In fact Roland had been bored with country life in general until the day in late June when he had accompanied his mother to a nursery to buy plants for the garden. The nurseryman, a friendly old fellow with a sense of humor, had a ferret which he told Roland he had captured on the weekend while out hunting rabbits. Roland had been fascinated by the caged ferret which could hunch itself into a very short length as if its body were made like an accordion, then flash into its hole in the straw, looking three times that length. The ferret was black, light brown and cream, and to Roland looked part rat, part squirrel, and exceedingly mischievous.
“Careful! He bites!” the nurseryman said, when Roland put his finger against the wire of the cage.
The ferret had bitten Roland with a needle-like tooth, but Roland hid his bleeding finger in a handkerchief in his pocket. “Would you sell him? With the cage too?”
“Why? Do you hunt rabbits?” the nurseryman asked, smiling.
“A hundred new francs. A hundred and fifty,” Roland said. He had that much in his pocket.
Roland’s mother was bending over camellias yards away.
“Well—”
“You’ll have to tell me what he eats.”
“A little grass, of course. And blood,” he added, bending close to Roland. “Give him some raw meat now and then, because he’s got the taste for it now. And mind you don’t let him loose in the house, because you’ll never catch him. Hay to keep him warm, like this. He made that tunnel himself.”
The ferret had darted into the little tunnel in the straw and turned around so that only his lively face peered out with low-set, mouse-like ears and black eyes that slanted downward at the outer corners, making him look thoughtful and a bit melancholic. Roland had the feeling the ferret was listening to the conversation and hoping he would be able to go away with Roland.
Roland pulled out a hundred note and a fifty. “How about it—with the cage?”
The nurseryman glanced over his shoulder, as if Roland’s mother might interfere. “If he bites, stick an onion at him. He won’t bite you after he bites into an onion.”
Margaret Lemoinnier was surprised and annoyed that Roland had bought a ferret. “You’ll have to keep the cage in the garden. You mustn’t take it in the house.”
Antoine said nothing, but his pink-white face took on a more sour expression than usual. He put lots of newspaper on the back seat of the Jaguar so that the cage would not touch the leather upholstery.
At home, Roland got an onion from the kitchen and went out on the lawn behind the house where he had set the cage. He opened the door of the cage slightly, onion at the ready, but the ferret, after hesitating an instant, darted through the door into freedom. He made for the woods at one side of the estate and disappeared. Roland warned himself to keep cool. He brought the cage, its door open, to the edge of the woods, then ran into the house via the back door. On a wooden board in the kitchen lay just what he wanted, a large raw steak. Roland cut off a piece and hurried back to the woods.
Slowly Roland entered the woods, intending to make a circle and drive the ferret back towards his cage. A ferret could probably climb a tree too. Roland had seen his sharp claws when the ferret had stood up in his cage at the nursery. The ferret had tiny pink-palmed hands that were rather like human hands, with miniature pads at the end of the fingers, and a freely moving thumb. Then Roland’s heart gave a leap as he saw the ferret just a few yards away from him, sitting upright in the grasses, sniffing. The breeze blew towards the ferret, and Roland realized that he had smelled blood. Roland stooped and extended the raw meat.
Cautiously, rearing himself, then advancing a little, the ferret approached, eyes darting everywhere as if guarding against possible enemies. Roland was startled at the suddenness with which the ferret seized the meat in his teeth and jerked it away. The ferret chewed with bolting movements of head and neck, the brown and black hair on his back standing on end as he telescoped his lithe body. The steak was all gone, and the ferret looked at Roland, little pink tongue licking his face appreciatively.
Roland’s impulse was to run back to the kitchen for more. But he thought it best to move slowly so the ferret would not become alarmed. “Wait! Or come with me,” he said softly, because he wanted the ferret back in the cage. It would be dark soon, and Roland didn’t want to lose him.
