“In sum,” concluded Bertrand Valois, “the whole accusation rests on the word of this policeman.”
“And on the fact that César had no known enemy apart from Fabius.”
“They didn’t wish him dead, though!”
“There’s no evidence of that in the documents that we possess—but one thing has struck me since I’ve discovered the luminite plate that César hung in his study.”
“What?”
“The simple fact that he had hung it there, and that he took it down it frequently to see what had been happening in his absence. Why should he have taken the trouble to install that undetectable spy on the wall if he were not experiencing some unknown anxiety? The first idea that came to mind in that regard was that he feared surreptitious visits…”
“Secret societies abounded at that time. Do you think that he was a member of one?”
“I don’t think so. He was certainly not a partisan of any monarchy, constitutional or otherwise, but his memoirs show him to have been, to a certain extent, indulgent of Louis-Philippe—who, himself, did not hate the memory of Napoléon, whose ashes he had returned to Paris. 1835 was a year in which the Bonapartists remained quite tranquil. After the Emperor, they had lost the Duc de Reichstadt; they gave scarcely any thought to Prince Louis-Napoléon, the future Napoléon III, of whom there was to be no real mention until 1836, in Strasbourg. I’m therefore convinced that César was not under suspicion by the government of the Citizen-King, and that even his disgrace was no more than indifference. In my opinion, there was nothing to prevent him being received at Court. A man who had displeased the Bourbons might easily have pleased the man who had just got rid of them. In essence, it was César who did not want to ask for anything, not Louis-Philippe who disdained his services.”
“What worries me,” Colomba said, “is the simultaneity of Fieschi’s assassination attempt and César’s murder. It’s difficult to admit that hazard alone was the cause of it. Fieschi, Ortofieri and Christiani were all Corsicans—there’s no getting away from that!”
“I should point out,” said Charles, “that the Corsican origin of Fieschi had absolutely nothing to do with his crime. He too, of course, had loved Napoléon, whom he had served in uniform in Russia. I repeat, though, that in 1835, Bonapartism was temporarily devoid of an objective. Fieschi was the instrument of secret societies furious with Louis-Philippe because he had turned the revolution of July 1830, which had been designed to establish a republic, to his own advantage—but Fieschi hardly cared about the cause for which he was going to commit his crime. A murderer by nature, he surrendered himself to tenebrous masters without even knowing them well, or knowing them all, and he put to death at a single stroke a host of innocent people, less out of ambition than vanity, and most especially less out of conviction than ferocious cruelty and resentment against society.”
“Don’t you think, Monsieur Historian,” said Bertrand, “that we’re straying from the point…”
“No,” said Charles, smiling. “All this is relevant. I sense it, like Colomba. And if I’m mistaken, there won’t be much harm done. We’re learning a little history, which is always good for something.”
During this conversation, none of them had taken their eyes off the plate of luminite in which, marvelously, they saw the future environment of the past events that they had just been discussing. Henriette Delille had withdrawn now. César Christiani was smoking his clay pipe, sitting at the occasional table, reading Le Moniteur. Through the panes of the casement, in the distance, the so-called Fieschi house—or, rather, the house that would late be known as the Fieschi house—was visible.
Charles, armed with binoculars, could make out the profile of a young woman at the window furnished with the Venetian blind, which had served as an embrasure for the four-barreled cannon making up the infernal machine. She was sewing placidly. The Sun was shining into the room, on to a modest yellow-colored flowered wallpaper which was, indeed, already in the state described by the witnesses of 1835: torn in places, and crudely patched.
Charles had left the plate as he had found it, except that he had refitted it into the fir-wood frame, whose eight latches maintained its leaves, assuring the cohesion of the extremely thin tablets that César had once detached for the requirements of his mysterious surveillance. Since then, the light had continued on its way through the substance, the images of the past having advanced and all of the oldest aspects of the past being held within the intact thickness of the plate—a thickness that constituted, moreover, almost the totality of the depth of the whole, since the plate enclosed 93 years of retarded light and César had only searched two years and a few months.
At present, the fine plates that César had meticulously detached were showing the back of Grandmother Estelle’s ink-drawing, The Declaration of Love, with a poor light filtering through its paper, probably from the bedroom in Silaz, whose shutters were almost always closed.
Charles had given Bertrand and Colomba a complete demonstration of the properties of luminite. Amazed at first by such a new phenomenon, they had quickly formed a very clear conception of it, in relation to the simplicity of its effects. And while they experienced delight in watching people, animals and things that had lived long ago live again—César with his pipe, passers-by, horses, swallows, flies landing on the plate, the houses on the boulevard, the quadruple row of elms in which sparrows were fluttering, a historical décor now vanished because of the reconstruction and the opening out of the Place de la République—they were no less dominated by the idea that soon, at a time Charles chose, the bloody day of July 28 would appear within that frame and they would be witnesses to the murder of César Christiani.
And Bertrand Valois, practical above all, as realistic as one can expect of a successful dramatist (which is not very), came back to what he justly considered to be the primary necessity: “Portraits of Fabius Ortofieri, old chap! That’s what we need. As many portraits as possible! That’s the key!”
