The Perfume of the Lady in Black

  No, I didn’t see it at all, for I was quite sure that it wasn’t blood. It was just ordinary red paint. But I was careful at such a time not to annoy Rouletabille, and pretended to be greatly interested in the blood idea.

  ‘Whose blood?’ I asked. ‘Do you know whose blood it is? Is it Larsan’s?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Larsan’s blood! Who knows what Larsan’s blood is like? Who ever saw it? To know what colour Larsan’s blood is you would have to open my veins, Sainclair! That is the only way.’

  I was completely nonplussed.

  ‘My father wouldn’t let anybody take his blood like that.’

  He was again talking about his father with despairing pride.

  ‘When my father wears a wig, it’s completely undetectable. Likewise, my father wouldn’t let anybody take his blood just like that.’

  ‘Bernier’s hands were covered in it, and you saw some on the hands of the Lady in Black.’

  ‘Yes, yes, so they say, so they say. But you can’t kill my father like that!’

  He appeared very much excited and kept staring at the neat little drawing. He said suddenly with a great sob:

  ‘Oh, God, have pity on us! It would be too dreadful!’ Then he added: ‘Poor mother does not deserve that, nor do I, nor does anybody!’

  A great tear rolled down his cheek and fell into the saucer.

  ‘Oh,’ he exclaimed, ‘I mustn’t dilute the paint!’ His voice trembled as he said it, and, with infinite care, he picked up the little saucer and shut it away in a cupboard. Then he took me by the hand and dragged me away, while I stared at him and asked myself if he had not, after all, gone stark mad.

  ‘Come, come!’ he said. ‘The moment has arrived, Sainclair! Now we cannot hesitate. The Lady in Black must tell us everything that happened with the sack. Oh, if only M. Darzac would come back now, at once! It would be so painful. I cannot wait!’

  Wait? What for? Why was he so frightened? What made him stare like that? Why did his teeth chatter so? I could not help asking him again:

  ‘What is it that terrifies you so? Isn’t Larsan dead?’

  He repeated, grasping my arm nervously:

  ‘I tell you that I am more afraid of him dead than alive.’

  He knocked on the door of the Square Tower before which we stood. I asked him if he would not prefer to be left alone with his mother. To my astonishment, he replied that I must not leave him under any circumstances so long as ‘the circle was not closed’. And he added grimly: ‘I hope that may never be.’

  Since the door of the tower remained shut, we knocked again, and, at last, it swung partly open, and we caught sight of Bernier’s frightened face. He seemed annoyed to see us.

  ‘What do you want now?’ he asked. ‘Speak quietly. Madame is in Old Bob’s sitting room. He has not come in yet.’

  ‘Let us in, Bernier,’ said Rouletabille, pushing at the door.

  ‘You won’t tell Madame?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’

  We passed into the hallway and found ourselves in almost complete darkness.

  ‘What is Madame Darzac doing in Old Bob’s sitting room?’ asked Rouletabille.

  ‘She is waiting for M. Darzac to come home. She doesn’t dare go into their rooms, and neither do I.’

  ‘Very well,’ replied Rouletabille. ‘Go back to your lodge and wait till I call you.’

  Rouletabille opened the door leading into Old Bob’s sitting room, and we caught sight at once of the Lady in Black, or rather her shadow, for the place was but faintly lit by the first feeble rays of daylight. Mathilde stood leaning against the window, looking out upon the courtyard of Charles the Bold. She did not move when we entered, but spoke at once in a voice so strangely altered that I did not recognise it.

  ‘Why have you come? I saw you cross the courtyard. You know everything. What do you want?’ Then she added, in a voice of infinite sorrow: ‘You swore you would not look.’

  Rouletabille went over to the Lady in Black and took her hand with deep respect.

  ‘Come, mother!’ he said simply. And the words sounded like a sweet prayer. ‘Come with me.’

  She did not resist as he led her away. As soon as he took her by the hand, it seemed as if he could do as he liked with her. However, just as he led her up to the door of her rooms, she stopped short.

  ‘Not there!’ she moaned, and leaned against the wall for support.

