The Perfume of the Lady in Black Read online

  Finally, Brignolles’ cab headed off along the Corniche and my cab did the same. The numerous bends and turns of the road provided me with an excellent opportunity for watching without being seen. I had promised my cabby a handsome tip if he helped me to carry out my plan, and he did his best. Thus we reached Beaulieu. There, to my astonishment, Brignolles dismissed his cab, and, entering the railway station, sat down in one of the waiting rooms.

  Evidently he was going to take another train. What was I to do? If I tried to board the same train as he did, was he not likely to catch sight of me in that small deserted station? I must bluff it out. If he saw me, I would feign surprise at the meeting, for I was determined to stick to him until I had found out what he was doing in that part of the country.

  Everything went well, and Brignolles did not see me. He took a train heading for the Italian frontier. Every new move drew him nearer to the castle. I had taken my seat in the compartment just behind his, and watched the movements of the passengers at every station.

  Brignolles did not get off until we reached Menton. His object, therefore, was to arrive by some other train than that coming from Paris, since he would then have run the risk of meeting someone he knew at the station. I saw him get off the train, turn up his coat collar and pull his hat down over his eyes.

  He cast a rapid glance along the platform and, evidently reassured, hurried away towards the exit. Outside, he jumped into a dilapidated old carriage, which was waiting in front of the station. From the corner of the waiting room I kept my eye on Brignolles. What was his game and where was he going in that dusty old conveyance? In reply to my enquiries, a guard informed me that it was the Sospel coach.

  Sospel is a picturesque little town situated at the base of the Alps, about two and a half hours’ drive from Menton. There is no railway communication with the town. It is one of the most isolated, unknown spots in France and is equally disliked by civil servants and by the Alpine soldiery garrisoned there. Nevertheless, the road which leads to Sospel is one of the most beautiful imaginable, winding, as it does, through the mountains, running along the sides of steep precipices, and following, as far as Castillon, the narrow, deep valley of the Carei – one moment wild as a Judaean landscape, the next green and filled with flowers and infinitely pleasing to the eyes with its olive groves sweeping in silvery-leaved terraces from the skies down to the limpid bed of the rushing river below. I had visited Sospel several years before with a group of English tourists and still felt dizzy whenever I heard the name. What could Brignolles be doing there? I must find out.

  The carriage was full and had already started out with much clattering of iron and rattling of windows. I came to an arrangement with a cabman and I too set forth along the Carei valley. Oh, but I was sorry then not to have said anything to Rouletabille! Brignolles’ behaviour would have given him some valuable ideas; he would have known how to reason them out, whereas I did not. All I could do was to follow at Brignolles’ heels like a dog following the scent. If only I had followed the scent properly! At the precise moment when it was vital to follow it closely, I lost it. It escaped me precisely at the moment when I made an extraordinary discovery. Out of precaution, I had allowed the carriage to get a little ahead and I arrived at Castillon about ten minutes after Brignolles.

  Castillon is at the top of the road between Menton and Sospel. My cabman asked to be allowed to give his horse a short rest and a drink. I got out of the cab, and what did I see at the entrance of a tunnel that we would have to pass through in order to go down the mountain? Brignolles and Frédéric Larsan!

  I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move or utter a sound. I was thunderstruck at this revelation! Then I came to my senses, and, along with a sense of loathing for Brignolles, I experienced a feeling of pride in my own judgement.

  So I was right! I had been the only one to guess that that devil Brignolles was a danger to Darzac! If they had only listened to me, Darzac would have got rid of him long ago.

  Brignolles was Larsan’s tool, Larsan’s accomplice! What a discovery! Hadn’t I said that there was something unnatural about those laboratory accidents? Would my friends believe me now? I had seen Brignolles and Larsan together at the entrance to the Castillon Tunnel. At least I had – but where were they? – for I could no longer see them. They had evidently gone into the tunnel. I hurried forward, deserting my cab, and entered the tunnel, grasping my revolver in my pocket. I was wild with excitement.

