The Perfume of the Lady in Black

  ‘Not once.’

  ‘Were you there the whole time ?’

  ‘I was just outside my door, watching the door of their room, and that’s where my wife and I had our dinner, on a little table set out in the corridor, because it was lighter and more cheerful. After dinner, I stood in the doorway smoking cigarettes and chatting with my wife. We were placed so that, even if we hadn’t wanted to, we couldn’t help but see the door of M. Darzac’s room. That’s the mystery. It’s even more unbelievable than what happened in the Yellow Room. Then, nobody knew what had happened before. But here, sir, we know what happened before, since you yourself visited the rooms at five o’clock, and there was nobody there. We know what happened in the interval, because either I had the key, or M. Darzac was in his room, and he certainly would have noticed the man who opened the door and came to kill him. And, besides, I was in the corridor in front of the door, and the man couldn’t have passed without my seeing him, and we know what happened afterwards. Afterwards – there wasn’t any afterwards! After that, the man died, which proves that he was there, doesn’t it? It’s all very mysterious.’

  ‘Will you swear that between five o’clock and the time when the tragedy occurred you did not quit your post in front of the door?

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you positive?’ insisted Rouletabille.

  ‘I beg pardon, sir. There was a minute, when you called me.’

  ‘Good, Bernier, I wanted to see if you remembered that moment.’

  ‘But I was only gone a minute or two, and during that time M. Darzac was in his room.’

  ‘How do you know he didn’t leave his room during that time?’

  ‘If he had gone out, my wife, who was in the lodge, would have seen him. Besides, then everything would be explained, and he wouldn’t be so puzzled, nor me either. I had to tell him over and over again that nobody but himself had gone in there at five o’clock and you at six, and that after that no one at all went into the room until he did, at night, with Madame Darzac. He was like you, he wouldn’t believe me. I had to swear on the corpse that it was so.’

  ‘Where was the corpse?’

  ‘In his room.’

  ‘Was it a corpse?’

  ‘He was still breathing. I could hear him.’

  ‘Then it wasn’t a corpse, Bernier.’

  ‘Oh, M. Rouletabille, it was as good as! Just think, he had a bullet in his heart!’

  At last, Bernier was going to tell us about the corpse. Had he seen it? What did it look like? Anybody would have thought that these details were of only secondary importance to Rouletabille. The main thing that seemed to absorb his attention was how the corpse came to be there, how the man came to be killed where he was found.

  Bernier couldn’t throw much light on that side of the question. The whole thing had happened in a flash, so it seemed to him, and he was on the other side of the door. He explained to us that he went slowly back to his lodge, and was preparing to go to bed, when he and his wife were startled by the extraordinary noises coming from the Darzacs’ room. Furniture was being knocked over, and there was a loud banging on the wall. Just as Bernier’s wife asked: ‘What’s happening?’ they heard Madame Darzac calling ‘Help!’ Rouletabille and I had not heard that call in our quarters in the New Castle. While his wife fell to the floor in a faint, Bernier rushed to the Darzacs’ room and shook the door in vain.

  The struggle continued on the other side. He could hear the two men panting and then he recognised Larsan’s voice, saying: ‘This time I’ll fix you!’ Then he heard M. Darzac in a faint voice, calling to his wife for help: ‘Mathilde! Mathilde!’ He was evidently getting the worst of it in the hand-to-hand struggle with Larsan, when suddenly a shot saved him. The noise of the revolver going off had frightened Bernier less than the cry which followed. It seemed as if Madame Darzac, who had uttered the cry, had been hit.

  Bernier could not make out what Madame Darzac was doing. Why hadn’t she opened the door to let in the help he brought? Why hadn’t she drawn the bolt? At last, however, immediately after the shot, the door on which Bernier had not ceased to pound opened. The room was in pitch darkness. This, however, did not surprise him, for he had seen from the crack under the door the light of the candle go out, and heard the candlestick fall to the floor. It was Madame Darzac who opened the door, while her husband bent over somebody lying on the floor, who was evidently dying. Bernier had called to his wife to bring a light, but Madame Darzac had said:

  ‘No, no! No light, no light! Whatever you do, don’t let him know.’ Then she ran to the door of the tower, saying: ‘Here he comes! I can hear him. Open the door, Bernier, open the door! I will receive him!’ Bernier opened the door, while she gasped: ‘Hide! Go away! Don’t let him know!’

