The Dark Secret of Josephine rb-5

by Dennis Wheatley

  Two-thirds of the place had been gutted to form a lofty studio, and it now had two storeys only at its far end. There, a steep, narrow stairway, flush with the partition wall, ran up to a four-foot square landing giving access to a single door, which was presumably that of a bedroom overlooking the river. But, apparently, Madame Remy did not usually conduct her business up there; as, at one side of the studio before a small fire of sea-coal stood a broad couch covered with rugs and cushions. Near it was a table on which two candles, stuck in the necks of empty bottles, were burning. Otherwise, apart from a wicker chair, a battered oak chest, and a cracked mirror above the fireplace, the big apartment was bare of furniture.

  Swaying her hips seductively, the woman walked in front of Roger towards the couch. As she did so she must have caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, for she said in a honeyed Creole voice:

  "Down in these parts it isn't often that one sees a fine gentleman like you. But I promise you won't repent your visit. A West Indian girl can show most Frenchmen a few things they don't know; and perhaps you are the very one I have been waiting for to set me up in a better place."

  As she finished speaking she turned about and dropped him a curtsy. It was when rising from it with a smile that she got her surprise; but not the one that Roger had intended. He got one too. He found himself face to face with Lucette.

  Their meeting in Paris was so totally unexpected that neither had recognized the voice of the other, and it was not until they had come into the light of the candles that they had had the chance to discern one another's features. But now it was plain from the expressions on the faces of them both that neither had the least doubt about the other's identity.

  "You!" Lucette breathed the word with hatred and alarm. Next second her right hand darted downward through a placket hole in her skirt. In the same movement she stooped. As she came upright her hand emerged grasping an eight-inch long stiletto that she had drawn from die top of her stocking. Her dark eyes flashing she whirled it on high and came at Roger like a tigress.

  Without moving from where he stood he thrust up the thick malacca handle of his sword-cane, and parried the slash she made at his neck. Then he hit her hard beneath the chin. With a moan she went down backwards on the couch. Throwing aside his cane, he sprang upon her, seized her wrist and gave it a violent wrench. She uttered a cry of pain. Her fingers relaxed their grip upon the knife, and it fell with a tinkle on to the bare boards. Releasing her he picked it up and stuck it in the top of his jack-boot. Then he dusted his hands together, and said:

  "I owed you that. Since you remember me, you may also remember having knocked me down m the cabin of the Circe when I had hardly enough strength in my legs to stand up without assistance."

  "Remember you!" she panted, struggling into a sitting position. "Is it likely that I could ever forget you, after the ill you've done me. You are my jinx! Before we met I lived a fine carefree life. Since, everything has gone wrong. It was you who killed de Senlac. It was you who caused the break-up of the fraternity over which I reigned as Queen. I decided to settle down and keep a good, respectable house in St. Pierre. You came there and had me flung into prison."

  "You would have had a hanging, had I not had to take flight the day after I had you arrested," Roger put in quickly.

  Her face became clouded with a puzzled frown. "What mean you by 'take flight'? You were the Governor there, and they told me you had been recalled to England."

  "So I told my staff, but it was not the fact" Roger's brain had been working overtime for the last few minutes. He thought it unlikely that Lucette could do him any serious harm, but that it would nevertheless be prudent to give her some story to account for his presence in Paris. Some adaptation of his stock box-and-cox autobiography was obviously the most plausible line; so, with a not very pleasant little laugh, he went on:

  "From the fluency with which I speak French you must have realized that I am half a Frenchman, and although I was brought up in England I am wholly French at heart. I have long served the Republic secretly, and had hoped to strike a great blow for it by enabling Victor Hugues to retake Martinique. But he sent me warning that our plot was on the verge of discovery. I got away while I could, and from England employed a smuggler to run me across to France. What happened to you after I left?"

