The Eight Strokes of the Clock (3 page)

“Oh,” cried Hortense, in astonishment, “the same date as today! … They tore off the leaves until the 5th of September … And this is the anniversary! What an astonishing coincidence!”

“Astonishing,” he echoed. “It’s the anniversary of their departure … twenty years ago today.”

“You must admit,” she said, “that all this is incomprehensible.”

“Yes, of course … but, all the same … perhaps not.”

“Have you any idea?”

He waited a few seconds before replying:

“What puzzles me is this telescope hidden, dropped in that corner, at the last moment. I wonder what it was used for … From the ground-floor windows you see nothing but the trees in the garden … and the same, I expect, from all the windows … We are in a valley, without the least open horizon … To use the telescope, one would have to go up to the top of the house … Shall we go up?”

She did not hesitate. The mystery surrounding the whole adventure excited her curiosity so keenly that she could think of nothing but accompanying Rénine and assisting him in his investigations.

They went upstairs accordingly, and, on the second floor, came to a landing where they found the spiral staircase leading to the belvedere.

At the top of this was a platform in the open air, but surrounded by a parapet over six feet high.

“There must have been battlements which have been filled in since,” observed Prince Rénine. “Look here, there were loopholes at one time. They may have been blocked.”

“In any case,” she said, “the telescope was of no use up here either and we may as well go down again.”

“I don’t agree,” he said. “Logic tells us that there must have been some gap through which the country could be seen, and this was the spot where the telescope was used.”

He hoisted himself by his wrists to the top of the parapet and then saw that this point of vantage commanded the whole of the valley, including the park, with its tall trees marking the horizon; and, beyond, a depression in a wood surmounting a hill, at a distance of some seven or eight hundred yards, stood another tower, squat and in ruins, covered with ivy from top to bottom.

Rénine resumed his inspection. He seemed to consider that the key to the problem lay in the use to which the telescope was put and that the problem would be solved if only they could discover this use.

He studied the loopholes one after the other. One of them, or rather the place which it had occupied, attracted his attention above the rest. In the middle of the layer of plaster, which had served to block it, there was a hollow filled with earth in which plants had grown. He pulled out the plants and removed the earth, thus clearing the mouth of a hole some five inches in diameter, which completely penetrated the wall. On bending forward, Rénine perceived that this deep and narrow opening inevitably carried the eye, above the dense tops of the trees and through the depression in the hill, to the ivy-clad tower.

At the bottom of this channel, in a sort of groove which ran through it like a gutter, the telescope fitted so exactly that it was quite impossible to shift it, however little, either to the right or to the left.

Rénine, after wiping the outside of the lenses, while taking care not to disturb the lie of the instrument by a hair’s breadth, put his eye to the small end.

He remained for thirty or forty seconds, gazing attentively and silently. Then he drew himself up and said, in a husky voice:

“It’s terrible … it’s really terrible.”

“What is?” she asked, anxiously.

“Look.”

She bent down, but the image was not clear to her and the telescope had to be focused to suit her sight. The next moment she shuddered and said:

“It’s two scarecrows, isn’t it, both stuck up on the top? But why?”

“Look again,” he said. “Look more carefully under the hats … the faces …”

“Oh!” she cried, turning faint with horror, “how awful!”

The field of the telescope, like the circular picture shown by a magic lantern, presented this spectacle: the platform of a broken tower, the walls of which were higher in the more distant part and formed as it were a backdrop, over which surged waves of ivy. In front, amid a cluster of bushes, were two human beings, a man and a woman, leaning back against a heap of fallen stones.

But the words man and woman could hardly be applied to these two forms, these two sinister puppets, which, it is true, wore clothes and hats—or rather shreds of clothes and remnants of hats—but had lost their eyes, their cheeks, their chins, every particle of flesh, until they were actually and positively nothing more than two skeletons.

“Two skeletons,” stammered Hortense. “Two skeletons with clothes on. Who carried them up there?”

“Nobody.”

