The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  “ ‘This crossbeam,’ said he, ‘was placed here by my grandfather; it has borne the sign of Bœuf-Gras for one hundred and fifty years, from father to son; it harms no one, not even the hay wagons which pass beneath, for it is thirty feet above them. Those who don’t like it can turn their heads aside, and not see it.’

  “Well, gradually the town calmed down, and, during several months, no new event agitated it. Unhappily, a student of Heidelberg, returning to the university, stopped, day before yesterday, at the Inn Bœuf-Gras, and asked for lodging. He was the son of a minister of the gospel.

  “How could anyone suppose that the son of a pastor could conceive the idea of hanging himself on the crossbeam of a signboard, because a big monsieur and an old soldier had done so? We must admit, Master Christian, that the thing was not probable; these reasons would not have seemed sufficient to myself or to you.”

  “Enough, enough!” I exclaimed; “this is too horrible! I see a frightful mystery involved in all this. It is not the crossbeam; it is not the room——”

  “What! Do you suspect the innkeeper, the most honest man in the world, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Nuremberg?”

  “No, no; may God preserve me from indulging in unjust suspicions! but there is an abyss before me, into which I scarcely dare glance.”

  “You are right,” said Toubac, astonished at the violence of my excitement. “We will speak of other things. Apropos, Master Christian, where is our landscape of ‘Saint Odille’?”

  This question brought me back to the world of realities. I showed the old man the painting I had just completed. The affair was soon concluded, and Toubac, well satisfied, descended the ladder, entreating me to think no more of the student of Heidelberg.

  I would gladly have followed my good friend’s counsel; but, when the devil once mixes himself up in our concerns, it is not easy to disembarrass ourselves of him.

  In my solitary hours all these events were reproduced with frightful distinctness in my mind.

  “This old wretch,” I said to myself, “is the cause of it all; she alone has conceived these crimes, and has consummated them. But by what means? Has she had recourse to cunning alone, or has she obtained the intervention of invisible powers?” I walked to and fro in my retreat. An inward voice cried out: “It is not in vain that Providence permitted you to see Fledermausse contemplating the agonies of her victim. It is not in vain that the soul of the poor young man came in the form of a butterfly of the night to awake you. No, no; all this was not accidental, Christian. The heavens impose upon you a terrible mission. If you do not accomplish it, tremble lest you fall yourself into the hands of the old murderess! Perhaps, at this moment, she is preparing her snares in the darkness.”

  During several days these hideous images followed me without intermission. I lost my sleep; it was impossible for me to do anything; my brush fell from my hand; and, horrible to confess, I found myself sometimes gazing at the crossbeam with a sort of complacency. At last I could endure it no longer, and one evening I descended the ladder and hid myself behind the door of Fledermausse, hoping to surprise her fatal secret.

  From that time no day passed in which I was not en route, following the old wretch, watching, spying, never losing sight of her; but she was so cunning, had a scent so subtile that, without even turning her head, she knew I was behind her.

  However, she feigned not to perceive this; she went to the market, to the butcher’s, like any good, simple woman, only hastening her steps and murmuring confused words.

  At the close of the month I saw that it was impossible for me to attain my object in this way, and this conviction made me inexpressibly sad.

  “What can I do?” I said to myself. “The old woman divines my plans; she is on her guard; every hope abandons me. Ah! old hag, you think you already see me at the end of your rope.” I was continually asking myself this question: “What can I do? what can I do?” At last a luminous idea struck me. My chamber overlooked the house of Fledermausse; but there was no window on this side. I adroitly raised a slate, and no pen could paint my joy when the whole ancient building was thus exposed to me. “At last, I have you!” I exclaimed; “you cannot escape me now; from here I can see all that passes—your goings, your comings, your arts and snares. You will not suspect this invisible eye—this watchful eye, which will surprise crime at the moment it blooms. Oh, Justice, Justice! She marches slowly; but she arrives.”

