The Eight Strokes of the Clock (15 page)

“Why not? Though you did not even shake hands with her, I presume that Madame d’Ormeval is your friend?”

He gave her no time to reflect, drew her into the next room, closed the door and, at once pouncing upon Madame d’Ormeval, who was trying to go out and return to her own room, said:

“No, madame, listen, I implore you. Madame Astaing’s presence need not drive you away. We have very serious matters to discuss, without losing a minute.”

The two women, standing face to face, were looking at each other with the same expression of implacable hatred, in which might be read the same confusion of spirit and the same restrained anger. Hortense, who believed them to be friends and who might, up to a certain point, have believed them to be accomplices, foresaw with terror the hostile encounter which she felt to be inevitable. She compelled Madame d’Ormeval to resume her seat, while Rénine took up his position in the middle of the room and spoke in resolute tones:

“Chance, which has placed me in possession of part of the truth, will enable me to save you both, if you are willing to assist me with a frank explanation that will give me the particulars which I still need. Each of you knows the danger in which she stands, because each of you is conscious in her heart of the evil for which she is responsible. But you are carried away by hatred; and it is for me to see clearly and to act. The examining magistrate will be here in half an hour. By that time, you must have come to an agreement.”

They both started, as though offended by such a word.

“Yes, an agreement,” he repeated, in a more imperious tone. “Whether you like it or not, you will come to an agreement. You are not the only ones to be considered. There are your two little daughters, Madame d’Ormeval. Since circumstances have set me in their path, I am intervening in their defence and for their safety. A blunder, a word too much, and they are ruined. That must not happen.”

At the mention of her children, Madame d’Ormeval broke down and sobbed. Germaine Astaing shrugged her shoulders and made a movement towards the door. Rénine once more blocked the way:

“Where are you going?”

“I have been summoned by the examining magistrate.”

“No, you have not.”

“Yes, I have. Just as all those have been who have any evidence to give.”

“You were not on the spot. You know nothing of what happened. Nobody knows anything of the murder.”

“I know who committed it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It was Thérèse d’Ormeval.”

The accusation was hurled forth in an outburst of rage and with a fiercely threatening gesture.

“You wretched creature!” exclaimed Madame d’Ormeval, rushing at her. “Go! Leave the room! Oh, what a wretch the woman is!”

Hortense was trying to restrain her, but Rénine whispered:

“Let them be. It’s what I wanted … to pitch them one against the other and so to let in the daylight.”

Madame Astaing had made a convulsive effort to ward off the insult with a jest, and she sniggered:

“A wretched creature? Why? Because I have accused you?”

“Why? For every reason! You’re a wretched creature! You hear what I say, Germaine: you’re a wretch!”

Thérèse d’Ormeval was repeating the insult as though it afforded her some relief. Her anger was abating. Very likely also she no longer had the strength to keep up the struggle; and it was Madame Astaing who returned to the attack, with her fists clenched and her face distorted and suddenly aged by fully twenty years:

“You! You dare to insult me, you! You after the murder you have committed! You dare to lift up your head when the man whom you killed is lying in there on his deathbed! Ah, if one of us is a wretched creature, it’s you, Thérèse, and you know it! You have killed your husband! You have killed your husband!”

She leapt forward, in the excitement of the terrible words which she was uttering, and her fingernails were almost touching her friend’s face.

“Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t kill him!” she cried. “Don’t say that: I won’t let you. Don’t say it. The dagger is there, in your bag. My brother felt it, while he was talking to you, and his hand came out with stains of blood upon it: your husband’s blood, Thérèse. And then, even if I had not discovered anything, do you think that I should not have guessed, in the first few minutes? Why, I knew the truth at once, Thérèse! When a sailor down there answered, ‘M. d’Ormeval? He has been murdered,’ I said to myself then and there, ‘It’s she, it’s Thérèse, she killed him.’”

