‘Do you miss Oncle Jules so very much?’
Above them, the leaves swayed in the wind, whispering, murmuring, eavesdropping. Isolde sighed.
‘He was a considerate man,’ she replied carefully. ‘And a kind and generous husband.’
Léonie’s eyes narrowed. ‘But your words about love—’
‘One cannot always marry the person one loves,’ Isolde cut in. ‘Circumstance, opportunity, need, all these things play a part.’
Léonie pressed further.
‘I wondered how it was that you came to make one another’s acquaintance? I was under the impression that my uncle rarely left the Domaine de la Cade, so—’
‘It is true that Jules disliked travelling far from home. He had everything he wished for here. He kept himself well occupied with his books and took his responsibilities for the estate seriously. However, it was his custom to pay a visit once a year to Paris, as he had done when his father was still alive.’
‘And it was during one of those visits that you were introduced? ’
‘It was,’ she said.
Léonie’s attention was caught, not by Isolde’s words, but by her actions. Her aunt’s hand had stolen to her neck, which, today, was covered by a delicate high lace collar despite the mildness of the weather. Léonie realised how habitual a gesture it was. And Isolde had turned quite pale, as if remembering some unpleasantness she would rather forget.
‘So you do not miss him so much?’ Léonie pressed.
Isolde gave one of her slow, enigmatic smiles.
This time, there was no doubt in Léonie’s mind. The man about whom Isolde had talked with such longing, such tenderness, was not her husband.
Léonie stole a glance, trying to summon the courage to pursue the conversation further. She was hungry to know more, but at the same time she did not wish to be impertinent. For all the confidences Isolde appeared to have shared, in point of fact she had explained little of the history of her courtship and marriage. More, Léonie had the suspicion several times during the course of the conversation, that Isolde was on the point of raising some other issue, unsaid between them, although what this could be, she did not know.
‘Shall we return to the house?’ said Isolde, breaking into her reflections. ‘Anatole will be wondering where we are.’
She stood up. Léonie gathered her hat and gloves and did likewise. ‘So do you think you will continue to live here, Tante Isolde?’ she asked, as they made their way down from the promontory and headed back towards the path.
Isolde waited a moment before answering. ‘We will see,’ she said. ‘For all its undoubted beauty, this is a disquieting place.’
CHAPTER 52
CARCASSONNE
MONDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER
The porter opened the door to the first-class carriage and Victor Constant stepped down to the station platform at Carcassonne.
Un, deux, trois, loup. Like a game of grandmother’s footsteps. Coming to get you, ready or not.
The wind was ferocious. According to the porter, the region was forecast to suffer the worst series of autumn storms for many years. Another, predicted to be even more devastating than those preceding it, was expected to hit Carcassonne perhaps as early as next week.
Constant looked around. Above the railway sidings, the trees were plunging, lunging like unbroken horses. The sky was as grey as steel. Menacing black clouds scudded across the tops of the buildings.
‘This is just the overture,’ he said, then smiled at his own joke.
He glanced along the platform to where his manservant had disembarked with the luggage. In silence, they made their way out through the concourse and Constant waited while his man procured a cab. He watched with little interest as the bargemen on the Canal du Midi lashed their péniches to double moorings, or even to the bases of the lime trees that lined the bank. Water slapped against the brick embankments. In the kiosk selling newspapers, the headline of the Dépêche de Toulouse, the local journal, was talking of a storm that would strike that very evening, with worse to come.
Constant secured lodgings in a narrow side street in the nineteenth-century Bastide Saint-Louis. Then, leaving his man to begin the tedious process of visiting every boarding house, every hotel, every house with private rooms, to show the portrait of Marguerite, Anatole and Léonie Vernier purloined from the apartment in the rue de Berlin, he set out immediately on foot for the old town, the medieval citadel that stood on the opposite bank of the River Aude.
Despite his loathing of Vernier, Constant could not but admire how well he had kicked over the traces. At the same time, he hoped that Vernier’s apparent success in disappearing might lead him to be arrogant, foolish. Constant had paid the concierge in the rue de Berlin handsomely to intercept any communication addressed to the apartment from Carcassonne, relying on the fact that Vernier’s need to remain undiscovered would mean that he did not yet know of his mother’s death. The thought of how the net in Paris was tightening, even while he remained ignorant, gave Constant immense pleasure.
He crossed to the far side via the Pont Vieux. Far below, the Aude swirled black against the sodden banks, and sped over flat rocks and choked river weeds. The water was very high. He adjusted his gloves, attempting to alleviate the discomfort of the soft blistering between the second and third fingers of his left hand.
Carcassonne had changed a great deal since last Constant had set foot in the Cité. Despite the inclement weather, entertainers and men with sandwich boards now handed out tourist brochures, it seemed, on every street corner. He skimmed the tawdry pamphlet, his unforgiving eyes passing over the advertisements for Marseille soaps and La Micheline, a local liqueur, for bicycles and boarding houses.
