“Let’s set hypotheses aside,” said Charles. “Ifs won’t get us anywhere. Let’s stick to presumptions, which are a little less vain. You asked me just now whether the meeting between César and the man with the cane reinforces the charges laid against him. I can give you a clear answer: yes.”
“Ah!” said Bertrand, with a brief contraction of his entire face.
“The study clock marked 9 a.m.,” Charles said. “9 a.m. on July 1, 1835—28 days from the murder. It was on that day, in close proximity to the crime, that César and our unknown man found themselves face to face, in the course of a conversation of rare violence. And when I say ‘conversation,’ it’s a manner of speaking. César didn’t allow his visitor much opportunity to reply to his invective.
“He was sitting slantwise, writing on the tabletop of his roll-top desk—exactly as you see him at this moment, in fact.”
Bertrand was, as always, gazing at the plate, unable to take his eyes off it; the extraordinary spectacle imposed itself on everyone’s attention with incredible force.
“The door to the antechamber was open,” Charles continued. “Henriette Delille had shown the young man in and retired immediately. She was a sad sight: her pallor, her drawn features and her wretched expression would have wrung the hardest of hearts—but César would not even look at her. Perhaps he simply feared the sight of her grief, and felt that he was too likely to weaken. He pivoted in his armchair and looked the newcomer up and down. The other was standing before him, at a respectful distance, with his hat in his hand and his cane under his arm. He certainly didn’t look too rosy either; his cheeks were bloodless, his nose was pinched…”
“To the extent that a nose like ours can be pinched!” said Bertrand Valois, with a mocking grimace.
“He was smiling, though,” Charles went on, “and trying to put on a brave face. César looked at him for a few seconds—which the man found longer than others. Finally, there was a tirade such as you can imagine, of whose gist César’s mime was able to give me some idea: the old man, still seated, vituperating and abusing, pale at first, then red-faced, gripping the arm of the chair and the edge of the desk, going mad, going to close the window to deaden his vocal outbursts, and standing up, firm, going from extreme to the other; the young man pale, letting the avalanche pass over him, phlegmatic at first, then playing negligently with his cane, while the old man, standing in front of him, with his hands in his pockets and his head in his shoulders, threatened him with I don’t know what, as if he were a domestic.
“It seemed certain to me that César was demanding the key with the aid of which he had got into the apartment the day before. What followed convinced me. The unknown took the key from his inside pocket and held it out to the terrible old man, who grabbed it rudely and showed him the door.
“That significant gesture did not have the effect that he expected. The other didn’t budge. César moved forward, menacingly. The man with the cane, in total control of himself, raised his hand placidly and was finally able to say a few words—in a very dignified and gentle manner, imprinted nevertheless with considerable energy.
“His little harangue appeared to make César pause for thought. He made no reply, and remained for some while in the pose of a man studying a problem, or examining a proposition…
“He came to a decision, opened the door, and called out, Henriette responded to his call.
“At that moment, it wasn’t difficult to understand how much the young woman and her congenial accomplice loved one another. Their gazes told me.
“The scene was dramatic. I don’t think I’m mistaken in saying that César had summoned Henriette, at the unknown’s request, so that he might say goodbye to her. What I hadn’t grasped until then is that the young man had not renounced the woman he loved in any sense—inasmuch as it seems to me that he bowed to the sovereign will of a guardian, but only for the period during which that will still had the right of exercise. Indeed, as soon as Henriette was beside him, he did something that César had certainly not anticipated, and which will also surprise you unpleasantly, Bertrand…”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. And it isn’t without due reflection that I’ve decided to tell you everything—but if I didn’t tell you now, you’d deduce it tomorrow when you see…”
“Oh, don’t procrastinate!” cried Bertrand. “Don’t hide anything from me!”
“You’ll guess it when you see, on Henriette’s finger, the black enamel ring that Colomba has been wearing since your engagement!”
“My ring!”
“Yes, your ring, my poor old fellow—the superabundant proof of what you dread so much!”
“But just now, you still seemed to doubt yourself…”
“I allowed myself to delude you…”
“Oh!” said Bertrand, unhesitating in his reproach. “But now, now, it’s absolutely necessary that that man has nothing to do with the murder! That man is my ancestor—there’s no longer any doubt about it! It’s impossible that he killed César!”
“Nothing’s proven yet,” said Charles. “But everything is looking bad for the man with the cane.”
“Oh—yes, that’s true, you told me that the evidence is accumulating against him. How?”
“I told you that Henriette had come into César’s study. Immediately, the unknown took her by the hand and, before the eyes of the old man—who seemed confounded by such audacity—he began to speak to her tenderly and solemnly. The ring was in his waistcoat pocket; he took it out and put it on the young woman’s finger; she was both happy and frightened, on the point of fainting!”
“But what about César?”
“César, unfortunately, could not contain himself. I repeat that he certainly had not anticipated this passionate betrothal, celebrated against his will before his very eyes. He lost his temper again. The scene was frightful. A kind of cudgel was included among all the primitive weapons—look, the one you can see there, in the display, where César has since replaced it. He took hold of that bludgeon and brandished it over the man’s head, proffering insults that I regret not having heard.
