A young woman of thirty or so rose up from the chair placed in front of a desk where she had been sitting. Julia was struck first by her beauty: it was obvious at once how Maurice must have been attracted to Elizabeth de Bellefort. Like many Normans and Bretons, she was fair, and blue-eyed, and her luxuriant blonde hair was carefully coiffured. Her morning dress of brown silk exhibited all the cunning simplicity of a Paris modiste.
‘I am Mademoiselle de Bellefort,’ she said. ‘You wished to see me?’ Her English was perfect, but her delivery was cold and distant.
Julia Maltravers knew that she was being assessed as a former rival to a lover’s affections, and had been prepared for a haughty and perhaps even hostile reception. But she had not expected to see the Frenchwoman so obviously racked with grief and remorse. Her eyes were red with weeping, and shone, dark-shadowed, from a face made gaunt by lack of sleep. Elizabeth de Bellefort’s self-control was admirable. But Julia wondered how long she would be able to sustain it.
‘You will have realized, mademoiselle,’ said Julia, ‘that I am Julia Maltravers. We both find ourselves in mourning. Just over a month ago, I lost my father, and then, as you know, not so many days ago, I lost my fiancé. So neither of us is a stranger to grief. It is my sincere hope that we can bury any differences that we may have in Maurice Claygate’s grave.’
It had been a rehearsed speech, stilted, and perhaps a little insincere, but it had its effect. The Frenchwoman pointed to a chair, and Julia sat down. It had taken her no more than a few minutes to allow any preconceived dislike of Elizabeth de Bellefort to evaporate. Here was a woman tormented by some inner distress. It was surely the duty of another woman to help her?
‘Mademoiselle de Bellefort,’ said Julia, ‘I’m shocked to see you in such distress. It goes beyond grief for the loss of Maurice Claygate. What is it? What is the matter?’
In reply, the Frenchwoman burst into a fit of frantic weeping. She wrung her hands together in despair, and her whole frame seemed to shudder with pain. Julia sat very still and watched her. The faded glories of the old manor seemed to wrap them both in their stifling embrace. At last, Elizabeth de Bellefort mastered her emotion, and sat up straight in her chair. She looked at Julia as though she were seeing her for the first time.
‘You are quite different from how I imagined you,’ she said. ‘I have seen your sympathy for my plight showing in your face. May I call you Julia? My name, as you know, is Elizabeth. I have decided to tell you everything, including the nightmare that is haunting me. I must tell someone, or I shall go mad. My brother had sworn me to silence, but I can no longer remain true to that oath. Listen, Julia, while I tell you about my agony.
‘When Maurice deserted and betrayed me, my love for him turned to a deadly hatred. I swore to take a terrible revenge upon him, and my brother Alain supported me. Our honour, you see, had been compromised, so that my brother’s reputation was equally besmirched by what had happened.
‘When we received the invitation to attend Maurice’s twenty-sixth birthday celebration, it seemed as though fate had delivered him into our hands. We determined that I should write a note to him, to be delivered by a footman during the crowded reception. You will understand that my brother and I were well acquainted with the layout of Dorset House, and the way its household worked.’
‘Yes. It was designed to lure him away from his guests and into a place called the garden passage, where I would be waiting with a pistol. I will tell you what I wrote in that note. “Please, dear Maurice, come to take my hand one final time. I am waiting in the garden passage.” I knew it would appeal to his vanity, and that he would come. When he came through the door, I was to shoot him dead—’
‘You were to commit murder?’ cried Julia. ‘Was that to be the way of redeeming your honour? We arrange things rather differently in England!’
Elizabeth seemed not to hear her. Her whole attention was focused on her harrowing tale.
‘In the event, it did not happen,’ she continued. ‘At least, Alain says it did not happen. I was found, so they tell me, trying to prevent an appalling little man from gaining entry to the passage, although I have no clear memory of how I came to be there. Alain said later that my nerve had failed me, and that I was trying to banish the whole affair from my mind. I thought at the time that he was right.’
