Werewolf of Paris

by Guy Endore

  Arrived at the scene of his work, he showed the cane to his fellow workers. “Look what I found. Nice, eh?” The workmen admired; but one man said: “Where’d you get that? Belongs to Old Bramond, the garde champêtre. Better return it.”

  “I’ll have to, I guess,” the young man said, a little sorrowfully, hating to part with the piece of polished wood to which his hand had already acquired a friendship.

  “See that you do,” said the older man. Intentionally, however, the young man allowed various matters to delay him a week before he brought the cane back to its owner.

  “Where did you find this?” Bramond asked in surprise.

  “Out on the road.”

  Bramond shook his head. “Hm.” He showed the stick to his wife.

  “What does it mean?” she asked wildly.

  “Hm. Nothing, I guess. You remember he did not want it and stuck it through the straps of his knapsack? It must have fallen out without his noticing it.”

  “But we haven’t heard from either him or Aunt Louise. Surely he’s reached Paris already.”

  “Give him time, Mother. You know he hasn’t a cent to spare. With the four others we’ve got, he’ll have to go easy. He knows that too. And Aunt Louise is poorer than we are. Now, don’t you worry.”

  “But I am worried. Oh, I wish we could have sent our boy to study in style. M Galliez told me Bertrand took the train at Arcy. And M Galliez is going to follow just as soon as he can. Oh, I hope everything is all right with Jacques!”

  Lovesick for his sweetheart at home, the young farmhand suddenly departed. He was even willing to lose a portion of his wages for not having worked out the week. This proved a strong argument against him, when, a week or so later, poor Jacques’s body was discovered and this young farmhand was brought to trial. It was shown by clocking that on that morning he would have encountered Jacques at just about the point of the road which was nearest the grave in the forest.

  If he was not convicted, it was only because, aside from the cane and the meeting on the road which would explain either the finding of the cane or the murder, the evidence was too scanty. And no motive could be established, though theft was brought up strongly by the prosecution.

  Old Bramond was heard to mutter: “If he isn’t convicted, I’ll murder him myself!” But his wife could only think of the sadness of it: over and over, as she shook her head, she would repeat: “Just imagine, he didn’t even get out of sight of the village. And we thought him in Paris, long ago.”

  Even the farmhand’s girl back home had at least some suspicions and broke off with him, and the young man, though legally acquitted, found himself convicted by the community. Only Galliez had been decent to him, but when he knocked at the Galliez house he learnt that Monsieur was in Paris. He thought of emigrating, but he had no money, though the village credited him with having secreted Jacques’s cash. He thought of joining the army, which was calling for men to join the colors to beat back the Prussians besieging Paris, but before he did so, he got himself drunk one night of desperation and hanged himself.

  “Saved my gun the trouble,” Bramond grumbled. “Well, that shows up his bad conscience.”

  He was told of a note that was left by the young man. It read:

  I am innocent, but even my dearest Hélène thinks me guilty. How can I live?

  “Hm,” said Bramond in surprise. “The cheek of that kind to lie, even when they are about to appear before God’s tribunal.”

  Only Aymar knew. That morning that Jacques was murdered was the morning Bertrand had run off. The manner of the killing, the tearing of the carotid artery, the mutilation, etc. There could be no doubt of it. And yet: What proof had he?

  His first intention was to run off at once to Paris, where he suspected Bertrand must be, but he delayed several weeks. There was the trial of the poor farmhand. He must see that there be no miscarriage of justice there. He journeyed to Auxerre, where the trial was to be held, and having assured himself by a talk with the lawyers of the defense that the man could not possibly be convicted, he thought to have done his duty by slipping the poor fellow fifty francs and promising to do more if necessary.

  Subsequently, in Paris, when several months later news began to come through again, he learnt of the truth and reproached himself bitterly. “If only I had set fire to the house that night,” he thought. That phrase in the letter had been true: the Pitamonts leave a trail of misfortune that spreads out fanwise behind their poisonous course. If only he could have brought himself to make a complete confession to the police. But there was a strange shame here that he could not overcome. Oh, the terrible disgrace, the ignominy of it—possessing a mythical monster in one’s own family, in this age of science and enlightenment!

  Chapter Ten

  A ymar slipped into Paris, September the third, a day before its investment by the Germans was complete. Long before he had reached Paris, he had come to understand that, with no clue to go by, it would be difficult to find Bertrand. “How, in fact, shall I discover him?” Then he thought, sadly but realistically: “He will leave a trail of crimes.”

  Aymar’s first duty ought, then, to have been a visit to the police. But of this he naturally fought shy. What would he say to the police? For example: “I know something. There is a man who on certain nights craves blood so that he turns into a wolf and goes out to kill his prey.” If they do not laugh me out of court, they will at any rate ask:“You have seen this with your eyes.”And I shall say:“No, butI have proof of this fact from having lived with this man for nineteen years.”—“What proof have you?” “There was a silver bullet, which was shot at a wolf, and was found in his leg.”—“The mere sight of this bullet wouldn’t convince us, but where is it?”—“I haven’t got it, but he was born on Christmas eve and his eyebrows meet…”

  No, this was mad. He would not even get that far, and if he did, what good would it do? In the end he could only be locked up for a fool, and “serve me right, for I’d be a fool to do it,” Aymar concluded these thoughts.

