The Eight Strokes of the Clock (22 page)

The deputy did not reply. He exchanged a few words with the commissary of police and then, beckoning to a detective, ordered him to bring up one of the two motorcars. Then he turned to Natalie:

“Madame, you have heard M. Vignal’s evidence. It agrees word for word with your own. M. Vignal declares in particular that you had fainted when he carried you away. But did you remain unconscious all the way?”

It seemed as though Jérôme’s composure had increased Madame de Gorne’s assurance. She replied:

“I did not come to, monsieur, until I was at the château.”

“It’s most extraordinary. Didn’t you hear the three shots which were heard by almost everyone in the village?”

“I did not.”

“And did you see nothing of what happened beside the well?”

“Nothing did happen. M. Vignal has told you so.”

“Then what has become of your husband?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come, madame, you really must assist the officers of the law and at least tell us what you think. Do you believe that there may have been an accident and that possibly M. de Gorne, who had been to see his father and had more to drink than usual, lost his balance and fell into the well?”

“When my husband came back from seeing his father, he was not in the least intoxicated.”

“His father, however, has stated that he was. His father and he had drunk two or three bottles of wine.”

“His father is not telling the truth.”

“But the snow tells the truth, madame,” said the deputy, irritably. “And the line of his footprints wavers from side to side.”

“My husband came in at half past eight, monsieur, before the snow had begun to fall.”

The deputy struck the table with his fist:

“But, really, madame, you’re going right against the evidence! … That sheet of snow cannot speak false! … I may accept your denial of matters that cannot be verified. But these footprints in the snow … in the snow …”

He controlled himself.

The motorcar drew up outside the windows. Forming a sudden resolve, he said to Natalie:

“You will be good enough to hold yourself at the disposal of the authorities, madame, and to remain here, in the manor house …”

And he made a sign to the sergeant to remove Jérôme Vignal in the car.

The game was lost for the two lovers. Barely united, they had to separate and to fight, far away from each other, against the most grievous accusations.

Jérôme took a step towards Natalie. They exchanged a long, sorrowful look. Then he bowed to her and walked to the door, in the wake of the sergeant of gendarmes.

“Halt!” cried a voice. “Sergeant, right about … turn! … Jérôme Vignal, stay where you are!”

The ruffled deputy raised his head, as did the other people present. The voice came from the ceiling. The bull’s-eye window had opened and Rénine, leaning through it, was waving his arms:

“I wish to be heard! … I have several remarks to make … especially in respect of the zigzag footprints! … It all lies in that! … Mathias had not been drinking! …”

He had turned round and put his two legs through the opening, saying to Hortense, who tried to prevent him:

“Don’t move … No one will disturb you.”

And, releasing his hold, he dropped into the room.

The deputy appeared dumbfounded:

“But, really, monsieur, who are you? Where do you come from?”

Rénine brushed the dust from his clothes and replied:

“Excuse me, Mr. Deputy. I ought to have come the same way as everybody else. But I was in a hurry. Besides, if I had come in by the door instead of falling from the ceiling, my words would not have made the same impression.”

The infuriated deputy advanced to meet him:

“Who are you?”

“Prince Rénine. I was with the sergeant this morning when he was pursuing his investigations, wasn’t I, sergeant? Since then I have been hunting about for information. That’s why, wishing to be present at the hearing, I found a corner in a little private room …”

“You were there? You had the audacity? …”

“One must needs be audacious, when the truth’s at stake. If I had not been there, I should not have discovered just the one little clue which I missed. I should not have known that Mathias de Gorne was not the least bit drunk. Now that’s the key to the riddle. When we know that, we know the solution.”

The deputy found himself in a rather ridiculous position. Since he had failed to take the necessary precautions to ensure the secrecy of his enquiry, it was difficult for him to take any steps against this interloper. He growled:

“Let’s have done with this. What are you asking?”

“A few minutes of your kind attention.”

“And with what object?”

“To establish the innocence of M. Vignal and Madame de Gorne.”