  Nothing could be more sinister than the den now spread out before me—a great courtyard, the large slabs of which were covered with moss; in one corner, a well, whose stagnant waters you shuddered to look upon; a stairway covered with old shells; at the farther end a gallery, with wooden balustrade, and hanging upon it some old linen and the tick of an old straw mattress; on the first floor, to the left, the stone covering of a common sewer indicated the kitchen; to the right the lofty windows of the building looked out upon the street; then a few pots of dried, withered flowers—all was cracked, somber, moist. Only one or two hours during the day could the sun penetrate this loathsome spot; after that, the shadows took possession; then the sunshine fell upon the crazy walls, the worm-eaten balcony, the dull and tarnished glass, and upon the whirlwind of atoms floating in its golden rays, disturbed by no breath of air.

  I had scarcely finished these observations and reflections, when the old woman entered, having just returned from market. I heard the grating of her heavy door. Then she appeared with her basket. She seemed fatigued—almost out of breath. The lace of her bonnet fell to her nose. With one hand she grasped the banister and ascended the stairs.

  The heat was intolerable, suffocating; it was precisely one of those days in which all insects—crickets, spiders, mosquitoes, etc.—make old ruins resound with their strange sounds.

  Fledermausse crossed the gallery slowly, like an old ferret who feels at home. She remained more than a quarter of an hour in the kitchen, then returned, spread out her linen, took the broom, and brushed away some blades of straw on the floor. At last she raised her head, and turned her little green eyes in every direction, searching, investigating carefully.

  Could she, by some strange intuition, suspect anything? I do not know; but I gently lowered the slate, and gave up my watch for the day.

  In the morning Fledermausse appeared reassured. One angle of light fell upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the hands of the old shrew, and remount rapidly. Fledermausse looked at it very attentively, with her eyes half closed; then sneezed, and said to herself, in a jeering tone, “God bless you, beautiful one; God bless you!”

  I watched during six weeks, and could discover nothing concerning the power of Fledermausse. Sometimes, seated upon a stool, she peeled her potatoes, then hung out her linen upon the balustrade.

  Sometimes I saw her spinning; but she never sang, as good, kind old women are accustomed to do, their trembling voices mingling well with the humming of the wheel.

  Profound silence always reigned around her; she had no cat—that cherished society of old women—not even a sparrow came to rest under her roof. It seemed as if all animated nature shrank from her glance. The bloated spider alone took delight in her society.

  I cannot now conceive how my patience could endure those long hours of observation: nothing escaped me; nothing was matter of indifference. At the slightest sound I raised my slate; my curiosity was without limit, insatiable.

  Toubac complained greatly.

  “Master Christian,” said he, “how in the devil do you pass your time? Formerly you painted something for me every week; now you do not finish a piece once a month. Oh, you painters! ‘Lazy as a painter’ is a good, wise proverb. As so
on as you have a few kreutzers in possession, you put your hands in your pockets and go to sleep!”

  I confess that I began to lose courage—I had watched, spied, and discovered nothing. I said to myself that the old woman could not be so dangerous as I had supposed; that I had perhaps done her injustice by my suspicions; in short, I began to make excuses for her. One lovely afternoon, with my eye fixed at my post of observation, I abandoned myself to these benevolent reflections, when suddenly the scene changed: Fledermausse passed through the gallery with the rapidity of lightning. She was no longer the same person; she was erect, her jaws were clinched, her glance fixed, her neck extended; she walked with grand strides, her gray locks floating behind her.

  “Oh, at last,” I said to myself, “something is coming, attention!” But, alas! the shadows of evening descended upon the old building, the noises of the city expired, and silence prevailed.

  Fatigued and disappointed, I lay down upon my bed, when, casting my eyes toward my dormer window, I saw the room opposite illuminated. So! a traveler occupied the Green Room—fatal to strangers.

  Now, all my fears were reawakened; the agitation of Fledermausse was explained—she scented a new victim.

  No sleep for me that night; the rustling of the straw, the nibbling of the mice under the floor gave me nervous chills.

