Stone's Fall

  It took some time before I could find out what he died of, and it appears that he hanged himself and was buried in the municipal cemetery outside the town. A woman in a flower shop told me the story. Dr. Stauffer had never recovered from the murder of his wife, she said, and eventually found life too much. The newspapers told me a little more, when I read them in the library. He died in 1887, and Madame Stauffer was murdered in 1885. According to the newspapers, she was killed by a servant called Elizabeth Lemercier. She had been taken in by the family and had been showered with every kindness. But, it seems, she had a naturally criminal temper and turned on her mistress, stabbing her to death with a knife from the kitchen. She then fled and was never seen again, but I came across a report that she had been sighted in Lyon, which is why I am now here, trying to discover the truth. I hope you do not consider I am going beyond your instructions.

  I found a woman who had worked in the Stauffer family. It took some time and a lot of your money, but eventually she talked to me. I had to tell her that I was an assistant reporter on The Times; I added that I would be dismissed from my job if I did not produce the information you needed, as you were a horrid man and this made her more helpful. I apologise for this.

  She told me the newspapers had left out quite a lot of the story to spare what little remained of Dr. Stauffer’s reputation. She said the servant Lemercier had seduced the doctor, that he had given her expensive presents and that the wife had eventually found out. When Madame Stauffer confronted them, and threatened to report the girl—apparently you can be sent to gaol, or an asylum, for such behaviour here—she lashed out with the knife, and fled. The town collectively concluded that Dr. Stauffer was in the wrong to conduct such an affair in the family home (although I think what they meant was that he was wrong to have it discovered) and so concluded that he could not be invited for dinner anymore. It was this neglect which caused him, eventually, to hang himself.

  The report that Lemercier had fled to Lyon was not, as far as I can tell, based on anything solid. The idea came from the fact that a citizen of Lausanne was found dead in an inexpensive hotel in the city, and because he had been a friend of the Stauffer family. I believe that the journalist who wrote the story may have exaggerated in order to make his report more interesting. However, now I am here, I can tell you that the hotel in which the man—a Mr. Franz Wichmann, who died aged forty-six—was found does seem to be a house of ill-repute. This was not part of the newspaper report.

  Here I must apologise for the way in which I was forced to spend some of your money, sir. I do hope you will forgive me. But I went to this hotel all unknowing and it was not until I was inside that I began to realise what sort of place it was. By then the woman who runs it had demanded money of me, and I had paid her, thinking that I was renting a room. It was only when I was asked to choose a girl that I realised my mistake.

  I looked up and grinned. Truly Jules was a very poor liar; but I had a sneaking admiration for his cheek.

  Naturally, I was horrified, but I decided to disguise my shock, in order to be able to ask questions. So I told the old woman that I wished to wait, and asked to talk a bit. She took this to be a sign of nervousness—and I was really not very comfortable—and got one of the girls to join me.

  I will not go into the details, if you do not mind, but we talked for some time. She was really very nice. And she remembered the death of Mr. Wichmann very well. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as the house was closed down by the police for a while, and all the people who worked there had to find their work on the streets, which they do not like very much.

  The girl involved was called Virginie—none of them have second names—but she knew little else about her. They do not talk very much about their lives, it seems. Mr. Wichmann was not a regular visitor, he came once and went with one of the girls, and apparently glimpsed Virginie as he left. He was found the next morning in his room dead, with a knife wound through his heart. Virginie had vanished.

  At least, this is what that girl said. The girl Virginie was never seen again, and I do not think the police looked very hard for her. She was, by all accounts, quiet and very well behaved. She associated little with her colleagues, but preferred to sit and read while waiting for a client. She was not very popular with them, as they gained the impression she considered herself better than they were.

  I hope, Mr. Cort, that you do not consider that I have wasted my time and your money in finding all this out, and that you approve of my efforts. I will take the train back tomorrow morning.

  I burned the letter, once I had read it carefully; I do not keep stray pieces of paper around if they are not needed. Then I sat and thought. The connection, from Elizabeth Lemercier to Virginie to Countess Elizabeth Hadik-Barkoczy von Futak uns Szala was easy for me to see. And if all of this, or enough of this, was in the diary, Elizabeth was correct to be worried. If Jules had got the story right, then she could face the guillotine.

  But there was no time to do anything today, nor anything to do. I had to wait for Drennan to resurface; I was dependent on him. Still, I thought about the problem carefully as I made my way to Longchamp after lunch. I was not looking forward to it. I hate horse racing; I have never seen the point of it. Horses I like—I used to go riding quite often when I stayed with the Campbells in Scotland in my youth—and there are few finer experiences than getting up on a good horse at dawn, and riding off over the moors. The beasts have their own personalities; they really can become your friend, if you know how to deal with them. But racing around a course, with thousands of overdressed, pampered spectators shouting them on? The animals are so much more worthy than the people, who generally have little interest in the horses at all. They are there to be there, to be seen and to waste money. My day at Longchamp was not for pleasure.