Thérèse did not reply. She had abandoned her attitude of protest. Hortense, who was watching her with anguish, thought that she could perceive in her the despondency of those who know themselves to be lost. Her cheeks had fallen in and she wore such an expression of despair that Hortense, moved to compassion, implored her to defend herself:

“Please, please, explain things. When the murder was committed, you were here, on the balcony … But then the dagger … how did you come to have it …? How do you explain it? …”

“Explanations!” sneered Germaine Astaing. “How could she possibly explain? What do outward appearances matter? What does it matter what anyone saw or did not see? The proof is the thing that tells … The dagger is there, in your bag, Thérèse: that’s a fact … Yes, yes, it was you who did it! You killed him! You killed him in the end! … Ah, how often I’ve told my brother, ‘She will kill him yet!’ Frédéric used to try to defend you. He always had a weakness for you. But in his innermost heart he foresaw what would happen … And now the horrible thing has been done. A stab in the back! Coward! Coward! … And you would have me say nothing? Why, I didn’t hesitate a moment! Nor did Frédéric. We looked for proofs at once … And I’ve denounced you of my own free will, perfectly well aware of what I was doing … And it’s over, Thérèse. You’re done for. Nothing can save you now. The dagger is in that bag which you are clutching in your hand. The magistrate is coming, and the dagger will be found, stained with the blood of your husband. So will your pocketbook. They’re both there. And they will be found …”

Her rage had incensed her so vehemently that she was unable to continue and stood with her hand outstretched and her chin twitching with nervous tremors.

Rénine gently took hold of Madame d’Ormeval’s bag. She clung to it, but he insisted and said:

“Please allow me, madame. Your friend Germaine is right. The examining magistrate will be here presently, and the fact that the dagger and the pocketbook are in your possession will lead to your immediate arrest. This must not happen. Please allow me.”

His insinuating voice diminished Thérèse d’Ormeval’s resistance. She released her fingers, one by one. He took the bag, opened it, produced a little dagger with an ebony handle and a grey leather pocketbook and quietly slipped the two into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Germaine Astaing gazed at him in amazement: “You’re mad, monsieur! What right have you …?”

“These things must not be left lying about. I sha’n’t worry now. The magistrate will never look for them in my pocket.”

“But I shall denounce you to the police,” she exclaimed, indignantly. “They shall be told!”

“No, no,” he said, laughing, “you won’t say anything! The police have nothing to do with this. The quarrel between you must be settled in private. What an idea, to go dragging the police into every incident of one’s life!”

Madame Astaing was choking with fury:

“But you have no right to talk like this, monsieur! Who are you, after all? A friend of that woman’s?”

“Since you have been attacking her, yes.”

“But I’m only attacking her because she’s guilty. For you can’t deny it: she has killed her husband.”

“I don’t deny it,” said Rénine, calmly. “We are all agreed on that point. Jacques d’Ormeval was killed by his wife. But, I repeat, the police must not know the truth.”

“They shall know it through me, monsieur, I swear they shall. That woman must be punished: she has committed murder.”

Rénine went up to her and, touching her on the shoulder:

“You asked me just now by what right I was interfering. And you yourself, madame?”

“I was a friend of Jacques d’Ormeval.”

“Only a friend?”

She was a little taken aback, but at once pulled herself together and replied:

“I was his friend, and it is my duty to avenge his death.”

“Nevertheless, you will remain silent, as he did.”

“He did not know, when he died.”

“That’s where you are wrong. He could have accused his wife, if he had wished. He had ample time to accuse her, and he said nothing.”

“Why?”

“Because of his children.”

Madame Astaing was not appeased, and her attitude displayed the same longing for revenge and the same detestation. But she was influenced by Rénine in spite of herself. In the small, closed room, where there was such a clash of hatred, he was gradually becoming the master, and Germaine Astaing understood that it was against him that she had to struggle, while Madame d’Ormeval felt all the comfort of that unexpected support which was offering itself on the brink of the abyss:

“Thank you, monsieur,” she said. “As you have seen all this so clearly, you also know that it was for my children’s sake that I did not give myself up. But for that … I am so tired … !”

And so the scene was changing and things assuming a different aspect. Thanks to a few words let fall in the midst of the dispute, the culprit was lifting her head and taking heart, whereas her accuser was hesitating and seemed to be uneasy. And it also came about that the accuser dared not say anything further and that the culprit was nearing the moment at which the need is felt of breaking silence and of speaking, quite naturally, words that are at once a confession and a relief.