  I rose and leaned out of my window; I listened. The light in the room opposite was extinguished. In one of those moments of poignant anxiety, I cannot say if it was illusion or reality, I thought I saw the old wretch also watching and listening.

  The night passed, and the gray dawn came to my windows; by degrees the noise and movements in the street ascended to my loft. Harassed by fatigue and emotion I fell asleep, but my slumber was short, and by eight o’clock I had resumed my post of observation.

  It seemed as if the night had been as disturbed and tempestuous to Fledermausse as to myself. When she opened the door of the gallery, I saw that a livid pallor covered her cheeks and thin throat; she had on only her chemise and a woolen skirt; a few locks of reddish gray hair fell on her shoulders. She looked toward my hiding place with a dreamy, abstracted air, but she saw nothing; she was thinking of other things.

  Suddenly she descended, leaving her old shoes at the bottom of the steps. “Without doubt,” thought I, “she is going to see if the door below is well fastened.”

  I saw her remount hastily, springing up three or four steps at a time—it was terrible.

  She rushed into the neighboring chamber, and I heard something like the falling of the top of a great chest; then Fledermausse appeared in the gallery, dragging a manikin after her, and this manikin was clothed like the Heidelberg student.

  With surprising dexterity the old woman suspended this hideous object to a beam of the shed, then descended rapidly to the courtyard to contemplate it. A burst of sardonic laughter escaped from her lips; she remounted, then descended again like a maniac, and each time uttered new cries and new bursts of laughter.

  A noise was heard near the door, and the old woman bounded forward, unhooked the manikin and carried it off; then, leaning over the balustrade with her throat elongated, her eyes flashing, she listened earnestly. The noise was lost in the distance, the muscles of her face relaxed, and she drew long breaths. It was only a carriage which had passed.

  The old wretch had been frightened.

  She now returned to the room, and I heard the chest close. This strange scene confounded all my ideas. What did this manikin signify? I became more than ever attentive.

  Fledermausse now left the house with her basket on her arm. I followed her with my eyes till she turned the corner of the street. She had reassumed the air of a trembling old woman, took short steps, and from time to time turned her head partly around, to peer behind from the corner of her eye.

  Fledermausse was absent fully five hours. For myself, I went, I came, I meditated. The time seemed insupportable. The sun heated the slate of the roof, and scorched my brain.

  Now I saw, at the window, the good man who occupied the fatal Green Chamber; he was a brave peasant of Nassau, with a large three-cornered hat, a scarlet vest, and a laughing face; he smoked his pipe of Ulm tranquillity, and seemed to fear no evil.

  I felt a strong desire to cry out to him: “Good man, be on your guard! Do not allow yourself to be entrapped by the old wretch; distrust yourself!” but he would not have comprehended me. Toward two o’clock Fledermausse returned. The noise of her door resounded through the vestibule. Then alone, all alone, she entered the yard, and seated herself on the interior step of the stairway; she put down her basket before her, and drew out first some packets of herbs, then vegetables, then a red vest, then a three-cornered hat, a coat of brown velvet, pants of plush, and coarse woolen hose—the complete costume of the peasant from Nassau.

  For a moment I felt stunned; then flames passed before my eyes.

  I recollected those precipices which entice with an irresistible power; those wells or pits, which the police have been compelled to close, because men threw themselves into them; those trees which had been cut down because they inspired men with the idea of hanging themselves; that contagion of suicides, of robberies, of murders, at certain epochs, by desperate means; that strange and subtile enticement of example, which makes you yawn because another yawns, suffer because you see another suffer, kill yourself because you see others kill themselves—and my hair stood up with horror.

  How could this Fledermausse, this base, sordid creature, have derived so profound a law of human nature? how had she found the means to use this law to the profit or indulgence of her sanguinary instincts? This I could not comprehend; it surpassed my wildest imaginations.

  But reflecting longer upon this inexplicable mystery, I resolved to turn the fatal law against her, and to draw the old murderess into her own net.