  What would Rouletabille say when I told him that I had found Brignolles and Larsan together?

  But where were they? I went through the black tunnel. No Larsan, no Brignolles! I looked down the road to Sospel. Not a soul in sight. But on the left, towards old Castillon, I seemed to see two shadows hurrying away. They disappeared. I ran after them. I reached the ruins. I stopped. Two shadows might have been watching me from behind one of the walls.

  The old castle was uninhabited, and for a good reason. It had been entirely destroyed by the earthquake in 1887. All that remained were a few crumbling walls, some decapitated columns, an occasional fire-blackened beam and a few melancholy buttresses bending wearily to the ground. An impressive stillness reigned.

  With utmost caution I explored the depth of the crevasses which the 1887 earthquake had opened up in the rocks close at hand. One in particular seemed a bottomless pit, and as I was leaning over the edge, clinging to a charred olive branch for safety, I felt a bird’s wing brush my cheek. I felt the wind on my face and, with a startled cry, stepped hastily back. An eagle, like the flash of an arrow, had dashed past me out of those dreadful depths. It flew straight towards the sun, and, turning, descended in circles above my head, screeching loudly at me as if angry with me for having disturbed its solitude in the realm which fire and death had made his alone.

  Was I the victim of an illusion? I did not see my two shadows again. Was I once more the victim of my imagination when I picked up a piece of paper on the road which struck me as singularly like that which M. Darzac used at the Sorbonne? I was able to make out two syllables which I thought were in Brignolles’ handwriting. They were doubtless the ending of a word to which the beginning was missing. Owing to the way in which the paper was torn, all I could make out was ‘bonnet’.

  A couple of hours later, I was back at the castle and had told the whole story to Rouletabille. He put the slip of paper in his wallet and said nothing beyond asking me to keep what I knew to myself.

  I could not understand why such an important discovery could have so little effect on Rouletabille. I stared at him. He turned his head. As he did so, I noticed that his eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Rouletabille!’ I exclaimed.

  But he silenced me.

  ‘Hush, Sainclair!’ he said.

  I took his hand, it was feverishly hot. I had an idea that the state he was in was not due solely to his concern about Larsan. I reproached him for hiding from me what was going on between him and the Lady in Black, but he did not answer, and, as was his custom, he walked away, sighing.

  They had waited for me to return before supper was served. It was late. The meal was gloomy, despite Old Bob’s merriment. The rest of us made no attempt to hide from each other the fear freezing our hearts. It seemed as if we all knew what threatened us, and the weight of the drama had already settled upon our souls. M. and Madame Darzac ate nothing. Mrs Rance kept staring at me in a peculiar manner.

  At ten o’clock, I took up my post in the gardener’s gatehouse. While I was in the little meeting room, the Lady in Black and Rouletabille passed under the arch. The gleam of a lantern fell upon them. Madame Darzac seemed in a state of great excitement. She was pleading with Rouletabille in words which I could not make out, apart from one word spoken by Rouletabille. That word was ‘thief.

  They were now in the courtyard of Charles the Bold. The Lady in Black held out her arms to Rouletabille, but he did not see her, for he had turned away and gone to shut himself up in his room.

  She remained alone
for a while in the courtyard, leaning against the trunk of the eucalyptus tree in an attitude of indescribable despair, then passed, with lagging steps, into the Square Tower.

  This was on 10th April. The attack in the Square Tower took place on the night of the 11th to 12th.

  CHAPTER X

  The day of the 11th

  So mysterious and apparently beyond human comprehension were the conditions under which the attack took place that, in order that the reader may fully realise the tragic irrationality of the events referred to, permit me to dwell upon certain particulars concerning the manner in which our time was spent during the day of the 11th.

