The Scapegoat (40 page)

The
commissaire
looked at Dr Lebrun, who hesitated, glancing at the countess and then at me. ‘Madame Jean was certainly anxious for a son,’ he said. ‘In fact, she stressed the point when I attended her last week. No doubt this anxiety added to her nervous state.’

‘In short,’ said the
commissaire
, ‘Madame la Comtesse de Gué was inclined to hysteria. Forgive me, Monsieur, I only wish to establish that your wife was particularly agitated at the time of the accident, and therefore, in her condition, more liable to attacks of giddiness. You would agree, Docteur?’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘And you, Monsieur?’

‘I suppose so,’ I replied. ‘She was also anxious about her little girl. You have been told what happened?’

‘Monsieur Paul de Gué and Mademoiselle Blanche have given me their account of it. Also a
femme de chambre
. I am glad the little one was found eventually. So the last time you saw your wife was this morning, before you went to look for the child?’

‘That is so, yes.’

‘Was she very disturbed?’

‘Not more so, I think, than the rest of us.’

‘She did not suggest getting up and joining the search party?’

‘No.’

‘You left her in bed, presumably to await your return with news of the child’s safety?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everybody, then, seems to have left the house, with the exception of the two
femmes de chambre –
Germaine, who took up Madame la Comtesse Jean’s breakfast and was then sent to the village by Mademoiselle Blanche, and Charlotte; the cook, who was below; and of course Madame la Comtesse, who was in her room upstairs. I have examined the spot where your wife fell,’ he added to me. ‘I propose going to the bedroom directly, with your approval.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I have already questioned Berthe, the woman who tends the cows. She saw your wife leaning from the window, as though reaching out – so she described it – and then she grasped at the air, as it seemed, and fell. Berthe screamed for help, and was heard by the cook and Charlotte, who went instantly to the moat. The cook telephoned for the ambulance from Villars, and Dr Moutier has told me the rest. I should like to establish that nobody else went to the bedroom after Germaine, the
femme de chambre
whom I saw just now, took up her breakfast.’

‘Charlotte might have done,’ said Renée.

‘Perhaps you would ring for her, Monsieur?’ suggested the
commissaire
.

‘Charlotte is my personal maid: I will ring for her,’ said the comtesse. A hand went out from the armchair to the bell-rope. ‘It was Charlotte who broke the news of the accident to me. She was hysterical. So, I imagine, were the others. You won’t learn much from her. Servants always lose their heads in a disaster.’

When Gaston answered the bell she told him the
commissaire
wished to speak to Charlotte.

‘I don’t quite follow,’ said Paul, ‘why it matters what Charlotte or Germaine said to my sister-in-law. It has no bearing on the fact that she became giddy and fell from the window.’

‘I am sorry, Monsieur,’ said the
commissaire
. ‘I quite understand the distress all this must cause to the family. It is just that, in order to conform with the requirements of the law, I must establish beyond any shadow of doubt that the cause of the fall was accidental. Unhappily, when someone falls from a height this is not always the case.’

Renée, startled, turned suddenly white. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Madame,’ explained the
commissaire
gently, ‘when a person is in a highly nervous condition it leads them, sometimes, to do dangerous things. I am not suggesting that is what happened in this case. As I have already said, in my view the cause is more likely to have been a sudden attack of giddiness. But I have to make quite sure.’

‘Do you mean,’ asked Blanche, ‘that my sister-in-law may have fallen from the window purposely?’

‘It is possible, Madame. Not probable.’

There was a sudden silence in the room, a silence filled, it seemed to me, as I looked from one to another of their troubled faces, with swift, unspoken denial, born of their inner guilt that each one of them might have contributed to Françoise’s
death. Blanche, who had so successfully taken from Marie-Noel the affection which otherwise would have been given to the child’s mother; Paul, with his endless complaints about the terms of the Marriage Settlement, which made it impossible for Françoise to finance the family business; Renée, who had cared nothing that her intrigue with Jean would cause Françoise unhappiness if it came to her knowledge; and the comtesse, whose fierce maternal possessiveness had deprived Françoise not only of her husband’s tenderness, but also of her rightful place in the household – none of them was free from a measure of responsibility for the state of mind which had perhaps sent Françoise to her death.

