Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  She took a deep breath. Thoughts of the vanished Yvette pounded through her mind as loud as the pulse in her ears. Her own legs were in irons. She was too weak to move them the few paces into the shrubbery.

  At last, with an enormous effort of the will, she crouched down for a closer look, bent back prickly branches.

  There was more than just a leg. There were two. They were half hidden by a red dress, worn by a woman whose face was turned downwards into the cold, cold ground. The woman’s hair was long and dark and curly. Not Yvette then. With a shudder, she turned the woman over. She was too heavy. She was dead. There was no doubt of that. The maggots were already at her face. A thin trail of dried blood ripped like a scar from the side of her mouth. Marguerite put a hand up to her own. She didn’t know whether she was going to cry or retch.

  That was when she heard it. It made her leap up. A great noise of twigs and branches, a lunge like an animal coming towards her, a grunt and a blow that knocked her onto rough ground, and then the sound of running. The thud of feet on massed earth and crinkling leaves. And then quiet.

  She didn’t know how long she waited before she got up. Got up slowly, in confusion. Very slowly, because now panic had restricted her ability to move. It confused her senses, made the near far. She could hear a low rushing sound. Where was it? Where?

  She waited for the vertigo to pass, remembered the slab of chocolate she had put in Antoine’s pocket and slowly, very slowly, reached for it. She let it melt on her tongue, then so slowly she thought she might never get there, she began to walk towards the river. She walked and walked and walked. She had hoped for the miracle of a boat. A fisherman. Neither was to be seen. Some instinct reminded her to leave a marker. She twisted Antoine’s scarf round a bough. When she looked back at it, it was floating innocently in the wind, like some wordless banner inciting the woods to protest.

  TEN

  Without knowing quite how she had got there, Marguerite found herself lying on a high narrow bed under a diagram of a leg. There was a room screen in front of her. She called out. An aging, sweet-faced woman, a crumpled bonnet perched on her wispy hair, appeared. She was holding a cup.

  ‘Don’t say anything, Madame. Just drink this. Drink this first. I’m Madame Germaine.’

  Marguerite felt the heat of brandy in her throat.

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘How did I get here?’

  From behind the screen, Dr Labrousse appeared. He bowed briefly. ‘I found you, Madame la Comtesse. Found you slumped over on your horse as I was heading towards Poncé late this morning. I brought you back here. You needed some stitches in your arm. You’d lost a good deal of blood.’

  He looked at her with a mixture of compassion and curiosity.

  She stared down at her bandaged arm, which lay like an inert object on the sheet that covered her. It all came back to her.

  ‘How does your head feel? I don’t know whether you’ve had a fall or…’

  ‘Never mind about that, doctor. There are more important matters we have to deal with. And quickly. There’s a dead woman in the woods. A woman in a red dress. Someone would rather I hadn’t found her. I don’t know who. You must get the police there. And in a hurry.’

  An image flashed through her mind, fugitive, like a rushing animal, a boar in the undergrowth. Its snout became the face of … who was it? Olivier. Could it have been Olivier? The face swam into that of Dr Labrousse.

  ‘You’ve had some kind of accident, Madame de Landois. Your imagination may be working…’

  ‘I’m not prone to imaginings, Doctor. You need to alert the police. I’ve left a scarf tied to a tree by the riverbank to indicate the place or near enough. A boat might be quickest. It’s downriver from here.’

  The doctor stared at her, reached for her pulse. ‘I was about to send for Monsieur le Comte.’

  Her throat grew drier. ‘No, no. Better not. He’s busy.’ She controlled her voice. ‘Best not to trouble him. Just have someone let him know I’ll be back later.’

  Before the doctor could protest, she added. ‘I’ll hire a carriage.’

  ‘In fact, I would rather you rested here a little longer. Some hot soup would be beneficial. I’ll send to the inn. It wouldn’t be wise to get up just yet.’

  She smiled at him, her face stiff.

  ‘You must believe me, Doctor. The police will have to go quickly if they’re to find her. I’ll rest better if you alert them straight away.’

  When she woke again, it was to see the sweet-faced old woman balancing a tray. On it were two covered tureens and great hunks of country bread. The sight of them brought hunger and with it alertness.

