The Scapegoat

  As the mother took her seat opposite me I said, 'Now you are back again, where you belong, I intend making other changes too. I've already discussed them with Blanche and Paul and Renee. Paul isn't going to direct the verrerie any more. He's going to travel, taking Renee with him.'

  My statement left her unmoved. Forking a piece of kidney from her plate to the terriers who crouched on either side of her, she said, 'An excellent idea. They ought to have gone before. Unfortunately, none of us could afford it. Who will take his place? Not Jacques, surely? He hasn't the authority.'

  'Blanche,' I replied. 'She knows more about the verrerie than any of us. In future she will live at the master's house.'

  Even this failed to excite her. I don't know what I had expected. Abuse of Blanche perhaps, mockery, certainly a torrent of words. Instead she said almost placidly, 'I always said Blanche had a head for business. I don't know where she gets it from - certainly not from me. Nor was your father brilliant. He looked upon the verrerie as a family tradition, not as a commercial proposition. But Blanche ...' she raised her head and glanced across the table at her daughter, 'she'll have the tourists here in no time at all. A shop inside the gates, selling replicas of the chateau and the church, ice-creams from Julie at the lodge. It would have happened long ago, only that the war intervened.'

  She went on eating. Paul, throwing a look at me, said quickly, 'You don't disapprove, then? Either of this plan or the other?'

  'Disapprove?' she echoed. 'Why should I disapprove? Both suggestions suit me well. What in the world would Blanche do with herself should I decide to come downstairs every day?' She crumbled a piece of bread. 'Or Renee either, for that matter.' She glanced at her daughter-in-law. 'It's only when women have nothing to do that they get into mischief. They turn religious or take lovers.'

  So there was to be no argument. The child was right. Everyone had what they wanted. Relief showed itself on all their faces, and sitting there, watching them, I suddenly had a picture of what would be. Paul and Renee setting forth with luggage heaped at the back of the new car which I would buy for them, arriving in Paris feeling provincial and a little strange, but the feeling wearing off because of freedom; while Blanche, down in the master's house, sorting the furniture, turning over the books, coming perhaps upon a forgotten drawing or design, would find another freedom, escape from bitterness.

  As I saw these things I was aware of Marie-Noel watching me from across the table. 'Well?' I said. 'What now?'

  'Just this,' she said, 'You've made plans for everyone but yourself. What are you going to do when everybody's gone?'

  Her question caught attention from the rest. They all looked at me, curious. Even Blanche, raising her head for one brief moment, stared, then dropped her eyes.

  'I shall stay here,' I said, 'at the chateau, at St Gilles. I've no intention of going away. I shall stay here always.'

  As I spoke I knew what I was going to do. I had remembered the service revolver in the drawer of the library desk. On Saturday I had burnt my hand to spare myself humiliation and discovery because I could not use a gun. Today was different. There would be no observers. The greatest fool on earth could hardly miss at point-blank range. I should have no remorse and no regret. He would receive the welcome he deserved. Even the rendezvous he had chosen, the master's house, was added justice. The only thing I minded was burning my car. Not that it seemed mine any longer, since he had taken it. It belonged to a past I had forgotten anyway. The project, born in an instant, took shape, becoming clear. I too would walk to the master's house through the woods, and crossing the orchard at the back, climb through the window as I had done twice before. There would be no witnesses to this encounter. I stared in front of me, seeing nothing but the dark forest trees and the wet earth, and then, glancing up, I saw that they were still looking at me, puzzled, oddly strained. My last remark had sounded perhaps too vehement, too tense, and Marie-Noel, the only one without embarrassment exclaimed, 'When there's a sudden silence, and nobody speaks, it means there's an angel in the room, so Germaine told me. I'm not altogether sure. It could be a demon.'