  I had a frantic morning gathering more information on François Hubert than M. Steinberg had been able to give me. And I was still in a state of shock over my encounter with Simon. It had deeply disturbed me; I did not see what else I could have done, but the ease with which I came to that conclusion, and acted on it, I found unsettling in the extreme. So, with François Hubert I was sloppy; I allowed myself to pay far too much for trivial information, gave away too much, because I was in a hurry and overtired.

  My efforts at least produced enough to make me confident of success. M. Hubert was the head of the bonds department at Credit International; it was he who oversaw the bank’s participation in loan issues, who determined what stake they would take. All very well; most large banks now have such people and they are growing in importance. That in itself was not a great deal of use. More important was the information that M. Hubert liked gambling far too much for a man in his position, and that he liked a whole succession of women more than a married man should. Put those together and you had a picture of someone deeply in debt and, naturally, you begin to wonder where the money was coming from. Such a person can be persuaded to answer questions with no great difficulty.

  There was, of course, the problem of finding him. I had read my Zola and remembered well the scene in Nana, the description of the vast crowds, the innumerable carriages from fiacres to hay wagons, the masses, the bourgeoisie, the gratin, all in their different costumes with their different manners, milling about and brought together by the desire to gamble. I anticipated difficulties, saw myself pushing through the throngs, and never even glimpsing my quarry. I had considered asking Elizabeth to come with me so I could tell her about Simon at the same time as I looked, not that she would have accepted.

  The idea had a certain charm; she was the Nana of her age, but very much more sophisticated and self-assured. Not for her the fate of Zola’s whore, who was created solely so that her fall could be charted, to prove the cruelty of human life. Elizabeth had dedicated herself to proving the opposite, that the individual could triumph, that fate is not determined. I wished her well. And I worried about the warning given to me by Madame Kollwitz. And about those diaries. And about Drennan.

>   But Elizabeth hated horses, she had told me once, and disliked gambling. She did not take chances; that was her main characteristic. She was no Nana, consuming men for the sake of it, reducing them to poverty or suicide because she could. She belonged to a different generation, the age of business. She bought and sold, and built up her capital. Clear-eyed and certainly more intelligent than Zola’s creation, and certainly less likely to die alone in a hotel room. Elizabeth did not intend to burn brightly and die young.

  In fact, the problem of finding M. Hubert was very much smaller than I had anticipated. Zola (who can never resist the gaudy and vulgar) described one of the great events of the racing year, which attracted the multitudes. For the most part, though, Longchamp was very much more homespun; the daily events attracted only the truly dedicated, or the truly possessed. Some of the horses looked as though they would rather be living out their old age in a pleasant meadow somewhere, and at least three of the jockeys might have done better by their employers had they eaten a good deal less. All in all, the atmosphere was more like a village fête than a great racecourse; the crowd numbered a few hundred, and the bookies had turned up out of duty, rather than because of any prospect of making serious money. The great refreshment areas were all closed; the stands were empty; there was no buzz of anticipation. Indeed, the air was rather a melancholy one, the spectators knowing they were not going to be greatly excited, and realising all too well that they were there simply because they could not stay away. Nor was it even an agreeable day, with a warm sun to provide some compensation for the lack of other pleasures. Instead, the sky was low and grey, and threatened rain at any moment; the wind had a chill in it, which made me regret not having brought my thicker winter coat.

  For the most part, the crowd was of the shopkeeper class, with an air of desperation to their neatness, faces which were never quite right—too pinched, too ruddy, their voices too loud or too quiet. I observed them all swiftly, and dismissed them just as fast. Only one man could possibly have been a senior employee of Credit International, and he stood alone, studying his racing card with the calm of the professional, showing no emotion or interest in what he was doing. He was utterly unremarkable; had there been a greater crowd I would have stood no chance whatsoever of finding him. I watched as he approached a bookie, paid over some money, heaved a great sigh and then retreated, though not to watch the race. His interest was abstract; it seemed as though he could spend the entire afternoon there without bothering to look at a single horse. He was obsessed with numbers, not with the sport.

  I followed him as he walked away from the track, hands behind his back, with a slow purposeless gait, then walked up behind him and coughed. “Monsieur Hubert?”

  He turned round to look at me, but did not smile or give any reaction. He didn’t even seem curious.

  “Forgive me for interrupting you,” I said. “My name is Cort, from The Times in London. I would like to ask you some questions, if I may.”

  Hubert looked puzzled. “I am sure you may not,” he replied. “Although I cannot think what you might want to ask.”

  “It is about Argentinian water.”

  Hubert looked very cautious at my question. “I have nothing to tell you whatsoever. It would be utterly inappropriate.”

  “I assure you that your name will never be mentioned—”

  “That is of no significance. Please leave me in peace.”

  “—however, if I am unable to write this story, I might have to write another one. About Amelie Feltmann. Your debts. Things like that.”

  He stared at me in total shock. This, I thought, was simply too easy; the man was pathetic. He could at least put up more of a struggle. I wasn’t even going to have to pay him.