The ferret followed to the edge of the lawn and waited. Roland went to the kitchen and cut some more meat, then gently poured from the paper below the steak a tablespoon of blood into a saucer. He carried this out. The ferret was still in the same place, one paw raised, gazing expectantly. The ferret approached the saucer, where the meat was also, but he chose the blood first, and lapped it up like a kitten lapping milk. Roland smiled. Then the ferret looked at Roland, licked his face again, seized the meat in his teeth and carried it in an uncertain route on to the grass, then seeing his cage, he made a straight line for it.
Roland was very pleased. The onion, still in Roland’s pocket, might not be necessary. And the ferret was safely back in his cage on his own initiative. Roland closed the cage door. “I think I’ll call you Harry. How do you like that name? Harry.” Roland was studying English, and he knew that Harry was informal for Henry, and there was also an English word “hairy” pronounced the same way, so the name seemed appropriate. “Come up and see my room.” Roland picked up the cage.
In the house, Roland encountered Antoine who was coming down the stairway.
“M. Roland, your mother said she did not want the animal in the house,” said Antoine.
Roland drew himself up a little. He was no longer a child to be told what to do by a servant. “Yes, Antoine. But I’ll speak to my mother on the subject,” Roland said in his deepest voice.
Roland put the cage in the middle of the floor in his room, and went to the telephone in the hall. He dialed the number of his best friend, Stefan, in Paris, had to speak with Stefan’s mother first, then Stefan came on.
“I have a new friend,” Roland said, putting on a voice with a foreign accent. “He has claws and drinks blood. Guess what he is?”
“A—a vampire?” said Stefan.
“You are warm.—My mother’s coming and I can’t talk long,” Roland said quickly. “He’s a ferret. His name is Harry. Bloodthirsty! A killer! Maybe I can bring him to Paris! Bye-bye, Stefan!”
Mme. Lemoinnier had come up the stairs and was walking towards Roland down the hall. “Roland, Antoine says you have brought that animal into the house. I said you could keep it only if it stays in the garden.”
“But—the nurseryman told me to watch out that he doesn’t get cold. It’s cold at night, Mama.”
His mother went a few steps into Roland’s room. Roland followed her.
“Look! He’s gone to sleep in his burrow. He’s perfectly clean, Mama. He’ll stay in his cage. What’s the matter with that?”
“You’ll probably take him out. I know you, Roland.”
“But I promise, I won’t.” Roland didn’t mean that promise, and knew his mother knew it.
A minute later, Roland was reluctantly carrying Harry, now out of sight in the hay, down the stairway and into the garden. Harry was probably sleeping like a log, Roland thought, remembering what the nurseryman had said about ferrets falling asleep, often close to their victims for warmth, after they had drunk the blood of their prey. The primitiveness of it excited Roland. When his mother had gone back into the house (she had been watching him from the kitchen door), Roland opened the cage and lifted some of the hay, exposing Harry who raised his head drowsily. Roland smiled.
“Come on, you can sleep up in my room. Then we’ll have some fun tonight,” Roland whispered.
Roland picked Harry up and put the hay back in place. Harry lay limp and innocent in Roland’s hand. Roland opened a button of his shirt, stuck Harry in and fastened the button. He closed the cage
door and latched it.
Up in his room, Roland got his empty suitcase from a wardrobe top, put a couple of his sweaters into it, and put Harry in, propping the suitcase lid open a little with the sleeve of one sweater. Then Roland got a clean ashtray from the hall table, filled it with water from the bathroom tap and put it in the suitcase.
Roland then flopped on his bed, lit one of the cigarettes which he kept hidden in a bookshelf, and opened a James Bond which he had already read two or three times. He was thinking of things he might teach Harry. Harry should learn to travel around in a jacket pocket, certainly, and come out on command. He should also have a collar and lead, and the collar, or maybe a harness, would have to be custom-made because Harry was so small. Roland imagined commissioning a leather craftsman in Paris and paying a good price for it. Fine! It would be amusing in Paris—even in Orléans—if Harry could emerge from his pocket on his lead and eat meat from Roland’s plate in a restaurant, for instance.