  Gaston came with vegetables. The moment passed. Everyone began to talk at once, except myself. The mother, holding me with her eyes, framed with her lips the question, 'What's the matter?' I shook my head, gesturing, 'Nothing.' I could see him climbing into the car at Deauville, driving off, confident, careless, assured of the little world that waited for him, the world which had become suddenly easier, his problems solved, the fortune he had always wanted now within his grasp; and I wondered whether it was his intention to dismiss me with a handshake and a smile, and then resume the life it had amused him to throw away. If so, his scheme would come to nothing. I was the substance now and he the shadow. The shadow was not wanted and could die.

  After lunch my opportunity came. Blanche and the child went upstairs for lessons. The mother called the others to see the rearrangement of the salon. I went to the library, crossed over to the desk and pulled open the drawer. I saw the butt of the revolver beside the photograph album. I took it out and opened it, and it was loaded. I wondered why he kept it there, for what emergency, what strange purpose. Now it would be used against him. He had kept it loaded through the years for this. I slipped the revolver into my coat pocket, went upstairs to the dressing-room and put it away in the drawer beside the boxes containing the morphine and the syringe.

  When I came downstairs I realized I had been only just in time. They were moving into the library. The salon was now a place apart, waiting for tomorrow's ritual. Paul sat down at the desk, Renee at the table, and both of them began addressing envelopes. The mother, settling herself in a chair where she could watch them, put out her hand to me.

  'You're restless,' she said. 'What's on your mind?'

  As I looked at her I reminded myself that it was not her son I was going to kill but someone apart, without emotions, without heart, who had no feeling for her or anyone else. She recognized me as her son. In future I should do everything for her that he had failed to do.

  'I want to bury the past,' I said. 'That's the only thing on my mind.'

  'You've been doing your best to resurrect it,' she answered, 'with your plan for Blanche.'

  'No,' I said, 'that's what you don't understand.'

  She shrugged her shoulders. 'Just as you like,' she said. 'I ask for nothing better, if it works. The whole thing is a conspiracy, of course, to make life more pleasant for yourself. Come and sit down.'

  She gestured to the chair beside her and I sat down, still holding her hand. Presently, I saw she slept. Paul, turning his head, said quietly, 'She's doing much too much. Charlotte said so just now. She'll suffer for it later. You ought to stop her.'

  'No,' I said, 'it's better this way.'

  Renee glanced at me from the table. 'She ought to be resting upstairs,' she said, 'as she always does. Paul is perfectly right. She'll have a complete breakdown after the funeral.'

  'That's my risk,' I said, 'and my responsibility.'

  The long afternoon wore on. There was no sound but the scratching of the pens. I looked at the mother's face, asleep, and knew suddenly I must go before she woke, before the child came downstairs. Paul had his back to me, and Renee also. They must none of them know where I was going. Some impulse, like touching wood to ward off danger, made me kiss the mother's hand. Then I rose and went out of the room. No one looked up or called me back.

  I fetched the revolver from the dressing-room and went out of the front door on to the terrace and round the side of the chateau to the garden door. As I stood a moment under my first hiding-place, the cedar-tree, I saw Cesar come out of his kennel. He lifted his head, sniffing the air, and looked towards me. He saw me, but he did not bark. Neither did he wag his tail. He accepted me as belonging to St Gilles, but I was not yet his master. That would be one of my tasks. I went through to the park, under the chestnuts, and so out of the domain. Never had the forest seemed more beautiful or more benign, the hot sun gilding the fa
lling leaves.

  When I came to the field bordering the foundry grounds I lay down and waited. It was no use entering the master's house until Jacques had gone and the men had stopped work for the day. I remembered I had seen cans of petrol standing in the shed where they kept the lorry. Petrol was necessary for my purpose. Lying there in the woods I could see the wisp of smoke coming from the foundry chimney, and I began to get impatient, restless. I wanted the men to go.

  Two hours must have passed. I had no means of telling, without a watch, but of a sudden the air became more chill, the sun had dipped behind the trees, and I was aware of silence. All sounds from the foundry had ceased. I got up, and, crouching behind the hedge, looked at the orchard. No one was there. The windows of the office in the master's house were shut; the place seemed deserted. I crossed the orchard, keeping close to the hedge, and stood against the wall of the master's house. I waited a moment, then, sheltered by the vine, looked in at the office window. The room was empty, Jacques had gone home, and I had the place to myself. I moved along the house to the further end and climbed through the window once again. The room was full of traces of Blanche and Paul. Some of the furniture had already been shifted, tables and chairs pulled forward, pictures moved. She had not wasted time, then. She knew what she wanted to do. The room was no longer a shell, housing the past, but waited, expectant, for her to bring life to it once more.