“The time, I think, has come,” said Rénine to Thérèse, with the same unvarying gentleness, “when you can and ought to explain yourself.”

She was again weeping, lying huddled in a chair. She too revealed a face aged and ravaged by sorrow; and, in a very low voice, with no display of anger, she spoke, in short, broken sentences:

“She has been his mistress for the last four years … I can’t tell you how I suffered … She herself told me of it … out of sheer wickedness … Her loathing for me was even greater than her love for Jacques … and every day I had some fresh injury to bear … She would ring me up to tell me of her appointments with my husband … she hoped to make me suffer so much I should end by killing myself … I did think of it sometimes, but I held out, for the children’s sake … Jacques was weakening. She wanted him to get a divorce … and little by little he began to consent … dominated by her and by her brother, who is slyer than she is, but quite as dangerous … I felt all this … Jacques was becoming harsh to me … He had not the courage to leave me, but I was the obstacle and he bore me a grudge … Heavens, the tortures I suffered! …”

“You should have given him his liberty,” cried Germaine Astaing. “A woman doesn’t kill her husband for wanting a divorce.”

Thérèse shook her head and answered:

“I did not kill him because he wanted a divorce. If he had really wanted it, he would have left me, and what could I have done? But your plans had changed, Germaine; divorce was not enough for you, and it was something else that you would have obtained from him, another, much more serious thing which you and your brother had insisted on … and to which he had consented … out of cowardice … in spite of himself …”

“What do you mean?” spluttered Germaine. “What other thing?”

“My death.”

“You lie!” cried Madame Astaing.

Thérèse did not raise her voice. She made not a movement of aversion or indignation and simply repeated:

“My death, Germaine. I have read your latest letters, six letters from you which he was foolish enough to leave about in his pocketbook and which I read last night, six letters in which the terrible word is not set down, but in which it appears between every line. I trembled as I read it! That Jacques should come to this! … Nevertheless the idea of stabbing him did not occur to me for a second. A woman like myself, Germaine, does not readily commit murder … If I lost my head, it was after that … and it was your fault …”

She turned her eyes to Rénine as if to ask him if there was no danger in her speaking and revealing the truth.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I will be answerable for everything.”

She drew her hand across her forehead. The horrible scene was being reenacted within her and was torturing her. Germaine Astaing did not move, but stood with folded arms and anxious eyes, while Hortense Daniel sat distractedly awaiting the confession of the crime and the explanation of the unfathomable mystery.

“It was after that and it was through your fault Germaine … I had put back the pocketbook in the drawer where it was hidden; and I said nothing to Jacques this morning … I did not want to tell him what I knew … It was too horrible … All the same, I had to act quickly; your letters announced your secret arrival today … I thought at first of running away, of taking the train … I had mechanically picked up that dagger, to defend myself … But when Jacques and I went down to the beach, I was resigned … Yes, I had accepted death: ‘I will die,’ I thought, ‘and put an end to all this nightmare!’ … Only, for the children’s sake, I was anxious that my death should look like an accident and that Jacques should have no part in it. That was why your plan of a walk on the cliff suited me … A fall from the top of a cliff seems quite natural … Jacques therefore left me to go to his cabin, from which he was to join you later at the Trois Mathildes. On the way, below the terrace, he dropped the key of the cabin. I went down and began to look for it with him … And it happened then … through your fault … yes, Germaine, through your fault … Jacques’ pocketbook had slipped from his jacket, without his noticing it, and, together with the pocketbook, a photograph which I recognized at once: a photograph, taken this year, of myself and my two children. I picked it up … and I saw … You know what I saw, Germaine. Instead of my face, the face in the photograph was
yours
! … You had put in your likeness, Germaine, and blotted me out! It was your face! One of your arms was round my elder daughter’s neck, and the younger was sitting on your knees … It was you, Germaine, the wife of my husband, the future mother of my children, you, who were going to bring them up … you, you! … Then I lost my head. I had the dagger … Jacques was stooping … I stabbed him …”