Chapter 6

THE RIVER

The next morning, a light drizzle fell and low clouds shrouded the countryside. A dull ringing filled my head. It had been a stormy night in which it seemed as if every piece of furniture in the house creaked and my covers were scorching hot. I had kept turning the heart-shaped, golden pendant that one of my two friends gave me for Christmas over and over in my hands. I’d tried lighting the gas fire many times to see it better. It must have been from Lupin, I kept repeating the whole night. Of course the gift had to have come from Lupin!

I rose and got the latest of my diaries — those same diaries that have allowed me to reconstruct my daring childhood today. I opened it to a certain page filled with cross-outs. During those first months of the year, every time I believed I could guess whether Arsène or Sherlock had given me that gift, I wrote down one of their names. By then, I had crossed out their names on the page twenty times.

That night I checked. And, as I had thought during the ebb and flow of my dreams, I had crossed out Sherlock’s name for the umpteenth time and replaced it with that of Arsène. Only then, exhausted, did I fall asleep.

The morning passed slowly. I took refuge in my room, in the company of the pages of my beloved Le Fanu. I tried not to think of my afternoon appointment with the woman from the cathedral.

I did not even try to draft a letter for our friend, Sherlock Holmes. What could I write him? That I missed him? That Arsène and I wished he were with us? Why, then? Because we had an old piece of paper we could not decipher? I told myself that we did not have enough information to be able to ask for an opinion. And although in my heart I was dying for news from him, I put it off and sought refuge between the pages of Uncle Silas.

Lupin and I had agreed to meet at home right after lunch to decide what I should do before four o’clock. Meanwhile, I could not help but rack my brains about that piece of paper — apparently meaningless and yet so carefully hidden in the house — and about the talk the woman had with me the day before. Her answers had not entirely convinced me, and I wondered whether I should show up for the afternoon appointment. I felt suspicion toward that strange woman and was reluctant to give her the envelope. Nonetheless, it made me deeply uncomfortable to keep something that someone had so urgently requested and that I had been told was so dangerous.

When Lupin finally turned up at our house in the afternoon, he had changed his clothes and put on a brand-new outfit that was a bit too large for him. He was also boasting a scent that was somehow familiar.

We went out into the garden and took a slow stroll, discussing what to do. We walked side by side, like astronomers discussing the marvels of creation. And in that moment, all the events and the meeting of the day before seemed distant, as if I had experienced them in a dream or read about them in a book.

“What I can’t figure out,” Lupin interrupted all of a sudden, “is why this lady didn’t get the owner of the house to write a note authorizing her to retrieve the letter. That’s what I would have done in her place. How else does she think she can get it delivered to her based solely on her word?”

“That’s what I asked her, to tell the truth. She replied that d’Aurevilly was very ill and is no longer rational. She hinted at some relatives who wanted to seize the estate and the fact that the housekeeper was in cahoots with them. Quite a vague story, actually. It struck me as suspicious.”

We concluded that we knew too little to make a decision, and that the only possibility was to go meet with the woman so that we could at least ask for some explanations.

We headed toward the village with determined steps. The sweet smell of warm bread and raisins wafted through the alleys of the old village, between the cone-shaped roofs of the small castle and the medieval houses that had survived the revolution.

We reached the bench where I’d sat the previous day a few minutes before four. We sat down to wait, trying to talk about other things.

The bell towers chimed four o’clock, and then half past. We looked at each other, shocked, as it was twenty minutes to five by then.

Lupin rose. “Let’s go,” he said firmly. “I don’t think a young lady like you should have to waste her time waiting for a bizarre woman who tells vague stories.”

So saying, Arsène offered me his arm, and we prepared to go back home.

As we walked through the village, we reviewed what had happened to me the day before step by step, searching for a detail that I might have missed.

“Exactly when did the woman begin to act afraid?” Lupin asked at one point in the discussion.

But I could not tell him. I had not noticed anything strange around us then — nothing at all.

Only then did I remember the carriage that had approached on the main street of the village. And suddenly, that image made me think of the unusual carriage I had spotted on the streets of London last Christmas. When I was going to the Shackleton Coffee House — my friends’ and my favorite cafe during that London winter — the carriage had come alongside me and a mysterious woman leaned out to give me a little Christmas gift.

“Nothing strange … at least, I don’t think so,” I muttered. “Only an approaching carriage that came into the village shortly thereafter.”

Lupin stuck his hands in his pockets and led us toward the river. “And then there’s what she said about your mother, that she had known her for many years …” he trailed off.

“And that she would be in danger,” I said.

“You haven’t yet spoken to her, of course.”

“I didn’t think it would be a good idea,” I admitted. “And not just because of how she has been feeling at the moment, but because I think it would worry her too much, in any case.”

Lupin seemed to agree with me. “Your mother is from here?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“But she’s French?” he asked.

“Yes, from Fontainebleau, just south of Paris.

“I know it. Where the palace is.”

“But I’ve never been there. My mother did not particularly like going back,” I said. “She liked being in Paris. Only in Paris, to be precise.”

He made a hard face, which I quickly understood the reason for. We were both convinced we had to deal with demanding Parisian mothers, both of them a bit too pampered and incompetent. But instead, as the facts soon showed, neither of us was right to believe this.

“She said if your mother knew what she was doing, she’d kill her,” my friend continued. “But the word kill is very odd for a lady to use,” he observed. “She could have used an expression like take steps or be annoyed about it. But kill? Doesn’t that seem a bit too … strong?”

I nodded. And that observation reminded me that the woman had seemed to be playing a part, like an actress.

I was about to tell Lupin so, when at that exact moment, a hand grabbed my by the shoulder and yanked me to the ground.

I screamed, but a second hand pressed over my mouth to stop me. Then it pulled down my collar, grabbed my gold pendant, and tore it off me. I felt my skin sting and kicked at my assailant, barely missing him.

I wound up flipped upside down, just as something sparkling fell to the ground. It ricocheted two steps in front of me with a metallic clink. A knife.

“Irene!” Lupin shouted.

He threw himself at my attacker like a lightning bolt, shoving him away. Then he stepped between a second man and me. The man was kneeling on the ground, holding a bloody hand and cursing in a low voice.

Lupin balanced from one foot to the other like a juggler. He did not seem at all intimidated by having to face two men considerably bigger than himself. One of them threw a punch, but Arsène dodged the blow and delivered a kick to his ribs. I heard him exhale like a bull, and I got back up.

“Are you okay?” my friend asked me, without glancing away from our attackers.

“Yes!” I replied, then I felt my neck. “The pendant! They stole it from me!”

“The young lady’s pendant!” Lupin cried out.

“Hit him!” shouted the man with the bloody hand.

The other man hesitated, and that hesitation was crucial for us. Lupin had continued to retreat toward the river and I with him. When he heard those words, he did not wait a moment longer. He seized my wrist and pulled me into the current.

I found myself imprisoned by my dress, being dragged to the bottom of the river. With a rush of air, I kicked with all my might and returned to the surface about ten meters farther downstream from where we had been attacked. I tried to get to where the current was weaker, and then I saw that Lupin was swimming beside me.

Without a word, we crossed the river and climbed back up by the reeds along the opposite bank. Dripping, we headed toward the d’Aurevilly home.

I felt Arsène’s arm supporting me and looked at him. He was still keeping a close watch to make sure those hoodlums weren’t following us.

“All okay?” he asked me.

“Yes, but … what’s going on?”