Wolf Hunt (24 page)

The farmer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your game is off...' Relmyer would have liked to hit him but Margont said compassionately: ‘He doesn’t know about all this, Lukas. And if you take it out on him, his dogs will tear you to pieces.’

The farmer moved away. This affair was taking an unexpected turn and he wanted to avoid being too involved. A hussar went with him to keep an eye on him. Lefine kept turning his head, his mouth seeking less foul air and his eyes a less harrowing spectacle.

‘It’s not a hiding place, it’s a tomb.’

Relmyer did not move, shrinking inside himself.

‘Look at the size of the body!’ exclaimed Margont. ‘It’s an adult, not a young boy of fifteen Relmyer went quickly over to him.

‘Who is it then?’

Margont turned to Pagin. ‘Go and fetch the portrait.’

Lefine and the other hussars were moving off when Margont called them to order.

‘Let’s continue! We have to free the body.’

He set an example, forcing himself to ignore the sticky pestilential corpse. Lefine let his spade fall from his hands. The sight of the worms infesting that decaying carcass horrified him. Eventually Margont found himself digging on his own.

‘That’s enough,’ Jean-Quenin intervened.

‘No, I want to be sure that there is only one corpse in this grave,’ said Margont obstinately.

Relmyer went to fetch sheets from the house and helped him exhume the dead man. Margont continued to dig for a while. With each spadeful, Relmyer expected to see the face of a young boy appearing, as if the earth, dark and rich, had embalmed and conserved intact the body of another victim. Relmyer then looked around him. Was he going to have to dig for the rest of his days to find all the victims?

Margont joined Jean-Quenin. ‘What can you tell us about the corpse?’

In contrast to his companions, the medical officer showed little emotion. Death was an old acquaintance.

‘It’s an adult - I can’t be sure of his age; killed with a knife, struck several times in the abdomen and chest, violently; some of his ribs were broken by the impact of the blows.’

Jean-Quenin wrapped his hand in a sheet and took hold of one of the body’s arms, which he examined.

The victim probably knew his assassin.’

‘How can you say that?’ asked Relmyer, crossly.

‘When you’re attacked, your first instinct is to protect yourself with your arms. But here, you can see there are no injuries to the arms. This man was taken by surprise by the assault and the murderer must have been standing quite close to him to be able to stab him. You only let people you trust come close to you.'

‘When was he killed?’ asked Margont.

‘It’s hard to say. The speed of decomposition varies according to numerous factors - heat, humidity, the type of soil the body is buried in ... I would say between ten and fifteen days ago/

Relmyer made a huge effort to control himself. He had just been shaken out of a world with one simple objective - to wait for Tey-hern in his salon - into a universe of chaos where questions abounded: who was that man? Who had killed him? Why?

Margont looked at the grave.

The body was buried very deep to prevent the smell escaping and alerting us. In addition, the tomb was well hidden: we noticed nothing when we first looked here. The assassin was very determined that we should not find his victim. Conclusion: this dead

man is a major clue — may God rest his soul — and I want to know everything about him. Pagin, show the portrait to the medical officer. Jean-Quenin, can you tell us if these are the same person?’ Pagin and Relmyer looked at each other, disorientated by this question, which seemed unnecessary to them. Jean-Quenin Bre-mond set himself to answering the question without seeking to understand it. He was used to Margont’s bizarre requests.

‘No, they’re two different men.’

Relmyer looked at the body, whose features had been effaced by putrefaction.

‘What are you saying? You can’t tell anything from that face except that it’s dead! They both have approximately the same colour hair. It could be him, it could be his brother or his neighbour or half the men killed in the last two weeks.’

‘Look at his cheekbones.’

But Relmyer could not bring himself to look at the cadaver. He contented himself with listening to the medical officer’s explanations.

The victim’s cheekbones are more prominent than those of the man in the portrait. And the victim’s lower jaw is narrower and his chin protrudes.’

‘Perhaps the painting is not a good likeness—’ Relmyer interrupted himself: the painting was an excellent likeness.

