“And where is the proof in that?” I said, a more strident challenge than I had intended. It was after all supposed to be a celebratory evening, and I had no wish to appear like an officious harpy on the very first day of my peculiar engagement.
“The food sack was in the cabin,” said my father. “There is little doubt that he went to the convent to beg for provisions and then—for some reason known only to himself—turned on the one human being who was closest to him. He had even eaten some of the food. He still had traces of duck grease on his fingers.”
I looked down at the duck confit I was in the process of consuming myself. There was little risk that I would get grease on my fingers, the silverware was Minerva, and were it to happen anyway, I could always make use of one of the starched white damask napkins. The contrast to the battered and confused creature they had dragged home like some kind of hunting catch was suddenly nauseatingly huge.
“Did the tooth prints match?” I asked.
My father shook his head slightly, not so much a definite no as an indication of doubt.
“I would not be able to convict him on that basis,” he admitted. “And I have asked the inspector to make sure that a dentist takes a more precise print so we can get firmer evidence.”
“What you are saying is that it does not match.”
“No. I just said that the match is not sufficiently precise.”
Above our heads, the crystal chandeliers twinkled like captive stars, and all around us at the other tables dinner-jacketed gentlemen conversed with ladies in elegant décolletage. I myself was wearing the only evening gown I owned, a midnight blue taffeta gown from Magasin Duvalier. Madame Duvalier was one of my father’s living patients, and she had let me have it cheaply. It was perhaps not this year’s fashion, but according to Madame Duvalier it “flatters your fair complexion, chérie, and your lovely blue eyes.” She had not mentioned my unbelievably ordinary middle-brown hair.
“Has he confessed?” I asked.
“No,” said my father. “In fact he still has not uttered a single word. The inspector is beginning to doubt that he can speak, but the nuns have assured us that he has the ability. Or had. Perhaps what has happened has robbed him of it again.”
“He was like a son to her,” I said. “And no one has ever accused him of being violent. Why would he suddenly ‘turn on her’?”
The professor looked from one to the other.
“Perhaps he is what Mr. Darwin calls an atavism,” the professor said. “A return to an earlier and more primitive stage of human development.”
“Are you a supporter of Darwin’s theories?” My father seized—with a certain gratitude, it seemed to me—this less personal topic.
“The arguments are convincing,” said the professor. “Scientifically speaking, creationism must be considered dead. Regardless of what theological consequences it may have . . .”
I let them change the subject. But though I definitely considered Darwin’s evolution theories fascinating and worthy of numerous discussions, my thoughts still continued to center on Emile Oblonski.
When we reached dessert, I tried again. “Where exactly is that hunting cabin? How far from the convent?”
“A few kilometers,” said my father. “It actually belongs to the Vabonne family, but old Jacques Vabonne has sold off the hunting rights for that part of the forest and hasn’t used the place in years.”
“I would like to see it,” I said tentatively. “Is that possible?”
“Why?”
“Because we still do not know where or how Cecile Montaine fell ill.”
“I will ask the Commissioner,” said my father. “If you really believe it can help us solve that riddle.”
The professor escorted us home to Carmelite Street in a hansom cab and then continued on to his lodgings after a warm back-patting embrace of my father and a fairly modest peck on the cheek for me.
My father stood for a moment looking after the hansom cab that clip-clopped down the night-damp cobblestones and disappeared around the corner and onto Rue Perrault.
“That was a surprise, Maddie,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I value the man greatly.”
“I know.” Why was there, then, an unspoken “but” in the air? Nothing could make me happier, he had said. Had he not meant it?
Silence fell, but my father did not move and made no sign that he wanted to go inside.
“When . . . ?” he asked at last. “What is your plan? This fall, perhaps?”
Something had cracked in him, something that was no longer whole.
“Papa. No. It will be a long time. And I am not sure that we ever will be married; I have only promised to consider it.”
“Of course you will marry,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he had just bit into a mealy apple. “That is the point of an engagement, after all.”
He turned abruptly and clumsily at the same time and unlocked the front door. He would not let me help but struggled up the stairs on his own. I did not know what to say or do.
The next morning he was carefully kind and cheerful, but to me the apparent good humor seemed forced.
I cannot leave him, I thought. I have to tell August (we had at least achieved that much in the course of the evening) that it is impossible. It is unfair to lead him on.
And yet, the second I came to that conclusion, I felt unreasonably angry. I stabbed the knife into my brioche as if it were an animal I wanted to gut, and forced Madame Vogler’s strawberry jam into it with furious force.
“What is wrong?” asked Papa.
“Nothing. Why should there be anything wrong?”
He did not have anyone else. I thought of the photograph on his bedside table. The little family—father, dead mother, and child. For ten years it had been the last thing he saw before he turned off his bedside lamp, and perhaps the first thing he looked at in the morning.
“Papa?”
“Yes?”
“Would you ever consider . . . ?” I stopped. We never discussed this kind of thing. Never.
“What?”
“Getting . . . married again?”
He looked at me for a long time across the edge of the copy of Médecine Aujourd’hui that had arrived in the morning mail.