‘He was right, Elizabeth,’ said Julia. ‘Whatever happened as a result of that note being delivered, there was nobody in the passage, either living or dead. It was empty. Your “appalling little man” told me that. He is a detective inspector from Scotland Yard.’
Elizabeth looked bewildered. She shuddered again, and cradled her head in her hands.
‘How could I have been so wicked?’ she whispered. ‘When Alain told me that I had not been in that passage at all – that my nerve must have failed me, and that I had suffered an hysterical fit that blocked all memory of that part of the evening – I was more relieved than I can put in words. It was as though I’d been born again, free of the sinful desire to murder a fellow human being. And yet—’
‘Maurice was indeed shot, Elizabeth,’ said Julia, ‘but it was in a house in Soho, far away from Dorset House. His death is a mystery, but, despite those wicked plans hatched by your brother and you, neither of you could have been in any way concerned in Maurice’s death. I beg you not to torment yourself by thinking that you had translated a wicked desire into an actual deed.’
‘Then why do I suffer from this hideous conviction that I did, indeed, shoot Maurice dead?’ cried Elizabeth. During their dramatic meeting, she had developed an instinctive trust for the English girl who had been her rival. She felt no need to conceal from her the secrets of her heart.
‘Let me tell you about this dream,’ she continued. ‘It sprang into my mind in all its detail while I was still in England, and has haunted me ever since. I imagine that I am standing in the deserted garden passage at Dorset House, waiting for Maurice Claygate to appear in response to my note. I have taken up a position facing the door, and there is a revolver in my hand. It all seems so real! I notice that the door which I am facing – the door that leads from the vestibule to the passage – is in need of a coat of paint. Strange, how, at moments of great distress or tension, one notices little, unimportant things! I can smell the acrid smoke from the fireworks, and hear the laughter of those guests who are still lingering in the garden.’
‘And how do you feel when you see these things?’ asked Julia.
‘I feel terrified, and my heart is beating as though it would burst. I know, too, that its frantic pounding is caused by a mixture of fear and exhilaration. Oh, Julia, how wicked I am! I feel the hard metal of the revolver clutched in my right hand. Alain had already turned off the safety catch for me earlier in the evening, and my index finger rests on the trigger.’
As Elizabeth de Bellefort recounted her mysterious dream, Julia Maltravers became more and more entranced. This poor girl was reliving a fantasy that her brother had concocted for her to believe. He must have drilled all these details into her receptive mind and, when her courage failed her, that mind had reproduced the chimaera as though it were fact. Did she have no existence independent of her appalling brother?
‘The passage was empty,’ Elizabeth continued, ‘but I have a horrible suspicion that there were witnesses assembled behind me, hidden by some old cupboards and screens, waiting to see what I would do. And then I sense that there is another, more terrible figure, a demon of wickedness, standing so close behind me that if I were to turn, I would see it. But I dare not look behind me. I dare not! And there I stand, waiting, waiting…. I think to myself, “Will Maurice never come?”’
‘This dream – do you have it often? Does it never vary?’ asked Julia.
‘No, it is always the same. I suffer it almost every night, and I cannot wake until it’s done. Then I fly to the window and look out over the fields of the demesne, and at the starry sky.’
‘What happens next in your dream?’
‘The door opens, and Maurice Claygate comes into the passage. Somebody quietly closes the door from the other side. Julia! He stands there as though alive again, graceful and handsome, as we both knew him. He is holding the note that I had written to him. He looks at me, and I see that his face holds an expression of hurt surprise. He looks at the revolver in my hand, and darts forward as though to take it from me. There comes a tremendous barrage of fireworks exploding in the garden – and I pull the trigger.’
‘How horrible!’ Julia exclaimed. ‘But you must banish this fantasy from your mind, Elizabeth, because it did not happen. I tell you, the passage was empty. Maurice was killed elsewhere, and not by you.’