“I’ll do what’s necessary,” Charles said, smiling placidly. “Writing to Mademoiselle Ortofieri is out of the question, but I’ve found Madame Le Tourneur’s address in the telephone directory. She’ll return to Paris today or tomorrow, if she hasn’t done so already—and as soon as I arrived, I sent her an explanatory letter, for which she was, I’m sure, waiting with impatient avidity. At the same time, I asked her to alert Rita with respect to portraits of her ancestor.”
“Good work,” judged Bertrand.
“I’m counting on you for a great deal,” Charles said.
“To do what?”
“I deem it indispensable to know, hour by hour, what was happening in César’s study for several days before the 28. Let’s say a fortnight.”
“That’s perfectly sensible.”
“My plan, therefore, consists of laying bare by progressive strokes, as soon as we’ve made all the preliminary dispositions, the surface the plate corresponding, on the day of the operation, to July 15, 1835. Afterwards, there must be an observer permanently in front of the plate. We’ll have to do that sentry-duty in shifts—you, me, Colomba too, and other collaborators if need be—during the 12 days that the phase leading up to the crime lasts.
“During the entire day of July 28, 1835, apparatus for making cinematographic images in color will record the vision of that critical moment. I don’t intend to film the 12 or 24 preceding hours, but that period too has to be recorded nevertheless, in order that we can look at it again if necessary.”
“Recorded?” said the young woman. “Without the assistance of film cameras? How? Oh! Pardon me, I understand! By means of another plate of virginal luminite!”
“Why virginal?” queried Bertrand. “That doesn’t matter. The power of luminite is inexhaustible, isn’t it, Charles?”
“Of course. I can’t re-emphasize sufficiently that the only advantage of a virginal plate is to seem completely dark, on its two surfaces as well as its edges.”
“Evidently,” Colomba adm
itted. “How stupid I am!”
“Permit me to contradict you!” said Bertrand. “All this is too new for anyone to be able to take it all in at once. What a marvel!” His quirky and voluptuous nose seemed to be sniffing a rare perfume in the air.
“Can I count on you—on both of you?”
“That goes without saying,” said Bertrand, while his fiancée confirmed it. “When do you hope to begin?”
“When I have the portraits of Fabius and when I’m assured of the collaboration and attendance of certain individuals for the great day.”
“Who?”
“Scientists, historians, magistrates, official witnesses and representatives of the Ortofieri family.”
“Indeed,” said Bertrand. “We can’t do otherwise. It’s indispensable to inform the banker about the counter-inquiry, and the secret is impossible to keep.”
“Even so, we shall try to keep the family business—which is a criminal affair—private and confidential. As for luminite, it is included the inheritance of humankind, and we don’t have the right to withhold it from science, any more than it is our prerogative to deprive History of a direct vision and a cinematographic film of Fieschi’s assassination attempt. To begin with, I have to go about things stealthily, but…”
“You’re right, my dear Charles,” Bertrand declared. “All this is bigger than us; we don’t own it.”
Scarcely had he spoken than someone knocked deliberately on the door.
Charles closed the cupboard on the prodigious image that it contained. “Come in!”
The valet came in carrying a telegram on a tray. “For Monsieur!” he said.
The young man opened the telegram. “Ah!” he said. “It’s from the worthy Madame Le Tourneur. Before even having received my letter she wants me to call on her.”
“How amusing it is!” exclaimed Colomba, dazedly. “It would make a comedy, wouldn’t it, Bertrand?”
“I see it more as a play for the Châtelet, personally,” said Bertrand. “A modern fairy play…”
Charles, however, looked at them silently and reproachfully. His hope was not made for laughing at.
XII. Surprises in the Present and the Past
Before going to see Madame Le Tourneur, Charles realized that he could not leave his mother in ignorance any longer regarding his discovery and the project he had conceived to bring the circumstances of the 1835 murder to light. He even regretted not having spoken to her as soon as he had returned, and was annoyed to have let himself fall prey to a sentiment that was far from heroic.
Deep down, Madame Christiani inspired a certain dread in him: a vestige of the past, a relic of childhood. The good woman had ruled the education of her children with a rod of iron, and something of that still remained. Now, Charles knew that the initial shock would be rude…
He did it. Madame Christiani was not at all astonished. The existence of luminite did not surprise her at all. She said: “It’s curious”, devoted two minutes to the pleasure of knowing that such a bizarre thing was counted among physical phenomena, and, following her mental custom, stopped there, neglecting to think or speculate about that marvel or its effects. She cared little about the potential consequences of his discovery. The two minutes having gone by, Charles realized that his mother’s thoughts had already resumed their quotidian course and that they would be occupied henceforth with the household accounts, the latest political article in Le Temps and the division of her contemporaries into worthy souls and bad lots—which is to say, into these of whom she thought well and the rest.
Everything changed when Madame Christiani was informed about the project of the counter-enquiry and that it might result in the revelation of the innocence of Fabius Ortofieri. That name made her shiver. For a long time, even before she had become a Christiani by marriage, she had known that Fabius had murdered César. She knew it as we all know that Ravaillac stabbed Henri IV. It was History, Gospel truth. To revisit the question? She choked on the amazement and indignation.