“But still …”

“That man and that woman must have died at the top of the tower, years and years ago … and their flesh rotted under their clothes and the ravens ate them.”

“But it’s hideous, hideous!” cried Hortense, pale as death, her face drawn with horror.

Half an hour later, Hortense Daniel and Rénine left the Château de Halingre. Before their departure, they had gone as far as the ivy-grown tower, the remains of an old donjon keep more than half demolished. The inside was empty. There seemed to have been a way of climbing to the top, at a comparatively recent period, by means of wooden stairs and ladders, which now lay broken and scattered over the ground. The tower backed against the wall, which marked the end of the park.

A curious fact, which surprised Hortense, was that Prince Rénine had neglected to pursue a more minute enquiry, as though the matter had lost all interest for him. He did not even speak of it any longer; and, in the inn at which they stopped and took a light meal in the nearest village, it was she who asked the landlord about the abandoned château. But she learned nothing from him, for the man was new to the district and could give her no particulars. He did not even know the name of the owner.

They turned their horses’ heads towards La Marèze. Again and again Hortense recalled the squalid sight which had met their eyes. But Rénine, who was in a lively mood and full of attentions to his companion, seemed utterly indifferent to those questions.

“But, after all,” she exclaimed, impatiently, “we can’t leave the matter there! It calls for a solution.”

“As you say,” he replied, “a solution is called for. M. Rossigny has to know where he stands and you have to decide what to do about him.”

She shrugged her shoulders: “He’s of no importance for the moment. The thing today …”

“Is what?”

“Is to know what those two dead bodies are.”

“Still, Rossigny …”

“Rossigny can wait. But I can’t. You have shown me a mystery, which is now the only thing that matters. What do you intend to do?”

“To do?”

“Yes. There are two bodies … You’ll inform the police, I suppose.”

“Gracious goodness!” he exclaimed, laughing. “What for?”

“Well, there’s a riddle that has to be cleared up at all costs, a terrible tragedy.”

“We don’t need anyone to do that.”

“What! Do you mean to say that you understand it?”

“Almost as plainly as though I had read it in a book, told in full detail, with explanatory illustrations. It’s all so simple!”

She looked at him askance, wondering if he was making fun of her. But he seemed quite serious.

“Well?” she asked, quivering with curiosity.

The light was beginning to wane. They had trotted at a good pace, and the hunt was returning as they neared La Marèze.

“Well,” he said, “we shall get the rest of our information from people living round about … from your uncle, for instance, and you will see how logically all the facts fit in. When you hold the first link of a chain, you are bound, whether you like it or not, to reach the last. It’s the greatest fun in the world.”

Once in the house, they separated. On going to her room, Hortense found her luggage and a furious letter from Rossigny in which he bade her good-bye and announced his departure.

Then Rénine knocked at her door:

“Your uncle is in the library,” he said. “Will you go down with me? I’ve sent word that I am coming.”

She went with him. He added:

“One word more. This morning, when I thwarted your plans and begged you to trust me, I naturally undertook an obligation towards you, which I mean to fulfill without delay. I want to give you a positive proof of this.”

She laughed:

“The only obligation which you took upon yourself was to satisfy my curiosity.”

“It shall be satisfied,” he assured her, gravely, “and more fully than you can possibly imagine.”

M. d’Aigleroche was alone. He was smoking his pipe and drinking sherry. He offered a glass to Rénine, who refused.

“Well, Hortense!” he said, in a rather thick voice. “You know that it’s pretty dull here, except in these September days. You must make the most of them. Have you had a pleasant ride with Rénine?”

“That’s just what I wanted to talk about, my dear sir,” interrupted the prince.

“You must excuse me, but I have to go to the station in ten minutes, to meet a friend of my wife’s.”

“Oh, ten minutes will be ample!”

“Just the time to smoke a cigarette?”

“No longer.”

He took a cigarette from the case which M. d’Aigleroche handed to him, lit it and said:

“I must tell you that our ride happened to take us to an old domain which you are sure to know, the Domaine de Halingre.”