‘I know that I must believe that to be true, Julia, but the dream persists. Let me tell you how it ends. I am all but deafened by the report, and in a split second there comes its shattering echo, reverberating along the garden passage. Maurice’s face assumes a terrifyingly neutral expression, as though nothing had happened to him. Then his eyes seem to glaze over, and he sinks to the floor. I think to myself, How odd, that a man will make no attempt to cushion his fall when he’s shot! I see my note flutter from his hand and lie like an accusation on the terracotta tiles of the passage.
‘I fancy that I hear footsteps behind me, and I hear the metallic clatter of the revolver as I throw it down. Somehow, I step over Maurice’s body, fling open the passage door, and find myself facing a crowd of witnesses, bent on coming into the passage to see the consequences of my crime. That perky little man in a brown suit is there. He talks, and I reply – I don’t hear what I say. The little man tries to push me away from the door – and I wake up, trembling, in the dark. And that, Julia, is the burden that I have to bear as penance for even thinking about a deed that in the end I never carried out.’
When Elizabeth de Bellefort ended her story, the two women sat in silence for a while. The old manor-house creaked and settled as the morning sun rose high in the sky. They could both hear the wind rustling in the long row of stately elms that bordered the demesne.
What was the meaning of this Frenchwoman’s torment? Was she unconsciously punishing herself for having listened to the wicked schemes of her brother? No doubt there were differences of temperament between an English country girl from Northumberland, a girl who came from farming stock, and this haughty French gentlewoman, whose family still nurtured dreams of power and influence that would never be brought to fruition. And yet….
‘Elizabeth,’ she said, ‘many women experience the humiliation of being rejected by a lover. It’s part of the common lot, whatever our nationality. Why did your love for Maurice turn to such deadly hatred? Why did you not shake off his memory, and seek elsewhere for a husband?’
As she spoke, she thought of the young man in the slouch hat, decapitating nettles with his sword. What had he been doing at the house? Delagardie. That was his name: Monsieur Etienne Delagardie.
Elizabeth de Bellefort had risen slowly from her chair. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, as though in prayer, looking intently at the English girl.
‘Of course, you do not know,’ she said. ‘How could you? If I tell you the secret of that hatred, will you swear to me that you will never reveal it to a living soul? All my wicked loathing has evaporated, now, but I know that you will despise me if I do not tell you why I acted as I did.’
‘I swear,’ said Julia. She had no intention of seeking clever reasons not to hear another woman’s solemn secret.
‘It is over a year, now,’ said Elizabeth, ‘since Maurice Claygate intimated to me that our relationship was to end. I received the news with the quiet dignity expected from women of my rank here in Normandy. Alain and I returned here to the Manoir de Saint-Louis, and soon afterwards I discovered that I was enceinte – pregnant, you understand—’
‘What?’ cried Julia, springing up from her chair. ‘Pregnant? But surely you told him?’
Elizabeth de Bellefort flushed in anger, and stamped her foot.
‘Tell him? Of course not. Do you think that I would demean myself, and monseigneur my brother, by revealing such a shame to the man who had caused it? We told him nothing, and Maurice died without knowing the sordid truth.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Julia, ‘what did you do?’ She could no longer restrain the tears that leapt to her eyes.
‘I was conveyed by intimate friends to a remote hospice on the fringes of Brittany, run by the Visitation Sisters. I was one of six desperate girls who were hiding their shame in that place. Eventually, I was delivered of a stillborn child.’
Julia Maltravers knelt down beside the wronged Frenchwoman, and took her hand in hers. How strange life was, that they two should have been so inextricably bound up in the life of a young man who had brought disgrace to one of them, mourning to another, and death to himself.
‘You should have told him,’ Julia whispered. ‘He would have married you. You should not have yielded to all this doomed fantasy of rank and station.’
‘It was what I had to do, Julia. These things are instilled into one from birth. But now you will understand where my hatred of Maurice came from. It died with the news of his own death, but I had good cause, before then, to wish him dead.’
‘What happened afterwards?’