He was wearing that calm air, that sort of indifferent look which was peculiar to him in moments of actions when the crisis of the drama depended solely upon himself. Hortense felt a thrill pass through her and at once became full of confidence:

“They’re saved,” she thought, with sudden emotion. “I asked him to protect that young creature, and he is saving her from prison and despair.”

Jérôme and Natalie must have experienced the same impression of sudden hope, for they had drawn nearer to each other, as though this stranger, descended from the clouds, had already given them the right to clasp hands.

The deputy shrugged his shoulders:

“The prosecution will have every means, when the time comes, of establishing their innocence for itself. You will be called.”

“It would be better to establish it here and now. Any delay might lead to grievous consequences.”

“I happen to be in a hurry.”

“Two or three minutes will do.”

“Two or three minutes to explain a case like this!”

“No longer, I assure you.”

“Are you as certain of it as all that?”

“I am now. I have been thinking hard since this morning.”

The deputy realized that this was one of those gentry who stick to you like a leech and that there was nothing for it but to submit. In a rather bantering tone, he asked:

“Does your thinking enable you to tell us the exact spot where M. Mathias de Gorne is at this moment?”

Rénine took out his watch and answered:

“In Paris, Mr. Deputy.”

“In Paris? Alive then?”

“Alive and, what is more, in the pink of health.”

“I am delighted to hear it. But then what’s the meaning of the footprints around the well and the presence of that revolver and those three shots?”

“Simply camouflage.”

“Oh, really? Camouflage contrived by whom?”

“By Mathias de Gorne himself.”

“That’s curious! And with what object?”

“With the object of passing himself off for dead and of arranging subsequent matters in such a way that M. Vignal was bound to be accused of the death, the murder.”

“An ingenious theory,” the deputy agreed, still in a satirical tone. “What do you think of it, M. Vignal?”

“It is a theory which flashed through my own mind. Mr. Deputy,” replied Jérôme. “It is quite likely that, after our struggle and after I had gone, Mathias de Gorne conceived a new plan by which, this time, his hatred would be fully gratified. He both loved and detested his wife. He held me in the greatest loathing. This must be his revenge.”

“His revenge would cost him dear, considering that, according to your statement, Mathias de Gorne was to receive a second sum of sixty thousand francs from you.”

“He would receive that sum in another quarter, Mr. Deputy. My examination of the financial position of the de Gorne family revealed to me the fact that the father and son had taken out a life insurance policy in each other’s favour. With the son dead, or passing for dead, the father would receive the insurance money and indemnify his son.”

“You mean to say,” asked the deputy, with a smile, “that in all this camouflage, as you call it, M. de Gorne the elder would act as his son’s accomplice?”

Rénine took up the challenge:

“Just so, Mr. Deputy. The father and son are accomplices.”

“Then we shall find the son at the father’s?”

“You would have found him there last night.”

“What became of him?”

“He took the train at Pompignat.”

“That’s a mere supposition.”

“No, a certainty.”

“A moral certainty, perhaps, but you’ll admit there’s not the slightest proof.”

The deputy did not wait for a reply. He considered that he had displayed an excessive goodwill and that patience has its limits and he put an end to the interview:

“Not the slightest proof,” he repeated, taking up his hat. “And, above all … above all, there’s nothing in what you’ve said that can contradict in the very least the evidence of that relentless witness, the snow. To go to his father, Mathias de Gorne must have left this house. Which way did he go?”

“Hang it all, M. Vignal told you: by the road which leads from here to his father’s!”

“There are no tracks in the snow.”

“Yes, there are.”

“But they show him coming here and not going away from here.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“What?”

“Of course it is. There’s more than one way of walking. One doesn’t always go ahead by following one’s nose.”

“In what other way can one go ahead?”

“By walking backwards, Mr. Deputy.”

These few words, spoken very simply, but in a clear tone which gave full value to every syllable, produced a profound silence. Those present at once grasped their extreme significance and, by adapting it to the actual happenings, perceived in a flash the impenetrable truth, which suddenly appeared to be the most natural thing in the world.