  Bernier continued:

  ‘Then you arrived like a thunderbolt, M. Rouletabille, and she led you into Mr Bob’s sitting room. You didn’t see anything. I was with M. Darzac. The man on the floor had stopped moaning. M. Darzac, still leaning over him, said to me: “Bring a sack, Bernier, and a stone! He shall be dropped into the sea, and we shall never hear of him again!” Then I remembered my sack of potatoes. My wife had picked them up off the floor and put them back into the sack again, but I emptied them all out again and took the sack into the room. We were as quiet as possible. During that time, I suppose, Madame was telling you some story in the sitting room, and M. Sainclair was talking to my wife in the lodge.

  M. Darzac tied the corpse up properly, and we slid it gently into the sack. But I told M. Darzac: “If I might be allowed to make a suggestion, sir, don’t drop it into the sea. It isn’t deep enough to hide it. Some days the water is so clear that you can see the bottom plainly.”

  “What shall I do with it, then?” asked M. Darzac in a whisper. And I said: “I don’t know, sir. Everything I could do for you and Madame and humanity against a scoundrel like Larsan, I’ve done, but don’t ask me to do any more. And God help you, sir!”

  Then I left the room and went into my lodge, where I found you, M. Sainclair. Then M. Darzac came out of his room and asked you to join M. Rouletabille, which you did. My wife nearly fainted when she saw that M. Darzac was covered in blood; I was too. Look, sir, my hands are all red! Oh, I just hope all this doesn’t bring us some misfortune. Well, we’ve done our duty. He was a great scoundrel! What do you expect me to say? You can’t keep something like this quiet, and the sooner the authorities are told about it the better. I swore not to say anything, but just the same, I’m mighty glad to be able to unburden myself to you two gentlemen, who are M. and Madame Darzac’s friends, and can perhaps make them see reason. What do they want to hide the thing for? Isn’t it an honour to have rid the world of a fellow like Larsan, begging your pardon, sir, for speaking the name? Madame Darzac promised me a fortune (a fortune, sir!) if I would promise never to say anything. What would I do with a fortune? Isn’t it the best fortune in the world to be able to do that dear lady a service? I won’t take anything, not a penny, but I’ll make her speak. What is she afraid of?

  I said to her when you pretended to go off to bed, and I was alone with her in the Square Tower with the corpse, I said: “Why don’t you shout it aloud that you have killed him? Everybody will cry hurrah!” She answered: “There has been too much scandal already, Bernier. As far as I am concerned and, as far as you are concerned too I hope, this new affair will be kept quiet. If my father found out about it, it would kill him!” I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking: “If this comes out later, people will think all kinds of wrong things, and your father will die of it just the same.” But, no, the idea is to say nothing about it. Very well, we’ll keep silence then. Amen.’

  Bernier walked away towards the door, showing us his hands, and saying:

  ‘I must go and wash off that wretch’s blood!’

  Rouletabille stopped him.

  ‘What did M. Darzac say? How did he feel about it?’

  ‘He said: “Whatever Madame Darzac does is righ
t. You must obey, Bernier.” His coat was torn, and he had a slight wound on his throat, but he paid no attention to it, and the thing that seemed to worry him the most was how the man had got into his room. I tell you he couldn’t get over it, and I had to repeat what I’d told him already. The first thing he said when I explained to him was: “But when I came into my room a while ago, there wasn’t anybody here, and I bolted the door at once!” ’

  ‘Where did this conversation take place?’

  ‘In my lodge, in front of my wife, who was completely dumbfounded by it all, poor creature!’

  ‘And where was the corpse?’

  ‘It was in M. Darzac’s room.’

