Мэри Элизабет Брэддон
Wyllard's Weird
CHAPTER X.
ROSES ON A GRAVE
While Bothwell was watching the builder's men upon the green hill beside the Atlantic, Edward Heathcote was slowly, patiently, laboriously following the thin thread of circumstantial evidence which was to lead him to the solution of Léonie Lemarque's fate. He had taken this task upon himself in purest chivalry, an uncongenial duty, entered upon in unselfish devotion to the woman he loved. He pursued it now with a passionate zest, a morbid interest, which was a new phase in his character. Never had he followed the doublings of some cunning old dog-fox across the moors and heaths of his native land with such intensity as he followed that unknown murderer of Léonie Lemarque. That she had been murdered – deliberately sacrificed – as the one witness of a past crime, was now his conviction. He had ceased to halt between two opinions. Léonie had gone to meet the murderer of her aunt, and she had fallen a victim to the folly of the dying woman who had sent her to seek protection from such a source.
Who was that murderer, and for what reason had he carried his helpless prey to a remote Cornish valley? Why should he not have tried to get rid of her in the great wilderness of London, where the crime would have excited much less curiosity, and would have been less likely to be discovered?
Entering deliberately into the thoughts of the assassin, following out the working of his mind, his fears, his calculations, his artifices, it seemed to Heathcote that a man familiar with the line between Plymouth and Penzance might scheme out just such a murder as that which had been committed, might fix on the very spot at which the deed was to be done, knowing that at that particular point the palisades had been removed, and the viaduct left unprotected. He would speculate that the fall of a strange girl at such a spot would be accepted as purely accidental. He would trust to his own cleverness for finding the way to disconnect himself from the catastrophe; he would imagine that in the hurry and confusion following such an event it would be impossible for the murderer to be identified. Who was to select from all the travellers in a train that one traveller whose arm had thrust the girl to her doom? A little cleverness and watchfulness on his part would render such identification impossible. A man provided with a railway key could get from one carriage to another easily enough, in the surprise and horror of the moments following upon the girl's fall. Few men are quite masters of their senses during such moments, and all eyes would be turned towards the gorge at the bottom of which the girl was lying; everybody's thought would be as to whether she was living or dead. Very easy in such a moment for an active man to pass from one carriage to the other, unobserved by any creature in or about the train.
Mr. Blümenlein's remark about the hidden door in the alcove had impressed Heathcote strongly: the door opening into a dark and obscure court, a narrow passage piercing from one street to another, and with only a side door here and there leading into a yard, and here and there the grated windows of a warehouse or an office; an alley in which, after business hours, there were hardly any signs of human habitation. Heathcote inspected this passage after he left the merchant's office. He followed it to its outlet into a narrow street, which led him into another and busier street parallel with the Rue Lafitte. A curious fancy possessed him; and he made his way, by narrow and obscure streets, behind the Grand Opera and the Grand Hotel, into the Rue Lafitte. By this way, which was somewhat circuitous, and which led for the most part through shabby streets, he avoided the Boulevard altogether.
That speech of Mr. Blümenlein's haunted him, like the refrain of a song. The words repeated themselves over and over again in his mind, with maddening reiteration.
"Wyllard, the speculator, was one man; but there was another man of whom the world knew nothing, and who went out and came in between dusk and dawn by that side door in the court."
It was a hold speculation on the part of the German merchant, and might have very little foundation in reality: yet the fact that such a side door had been made at Julian Wyllard's expense implied a desire for independent egress and ingress, a wish to be free from the espionage of porters and porters' wives, to go out and come in unobserved, to have no comment made upon the hours he kept.
For such a man as Wyllard had appeared in the eyes of the world, for a hard-headed plodder, a moneymaking machine, this easy access to the Boulevard and the pleasures of a Parisian midnight would have been useless.
But for a man who led a double life, who was the hard calculating man of business by day, and who at night took his revenge for the toil and dulness of the money-grubber's career in the dissipations of the gayest city in the world – for such a man the facility afforded by the side door in the court would be invaluable.
Had Wyllard been such a man? Had Wyllard lived a double life during the ten years of his Parisian existence?
