What Dread Hand? (11 page)

She dragged herself to her feet. She stammered out: ‘At least I can pity you…’

Ice-cold hands caught at her hands again. ‘Love me! Love me! Pity is not enough.’

She put up her hands, she framed his cold face in her hands, she looked into his eyes, she saw all the longing, the pleading there. ‘Pity is akin to love,’ she said.

As cold as death were his kisses on her lips, as cold as death his arms about her body holding her close to him. Like a dead thing herself, made animate for an hour, she surrendered, powerless, to the wild, chill fever of his ecstasy, gave herself up, virginal, to the embrace of the living dead—like a dead thing lay at last in the crook of his rigid arm on the great four-poster bed. He bent over her. Out of the immensity of her sacrifice, she whispered: ‘Tell me now that I have set you free,’ and looked up into his face.

Gone the sadness, gone the look of longing, the piteous pleading. Instead…

She blurted out to him: ‘Why are you laughing?’

Laughing: shrieking, screaming with mocking, triumphant laughter, the more horrible that she knew that no ears but her own could hear. His face was distorted with it, made hideous by it, a mask of mockery; the stench of evil was in her nostrils again, the great bed was grave-cold, its canopy a coffin-lid above her. In the grate the fire crept and crackled no more, beyond that room all the world seemed hushed again into unnatural stillness. His face bending over hers, mouth hollow and black with the open screaming of his laughter, was vile with all the vile filth he had recited to her that night, feigning repentance. ‘Those others—do you think they didn’t listen too, drinking it all down? Do you think they didn’t tumble over themselves, they too, with their “pity” and their “forgiveness”? They and a dozen others before them, in the years since that poor fool also listened and also “forgave”—forgave
me,
dared to offer charitable absolution to
me,
to me who had walked as a friend with the Prince of Darkness…’ But at that name, he lifted his head, as he spoke that name he went suddenly rigid and lifted his head and was silent—listening. And the cold in the room grew ice cold and the silence was the silence of nothingness, of the world’s dissolution. Into the cold and the silence he muttered: ‘Master…! Master…!’ as though at a summons; and crawled up from the bed and, like a cowed dog, slunk back into the shadows of the evil from which he had emerged—and so was gone.

Outside, a little breeze blew and a leaf tapped at the glass of the window pane; and a cock crowed, and faintly, faintly, the grey night skies were a-shimmer with the first pale promise of the dawn.

So long ago… So long ago… Those others had gone forth and destroyed themselves, the young girl who had lived in an age of innocence, not waiting; the young widow waiting only a little while. But she—she had waited: and now crouched screaming, screaming… ‘Come back! Come back!’ But they did not come back. In all that white, shining, pitiless place there was no movement now, as in that room there had been no sound. Only the shush-shush sigh of the double doors left swinging in their panic flight. ‘Come back! Come back! Don’t leave me here alone! Don’t leave me here alone—with this!’

But the doors sighed and were still, closing; upon whose frosted panes she could, from within, make out the mirror image—

‘S
O POSITIVELY, MY DARLING,’
said Don Juan, ‘this is the last embrace.’ He bestowed it languidly. ‘Tomorrow the announcement of my betrothal goes out to every newspaper in Paris.’

‘I shall kill myself,’ she said.

‘They all say that,’ said Don Juan. ‘My whole day has been a nightmare of threatened suicides.’ He handed her a tiny ornamental pistol from the table beside the couch. ‘Take this—it may assist you. A memento.’

‘A dangerous one?’ she suggested—dangerously.

‘Ah, danger! The spice of life. Why else have I lived with a gun always close to my hand? But alas!—those days are over: the jealous husbands enraged, the lovely ladies outraged.’ Or nearly over, he added, laughing, and brushed aside with his left hand, the tiny pistol, to point elsewhere than at his heart; with his right hand he fumbled beneath a cushion. ‘Come, here is something to avert, let us hope, my last threat of peril.’

A jeweller’s box, its inner velvet raised to take a necklace, with indentations for seven hanging drops; in the box, however, only a single diamond. ‘A family heirloom,’ he said. ‘The Coqauvin “Collar of Tears”. The pendant, you see, shaped like a falling tear.’ And he lifted out the single diamond, tossed aside the empty box, placed the jewel in the palm of her left hand and folded her fingers over it with a kind little pat. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘A souvenir.’

