Mason paced the confined width of her cell, back and forth in a continuous path that led nowhere. Frantic with worry for Richard and Lisette. Confused by the barrage of impossible developments. Terrified of where this monster of her own making might be carrying them all.
After her catastrophic meeting with Duval, he’d summoned a jailer who’d handcuffed her, gagged her, and placed a black hood over her head before forcing her down four flights of stairs to an empty basement dungeon. There she’d been freed of her restraints and prodded into a cell with padded walls. As he supervised her incarceration, Duval told her, “This is a holding pen for criminally insane patients on their way to the Charenton asylum. You are the only detainee we have down here at the moment. You might as well save your breath, because the guards will assume everything you say is the babbling of a lunatic.”
As he left, she begged him, “You can’t do this, Duval. Even if you have to do it to me, please don’t do it to Lisette. It’s unspeakable. She never harmed a creature in her life.”
The door clanged shut behind him.
A day and a night had passed since then. She’d worn herself out banging on the door, trying to get the guards to listen to her. She tried to assuage her anxiety by telling herself Duval couldn’t possibly keep this up. What did he intend to do, anyway? Throw her in Charenton for the rest of her life? Try Lisette for her murder? It was beyond belief! He would have to come to his senses and see the absurdity of his scenario. Once he talked to Lisette and she corroborated the story, he would realize his mistake and set them both free.
But in her bleaker moments, she thought of the injustice that was so prevalent in the French legal system. It was a major theme in their literature. Half the novels of Balzac, Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. Hadn’t they’d put Dantes in prison and thrown away the key?
Another day and night passed. A jailer sat on a stool outside her cell for much of the day. She demanded to see the inspector, begged to be taken to Lisette, asked the whereabouts of Richard. But all of it fell on deaf ears. He sat reading his newspaper, as oblivious to her as if she were a raving madwoman.
If only she knew what was going on. She’d asked for news and he’d ignored her. He’d always snuck in a bottle of wine and nipped at it during the day. By late afternoon, he was usually asleep. She heard him snoring and got an idea. Looking through the slot in the bottom of the door through which a plate of food was shoved twice a day, she could see that he’d put the newspaper he was reading on the floor beside him. Her hand was slender, and if she could just reach it a little farther…just a little more…It was really tight now, but pushing just a tiny bit harder, she was able to get the end of it between her two extended fingers and pull it through the slot and into the cell.
Its front page headlines screamed the scandalous story. The American painter Mason Caldwell had not committed suicide: She’d been murdered…her best friend, the popular circus performer Lisette Ladoux, had been arrested and refused to comment on her guilt or innocence…a speedy trial date had been set…Inspector Honoré Duval, who had miraculously solved the crime, was the hero of the hour…the scandal had explosively boosted the interest in the artist’s paintings and in her upcoming retrospective on the Champ de Mars…the victim’s sister, broken by the revelation of the murder, had gone into strict seclusion…
The paper dropped from her hands and she curled up in a ball on the floor, feeling queasy. It was even worse than she’d imagined. Lisette awaiting trial for murder, too loyal to Mason to defend herself. Strict seclusion…Did that mean they intended to keep Mason locked up forever? And Richard…Where was he? What was happening to him? Had they reached him in time? It was all such a mess.
What she would give to go back to the Pont de l’Alma and start all over.
Finally, Mason had worn herself out and fell into a deep sleep. But she was awakened by the sound of a metallic clang, then voices, one of them Duval’s. She had no idea what time it was, but it had to be some early hour of the morning.
Momentarily, she heard the key turn in her lock. The door squealed open. The light hit her eyes, briefly blinding her. “What’s happening?” she asked groggily.
“We are going for a ride,” the inspector answered calmly.
A ride? “Charenton?” Mason asked.
“It is best if you not ask questions, Mademoiselle.”
“Inspector, you’re an intelligent man. You must know the sequence of events you’ve outlined can’t possibly be true. You must know I’m telling the truth.”
“I do know you’re telling the truth,” he said gently.
Her heart lifted. “Then…you’re here to set me free?”
“Sadly, no.”
No?
He gestured to the two men accompanying him and they lifted her to her feet. All three men wore rain slickers. One of the guards asked, “Should we use the hood, sir?” “Never mind. There will be no one about at this hour.” They took her upstairs and out into the courtyard where a tempest was raging. The wind was howling and the rain pouring in a way it hadn’t since the night this had all started for her. A coach and three mounted men were waiting. She had no coat and was soaked to the skin before Duval could hustle her into the coach.
