Sepulchre (66 page)
The private drawing room on the first floor of a hotel on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees was full of acrid smoke from the Turkish cigarettes the resident guest had smoked since his arrival some weeks before.
It was a warm day in August, yet he was dressed as for midwinter in a thick grey greatcoat and soft calfskin gloves. His frame was emaciated and his head bobbed slightly in perpetual motion, as if disagreeing with a question no one else could hear asked. With a hand that shook, he raised a glass of liquorice beer to his lips. He drank carefully through a mouth scabbed in the corners with pustules. But despite his haggard appearance, his eyes held the power to command, drilling into the souls of those observed like the sharpest jab of a stiletto. He held up his glass.
His man stepped forward with the bottle of porter and filled his master's glass. For a moment they made a grotesque tableau, the disfigured invalid and his grizzled servant, his scalp blistered and raw from scratching. 'What news?'
'They say she is drowned. By her own hand,' the servant replied. 'And the other?' 'She cares for the child.'
Constant made no answer. The years of exile, the remorseless progress of the disease had left him weak. His body was failing. He could no longer walk easily. But if anything, it seemed to have sharpened his mind. Six years ago, he had been forced to act faster than he had wished. It had deprived him of the pleasure of enjoying his revenge. His interest in ruining the sister had been only for the purpose of torturing Vernier himself with the knowledge, so that mattered little to him. But the quick and clean death meted out to Vernier disappointed him still, and now it seemed he had been cheated of Isolde as well.
His precipitate flight over the border to Spain meant that Constant had not learned for some twelve months after the events of Hallowe'en 1891 that the whore had not only survived his bullet, but had lived to give birth to a son. The fact that she had escaped him again had played obsessively on his mind.
It was the desire to complete his revenge that had kept him patient these past six years. The attempts to seize his assets had almost ruined him. It had taken all the skill and immorality of his lawyers to protect his wealth and his whereabouts.
Constant had been forced to be cautious and circumspect, staying in exile on the far side of the border until all interest in him had died down. Finally, last winter, Inspector Thouron had been promoted and assigned to the investigation into the conduct of the army officer Dreyfus which was so occupying the Parisian police force. More relevant to Constant's all-consuming desire to be revenged upon Isolde, word had reached him that Inspector Bouchou of the Carcassonne gendarmerie had finally retired four weeks past.
At last, the way was clear for Constant to return quietly to France. He had sent his man ahead to prepare the ground in the spring. With anonymous letters to the town hall and the Church authorities, it had been easy to fan the flames of a whispering campaign against the Abbé Saunière, a priest associated particularly with the Domaine de la Cade and the events Constant knew had taken place in Jules Lascombe's day. Constant had heard the rumours of a devil, a demon, released in the past to terrorise the countryside.
It was his paid associates who spread new rumours of a beast stalking the mountain valleys and attacking livestock. His servant travelled from village to village, rousing the crowds and spreading rumours that the sepulchre in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade was once again the centre of occult activity. He began with the vulnerable and the unprotected, the barefooted beggars who slept out of doors or found shelter beneath the drayman's cart, the winter shepherds in their isolation on the mountains, those who followed the Assizes from town to town. He dripped Constant's poison into the ears of drapers and glaziers, boot boys from the big houses, cleaners and pantry maids.
The villagers were superstitious and gullible. Tradition, myth and history confirmed his calumnies. A whisper here and there that the marks were not those of an animal's claws. That strange wailings were heard in the night. That there was a putrid stench. All evidence that some supernatural demon was come to demand retribution for the unnatural state of affairs at the Domaine de la Cade - an aunt taken in marriage by her husband's nephew.
And if it was true that there were attacks for which his man did not claim credit, Constant assumed these were no more than the usual litany of the savagery of mountain cats, or wolves, stalking the higher pastures and peaks.
Now, with Bouchou's retirement, the time was right to act. He had waited too long already, and because he had done so, he had lost his chance to punish Isolde appropriately. Besides, despite the endless remedies and treatments, the mercury, the waters, the laudanum, Constant was dying. He knew he did not have long before his mind too would fail. He recognised the signs, could diagnose himself now as accurately as any quack. The only thing he now feared was the brief, final flare of lucidity, before the shadows descended for good.
From the pocket of his waistcoat, he pulled the timepiece stolen from Vernier in the Passage des Panoramas nearly six years ago. As the Spanish shadows lengthened, he turned it over in his decaying, syphilitic hands, thinking of his Isolde.
On 20th September, the anniversary of Marguerite Vernier's murder, another child went missing. It was the first for more than a month, taken from the bank of the river downstream of Sougraigne. The girl's body was found close to the Fontaine des Amoureux, her face badly disfigured by claw marks, red slashes across her cheeks and forehead. Unlike the forgotten children, the dispossessed, she was the beloved youngest child of a large family with relations in many of the villages of the Aude and the Salz.
Two days later, two boys vanished from the woods not far from the Lac de Barrenc, the mountain lake supposedly inhabited by a devil. Their bodies were discovered after a week, but in such poor condition that it was not observed until some time later that they too had been savaged by an animal, their skin ripped raw.
Léonie tried not to pay attention to the coincidence of the dates. While there was still hope the children might be found unharmed, she offered the assistance of both inside and outside staff to participate in the search parties. It was refused. For Louis-Anatole's sake, she maintained a veneer of calm, but for the first time she began to accept that they might have to leave the Domaine de la Cade, until the storm had blown over.
