Marguerite imagined the sturdy, barrel-chested man bowing deeply and smiled. For all his occasional pomposity, his rigorous attention to form, she valued the chief inspector’s friendship above many older ones. He was reliable and astute and the kind of proud Republican she too rarely met in her own circles. He was also, with Rafael gone, in a strange way her remaining link to Olympe and the terrible tragedy of her one-time protégée’s untimely death.
Yes, Rafael had returned to America, for good this time it seemed. Rafael with his passionate features, his quick grace and fiery enthusiasms. How she missed him.
But there was nothing for it.
Marguerite slipped into her bedroom. The lawn blouse she had asked for was freshly ironed, the petticoat and striped grey travelling suit laid out. Jeanne, her maid, was waiting to tend to her morning toilette. Marguerite indulged herself and let her mind go back to Raf.
It wasn’t so much that Raf had fallen out with her as that he had fallen out with France as a whole. She had been there at the start of his love affair with her country. She could do little to prevent its end. Their passion, which had turned into the most interesting of amorous friendships, had now dwindled into an erratic exchange of letters. The whole sorry business of Olympe had taken its toll on them both. Her young friend’s drowning had made Marguerite feel like some bereft Queen of the Night whose child had been stolen away by malevolent forces. For Raf, it had been even worse. He felt in some sense responsible for those forces.
On top of that, the latest abysmal instalment in the Dreyfus affair had turned him against the country he had begun to call his second home. It was hardly surprising. The scandal had turned husbands against wives, polarised families, ranged Republicans against the military and ordinary people against a Church that had grown narrowly political and patriotic, as if God could only be a Frenchman of one particular sort. The stitching up of Dreyfus’s pardon – after the fragile, victimised man had been given the choice, which was no choice at all, of accepting his guilt and being returned to his family or battling for his innocence from prison – so sickened Rafael that by the end of September, he had determined to return to America.
Life seemed to be so much simpler in America. Virtue there was a distinct and nameable possibility. There were so few shades and textures between good and bad that she feared no Frenchwoman she could name, Joan of Arc apart, would qualify for the side of those angels. Or indeed the devils that virtue spawned.
She only heard Jeanne’s request that she stand at her second bidding. She let the girl adjust her corset. Could this garment, which so forcefully threw her bosom forwards and her hips back, also act as a bulwark against maudlin thoughts? Marguerite laughed at herself soundlessly, helped the girl to hook and pull and tie and at last arrange the slim skirts, fluted hips and back.
She had had to wait until the ripe age of thirty to experience longing in its true romantic sense. She supposed it was an emotion that sat better on the young. But she had never been a Madame Bovary, hadn’t spent her girlhood amongst nuns with copper crosses dangling from their necks, sweet-faced women who taught one how to swoon on one’s knees in expectation of a heavenly husband, a holy lover, an eternal marriage.
Nor had she, at the appropriate age, had rapturous encounters with Paul and Virginie in balmy, exotic climes, or indeed with Walter Scott in dramatic highlands. The most romantic tome in her father’s library had probably been Rousseau’s treatise on education, Emile. That apart, she had been reared on Aristotle and Plato, on the encyclopaedists and the natural scientists, with their fine distinctions and their insistence on observation. Nature, science and the published proceedings of the Botanic Society had been her girlhood romance.
The novelists had come with her marriage and the ones she read most ardently had an analytic cast of mind. They taught her that choices weren’t always and altogether one’s own to make, that happiness might be a fugitive moment most enjoyed in anticipation or memory.
Yet here she was, immersed in mourning the passing of a love she had always known would have to pass. Rationalists, too, bore a burden of unreason, she told her reflection in the sloping cheval mirror.
When she returned to her sitting room, she found Olivier bending over her desk, blatantly reading her letters.
‘You left this quite open to all eyes, Marguerite.’ He didn’t blink. ‘I gather you’re rather proud of the “feminine intuition” this Durand compliments you on.’
She glared at him.
‘Are you going to use it now to discover the identity of the dead man for us? The staff are awash with ideas. I fear they may drown in the bilge.’
Marguerite snatched Durand’s letter away from him. She hated his scoffing.
‘In fact, Olivier,’ she said coldly, ‘I was rather planning to unleash my cool, clear mind on the secrets of your foundling’s parentage. But if you’d rather I concentrated on the dead man, I shall be happy to oblige. You, in return, will keep your eyes well away from my correspondence.’
‘You know that these policemen are nothing more than criminals in uniform, Marguerite. Remember the heritage they share with the notorious Vidocq. No better than spies and stoolpigeons, all of them. As crooked as the people they’re after. Even worse than the Bohemian rabble you’ve taken up with in Paris. I don’t know what you can be thinking of.’
‘That’s enough, Olivier. Quite enough.’
Anger suffused her face. With a great effort she controlled it. She had made the vow years ago. She wouldn’t allow herself to be baited by Olivier. Actions, with him, worked far better than words. With the latter, he always triumphed.
She took a deep breath. ‘We’ve had eighty years of policing since Vidocq, Olivier. And Chief Inspector Durand has less in common with him than he probably does with one of our Republican deputies. At the moment, you’re the one who’s being a spy.’
