‘That’s terrible.’
‘I agree. But only terrible for you and me. Yvette, I think, rather longed for the next life. I don’t know what her sister’s like in that respect.’
‘So you think Yvette is dead? You keep talking about her in the past tense.’
He shrugged and got up to pace. ‘I really don’t know, Madame. I’d like to know. Had I thought my story would help you, I would perhaps have told you sooner. But I don’t know where she went after I took her to the Clares. She couldn’t have stayed with them for long.’
‘And have you told me everything now?’
He smiled, a little sadly. ‘Everything of moment. I hope you believe that I never colluded with Madame Tellier. If anything I was happy to get the girl out of her way. As far out of her way as possible.’
‘Now, Doctor. Tell me honestly. Has her sister, Martine, come to you in the last few days?’
‘No Madame, how can you think it? I wish she had.’
He said it with an air of such longing that Marguerite suddenly felt she might weep.
These last days were beginning to take their toll. She was tired, tearful, felt she had failed in too many respects. A man in love brought back all the vulnerability she worked so hard to distance herself from.
‘You’ll excuse me. I must get back to the remains of Monsieur Marchand.’
She nodded and met his eyes. She had the impression the doctor, like her, had been running away from intimate matters by immersing himself in more distant problems.
You could, she thought, be overwhelmed by both.
A coughing fit took hold of her on the way home. Yes, she was bone-tired, had probably caught a chill in the rain or in the tunnels or in Napoléon Marchand’s house, or indeed in the church only this morning. In the church with Olivier, who was more distressed than she had ever seen him. She shivered and tucked the blanket around her skirt. It had been too long a day.
Part of her was relieved that the inspector had stayed behind in Montoire to learn the results of Dr Labrousse’s laboratory work and to stay close to the investigating magistrate. She needed some time alone. Time to think. She hadn’t been thinking clearly enough. There was so much she had missed. Missed about Yvette, probably about Martine, even about Olivier. She had been blind to a whole spectrum of motive and inclination and intent.
Faith. Belief. Ritual. Their comforts. Their attendant hierarchies of authority and of punishment, guilt and sin. They had so little play in her own life that she had been blind to the way they shaped or distorted the daily lives and passions of others. She had been blind not to religion’s sway as a political or social force – these last years which had riven the nation had made that all too clear. But blind to the sway religion had over the individual conscience, over desires, too, over aspirations and fears. Her sleep of reason had bred only one kind of monster, and it wasn’t the one in play.
She should have seen it before. Yvette was a pious girl, inspired more by Bernadette and Joan of Arc than by the likes of George Sand. She was hardly alone if you were to judge by the ranks and ranks of women who filled the churches. It was one of the reasons the Republicans were against giving women the vote. They feared women in the sway of priests would vote largely for the religious right.
Marguerite looked out at the grey, winding river, with its graceful willows and poplars, its reeds, all bending in the direction the wind chose. She forced her thoughts back to the particular.
Everything she had been told about Yvette should have pointed her in the right direction. The girl was strong, unafraid, Martine had said, with just a little note of fear in her own voice. Virtuous. Little frightened her, not even blood; in fact she drew it herself, punished her body for its sins. There was that little shrine to the Virgin Mary in the old sinner’s house. Frère Michel’s cryptic words about silence were not cryptic at all, looked at in the right light. Poverty. Chastity. Obedience. And sometimes silence. Silence could simply be one of the vows.
Where did girls go to disappear? Girls without money, girls with no one to turn to? It was the question she had posed herself about Yvette all along and she had come up with a Parisian answer, the answer of anonymous crowds and shop-filled streets and rows upon rows of houses. Houses of ill repute, she had told herself. But brothels didn’t take in pregnant girls.
