Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Calm yourself, Madame.’ Marguerite took a step backwards, then stood her ground. ‘I have no idea what you’re referring to. I should also remind you that you’re in my house and to accuse me of theft is not only a lie but a base insult.’

  ‘Don’t start on me with your hoity-toity ways. You know very well what I’m talking about. My father’s papers. His will. They were in his desk. I saw you there. Saw you pilfering, filching. What have you done with it all?’

  She shook the poker at Marguerite.

  Marguerite’s eyes sought sanctuary in the painting above the fireplace where her mother presided with her regal stance.

  ‘If you stopped to think for a moment, Madame, you would know that Monsieur Marchand probably lodged his will with his notary. I recommend you go to him. Right now. And leave my house.’

  She stood aside and with a sweep of the arm showed the woman the door.

  ‘It’s not that easy. Not that easy,’ the woman hissed. She waved the poker again and it caught at an ashtray that clattered to the floor. She took another menacing step towards Marguerite. ‘Napoléon Marchand had little time for notaries. And I know he kept his will close to his person. Very close. In his room. Kept all his papers about him. Money, too.’ She was shouting now, her voice rising through the quiet of the house like a trumpet.

  It came to Marguerite that at any moment the woman might make good her fury and plunge the poker into her. She had had the same sense with old Napoléon, her father – minds gone awry and at the mercy of wild passions. They were immune to reason.

  ‘I have nothing more to say to you, Madame.’ Marguerite backed towards the door. ‘This interview is over.’

  The woman started to laugh. A loud guffaw of malevolence. ‘You think that lover of yours, that Labrousse, can help you out of this. Vouch for you in the courts. Well you’re wrong. Quite wrong. He’s had his come-uppance, the scoundrel. No more bribing for him. No more extra fees here and there. Not for shutting up that Yvette you’re so interested in either. Or for providing a little sleeping powder for my poor father now and again. No more pretending he’s interested in my daughters. Too good for him. Both of them.’

  ‘I think, Madame,’ a deep male voice, followed by a stentorian cough, startled them both. ‘I think, Madame, if my wife has taken a lover it can be no business whatsoever of yours. Nor is Dr Labrousse of any interest to me. My men will see you out. Though if you prefer to wait for the constables, you can do so in the stables. With the other animals.’

  Olivier snapped his fingers and two men appeared simultaneously at the door. Georges took the poker from Madame Tellier’s hand. A man on either side of her, the surprised but still protesting woman was dragged from the house.

  She shouted behind her. ‘You’ll be hearing from me. Don’t think you’ve got away with it. No one robs a Tellier.’

  Marguerite sank into an armchair and breathed deeply.

  ‘If you will insist on keeping such low company, Marguerite, I don’t know what you expect.’ Olivier shook his head in distaste.

  ‘Has it not occurred to you that I keep this company because you asked me to come here?’

  ‘Hardly for Madame Tellier’s sake.’

  It was Marguerite’s turn to see red.

  ‘If you’re speaking to me like this because you believe that lunatic woman’s accusations, you have no cause.’

  ‘I’m speaking to you like this because you behave in such a way that permits this lunatic woman to make such accusations. What you do behind closed doors is your concern alone. What you do in public is also mine.’

  ‘And what you’ve done in private has become mine.’

  The accusation leapt to Marguerite’s lips before she could stop herself. Now that it was out she had no particular regrets. ‘I suppose that Villemardi has told you that the girl you so assiduously bedded refuses to acknowledge that she is Gabriel’s mother. If she is.’

  Olivier looked down at his feet. They were well shod in soft brown leather. When he met her eyes again, his face no longer wore its arrogant condemnation. ‘Paul told me,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t know why she denies it.’

  ‘What you need to tell me is how you became convinced that Gabriel was hers. And yours.’

  He eased himself into a chair. She could see from the workings of his face that he had so long assumed it all as given, whatever the timescale of his confessions to her, that it was no longer easy for him to reconstruct how what he had assumed as truth had become so.

  ‘The curé told me,’ he said at last.