It pulled out of the courtyard, crossed the Pont Notre Dame to the Right Bank, and headed off into the night, the mounted escort leading the way. As they rumbled along, the inspector seemed to have lapsed into deep contemplation. After a moment, she said to him, bitterly, “You’re a policeman. Your business is uncovering the truth. How can you turn your back on it now?”
Mason detected an air of melancholy. “It brings me no pleasure.”
“Then, why?”
“Because I have no choice.”
She stared at him. “No choice?”
“They are going to make me a member of the Legion of Honor.”
Mason didn’t understand. “For what?”
“For solving the murder of the decade.”
“But you know now there was no murder.”
“Yes, but by the time you told me who you really were, it was too late. I had already convinced the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Culture, and President Carnot himself that a dastardly murder had been committed. Your friend Mademoiselle Ladoux had already been arrested. The press conference announcing my ‘spectacular detective work’ had already been scheduled. I was the man of the hour. So you see, I could hardly step forward at that point and admit that I had been a complete fool. It would ruin my career, my reputation…my very life.”
“You’d let an innocent woman die for a crime she didn’t commit to save your career?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I do not expect you to understand. But a man’s reputation is everything. Without it, he is nothing—a pariah. Even if I could weather the storm, my wife could not. She comes from an old and proud family, and she married a mere policeman. The promise of the Legion of Honor will exonerate her—and me—in her family’s eyes. Besides, her health is poor, and the scandal would kill her. So you see, my course is clear.”
“So it came down to a choice between your wife or Lisette.”
He averted his eyes. The silence was deafening.
Suddenly she did understand. “It’s not just Lisette, is it? You won’t be able to get a night’s sleep as long as anyone who knows the truth is still around. It’s not enough for Mason’s ‘sister’ to be in seclusion or off in a mental institution. After all, she might escape. She might convince someone of the truth. No, that’s much too risky.”
“Regrettably, true.”
At that moment the coach pulled up at its destination and Duval opened the door. “I am afraid the only logical end for Amy is that she join her sister in Mother Seine.”
As they helped her out into the wind and rain, Mason realized they were at the Pont de l’Alma. It was only then that Mason came face-to-face with the full, impossible dimensions of her dilemma, of what was about to happen to her.
And the unavoidable truth was that she’d done it all to herself. Her desire for success, and her willingness to take shortcuts to achieve it, had been the cause of a mountain of misery.
She turned to Duval with tears in her eyes. “What about Richard?”
“It is too late to worry about him, child.”
Of course. They couldn’t very well have let him live either.
“It’s time to make your peace with God. I promise you won’t suffer. One quick blow and it will be over. You will simply go to sleep in the Seine’s embrace.”
A poetic ending. Distraught over her sister’s murder, Amy goes to the scene of the crime and hurls herself into the river. Kindly, he added, “You can go to your rest knowing you will not be forgotten. Your paintings will be confiscated and become part of the national heritage of France. The campaign you started to make yourself immortal will go on as before. The retrospective at the Exposition will open on schedule under my personal charge with all the amenities you would have wanted. You see, my child, the greater the name of Mason Caldwell, the better it is for France, and the better it is for the reputation of the man who solved her murder.”
She looked down at the raging water below, barely discernable in the storm. It had been her fate all along to die in its depths. If only it had happened that first time, months ago. If she’d known what would come of it, she’d never have fought to stay alive.
She stepped to the rail, no longer minding her fate. She deserved it.
But before she closed her eyes, she looked about her and thought of the symmetry of the situation. This bridge. This night. A night so eerily like that other. And even…another pedestrian suddenly appearing from the darkness behind the coach, coming her way.
But this time, it wasn’t a suicidal woman. It was just some man crossing the bridge. He was slumped over, weaving from side to side. A drunk on his way home from some late night revel. As he came closer, she could hear him slurring the words of a popular cabaret song.
They would have to wait until he passed. The policemen raised their collars so he wouldn’t see their faces.
“Bonsoir, messieurs,” he greeted them.
“Bonsoir,” they called back curtly.
But he didn’t continue on. He stopped before them and gave them a drunken smile.
For a moment, she thought she was seeing a ghost.
Richard!