  I sat waiting, too, for the man I meant to kill. Sunlight went from the room, the shadows grew. In half an hour or less it would be dusk, and when he came, knocking on the window or the door, he would find that what happened to him was his own crime in reverse. He, and not I, would go back fifteen years.

  I saw the handle of the door turn first, and because of disuse the knob fell to the floor. The door did not open for I had bolted it. I crossed the room, picked up the knob and fitted it back. Slowly I withdrew the bolt, holding the revolver ready. I opened the door, the bottom of it jarring the stone flag, and it was thus, I thought, that Maurice Duval must have opened the door that night, and found him standing there in the darkness. Then I heard an exclamation from without and a voice - not his - said, 'Hullo, is there somebody in the house?' It was not Jean de Gue, it was the cure. We confronted one another, I shaken and nonplussed, he smiling, nodding, until his eye, falling upon the revolver, oddly changed.

  'Will you allow me?' he said, and he put out his hand and took the revolver from me before I knew what he was about. Then he emptied it, putting the cartridges in the pocket beneath his cassock, and the revolver also.

  'I don't like those things,' he said. 'We had enough of them during the war, and during the Occupation too. They caused a lot of damage, and they could do so again.'

  He looked up at me, his head nodding agreement, and because I was without words, unable to speak, he patted my arm and said, 'Don't be angry. You'll be glad that I took it away from you one of these days. You had planned destruction, hadn't you?'

  I didn't answer him at once. Then I said, 'Yes, Father.'

  'Very well,' he said, 'we won't discuss it. It's a matter for your own conscience and for God. It's not my business to ask you what is wrong. But it is my business to save life if I can. If that is what I have just done I find myself very thankful, and very humble too.' He looked about him at the darkening room. 'I've been visiting Andre Yves,' he said. 'Happily, in time he may recover the use of his arm. He has great endurance. He said to me a week or so ago, "It might be better if I put an end to myself." "Not so, Andre," I told him. "The future begins today. It's a gift, to which we wake each morning. Make use of it, don't throw it away."' He paused, and then, pointing to the furniture, said, 'So it's true then, what Mademoiselle Blanche told me this afternoon at the chateau when I called? She may come here to live, and it was your suggestion?'

  'If she told you so, it's true,' I answered.

  'Then you certainly would not want to do anything to make her change her mind,' he said. 'There's an old saying - two wrongs don't make a right. Perhaps, if I had not happened to pass by, something would have happened to cause grief to all of us. There has been tragedy enough in your family without your adding to it.'

  'I wasn't going to add to tragedy, Father,' I said. 'I hoped to remove the cause.'

  'By destroying yourself?' he asked. 'What good would that do, to you or to them? By living, you can create their world afresh. Already I see signs of it, here in the master's house. That's what's needed, not only here in the verrerie but in the chateau too. Life, not death.'

  He waited for me to answer. I said nothing. 'Well, now,' he hesitated, turning again to the door, 'I can't offer you a ride - I came on my tricycle. I don't see the car outside. How will you go home?'

  'I walked,' I said, 'and I shall return that way.'

  'Why not walk beside me?' he suggested. 'I go very slowly, you know.' He drew out his watch. 'It's after seven already,' he said. 'They may be looking for you at the chateau. I know one who will be waiting anyway, the child. I'm dull company on the road, but I'd like you to join me.'

  'Not tonight, Father,' I said. 'I'd rather be alone.'

  Still he hesitated, his eyes anxious. 'I'm not sure that I'm happy to leave you,' he said, 'after what I discovered just now. You might still do something rash that you'd regret.'

  'I can't,' I said. 'You've made it impossible.'