She sat, still and cold, looking down at the diamond drop in her hand. ‘And the other six?’

‘Dispersed,’ he said. ‘In the course of this one melancholy day—dispersed. Souvenirs of the kindnesses of my bachelor years.’

‘And the collar itself?’

‘Ah, the collar…’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I will be frank with you, my dear. I had reserved the collar for you—I knew that for you no “tears” would be necessary: you alone would truly shed them. But—well, a lovely creature was importunate; she asked for them so prettily that…’ He shrugged again. ‘And so she has just departed—and with her the collar.’ He added smiling reminiscently that, of them all, she had certainly deserved it.

‘She who “deserved it” has the collar. And I—
I
!—a single stone?’

‘You and half a dozen others and none of
them
has made any complaint. And no one can say,’ he added complacently, ‘that I have not shed tears at parting. Seven lovely ladies—seven diamond tears.’

‘You have a heart of stone,’ she said. ‘No wonder you should also shed tears of stone.’ And she opened her fingers and looked down at the diamond, lying like a tiny pool of sorrow in the palm of her left hand; and lifted her right hand, levelled the little gun, and this time pulled the trigger.

‘Show Madame la Marquise to my boudoir,’ said Madame la Duchesse de Marlaine. She gave a small, elegant wriggle to adjust the bustle of her dress, glanced in a looking glass to see that her rouge was not too evident, and assumed a welcoming smile. ‘Celèstine, how charming! But, my dear, why so pale?’

‘Nonsense, Margeurite, I am no paler than usual.’ Madame la Marquise forced herself to a gossipy tone. ‘I only dropped in to ask you—have you heard the news?’

‘The news?’ said the Duchess.

‘Don Juan is dead.’

‘Le Vicomte Coqauvin? Yes, I had heard. I have, in fact, sent out the children’s governess to gather further details. Is it true he was murdered?’

‘Shot through the heart, they say.’

‘That must have taken some locating,’ said the Duchess, dryly.

‘Then you knew him, Margeurite?’

‘I knew his reputation. And the Duke, when he was alive, was acquainted with him—le Vicomte has dined here. But not, of course since—A woman so recently a widow has to be careful.’

‘Especially a young, rich and beautiful widow,’ said Madame la Marquise.

‘Almost as careful as a young, rich and beautiful wife,’ agreed the Duchess. She added: ‘Is it true that you’ve been trying to buy a diamond from Solange Vivante? Her maid told my governess—’

Madame la Marquise became even paler than before. ‘That governess of yours, Margeurite! Nothing escapes her.’

‘An invaluable creature,’ said the Duchess. ‘But alas!—she will be leaving me soon—she is going to be married. Her young man is even now in Paris, waiting to take her away. Meanwhile, however, my dear—about Solange Vivante?’

‘Well, yes, Margeurite, it’s true that she has this single stone—a diamond drop, shaped like a tear. I happen to have one very much like it—’

‘Have you indeed?’ said the Duchess.

‘—and I thought they would make a nice pair…’

‘I had no idea,’ said the Duchess, ‘that Solange possessed such a gem. She showed it to you?’

‘Not exactly showed it. I—I dropped round to see her, to discuss the murder, just as I’ve dropped in upon you, Margeurite; and by the purest chance—only Solange, of course, won’t believe me—I went into her dressing-room to borrow a handkerchief and just happened to notice this diamond—’

‘If people will keep their jewels in their handkerchief drawers,’ agreed the Duchess, ‘they simply ask to be discovered.’ She enquired before the other could comment: ‘And were you successful?’

‘Successful, Margeurite?’

‘In borrowing a handkerchief, my dear.’ She flung out a hand towards her own bedroom. ‘If you want one of mine, by all means help yourself. But alas!—you will find no diamond “tear” and, in fact, since they seem of a sudden to be all the rage, I begin to covet one myself. I suppose, as you were not able to make up the pair, you wouldn’t sell me yours?’