At dinner, Roland and his mother and a man friend of hers, who was an antique dealer of the neighborhood and very boring, were interrupted by Brigitte, who whispered to Mme. Lemoinnier:
“Madame, I beg to excuse myself, but Antoine has just been bitten. He is quite upset.”
“Bitten?” said Mme. Lemoinnier.
“He says it is the ferret—in M. Roland’s room.”
Roland controlled his smile. Antoine had gone in to turn the bed down, and Harry had attacked.
“A ferret?” said the antique dealer.
Roland’s mother looked at him. “Will you excuse yourself, Roland, and put the animal back in the garden?” She was angry and would have said more if they had been alone.
“Excuse me, please,” Roland said. He went into the hall and saw Antoine’s tall figure in the little lavatory by the front door. Antoine stooped to hold a wet towel against his ankle. Blood, Roland thought, fascinated to think that Harry had drawn blood from that old creature Antoine, who in fact looked as if he hadn’t any blood in him.
Roland ran up the stairs two at a time, and found his room in disorder. Antoine had obviously abandoned the bed-turning-down midway, an armchair was askew where Antoine must have dragged it looking for Harry, or maybe trying to protect himself. But the bed in disorder meant more to Roland than an explosion: Antoine would not have left a bed in that state unless he was ready for extreme unction. Roland looked around for Harry.
“Harry?—Where are you?” He looked up at the long curtains, which Harry would certainly be able to climb, in the wardrobe, under the bed.
The door of his room had been closed. Evidently Antoine had wanted to guard against Harry escaping. Then Roland looked at the folds in the bedcovers where nothing, however, twitched.
“Harry?”
Roland lifted the top sheet. Then he saw the counterpane move. Harry was between counterpane and blanket, and he sat up and regarded Roland with a desperate anxiety. Roland noticed another beautiful thing about Harry: his whole torso was beige and soft looking, from his little black chin down to the counterpane on which he stood, and a fine line of brown fur perhaps caused by the fur pressing together down the center of his body, gave the effect of a stripe, turned Harry into a bifurcated piece of beige fluff, quite concealing where his hind legs began and ended. Harry’s dainty hands sought either side of the counterpane’s folds, not to keep his balance which he had perfectly, but nervously, as the hands of a highly strung person might do. And perhaps Harry was asking, “Who was that giant who tried to shoo me, scare me, catch me?” But as Roland looked at Harry, Harry’s face seemed to lose some of its terror. Harry lowered himself and advanced a little. Now he might be saying, “I’m delighted to see you! What’s happening?”
Roland extended a hand without thinking, and Harry went up his arm and down his shirtfront—the collar of his shirt was open—and nestled with scratchy little claws against Roland’s waist. Roland found his eyes full of tears which he could not explain. Was it pride because Harry had come to him? Or anger because Harry had to stay in the garden tonight? Tears, explained or not, had a poetic value, Roland thought. They signified importance of some kind.
Roland took Harry out of his shirt and put him on a curtain. Harry ran up the yellow curtain to the ceiling, Roland took the bottom of the curtain in his hands, and Harry ran down the slope. Roland laughed, lowered the curtain, and Harry ran up again. Harry seemed to enjoy it. Roland caught Harry at the bottom of the curtain and stuck him into the suitcase. “I’ll be back in a minute!” This time Roland fixed the lid down with a straight chair turned sideways.
Roland intended to go back to the dining room until the meal was over, then ask Brigitte for some meat before he took Harry to the garden. But it seemed the meal was over. The dining room was empty. The antique dealer sat in the drawing room where the coffee tray already stood on the table, and Roland heard his mother’s voice and Antoine’s voice from the room opposite the drawing room. Its door was not quite closed.
“. . . disobeyed me,” Antoine was saying in his shaky old man’s voice. “And you, madame!”
“Now you must not take it so seriously, my dear Antoine,” Roland’s mother said. “I am sure Roland will keep the animal in the garden . . .”