Maître Fromilhague and Madame Bousquet maintained it was obviously the work of wild dogs or wolves come down from the mountains. During the hours of daylight, Léonie too could dismiss the rumours of a demon or supernatural creature. But as dusk fell, her knowledge of the history of the sepulchre and the presence of the cards within the grounds made her less assured.
'If you please.' All eyes were on Pascal who, for a moment, remained steadfast, then slowly, stepped aside to allow Léonie sight of what he so keenly wished to hide.
The skinned corpse of a rabbit, some days old, had been impaled to the door with a heavy furrier's nail. A swarm of flies buzzed furiously around a crude cross daubed on the wood in blood and, beneath it, words printed in black tar: par ce signe tu le vaincras.
Léonie's hand flew to her mouth, the stench and the violence of it making her nauseous. But she kept her composure. 'See it is disposed of, Pascal,' she said. 'And, I would be grateful for your discretion.' She looked at the assembled company, seeing her own fear reflected in their superstitious eyes. 'All of you.'
Still, Léonie's resolve did not waiver. She was determined not to be driven from the Domaine de la Cade, certainly not before Monsieur Baillard returned. He had said he would be back by the feast day of St Martin. She had sent letters via his old lodgings in the rue de l'Hermite, increasingly frequently of late, but had no way of knowing if any had found him on his travels.
The situation worsened. Another child disappeared. On 22nd October, a date Léonie recognised as the anniversary of Anatole and Isoldes clandestine marriage, the daughter of a lawyer and his wife, pretty in white ribbons and niched skirts, was taken from the Place du Pérou. The outcry was immediate. By ill chance, Léonie was in Rennes-les-Bains when the child's torn and ripped body was recovered. The corpse had been left beside the Fauteuil du Diable, the Devil's Armchair, on the hills not far from the Domaine de la Cade. A sprig of wild juniper had been pushed between the bloodied fingers of the child's hand.
Léonie turned cold when she heard, understanding how the message was left for her. The wooden cart rumbled along the Gran'Rue, followed by a ragtail cortège of villagers. Grown men, toughened by the hardship of their daily lives, wept openly.
No one spoke. Then a red-faced woman, her mouth bitter and angry, caught sight of her, and pointed. Léonie felt a frisson of fear as the accusing eyes of the town turned upon her. Looking for someone to blame. 'We should go, Madama,' whispered Marieta, hurrying her away. Determined not to show how frightened she was, Léonie held her head up as she turned and made her way to where the carriage stood waiting. The murmuring was getting louder. Words shouted, abusive, ugly insults, that fell upon her like blows.
Léonie's friends and allies in the town - and Pascal and Marieta too -all tried their best to persuade her accusers that they were mistaken in believing that there was any such beast quartered within the estate, but the town had made up its narrow mind. They believed it was incontrovertible that the old devil of the mountain had returned to claim his own, as he had in Jules Lascombe's time. No smoke without fire.
Léonie tried not to see Victor Constant's ever-present hand in the persecution of the Domaine, but all the same was convinced he was preparing to strike. She attempted to persuade the gendarmerie of this, she begged the Mairie, pleaded with Maître Fromilhague to intercede on her behalf, but to no avail. The Domaine stood alone.
After three days of rain, the outdoor staff put out several fires set on the estate. Arson attacks. The disembowelled corpse of a dog was left upon the front steps under cover of dark, causing one of the youngest parlourmaids to faint. Anonymous letters were delivered, obscene and explicit in their descriptions of how Anatole and Isolde's incestuous relations had brought such terror down upon the valley.
Isolated with her fears and suspicions, Léonie understood this to have been Constant's purpose all along, to stir up the town into a frenzy of hate against them. And she understood too, although she did not speak the words aloud, even to herself in the darkness of night, that it would never end. Such was Victor Constant's obsession. If he was in the vicinity of Rennes-les-Bains - and she feared he was - then he could not fail to know that Isolde herself was dead. The fact that the persecution continued made it clear to Léonie that she had to get Louis-Anatole to safety. She would take what she could with her, in the hope that they would return to the Domaine de la Cade before too long. It was Louis-Anatole's home. She would not allow Constant to deprive him of his birthright.
The truth was that Léonie had nowhere to go. The apartment in Paris had long ago been let go, once General Du Pont had stopped paying the bills. Other than Audric Baillard, Madame Bousquet and Maître Fromilhague, her confined existence in the Domaine de la Cade meant she had few friends. Achille was too far away and, besides, occupied with his own concerns. Because of Victor Constant, Léonie had no immediate family.
Confiding in no one but Pascal and Marieta, she prepared for departure. She felt certain that Constant would make his final move against them on Hallowe'en. It was not only the anniversary of Anatole's death - and Constant's attention to dates suggested he would wish to observe this -but as Isolde had once let slip in a moment of clarity, 31st October of 1890 was the day on which she had informed Constant that their short-lived affair must end. From that, all things had followed.
On the crisp and cold afternoon of 31st October, Léonie put on her hat and coat, intending to return to the clearing where the juniper grew wild. She did not wish to leave the Tarot cards for Constant to find, however unlikely it was that he should stumble upon them in such an expanse of woodland. For the time being, until she and Louis-Anatole could safely return and in Monsieur Baillard's continuing absence - she had in mind that she would give them into the safe keeping of Madame Bousquet.
Frowning, Léonie opened it. The letter was from the elderly priest of the parish, Antoine Gélis, inviting her to call upon him this afternoon on a matter of some urgency. Since he was known to be something of a recluse - and Léonie had met him only twice in six years, in the company of Henri Boudet in Rennes-les-Bains on the occasion of Louis-Anatole's baptism, and at Isolde's burial - she was puzzled to receive such a summons.