  ‘What did they decide to do to get rid of it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but they’d obviously made up their minds, for Madame Darzac said to me : “Bernier, I have a last favour to ask of you. Go to the stable and hitch Toby up to the trap. Try not to wake Walter. If he does wake, and asks questions, you are to tell him, and Mattoni too if he says anything, that M. Darzac needs the trap because he has to be at Castellar at four o’clock this morning to start out on his tour of the Alps!” She said too: “If you meet M. Sainclair, you are not to say anything, but bring him here to me, and if you meet M. Rouletabille, you are not to say or do anything.” Madame would not let me go out until your window was shut and there was no light on in your room. All the same, we were terrified by that corpse which we had imagined was dead and which suddenly began to sigh again. Such a sigh! You saw what happened next, sir, and now you know as much as I do, God help us all!’

  When Bernier had finished telling his story, Rouletabille thanked him sincerely for his great devotion to his master and mistress, urged him to be discreet, begged him to forget his violence of a moment ago, and commanded him to say nothing to Madame Darzac of the cross-examination to which he had been subjected. Before leaving, Bernier wanted to shake Rouletabille’s hand.

  ‘No, Bernier, you are still covered with blood.’

  Bernier left us and went to join the Lady in Black.

  ‘Well,’ I said, when we were alone, ‘Larsan is dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘so I fear.’

  ‘Fear? Why are you afraid?’

  ‘Because,’ he replied, in a colourless voice that I had never heard in him before, ‘because the dead Larsan who leaves the room dead, without having entered it either dead or alive, terrifies me more than the live Larsan!’

  CHAPTER XIII

  Rouletabille’s terror begins to worry me

  As a matter of fact, he was terror-stricken. I had never seen him in such a state. He strode up and down the room, stopping every now and then before the looking-glass and passing his hand over his forehead, staring strangely at his reflection, as if to say: ‘Is it you? Can it really be you, Rouletabille, who would think such a thing as that? Do you dare to think such a thing?’ He would stop as though to ponder and then think better of it, shaking his head fiercely. He went over to the window, where he crouched over the sill, leaning far out into the night and listening intently for something, probably the sound of Toby’s hooves. He seemed like a wild beast waiting for its prey.

  The roll of the surf had quietened down, and the sea was now calm. Suddenly a white streak appeared just above the horizon in the East. It was dawn. All at once, the old fort loomed against the sky, pale and gaunt as we ourselves.

  ‘Rouletabille,’ I said hesitantly, for I was fully aware of the boldness of my remark, ‘your conversation with your mother did not last very long. You were very quiet when you parted. I should like to know, my friend, if she told you the truth about the accident with the revolver and about how it fell off the table.’

  ‘No,’ he said, without turning round.

  ‘She said nothing about it?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Didn’t you ask her to explain the shot or the cry, which was so like the cry we heard on that other tragic occasion?’

  ‘Sainclair, you are very inquisitive. I’m not. I didn’t ask her anything.’

  ‘And you swore not to see or hear anything without her telling you what caused the shot or the cry?’

  ‘Really, Sainclair, you must believe me. I respect the secrets of the Lady in Black. It was enough that she should say to me, without my asking her anything: “You may go, my dear, for nothing separates us now.” ’

  ‘Oh, she said that, did she? “Nothing separates us now”?’

  ‘Yes, my friend, she did, and her hands were covered in blood.’

  We were silent. I had stepped over to the window and was standing beside Rouletabille. Suddenly he laid his hand on mine, and called my attention to the line of light still shining beneath the door of Old Bob’s subterranean study in Charles the Bold’s Tower.

  ‘It’s daylight, and Old Bob is still at work,’ he said. ‘The old fellow is very diligent. Suppose we go down and watch him. It will change the direction of our ideas, and I can stop thinking about this closing circle which is strangling me.’

  He gave a heavy sigh.

  ‘Will Darzac never come?’ he said, almost to himself.

  We crossed the courtyard, and went down into the octagonal hall beneath Charles the Bold’s Tower. It was empty! The lamps were still burning on the writing table, but old Bob was not there!