Rénine continued his argument. Stepping backwards in the direction of the window, he said:

“If I want to get to that window, I can of course walk straight up to it, but I can just as easily turn my back to it and walk that way. In either case I reach my goal.”

And he at once proceeded in a vigorous tone:

“Here’s the gist of it all. At half past eight, before the snow fell, M. de Gorne comes home from his father’s house. M. Vignal arrives twenty minutes later. There is a long discussion and a struggle, taking up three hours in all. It is then, after M. Vignal has carried off Madame de Gorne and made his escape, that Mathias de Gorne, foaming at the mouth, wild with rage, but suddenly seeing his chance of taking the most terrible revenge, hits upon the ingenious idea of using against his enemy the very snowfall upon whose evidence you are now relying. He therefore plans his own murder, or rather the appearance of his murder and of his fall to the bottom of the well and makes off backwards, step by step, thus recording his arrival instead of his departure on the white page.”

The deputy sneered no longer. This eccentric intruder suddenly appeared to him in the light of a person worthy of attention, whom it would not do to make fun of. He asked:

“And how could he have left his father’s house?”

“In a trap, quite simply.”

“Who drove it?”

“The father. This morning the sergeant and I saw the trap and spoke to the father, who was going to market as usual. The son was hidden under the tilt. He took the train at Pompignat and is in Paris by now.”

Rénine’s explanation, as promised, had taken hardly five minutes. He had based it solely on logic and the probabilities of the case. And yet not a jot was left of the distressing mystery in which they were floundering. The darkness was dispelled. The whole truth appeared.

Madame de Gorne wept for joy and Jérôme Vignal thanked the good genius who was changing the course of events with a stroke of his magic wand.

“Shall we examine those footprints together, Mr. Deputy?” asked Rénine. “Do you mind? The mistake which the sergeant and I made this morning was to investigate only the footprints left by the alleged murderer and to neglect Mathias de Gorne’s. Why indeed should they have attracted our attention? Yet it was precisely there that the crux of the whole affair was to be found.”

They stepped into the orchard and went to the well. It did not need a long examination to observe that many of the footprints were awkward, hesitating, too deeply sunk at the heel and toe and differing from one another in the angle at which the feet were turned.

“This clumsiness was unavoidable,” said Rénine. “Mathias de Gorne would have needed a regular apprenticeship before his backward progress could have equalled his ordinary gait, and both his father and he must have been aware of this, at least as regards the zigzags which you see here since old de Gorne went out of his way to tell the sergeant that his son had had too much drink.”

And he added, “Indeed it was the detection of this falsehood that suddenly enlightened me. When Madame de Gorne stated that her husband was not drunk, I thought of the footprints and guessed the truth.”

The deputy frankly accepted his part in the matter and began to laugh:

“There’s nothing left for it but to send detectives after the bogus corpse.”

“On what grounds, Mr. Deputy?” asked Rénine. “Mathias de Gorne has committed no offence against the law. There’s nothing criminal in trampling the soil around a well, in shifting the position of a revolver that doesn’t belong to you, in firing three shots or in walking backwards to one’s father’s house. What can we ask of him? The sixty thousand francs? I presume that this is not M. Vignal’s intention and that he does not mean to bring a charge against him?”

“Certainly not,” said Jérôme.

“Well, what then? The insurance policy in favour of the survivor? But there would be no misdemeanour unless the father claimed payment. And I should be greatly surprised if he did … Hullo, here the old chap is! You’ll soon know all about it.”

Old de Gorne was coming along, gesticulating as he walked. His easygoing features were screwed up to express sorrow and anger.

“Where’s my son?” he cried. “It seems the brute’s killed him! … My poor Mathias dead! Oh, that scoundrel of a Vignal!”

And he shook his fist at Jérôme.

The deputy said, bluntly:

“A word with you, M. de Gorne. Do you intend to claim your rights under a certain insurance policy?”