‘I suffered a severe brainstorm, which led to temporary insanity. I was confined for three months to the insane asylum of Bon Sauveur in Caen – the same institution in which my own father died. When I was better, I came back here, and Alain and I plotted our revenge. Thank God, it came to nothing, and hands other than ours sent Maurice Claygate to judgement.’
Elizabeth glanced around the faded room which still held the silent reproach of something that had fallen on evil days for the loss of its former magnificence.
‘Alain has great hopes of receiving enough money to re-found our fortunes,’ she said, ‘and to restore this house to its ancient glory. Then, perhaps, I will be able to move in society again. We may induce the higher echelons of the Norman nobility to dine here. It is from small beginnings of this sort that one can be drawn back into the fold of the ancienneté.’
Poor Elizabeth! It was time for Julia to renew her expressions of regard for the stricken girl, and take her departure. Elizabeth de Bellefort seemed incapable of living in the present, and facing up to the fact that the world for which she and her brother craved had passed away for good.
Julia made her way thoughtfully along the main street of the little town of Saint-Martin de Fontenay, noting the ancient church, and the civic buildings facing it, from the roof of which fluttered the tricolour of the French Republic. Carts laden with farm produce made their way along the roads, and two separate smithies seemed to be doing a roaring trade. In this bustling little town, thought Julia, there was no sign of the tragic inertia afflicting the old manor-house and its demesne on the outskirts.
At one end of the main street a fine two-storey house of white stucco, its windows flanked by smart green shutters, rose up in well-tended gardens behind black iron railings. Behind it stretched an array of greenhouses, and Julia could see a number of men moving purposefully between them.
The front door of the house opened, and the young fair-haired man, this time without his slouched hat and sword, emerged on to the path. She heard him call a name, and one of the men raised his hand in an informal salute. Monsieur Delagardie, then, was not too proud to earn his own living by what appeared to be extensive market gardening.
Julia made her way to the little railway station, where an afternoon train would take her back to Caen. She had learnt a lot from her visit, and there was valuable information that she would have to impart to Inspector Box. She would not betray Elizabeth de Bellefort’s intimate confidences, but there were a number of things that the police would have to know.
For the dead Maurice Claygate she felt only pity. He had known nothing of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, or of its terrible aftermath, but there could be no doubt that he had behaved abominably to her, and had been content to dismiss her when he was ready to forge another alliance – namely, with her, Julia. From that moment, Maurice would be relegated firmly to the past.
She glanced back along the main street at the elegant and prosperous house of Monsieur Delagardie, and wondered. Perhaps that interesting man would one day be able to exorcize that decaying old manor of its presiding spirit of death and decay, and take Elizabeth away with him to live in the real world. Well, it was none of her business, but it was a pleasant thought, for all that.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Adrian Kershaw stood at the window of his temporary headquarters in the London Pavilion, and looked down at the crowds thronging Piccadilly Circus. Soon, he hoped, his business there would be finished, and he could disappear from public scrutiny, and the cares of his office, at least for a short while. With luck, he would be back in uniform for three weeks, supervising the instructors at the School of Gunnery at Shoeburyness, lost from sight amidst a host of soldiers on the vast, empty firing-ranges of the Maplin Sands.
But not yet. One of the trim little Baker Street omnibuses had just drawn up at the island, and a rather aggressive-looking workman, clutching a newspaper in his right hand, had hurried down the stairs from the top deck. Without looking to right or left, he pushed his way through the throng and disappeared from sight. In a moment, thought Kershaw, our friend Cadbury will show him in here….
‘Ah! Mr Ames. I’m very glad to see you. Thank you, Cadbury. This man is one of our people. He only looks like a dangerous ruffian.’
Mr Cadbury smiled to himself, and closed the door behind him as he left the room.
‘Now, Ames, what’s amiss?’ asked Kershaw. ‘You know that it’s highly irregular to come barging in upon me like this. Sit down.’