“It was in that fashion that he threw him out, chasing him away under the threat of his stick.”
“I’d like to think that the other didn’t lack dignity!”
“No,” said Charles, smiling in spite of himself. “He retreated very honorably, backwards, his cane still maintained under his arm, as if old César were already no more than an imponderable image. He addressed a glance charged with all his affection to Henriette—and she, half-dead, holding his black ring to her lips, watched him depart, pushed by that comedy guardian, and sent him that long kiss.”
“It’s pure Beaumarchais!24 In pantomime!”
“It’s real life, alas! It’s pain for three individuals—or, rather, it was. They’re no longer suffering today.”
“Today it’s us—because of them. Here’s an entire drama that no one has ever suspected.”
“No one. History is made thus. We don’t know the half of it.”
“In conclusion,” Bertrand said, “less than a month before his death, César made himself a mortal enemy—and that enemy was my ancestor.”
“He no longer had the key…” Charles objected, obligingly.
“That’s a detail, for such a shrewd fellow.”
“Shrewd? What do you mean by that?”
“I think it very shrewd, on his part, to have hidden the note under the bust of Napoléon, in César’s own study. He could have put it in a thousand places more easily accessible to the young woman—in her room, for example. At first glance, that seems simpler, more rational—but the old corsair might have discovered it there by prying. Would he ever have had the idea of searching his own study if the luminite had not tipped him off on the sly?”
“But what if the idea was Henriette’s, and not his?”
“It’s all the same to me,” said Bertrand, wrinkling his nose. “It’s all the same to me.”
“Becau
se?”
“Because Henriette is my grandmother, of course! There’s no doubt that she became the wife of the man with the cane…and the ring.”
“Comtesse or Marquise!” Charles confirmed, laughing.
“Of course!” said Bertrand. “The man with the cane is an aristocrat—that’s obvious. I’ve always said so! And a nobleman doesn’t murder people!”
“God willing, my dear Bertrand! I hope so, for your sake, with all my heart!”
Was the guilty party the man with the cane, though? Was it Fabius Ortofieri? Would the luminite give the lie to History? Or was it someone else? Or, as had been suggested, no one at all?
XIV. The Great Day of the Prodigious Spectacle
We shall not think of detailing here the 16 days that preceded the moving and tragic retrovision of July 28, 1835—which is to say, in reality, the period that extended from the October 30 to November 15, 1929.
In the Rue de Tournon, Charles and his friends had a very busy fortnight, a phase of preparations and continuous observation, which lent the circumstances an extraordinary interest. There was not a minute that did not contain a significant dose of attraction, due to the marvelous properties of luminite, the spectacle of the past that it restored, the formidable scenes of which the surprising vision was awaited on the appointed day, all the mysteries that would then be clarified, and the fortunes and misfortunes that would result therefrom.
During that interval, however, the surveillance of the famous plate did not give rise to general conclusions that made any essential difference to what they knew already, whether on the subject of César Christiani or that of his neighbor, Joseph Fieschi.
During the period preceding his death, César’s study was not the theater of any indicative scene. The life of the former corsair and his ward went by monotonously and joylessly; all that could be deduced from what was seen was that, according to appearances, Henriette did not often go out alone, but mostly accompanied by her guardian. The visits received by César Christiani produced nothing remarkable. Among the visitors Charles was able to recognize relatives of his thrice-great-grandfather: his grandson Napoléon, aged, it will be remembered, 21; Lucile Leboulard and her husband, his daughter and son-in-law; their son, Anselme Leboulard, a young man of 20 who would become the father of Cousin Drouet. There was nothing but affection and deference in their conduct; they were earnest individuals who showed César great respect and Henriette a smiling and familiar consideration.
Of Fabius Ortofieri there was not the slightest sign.
As for the man with the cane, he had disappeared.
So much for matters relating to César Christiani; his last days were uneventful, dull, exempt from all anxiety, merely saddened by his disagreement with Henriette.
As for Fieschi, the surveillance only produced secondary results—very precious, it is true, for History, but which were not of a nature to modify the annals of the assassination attempt, nor to give any preliminary indication regarding the mystery of César’s murder. Fieschi’s appearances at his window, or smoking his pipe on the doorstep with the concierge Pierre, and those of Nina Lassave—their daily comings and goings—only held a mediocre interest. It was much more exciting to check, at close range, the assertions of History: to see, for example, on the eve of the crime, the tinsmith Boireau pass along the boulevard on horseback, in order to permit Fieschi to take proper aim with the diabolical organ of the 24 rifle-barrels, which could just about be distinguished behind the Venetian blind with the aid of binoculars; to see, moving in the shadows between the slats of that blind, the form of the man who was already lamentably ambitious to be a regicide; and to perceive, in the dusk, the old and massive Morey emerge from the red house to climb into a cab, after having loaded the infernal machine with powder, bullets and grapeshot.