Such a thing seemed to the last degree unlikely. Difficult to suppose that he could have given his nights to pleasure and folly – he who had succeeded as a foreigner in a field where native talent had so often failed; he who had penetrated the innermost labyrinths of the financial world, and had always been a winner in the hazardous game where the reckless and the idle must inevitably end as losers; he who had the flair for successful enterprises which had been spoken of to Heathcote as little short of inspiration; he who had been respected by the cleverest men on the Paris Bourse, looked up to as the hardest worker and keenest thinker among them all. No, such a man could not have given his nights to pleasure, could not have rioted among foolish revellers betwixt midnight and morning – to go back to his den in the early dawn, and to begin a new day, half rested, bemused by wine and folly.
No, such a man could not have habitually lived the Boulevard life, could not have been the associate of fools and light women. He could not so have lived without the fact of his folly being known to everybody in Paris. And Edward Heathcote had heard his rival praised for the sobriety and steadiness of his life, wondered at as a miracle of industry and good conduct, a man of one idea and one ambition. He had heard Julian Wyllard so spoken of by men who knew their Paris. He had heard his character discussed and sifted years ago, at the time of his marriage with Dora Dalmaine.
That Julian Wyllard could have lived a profligate life was impossible; but that theory of a double life did not necessarily imply dissipation or folly. What of a man who concealed from the world his inner life, the life of passion and emotion, who abandoned himself in secretness and obscurity to his all-absorbing love for a woman whom he dared not acknowledge before society? Such a man might verily be said to lead a double life – and Julian Wyllard might have been such a man.
Heathcote looked at his watch when he entered the Rue Lafitte. He had walked the distance in a quarter of an hour.
He had made a note of the number of the house in which Marie Prévol had lived. It was 117, about half-way between the Boulevard and the Rue Lafayette. It was to this house that he now directed his steps, impelled by the desire to see the rooms in which the beautiful young actress had lived – if it were possible to see them. In this dead season, when so many of the residents of Paris were absent, there was just the chance that some good-natured concierge– and the concierge is always amenable to the gentle inducement of a five-franc piece – might consent to admit a respectable-looking stranger to a view of the third floor of No. 117.
The house was a quiet reputable-looking house enough – one of the older and smaller houses of the street, untouched by the hand of improvement, and of somewhat shabby appearance externally.
The person who opened the door, and who occupied a little den at the back of the entrance-hall, was a woman of about forty, cleaner and fresher looking than the generality of portresses and caretakers. She was decently attired in a smart cotton gown, which fitted her buxom figure to perfection. Her face was clean, and her cap spotless. She had a pleasant open countenance, and Heathcote felt that he might believe anything she told him.
He asked if there were any apartments to be let in the house.
No, the portress told him. There were only old-established families living there. There had not been a floor to let for three years.
"Indeed! Not the third floor, for example?"
"No. But why does Monsieur inquire especially about the third floor?" the portress-asked, looking at him keenly with her bright black eyes.
"I confess to having a particular curiosity about the third floor," replied Heathcote, judging that frankness would serve him best with this outspoken matron, "and if by any chance the family were absent – "
"Monsieur would like to indulge a morbid curiosity," interrupted the portress, "to see the rooms which were occupied by a beautiful woman who was murdered. There was a time when I had twenty, forty, fifty such applications in a day, when all the idlers in Paris came here to spy about and to question. If the murder had been done in one of those very rooms instead of in the wood, I should have made my fortune. As it was, people stared and pried and touched things; as if the very curtains and the sofa cushions had been steeped in blood. But that was ten years ago. I wonder that Monsieur should feel any curiosity after all those years."
"You were living in this house ten years ago, at the time of the murder?" questioned Heathcote eagerly.
"Yes, Monsieur, and for three years before that. I was with Madame Georges from the day she first entered this house to the day she was carried out of it in her coffin. I am Barbe Leroux, born Girot. If you have heard of the murder of Marie Prévol, you must have heard of Barbe Girot, her servant. I was one of the chief witnesses before the Juge d'Instruction."