Ames wore the rough working clothes of an artisan. He sat down at the table opposite Kershaw, putting down his peaked cap carefully on the floor beside his chair.
‘Read that, Colonel,’ he said, slapping the newspaper down on the table in front of Kershaw. ‘The bit that I’ve marked down the side in blacklead.’
Colonel Kershaw merely glanced at the roughly spoken man sitting opposite him before doing as he had been bidden. Ames was the son of a corporal in the Royal Artillery and a woman from Haiti. The corporal had perished in one of the several Afghan skirmishes in the eighties, and the Haitian woman had died of an obscure disease in the Royal Infirmary at Liverpool. Ames earned his living as a ship’s labourer, but he was also a loyal and devoted member of Kershaw’s band of ‘nobodies’ – obscure folk who carried out mundane tasks that helped in the smooth running of the Secret Intelligence. Ames could also read and speak French fluently, having learnt that language at his mother’s knee.
Kershaw looked at the newspaper, and saw that it was a two-day-old copy of the Courant de Paris, a popular but responsible French newspaper. He read the passage that Ames had marked.
SERVANT FOUND DEAD
The body of François Leclerc, a servant in the household of the Minister of Marine, was found in his quarters at the minister’s house in Neuilly early this morning. It was clear that he had taken his own life by the administration of cyanide. Leclerc, aged 45, had been in the minister’s employment for four years.
LATER
It has transpired that François Leclerc was an inveterate gambler, and it is thought that anxiety over heavy debts led to his self-immolation.
‘Well, well,’ said Kershaw. ‘And what do you think of that, Mr Ames?’
‘The paper’s hushing things up, Colonel. Leclerc had been on the edge of a breakdown for weeks, ever since rumours about him began to circulate. I think he realized that the game was up. You were on to him, and so were they – you know who I mean. So he upped and done for himself. I thought you’d want to know. Unless the French make some kind of an effort, the whole business will come out into the open. The minister’s wife and her indiscretion, and all the rest of it. It’s going to be dangerous, Colonel, unless something’s done soon.’
François Leclerc…. Inspector Box had sent him the notes that someone had left in Sophie Lénart’s books for anyone to find. Obviously, other little bits of evidence implicating Leclerc in skulduggery and murder had been planted elsewhere, not only in England, but in France. Somebody had wanted the weak François Leclerc out of the way.
‘Who do you think is behind Leclerc’s death, Mr Ames?’
Ames laughed, revealing a mouthful of stained and broken teeth.
‘Who do you think, Colonel? You know very well who’s behind it. It’s that sponging parasite De Bellefort – you know it, and I know it. He did for poor Maurice Claygate, and Sophie the spy, and now he’s done for François Leclerc by driving him to suicide. I’ll have to go, now. I’m due at the West India Dock at noon.’
Colonel Kershaw opened a drawer in the desk, and withdrew a cash box, which he unlocked. He took out ten sovereigns, and pushed them like a croupier towards the rough man sitting opposite him.
‘That’s a little something by way of a “thank you”,’ he said. ‘Yes, it’s De Bellefort, and he’ll have to be stopped. Could you lay your hands on Théophile Gaboriau for me? I’ve lost track of him, much to his relief, no doubt.’
‘Gaboriau? Surely you wouldn’t—’
‘Can you find him for me? Yes or no?’
‘Yes, I know where he is. But be careful, Colonel. Gaboriau is no shrinking violet. If you put him on a job, and then change your mind, it’ll make no difference to him. He’ll just go on and do it.’
‘Well, let’s leave it there, Mr Ames. When I want your services again I’ll send one of my folk after you. Thanks once again for the information.’
Ames scooped up the little pile of sovereigns from the table, and dropped them into his pocket. He retrieved his hat, and gave Kershaw a clumsy bow.
‘Remember what I told you, Colonel,’ he said, as he made for the door, ‘Theophile Gaboriau’s no shrinking violet. What he starts, he finishes.’
In a moment he had gone, leaving Kershaw to his own subtle thoughts.