The text itself was a mixture of civic self-aggrandisement and history rewritten. Constant crumpled the cheap paper in his gloved fist and threw it to the ground.
Constant hated Carcassonne and had good cause to do so. Thirty years ago, his uncle had taken him to the slums of La Cité. He had walked among the ruins, seen the filthy citadins who lived within its crumbling walls. Later that same day, full of plum brandy and opium, in a damask-draped room above a bar in the Place d’Armes, he had had his first experience of a working girl, courtesy of his uncle.
That same uncle was now sequestered in Lamalou-les-Bains, infected by one connasse or another, syphilitic and mad, believing his brain was being sucked out through his nose. Constant did not visit. He had no desire to see how the disease might work, over time, upon him.
She was the first Constant had killed. It was unintentional and the incident had shocked him. Not because he had taken a life, but because it had been so easy to do so. The hand on the throat, the thrill of seeing the fear in the girl’s eyes when she realised that the violence of their coupling was but a precursor to a possession more absolute.
Had it not been for his uncle’s deep pockets and connections in the Mairie, Constant would have had nothing but the galleys or the guillotine to look forward to. As it was, they had left swiftly and without ceremony.
The experience had taught him much, not least that money could rewrite history, amend the ending to any story. There was no such thing as a ‘fact’ when gold was involved. Constant had learned well. He had spent a lifetime binding to him friends and enemies alike, through a combination of obligation, debt and, when that failed, fear. It was only some years later that he understood that all lessons came at a cost. The girl had her revenge after all. She had given him the sickness that was painfully leaching the life from his uncle and would from him. She was beyond his reach, many years below ground, but he had punished others in her place.
As he descended the bridge, he thought again of the pleasure of Marguerite Vernier’s death. A flush of heat shot through him. She had, for a passing moment at least, obliterated the memory of the humiliation he suffered at the hands of her son. The fact remained that, even after so many had passed beneath his depraved hands, the experience was the more pleasurable when the
woman was beautiful. It made the game worth the candle.
Stimulated more than he wished by the memory of those hours in the rue de Berlin with Marguerite, Constant loosened his collar at the neck. He could all but smell the intoxicating mix of blood and fear, the distinctive scent of such liaisons. He clenched his fists, remembering the delicious feel of her resistance, the pull and stretch of her unwilling skin.
Breathing fast, Constant stepped down on to the rough cobbles of the rue Trivalle and waited an instant until he again was master of himself. He cast a supercilious eye over the vista before him. The hundreds, thousands of francs spent on the restoration of the thirteenth-century citadel did not seem to have affected the lives of the people of the quartier Trivalle. It was as impoverished and rundown as it had been thirty years ago. Bareheaded, barefoot children sat in filthy doorways. Walls of brick and stone bowed outwards, as if pushed by the broad hand of time. A beggar, swaddled in dirty blankets, her eyes dead and unseeing, held out a grimy hand as he passed by. He paid no heed.
He crossed the Place Saint-Gimer in front of Monsieur Viollet-le-Duc’s ugly new church. A pack of dogs and children were snapping at his heels, calling out for coins, offering their services as guides or messengers. He paid them no heed, until one boy ventured too close. Constant struck him a blow with the metal head of his cane, splitting open his cheek, and the gaggle of urchins backed away.
He arrived at a narrow cul-de-sac on the left, little more than an alleyway, which led up to the base of the ramparts of the Cité. He picked his way up the filthy, slippery street. The surface was coated with a skein of mud the colour of gingerbread. Debris, the flotsam and jetsam of poor lives, covered the streets. Paper wrappings, animal excrement, rotting vegetables too decayed for even the mange-bitten dogs to eat. He was aware of unseen dark eyes watching him from behind slatted shutters.
He stopped before a tiny house in the shadows of the walls and rapped sharply on the door with his walking stick. To find Vernier and his whore, Constant had need of the services of the man who lived within. He could be patient. He was willing to wait for as long as it might take once he had proved to his own satisfaction that the Verniers were in the area.
A wooden hatch shot back.
Two bloodshot eyes widened first in shock, then in fear. The hatch was slammed shut. Then, after the sliding of a bolt and the painful turning of the key in the lock, the door was opened.
Constant stepped inside.
CHAPTER 53
DOMAINE DE LA CADE
The blustery and changeable September gave way to a mild and gentle October.
It was only some two weeks since Léonie had left Paris, but already she found it hard to remember the pattern of days at home. To her surprise, she realised she did not miss a thing about her former life. Not the views, not the streets, not the company of her mother or her neighbours.
Both Isolde and Anatole appeared to have undergone something of a permanent transformation since the night of the dinner. Isolde’s eyes were no longer clouded with anxiety, and although she tired easily and often kept to her room in the mornings, her complexion was radiant. With the success of the gathering, the genuine warmth of the letters of thanks, it was evident that Rennes-les-Bains was prepared to welcome Jules Lascombe’s widow into their society.