  ‘You mean Louise confessed to him. He broke the confidence of the confessional and told you.’

  Olivier nodded once abruptly. His attention was now all for the flames.

  Marguerite brought him back. ‘Did he also tell you that Louise knew the babe was here with us?’

  Olivier considered. It took him time. She knew he was going through his many meetings with the curé, sifting them. It reminded her that she hadn’t seen the man in the house since that Mass, the day of Napoléon Marchand’s death. Was that to do with Olivier or with her?

  ‘He intimated,’ Olivier replied at last. ‘I’m not sure he said it directly. So it’s just possible she doesn’t know. Which is why she couldn’t be honest with you.’

  He gave a little sigh of what seemed to be relief.

  ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that, Olivier. But never mind for now. I must have some coffee. Then I’m going out. I’ll need Georges all day.’

  Madame Tellier’s words about Labrousse had just come back to her. What could the demented woman have meant? And why was it that she was still free to charge about the countryside? The old adage must still hold true that what was labelled madness in the poor was considered mere eccentricity in the rich. Had the investigating magistrate failed to find anything incriminating in the family houses and changed his mind about arrest? Or did he and the local police feel it safe to leave Madame Tellier free until they had amassed sufficient evidence against her? Given the barely contained violence she had long sensed in the woman, she feared they would be proved horribly wrong.

  Fearing she might already be too late, Marguerite pushed open the door of Dr Labrousse’s consulting room after only the most cursory of knocks.

  Her dire expectations subsided. There was no body slumped over the desk. The doctor was sitting up and filling out what looked like a complicated dossier. She didn’t immediately notice the spectacled magistrate at his side.

  ‘Dr Labrousse. Thank goodness I find you upright. You’re quite well?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Madame Tellier frightened me with vile warnings. I thought I might find you…’ she hesitated, ‘ill.’

  ‘No. No. I’m fine.’ He smiled, his beard moving with his lips. ‘Just a little tired. I haven’t seen Madame Tellier. Though her daughter dropped round at about five yesterday. And how is everyone at La Rochambert?’

  ‘At five o’clock yesterday, you say?’

  ‘Yes, to see how I was doing. To weep over grandpa. To talk about details of the funeral. He’s been embalmed and is lying in state in the Tellier house, apparently.’

  Marguerite had a sudden vision of Madame Tellier, hair loosened, shuddering tears, bent over her father’s corpse for hours on end, begging him to reveal the location of his will.

  ‘Laure also brought me some stew from her mother. Madame Tellier is convinced that I prefer her housekeeper’s rabbit stew to all else.’

  ‘And do you? You ate it?’ Marguerite asked carefully. Had her fears about the frenzied woman been all wrong?

  ‘In fact I didn’t. I was dining with Monsieur Tournevau, the chemist, so I left the ragoût in the larder.’

  ‘I … I suspect we should look at it.’

  Labrousse gazed at her as if she had suffered a fit of lunacy and he would like to prescribe a bromide. ‘I don’t think I understand you.’

  ‘I understand you, Madame.’ The magistrate, Maître Narbonne, i
nterrupted, his nose twitching. ‘That madwoman probably put poison in the stew. So you wouldn’t be able to stand up in court and say that her father had been helped to his end, Doctor.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I suspect, Maître.’

  Dr Labrousse brought the cloth-covered dish out of the larder, set it on the kitchen table and carefully unwrapped it. But for a slight scum that had formed at the top, the dish looked innocuous enough. But a moment after being uncovered, it emitted a pungent smell that tugged at their nostrils. Marguerite put a handkerchief to her nose.

  Carefully, Dr Labrousse dipped his finger into the sauce and brought a smidgen to his tongue. He screwed up his face, which had turned white, and coughed with instant revulsion.

  ‘Bitter. Strychnine, I’ll wager.’ He poured some water from the jug and rinsed out his mouth.

  ‘I imagine the taste is more in evidence since yesterday. She uses it on her rats, no doubt. And I’ve become one of them. Lucky you came to warn me, Madame. I was planning to make a meal of it this evening.’