"Madame, I have read your evidence," replied Heathcote. "I am deeply interested in the history of that terrible murder, and I rejoice in having met a lady who can, if she pleases, help me to unravel a mystery which baffled the police."
"The police!" exclaimed Madame Leroux contemptuously; "the police are a parcel of no-great-things, or they would have found the man who killed my mistress and Monsieur de Maucroix in a week."
"Provided that he stopped in Paris to be found. But it seems evident that he got away from Paris, and instantly, or he would have been taken red-handed."
"I have reason to know that he was in Paris long after the murder," said Barbe decisively.
"What reason? Pray consider, Madame, that I am brought to this house by no idle curiosity, no morbid love of the horrible. It is my mission to discover the murderer of Marie Prévol. Give me your confidence, I entreat, Madame. You who loved your mistress must desire to see her assassin punished."
Barbe Leroux shrugged her shoulders with an air of doubt.
"I don't quite know that, Monsieur. Yes, I loved my mistress; but I pity her murderer. Come, we cannot talk in this passage all day. Will you walk into my room, Monsieur, and seat yourself for a little while? and then, if you are anxious to see the apartment in which that poor lady lived, it may perhaps be managed."
"You are very good," said Heathcote, slipping a napoleon into Barbe Leroux's broad palm.
Had it been half a napoleon she would have considered herself repaid for ordinary civility; but the larger coin secured extraordinary devotion. She would, in her own phrase, have thrown herself into the fire for this gentlemanly stranger, whose hat and coat were so decidedly English, but who spoke almost as a Parisian.
She ushered him into her little sitting-room, the very sanctuary and stronghold of her domestic life, since there was a bed in a curtained corner, while there was a cradle sunning itself in the few rays of light which crept down the hollow square of brick and stone on which the window opened. The pot-au-feu was simmering on a handful of wood-ashes in a corner of the hearth; and Madame Leroux's plethoric work-basket showed that she had been lately occupied in the repair of a blue linen blouse.
"Leroux is one of the porters at the Central Markets," she explained. "It is a hard life, and the pay is small; but there are perquisites, and between us we contrive to live and to put away a little for the daughter there," with a nod and a smile in the direction of the cradle, whence came the rhythmical breathing of a fat baby.
"The only one?" inquired Heathcote.
"Yes, Monsieur."
"And you have lived in this house for thirteen years, Madame Leroux?"
"Nearer fourteen, Monsieur, when all is counted. I was a dresser at the Porte-Saint-Martin when Mademoiselle Prévol first appeared there. It was a wretched life – bad pay, late hours, hard work. I caught cold from going to and fro on the winter nights, thinly clad; for I had an old mother to support in those days, and I could not afford warm clothing. I had a cough which tore me to pieces; but I dared not give up my employment, and my fear was of being sent away on account of bad health. I had not a friend in Paris to help me. Then it was, Monsieur, that Mademoiselle Prévol took pity on me. She spoke about me to a doctor who used to come behind the scenes and was on friendly terms with all the actors and actresses. She asked him to prescribe for me; but he told her that medicines would be of no use in my case. I was young, and I had a good constitution. All that was needed for my cure was warmth and comfort. I was not to go out of doors after dark, or in bad weather, if I wanted to cure myself. I almost laughed at the doctor for his advice. I lived on the Boulevard de la Chapelle, and had to walk to and fro in all weathers, good or had. It was January at this time, and the snow was on the ground."
"It was then that Mademoiselle Prévol took you into her service?" speculated Heathcote.