  The morning

  It was oppressively warm, and particularly hard for those of us on guard. The sea shone like molten steel beneath a torrid sun, and it would have been difficult for us to keep a lookout over the water if we had not worn dark glasses, without which it is impossible to survive in these climes once the winter season has passed. I left my room at nine o’clock and went to relieve Rouletabille, who was on guard in the gardener’s gatehouse.

  I had barely had time to speak to him before Darzac arrived and announced that he had an important communication to make to us. In reply to our anxious inquiries, he replied that he wanted to leave the castle, taking his wife with him.

  At first, we were dumbstruck by this announcement, but then I tried to persuade M. Darzac to change his mind. Rouletabille asked him point-blank why he had so suddenly changed his plans, and Darzac told us about a scene that had occurred on the previous evening which, we had to admit, did make his position and that of his wife a delicate one. The whole story could be summed up in a few words: ‘Mrs Rance had had an attack of hysteria.’

  Of course, we understood at once the cause of her nervousness, for it was perfectly obvious to Rouletabille and to me that Mrs Rance’s jealousy was growing by the day, and that she was beginning to lose patience with her husband’s attentions to Madame Darzac. The noise of the quarrel between the Rances had penetrated the thick walls of La Louve, and had been overheard by Darzac, who was calmly pacing up and down on watch in the courtyard.

  Rouletabille immediately began to reason with Darzac. He granted that M. and Madame Darzac’s stay at the castle would have to be shortened, but he made him see that for their own safety’s sake, they must not hasten their departure. A new struggle had begun between them and Larsan. If they went away, Larsan would have no difficulty in over-taking them, and he was likely to do so under conditions which would leave them practically defenceless. In the castle, they knew what to expect. They were on their guard because they were forewarned. In any other place, they would be at the mercy of all and everything about them, for they would not have the ramparts of Fort Hercules to protect them.

  The situation could not be prolonged indefinitely, but Rouletabille asked only for eight days, neither more nor less. ‘In eight days,’ said Columbus, ‘I will give you a world.’ Rouletabille would gladly have said, ‘In eight days I will deliver Larsan to you.’ He did not say so, but it was easy to see what his thoughts were.

  Darzac went off, shrugging his shoulders, apparently furious. It was the first time we had seen him in a temper.

  Rouletabille said:

  ‘Madame Darzac will not want to go, and Darzac will have to stay.’ And, turning on his heel, he walked away.

  A few minutes later, I saw Mrs Rance coming towards me. She was dressed with a most becoming simplicity and was in the best of humours. She made fun of my new occupation. I replied rather sharply that it was uncharitable of her to treat the matter as a joke, since she knew perfectly well that we were taking all this trouble and running such risks for the sake of the best woman in the world.

  ‘The Lady in Black!’ she exclaimed. ‘She seems to have bewitched you all.’

  She had the prettiest laugh imaginable and although, under different circumstances, I might not have been inclined to let anyone speak of the Lady in Black in such a slighting manner, that morning I did not have the courage to rebel, and I laughed with her.

  ‘To a certain extent that’s true,’ I replied.

  ‘My husband’s still crazy about her. I would never have thought him so sentimental. But then I’m extremely sentimental,’ she added, looking at me out of the corner of her eye in that way which I had found so strangely troubling before.

  ‘Ah!’ was all I could find to say.

  ‘For instance, I enjoy talking to Prince Galitch, who is certainly more romantic than all the rest of you put together.’

  I must have assumed a curious expression, for she laughed merrily. What a strange creature! So I asked her who this Prince Galitch was whom she mentioned frequently and whom we never saw.

  She replied that she had invited him to meet us at luncheon and gave me a few details about him. It seems that Prince Galitch is one of the wealthiest noblemen from that part of Russia called the Black Lands, lying between the forests of the Northern and the Southern Steppes.