  "With you no longer there, they could bring no evidence of piracy against me," she replied morosely, "but your denunciation caused Colonel Penruddock to treat me most scurvily. He had me charged with keeping a disorderly house and I was sentenced to three months' imprisonment. When I came out I found myself ruined. The pretty mulatto wenches for whom I had paid high prices had vanished; the house slaves had looted my property and run away. Only the house itself was left, and that stripped from cellar to rafters."

  "So, for a change, you have learnt what it feels like to be despoiled."

  Her eyes gleamed hatred at him. "That I owe to you! And the wretched state to which I am now reduced. By the sale of the house I raised just enough money to get me to France. I had a project here which I have always kept for an emergency; believing that were I ever in need I could count on it to secure me a regular pension. But so far it has not matured. Meanwhile, I have been forced to become a wharf-hands' whore, and either starve or submit to the brutalities of any drunken swine who has a fancy to put me through my paces."

  Roger nodded. "Touching this project of yours. It is upon that I have come to see you."

  "What!" she cried, springing to her feet. "I thought your visit a chance one: that you had been sent here by one of the maguereaux who find men for me and take a commission on my earnings. Do you mean that you are come to play the jinx again, and rob me of my last chance to enjoy an old age in some comfort. That I must have! I must; for I am no longer young!"

  She had been sitting with her back to the candles, but had turned as she sprang up, and her face, now fully lit by them, confirmed her words. From the fact that Josephine was her foster sister, Roger knew that both of them must be well over thirty. The former had kept her looks remarkably well; so had Lucette up till six months ago, but since then her imprisonment and the life she was now leading had caused a swift deterioration to set in. The muscles of her cheeks had gone slack, her complexion had become slightly raddled, there were great hollows under her fine eyes, and the outer corner of the left one was still a little discoloured from a bruise where one of her transitory lovers must have blackened it for her.

  Knowing her past, Roger felt no compassion for her, and replied tersely: "Your future means nought to me. I am now an official of the French Government, and have been sent to enquire into your doings. You have been endeavouring to blackmail Madame de Beauharnais, have you not?"

  Seeing her hesitate, he added: "Come! I have no time to waste; and I have men outside awaiting my orders. If you refuse to answer my questions I will have them take you off to prison."

  "You put a hard interpretation on it," she muttered sullenly. "Marie-Rose Josephine is my foster sister. She owes me much: for it was through being of service to her that I was thrown out of her father's house, and became what I am."

  Roger gave a cynical little laugh. "You seem to have forgotten that you told me the whole story yourself, and that there is another side to it. Had it not been for your example in taking a lover she might not have been incited to go to such lengths with William de Kay. But, that apart, it was you who planned and induced her to go through this form of marriage which has since proved the curse of .her life; so she can owe you nothing but the bitterest reproaches."

  "I intended it only for her happiness. She should remember that, and that in girlhood we were devoted friends. She is rich, and could well afford to give me the small pension which is all I meant to ask."

  "She might have, had that been all, and you had gone to ask it of her yourself. But it was not You meant to bleed her white. For that, to conceal your identity in case she went to the police, you had to have an intermediary, and for the purpose have been using C
itizen Fouché"

  Fear showed in Lucette's eyes, as she said in a low voice: "So you know about that?"

  "There are now only a few minor details that I do not know about this matter; such as why you choose him for your agent."

  "It was owing to a man I met soon after landing at Nantes. He told me that Citizen Fouché was a skilful homme d'affaires, and not above sharing any profit to be obtained from a valuable piece of information. My friend gave me a letter of introduction to him."

  "I see. Let us proceed to business, then. Be good enough to hand over Madame de Beauharnais's diary."

  "I... I have not got it."

  "That is a lie. You are much too clever to have passed it on to Fouché. Had you done so, you know well enough he would have had no further truck with you."

  "I tell you I have not got it."

  "Then that is most unfortunate for you." Roger drew from his pocket the Order of Transportation, opened it held it to the light and told her to read it. Then he said:

  "When I came here I had no idea that you were Madame Remy. But I was prepared to make a bargain with her, and I will do so with you. Give me the diary, and agree to leave Paris for good tomorrow morning, and I will have this order suspended. It will be marked 'to be executed only in the event of the person named being found to have returned to the Capital'. Should you refuse, I will call in my men to arrest you, and I snail see to it myself that you start on your journey to Cayenne tomorrow."