Charles appealed to her sense of justice. Having pleaded the cause of impartiality for some time, he saw his mother calm down, but by closing her face, as she did when anyone tried to prove to her that Cousin Drouet had always behaved well toward Mélanie. Madame Christiani made an appearance of concession; she gave up arguing—but everything indicated that she was sticking to her position.
It was not a victory. Galileo had put on that face when declaring that the Earth did not rotate—so Charles did not look forward without apprehension to the consequences of his exposé.
“It’s necessary,” he said. “At the end of the day, it will be good, and even…necessary that Monsieur Ortofieri the banker can check the facts and verify…”
“What do you mean?” Madame Christiani exploded. “Do I understand that you have the intention of inviting that brigand to come here?”
“You know perfectly well that he won’t come, Mother—that he’ll delegate someone…”
“Never!” fulminated the terrible woman. “I forbid it. While I live, no Ortofieri will ever set foot in my house, even by proxy.”
Charles could not help smiling.
“I’m not laughing!” his mother declared, dryly.
“Please,” said Charles, in a serious voice. “You’re much too good and too just to forbid anything whatsoever, from the moment that it’s a matter of truth. We must do our duty in this regard.”
“It’s not for you to tell me mine!”
“You’ll cause me infinite pain if you won’t approve of all that I intend to do.”
Madame Christiani fell silent. In the excess of her discontentment, she had turned her back to her son and was looking through the window into the depths of the garden that extended in front of her. Charles’s last sentence, and the tone in which he had pronounced it, had awoken a sort of alarm in her of which she had given no sign—but the fit was doubtless difficult to hide, for she maintained her stance in front of the window.
Her silence, however, encouraged the young man, who said: “If you love me, trust me. Come on! I shall not do anything contrary to our dignity—but can a work of justice ever be less than noble?”
He had promised himself that he would only convince her with general arguments and not to get away from the question of justice. He did not doubt that his mother would give way on every point if she knew that the happiness of her child was at stake, once she had been made to envisage, astonishingly, the innocence of Fabius Ortofieri. But Charles foresaw the possibility that Fabius’ guilt would be confirmed—in which case Rita might, in consequence, remain an impossible dream so far as he was concerned. Wanting to spare Madame Christiani from the great chagrin of seeing her son Charles unhappy, he would do anything rather than confess his love.
Madame Christiani turned around, unhurriedly. She had devoted herself, in the secrecy of her inner being, to observations, reflections and checks that had affirmed her immediate and initial assumption.
He saw immediately that he had won his argument—not that the hard face was at all suggestive of agreement. Only the eyes, having softened, were displaying contentment and capitulation. “All right,” she sighed. “Do as you like.”
“Thank you!” he cried, enthusiastically.
She sat down at her desk and calmly began to write. Charles wanted to put his arms around her; he did not resist, as he usually did, the need to shower her with tender kisses.
“Come on!” she said. “It’s all right!” and, having pecked brusquely at her son’s cheek, she gently drew away. “Let me work. There are serious matters needing my attention.”
“I love you very much!” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders, and he went out.
Then Madame Christiani set her pen down and put her hands together. “No doubt about it,” she murmured. “He kisses me, tells me he loves me! Come on! Just like all men! There’s only one Ortofieri daughter on earth, and my Christiani has to fall in love with her! Now we have but one hope, and it’s feeble. If tha
t bandit Fabius remains guilty—and I’m convinced that he is—my son will be unhappy! For I know him! César’s murderer will never enter into our family, even represented by his heir of the 20th generation! Never, while there are men among us like Charles and women like me!” She added, thoughtfully: “Poor boy! It’s a stroke of luck that he’s found those plates…”
But that seemed perfectly natural to her, while Charles’ love for an Ortofieri seemed to her to be the most inconceivable thing in the world.
Madame Geneviève Le Tourneur had said to Charles, as he took his leave of her: “That’s agreed, then. Come back to see me tomorrow. Let’s avoid letters as much as possible. Tomorrow I’ll have seen Rita and I’ll tell you what she says about the portraits and the steps to follow.”
And Charles had added: “Permit me to ask you to remain silent with regard to the luminite. I’d like to be completely finished with the Ortofieri affair before making the discovery public. If the newspapers get hold of it prematurely, it will put an end to our tranquility; we’ll be besieged, and it’s frightful to contemplate the rapidity with which the news that we want to keep secret will spread. Just now, when I came out of my house, my wonderstruck concierge didn’t hesitate to ask me for details regarding ‘the extraordinary trick that I brought back from Savoy.’ The chauffeur must have talked, in spite of my instructions….”
“Don’t worry,” Geneviève had replied, in the jovial and slightly pedantic tone she sometimes adopted., by virtue of a little culture of which she was inordinately proud. “I shall imitate the prudent silence of Conrart.”21
The next day, when Charles presented himself at the home of the blonde emulator of that obscure writer, he was powerfully moved to find himself in the company of Rita Ortofieri.
“Isn’t this much simpler?” said Geneviève, with a little laugh.
The Master of Light Page 17