  He smiled. 'I'm glad,' he said. 'I shall never regret it. As for your gun ...' he patted his cassock, 'perhaps I'll let you have it back again, one of these days. It will depend upon yourself. Bonsoir.'

  He went out of the doorway into the dusk. I watched him pass the well without a glance, and so across the ground towards the sheds. I closed the door and bolted it again. The room was now filled with shadows, the day was done. As I went to the window facing the orchard a figure rose from beneath it, gun in hand, and throwing his legs across the sill climbed in. Laughing softly, pointing the gun at my chest, he said, 'That's how I worked it once before, but this was far easier. No sentries on the road, no huts, no blocks, no wire. And instead of a bunch of lads who might give me away under threat, good Monsieur le cure himself, who happened to pass by. You must admit that luck is always on my side. I was right, wasn't I, to come armed? It was the only thing I didn't leave you in my valise in Le Mans.'

  He pulled forward two of the chairs that Blanche had moved that morning.

  'Sit down,' he said. 'You don't have to keep your hands up. This isn't a threat, merely a precaution. I've always carried a gun since '41.' He sat down in the other chair and straddled it, facing me. The back of it made a resting-place for the gun. 'So you planned to get rid of me, did you, and stay in St Gilles? The sudden prospect of a fortune was too much for you? I sympathize. I felt that way myself.'

  26

  I couldn't see his eyes but only his features, dimly, which were mine. The absence of light made his presence, although more sinister, somehow easier to bear.

  'What happened?' he asked. 'How did she die? The notice I read this morning said by accident.'

  'She fell,' I answered, 'from the window of her bedroom. She had dropped the locket brooch you brought her back from Paris, and was reaching for it.'

  'Was she alone at the time?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'There was a police inquiry. The commissaire was quite satisfied, and the death certificate was signed. Tomorrow they bring her back to St Gilles, and the funeral is on Friday.'

  'I read that in the papers,' he said. 'That's why I returned.'

  I made no comment. It was not the funeral of his wife which had brought him home, but what her death would mean to him hereafter.

  'You know,' he said, 'I never thought you'd face it. When I left you in that hotel bedroom a week ago today, I imagined you going to the police, telling them your story, and, after many muddled explanations, persuading them to believe it. Instead ...' he laughed, 'you've succeeded in living a lie for seven whole days. My congratulations. What a boon you could have been to me twelve or fifteen years ago. Tell me, has no on
e had any suspicion?'

  'No one,' I said.

  'What about my mother, and the child?'

  'They least of all.'

  To say this gave me a strange sort of satisfaction that was almost savage. He had not been missed; no one had regretted him.

  'I wonder how much you learnt,' he said. 'It amuses me immensely to think of how you dealt with Renee, for instance, who already, before I left, was becoming a bore. And how you kept Francoise pacified. And whether, with misplaced courtesy, you tried to talk to Blanche. As for my mother, her demands can only be dealt with in the future by a doctor. Not our own, needless to say, but an expert. She'll have to go to a clinic. I'm already in touch with one, in Paris.'

  I watched the muzzle of the revolver on the back of his chair. I should never reach it. Expert in trickery as in all things, he would be too quick for me.

  'There's no need to send her to Paris,' I said. 'Though I expect she will need medical care at home. She wants to stop the drug. I was with her all last night. She's made the first attempt.'

  I could feel his eyes upon me in the darkness. 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'You were with her all last night? What did you do?'

  I thought back to the chair beside her bed, to the half-dreams, to the silence, to the threatening shadows that seemed to dissolve and pass. To tell him about the night now sounded trite, absurd. Nothing had been accomplished, only sleep.

  'I sat beside her and she slept,' I said. 'I held her hand.'

  His laughter, infectious yet intolerable, rang through the dark room. 'My poor friend,' he said, 'do you imagine that is the way to cure a morphine addict? Tonight she'll be a raving maniac. Charlotte will have to give her a double dose.'

  'No,' I said. 'No.' But doubt assailed me. Already, when I left her sleeping in her chair, she had looked ill and exhausted.