He stared at her as if she had said something utterly astonishing, then averted his eyes and adjusted the silk scarf he wore bunched around his neck.
‘Yes. Of course. You’re right.’ He smiled with sudden contrition. ‘It was unforgivable of me to succumb to the temptation of the letter. I really came in to ask you whether you’d like to stroll down to Paul’s studio with me and have a look at his work.’
At the side door closest to the outhouses, they found the footman talking to a uniformed constable. The latter was insisting that he had been told in the village that a Monsieur Villemardi lived here. The footman was shaking his head in adamant negation.
‘Leave it to me, Georges,’ Olivier intervened.
As if to disprove every malign word he had uttered to Marguerite, he addressed the constable with charming politeness. ‘How can I help you?’
The man, who stood a head shorter than him, instantly bowed and removed his cap to display a tuft of reddish hair two shades brighter than his lustrous moustache.
Ten minutes later Paul Villemardi had been summoned and they were all gathered in the small drawing room, listening to the constable.
‘You see, Monsieur, the suicide may have carried no identification, but in his jacket pocket we found two items. One: a woman’s embroidered handkerchief, with the initials A. S. The second, a card, embossed with the words “Villemardi Fils, Stonemasons”.’
Paul Villemardi’s velvet eyes twinkled. ‘And so you think, Constable, that this man had already selected a funerary monument to adorn his grave?’
‘We think, Monsieur, that you may be able to identify him.’
‘But, Constable, if you stop to read the card, you’ll see that the address given on it is in the town of Château du Loir, not La Rochambert. Château is where you will find my honoured father who runs the business and may therefore be able to help you rather better than I can.’
‘Which is what the footman said to me. Without wishing to be disrespectful, Monsieur le Comte,’ he bowed towards Olivier, ‘I said to him that a colleague was on his way to Château du Loir. He would concentrate on Père and I on Fi
ls.’
‘I shall come with you to see the body, if you like, Monsieur Villemardi,’ Marguerite offered, but Olivier cut her off before she could finish.
‘That is not possible, Marguerite.’ He was as stern as a father disciplining a child. ‘I will accompany Paul.’
Seeing her face, he lightened his tone. ‘With his artist’s eye, Paul will be able to give you a detailed summary on our return.’
Not trusting her voice, Marguerite nodded a stiff goodbye to the men. She had other plans for the day in any event, ones Olivier would hardly approve in any greater measure. She wondered whether it was the notion of her becoming mother to his foundling that had so exacerbated the controlling instincts he had largely kept at bay during the last few years of their arrangement.
FOUR
The wind whipped through the carriage. The trees lining the river road shook and swayed like old men attacked by palsy. The sky was a sullen mass of darkening grey.
Marguerite shot a reassuring glance at Martine. As they approached the village of Troo, where her sister had last been in service, the girl moved closer and closer to the edge of her seat. She was like a bundle of exposed nerves. She jumped when Marguerite began to speak.
‘Why don’t we ask Georges to pull up by the River Inn? We can walk up towards the Tellier house. A walk will do us both good.’ Marguerite was a great believer in the health-giving properties of exercise for young women. Mental health in particular. Had she had her way, she would have ordered Martine on to a bicycle and a regime of two miles a day before lunch.
Martine nodded, her lips too tight for speech.
‘And Georges can make a few inquiries at the inn. Someone there may have information about Yvette.’
‘I should go with him,’ Martine burst out.
‘No, it’s best you come with me. The family will be more inclined to speak to Yvette’s sister than to a total stranger. And we need the walk.’
The girl seemed about to protest. Her eyes beneath the blue woollen hat were wide with what Marguerite could only interpret as fear. It was as if she had already decided her sister was dead and confrontation with her employers would confirm the fact against all her hopes.
Outside it was so cold the air cracked and whistled. The stairs cut into the crag were steep, the road unpaved. The houses huddled into the rock face like the Neolithic caves out of which some of them had grown. In the fields around here, Marguerite remembered, there were menhirs and stones with odd carvings. Her father had been fascinated by the troglodyte dwellings, the flints and arrowheads that had been found in them. So had she been, back then. There was an adventure to the world growing older and older as it bounded into the future.
Now Marguerite felt the ancient village had grown less hospitable, whether it was the discomfort of not being clogged and trousered as she had been in the old childhood days beside her father, or simply the silence around them that had an unnatural, hostile edge. She could feel the villagers pausing in their activity to watch their passage from behind small, shrouded windows and barred doors.
Beyond the church square, they took a narrow winding path of pebble and mud. With no warning, a noise burst upon the quiet like an explosion of gunfire at an execution. Both of them stopped in their tracks and stared at each other. With a shrug, Marguerite moved on to where the road twisted.
The scene that confronted her brought an admonishing shout to her lips. A group of boys stood in front of a house set well back from its neighbours and surrounded by a stone wall. The boys wore thick ragged pullovers or dingy jackets and had hobnailed boots or clogs on their feet. These clattered loudly as they moved. A pile of stones and smooth pebbles lay heaped in front of them – ammunition for battle. At a command from their leader, they aimed the stones at the wall or over it. Their shouts came in raucous unison, like a hail of bullets. The echo of the rock face amplified their noise, turning it into a tumult. The boys’ faces were contorted in spite. The words they yelled were not ones she would want to repeat in any company.