“I do not think so,” he said calmly.
Damn the man. The thought resounded in my head, and still I barely knew which one of them I was cursing. It was a relief when the Commissioner arrived shortly thereafter in a rented carriage to escort me to Jacques Vabonne’s old hunting cabin.
This part of the forest had once provided oak for ship planks and masts, but now only the most crooked and thus useless trees were left, and a new, younger forest had come up, a mixture of alder thicket and hornbeam and an occasional dark pine. The new forest was dense and impenetrable, and you could see why Emile had been able to hide here for so long without being discovered.
Vabonne’s gamekeeper pointed down a narrow path that was barely more than an animal track.
“You will have to make your way on foot,” he said. “It is about an hour’s walk. Or . . .” He glanced at me and was probably calculating how much my womanly weakness would slow us down. “Maybe two. Just continue until you get to the lake. If Monsieur Leblanc should appear, give him my regards and tell him you have my permission.”
“Monsieur Leblanc?”
“Yes. He has the hunting rights.” Leblanc. Like Imogene Leblanc?
“Does he have a daughter who teaches at the convent school?”
“No idea,” the gamekeeper grunted. “Don’t really know the man. He occasionally takes part in the hunts, but he never says much.”
The Commissioner considered the narrow path with skepticism.
“Dear Madeleine, are you sure this will do any good?”
“I am sure, at least, that we will feel negligent if we do not go,” I said.
He sighed. “Very well. Onward, onward, ho, ho, and away we go . . .”
&nb
sp; It took us almost an hour and a half before there was finally a glimpse of water through the branches, and the path dipped sharply. The earth under our feet became blacker and more swampy, and it was necessary to climb across a couple of fallen trees. The Commissioner offered me his arm, and I needed it. My poor abused traveling suit would not survive this trip without harm, I noted with a certain sadness. The hem of the skirt was already dark with mud and lake water, and I had both felt and heard the seams rip under my left arm.
The sun glinted off the waters of the lake, but here in the shadows the mosquitoes were dancing. We followed the path along the slippery bank for another fifteen minutes. The Commissioner, who was not used to such physical challenges, was red faced and out of breath, but he did not suggest that we turn back. At heart, he was probably as stubborn as I was, and just as curious.
Now we could finally see the cabin. It rested on a rough platform that overhung the surface of the lake. The walls were built of black, tar-smeared logs, with faded silver-gray wooden shingles on the roof. This was not the sort of cabin meant for parties and drunken brotherhood; it was little more than a glorified duck blind, a primitive sanctuary and night shelter for a lone hunter who wished to catch the sunset from the worn wicker chair on the veranda and watch snipes come in to land in the reeds at dusk.
The door was closed and the windows covered by shutters. You could see tracks in the mud around the lodge, presumably from the men who had hunted and caught Emile Oblonski, but otherwise there was a feeling of abandonment about the place.
A split log served as a step to the veranda.
“Watch out,” said the Commissioner. “Some of the boards look as if they’ve rotted through.”
I stepped around a few of the worst places and pushed the door open.
The room was dim and smelled of damp and old ashes. There was a brick oven at one end, providing a crude source of heat and the facility to cook a simple meal, and a curtained-off sleeping alcove at the other. In front of the window facing the lake stood a small table with yet another wicker chair.
I had imagined it bigger. It was hard to picture Cecile Montaine in these surroundings, even though her room at the convent school had been even more spartan.
The Commissioner opened the shutters to let the light in.
In the alcove there were several gray blankets that seemed very similar to the ones at the convent. The bed frame was covered by a rough burlap-covered mattress, presumably filled with straw. A shelf above the fireplace held a couple of tin cans and a blue enamel coffeepot. On the table stood a water basin and a pitcher covered by a checkered dishtowel. There were also two books, which I immediately examined. One was an almanac, the other a Bible. Both had numerous notes in the margins, with small closely spaced letters that did not resemble Cecile’s loopy handwriting.
The Commissioner’s interest had been caught by a faded green dress carefully hung on an improvised hanger cut from a thick branch.
“We can probably assume that this belonged to Cecile Montaine,” he said.
“It is hard to imagine that it could have been anyone else’s,” I said. “Unless the good Monsieur Vabonne has a mistress with a passion for nature.”
The Commissioner offered a small, dry “Ha.”
“Unlikely,” he said. “I believe he is over eighty. And if this was a love nest, the décor would probably be somewhat less spartan. Two glasses, for example. Another chair on the veranda. Not to mention sheets.”
He took out a large white handkerchief and dabbed his neck and forehead.
“Do you think we can drink the lake water without contracting dysentery?” he said.
“Most likely,” I said. “There are probably greater health risks associated with the municipal water in Varbourg.”
I lifted the dishtowel. The water pitcher was almost full. I poured a glass for the Commissioner and took the porcelain cup myself. I, too, was thirsty after the hike, and the water tasted fresh and clean. Then I began my search. I lifted the mattress, looked in the tins, shook the Bible and the almanac to see if any loose pages were hidden among the printed pages.
“Dear Madeleine, what is it you expect to find?”