During these tranquil weeks, Léonie spent as much of her time as possible out of doors, exploring every inch of the estate, although she avoided the abandoned path that led to the sepulchre. The combination of sun and early autumn rain had painted the world in bright colours. Vivid reds, deep evergreens, the golden underside of branch and bough, the crimson of the copper beech trees and the yolk yellow of the late broom. Birdsong, the bark of a solitary dog carried up from the valley, the rustle of the undergrowth as a rabbit ran for cover, the heels of her boots dislodging pebbles and twigs underfoot, the growing chorus of cicadas vibrating in the trees; the Domaine de la Cade was spectacular. As time put a distance between the shadows she had perceived on her first evening and the chill of the sepulchre, Léonie felt herself absolutely at home. That her mother, as a child, had felt something disquieting about the grounds and house, she now could not comprehend. Or so Léonie told herself. It was a place of such tranquillity.
Her days fell into an easy routine. Most mornings, she painted a little. She had intended to embark on a series of landscapes, undemanding and traditional, the changing character of the autumn countryside. But following her unexpected success on the afternoon of the supper party with her self-portrait, without at any stage taking a conscious decision to do so, she found herself embarking on a sequence, from her fading memory, of the remaining seven Tarot tableaux from the sepulchre. Rather than a gift for her mother, she now had the idea that the paintings might be a souvenir for Anatole of their sojourn. At home in Paris, in galleries and museums, grand avenues and tended gardens, the charms of nature had hitherto left her unmoved. Yet here, now, Léonie found she had an affinity with the trees and views she saw from her window. She found herself painting the landscape of the Domaine de la Cade into each illustration.
Some of the tableaux came more readily to mind and more easily to her brush than others. The image of Le Mat took on the character of Anatole, the expression on his face, his figure, his colouring. La Prêtresse possessed an elegance, a charm that Léonie associated with Isolde.
She did not attempt Le Diable.
After luncheon, most days Léonie would read in her chamber or else walk with Isolde in the gardens. Her aunt continued to be discreet and circumspect about the circumstances of her marriage, but little by little Léonie managed to acquire enough fragments of information to piece together a satisfyingly complete history.
Isolde had grown up in the Parisian suburbs in the care of an elderly relative, a cold and bitter woman to whom she was little more than an unpaid companion. Liberated by her aunt’s death, and left with few means with which to support herself, she had been fortunate enough to find her way into the city, at the age of twenty-one, in the employ of a financier and his wife. An acquaintance of Isolde’s aunt, the lady had lost her sight some years earlier and required day-to-day assistance. Isolde’s duties were light. She took dictation of letters and other correspondences, read aloud from the newspapers and the latest novels and accompanied her employer to concerts and the opera. From the softness of Isolde’s tone as she talked of those few years, Léonie understood that she had been fond of the financier and his wife. Through them she also acquired a good working knowledge of culture and society and couture. Isolde was not explicit about the reasons for her dismissal, but Léonie inferred that inappropriate behaviour on the part of the financier son’s had played its part.
On the matter of her marriage, Isolde was more guarded. It was clear, however, that need and opportunity had played as significant a part in her acceptance of Jules Lascombe’s proposal as had love. It was a matter of business rather than romance.
Léonie also learnt more about the series of incidents in the area that had caused disquiet in Rennes-les-Bains, to which Monsieur Baillard had alluded, and which had, for no clear reason she could comprehend, become associated with the Domaine de la Cade. Isolde was not clear on the specifics. There had also been allegations in the 1870s, of depraved and inappropriate ceremonies within the deconsecrated chapel in the woods of the estate.
At this, Léonie had found it difficult to conceal her innermost feelings. The colour drained from her face, then rushed back as she remembered Monsieur Baillard’s comments about how Abbé Saunière had been called upon to attempt to quiet the spirits of the place. Léonie wished to know more, but it was a story told second-hand by Isolde and heard some time after the event, so she could not or would not tell her.
In another conversation, Isolde told her niece how Jules Lascombe was considered by the town to be something of a recluse. Alone since the death of his stepmother and departure of his half-sister, he was content in his solitude. As Isolde explained it, he had no wish for company
of any description, least of all a wife. However, Rennes-les-Bains had increasingly come to mistrust his bachelor status and Lascombe found himself a focus of suspicion. The town questioned, vociferously, why his sister had fled the estate several years previously. If, indeed, she had ever actually left.
As Isolde explained it, the drizzle of gossip and innuendo grew stronger until Lascombe was obliged to act. It was in the summer of 1885 that the new parish priest of Rennes-le-Château, Bérenger Saunière, suggested to Lascombe that the presence of a woman at the Domaine de la Cade might go some way to reassuring the neighbourhood.
A mutual friend introduced Isolde to Lascombe in Paris. Lascombe made it clear that it would be acceptable - indeed, agreeable - to him for his young wife to remain for most of the year in town at his expense, provided she was available in Rennes-les-Bains when he required it. The question flitted into Léonie’s mind - although she was not bold enough to ask - whether or not the marriage had ever been consummated?