  ‘We’ll have you right as rain in no time, my dear. It’s these horses. They get skittish at this time of year. I reckon he must have thrown you. Thrown you on to some rocks. But you climbed right back on. Brave of you. And lucky that the doctor was heading that way.’

  ‘You’re quite right, Madame Germaine. That must have been it.’ There was no point explaining that her fall had taken place earlier. Marguerite took a second look at the woman and allowed her aching body to be helped into a chair and fed. The soup was thick and hot, the bread moist and yeasty. She was hungry. And the dizziness was gone.

  Madame Germaine’s friendly, wrinkled face twinkled at her. ‘Good, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’

  ‘You do indeed, my dear. I was hoping it might come back to you. Years ago now. I worked in your father’s house. You must have been about ten. Your father liked me to instruct him on the medicinal properties of the forest plants, and the herbs. You used to tag along and listen.’ She laughed. ‘You wore trousers then, too.’

  ‘So it was you…’ Marguerite was filled with relief. She was wondering who had undressed her, found Antoine’s trousers beneath her hastily donned skirt.

  ‘Yes, and I gave you just a little wash. The doctor had already done his business on your arm. You have more scrapes and bruises on you than you did as a child. Though I imagine they won’t do you any more harm now than they did then.’

  Marguerite saw the woman give her a distinct wink.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Madame Germaine. Very good.’

  While she ate, the woman regaled her with stories of the old days, little tidbits about her father. Marguerite felt strength coursing back with the food and the kind, humorous voice.

  When she had finished the last morsel on the tray, she insisted on taking a stroll at least around the room.

  ‘The doctor, I take it, makes his home here.’

  ‘Yes, my dear. He’ll be in to see you as soon as he’s back. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Tell me, Madame Germaine.’ Marguerite lowered her voice. ‘Can one see from a dead woman’s body whether she’s recently had a baby?’

  ‘You mean the woman you think you saw in the woods?’ Madame Germaine had all her wits about her.

  ‘I did see. And her killer – or someone – was still in the vicinity. He hurt my arm. I’m convinced of that.’ A trembling took hold of her.

  ‘There, there, my dear. I’m going to brew you one of my special tisanes. It will see you right. Calm you, too.’

  ‘But can you tell? About the baby, I mean.’

  ‘Oh yes. Easily enough.’

  Her words filled Marguerite with relief. Whoever the dead woman was, if she had recently been delivered of a baby, Marguerite’s misadventure wouldn’t have been altogether in vain.

  There remained the question of who the woman in red might be. But that would be determined soon enough. Madame Germaine herself, who delivered so many of the babies of the region, might know.

  She hoped with all her being that Olivier himself had no hand in the fact that she was dead. That he hadn’t, through some mistaken wish to make the child he now called Gabriel wholly his, helped the babe’s blood mother to her end. It would account for his lack of worry about the child’s parentage.

  But these were wild speculations, fantasies
worthy only of her exhaustion.

  The next time she woke up, it was to find Martine and her little maid, Jeanne, hovering over her in the cramped space behind the screen where the body part diagrams were attached to the wall.

  ‘Oh Madame,’ Martine was tearful. ‘I’m so glad you’re awake. I mean, I’m so sorry about your accident. Monsieur sent us. He sent us to fetch you.’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ Jeanne smoothed the hair from Marguerite’s brow. ‘He wants you straight home. He won’t stand for a “non”. No Madame, he won’t. I shall do your hair, while you have something to drink. That Madame Germaine said you had to. Drink, that is. Then Georges is waiting to help.’

  Marguerite smiled at both of them. ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ She glanced at the clock on the mantel. Not yet four. ‘Very glad. Now, Jeanne, before you do my hair, I want you to tell Georges to rush over to the post office and see if a telegram has come for me. No, no. No protests. Straight away. It will be from Chief Inspector Emile Durand.’

  She flinched as she waved the girl away. Her arm was very sore.

  ‘Oh, Madame.’ The colour had drained from Martine’s face, making it paler than the starched cotton of her shirt.