“Certainly I know it. But it has been closed, boarded up for twenty-five years or so. You weren’t able to get in, I suppose?”

“Yes, we were.”

“Really? Was it interesting?”

“Extremely. We discovered the strangest things.”

“What things?” asked the count, looking at his watch.

Rénine described what they had seen:

“On a tower some way from the house there were two dead bodies, two skeletons rather … a man and a woman still wearing the clothes which they had on when they were murdered.”

“Come, come, now! Murdered?”

“Yes, and that is what we have come to trouble you about. The tragedy must date back to some twenty years ago. Was nothing known of it at the time?”

“Certainly not,” declared the count. “I never heard of any such crime or disappearance.”

“Oh, really!” said Rénine, looking a little disappointed. “I hoped to obtain a few particulars.”

“I’m sorry.”

“In that case, I apologise.”

He consulted Hortense with a glance and moved towards the door. But on second thought:

“Could you not at least, my dear sir, bring me into touch with some persons in the neighbourhood, some members of your family, who might know more about it?”

“Of my family? And why?”

“Because the Domaine de Halingre used to belong and no doubt still belongs to the d’Aigleroches. The arms are an eagle on a heap of stones, on a rock. This at once suggested the connection.”

This time the count appeared surprised. He pushed back his decanter and his glass of sherry and said:

“What’s this you’re telling me? I had no idea that we had any such neighbours.”

Rénine shook his head and smiled:

“I should be more inclined to believe, sir, that you were not very eager to admit any relationship between yourself … and the unknown owner of the property.”

“Then he’s not a respectable man?”

“The man, to put it plainly, is a murderer.”

“What do you mean?”

The count had risen from his chair. Hortense, greatly excited, said:

“Are you really sure that there has been a murder and that the murder was done by someone belonging to the house?”

“Quite sure.”

“But why are you so certain?”

“Because I know who the two victims were and what caused them to be killed.”

Prince Rénine was making none but positive statements, and his method suggested the belief that he supported by the strongest proofs.

M. d’Aigleroche strode up and down the room, with his hands behind his back. He ended by saying:

“I always had an instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I never tried to find out … Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago, a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de Halingre. I hoped, because of the name I bear, that this story, which, as I say, I never knew but suspected, would remain hidden forever.”

“So this cousin killed somebody?”

“Yes, he was obliged to.”

Rénine shook his head:

“I am sorry to have to amend that phrase, my dear sir. The truth, on the contrary, is that your cousin took his victims’ lives in cold blood and in a cowardly manner. I never heard of a crime more deliberately and craftily planned.”

“What is it that you know?”

The moment had come for Rénine to explain himself, a solemn and anguish-stricken moment, the full gravity of which Hortense understood, though she had not yet divined any part of the tragedy which the prince unfolded step by step.

“It’s a very simple story,” he said. “There is every reason to believe that M. d’Aigleroche was married and that there was another couple living in the neighbourhood with whom the owners of the Domaine de Halingre were on friendly terms. What happened one day, which of these four persons first disturbed the relations between the two households, I am unable to say. But a likely version, which at once occurs to the mind, is that your cousin’s wife, Madame d’Aigleroche, was in the habit of meeting the other husband in the ivy-covered tower, which had a door opening outside the estate. On discovering the intrigue, your cousin d’Aigleroche resolved to be revenged, but in such a manner that there should be no scandal and that no one even should ever know that the guilty pair had been killed. Now he had ascertained—as I did just now—that there was a part of the house, the belvedere, from which you can see, over the trees and the undulations of the park, the tower standing eight hundred yards away, and that this was the only place that overlooked the top of the tower. He therefore pierced a hole in the parapet, through one of the former loopholes, and from there, by using a telescope which fitted exactly in the grove which he had hollowed out, he watched the meetings of the two lovers. And it was from there, also, that, after carefully taking all his measurements, and calculating all his distances, on a Sunday, the 5th of September, when the house was empty, he killed them with two shots.”