  “Oh, dear God,” he said, with a tremble in his voice. “Who are you?”

  “As I say, I work for The Times. I am writing an article on French banking. And I want to know everything—I mean everything—about the Argentinian bond issue. You are going to tell me.”

  I had expected a few moments of bargaining, at least, but instead he just crumpled up, hands shaking.

  “I knew something like this would happen, sooner or later,” he said. “I just knew it…”

  “Well, you were right,” I replied brutally. “It has. So just count yourself lucky that all I want is harmless information, nothing else.”

  He glanced around him, somewhat in the way you might if you felt your employer could be hovering nearby, watching and listening.

  “Come and take a little stroll,” I said. “I do not think there is anyone who will see you talking to me. And I will never reveal anything at all. Word of a journalist, if you doubt my honour.”

  He sighed heavily, and gave in. The surrender was complete, and I could see that he would now tell me anything I asked him. My opinion of him was not high. I would have thought better of him had he tried to run, or hit me first.

  “So, let’s begin. The Argentinian loan. Why is your bank not participating? Was that your decision?”

  “Oh no. Not me. I am not sufficiently senior to decide a thing like that. I would never dare defy Barings on my own authority. I arrange the practicalities of taking up a subscription, I do not decide what we subscribe to.”

  “So? Who does decide?”

  “Normally there is a committee which evaluates each issue. In this case, it was a decision taken by the Chairman alone.”

  “And that is unusual?”

  “That is unheard of.”

  “How did it happen?”

  He looked around, nervously, once more. “I was told to write a letter refusing to take part. And also instructed to give no reasons why this decision had been taken. Again, this is unusual. It is normally a matter of courtesy to give an explanation, even if it is informal.”

  “And, again, it was the Chairman who gave you these instructions?”

  “Yes. He summoned me personally. I asked why, as in the past Barings’ business has been very profitable. All he said was that this time no one was going to take part. Not a single institution in France was going to touch it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Exactly what I asked. Was there something wrong with it? I asked. But no, he said there was nothing particularly wrong with it. That was why Barings was going to get such a shock. And more than Barings, he said.”

  “And what did he mean by that?”

  “He said no more. But it puzzled me, as I can see it puzzles you. So I listened, you see, and asked questions of my colleagues at other banks. And do you know what I discovered?”

  He was positively voluble now, willing to tell me things I hadn’t even asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “It was true. All the big banks in France will refuse to take any Barings paper. Not only that, I know of two banks in Belgium, and one in Russia, which will also turn it down.”

  “How much is this issue?”

  “In all, about five million pounds. A very great deal of money, but no more than many South American issues and with better prospects than many. Of course, you can argue that too much money has been put into Argentina, and I would sympathise with that view. Sooner or later the markets will have had enough. But if you want to reduce your liability, then this is a foolish way of going about it.”

  “Why so?” I knew the answer to that already, but also knew that the more he told me, the more he would tell me. He hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t taking any notes.

  “Because we hold a substantial amount of South American bonds, and our customers have bought more off us. A failure could panic the whole sector and drive down prices across the board. We could lose a great deal of money. It would be much more sensible to sell off stock first.”

  “And that has not been done?”

  “There has been some selling, but not enough.”

  If South American bonds collapsed, then French institutions would lose money, that was true. But nowhere near as much as English ones would lose. Of all the bonds sold in the
past decade, since Barings discovered South America, at least half the value had been sold in England, the rest had to be spread across Europe and North America. I could not call the figures to mind, although it was obvious that it would send a shock wave through the markets. But nothing that the City could not cope with. The American railroad collapse had been just as severe, but had been surmounted without much difficulty. And the effect would run right across the Continent. Why would banks connive at conjuring up losses unnecessarily? As M. Hubert said, there were much more sensible ways of getting out of markets you feared might be nearing their peak. Bringing them down while you were still fully exposed was foolish, to say the least.

  But he could tell me no more. He confined his interests to bond issues, horses and his lover. He could give no reasons, nor offer any guesses. His was not a speculative mind. I ended up quite admiring him for his little peccadilloes. It showed that he was not entirely an automaton. Somewhere in him there was a little imp, urging him to transgress and, after many years, he had given in. I hoped very much he was enjoying himself, because he was not very good at it. Sooner or later, he would be discovered and his world would crash in ruins.

  “Thank you,” I said when it was clear I had exhausted his knowledge. “You see, you have told me nothing that was so very dangerous. It is a small sin in comparison to your others. And will remain very much more secret than they will.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, apprehensively.

  “Simply that what I could find out fairly easily, then so others can. And will.”

  I bowed to him, and left, leaving him standing, watching me. I am glad to say—what a strange world of amorality I had come to inhabit!—that M. Hubert acted on my warning. I never got the full details, but it appears that he set about using his very considerable talents to embezzle a good deal more money over the next year. When the bank finally discovered that the accounts were not quite what they should be, M. Hubert went to Buenos Aires, and vanished forever.