“Cecile Montaine kept a diary,” I said. “I found her brother burning it.”
“Then it can hardly be here,” said the Commissioner dryly.
“No. But if you had developed that habit—would you stop? If you were sitting in a cabin like this one, during a couple of freezing weeks in February, with no company other than a peculiar young man—who from what we have heard does not talk much—might you not feel the need to put down your feelings and thoughts?”
The Commissioner looked around the small room. It was as if he imagined for the first time what it was like to be Cecile and to be here, in the winter cold, alone with Oblonski.
“She would not have been able to spend much time out of doors,” he said. “And what happened to her shoes? She was barefoot when she was found.”
“If he took her boots, with the weather we had in February, that would be about as effective as chaining her to the wall. She would not get far.”
“Do you think that is what he did?”
“The thought is frightening,” I said. “And when she fell ill . . .”
“Yes. She would have been utterly helpless. Completely dependent on him.”
But though we searched high and low, we found neither boots nor diary, and traces of Cecile were on the whole depressingly scarce. Other than the dress, the only evidence were two blood-splotched handkerchiefs with the initials CM embroidered in satin stitches, and some bloodstains on the gray blankets.
I thought about the long trip home and felt a need to apologize to the Commissioner.
“I was so sure that we would find something,” I said.
“We did,” he said, and put the handkerchiefs in his pocket. Then he carefully folded the faded green dress and placed it on top of one of the blankets. He folded the two other blankets with the same care and then tied the corners of the first together into a travel bundle. “We can now tell her family a little more about what happened before she died. It all counts.”
I hoped Cecile’s father was still free from infection and wondered if I could use the handkerchiefs as an excuse to see him again. Probably not. But perhaps I could ask the Commissioner for a report.
“Can we take the Bible and the almanac with us?” I asked.
“Presumably they belong to Old Vabonne or possibly to Leblanc,” said the Commissioner.
“Yes. But I would like to have the time to look through them properly and see whether Cecile has written something after all.”
“Very well. I don’t think the owner will object.”
We both had another drink of water, and I dried the glass and cup with the dishtowel before putting them back in their place. Then we closed the shutters and began the homeward trudge.
My feet and legs were sore and my throat covered with mosquito bites when we finally reached civilization, or at least the forest lane that led to civilization. I walked often and happily, but I was more used to the city’s short distances and smooth streets and sidewalks. I was definitely not some kind of female Doctor Livingstone.
“Wait here,” said the Commissioner, who must have seen my exhaustion. “I will go back to Vabonne’s farm and get the carriage. It shouldn’t take me more than half an hour. Here, you can sit on the blanket in the meantime.”
For once it was nice to be treated as a delicate feminine creature. I sat down gratefully and wished that we had thought to bring some kind of water bottle.
Here in the sun, the mosquitoes left me alone; they were still not as numerous as they would be later in the spring. When the Commissioner had disappeared down the lane, I unlaced my boots and took them off. I was quite convinced that I had acquired at least four blisters and considered removing my stockings as well, but refrained. I would have had to shimmy up my skirt and loosen the garter belts, and this was, after all, not the East
African jungle. Someone might walk by.
While I waited, I studied the notes in the almanac. They were for the most part hunting observations—this and that kind of bird or animal spotted in such a place, at such a time, carefully registered on the relevant dates. Once in a while the observations were mixed with comments of a more personal kind: “J d’ A could not hit a barn door at three paces. But his cognac is good.” “AB boasts of his conquests. Unpleasant human being.” Apparently these were character judgments Old Vabonne had made of various hunting friends. Most were very brief, but in one place there was a slightly longer note: “Lb’s dog is a devil. It attacked MP’s brown gelding and bit it so severely in the left hock that the tendons were damaged. Have forbidden him to bring it on hunts from now on. At first, he was furious and cursed me to my face, but that same evening he came over to apologize. The man is choleric but has a good heart. Has offered me a nice sum for the hunting rights, too. Considering it. Maybe next year? These old legs aren’t what they used to be, and he knows what he is doing. But will miss this place.”
My attention was abruptly sharpened. Lb had to be Leblanc, since I knew from Vabonne’s own groundskeeper that he had in fact taken over the hunt now.
Leblanc had a devil of a dog. A dog that attacked horses. Or at least he had had one when Vabonne had made his notes.
I quickly flipped through the rest of the almanac to see if there was any more about Lb. There was not. Only one carefully filled margin after another about snipes, pheasants, ducks, wild rabbits, and an abundance of other living creatures.
I picked up the Bible to see what kind of thoughts Old Vabonne had set down there. Here there were fewer comments, and they focused almost exclusively on the First Book of Moses, the Book of Job, and a few places in Revelation. “Myriad is God’s creation” it said next to the creation in Genesis with a neat line under “myriad.” And in Ecclesiastes, a section was underlined with the same ruler-straight precision: “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.” A brief “So true!” was added in the margin. But either Vabonne had changed his mind or someone had felt the need to express disagreement. A wild and clumsy hand had crossed out the first declaration and scrawled a denial—NO NO WILL NOT BELIEVE IT, in awkward capitals and with no punctuation.