"Yes, Monsieur. There are not many ladies in her position who would have cared what became of a drudge like me. She was new to the theatre, and she had just become the rage on account of her beauty. The papers had all been full of her praises. Cigars, hats, fans, shoes were called after her. The public applauded her songs and dances madly every night. Admirers were waiting in crowds at the stage-door to see her leave the theatre, in the shabby little forty-sous that used to take her home. She dared not walk, for fear of being followed and mobbed. She was young enough to have had her head turned by all this fuss; but she seemed to care hardly anything about it. One honest man's love would be worth all this rubbish, she said to me once, when I asked her if she was not proud of being the rage with all Paris. I was proud of dressing her; and I used to take the greatest care in everything I did for her; and I suppose it was this that made her so good to me. She knew that I loved her; and the poor dresser's love was honest love. In a word, Monsieur, she asked me if I would like to be her servant. She was going to leave her mother's lodgings, where she was not comfortable, and to take an apartment of her own. I might have to work hard, perhaps, she told me, and I should have to be careful and saving, as she had only her salary to live on. She was not like those ladies who rolled their carriages and lived in the Bois yonder; but she would feed me and lodge me well, and she would give me as much money as I was getting at the theatre, without either food or lodging."
"Naturally, you accepted?"
"With delight, Monsieur. And three days after, I came to this house. My young mistress had taken the third floor for five years. The landlord put the rooms in order for her; and she furnished them very modestly, scantily even, partly out of her little savings since she had been at the theatre, partly on credit. She was to pay so many francs a week to the upholsterer till all was paid for. She had no extravagant tastes, no craving for finery or luxurious living. If you had seen her rooms in those days, you might have thought them the rooms of a nun – all things so simple, so neat, so pure."
"But there came a change afterwards, I suppose?"
"There came a time when Monsieur Georges loaded her with presents, and the apartment changed gradually under his influence. He sent her easy-chairs, velvet-coloured tables, a bookcase, an escritoire, satin curtains, rich carpets, pictures, china, hothouse flowers. He showered his gifts upon her; but I knew that she would have been better pleased to live in her own simple way. She had a horror of seeming like those other ladies of the theatre, with their luxurious houses and fine clothes. She spent very little money on herself; she lived almost as plainly as a workman's wife."
"Was she called Madame Georges when she first came to this house?"
"No, Monsieur; she did not even know the name of Monsieur Georges at that time. She only knew that she had a mysterious admirer, who came to the theatre every night, who used to sit in a dark corner of a small private box close to the stage, who never showed himself to the audience, and who was always alone. This was all she knew of Monsieur Georges in those days."
"Do you know how their acquaintance advanced from this point?"
"No, Monsieur. I hardly know anything of the progress of their attachment. There were letters – gifts – which came to the house. And I know that, in the spring nights of that first year, my mistress used to walk home from the theatre, escorted by Monsieur Georges. But he never entered our apartment till after Madame's return from England, where she went during the summer vacation. She had been very silent about her strange admirer – she had told me nothing – but she had shed many tears on his account. That was a secret which she could not hide from me. She had spent many wakeful nights, breathed many sighs. When she told me she was going to England, I thought all was over. She had fought hard to be true to herself, poor girl: she had struggled against her fate: but this man's love had conquered her."
"She did not tell you that she was going away to be married?"
"No, Monsieur; but when she came back, after a fortnight's absence, she showed me her wedding-ring, and she told me that she was to be called Madame Georges henceforward. This I took to mean that Monsieur Georges had married her while in England, and I believe it still. He loved her too well to degrade her by making her his mistress."
"He loved her well enough to murder her," said Heathcote. "I suppose that is about the highest flight for a lover."
"He loved her as women are not often loved, Monsieur," replied Barbe, with conviction. "I saw enough to know that from first to last he adored her; that the jealousy which devoured him later – the jealousy which made him act like a madman many times in my hearing – was the madness of intense love. I have listened outside the door, trembling for my mistress's safety, ready to give the alarm to the house, to rush in and rescue her from his violence; and then the storm was lulled by her sweet words, her gentleness, and he became like a penitent child. Yes, Monsieur, he loved her as few men love."
"If this were so, why did he keep her in such a discreditable position? Why did he not introduce her to the world as his wife?"
"I cannot tell. There must have been reasons for his secrecy. He seldom came to this house before nightfall. He never showed himself anywhere with Madame till after the theatre."
"Since he was rich enough to be lavish, why did he not remove her from the stage?"
"That was one of the causes of unhappiness towards the last, Monsieur. It was his wish that she should leave the theatre, and she refused. I believe it was at this time she became acquainted with Monsieur de Maucroix."
