The Scapegoat (38 page)

‘When?’ she asked. ‘I did not see her after she became unwell and went to bed. I had not seen her for several days.’

‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘You saw her this morning.’

My reply was sudden. She did not expect it. I saw her whole body stiffen in her chair.

‘Who says so?’ she demanded. ‘Who’s been talking?’

‘I say so,’ I answered, ‘and nobody’s been talking.’

Purposely I kept my voice low. There was no accusation in it, or in my words.

‘Did she recover consciousness? Did she say anything to you in the hospital before she died?’The question was sharp, abrupt.

‘No,’ I said. ‘She said nothing to me, or to anyone.’

‘Then what does it matter? Why do you want to know? Suppose she did come here this morning, how can it help you now?’

‘I want to know how and why she died,’ I answered.

She gestured. ‘What’s the use? None of us can know. She became giddy and fell. Berthe saw her, didn’t she, as she was crossing into the park with the cows? That was what Charlotte told me. Weren’t you told the same story?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I was told the same story. So was Blanche. So were Paul and Renée, I imagine. So were the people at the hospital. I don’t believe it, that’s all.’

‘What do you believe?’

I stared at the face that told me nothing. ‘I believe she killed herself,’ I said, ‘and so do you.’

I expected a denial, or an outburst, or an accusation – or possibly a crumpling of defence and a plea for sympathy. Instead, unbelievably, she shrugged her shoulders, and then she smiled and said without emotion, ‘And if she did …’

This answer, cold, inhuman, dismissing sudden death so casually, was yet a confirmation of all I had most feared. Indifference towards Françoise I had sensed from the beginning, but with
something else as well, never spoken: a wish on the part of the mother that her daughter-in-law might die. Whatever the reason – possessiveness, malice, greed – the countess had wanted Françoise out of the way, and had believed, in her inmost heart, that her son wanted it too. Illness in pregnancy might have achieved this end: today’s disaster made a swifter finish. It roused no pity in her that Françoise, unhappy, neglected, had perhaps surrendered on impulse without the will to live. Death, or the birth of an heir – either meant release from poverty; and Jean’s mother felt only relief that matters were now resolved.

‘Whatever happened,’ she said, ‘there can be no blame on you. You were not here. Therefore forget it. Play your part and mourn.’ She leant forward in her chair and took my face between her hands. ‘It’s too late to develop a conscience,’ she went on. ‘I told you that the other evening. And if you thought that Françoise would survive the birth of the child, what made you gamble on her death?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘The day after you returned from Paris you telephoned Carvalet,’ she said. ‘Charlotte told me – she listened on the extension in Blanche’s room, as she always does if there’s anything being said below worth listening to, and then reports to me – and when I heard what you had said to the firm, the nonsensical agreement to their demands, I knew at once that it was a gamble. You were counting on the fortune that might come. Without an increase in capital you’d ruin yourself. No wonder you had qualms the next morning, and went off to Villars to the bank, and down to the safe to look through the Marriage Settlement. You could have spared yourself the trouble. There are duplicates of everything in the library, if you had taken the trouble to search for them. It was more amusing to go to Villars, wasn’t it? You have a woman there. You told me so that evening when you returned.’

The pattern of events was plain and could not be denied. My motives, misconstrued and twisted, were unimportant now.

‘Françoise knew about the contract,’ I said. ‘I didn’t keep it from her. I told her the truth.’

‘The truth?’ The eyes that looked into mine were cynical and hard. The pain and anguish of the night before had gone. She might never have asked for my help, might never have suffered. ‘We all of us tell the truth when it happens to suit us,’ she said. ‘Françoise told me the truth this morning, when she came in here. Oh yes, you’re right. I did see her. I was probably the last to do so. She came up dressed, ready to search for the child. “What’s upset Marie-Noel?” she asked. “Why has she run away?” “What’s upset her?” I answered. “She’s afraid of being supplanted, that’s all. None of us likes to be deposed. She wants you out of the way, and the baby too.” That started it. She told me she’d never been happy here, she’d always been homesick, lonely, lost, and it was my fault, because I’d been against her from the start. “Jean was never in love with me,” she said. I agreed. “Even now he only wants the money,” she went on. “Naturally,” I replied. “Does he want me to die so that he can marry someone else?’ she asked at last. I told her I did not know. “Jean makes love to everyone. He has made love to Renée, even, here in the château, and he has a mistress in Villars,” I said. She told me she had suspected both these things, and that your kindness to her, the last few days, had been a blind, to make her believe otherwise. “So the child isn’t the only one to want me out of the way,” she said. “Jean does, too, and so do you, and Renée, and the woman in Villars.” I didn’t answer her. I told her to stop being hysterical, and to take herself downstairs. That was all. Nothing more was said. She asked for the truth and got it. If she was not brave enough to face up to it, that was her affair, not mine. Whether she threw herself out of the window or fell because she was giddy is beside the point, and something we can’t ever prove. The result is the same. You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?’