The tension was broken as Charlotte came into the room, looking aggrieved and suspicious.

‘You sent for me, Madame la Comtesse?’

‘The
commissaire de police
has some questions to ask you, Charlotte,’ replied the countess.

‘I want to know,’ said the
commissaire
, ‘whether you had any conversation this morning with Madame la Comtesse Jean before the accident?’

Charlotte flashed an angry look at me, and I realized, from her expression, that she believed he was asking her this question because of some remark or complaint of mine. She thought I had already told him about her visit to the bedroom, and that she was now to be reprimanded.

‘I only saw Madame Jean for a few minutes,’ she said. ‘I spread no gossip, made no mischief. If Monsieur le Comte thinks I have been causing trouble he is wrong. I said nothing to Madame Jean about the telephone conversation.’

‘Telephone conversation?’ said the
commissaire
. ‘What telephone conversation?’

Charlotte must have realized that she had made a mistake. She looked resentfully at her mistress, and then at me. Anxiety to cover her past actions had led to her own betrayal. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, ‘I thought Monsieur le Comte wanted
to find fault with me. I happened to overhear a long-distance call of his to Paris, but I never mentioned this to Madame Jean. I knew my place. It wasn’t for me to add to her worries.’

Everyone turned in my direction, their expressions – from Renée’s look of suspicion to Dr Lebrun’s evident embarrassment – betraying the obvious conclusions which they drew from Charlotte’s barbed sentences. It was the comtesse who broke silence first.

‘My son’s telephone call was a business one,’ she said. ‘It can have no possible bearing on the present situation.’

The
commissaire
coughed apologetically. ‘I have no desire to probe into Monsieur le Comte’s financial affairs, Madame,’ he said, ‘but anything that might have increased his wife’s anxiety is of interest.’ He turned to me. ‘Did she know about this telephone conversation?’ he asked.

‘She did,’ I said.

‘There was nothing about it to cause distress?’

‘Nothing whatsoever. It referred to a contract I had negotiated in Paris.’

The
commissaire
turned to Charlotte. ‘Why did you think the telephone call to Paris might have added to Madame la Comtesse Jean’s worries?’ he asked. His tone was not unkindly, merely abrupt.

Charlotte, already hostile, took it as further reproof. Once again she looked at me spitefully. ‘That is for Monsieur le Comte to say, not me,’ she replied.

Paul intervened. ‘This is quite ridiculous,’ he said. ‘My brother had renewed a contract with the firm of Carvalet in Paris, who take a large proportion of our glass. We were delighted he had done so. Failure would have necessitated closing down the
verrerie
. As it is, we have renewed on terms which will enable us to carry on, at any rate for a further six months. My sister-in-law was as pleased as the rest of us.’

Talbert stepped forward, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t want to contradict you, Monsieur,’ he said to Paul, ‘but your facts are
surely wrong? Carvalet sent me a copy of the new contract only this morning. It is substantially different from the last: the terms are most decidedly to your disadvantage. I was amazed when I read it. Naturally, today’s tragedy put it out of my mind, but since it is now mentioned …’ he glanced at me, ‘possibly Madame la Comtesse Jean was a trifle upset. She must have realized that the birth of an heir was more important than ever.’

Paul stared at him, stupefied. ‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘How can the contract be to our disadvantage? The terms are most favourable.’

‘No,’ I said.

I saw the
commissaire
glance surreptitiously at his watch. The tangled finances of the de Gué were not his concern.

‘I can explain to my brother later about the contract,’ I said to him quickly. ‘I can assure you now that my wife was not in the least concerned about it. I took her into my confidence, and she appreciated it. There is nothing more I can say. Now, are you ready to go upstairs and inspect her room?’

‘Thank you, Monsieur.’ He turned to Charlotte for his last question. ‘Apart from natural anxiety over the little girl, you found Madame la Comtesse Jean her usual self?’ he asked.