  Rouletabille tried the door, but found it closed. He called Bernier to open it. This Bernier did, then hurried away.

  As the door swung open, an awful sight confronted us. The greatest disorder reigned, and was rendered all the more impressive by the blood-red gleam of the rising sun. What a light for a room in which a murder has been committed: blood on the walls, on the floor and on the furniture, the bloody rays of the rising sun, and the blood of the man whom Toby had carried away in the sack who knows where! Tables, chairs, everything was upset. The sheets on the bed, to which the man must have clung in his death agony, were half on the floor and bore the mark of a red hand. We walked into the midst of all that, supporting the Lady in Black, who seemed on the point of fainting, while Rouletabille kept saying in his soft, supplicating voice: ‘We must, mother, we must!’

  He began questioning her as soon as she was seated in one of the armchairs which I had set on its feet again. She answered in monosyllables, with nods of her head or by signs. I could see that as she progressed with her answers, Rouletabille became more and more puzzled, troubled, desperate; I could see that he was trying to regain the composure which he needed now more than ever, but which seemed harder than ever to preserve. He spoke to her in endearing terms, whispering ‘Mother, mother!’ every now and then to give her courage. But she had no more courage. She held out her arms to him, and he flung himself into them. They clung desperately to each other, and she seemed somewhat comforted by this, for suddenly she burst into tears, and this seemed to relieve her. I made to leave, but they both held me back, and I understood that they did not want to be left alone in the Red Room. She murmured:

  ‘We are delivered!’

  Rouletabille knelt beside her and said gently:

  ‘To be quite sure, mother, quite, quite certain, you must tell me everything that happened, everything you saw.’

  At last, she was able to speak. She glanced over at the closed door; her eyes, filled with terror, surveyed the objects scattered about her, the blood on the floor and the furniture. And in a low voice, so low that, in order to catch her words, I had to lean over her as one does at the bedside of a dying person, she described to us the fearful scene.

  It seemed that as soon as they entered their room that night, Darzac had bolted the door and gone straight to his writing table, so that when the thing happened he was standing in the centre of the room. The Lady in Black was on the left, just about to step into her room. The only light was furnished by a candle which was on a small table close to Mathilde.

  Suddenly, breaking in upon the stillness of the room, they heard the sound of creaking wood. They both looked up in wonder and turned their heads in the same direction, while the same terror filled their hearts. The sound came from the wardrobe. Then all was still again. They gazed at each other wonderingly. The sound did not strike them as normal, for they had certainly never before heard the furniture creak. Darzac took a step in the direction of the wardrobe, which was at the other end of the room on the right. He stopped, paralysed by a second sound, and this time it seemed to Mathilde that she saw the piece of furniture move.

  Darzac had evidently had the same sensation, for he strode boldly forward. It was then that the door (the wardrobe door) opened. It swung on its hinges, pushed by an invisible hand. The Lady in Black would have liked to scream, but the scream stuck in her throat. Instead, she flung out her hand, and accidentally knocked over the candle just as a shadow issued forth from the wardrobe and Darzac, with a cry of rage, threw himself upon it.

  ‘But the shadow had a face!’ interrupted Rou
letabille. ‘Mother, why didn’t you see that face! You killed the shadow, but how do I know that it was Larsan, since you didn’t see his face? Perhaps you didn’t even kill Larsan’s shadow!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said simply, ‘he is dead!’

  Who, indeed, could they have killed if not him? Mathilde had not seen his face, but she had heard his voice and still trembled at the memory of it. Bernier had heard it too and knew it for that of Larsan, of Ballmeyer.

  ‘This time I’ll fix you!’ it had said. While Robert Darzac could only moan: ‘Mathilde, Mathilde!’

  Oh, how he had called to her! And all she could do was to cry out in anguish, and in the blinding darkness try desperately to interpose her shadow between the other two, while she called in vain for the help she could not give, and which did not come. Then, suddenly, the shot rang out that had caused her to scream as though she herself had been hit by the bullet. Who was dead? Who was living? Who would speak? What voice was she going to hear? Ah, Robert spoke!