‘No,’ I shouted, ‘no …’

I pushed her back in the chair, and her expression changed.
She looked bewildered, frightened, and the sudden switch from cynicism to apprehension at the sound of my voice, roused in anger against her, as she believed, and not against myself, made me realize the hopelessness of explanation, the useless wasted effort of trying to make her understand. Whatever she had said to Françoise, however truthful, however harsh, had been said for her son’s sake. I could not accuse her.

I got up and went to the window, and stood there staring out across the park to the trees. Dear God, I thought, there must be an answer to this, there must be a way out – not for me, the impostor, but for them, for the mother, for the child, for Blanche and Paul and Renée. If Jean de Gué had fostered jealousy, dissension, animosity, he had the excuse of the past. I had no such pretext. I had followed him because I wished to remain hidden, to lose identity.

The night’s rain had cleared the debris from the leaded guttering. A pool of water glistened on the gargoyle’s tongue. Something else in the gutter shone like glass. It was a morphine phial, empty, thrown out by Charlotte and now revealing itself because the leaves had gone. Seeing the phial lying there in the gutter I wondered, had I not used the syringe the night before but had stayed here in the room, what might have been achieved, what hope, what understanding. I should not have gone to Villars, nor the child to the well. The tragedy would have been averted. Françoise would have lived. I turned away from the window, and looked back at the woman sitting in the chair, and I said to her, ‘You’ve got to help me.’

‘Help you? How?’ she asked. ‘How can I help you?’

I knelt beside her chair and took her hand. Whatever wrongs there had been in the years that were gone, they could not be righted by a stranger. I could only build the present. But not alone.

‘You told me just now that I had got what I wanted,’ I said. ‘Did you mean the money? For the glass-foundry, for all of us, for St Gilles?’

‘What else?’ she asked. ‘You’ll be a rich man, you can do what you like, and you’ll be free. That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘you matter to me. I want you to be the head of my house, as you used to be. And you can’t as long as you take morphine.’

Something fell apart, the layer upon layer of defence protecting every individual from assault so that no challenge can be heard, no signal seen; the core, left untouched in isolation, crumbled for one brief moment as I spoke, and I felt, in the hand that tightened on mine, the loneliness of years, the numbed senses, the mocking mind, the empty heart. It was as though, touching her then, these things became part of me and were now mine, and the burden was intolerable beyond belief. Then she withdrew her hand from mine, the armour folded about her once again, the face formed into features, and she became a person who had chosen a way of life because there was no alternative, and the man who knelt by her side, whom she believed to be her son, was trying to take away from her the only solace, the one method of oblivion.

‘I’m tired and old and useless,’ she said. ‘Why should you grudge me something that makes me forget?’

‘You’re not tired or old or useless,’ I said. ‘To yourself, perhaps, but not to me. Yesterday you came downstairs and stood on the terrace, receiving the guests. You wanted to stand beside me, as you stood beside my father, you wanted to be the person you were once, long ago. But it wasn’t just clinging to the past, or pride; it was also an attempt to prove to yourself that it could be done, that you were not dependent on the box of ampoules in there, and the syringe, and Charlotte. You could defeat them, and you did. You would have gone on defeating them but for me.’

She looked up at me, watchful, guarded. ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘What did you think about,’ I asked, ‘yesterday morning, after the guests had gone?’

‘I thought about you,’ she said, ‘about the past. I went back over the years. What does it matter what I thought? I began to suffer, that’s all. When I suffer I have to have morphine.’

