away as quickly as possible from the small provincial town to which he had been exiled by the changes and chances of promotion; he was sick of Brives, and now it occurred to him that a crime like this present one would give him an opportunity of displaying his gifts of intuition and deduction, prove his quality, and so might enable him to get another appointment. After Dollon had received him at the château, the magistrate had first of all made enquiry as to who was in the house at the time. From the information given him he was satisfied that it was unnecessary to subject either Thérèse or Charles Rambert to immediate examination, both of the young people being much too upset to be able to reply to serious questions, and both having been taken away to the house of the Baronne de Vibray. It was, also, clear that M. Rambert senior, who had only arrived after the crime, could not furnish any interesting information.
“Tell me exactly how you discovered the crime, M. Dollon,” he said as, pale and trembling, the steward accompanied him along the corridor to the scene of the murder.
“I went this morning as usual, sir,” the steward replied, “to say good morning to Mme. de Langrune and receive her orders for the day. I knocked at her door as I always did, but got no answer. I knocked louder, but still there was no answer. I don’t know why I opened the door instead of going away; perhaps I had some kind of presentiment. Oh, I shall never forget the shock I had when I saw my poor dear mistress lying dead at the foot of her bed, steeped in blood, and with such a horrible gash in her throat that for a moment I thought her head was severed from the trunk.”
The police sergeant corroborated the steward’s story.
“The murder certainly was committed with peculiarly horrible violence, sir,” he remarked. “The body shows that the victim was struck with the utmost fury. The murderer must have gone mad over the corpse from sheer lust of blood. The wounds are shocking.”
“Knife wounds?” M. de Presles asked.
“I don’t know,” said the sergeant uncertainly. “Your worship can form your own opinion.”
The magistrate followed the steward into the room where Dollon had taken care that nothing was touched.
In its furniture and general arrangement Mme. de Langrune’s room corresponded with the character of the old lady. It was large, and quietly furnished with old presses, arm-chairs, chairs and old-fashioned tables. It was evident that she had had no liking for modern fashions, but had preferred to have her own room stamped with the rather severe, yet very comfortable character of former days.
The whole of one side of the room was filled by the Marquise’s bed. It was large, and raised upon a kind of dais covered with a carpet of subdued tones. At the foot of the bed, on the right, was a large window, fastened half open despite the keen cold, no doubt for hygienic reasons. In the middle of the room was a round mahogany table with a few small articles upon it, a blotting-pad, books and so on. In one corner a large crucifix was suspended from the wall with a prie-Dieu in front of it, the velvet of which had been worn white by the old lady’s knees. Finally, a little further away, was a small escritoire, half open now, with its drawers gaping and papers scattered on the floor.
There were only two ways of ingress into the room: one by the door through which the magistrate had entered, which opened on to the main corridor on the first floor, and the other by a door communicating with the Marquise’s dressing-room; this dressing-room was lighted by a large window, which was shut.
The magistrate was shocked by the spectacle presented by the corpse of the Marquise. It was lying on its back on the floor, with the arms extended; the head was towards the bed, the feet towards the window. The body was almost naked. A gash ran almost right across the throat, leaving the bones exposed. Torrents of blood had saturated the victim’s clothes, and on the carpet round the body a wide stain was still slowly spreading wider.
M. de Presles stooped over the dead woman.
“What an appalling wound!” he muttered. “The medical evidence will explain what weapon it was made with; but no doctor is required to point out the violence of the blow or the fury of the murderer.” He turned to the old steward who, at sight of his mistress, could hardly restrain his tears. “Nothing has been moved in the room, eh?”
“Nothing, sir.”
The magistrate pointed to the escritoire with its open drawers.
“That has not been touched?”
“No, sir.”
“I suppose that is where Mme. de Langrune kept her valuables?”
The steward shook his head.
“The Marquise could not have had any large sum of money in the house: a few hundred francs perhaps for daily expenses, but certainly no more.”
“So you do not think robbery was the motive of the crime?”
The steward shrugged his shoulders.