  Marguerite thought the girl might faint and she ordered her somewhat brutally into a chair.

  ‘Drink something, Martine. Here. And tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s your arm, Madame. The rawness. The welts.’ The girl trembled.

  Marguerite looked down. Madame Germaine had put an unguent over the stitches to speed the healing and had left the arm to air unbandaged.

  ‘It is ugly, isn’t it? We’ll cover it up soon enough. Did you get lots of cuts as a child? I was terrible, always falling about.’ She made light of the wound.

  ‘Ah no, Madame. It’s not that. It reminds me. Reminds of Yvette.’ Abruptly she clamped a hand over her mouth.

  ‘What does it remind you of?’ Marguerite asked softly.

  ‘No, no. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Tell me, Martine. It may be important. To help us find her. Anything you can tell me is important. Is she marked in some way?’

  Martine tore the woollen hat off her head as if it sat there with the weight of an iron case. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face today and caught in a wispy bun. Long fingers played with it, trying to tuck stray curls. It came to Marguerite that Olivier might have said something to the girl about her slightly dishevelled appearance. ‘It really is important, Martine.’

  ‘She … Yvette. She had a lot of cuts. Blood, too. It made me…’ The fingers coiled into a tight fist on her lap and grew white. ‘Welts … She did it to herself. To punish herself, she said. Because she was wicked. Because it made her feel better afterwards. After she had been punished. And it did make her feel better, Madame. Her eyes would grow all clear. Do you feel better, Madame?’

  Marguerite stared at her. Her conversation with Madame Tellier, whom she had judged more or less lying, perhaps even mad, took on a different configuration. Was it Yvette who was the greater hysteric? Was the girl inflicting harm on herself in a systematic way?

  ‘Do you think Yvette could…’ she chose her words carefully, ‘could punish herself so badly that … that she couldn’t move?’

  Martine shook her head uncertainly. ‘I don’t know, Madame. I don’t think so. I don’t. She never did before.’

  ‘What about someone else? Could she hurt someone else? While she was punishing them, of course?’

  ‘She never hurt me. Never.’

  ‘But she frightened you?’

  ‘Ladies.’ For lack of a door to knock on, Dr Labrousse spoke his presence. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ Marguerite called out. ‘Tell me the news, Doctor. About the woman.’

  She glanced at Martine and saw that the doctor was staring at her. ‘But of course, you haven’t yet met. This is Martine Branquart, Dr Labrousse. Yvette’s sister.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I see.’ He bowed slightly.

  ‘My husband has sent the carriage for me. He insists I return.’

  The doctor was still staring at Martine. ‘You’re very like your sister,’ he murmured.

  The colour rose in uncomfortable flecks on Martine’s cheeks. ‘Yes,’ she turned away.

  ‘Very pretty, Mademoiselle.’

  Martine flashed him a shy smile.

  He looked at his feet. Like a boy, Marguerite thought, timid despite all his experience. But she needed him alert.

  ‘Martine, why don’t you go and see if Jeanne is back yet.’ She didn’t speak until the girl had closed the door behind her. ‘Please, Doctor, tell me what you found.’

  He placed his hand to her forehead and then, putting a lens to his eye, lifted her arm to examine it better. ‘Remarkably like her sister,’ he murmured again, still troubled. ‘I do hope the poor young woman is all right.’

  Marguerite was growing impatient. ‘The woman in the woods, Doctor. The woman in red.’

  ‘Oh yes, Madame. She was just up the path from where you left the scarf flying. The constable confirmed it to me on my return here. I owe you an apology once more it seems.’

  ‘And who is she?’

  ‘That I can’t help you with, Madame. I had rounds at the hospital to make and I haven’t yet seen her. Tomorrow I will examine her.’

  ‘I see.’ Marguerite wished that Olivier hadn’t sent for her, but now there was no way she could stay here and wait for the doctor’s autopsy. ‘That will make two bodies for you in under ten days, Doctor.’

  ‘Yes, that does rather exceed our usual rate.’ He met her eyes. ‘I sense what you are thinking, Madame. But you must rest. I am sending Madame Germaine home with you. To look after you. She is wholly reliable.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for coming along at the right moment, too. Who knows, you might have had three bodies to contend with.’