  At the age of twenty he had inherited a vast estate in Moscow, the value of which, by intelligent management – hardly to be expected in so young a man, whose interests up to that time had been devoted exclusively to books and hunting – he had succeeded in increasing greatly. It was said that he was hardworking, miserly and poetic. From his father he had inherited a high position at Court. He was a Chamberlain to the Tsar, and it was generally believed that because of great services rendered by the Prince’s father, the Tsar took a particular interest in the son. He was as delicate in appearance as a woman and as strong as a Turk. In a word, this Russian nobleman had much to favour him. I had not even met the fellow, but I hated him already. As for his relations with the Rances, they were on the friendliest of terms.

  Two years before, he had bought the beautiful property which, at Garavan, was known as the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ because of its magnificent terraces planted with rare species. He had been able to render some slight services to the Rances when our young hostess had undertaken to transform the courtyard of the castle into a lovely garden. He had presented her with certain plants that had filled the recesses of the old castle with a vegetation hitherto found only upon the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

  Mr Rance had occasionally invited the Prince to dinner, and he had returned the compliment by sending Mrs Rance a palm or a cactus. They cost him nothing. He had too many, and he preferred to give those to her and to keep his roses for himself. Mrs Rance enjoyed the young nobleman’s company because of the poems which he recited to her. He would speak them first in Russian and then translate them into English; he had even written some in English which he had composed especially for her. Poetry – real poetry – dedicated to her! She had been tremendously flattered and had asked him to translate his own English verses into Russian for her. This sort of literary game amused Mrs Rance hugely, but it wasn’t altogether to her husband’s taste. The latter did not disguise the fact that he only half liked the Prince, but, curiously enough, the half he did not like was not the half which attracted his wife, that is to say, the poetic side of the Russian’s nature. What displeased Rance was the Prince’s meanness.

  He couldn’t understand how a poet could be a miser. I quite agreed with him. The Prince kept no carriage. He went everywhere by tram and often did his own shopping, assisted by his only servant, Ivan, who carried the basket. My hostess went on to tell me that, according to his cook, he bargained like a fishwife with the tradespeople over the difference of a penny in the price of something. Curiously enough, this miserliness was not displeasing to Mrs Rance, who found it rather original. Finally, nobody had ever been inside his property. He had never invited the Rances to see his garden close to.

  ‘Is he handsome?’ I asked, when she had finished her panegyric.

  ‘Far too handsome,’ she replied. ‘You’ll see.’

  I don’t know why I was put out by her answer. I thought of nothing else after she was gone, and it was still in my mind when I was relieved at half pas
t eleven.

  The first bell for luncheon had just sounded, and I ran up to my room. When I was ready, I hurried up the steps of La Louve, thinking that the meal would be served there, but I stopped short at the entrance, surprised to hear the sound of music. Who could have the audacity to play the piano within the confines of the castle in the present circumstances? Someone was singing, too, in a soft, sweet, tenor voice! The song was a curious mixture of plaintive melody and powerful harmony. I know that song now by heart, for I have heard it so often since. Ah, perhaps you know it, too, if you have ever crossed the cold borders of that northern land. It is the song of the half-naked maidens who draw the traveller beneath the waves and mercilessly drown him. It is the song of ‘Willis Lake’, which Sienkiewicz read upon a never-to-be-forgotten occasion to Michel Vereszezaka. Listen:

  ‘If you draw near Switez by night, and turn your face towards the lake, you will see stars overhead and stars at your feet, and twin moons will shine in your eyes. Do you see those plants that sway along the shore? They are the wives and the daughters of Switez, whom God has changed into flowers. Their white heads are like moths poised above the liquid depths, their leaves are green, like the spears of larches silvered by the hoar-frost. Innocent in life, they have kept their virginal robes in death. They live in the shadows and their purity is unbesmirched, for mortal hands may not touch them.

  So the Tsar and his hordes learned to their sorrow, when, having plucked the beautiful blossoms, they sought to wreathe them about their brows and place them in garlands upon their steel helmets, for all whose hands had been stretched over the waters were struck down in death.

  When time had effaced these things from the memory of men, the remembrance of the punishment lived on in the minds of the people, and to this day, the peasants call the flowers of Switez “tsars”.