The kinds of houses that did were holy houses. At the opposite end of the spectrum of vice stood virtue. There were two kinds of home away from home. The brothel and the convent. She hadn’t considered the convent. Yet she knew that even as the state grew increasingly secular and Republican, orders, scores of them women’s orders, had sprung up across the country. In many instances they offered women not only piety and the ascetic religious life, but a way of doing useful work in the world, a way of freeing themselves from the imposed and constricting choices of marriage or spinsterhood.
For a troubled adolescent with no one to turn to, what greater relief than to have order put into a disordered universe by a power greater than oneself. She would find Yvette in a convent. She was now convinced of it. All she had to do was begin the search. As for Martine, it was becoming clearer to her where she might be. If that frightening bear of a creature, that P’tit Ours and his malign old master, hadn’t stood in the way, she might have seen it sooner.
At La Rochambert, she was relieved to hear that Olivier had returned. He had come back with Armand and his father, Henri, the gamekeeper. He had said he would do without dinner. Just a bowl of soup in his rooms. He was feeling under the weather and wanted not to be disturbed.
Marguerite asked for the same.
But when she finally curled up in bed, she couldn’t sleep. The sheets felt alien. The events of the last days whipped at her mind like angry wasps at a closed window. She was too tired to calm them and they buzzed around her, spiralling, intersecting for hours, creating waking dreams, so that when she heard a sound, felt rather than saw a shifting pattern of light, she jolted up in fear.
A thin stream played across the floor of her room, moved, gave birth to shadows. It was too late for light. But someone was walking along the hall. Who? Going where?
Softly, she stole into her dressing gown. The house was cold. She would have to have shoes. No, they would make too much noise. Was it her ruminations about the power of the clergy that provoked the thought that Père Benoit might be making a little free with their hospitality? All the doors of the house were rarely locked. He could easily come in. To find what?
Blackmail. The word resounded in her mind with all the clarity of a bell ringing out evensong. Hadn’t he already threatened as much earlier that day? And one of his sources of extra cash had now given out. If the curé was to be accused – and he had certainly seen her carriage at old Napoléon Marchand’s – then he would point a finger at Olivier in turn.
But what could there be amongst Olivier’s papers that attested to his secret life? Surely nothing. This wasn’t the stuff of documents.
Letters? Might there be letters? In the library. Had the light come from the direction of the library?
She was already in the hall, stealing after the flicker of the lamp. It cast a weak, yellow light, on the stairs now, no, not down, but up. That surprised her. She waited until it was only a gleam in the distance, then crept up the stairs.
A shadow – robed, tall, broken at the legs. It loomed up the side of the wall. Then it was gone before she could decipher it. Through a door. The babe’s room. She was certain of it. What could the curé want in little Gabriel’s room? Was it possible that Olivier kept secrets in there?
She took a deep breath and followed. She waited a few moments before turning the knob. But there was no point creeping. Or hiding. It was her house after all.
The figure sat in lamplight, his profile to her. He was staring into the cradle. He was so intent on what he saw that he seemed not to have heard the movement of the door. He held up the little glimmering heart-shaped amulet that lay in the crib and brought it to his lips.
Marguerite stopped in her progress.
Olivier.
It was Olivier in his long dressing gown that had played over the walls like the curé’s habit. He was watching the baby with a concentration that blocked out all else. For a moment she thought he might be sleepwalking. Or about to do the child some harm.
Then he turned to her, slowly took in her presence. His face wore the marks of the misery she had seen the first signs of that morning. The full-blown realisation came towards her, like one of those engines travelling through the night of a moving picture screen. She had glimpsed the headlight before, cutting across the distance, growing brighter and brighter. Now, as it threatened to knock her over, she was forced to grapple with the unmistakable beast.
‘He’s your son, isn’t he, Olivier? You know he’s your son? You just haven’t told me. It might have been easier to tell me.’
A strangled sound emerged from his throat. He repeated it more firmly.
‘Yes.’
She held back, then uncharacteristically walked towards him and placed her hand on his shoulder.
‘That’s fine, Olivier,’ she said. ‘I just needed to know. To know the truth.’