“The murderer may have thought that Mme. de Langrune had money here, sir. But anyhow he must have been disturbed, because he did not take away the rings the Marquise had laid upon the dressing-table before she got into bed.”
The magistrate walked slowly round the room.
“This window was open?” he asked.
“The Marquise always left it like that; she liked all the fresh air she could get.”
“Might not the murderer have got in that way?”
The steward shook his head.
“It is most unlikely, sir. See: the windows are fitted outside with a kind of grating pointing outwards and downwards, and I think that would prevent anyone from climbing in.”
M. de Presles saw that this was so. Continuing his investigation, he satisfied himself that there was nothing about the furniture in that room, or in the dressing-room, to show that the murderer had been through them, except the disorder on and about the little escritoire. At last he came to the door which opened on to the corridor.
“Ah!” he exclaimed: “this is interesting!” and with a finger he pointed to the inner bolt on the door, the screws of which were wrenched half out, showing that an attempt had been made to force the door. “Did Mme. de Langrune bolt her door every night?” he asked.
“Yes, always,” Dollon answered. “She was very nervous, and if I was the first to come to bid her good morning I always heard her unfasten that bolt when I knocked.”
M. de Presles made no reply. He made one more tour of the room, minutely considering the situation of each single article.
“M. Dollon, will you kindly take me where I can have the use of a table and inkstand, and anything else I may need to get on with my preliminary enquiry?”
“Your clerk is waiting for you in the library, sir,” the steward replied. “He has everything ready for you there.”
“Very well. If it is convenient to you we will join him now.”
M. de Presles followed Dollon down to the library on the ground floor, where his enterprising clerk had already established himself. The magistrate took his seat behind a large table and called to the police sergeant.
“I shall ask you to be present during my enquiry, sergeant. The first investigations will devolve upon you, so it will be well for you to hear all the details the witnesses can furnish me with. I suppose you have taken no steps as yet?”
“Beg pardon, sir: I have sent my men out in all directions, with orders to interrogate all tramps and to detain any who do not give a satisfactory account of their time last night.”
“Good! By the way, while I think of it, have you sent off the telegram I gave you when I arrived—the telegram to the police head-quarters in Paris, asking for a detective to be sent down?”
“I took it to the telegraph office myself, sir.”
His mind made easy on this score, the young magistrate turned to Dollon.
“Will you please take a seat, sir?” he said and, disregarding the disapproving looks of his clerk, who had a particular predilection for all the long circumlocutions and red tape of the law, he pretermitted the usual questions as to name and age and occupation of the witnesses, a
nd began his enquiry by questioning the old steward. “What is the exact plan of the château?” was his first enquiry.
“You know it now, sir, almost as well as I do. The passage from the front door leads to the main staircase, which we went up just now, to the first floor where the bedroom of the Marquise is situated. The first floor contains a series of rooms separated by a corridor. On the right is Mlle. Thérèse’s room, and then come guest-chambers which are not occupied now. On the left is the bedroom of the Marquise, followed by her dressing-room on the same side, and after that there is another dressing-room and then the bedroom occupied by M. Charles Rambert.”
“Good. And the floor above: how is that arranged?”
“The second floor is exactly like the first floor, sir, except that there are only servants’ rooms there. They are smaller, and there are more of them.”
“What servants sleep in the house?”
“As a general rule, sir, the two maid-servants, Marie the housemaid and Louise the cook, and also Hervé the butler; but Hervé did not sleep in the château last night. He had asked the mistress’s permission to go into the village, and she had given it to him on condition that he did not come back that night.”
“What do you mean?” enquired the magistrate, rather surprised.
“The Marquise was rather nervous, sir, and did not like the idea of anyone being able to get into the house at night; so she was always careful to double-lock the front door and the kitchen door herself every night. She went round all the rooms too every night, and made sure that all the iron shutters were properly fastened, and that it was impossible for anyone to get into the house. When Hervé goes out in the evenings he either sleeps in the village and does not return till the following morning, which is what he did to-day or else he asks the coachman to leave the yard door unlocked, and sleeps in a room above the stables which as a rule is not occupied.”
“That is where the other servants sleep, I suppose?”
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