  The best thing would be to wait for circumstances to make the matter plain to a number of people. “Then I can appear with my further confirmation. And either there will be crimes such that the matter will come to light, or else there will be no crimes and I needn’t worry.”

  Thus it was that several times a day Aymar looked through all the papers. Impatiently he turned away from the war news and sought the news of crime. But the war had crowded the latter out. Before the greater importance of thousands going to death, before a greater werewolf drinking the blood of regiments, of what importance was a little werewolf like Bertrand?

  Nevertheless, one day there was a clue. A General Darimon had died. His death roused sympathy, for his end was tragic. On one day he had lost his only child. On the next he had suffered a most brutal attack, the criminal going so far as to desecrate the dead child, and on the following day he, himself, had expired. The criminal was being held at the Déepôt and would shortly be moved to the prison of La Grande Roquette to await trial.

  The matter allows itself to be reconstructed from the data given by Aymar in his script, the newspapers of the time, the dossier of a certain Jean Robert, etc.

  General Darimon had been a popular figure in Imperial Paris. After a life spent in seeking the satisfaction of his baser instincts, he had secured both a stable position and a new fortune by an excellent marriage to an heiress. Despite the gossips, he was genuinely in love and thoroughly willing to be completely domesticated, which is not surprising, seeing that he was near taking his retirement. His cup ran over when he was blessed with a daughter, who he could not doubt was to be the last fruit of his life.

  In November 1870, when the girl was but five years old, she was carried off by so rapid an illness that there had been scarce time to call a physician, who, to be sure, could himself do no more than witness the last choked breaths of the hot, tortured body, whose fever cooled down rapidly to death’s chill.

  The church ceremony was
impressive. The funeral cortége, for those days when horses were lacking, was nevertheless an endless file, so great was the company. Women and children wrapped in shawls against the cold streets, waiting in long queues to obtain their little rations of meat, watched the sad procession and found their lot a little easier to bear. Even shivering in the cold is a manifestation of life. It’s when the cold no longer makes you shiver…

  The little body was brought to rest at Pére-Lachaise. The workmen had removed the great slabs of stone from the vault and, on account of the lateness of the hour and the bitter cold, had gone home, expecting to close the vault on the morrow.

  The stricken parent, with tears streaming over his cheeks, could not restrain himself from weeping out loud, and informing those around him that he had been a cruel father who once had even shouted angrily at his angelic daughter because she had scribbled over some important correspondence. For this he would never forgive himself. Why had he not saved those scribbled sheets and framed them? They would now have been the most cherished mementos of his life.

  Among the mourners were many of the general’s old colleagues who could not help recalling that this pitiful old man with his childish tale of woe had been for twenty years the most noted raconteur of risqué stories in France, with more than one such story of his own experience. The way that man could crack a chestnut in the company of young men and women so that the girls understood not a word while the men had to hold their sides! That had been, in fact, his favorite trick, his forte.

  The hardest hearts melted at the sight of the father being torn away by force from the pit that had swallowed his child in its white coffin. The wife distraught, half unconscious, suffered herself to be led back to the long line of carriages with no resistance. But the general proved a problem for his friends.

  Finally he stood at the door of the coach. Resolved, he suddenly went forward to the black-plumed horses and spoke to the coachman. “You will call for me at five o’clock tomorrow morning. And every morning hereafter until I die. I shall see the sun rise here every day of my life.” The startled coachman doffed his tall black hat and mumbled something incomprehensible.

  Early in the morning the general was ready for the coachman who called promptly. Off they drove at a rapid pace through the dark, silent streets, where only a few trucks piled with cabbages and carrots were distributing the scanty rations of the siege-period. The drivers nodded on their seats, while the patient donkeys and horses trotted on philosophically. Behind, a woman or a boy snored, muffled in many shawls against the morning chill. It was a shrunken picture of a scene the general had often witnessed when coming home from some late festivity, but at the end of a night, never at the beginning of a day.

  The general sat erect, dry-eyed. He was fulfilling a vow, the execution of which, by the demands it placed upon him, was already helping him bear his load of grief. As he drove on, it suddenly occurred to him that he was making a strange man a party to his vow. A man who would henceforth suffer the same punishment he had meted out to himself. This idea, which would never have occurred to him in his former days, was now so insistent that he was driven to act. He called out to the coachman to stop. Then he stepped out and hoisted himself upon the box.

  “Drive on,” he said.

  The coachman, nonplussed, lifted the reins and let them slap down on the backs of his beasts. The night wind rushed past the two men. The general sat bolt upright. The coachman stiffened out of his natural droop.

  “What is your name?” the general asked kindly.

  “Jean Robert, at your service.”

  “Are you married?” the general pursued.

  “Yes, your excellency.”

  “Any children?”

  “Five, your excellency.”

  “Girls?”

  “Two.”

  “Do you love them?”

  “Ah, well, you see, monsieur, they’re mine.”

  “Of course.”

  “And then they cost a pretty sum.”