His breath was ragged. He nodded once, a definitive once.
‘And his mother is Louise who was once a maid here? Is that right?’
The nod again. This time he met her eyes. ‘It was Père Benoit’s idea. To make me go to her … I needed to be made whole. He said it would make me whole.’
‘Whole. I see. I see.’ She saw it with a terrifying clarity. The priest directing Olivier to Louise. To make him a man. A different kind of man. And then inducing him to come to Marguerite herself. To prove it once more. To prove it, since his desires that night of the party had so palpably lain in another direction.
‘I’m glad you’ve told me,’ she said.
He stared at her. ‘Are you?’
‘Told me yourself.’ She moved a step closer to the cradle. ‘But I must go and see her, this Louise. Talk to her. You understand that, Olivier?’
He nodded miserably.
‘If she’s happy about it, we’ll move ahead with the adoption. Perhaps you might just delay the notary for a few days.’
He looked back into the cradle. ‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. And he trusts us. Perhaps mistakenly.’
‘Marguerite…’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you.’
PART FOUR
UNHOLY LOVES
TWENTY-SIX
Marguerite woke late, but with a lightness in her heart that was difficult to attribute.
Could she really feel so much easier because Olivier had confessed to a paternity she had already half-suspected? Could she really prefer a truth ordinarily so difficult for a wife to swallow to the shadow play of concealment? She was, she reflected, just a little odd. Or maybe it was simply that she didn’t consider Olivier’s transgression a betrayal. Except in law, the larger part of their bond had long been broken.
Of the two of them, however, the curé was decidedly the odder. Perhaps even the more transgressive. She could just about bring herself to see how he might find it within his understanding that Olivier be charged with performing his marital duty. She could not see how inducing him to bed a serving girl would transform his so-called sexual sins. Nor could she call to mind any scriptural instance in which sodomy was purified by adultery.
But all that finally had little to do with baby Gabriel’s future. She would go and see the girl Louise at the nearest opportunity. Today, however, she had a more urgent task.
No sooner had she rung for Jeanne than the young woman was through the door.
‘Ah Madame, I’ve been putting the inspector off. I told him you needed your rest. You weren’t well yesterday.’
‘What is it, Jeanne?’
‘He wants to see you. Before he leaves. Leaves for Paris. He’s been summoned.’
‘Help me dress, Jeanne. I’ll take my coffee with him.’
Durand was pacing the small drawing room impatiently. There were circles under his eyes. He had shaved without his usual care, and the stubble darkened his chin, giving his dapper air a dangerous edge. The inn at Montoire, as he had told her before, had little to recommend it except a loose-tongued mistress and gossip exchanged round the blazing fire.
‘I leave on the next train, Madame,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘There was a telegram waiting for me from the Commissioner when I got back here.’ He adjusted his tie in unhappy anticipation. ‘His patience has run out.’
‘I’m so sorry, Inspector … I had hoped to have news about our renegade politician any day now … You shall be much missed here, as I think you know.’
A maid brought in a tray of coffee and brioche. The morning’s post sat in a neat pile next to the silver pots.
‘I am sad to say, Madame, that our incursion early this morning into the property you call the witch’s house, though in fact it belonged to Napoléon Marchand, was a complete failure. A failure in the sense that neither P’tit Ours nor this Amandine Septembre were there. Nor was anyone else.’
‘I see.’
Marguerite played with the lace of her collar and looked down at the black and white patterning of checks on her skirt. Half of her was relieved. She didn’t want the inspector to notice. She hadn’t relished the possibility of Amandine Septembre behind bars on a charge Madame Tellier would inevitably have concocted. And the woman had only, after all, pushed Napoléon over in justifiable self-defence. She had a hunch the old man himself would never have pressed charges. He was not one to go to the police for justice. Though that, she reminded herself, was hardly a good.
‘I was almost certain that if they’d taken the tunnel route, that’s where they’d be.’