Jean-Quenin Brémond went on with his commentary. ‘Although the nose is crushed, you can still see that it is larger and longer. And besides, it runs straight down from his forehead, what you call a Greek profile. The man in the picture has a hooked nose much more separated from the forehead. The position of his ears is also lower.’

Margont went over to the farmer with Pagin, who was still holding the picture.

He demanded, in German: ‘You live near here - do you know the man in this portrait?’

‘Never seen him before.’

Very reluctantly, the man followed him to the grave. As soon as he caught sight of the body, he grew agitated.

‘But you do know him! Don’t try to deny it!’ exclaimed Margont. ‘Who is he?’

‘Hermann Teyhern ...’

‘What?’ cried Relmyer.

The man was panic-stricken. He said desperately: ‘I live peacefully at home, I didn’t see anything and I don’t speak French. I’ll give you back the money you paid me to bring the dogs. I don’t understand anything about this business and I swear I will say nothing

*

Margont tried in vain to question him more closely about Teyhern, then had to agree to let him depart. The farmer did not wait to be told twice and fled with his dogs. Margont went back to Relmyer. ‘The assassin knows Teyhern well because he falsified the records for him. He realised that our quest would eventually lead us here, or at least he knew that Teyhern’s tampering had been discovered. So he had to get rid of Teyhern. But he didn’t mutilate his face: he didn’t treat him the way he normally treats his victims. He took the key to the house and he put his own portrait in the salon. Then he carefully concealed the body. We managed to find his accomplice, but our trail ends here.’

Relmyer began to rant at the corpse in German, asking it how it could have acted in that way. Pagin and another hussar stood in his path, because it really seemed as if he might fling himself on the body and beat it.

THAT evening, everyone was back in his respective encampment. The sky was cloudy. The tension was visible on the men’s faces. Soldiers were bivouacking as far as the eye could see: on the plains, in the fields, in the villages, the farms, the barns, the woods, the forest...

Margont paced in a circle, arms crossed, brow furrowed, as he used to do as a child in his monastic cell at Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert.le-Desert. He kept repeating that he refused to admit defeat, but actually, it was worse than that: he couldn’t allow himself to give up.

‘Did you see how badly Relmyer reacted?’

Lefine nodded, not adding that Margont was hardly taking it any better.

‘He’s just lucky that his major closed his eyes to his absence. It has to be said that Batichut adores Relmyer, he reminds him of himself at twenty ... Could you stop pacing up and down?’

‘No.’

‘It’s over,’ decreed Lefine. ‘The assassin beat us. He’s cleverer than us, or luck gave him all the best cards, a very fine hand. Now there’s only one thing we have to concentrate on: the battle to come. Let’s do our work, and try to come out of it alive with all our limbs intact. I’m quite happy to fight to the death as long as it’s not my death.’

‘But we haven’t lost yet!’

‘Apparently we’re lining up a hundred and ninety thousand men and six hundred cannon! And the Austrians, probably about a hundred and forty thousand and four hundred pieces of artillery. My source is reliable; it’s one of my friends who serves on the general staff. But where did they find those three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers? You’d think they bought them at auction. Bids for victory, please! I have a hundred thousand men for the Austrians, a hundred thousand! A hundred and twenty thousand for Napoleon, yes I did say a hundred and twenty thousand! A hundred and forty thousand for the Archduke! Come on, Monsieur

Napoleon, make an effort, damn you! A hundred and ninety thousand for the French? By thunder, he just doesn’t want to lose, the bugger! Have you ever seen two such enormous armies facing each other? How many will we be next time, ten million against ten million?’

‘It was all too perfect and that’s what’s wrong with it!' exclaimed Margont.

‘It’s all very well, numerical superiority, except that each time one of our regiments reaches Austrian soil, all the enemy divisions are going to converge their fire against it. The regiments will arrive one by one, in single file, so we will always find ourselves one against ten. That will mean a succession of little Battles of Essling. The Austrians will methodically crush us as we arrive. If the Emperor does not find a way of parrying their attack, we will all be massacred, even if there were to be a million of us!’

Margont stared at him long and hard.