  Rouletabille took the Lady in Black in his arms and lifted, almost carried, her to the door of her room. On the threshold, he said:

  ‘Go, mother! Leave me! I must work, work hard, for you, for M. Darzac and for myself.’

  ‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ she asked, in anguished tones. ‘I don’t want you to leave me till M. Darzac comes back.’

  Rouletabille promised her that he would not go away, urged her to rest a little, and was about to close her door when there was a knock on the door. Rouletabille inquired who was there and heard Darzac reply.

  ‘At last!’ he exclaimed and opened the door leading into the corridor.

  The man who entered looked like a ghost. Never was a human face more bloodless, more lifeless. So many emotions had passed over it that now it expressed none.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so you are in here! Well, it’s over!’

  He sank into the armchair where the Lady in Black had sat a moment ago, and glanced up at her.

  ‘Your will is done,’ he said. ‘He is where you wished him to be.’

  Rouletabille asked at once:

  ‘Did you see his face?

  ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I did not. Did you imagine I was going to open the sack?’

  I expected Rouletabille to express despair at this reply, but, to my astonishment, he suddenly stepped up to Darzac and said:

  ‘Oh, so you didn’t look at his face! That’s excellent.’ And he shook him effusively by the hand. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘that isn’t our main concern. We must now avoid “closing the circle”. You will help us in that, M. Darzac. Wait a minute!’

  He fell joyfully down on all fours, and I saw again that dog-like look that I had noticed in the Yellow Room. He ran about, under the bed, the table, in and out among the chairs, looking up every now and again to say:

  ‘I shall surely find something that will save us.’

  Turning to Darzac, I said:

  ‘But aren’t we safe already?

  ‘Something that will set our minds at rest,’ said Rouletabille.

  ‘The boy is right,’ said Darzac. ‘We must know how that man got in here.’

  Rouletabille suddenly stood up. He held in his hand a revolver, which he had just found under the wardrobe.

  ‘Ah,’ exclaimed Darzac, ‘you have found his revolver! Fortunately he did not have time to use it.’ As he said this, he drew from his pocket his own revolver, the one that had saved him, and handing it to the young man, remarked: ‘An excellent weapon.’

  Rouletabille took it, discarded the empty cartridge, and compared the revolver with the one he had found under the wardrobe, where it had fallen on dropping from the murderer’s grasp. The latter bore the mark of a London maker and it appeared quite new. All the bullets were in place, and Rouletabille declared that it had never been used.

  ‘Larsan never uses firearms except as a last resort,’ he said. ‘He dislikes making a noise. You may be sure that he merely wanted to frighten you with his revolver, otherwise he would have used it at once.’ Rouletabille handed Darzac’s revolver back to him and put the other one in his pocket.

  ‘What’s the use of being armed now?’ said Darzac. ‘I can assure you there’s no need for it.’

  ‘You think so, do you?’ remarked Rouletabille.

  ‘I’m positive.’

  Rouletabille rose and walked about the room.

  ‘You can never be sure with Larsan,’ he said. ‘Where is the corpse?’

  Darzac answered:

  ‘Ask Madame Darzac. I want to forget about it. I want nothing more to do with this dreadful affair. Whenever I remember that awful trip, with the dying man rolling about at my feet, I shall say: “It was just a nightmare,” and I shall drive it out of my mind. Nobody but Madame Darzac knows where the body is. She will tell you if she chooses.’

  ‘I too have forgotten,’ said Madame Darzac. ‘I must!’

  ‘All the same,’ insisted Rouletabille, ‘you said he was dying. Are you sure he is dead now?’

  ‘I am sure,’ said Darzac simply.

  ‘Oh, isn’t it all finally over! Isn’t everything now at an end?’ wailed Mathilde, with a note of supplication in her voice. ‘Look, daylight! This awful night has gone for ever!’

  Poor Lady in Black! The thought uppermost in her mind was that at last the dreadful nightmare had come to an end. There was no more Larsan! Larsan was dead and buried!