It was not Charles who made these observations. To avoid the regrettable consequences of dividing his attention, he had assigned himself the particular task of tracking César, with the collaboration of Bertrand and Colomba. He had left the Fieschi affair to the care of a highly reputable historian, Monsieur Colas-Dunormand—who, as everyone knows, is also a specialist in the study of the Restoration and the reign of Louis-Philippe. Colas-Dunormand, or one of his own collaborators, only left the studio late at night to return at dawn, and every time a notable event occurred concerning Fieschi, he never failed to inform Charles—who came running, or, if he was already there, became attentive.
There was, in the studio in the Rue de Tournon and Madame Christiani’s apartment, a visible effervescence that only ceased during the night, to give place to a less intense observation—but which never relaxed. Luc de Certeuil took part in it with a reserve that, strictly speaking, was imperative, but which Charles, aware of the fact that it was not the man’s nature to push himself, knew to be voluntary too.
Orders of the strictest sort stopped at the door of the apartment those curiosity-seekers whom the concierge had been unable to discourage. A few, though, could not be evicted; they were people too important to be forbidden access to the luminite and the spectacle of the prologue to Fieschi’s assassination attempt and César’s murder.
In the final days, although the four differently-aimed cameras had been disposed around the plate, there were a dozen powerfully-captivated intruders continually in the studio. Their eyes grew wide, at varying distances, in the name of science, art or journalism, before the image, supported on its easel, in which the sky of the summer of 1835 lit a room and a boulevard of yesteryear. Meanwhile, the five cinema cameras were continually in play and gentlemen armed with binoculars, notepads and pens were keeping constant surveillance, relentlessly scrutinizing the progress of event happening a century ago.
It was necessary, from time to time, to ask these visitors to leave, for they never tired of savoring such a novel representation with their eyes. Others replaced them—but as November 15 drew nearer, their affluence increased and their insistence increased proportionately. Formal provision became necessary. At the door to the building there was an inexorable police officer, while inside the apartment itself, auxiliaries made sure that no reporter who was not invited to the great session had hidden himself anywhere until the moment came.
Madame Christiani took charge of ensuring that other measures were taken with a view to keeping everything safe. “Pathways” of strong canvas marked out the route from the antechamber to the studio through the successive rooms that it was necessary to pass, and that trajectory was stripped of all the trinkets that, by virtue of their smallness, their portability and their charm, might have induced temptation in collectors of pretty trifles. An ill-informed passer-by might have wondered whether some great marriage or great funeral was in preparation there.
In fact, that is what Charles, Bertrand and Colomba were wondering. What was in preparation? Their marriage or the burial of their hopes? They had no idea—none at all, on the eve of the very day on which everything would be made known. But they, at least, always had something to do to distract them from their anxiety. They were perpetually in contact with the instrument of the revelation, plunged into the seething activity that surrounded it, occupied with a thousand concerns—and Charles thought about Rita, distant from that focus of attraction, deprived of any distraction, as alone as one can possibly be, who was spending all the time she could at Geneviève Le Tourneur’s house, in order to keep track of the counter-enquiry as best she could. Charles had, in fact, taken to telephoning Geneviève at regular intervals and informing her of the historian’s communications, for transmission to Rita. He knew that Mademoiselle Ortofieri would spend the entire day of November 15 at her friend’s house, and he shivered in advance at the thought of the telephone call that he would make to Madame Le Tourneur, shortly after 11 a.m.
It was, in fact, at midday that César had been killed on July 28, 1835, since Fieschi’s simultaneous assassination attempt had occurred at that time—but they had observed a certain temporal dislocation between present time and the t
ime that the luminite plate was then unfolding. For the moment, taking account of the modifications made since 1835 to official French time, the plate was about 60 minutes in advance of the sun of 1929. As on every day, therefore, the hands of César’s clock would be standing at noon when the clocks of the Rue de Tournon and the church of Saint-Sulpice were chiming 11.
On the evening of November 14, Charles Christiani, almost sure that he had not forgotten anything, only regretted one thing. That was that his cousin Drouet was not well enough to come and sit in the old armchair that had been reserved for her in front of the luminite plate at the hour of the double tragedy. By force of argument and obstinacy, he had persuaded his mother to make a gesture to the old lady, reckoning that on such an occasion, in spite of any more-or-less gratuitous prohibition, the place of Cesar’s great-granddaughter—the last and only representative of the younger branch—was in the midst of the other members of the family. After all, while he had never believed that Cousin Drouet had “behaved badly toward Mélanie,” he had reminded himself that the ancestor’s heir might still have relevant documents and that, in consequence, to show her the deference that combined justice and utility was a course as judicious as it was commendable.
Madame Christiani had yielded eventually, finally vanquished by the spirit of race and family, which she placed so high in the scale of virtuous sentiments, telling herself, in addition, that since she would be obliged to invite the cousin to Colomba’s wedding, she might as well see her again right away. So, accompanied by her daughter, Madame Christiani had gone to the Rue Rivoli, where Madame Drouet had given them a charming reception. Unfortunately, age having partly crippled her, she had expressed, with a politeness that was entirely Old School, her regret at being unable to go to the Rue Tournon on the fifteenth of November. She only hoped that her pains would give her leave to attend the dear child’s wedding, at least for the mass.
The Master of Light Page 21