  "No!" she exclaimed with a violent shake of the head. "I'll not give it up. Send me to Cayenne if you will. I am no flabby European to take a fever and die of it. For once I'd have something for which to thank my black blood. I'll be little worse off there than I am here, and I'm not yet so ill-favoured that I could not seduce one of the guards into aiding my escape."

  At her outburst Roger's confidence in his prospects of success suddenly slumped to near zero. It had not occurred to him that for a mulatto prostitute transportation threatened few of the terrors it would have held for an ordinary French woman. All he could do now was to play his subsidiary card; so he said:

  "I think you underrate the horrors that you will have to face. I am told that conditions in the convict ships are appalling, and that many people die upon the voyage. Be advised by me and take the easier way. Your refusal, too, may have been influenced by lack of money. If so, I will give you a hundred louis; and that will see you back to the West Indies in comfort."

  Again she stubbornly shook her head. "No. I know enough of Voodoo to survive the voyage, and within a month of reaching Cayenne I will have escaped. Then I will join another fraternity of sea-rovers. The diary is safe enough where it is. Later I will return and collect it Having kept it so long, I'll not give it up. It is my life-line to a secure old age.

  Roger had already thought of threatening her with prison, but whatever charge was trumped up against her she could not be kept there indefinitely. Then, as he sought desperately in his mind for a way to get the better of her, the expression 'life-line' that she had used gave him a sudden inspiration. Since she was who she was, he still had a forgotten ace up his sleeve.

  Refolding the transportation order, he said quietly: "You seem to have overlooked one thing. Piracy is just as much a crime punishable by death in France as it is in England. Unless you produce that diary, I will charge you with it; then the thing you count your life-line will become the rope that works the blade of the guillotine."

  At that her jaw fell; then she screamed: "You fiend! You devil!" and came at him with hands rigid like claws in an attempt to tear his eyes out. Thrusting her off, he gave her a swift jab in the stomach, which sent her reeling and gasping for breath back again on to the couch.

  Standing over her Roger said firmly: "Now! Do I send you to your death or will you give me the diary?"

  Still whimpering, the fight at last gone out of her, she pulled herself to her feet, and slouched across to a door at the far end of the studio under the steep stairway. Roger followed her and, as she opened it could just make out by the faint light that beyond it there lay a kitchen. Going inside she fished about for a moment in its near darkness, and emerged holding a heavy meat chopper.

  Alert to the possibility that she meant to attack him with it, Roger watched her warily. But without a glance at him she went up the twenty or more narrow stairs to the small landing; then, using the blunt back of the heavy chopper, she began to hammer with it at the end of one of the many short cross beams that supported the roof of the studio. After half a dozen blows the nails that held the end of the beam to a larger rafter were loosened enough for her to pull it down. It was hollow, and thrusting her hand into the cavity she drew out a small leather-bound book. Then she came down the stairs and handed it to him.

  "Thank you," he said. "Allow me to congratulate you on having thought of such a good hiding-place. We might have hunted the house for a month without coming upon it Indeed, I doubt if we would have found it short of pulling the whole building to pieces."

  With a shrug, she walked past him, threw the chopper on to the table, and sat down again on the couch. Meanwhile, he flicked over the leaves of the little book to make quite certain that it was the thing that he had gone to so much trouble to obtain. It was a thick book and all but the last dozen of its pages were covered with a round childish scrawl. Soon he came upon the name William repeated three times on the same page, then on a passage that made nun raise his eyebrows. It was, he thought, remarkable how indiscreet young girls could be during the first upsurge of physical passion, in confiding their feelings and experiences to paper. Little wonder Madame de Beau­harnais could not face the thought of her diary falling into the hands of an unscrupulous publisher. There was no law to prevent the printing of such material, however personal; and there were still innumerable books on sale describing, without the least truth, obscenities of the most revolting kind said to have been practised by Marie Antoinette, which had been published while she was a Queen living in splendour at Versailles.