‘What are you talking about, with your millions? Are you actually going to listen to me? The murderer was just putting us off his

trail with Teyhern. But it was too perfect, too well executed to be totally false. It’s in the word “too” that the solution lies. We have not stopped drawing closer to the assassin: we have discovered that the registers were tampered with, Relmyer forced him to show himself again, we know that he serves in the Viennese Volunteer regiment ... The false trail of Teyhern worked: Relmyer believed in it, so did I ... The man we’re looking for panicked after the setback of the ambush. He had very little time to put together the scheme that made us confuse him with Teyhern. Think about the difficulties he must have overcome to set up that scenario ... Our man had to prepare his crime rapidly because a large part of his time was taken up with the army. How could he have acted so quickly? He must have known Teyhern very well, he knew everything about him. What’s more, for him to leave us such a precious clue as his portrait must mean that he’s starting to lose his grip! We are so close to the real culprit! It’s as if we’re in the right street but we knocked at the wrong door. The assassin and Teyhern knew each other extremely well! We have to find out more about this

Teyhern.’

Lefine seized a stick and shook up the fire, which was cooking the soup rather slowly.

‘We have a hundred and forty thousand Austrians on one side and a murderer on the other, and you choose to worry about the murderer? We’ll see to it after the battle! I know, it’s possible that the man has locked up a young boy somewhere. But that’s only a hypothesis.’

‘I really believe it is a possibility. And that’s not all. We are very close to him, he has murdered his accomplice, the Austrian army is investigating the business of the falsified records ... For him, it’s the end: he has held out a long time, but his world of hypocrisies and of manipulations is beginning to crack at the seams. If we don’t name him, Relmyer will, or Luise, or the Austrian military authorities ... He’s going to flee, Fernand. He knows that someone is going to unmask him, it’s no longer a question of weeks; he knows it will happen in days. The battle is keeping us here, because there are so many patrols on the lookout for deserters. But,

as soon as he has the chance, he will leave the region, possibly Austria. We’re running out of time to catch him.’

Margont finally stopped pacing up and down; he had just taken a decision.

‘I’m going to see Luise. Only she can find out about Teyhern.’ ‘You’re joking! What about our orders? We are not allowed to leave our regiments. The imperial police don’t take it lightly when a battle is imminent.’

‘Jean-Quenin can scrawl me a note. He can pretend that I’ve come down with typhus and they’ll send me away in horror. I’ll leave straight away. I’ll be back before nightfall.’

Margont was too stubborn to allow anyone to change his mind. If the major wondered about his absence, Lefine, Saber and Pique-bois would come up with something. They were used to doing that. 

MARGONT made his way amongst the cohorts of regiments, crossing long convoys of artillery that blocked the roads, regiments that were behind schedule, recovered invalids looking for their battalions, impatient couriers ... In Vienna, he skirted round the large avenues, his horse splashing through the mud of the narrow streets, while the large thoroughfares rang to the sound of the hoofs of the squadrons.

Luise was watching the troop movements from her window. She was hoping to see Relmyer or Margont pass by, unlikely as that was, and she despaired at the size of the army that was about to be unleashed against her own side. She was dumbfounded when she saw Margont silhouetted against the garden gate. She hastened to go to open it for him, deaf to her mother’s protestations, and led him into a back room, while Margont apologised profusely.

‘How are you? Has your wound healed?’ she asked immediately.

‘Yes, I’m very well, completely recovered.’

‘And Lukas? Has he finally found Teyhern? Did he confess?’ Margont brought Luise up to date with everything that had happened. Her face clouded. Old sorrows resurfaced, mixing with her present worry.

‘This has been going on so long, and each time we think we’ve got him, he disappears again. Will it never be over? It’s as if we’re being tortured by a ghost.’

Margont was struck by that last word.

‘Luise, you’re going to have to find out as much as possible about Teyhern. He’s very close to the man we’re after, and knows him extremely well.’

‘I’ve already started. I knew that it might be useful to you. But it’s not easy ... Vienna is in turmoil ... Like our lives.’

‘We don’t have much time. I think our man will flee as soon as he has the chance ...’

Margont put the portrait of the culprit on a chest of drawers.