‘What on earth are you up to?’ Marguerite confronted them with all the dignity of her rank and age.
They stared at her, leers and nastiness still ripe on their features.
‘Nothing,’ the leader brazened it out. ‘We’re playing.’
He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine.
‘Playing?’
‘Yes, we’re aiming at the wall.’
‘And at the witch who lives there,’ a tiny voice piped up.
‘A witch?’
‘A bad witch. She never comes out. She just sends her wicked servants to catch us and eat us up.’
‘Yes,’ another voice intervened. ‘A huge black witch. She eats babies. Hides them away then eats them, bit by bit.’
Marguerite noticed that this small huddled shape was in fact a girl in trousers. ‘Babies?’ Marguerite queried. ‘Have any gone missing?’
‘See, see. There she is.’ The child jumped up and down in great excitement, pointing at a high window. One of them launched a stone that cleared the wall and fell with a thud on invisible ground.
There was indeed a shape at the window. It floated behind a gauzy curtain and, to Marguerite’s consternation, conformed to the children’s description. The figure appeared ominously dark and with a tangled frazzle of hair.
‘Away with you. Away.’ A door in the wall scraped open. A gnarled old man showed his face. ‘Away, I tell you.’ He shook a fist at the children, threw a stone back in their direction.
The little girl set up a howl. Marguerite didn’t think she’d suffered a direct hit. She didn’t have time to check, because now the old man was staring at her from small, malevolent eyes that seemed older than the hills, eyeing Martine, too, who huddled behind her.
‘And you. What do you want? Are they sending the duchesses after us now? This is a Republic isn’t it? A free Republic. Liberty. Equality. We’ll have to wait a thousand years for the Fraternity.’ He made a high, shrill sound, like a cackle and aimed a gob of spit at the ground. It fell not far from Marguerite’s skirts.
Before she could respond, the door clattered shut. She could hear a key turning this time. The children took up their shouting again, but it had grown half-hearted.
‘Time to head home,’ Marguerite silenced them. ‘Or find something else to play at.’
As she watched the children meander off, poking and prodding each other with casual cruelty, aiming the occasional stone, she thought for a moment about Olivier’s foundling. To parent a child was no simple matter. She shook the thought away. This wasn’t her business for the moment. There was Martine’s sister to see to first.
‘Are you still here?’ The gnarled old man clattered the door open again and stared at her as if she had spoken out loud. ‘What are you after, eh?’
‘Nothing, Monsieur. Nothing. I was trying to stop the children. I’m looking for the Tellier house. Have I arrived?’
‘Arrived? Arrived in Heaven?’ He grumbled some incomprehensible oath, then pointed a bony finger to the right, described a sinuous line, and slammed the door with a clang.
Above her in the distance, Marguerite saw the curtain move once more. Behind it, a shadowy figure raised a hand. The gesture could have been either rage or supplication.
A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with the chill wind.
Up the hill and round the crest to the right, they finally found the Tellier house. It was a substantial residence, solid and square and self-important, with its own imposing stretch of grounds, an iron gate and a row of chestnuts – one of those houses that the affluent provincial bourgeoisie inhabited.
Martine stared at the gate as if it might absorb her, swallow up her vital essence in return for her sister’s sudden apparition. Marguerite had seen that look before during a séance she had once attended out of curiosity. Yes. It was the expression on the face of a young woman who was hoping for word from her dead fiancé. It was exactly with that look of a supplicant, mouth vuln
erable, cheeks pale and, one could feel it, bitten from within, that the woman gazed at the impassive medium lost in her real or enacted trance. Like that woman, all Martine’s energy seemed now to have gone out of her. Its only residue was contained in the springy aureole of her pale blonde hair.
Marguerite laced a supporting arm through the girl’s and gave the front gate a vehement prod. It opened easily enough and they strode up the tree-lined path. For a moment, she imagined herself as a girl raised to other aspirations, as the Branquart sisters had been, and suddenly thrust into service in a house like this – a house where the provincial mistress would probably be far more vigilant and exacting than Marguerite could ever be. She felt a cage of servitude closing round her, a constriction in breath and movement that was difficult to shrug off. Someone was always watching, measuring, judging. There was no escape. Destitution was round the corner. Yet flight felt like an imperative. She held on to Martine more tightly.
The three floors of the stuccoed house had even rows of windows, large at the bottom, smaller at the top, all similarly shuttered. She waited for Martine to catch her breath, then let the heavy knocker fall several times. When no response came, she tried again.
At last the door inched open. A sturdy middle-aged woman with leathery skin and pale eyes poked her head through the crack. She was wearing a servant’s bonnet and an apron stained in what might be blood or wine.
‘There’s no one available,’ she declared before Marguerite could utter a word. ‘Madame has gone to Tours. Gone after Monsieur Tellier. She won’t be back for days, maybe weeks. Who knows. They never tell me.’
Sacred Ends Page 4