  Rouletabille picked up the lamp and looked carefully about him. He examined the little showcases fixed to the walls round the study. Nothing had been disturbed. When he had finished a minute inspection of the scientific specimens, we returned to the writing table. Here we found the oldest skull in the world and noticed that the jaw was red with paint, doubtless the paint used in the drawing which still lay on the table. I went to all the windows and tried the bars. They were perfectly solid, and had evidently not been touched.

  Rouletabille saw me and said:

  ‘What are you doing? Before trying to find out if he escaped through the window, you had better find out if he didn’t leave by the door.’

  He set the lamp down on the floor and began examining the footprints.

  ‘Go over to the Square Tower,’ he said, ‘and ask Bernier if Old Bob came in. Question Mattoni at the gatehouse and Old Jacques at the entrance gate. Go on, Sainclair, go on!’

  Five minutes later, I was back with the desired information. Nobody had seen Old Bob. He had not been seen anywhere.

  Still crouching on the floor, Rouletabille said:

  ‘He left the lamp burning so that people would think he was at work in here.’ Then he added anxiously: ‘There are no signs of a struggle. All I can find on the floor are traces of Arthur Rance’s and Robert Darzac’s footsteps. They came in here last night during the storm with a little loose earth from the courtyard clinging to the soles of their boots. There is not the slightest trace of Old Bob. He came in here before the storm and he may have gone out in it, but he certainly did not return.’

  Rouletabille rose and placed the lamp once more on the table, where the light fell upon the red jaw of the horrible grinning skull. The room was filled with skeletons, but they frightened me much less than Old Bob’s absence.

  Rouletabille stood for a while looking down upon the skull. He suddenly took it in his hands and gazed earnestly into its eyeless sockets, then lifted it up and stared at it in a most extraordinary fashion. Next he looked at it in profile, and afterwards handed it to me, and I had to lift it up and look at it while Rouletabille held the lamp high over his head.

  Suddenly an idea struck me, and, flinging the skull down on the desk, I rushed out into the courtyard in the direction of the well. When I got there, I noticed that the iron bars fastening it were undisturbed. If anybody had fled by way of the well, or had either fallen or jumped into it, the iron clasps would have been undone. I returned feeling more anxious than ever.

  ‘Rouletabille, Rouletabille! The only way Old Bob could have left was in the sack.’

  I repeated what I had just said several times, but Rouletabille paid not the slightest attention
to me, and I was surprised to find him engaged in what was to me an incomprehensible task. How was it possible that, at a tragic moment like that, when we were only awaiting the return of M. Darzac to ‘close the circle’, to solve the mystery of the second corpse – while beside us in the old tower the Lady in Black, like a modern Lady Macbeth, was busy washing from her hands the traces of that impossible crime – how, I say, could Rouletabille amuse himself by making designs with the aid of a T-square, a drawing pen and a compass? Yet that was what he was doing. He was seated in the geologist’s armchair and, having taken up Darzac’s drawing-board, was sitting quietly, in a state of dramatic calm, sketching out a plan as if he were an architect’s assistant.

  He stuck the point of his compass into the paper and with the other compass arm drew a circle, which might represent the space occupied on M. Darzac’s plan next to Charles the Bold’s Tower. Then, dipping the brush in the saucer, still half full of the paint left by M. Darzac, he carefully coloured in the circle. He took the greatest care over the work, applying the paint evenly as an art student might have done. He leaned his head first to one side then to the other, judging the effect, and sticking out his tongue like a schoolboy. Then for a while, he remained motionless. I spoke to him again, but he would not talk. His eyes were fixed on the drawing, watching the paint dry. Suddenly, his lips parted in an expression of horror, and his face frightened me, for it was the face of a madman. He spun round towards me so suddenly that he overturned the heavy armchair.

  ‘Sainclair! Sainclair! Look at the red paint!’

  I leaned over the board breathlessly, terrified by his wild manner. But all I could see was a neat little wash drawing.

  ‘The red paint! The red paint!’ he moaned, his eyes staring as if they beheld some frightful spectacle.

  I could not help asking him:

  ‘What’s the matter with it?’

  ‘What’s the matter with it! Can’t you see that it’s dry now? Don’t you see that it’s blood?’