  ‘That is definitely not a matter to joke about, Madame.’ He stood sternly to his full height and took on the aura of a stern patriarch.

  ‘I am very grateful to you, Doctor. Perhaps I was destined to become your patient after all. By the way, I hope that very soon we shall have a senior member of the police judiciare with us. That should be of some help in following through what are now your two cases.’

  ELEVEN

  The bedroom Marguerite used when she came to La Rochambert had once been her mother’s. Olivier had transformed it from the Empire burgundies and golds it had worn in her childhood to coolest celandine and silver. It held a large whitish bed in provincial style draped on three sides by yards of finest muslin, almost like a girl’s bed. Next to the room was a small matching boudoir, complete with chaise longue and a fine rococo writing desk. The little boudoir occupied one of the château’s rounded towers.

  It was here she reclined, freshly washed and powdered in her heavy silk robe, its deep forest green encrusted with gold thread that caught the fire’s light. On the table in front of her sat a carafe of brandy and a book Olivier had evidently left for her.

  She opened the book to find it was a volume by Maurice Barrès: The Garden of Berenice. Had Olivier intended it as provocation, an education in the wifeliness she so patently failed to display? Clearly he must know that the inventor of the cult of the self, with his love of priests and prayer and native soil, his stance against Dreyfus, was hardly amongst her favourites.

  She couldn’t concentrate on Barrès’ encrusted prose. There was little she could concentrate on. Not even her own thoughts were clear. Her body ached far more than she had thought possible earlier. Pain had set in once it knew it was safe to do so. But was she safe, she wondered? Someone had seen her in the woods beside the dead woman. Someone who might be Olivier. Someone who might or might not have recognised her in the guise of Antoine.

  Marguerite gazed at the leaping fire in the hearth. Was it weakness that now made her so uncomfortable and so suspicious? There had been a barely restrained scowl on Olivier’s face as he watched her slowly take the stairs
with the help of Madame Germaine and Martine.

  She had sent both of them away now to visit Gabriel and in order to have some time to think on her own. Not that Madame Germaine had been any help on the Gabriel front. She could think of no woman she knew of in the immediate area who had disappeared during or after a visible pregnancy to reappear without the child.

  In other spheres, though, the woman was a mine of information, even asserting with a smile that gossip was part of her profession. She had babbled on happily about the Telliers when Marguerite had asked, telling her what she already knew in part, but giving it all a vividness previously lacking.

  The Telliers, in alliance with Madame Tellier’s family, the Marchands, were Troo’s most despised and revered family, hated and admired in equal measure for their wealth, profligacy and baronial temperament, even though there were no titles to justify it.

  Over the years, the family had accumulated sizeable properties both in the area and in Tours, where the men spent much of their time when business concerns didn’t also take them further afield. Monsieur Tellier, an avaricious sort, whose mother was a cousin to the Marchands, was older than Madame, probably as old as her intemperate father, Napoléon Grandcourt Marchand, who had been notorious in the area in his debauched youth, years ago now. He was a scoundrel of the first order: a lumbering giant of a man with pitch-black hair and eyes and an even darker disposition. He had had a brother, now long gone, who was no better. There had been some funny business with the sister as well, a broken engagement or some such. Anyhow, she had left and the brothers had started to travel. The region had breathed a sigh of something like relief and went to feed its appetite for gossip elsewhere. Madame Germaine had had little contact with them of late. She was only irregularly called to Troo, which had its own midwife.

  A loud, unmistakable knock on the door announced Olivier’s presence. He didn’t wait for her to bid him in. Nor did he sit. He stood over her, his features heavy, dour.

  ‘You should know, Marguerite, that I am less than pleased at your misadventures. Of course, of course,’ he held up a hand as if she had been about to interrupt him, ‘I’m sorry that you’ve taken a fall. But what you think you were doing traipsing round the countryside on your own, making a spectacle of yourself, ending up prostrate at the house of that less than savoury Dr Labrousse … Really, Marguerite. This kind of behaviour is better suited to a kitchen maid than a countess.’