"You stated before the Juge d'Instruction that you believed the acquaintance between your mistress and Monsieur de Maucroix to have been an innocent acquaintance. Is that still your belief?"
"It is my conviction, Monsieur. I never doubted my dear mistress's honour, though I doubted her wisdom in allowing herself to think about Monsieur de Maucroix. It must be pleaded for her excuse that he was one of the most fascinating men in Paris. At least that is what I have heard people say of him. I know that he was young, handsome, and remarkably elegant in his appearance."
"And now tell me how you happen to know that Georges remained in Paris after the murder? Did you ever see him?"
"Yes, Monsieur. It is rather a long story. If I were not afraid of tiring you – " Madame Leroux began deprecatingly.
"You will not tire me. I want to hear every detail, however insignificant."
"Then, Monsieur, you must know that in consequence of Madame's kindness and of the lavish generosity of Monsieur Georges, and also by reason of a good many presents from Monsieur de Maucroix, who threw about his money with full hands, I was very comfortably off at the time of Madame's sad death. I had buried my poor mother two years before, and I had been able to save almost every penny of my wages. I felt, therefore, independent of service. The term would have to be paid by Madame Lemarque, who inherited all her daughter's property, and as she had a horror of the rooms in which her poor daughter had lived, and could not bear to be alone in them for an hour, she asked me to stay till the end of the quarter. Then, as I told you, people came in crowds to see the rooms; and as I had power to show them, or to refuse to show them, just as I pleased, I need not tell you that I made a good deal of money in this way. I did not make a trade of showing the rooms, Monsieur; I never asked any one for money, but on the other hand I did not refuse it when it was offered to me. This continued for some weeks; then came the sale. All the handsome articles of furniture, all the pictures and ornaments, fetched high prices. They were bought by fashionable people as souvenirs of the beautiful Marie Prévol. But the plainer furniture, the things which my mistress had paid for out of her own earnings, were sold for very little, and these I bought. I had conferred with the landlord, and he had agreed to retain me as his tenant. With the furniture which I bought at the sale, and with other things which I picked up cheaply among the secondhand dealers, I contrived to make the rooms very comfortable as furnished lodgings, and from that time to this I have carried them on with reasonable profit. Three years later I was able to take the fourth floor; and two years after that, on the second floor falling vacant, I ventured to become tenant for that also. There remains only the first floor, which is let to an old lady of ninety; and if Providence prospers Leroux and me, we ought to be able to take the first floor by the time the old lady dies."
"You will then be lessees of the whole house; a bold speculation, Madame, but one which with your prudent habits will doubtless succeed. But to return to this man Georges, whom you saw in Paris after the murder."
"I was accustomed to go every week to the cemetery of Père Lachaise, Monsieur, to look at my dear mistress's grave, and to lay my humble offering of flowers upon the marble slab which had been placed there at Madame Lemarque's expense. It bore for inscription only the one word – Marie: Madame Lemarque dared not describe her daughter as a wife – she would not record her name as a spinster. Marie was enough. For the first month after her burial I found the slab covered with flowers, wreaths, crosses, bouquets of the costliest flowers that can be bought in Paris. I noticed that among the variety of flowers there was one wreath frequently renewed, and always the same – a wreath of Maréchal Niel roses – and I knew that these had been her favourite flowers, the flowers she always wore, and had about her in her rooms. I had often heard her call the Maréchal Niel the king of roses. Months passed, and on my weekly visits with my poor little bunch of violets, or snowdrops, or jonquils, I found always the wreath of yellow roses. All through the winter, when even other token had ceased to adorn the grave – when the beautiful actress was beginning to be forgotten – the yellow roses were always renewed. I felt that this could be done only by some one who had devotedly loved Marie Prévol. For her admirers of the theatre her death had been a nine days' wonder. They had covered her grave with flowers, and then had gone away and forgotten all about her; but the wreath of yellow roses, renewed again and again, all through the dark dull winter, was the gift of a steadfast love, a grief which did not diminish with time. I questioned the people at the gates, but they knew nothing of the hand which laid those flowers on my mistress's grave. I hoped I should some day surprise the visitor who brought them; but though I altered the days of my visits, never going two weeks running on the same day, I seemed no nearer finding out that constant mourner. At last, early in the February after my mistress's death, I resolved upon going to the cemetery every day, and remaining there, in view of the grave, as long as my stock of patience would allow me. I spent three or four hours there for six days running, till my heart and my feet were alike weary. But I had seen no one: the roses had not been renewed. The seventh day was a Saturday, the day I always devoted to cleaning the apartment, which was now in the occupation of an elderly gentleman and his wife. I was not able to leave the house till late in the afternoon. The day had been foggy, and the fog had thickened by the time I left the omnibus, which took me to the Rue de la Roquette. At the gates of the cemetery it was so dark that if I had not been familiar with the paths which led to my mistress's grave, I should hardly have been able to find my way to the spot. The grave is in a narrow path, midway between two of the principal walks; and as I turned the corner between two large and lofty monuments, I saw a man standing in the middle of the path in front of Marie Prévol's grave. A tall figure, in a furred overcoat, a figure I knew well. I had not an instant's doubt that the murderer of my mistress stood there before me, looking at his victim's grave."
