The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (18 page)

Roland intended to go back to the dining room until the meal was over, then ask Brigitte for some meat before he took Harry to the garden. But it seemed the meal was over. The dining room was empty. The antique dealer sat in the drawing room where the coffee tray already stood on the table, and Roland heard his mother’s voice and Antoine’s voice from the room opposite the drawing room. Its door was not quite closed.

“. . . disobeyed me,” Antoine was saying in his shaky old man’s voice. “And
you
, madame!”

“Now you must not take it so seriously, my dear Antoine,” Roland’s mother said. “I am sure Roland will keep the animal in the garden . . .”

Roland made himself move away. Gentlemen did not eavesdrop. But it irked him that Antoine had said, “M. Roland disobeyed me.” Since when did Antoine think he controlled him? Roland hesitated at the doorway of the drawing room, where the antique dealer sat smoking and gazing into space, his white trousered legs crossed. Roland wanted coffee, but it was not worth walking into that boredom for, he thought. Roland went through the dining room into the kitchen.

“Brigitte, may I have some meat for the ferret? Preferably raw,” Roland said.

“M. Roland, Antoine is very upset, you know? A ferret is a
bête sauvage
. You must realize that.”

Roland said courteously, “I know, Brigitte. I am sorry Antoine was bitten. I am going to take the ferret to the garden. In his cage. Now.”

Brigitte shook her head and produced some veal from the refrigerator and cut a morsel grudgingly.

It wasn’t bloody but it was raw. Roland flew up the stairs to his room, gently lifted the suitcase lid, whereupon Harry stood upright like a jack-in-the-box. Harry took Roland’s offering with both front paws and his teeth, chewing it and turning it so he could get at the edges.

Roland extended his hand fearlessly, saying, “You’ve got to sleep in the garden tonight, sorry.”

Harry flitted through the gap above Roland’s shirt cuff, went up to his shoulder and down to his waist. Roland cradled him in his shirt, and went down the stairs like a soldier, the cage in his other hand.

It was dark, but Roland could see by the light from the kitchen window. He stuck Harry into the cage and closed the door with its pin latch which dropped through a loop. Harry had a tin mug of water which still held enough. “See you tomorrow, Harry my friend!”

Harry stood up on his hind legs, resting a pink palm lightly against the wire, black nose sniffing the last of Roland, who looked back at Harry as he walked across the lawn.

The next morning, a Sunday, Roland was brought tea by Brigitte at eight o’clock, a ritual that Roland had started a few weeks earlier. It made Roland feel more grown-up to fancy that he couldn’t awaken properly without someone handing him a cup of something hot in bed.

Then Roland pulled on blue jeans, tennis shoes and an old shirt, and went down to see Harry.

The cage was gone. Or at least it was not in the same place. Roland looked in the corners of the garden, behind the poplar trees on the right, then next to the house. He went into the kitchen, where Brigitte was preparing his mother’s breakfast tray.

“Someone’s moved the ferret’s cage, Brigitte. Do you know where it is?”

Brigitte bent over the tray. “Antoine took it, M. Roland. I don’t know where.”

“But—did he take the car?”

“I don’t know, M. Roland.”

Roland went out and looked in the garage. The car was there. Roland stood and turned in a circle, looking. Could Antoine have put the cage in the toolhouse? Roland opened the toolhouse door. There was nothing there but the lawnmower and garden tools. The woods. Antoine had probably been told, by his mother, to take Harry to the woods and turn him loose. Frowning, Roland started off at a trot.

He pulled up when some brambles caught at his shirt and tore it. Old Antoine wouldn’t have gone too far in these woods, Roland thought. There weren’t any real paths.

Roland heard a groan. Or had he imagined it? He was not sure where the sound had come from, but he plunged on the way he had been going. Now he heard a crackling of branches and another groan. It was unmistakably a groan from Antoine. Roland advanced.

He saw a splotch of dark through the trees. Antoine wore dark trousers, often a dark green cotton jacket. Roland stood still. The darkish splotch was pulling itself up only thirty feet away. But there were so many leaves in between! Roland saw a golden light streak from the left towards the vague form which was Antoine, heard Antoine’s rather shrill cry—feeble, almost like the cry of a baby.