  “They do that,” the general confirmed and nodded his head.

  “When they’re tiny then of course they cost nothing for a while, but when you figure in the midwife…”

  “To be sure.”

  “They’ve got little mouths but big bellies and they’re always hungry.”

  “Strange, isn’t it?” the general asked politely.

  “Still, when they grow up and become men and women and marry, then you naturally expect them to take you in and take care of you in your old age.”

  “No good child forgets that duty,” said the general sternly.

  The coachman answered quickly: “I didn’t forget my old folks, I can tell you that, but children nowadays are not what they used to be. No respect for their elders any more. And the newspapers full of crime stories.”

  “Yes, the good old days,” said the general and sighed. “By the way,” he said, as if the thought that had been occupying his mind all the while had only just occurred to him, “it’s a shame that you should have to get up so early to drive me out to the cemetery. Hereafter I shall get up an hour earlier and walk.”

  The driver’s face fell. His voice revealed his disappointment.

  “Oh, not at all, your excellency. I am only too glad, too happy…”

  “That’s all right, my good man,” said the general and patted the coachman on the thigh. “You’ve a kind heart. But I have no business depriving you of the company of your children in the morning, simply because I have lost mine. I shall walk.” He sighed.

  They jogged along through the darkness for a while in total silence.

  “So it’s over,” said the coachman, and he too sighed.

  “What do you mean?” the general asked.

  “I mean it’s finished.”

  “What’s finished?”

  “The good job, of which I had promised myself so much.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We are paid very little, sir,” the coachman explained. “And here I had a little extra work every day, at an hour when no one else would have required me. Moreover, I arranged all the necessary details and promised the caretaker some money for opening the gates at this early hour.”

  The general fell into a reverie.

  As the carriage halted before the locked gate of the cemetery, the general, spurred by a sudden determination, handed the coachman his well-stuffed portefeuille.

  “Here. In that you will find a good year’s wages. Take it. It is yours. And I shall feel free to walk every morning and bear my grief alone.”

  The driver could not think of any other way to express his thanks than to get down on his knees and, with a choking voice cut by strangling sobs, mumble words that were incomprehensible.

  “Come, my friend,” said the general, to whom the scene was distasteful, “rise and let us be attending to business.”

  “Holà! Holà!” the coachman screamed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I must wake up the attendant who sleeps in the lodge there. He promised to open the door for us.”

  “No, no. That won’t do. Why should his sleep be disturbed? Besides, it is unseemly to shout in this place. Give me your hand and we shall soon be over the gate.” To facilitate the climb, which was not inconsiderable, the coachman backed his vehicle against the gate.

  The hour was now a little short of six. A morning mist, whitish-gray and luminescent, announced a chill dawn. The wet, leafless trees rained onto the cobblestoned walks. The two men had hardly dropped onto the other side when a dog rushed past them, took the high fence at one bound, resting for a second on the upper bars, and was gone.

  “What was that?” the general asked, startled.

  “The caretaker’s dog, I think,” said Jean Robert.

  “My nerves are bad,” said the general. They walked down the path through the wall of fog, in which the white tombstones seemed to be only concreter portions of the general mist, roughly carved into the shape of figures hunched aga
inst the chill.

  The feet of the walkers left the hard cobblestones and crunched along the pebbles of a narrower path—that crunch the only friendly sound in the dismal atmosphere. But even that friendly noise too often repeated grew ominous at last, took on an alarming note, seemed a threat. And from being the only sound in the cemetery, it came to be the only sound in the world. Crunch, Crunch! Crunch! The rhythms of the two walkers now agreed and reenforced each other, now broke and disagreed into a quarrel of crunches and then caught again, like dancers twirling in a complicated figure, like lovers kissing and bickering.

  The general’s ears were filled with the sound, his heart, his body, his mind were fastened on nothing but that crunching, crunching until his eyes caught sight of the grave of his child, a grave in strange disarray.

  His eyes sought to penetrate the mist. His feet hastened on. O Lord! O God! Have pity on me! The white coffin lay on one side, the cover was wrenched off and broken. Of the body of his little girl there were left only horribly mangled remains, scattered over the ground. In the distance sounded the early cannonade of the besieging Prussian troops firing on the fort of Mont-Valérien.

  Two hours later the caretaker discovered the terrible scene on his morning round. His dog, an old and silent beast that rarely barked, had run ahead and was excitedly growling and sniffing at the body of a man, General Darimon, and at the scattered remains of the body buried the previous day.

  The police, notified, were at once busy on the case. Both the general’s position in society and the gruesomeness of the crime demanded immediate attention. The general had been conveyed home where he lay in high fever unable to answer any questions, but the notorious cleverness of the Paris police rose to the occasion. In less than three hours, an officer and four men had set out, armed with a warrant, to a small street near the Porte Saint-Martin. They halted in front of a low two-story house of unappealing exterior. A central archway gave access to a dark staircase. Having posted his men, the officer, though timid by nature, felt compelled by his leadership to mount the steps, which he did, his pistol cocked. He took the further frequent precaution of stopping at almost every step and shouting out at the top of his voice: “In the name of the law!”