  Slipping the book into his pocket, he walked over to Lucette, and said: "Now, about yourself. If you will tell me where you wish to go when you leave Paris tomorrow morning, I will do my best to aid you, and will provide the money for your journey."

  "I think I had best return to the Indies," she murmured despondently. "With food to be had for the asking and the warmth of the sunshine, life is at least easier there."

  "Very well. I will endeavour to secure you a passage in a blockade runner."

  As he spoke, there came an urgent knocking on the front door.

  Muttering a filthy oath, she pulled herself to her feet. "I expect that is a customer. I must open to him, but will say that I am engaged."

  Roger watched her cross the room, pull aside the coarse curtain and unlatch the door. It was immediately thrust wide. With a cry of surprise, she took a pace back. Slamming the door to behind him, Fouché stepped after her into the room.

  Snatching up his sword-cane Roger called out to him: "So you followed me! What do you want here?"

  Thrusting his way past Lucette, Fouché advanced to the table, and halted. Glaring across at Roger, he panted: "I had hoped that you might still have to collect the order of transportation you spoke of from Barras, before threatening to execute it. Even had I had the luck to pick up a coach I might have managed to get here a few minutes before you."

  "Then you have had your half-hour's walk for nothing," said Roger quietly. "I already had the order: but it will not now be needed."

  Fouché's pale eyes switched from Roger's waist-line to Lucette's neck and he said sharply to her: "Then you have told him where the diary is?"

  She gave a sullen nod. "He has it, We argued over it for some time, but I surrendered it to him five minutes since."

  "You fool! You black, besotted bitch!" he snarled. "Did you not have the sense to realize that had you kept it hidden it might yet have meant big money for us both?"

  "For you, perhaps, but not for me!" she cried with sudden defi
ance. "He has the power to send me to the guillotine, and would have done so had I held out against him. I know this man! He is my enemy; my jinx! Had I not bought my life with the book he would have delighted in bringing about my death."

  "You know him?"

  Roger felt a sudden awful sinking in the pit of his stomach, but there was nothing he could do to stop Lucette shouting back:

  "Know him; do I not! He says now that he is a Frenchman, but I find that hard to credit seeing how first we met. Everyone then believed him to be an English milor. He had an English wife, English friends and was upon an English ship. In Martinique, too, everyone spoke of him as Son Excellence Mister Brook. But I care not what he is. I know only that he would gladly see me dead."

  "So!" Fouché" hardly breathed the word. Then, swinging round on Roger, his cry of triumph rang to the rafters. "A witness! The one witness I needed to support my oath! Mort Dieu; you are now no better than carrion in the executioner's cart!"

  Left with no time to think or plan for such an emergency, and made desperate by the terrifying turn events had taken, Roger whipped out his sword-cane. Across the table he made a furious lunge at Fouchi; but his enemy sprang back, pivoted on his heels and dashed for the door. Swerving sideways Roger jumped over the couch, but Lucette threw herself m his way. Before he could get past her Fouché" had wrenched the door open and was bellowing into the darkness:

  "Corporal Peltier! Bring your men! Citizens! Help! Quick! Come to my aid!"

  Still hoping to transfix Fouché with one well directed thrust which would silence him instantly and for ever, Roger leapt after him. Fouché" was standing in the doorway. He was still yelling for help, but from fear of another attack had his head half-turned towards the room. Roger's lunge was aimed high to take him through the throat. Fouché jerked his head back so sharply that it hit the open door a resounding crack. The movement saved him. The flashing point missed his Adam's apple by the fraction of an inch, then buried itself in the wooden door jamb. The thrust had been delivered with tremend­ous force. Under the impact the thin blade snapped. Roger was left holding only the handle and ten inches of the steel. Next moment Peltier and his three men blocked the doorway and came pushing past Fouché into the studio.