‘Sell mine? Margeurite, I could not dream of it. You will understand,’ said Madame la Marquise uneasily, ‘a family jewel…’

‘Oh, I understand—perfectly,’ said the Duchess. ‘But then—of what family?’

But the governess had returned and now presented herself before their ladyships, face blanched, eyes popping. ‘Compose yourself, girl,’ said the Duchess. ‘You look like a demented hare. What is all this excitement?’

‘Oh, Madame la Duchesse, please excuse me, but after all, it
is
exciting! Everyone is talking about it. And having met him here, here in this house—’

‘Having gaped at him one day in the hall, Mademoiselle, as the manservant showed him out—’

‘—having seen him, at any rate, with my own eyes—’

But Madame la Marquise could no longer contain her impatience. ‘Come, Mademoiselle!—what news?’

‘He was found by his valet this morning, my lady. He had dismissed the man for the whole day, he said he would be—entertaining. Entertaining several ladies, he said, and for the last time; and he kissed his fingers and blew the kiss into the air—many kisses; and then he laughed—’

‘Very well,’ said the Duchess, but her mouth was stiff. ‘So it
was
for the last time. What else?’

‘And so he was found, my lady. He was lying on the couch in the salon, the couch where—where they say he…’ She broke off in confusion. ‘There was a jewel box beside him, empty. The valet says it was one that held a necklace—a diamond collar with seven large hanging drops.’

‘And so?’ said the Duchess, not looking at Madame la Marquise.

‘Well, and so, Madame, Don Juan was dead. He may have died at any time—no one admits to having seen him after the valet was dismissed, about midday. He had been shot many times, but the first shot had killed him.’

‘With what weapon?’

‘With his own, Madame, or so they suppose—it is missing from his room. A small pearl-handled pistol. He kept it always on the table beside the couch.’

‘It wasn’t there last night,’ said the Duchess, and broke off quickly, her hand clapped to her mouth, staring, wide-eyed at Madame la Marquise.

‘Yes, it was,’ said Madame la Marquise; and clapped her hand to her mouth and stood staring back.

‘
Good
ness!’ exclaimed the little governess: and stood staring at both of them.

For a few moments, Madame la Marquise could not imagine who Mademoiselle Brune might be: nor why—for she proved to be the Duchesse de Marlaine’s governess—such a person should want to see her.

Mademoiselle Brune soon enlightened her. ‘I come to make my
adieux,
Madame.’

Well really! ‘You are leaving Paris?’ said Madame la Marquise, coldly. One could only trust that the Duchess’s chef and
femmes de chambre
were not also departing—would they too make a round of farewells to her ladyship’s friends?

‘For England, Madame. I am going to be married.’

‘I trust you will be very happy,’ said Madame la Marquise. Without enthusiasm, however; to be happily married, let alone living in wedlock, in England, must surely be a contradiction in terms.

Mademoiselle Brune was more sanguine. But… It was all so much a matter of money nowadays. Her Englishman’s family were enquiring about her dowry. Life as a governess had not been very rewarding…

‘No doubt, Mademoiselle. But what has all this to do with me?’

Once again Mademoiselle Brune enlightened Madame la Marquise. A little—shall we say, collection?—among the Duchess’s friends. Already, for example. Mademoiselle Solange Vivante had been most generous…

The tear-shaped diamond reached the Duchess that evening, by hand, with a request for its price by return. Madame la Marquise found herself suddenly in urgent need of money—and did not care, apparently, to approach her husband for it.

The Duchess put the diamond away—though not in her handkerchief drawer—and sat for a long time in deep thought. Then she sent for the governess. ‘So, Mademoiselle, before your departure to England—a little blackmail?’

‘Madame will not give me away,’ said the governess; and it was not a question.

‘Of course not,’ said the Duchess. She looked Mademoiselle Brune in the eyes. ‘After all, I have the diamond—two diamonds, in fact, for I have already been approached by Mademoiselle Vivante—’

‘At my suggestion,’ said the governess. She looked back, just as squarely, at the Duchess. ‘One hears that Clara Malheure, the opera singer, was wearing a new diamond during the first act, tonight. And she was—they also say—a friend of le Vicomte Coqauvin.’