‘I made you suffer,’ I said. ‘I was the cause.’

‘What if you were?’ she said. ‘All mothers suffer for their sons. It’s part of our life. We don’t blame you for it.’

‘It’s not part of a son’s life,’ I said. ‘They can’t stand pain. I’m a coward and always have been. That’s why I want your help, now and in the future, much more so than in the past.’

I rose from my knees and went into the dressing-room next door. The box of ampoules was still in the cupboard above the basin, and the syringe, and I took them out and brought them into the bedroom and showed them to her.

‘I’m going to take them away,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s dangerous to do so – I don’t know. You told me I gambled on winning a fortune when I made that new contract with Carvalet. This is another gamble, a different kind.’

I saw her hands tighten on the chair, and for a moment a look of terror, of despair, came into her eyes.

‘I can’t do it, Jean,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t deprive myself suddenly, like this. I’m too old, too tired. Once, perhaps, but not now. If you wanted me to stop, why didn’t you tell me so before? It’s too late.’

‘It’s not too late.’ I put the box down on the table. ‘Give me your hands,’ I said.

She put her hands in mine and I pulled her up from the chair. As she stood beside me she steadied herself, tightly clutching my bandaged hand, and I felt the pain shoot from my fingers to my elbow. She went on holding me, not realizing, and I knew that if I took my hand away something would be lost to her, some confidence, some strength, which for the moment was part of her and gave her courage.

‘Now come downstairs,’ I said.

She stood between me and the window, massive, huge, blocking the light, trembling a moment as she gained her balance, the ebony crucifix which she wore round her neck swinging against her breast like a pendulum.

‘Downstairs?’ she repeated. ‘What for?’

‘Because I need you,’ I said, ‘and in future you’ll come down every day.’

For a long time she held on to me, never once relaxing her grip upon my hand. Then she released me and moved slowly to the door, majestic, dignified. She did not take my arm in the corridor but went forward, ahead of me, and opened the door of another room. At once the terriers rushed at her, barking, jumping, leaping to lick her hands.

She turned to me, exultant. ‘Just as I thought,’ she said. ‘These dogs are not taken out. Charlotte lies to me. Charlotte is supposed to take them in the park every afternoon. The trouble is there is no supervision in the château, no sort of order.’

The dogs, released, ran to the stairs, and as we followed them she said to me, ‘Did I hear you tell the curé that Blanche and Paul were to make the arrangements for the funeral?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘They don’t understand these things,’ she said. ‘There hasn’t been a funeral in the château since your father died. It must be done properly. Françoise was a person of importance – she should have every respect paid to her. After all, she was your wife. She was the Comtesse de Gué.’

She waited at the head of the stairs while I put the boxes in the dressing-room. As we entered the salon we heard voices. The others had returned. Paul was standing by the fireplace, the curé beside him. Renée was in her usual place on the sofa, Blanche on another chair. They stared at us, disconcerted, and even the curé, startled, took a moment to recover before he came forward, solicitous, anxious to assist. But she waved him aside and went straight to the chair beside the fire, the chair where Françoise always sat. Blanche rose at once and went to her.

‘You ought to be in bed,’ she said. ‘Charlotte told me you were very shaken, very exhausted.’

‘Charlotte’s a liar,’ was the answer, ‘and you can mind your own business.’ She fumbled on her dress for the pair of spectacles that were hanging from a chain round her neck beside the crucifix, and put them on and looked at each one of us in turn. ‘This is a house of mourning,’ she said, ‘not a nursing-home. My daughter-in-law has died. I intend to see that everything is done to honour her that should be done. Paul, get me a pencil and some sheets of paper. Blanche, in the desk in my room, in the top drawer, you will find a dossier containing all the names of the people who came to your father’s funeral. Most of them are dead, but they have relatives. Renée, fetch me the telephone directory from the cloakroom. Monsieur le curé, I should be obliged if you will come and sit beside me; I may have to refer to you for matters concerning the actual burial itself. Jean …’ she looked up at me, and paused, ‘I don’t expect any help from you for the moment. You had better take a walk, the air will do you good. You can exercise the dogs, as Charlotte failed to do so. But before you go,’ she added, ‘change into a dark suit. The Comte de Gué does not stroll about in a sports jacket when he has lost his wife.’