  So many innocent victims called out for vengeance!

  I felt myself to be on the right path.

  I went to all the old-clothes sellers in Nuremberg, and returned in the afternoon to the Inn Bœuf-Gras, with an enormous packet under my arm.

  Nichel Schmidt had known me for a long time; his wife was fat and good-looking; I had painted her portrait.

  “Ah, Master Christian,” said he, squeezing my hand, “what happy circumstance brings you here? What procures me the pleasure of seeing you?”

  “My dear Monsieur Schmidt, I feel a vehement, insatiable desire to sleep in the Green Room.”

  We were standing on the threshold of the inn, and I pointed to the room. The good man looked at me distrustfully.

  “Fear nothing,” I said; “I have no desire to hang myself.”

  “À la bonne heure! à la bonne heure! For frankly that would give me pain; an artist of such merit! When do you wish the room, Master Christian?”

  “This evening.”

  “Impossible! it is occupied!”

  “Monsieur can enter immediately,” said a voice just behind me, “I will not be in the way.”

  We turned around in great surprise; the peasant of Nassau stood before us, with his three-cornered hat, and his packet at the end of his walking stick. He had just learned the history of his three predecessors in the Green Room, and was trembling with rage.

  “Rooms like yours!” cried he, stuttering; “but it is murderous to put people there—it is assassination! You deserve to be sent to the galleys immediately!”

  “Go—go—calm yourself,” said the innkeeper; “that did not prevent you from sleeping well.”

  “Happily, I said my prayers at night,” said the peasant; “without that, where would I be?” and he withdrew, with his hands raised to heaven.

  “Well,” said Nichel Schmidt, stupefied, “the room is vacant, but I entreat you, do not serve me a bad trick.”

  “It would be a worse trick for myself than for you, monsieur.”

  I gave my p
acket to the servants, and installed myself for the time with the drinkers. For a long time I had not felt so calm and happy. After so many doubts and disquietudes, I touched the goal. The horizon seemed to clear up, and it appeared that some invisible power gave me the hand. I lighted my pipe, placed my elbow on the table, my wine before me, and listened to the chorus in “Freischütz,” played by a troupe of gypsies from the Black Forest. The trumpets, the hue and cry of the chase, the hautboys, plunged me into a vague reverie, and, at times rousing up to look at the hour, I asked myself gravely, if all which had happened to me was not a dream. But the watchman came to ask us to leave the salle, and soon other and more solemn thoughts were surging in my soul, and in deep meditation I followed little Charlotte, who preceded me with a candle to my room.

  We mounted the stairs to the third story. Charlotte gave me the candle and pointed to the door.

  “There,” said she, and descended rapidly.

  I opened the door. The Green Room was like any other inn room. The ceiling was very low, the bed very high. With one glance I explored the interior, and then glided to the window.

  Nothing was to be seen in the house of Fledermausse; only, in some distant room, an obscure light was burning. Some one was on the watch. “That is well,” said I, closing the curtain. “I have all necessary time.”

  I opened my packet, I put on a woman’s bonnet with hanging lace; then, placing myself before a mirror, I took a brush and painted wrinkles in my face. This took me nearly an hour. Then I put on the dress and a large shawl, and I was actually afraid of myself. Fledermausse seemed to me to look at me from the mirror.

  At this moment the watchman cried out, “Eleven o’clock!” I seized the manikin which I had brought in my packet, and muffled it in a costume precisely similar to that worn by the old wretch. I then opened the curtain.

  Certainly, after all that I had seen of the Fledermausse, of her infernal cunning, her prudence, her adroitness, she could not in any way surprise me; and yet I was afraid. The light which I had remarked in the chamber was still immovable, and now cast its yellow rays on the manikin of the peasant of Nassau, which was crouched on the corner of the bed, with the head hanging on the breast, the three-cornered hat pulled down over the face, the arms suspended, and the whole aspect that of absolute despair.