  Suddenly we stiffened with horror, for the Lady in Black gave a mad laugh, which stopped abruptly, and was followed by a still more horrible silence. We dared not look at each other, nor at her. She was the first to speak.

  ‘It is finished,’ she said at last. ‘Finished, finished! I shall not laugh again.’

  Then we heard Rouletabille murmur:

  ‘It will be finished when we know how he got in.’

  ‘What is the use?’ replied the Lady in Black. ‘He has carried the answer to that mystery away with him. He alone could tell us, and he is dead.’

  ‘He won’t really be dead until we know,’ remarked Rouletabille.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Darzac, ‘as long as we don’t know, we shall want to find out, and he will remain present in our minds, but we must drive him away.’

  ‘Let’s do it, then,’ said Rouletabille. And going gently over to the Lady in Black, he took her by the hand. He tried to lead her into the next room, telling her she must rest, but she would not go. She said: ‘You want to drive Larsan away, and I shall not be there!’ We thought she was going to laugh that mad laugh again, and we signed to Rouletabille not to insist.

  The young man opened the door leading into the corridor, and called Bernier and his wife. They only came in because we told them to. Then we held a meeting, at which we agreed to regard the following facts as proven:

  1. Rouletabille visited the rooms at five o’clock, and examined the wardrobe, and there was nobody there.

  2. Since five o’clock the door had been opened twice by Bernier (who was the only person able to open it in the absence of M. and Madame Darzac), first, at a few minutes past five to let M. Darzac pass, and again at half-past eleven to let in M. and Madame Darzac.

  3. Bernier had closed the door when M. Darzac had gone out with us between a quarter and half-past six.

  4. The door had been bolted by M. Darzac as soon as he entered his room upon both occasions, in the afternoon and at night.

  5. Bernier had stood guard outside the door from five o’clock until half-past eleven, with a short intermission of two minutes at six o’clock.

  When we had agreed all this, Rouletabille, who had been seated at Darzac’s table, taking notes, got up and said:

  ‘It’s very simple. We have only one hope, and that is to be found in the two-minute interval at around six o’clock when Bernier left his post. During that time, there was no one watching the door. But there was someone behind it. That someone was you, M. Darzac. Are you absolutely sure that when you entered your room you immediately closed
the door behind you and bolted it?’

  Darzac replied solemnly and without hesitating:

  ‘I am absolutely certain. And I did not draw the bolt until you came with your friend M. Sainclair and knocked on the door.’

  And, as was shown later, he was speaking the truth. We thanked the Berniers, and they went back to their lodge.

  When Rouletabille spoke again, his voice shook.

  ‘Very well, M. Darzac, you have closed the circle. The suite of rooms in the Square Tower is as tightly closed as was the Yellow Room, which was shut fast like a safe, as was the mysterious gallery.’

  ‘You can tell at once that you are dealing with Larsan,’ I remarked, ‘the methods are the same.’

  ‘You are quite right, M. Sainclair,’ said the Lady in Black, ‘the method is the same.’ And she unfastened her husband’s collar, showing us the wound to the throat.

  ‘Do you see?’ she said. ‘It is the same thumbmark. I know it well.’

  There was a moment of painful silence. Darzac was thinking only of the strange recurrence of the mystery that had surrounded the Glandier crime. He repeated what had been said about the Yellow Room.

  ‘There must be a hole in the floor or the ceiling or the walls.’

  ‘There is none,’ replied Rouletabille.

  ‘Then,’ said Darzac, ‘it almost makes you want to bang your head against the stone walls and make one.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Rouletabille. ‘Was there one in the Yellow Room?’

  ‘It’s not the same thing here,’ I said. ‘The room in the Square Tower is closed even more hermetically than was the Yellow Room, for in this instance, it is impossible that anyone could have got in before or after.’

  ‘No, it isn’t the same thing,’ said Rouletabille. ‘It’s just the opposite. In the Yellow Room there was one body missing, in the Square Tower there is one body too many.’

  Then he swayed, apparently about to faint, and caught me by the arm to keep from falling. The Lady in Black sprang forward, but he had the strength to stop her.

  ‘It’s nothing. I’m just a little tired.’