Roland went closer, a little frightened. Now he could see Antoine’s head and face, and blood flowed from one of Antoine’s eyes. Then Roland saw Harry make a flying leap at Antoine’s thigh, saw Antoine’s hand slap uselessly against his leg, because Harry was already at Antoine’s throat. Or face. Antoine staggered back and fell.

He ought to go and help, Roland thought, grab a stick and fend Harry off. But Roland was spellbound and couldn’t move. He saw Antoine try a swinging backhand blow at Harry, but the branch Antoine held struck a tree and shattered. Antoine stumbled again.

In a way it serves Antoine right
, Roland was thinking.

Antoine got up clumsily and flung something—probably a rock—at Harry. Roland could see blood down the front of Antoine’s white shirt. And Harry was fighting like a mysterious little bullet that came again and again at Antoine from different directions. It looked as if Antoine was trying to flee now. He was stumbling through the underbrush to the left. Roland saw Harry leap for Antoine’s left hand and apparently cling there with his teeth. Or had it been a streak of sunlight? Roland lost sight of Antoine, because he fell again.

Roland gasped. He had not been breathing for several seconds, and his heart was pounding as if he had been fighting too. Now Roland forced himself to walk towards the place where he thought Antoine lay. Everything was silent except for Roland’s footfalls on the leaves and twigs. Roland saw the black, white and green of Antoine’s clothes, then Antoine’s face streaked with blood. Antoine was lying on his back. Both his eyes were bleeding.

And Harry was at Antoine’s throat!

Harry’s head was out of sight under Antoine’s chin, but his body and tail trailed down Antoine’s chest—as a fur piece might do from someone’s neck.

“
Harry!
” Roland’s voice cracked.

Harry might not have heard.

Roland picked up a stick. “Harry, get away!” he said through his teeth.

Harry leapt to the other side of Antoine’s throat and bit again.

“Antoine?” Roland went forward, raising the stick.

Harry lifted his head and backed on to Antoine’s green lapel. His stomach was visibly larger. He was full of blood, Roland realized. Antoine didn’t move. Seeing Roland, Harry advanced a little, nearly stood up on his hind legs, came down again and, staggering with the weight of his stomach, stepped down on to the leaves beside Antoine’s outflung arm, lay down and lowered his head as if to sleep. Harry was in a patch of sun.

Roland felt considerably less afraid, now that Harry was still, but he feared now that Antoine might be dead, and the possible fact of death frightened him. He called to Antoine again. The blood was drying and darkening in the eye sockets. His eyes seemed to be gone, just as Roland had thought, or at least nearly entirely eaten out. The blood everywhere, on Antoine’s clothing, down his face, was dark red and crusty now, and no more seemed to be coming, which was a sign that the heart had stopped beating, Roland thought. Before Roland realized what he was doing, he had stooped very close to the sleeping Harry and was holding Antoine’s wrist to feel for a pulse. Roland tried for several seconds. Then he snatched his hand from the wrist in horror, and stood up.

Antoine must have died from a heart attack, Roland thought, not just from Harry. But he realized that Harry was going to be taken away, even hunted down and killed, if anybody found out about Antoine. Roland looked behind him, in the direction of La Source, then back at Antoine. The thing to do was hide Antoine. Roland felt a revulsion against Antoine, mainly because he was dead, he realized. But for Harry he felt love and a desire to protect. Harry after all had been defending himself, and Antoine had been a giant kidnapper, and possibly a killer too.

It was still only a little past 9:30, Roland saw by his watch.

Roland began to trot back through the woods, leaping the bad patches of underbrush. At the edge of La Source’s lawn he stopped, because Brigitte was just then tossing a pan of water on to some flowers by the back steps. When she had gone inside the house again, Roland went to the toolhouse, took the fork and spade, and carried these into the woods.

He dug close beside where Antoine lay, which seemed as good a place as any to try to dig a grave. His exertions sobered him, and took away some of his panic. Harry continued to sleep on the other side of Antoine from where Roland was digging. Roland worked like one possessed, and his energy seemed to increase as he labored. He realized he was in terror of Antoine’s body: what had been the living fossil, so familiar in the household in Paris and here, was now a corpse. Roland also half expected Antoine to rise up and reproach him, threaten him in some way, as ghosts or corpses did in stories that Roland had read.

Roland began to tire and worked more slowly, but with the same determination. The job had to be done by midday, he told himself, or his mother and Brigitte would be searching for Antoine by the lunch hour. Roland tried to think of what he would say.