Charlotte shrugged her shoulders. ‘I suppose so,’ she said sullenly. ‘I don’t know. Madame Jean was easily discouraged and depressed. She told me this last upset of hers had come about because some favourite pieces of porcelain had been broken. She set great store by her possessions. She even dusted them herself, and would let no one touch them. “At least they’re mine,” she used to say. “They’re not part of St Gilles.”’

The venomous parting stroke embraced us all. The château stood condemned. I wondered if the
commissaire
saw Françoise as I saw her, an isolated figure clinging to the treasures of the home she had left, lonely, neglected, sought after solely for her fortune.

He asked me whether he might now see the bedroom, and I took him upstairs, the others remaining below in the salon.
As we went along the corridor he said to me, ‘I must again express regret, Monsieur, for all this inconvenience, and for adding to your distress at such a time.’

‘Please don’t apologize,’ I said. ‘You have been very considerate.’

‘It is a curious thing,’ he said, ‘but generally, after a tragedy such as this, those most concerned with the deceased feel themselves, as it were, on trial. They wonder whether it was their fault, and what they could have done to prevent it. In this case, the answer is nothing. Everyone who mattered was out of the château. It was unfortunate, but nobody’s fault. The only one to blame, perhaps, was your little girl, and she will never know.’

I opened the door of the bedroom, and as we entered I saw that the shutters were no longer closed, as I had left them, but were flung wide, and the windows too thrust back against the wall. The child’s body was across the sill, one hand grasping the window-frame, the other, with her head and shoulders, out of sight. I heard the
commissaire
catch his breath. I put my hand on his arm. To dash forward was the impulse of us both, yet to do so might have startled her, causing her to lose the hold she already had. For the eternity of perhaps ten seconds we waited, immobile. Then the child’s hand shifted its grip, the body wriggled back across the sill, and the whole of her emerged from the wide space between the windows. She slipped back into the room to face us, her eyes shining, her hair dishevelled.

‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘It was caught on the ledge.’

The
commissaire
found his voice before I did. I could not speak. I could only stare at Marie-Noel, who was safe and unaware of danger. She seemed to be holding what looked like a duster in her hand.

‘What have you got, my child?’ he asked gently.

‘Maman’s locket,’ she said, ‘the locket Papa brought her last week from Paris. She must have been shaking her duster out of the window, as she always did, and the locket was caught in it. They were lying together on the ledge below. I leant out
and saw them.’ She came towards us. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the pin of the locket is sticking into the duster. Unless I had climbed out as far as I did I couldn’t have reached them. If Maman had only rung her bell, Gaston or someone would have rescued them for her. But she was impatient. She thought she could reach them herself.’ She looked at the
commissaire
. ‘Are you religious?’ she asked.

‘I hope so, Mademoiselle,’ he said, taken aback.

‘Papa is not. He is a sceptic. But finding the locket and the duster was an answer to prayer. I said to the Sainte Vierge, “I did little for Maman when she was alive. Let me do something for her now she is dead.” The Sainte Vierge told me to lean out of the window. I did not want to do it. It was unpleasant. But I found the locket. I still don’t know why that should help Maman, unless it is that to her, in Paradise, it seems better for her daughter to wear the locket than to let it lie sadly rusted and forgotten on a ledge.’

B
efore the
commissaire
left he assured me that he was perfectly satisfied my wife had fallen accidentally from the window, and asked me to call on him the next day at eleven o’clock. He understood that my brother had arranged for the body to be brought home to the château afterwards. Once again he expressed his condolences, once again I thanked him. A moment or two later he left in his car, closely followed by the two doctors. Only the lawyer now remained, and he had the grace to apologize for his presence.

‘I only stayed, Monsieur,’ he said, ‘because I understand, from the conversation I have had with your brother, that he knew nothing whatsoever of the terms of the new Carvalet contract. I thought perhaps a few words now might clarify the position.’

‘Nothing will clarify the position,’ I said, ‘except for my brother to read it, which he is at liberty to do whenever he pleases. I have it upstairs in my dressing-room now.’

Paul hesitated. ‘I’m sorry to be persistent, especially at this moment,’ he said, ‘but you can hardly blame me. From what Maître Talbert has been telling me, the new contract differs from the old on the only vital points. Does that mean everything you told Jacques and me on your return from Paris was a lie?’