  He disappeared through the door with the dish in hand.

  The magistrate called him back. ‘No, no, don’t empty all of it. It’s the first substantial evidence we have.’

  ‘You’re right.’ The doctor wrapped the dish up again. ‘Though a small quantity should do us. This will be a putrid mess before we get it to court. In fact you should bring her in for questioning again straight away, and feed it to her.’ His laugh was as sour as the stew.

  ‘When will that be?’

  He glanced at his pocket watch. ‘I’ll have someone go and fetch her now. Little came from our prior interviews, as you’ve probably gathered. She just cried all the way through. Nor did my men find anything in their search of Monsieur Marchand’s house. She kept at them like a snapping terrier the whole time. And there were thousands of papers stashed in every available space. Scribbled records of purchases, sales, bills of lading. We’d need another importer on the premises, if we were to prove fraud. Particularly now that the plaintiff, Xavier Marchand, is dead.’

  ‘But you still have the brother’s notebook which details the fraud?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What about her house?’

  He squirmed a little. ‘We haven’t managed access yet. We agreed to wait until after tomorrow, when the old man will be buried.’

  ‘Given the tricks she seems disposed to play, Maître, I think you had better have her carefully watched until then.’

  ‘How did you come to know about all this, Madame?’ The magistrate suddenly returned her suspicion.

  ‘Madame Tellier came to me first thing this morning – to accuse me of stealing her father’s will. Other documents, too. Threatened me. If I had your authority, Maître, I would have locked her up days ago. But I must leave you. There are some others Madame Tellier might threaten. Time may not be on their side.’

  ‘Where? Who?’ Labrousse towered over her, his narrow face gaunter than ever. ‘I’ll come with you. We’ll bring the constable.’

  ‘No, no. Not immediately, in any case. It might scare away the truth for ever.’ She considered for a moment. ‘But why not come after me in about an hour. It may all be a wild goose chase, but it may not.’

  ‘Where are you heading?’

  Marguerite told them.

  ‘I doubt that is wise,’ Labrousse argued. ‘Let me come along.’

  Marguerite shook her head. For all his free-thinking intelligence, the doctor, she estimated, would be as intrusive as Paul Villemardi in the interview she had now to undertake.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The manor lay beyond the forest on the other side of La Rochambert. A high, ivy-clad brick wall masked its existence so that, coming to it, even from the road, the whole establishment looked like nothing so much as a dark extension of the wood, overgrown with parasites and creepers.

  Apart from her unfortunate trek on the day that she had discovered Danuta the Dancer’s body, it was Olivier’s aerial photographs that had alerted Marguerite to the secretive presence of the house. A further foray in the library through her father’s old military maps of the region had shown a network of tunnels, one of which connected the house with Napoléon Marchand’s.

  ‘The emperor,’ Auguste the strongman had called him. It was the name Danuta had given old Marchand. And she had evidently blackmailed her Napoléon after witnessing the death of Xavier Marchand, the emperor’s brother, in the house they had called Beaumont.

  These old walls seemed to lift the murderous family with its colonial extensions and rampant illegitimacies out of the register of the contemporary. The history of the valleys had been shadowed by pernicious royal intrigues. Now they found their echo in a local tyrant who had grown fat on far-flung interests. She had blundered into a war of succession between rival sisters, each laying claim to a legacy that had grown large through corruption and the labour of others. All she wanted to do now was to prevent more blood being spilled in passion and greed.

  At last, two chestnut trees appeared to mark a break in the wall. Between them was a muddy, rutted drive, half-covered with last year’s mouldy leaves and overgrown with the creeper that had spread everywhere. Napoléon Marchand had evidently not thought it worthwhile looking after this property.

  When the carriage lurched wildly, she told Georges to stop and wait. She would continue on foot. Surprise might be essential if she was to find anyone at home.

  The grounds of the house were in disarray and had been left untended for what felt like years. The outhouses she came upon were tumbling. An old wagon stood in front of the stables and from their depths, she heard the furtive trampling of a horse’s hooves on hay. She peered in and recognised the large mare on which Amandine Septembre had ridden through Blois. There were no other animals, carts or carriages visible.