Roland made himself move away. Gentlemen did not eavesdrop. But it irked him that Antoine had said, “M. Roland disobeyed me.” Since when did Antoine think he controlled him? Roland hesitated at the doorway of the drawing room, where the antique dealer sat smoking and gazing into space, his white trousered legs crossed. Roland wanted coffee, but it was not worth walking into that boredom for, he thought. Roland went through the dining room into the kitchen.
“Brigitte, may I have some meat for the ferret? Preferably raw,” Roland said.
“M. Roland, Antoine is very upset, you know? A ferret is a bête sauvage. You must realize that.”
Roland said courteously, “I know, Brigitte. I am sorry Antoine was bitten. I am going to take the ferret to the garden. In his cage. Now.”
Brigitte shook her head and produced some veal from the refrigerator and cut a morsel grudgingly.
It wasn’t bloody but it was raw. Roland flew up the stairs to his room, gently lifted the suitcase lid, whereupon Harry stood upright like a jack-in-the-box. Harry took Roland’s offering with both front paws and his teeth, chewing it and turning it so he could get at the edges.
Roland extended his hand fearlessly, saying, “You’ve got to sleep in the garden tonight, sorry.”
Harry flitted through the gap above Roland’s shirt cuff, went up to his shoulder and down to his waist. Roland cradled him in his shirt, and went down the stairs like a soldier, the cage in his other hand.
It was dark, but Roland could see by the light from the kitchen window. He stuck Harry into the cage and closed the door with its pin latch which dropped through a loop. Harry had a tin mug of water which still held enough. “See you tomorrow, Harry my friend!”
Harry stood up on his hind legs, resting a pink palm lightly against the wire, black nose sniffing the last of Roland, who looked back at Harry as he walked across the lawn.
The next morning, a Sunday, Roland was brought tea by Brigitte at eight o’clock, a ritual that Roland had started a few weeks earlier. It made Roland feel more grown-up to fancy that he couldn’t awaken properly without someone handing him a cup of something hot in bed.
Then Roland pulled on blue jeans, tennis shoes and an old shirt, and went down to see Harry.
The cage was gone. Or at least it was not in the same place. Roland looked in the corners of the garden, behind the poplar trees on the right, then next to the house. He went into the kitchen, where Brigitte was preparing his mother’s breakfast tray.
“Someone’s moved the ferret’s cage, Brigitte. Do you know where it is?”
Brigitte bent over the tray. “Antoine took it, M. Roland. I don’t know wher
e.”
“But—did he take the car?”
“I don’t know, M. Roland.”
Roland went out and looked in the garage. The car was there. Roland stood and turned in a circle, looking. Could Antoine have put the cage in the toolhouse? Roland opened the toolhouse door. There was nothing there but the lawnmower and garden tools. The woods. Antoine had probably been told, by his mother, to take Harry to the woods and turn him loose. Frowning, Roland started off at a trot.
He pulled up when some brambles caught at his shirt and tore it. Old Antoine wouldn’t have gone too far in these woods, Roland thought. There weren’t any real paths.
Roland heard a groan. Or had he imagined it? He was not sure where the sound had come from, but he plunged on the way he had been going. Now he heard a crackling of branches and another groan. It was unmistakably a groan from Antoine. Roland advanced.
He saw a splotch of dark through the trees. Antoine wore dark trousers, often a dark green cotton jacket. Roland stood still. The darkish splotch was pulling itself up only thirty feet away. But there were so many leaves in between! Roland saw a golden light streak from the left towards the vague form which was Antoine, heard Antoine’s rather shrill cry—feeble, almost like the cry of a baby.
Roland went closer, a little frightened. Now he could see Antoine’s head and face, and blood flowed from one of Antoine’s eyes. Then Roland saw Harry make a flying leap at Antoine’s thigh, saw Antoine’s hand slap uselessly against his leg, because Harry was already at Antoine’s throat. Or face. Antoine staggered back and fell.
He ought to go and help, Roland thought, grab a stick and fend Harry off. But Roland was spellbound and couldn’t move. He saw Antoine try a swinging backhand blow at Harry, but the branch Antoine held struck a tree and shattered. Antoine stumbled again.
The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder Page 18