"Did you accost him?"
"Alas, no! He was not more than a dozen yards from the spot where I stood, and I quickened my footsteps, intending to speak to him; but at the sound of those footsteps he looked round, saw a figure approaching through the fog, and hurried off in the opposite direction. I ran after him, but he had reached the other end of the path before I could overtake him; and when I got there it was in vain that I looked for any trace of him either right or left of the pathway. He had disappeared in the fog, which was thicker at this end of the path, as it was on lower ground. My mistress's grave was on the slope of the hill, and there the fog was less dense.
"I went back to the grave and looked at the flowers on the slab. A wreath of yellow roses, fresh from the hothouse where they had been grown, lay on the marble, surrounding that one word 'Marie.'"
"Are you sure that the man you saw was Georges?"
"Perfectly sure. I knew his figure; I knew his walk. I could not be mistaken in him. And who else was there in Paris who would come week after week, in all weathers, to lay the roses my mistress loved upon her grave? Many had admired her on the stage; but only two men had been allowed to love her, to know anything of her in her private life. Of those two, one was the murdered man, Maxime de Maucroix; the other was the murderer Georges."
"Did you find the flowers renewed after this day, or did the murderer take alarm and avoid the cemetery?"
"The roses were renewed week after week for more than a year after that foggy Saturday afternoon; but I never again saw the person who laid them there. I had, indeed, no desire to see him again. I had satisfied myself as to his identity. I did not want to betray him to the police. The shedding of his blood might have avenged my dear mistress's death, but it could not have restored her to life. It could have been no consolation to her in purgatory to know that this man, whom she had once loved, who had loved her only too well, was to die on the scaffold for her sake. I hated him as the murderer of my mistress, but I pitied him even in the midst of my hatred. I pitied him for the reality of his love."
"You say the flowers appeared on the grave for more than a year after that February afternoon?" said Heathcote. "Did the tribute fall off gradually? Was the wreath renewed at longer and longer intervals till it ceased altogether, or did the offering stop suddenly?"
"Suddenly. In the March of the second year after Madame's death I found a faded wreath on my weekly visit, and that faded wreath has never been replaced."
"That would be in March 1874?"
"Yes, Monsieur."
"You never saw Georges again, either in the cemetery or anywhere else?"
"Never."
"I have been told that he was a French Canadian. Have you any knowledge as to his country or his family history?"
"None, Monsieur. I always supposed him to be a Frenchman. I never heard him speak in any other language."
"Did he speak like a Parisian?"
"No, Monsieur. He did not speak exactly like the people about here, or the actors at the Porte-Saint-Martin. I used to think that he was a provincial."
"Did you hear from your mistress what part of England she had visited?"
"I heard, Monsieur, but have forgotten. The names of places were strange to me – such queer names – but I know it was a place in which there were lakes and mountains."
"Was it in Scotland or Ireland?"
"No, it was in England. I am sure of that. And now, if Monsieur would like to see the third floor."