  A sigh of relief escaped her. Madame Tellier wasn’t here. She had come in time.

  She made her way through the undergrowth towards the house. It was a prepossessing Restoration structure, but its stucco was crumbling. The tiles on the roof were in need of repair. Flaking shutters drooped on loose hinges and rattled in the wind.

  With no warning, she lost her foothold and tripped over some obstacle. Her heel caught on her dress. She barely put out a hand in time to stop a head-first plunge.

  A body lay splayed on the ground. It didn’t move. A man’s body in workaday clothes. She lifted herself up gingerly and held her breath. His back was to her, his neck at an angle, which suggested it had snapped, his cap at a little distance from his head. She recoiled, then forced herself to turn him over. The blood on his face was black. The mouth moved. She stepped backwards in revulsion. Maggots. He must have been here for some days.

  She recognised the face in its distorted remains. It was the old servant. Hercule. The one who had looked after Amandine Septembre. The one who had thrown stones back at the children. The one who was missing on the day of Napoléon Marchand’s fall. She covered his face with his cap.

  She had come too late. Too late to warn. No, no, that didn’t make sense. This wasn’t a fresh death. But why Hercule?

  The large wooden door of the house stood half open. She didn’t know whether to pull the bell cord or step in. Out of propriety, she decided on the first, though it was unlikely that the bell would be heard any further than the hall or the servants’ quarters.

  After a moment, she allowed herself to push the door open. A smell of fried onions and decay rose to her nostrils. She stopped in her tracks.

  Emerging from a door to the back of the yellowing mirrors of the hall was Amandine Septembre. The woman gave Marguerite a dazzling smile.

  ‘Oh happy. So happy you could come.’

  She sailed across the room towards her, her frayed dress billowing, and curtsied grandly. ‘Madame is kind. I told P’tit Ours you would come. I knew. I didn’t think he would find you so soon.’

  Marguerite worked to accustom herself to the island rhythms of her voice.

  ‘
P’tit Ours?’

  ‘Yes. P’tit Ours. My protector. That’s what I like to call him. He fetched you quick. Is he here? With your carriage?’

  ‘No, no, I came alone.’ Marguerite slowly took all this in. It was odd that she had been sent for. Maybe the woman practised those magic arts Marguerite didn’t believe in. Voodoo. She had read accounts of it.

  ‘He’ll follow later then. He’ll bring food. Come. Come. I have nothing to offer. Only rum, which ladies do not drink, and chestnuts and jams I found in the pantry along with the mice and the spiders. And yesterday’s bread and cheese. Come. P’tit Ours is a good eater. Everything else is finished.’

  P’tit Ours, her protector. Was it he who had protected her from gnarled old Hercule?

  The woman lifted her skirts and led Marguerite up the stairs into a sizeable drawing room where a quantity of framed oils hung. Admirals, generals and a judge presided over dust and derelict grandeur. There seemed to be a charred hole in the judge’s brow. A bullet hole, Marguerite thought, adjusting her gloves with renewed nervousness.

  On a long rectangular table lay an array of papers. To the right stood the strongbox Marguerite had seen P’tit Ours carrying in Blois. It was open.

  ‘Did my protector explain? I am not a good reader. He is not a reader at all. We have these papers. None of them is my pass from Martinique, which I had hoped P’tit Ours had fetched. I have lost that or my protector couldn’t find it at Napoléon Marchand’s house. But on one of these papers I read my name. I can read my name. A little more. I am Amandine Septembre.’ She stretched out a hand.

  Marguerite proffered hers. ‘Marguerite de Landois,’ she murmured.

  ‘Good. Now we know each other.’ Amandine waved her to a chair. ‘I knew you would help. You came. You came to the other house. I saw you. I sent you a note. The bad Hercule and my father decided I should not go out. As if Amandine were a slave. There are no more slaves, Madame. Not since 1848 on my island. I have learned that. But my father is not so good to me.’