The grave was deep enough. Roland set his teeth and pulled at Antoine’s green jacket and the side of his trousers, and rolled him in. Antoine fell face downwards. Harry, ruffled by Antoine’s arm, stood on four legs looking sleepy still. Roland shoveled the earth in, panting. He trod on the soil to make it sink, and there was still extra soil which he had to scatter, so it would not catch the eye of anyone looking in the woods. Then with the fork he pulled branches and leaves over the grave so it looked like the rest of the forest floor.

Then numb with fatigue, he picked Harry up. Harry was very heavy—as heavy as a pistol, Roland thought. Harry’s eyes were closed again, but he was not quite limp in sleep. His neck supported his head, and as Roland lifted him to his own eye level, Harry opened his eyes and looked at Roland. Harry would never bite him, Roland felt sure, because he had always brought meat to him. In a way, he had brought Antoine to Harry. Roland trudged back with Harry towards the house, saw the cage in the woods and started to pick it up, then decided to leave it for the moment. Roland put Harry down beside a sun-warm rock not far from the lawn.

Roland put the fork and spade back in the toolhouse. He washed his hands as best he could at the cold water tap by the toolhouse, then thinking Brigitte might be in the kitchen, he entered the house by the front door. He went upstairs and washed more thoroughly and changed his shirt. He put on his transistor radio for company. He felt odd, not exactly frightened any longer, but as if he would do everything clumsily—drop or bump into things, trip on the stairs—though he had done none of these things.

His mother knocked on the door. He knew her knock.

“Come in, Mama.”

“Where have you been, Roland?”

Roland was lying on his bed, the radio beside him. He turned the radio down. “In the woods. I took a walk.”

“Did you see Antoine? He’s supposed to fetch Marie and Paul for lunch.”

Roland remembered. People were coming for lunch. “I saw Antoine in the woods. He said he was taking the day off, going to Orléans or something like that.”

“Really?—He was letting the ferret loose, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, Mama. He’d already let the ferret loose. I saw the cage in the woods.”

His mother looked troubled. “I’m sorry, Roland, but it was not an appropriate pet, you know. And poor old Antoine—we’ve got to think of him. He’s terrified of ferrets, and I think he’s right to be.”

“I know, Mama. It doesn’t matter.”

“That’s a good boy. But Antoine, just to go off like that—He’ll go to a film in Orléans and come back this evening probably. He didn’t take the car, did he?”

“He said he was taking the Orléans bus.—He was very annoyed with me. Said he might be gone a couple of days.”

“That’s nonsense. But I’d better hop off now for Marie and Paul. You see what trouble you caused with that animal, Roland!” His mother gave him a quick smile and went out.

Roland managed to save some meat from dinner, and took it out around 10:30 p.m., when Brigitte had gone to bed and his mother was in her room for the night. Roland sat on the rock where he had left Harry earlier that day, and after seven or eight minutes, Harry arrived. Roland smiled, almost laughed.

“Meat, Harry!” Roland said in a whisper, though he was a good distance from the house.

Harry, slender once more, accepted the underdone lamb, though not with his usual eagerness, having eaten so much that day. Roland stroked Harry’s head for the first time. Roland imagined coming to the woods in the daytime, training Harry to stay in his pocket, teaching him certain commands. Harry didn’t need a cage.

After two days, Mme. Lemoinnier sent a telegram to Antoine’s sister who lived in Paris, asking her please to telephone. The sister telephoned, and said she hadn’t heard a word from Antoine.

It was curious, Mme. Lemoinnier thought, that Antoine had just walked off like that, leaving all his clothes, even his coat and raincoat. She thought she should notify the police.

The police came and asked questions. Roland said he had last seen Antoine walking towards the Orléans road where he intended to catch the bus that passed at 11 a.m. Antoine was old, Mme. Lemoinnier said, a little eccentric, stubborn. He had left his savings bank passbook behind, and the police were going to ask the bank to communicate if Antoine came to make a withdrawal or to get another passbook. The police went over the ground that Roland showed them. They found the empty cage, its door open, which Antoine had carried into the woods. The Orléans road was to the right, the opposite direction from where Antoine was buried. The police walked all the way to the Orléans road. They seemed to believe Roland’s story.