The inspector shrugged. ‘I’m sure they’ll be found in due course. I’m only sorry I won’t be with you when they’re apprehended. Or indeed until you find the Branquart sisters. I’m leaving too many loose ends. And Martine worries me. Such a tremulous young thing. Easy prey for any man.’
Marguerite sipped her coffee and told him of her hunch, only to see him smile and nod in that endearing way of his, as if the idea had been his all along, and she had now had the good sense to come round to it.
‘As for the rest,’ Durand added, happier now that the bad news didn’t seem so bad to her, ‘the examining magistrate and the constable are calling on Madame Tellier at this moment. There is reason enough to believe from Dr Labrousse’s report that she … or someone … had a hand in her father’s death. The old man certainly had too large a dose of morphine administered to him. Suspicion, of course, falls on Madame Tellier,’ Durand gave her a mischievous smile, ‘particularly since our brave little constable was sent into dreamland as well. On top of that, the drunken old blighter choked on his own vomit. The local magistrate wants to press the case against her.’
‘And will he succeed, Inspector?’
He shrugged. ‘She may try and slip out of it by claiming that her father took the additional powders and the quantities of alcohol himself. But the magistrate says he’ll persist with his interrogation, will not allow himself to be swayed.’ The inspector’s blue eyes were at their most shrewd.
‘You’re not certain he’ll resist her?’
He didn’t answer directly. ‘You said when you first went to see the old man he was already poorly. I suspect she may have been at her evil work for some time, though it’s hard to come by proof. I have convinced the magistrate that a thorough search of both her own and her father’s house is necessary. It should yield evidence of his defrauding of his brother. His estate, I imagine, will go to her.’
‘He threatened not, if she annoyed him. It may just have been a ritual provocation, often repeated but never acted upon. He certainly wouldn’t have had ready opportunity that night. Though I could be wrong. It may have been the provocation that decided her to perform the ultimate act. That plus finding direct evidence of her half-sister’s pr
esence in the house would have tipped her over – from love into hate, I mean.’
‘If only there was something to implicate Madame Tellier in the fraud against the Martinique branch of the firm, we’d be on a surer footing with charging her. You know how these provincial juries are reluctant to trust medical evidence. Too newfangled for them.’
‘I shall pester the magistrate to make sure both houses are thoroughly searched, Inspector. Something may well emerge. But in any case, the commune must be grateful to you. Two murders solved.’
‘Yes. Auguste confessed everything about Danuta, several times over. Funny.’ The inspector paused.
‘What’s funny?’
‘How people seem so often to want to confess…’
‘He had the trigger of Frère Michel. Religion and its forms are everywhere, Inspector. Even when people don’t believe.’
Durand nodded and pulled out his watch from his waistcoat pocket. He clicked open its lid with a decided snap. ‘Reluctantly I shall have to leave you, Madame. I hope Paris will see you very soon.’
‘Hold on one moment, Inspector.’ Marguerite had just noticed, amongst the pile of letters, two which bore the crests she had been waiting for. ‘There may be something here for the case of your deputy.’ She tore open one envelope, then another and read quickly. A smile pulled at her lips, as she passed the letters to Durand. ‘I think your commissioner will be very happy, Inspector. You have been working for him, even while you’ve been away.’
Durand’s grin grew wider than the window behind him. ‘Ah Madame. Your friends inform and insinuate with wonderful alacrity. What an intrigue. If I understand this correctly, our deputy is selling honours to pay off a blackmailer! Past sins feeding present ones.’ He shook his head sadly, but it did nothing to lessen his smile. ‘And one of your honourable friends names the villain. How convenient. It remains for my men to arrest the scoundrel and voilà! I feel certain our wise member of the Radical Party can then be seduced into a long, a very long holiday abroad.’
‘I think that about covers it, Inspector. Monsieur du Deffand also seems obliquely to suggest that he himself will urge him to it.’
Sacred Ends Page 28
