Fortunately, he had shaken the prince sufficiently to persuade him to provide all the details.
‘I’ve thought about it long and hard. An anecdote can perhaps explain such a cruel act. By the end of the performance, the audience was completely enthralled. Seeing this, Countess Nergiss suggested that the actors should give a repeat performance of certain scenes according to public request. Everyone joined in the spirit. They were even asked to recite speeches from other plays and were then applauded enthusiastically. From time to time someone asked a question. How could such and such an actor play such an odious character? Did they themselves feel anger when their character was angry? Opinions differed. Some of the actors maintained that you had to use your sensitivity and your emotions to “become” your character in order to perform the role properly. Hence a considerable limitation of roles because any given person could not “become” just anyone. Others thought that the actor remained an actor pretending to be the character. Therefore he had to use first and foremost his intelligence. Hence the possibility for a gifted actor to take on any role. In a word it was the insoluble debate begun by Monsieur Diderot.
‘Mademoiselle Lasquenet favoured the second point of view and proclaimed that she could play absolutely any role. Another actress, whose only fault was to be less beautiful and less talented than her stage partner, jealous of being eclipsed, challenged her to play a whore. How childish it was! They were no longer two young women but two adolescent girls ready to pull each other’s hair out. Mademoiselle Lasquenet gave a very convincing demonstration and even went as far as to caress her breasts. At that moment, the real spectacle was not what was happening on stage but on Countess Nergiss’s face. Mademoiselle Lasquenet continued in her role, this time using her tongue. She ran it over her lips quite indecently … The countess suddenly rose to her feet to applaud and the audience did likewise whilst Mademoiselle Lasquenet, whose cheeks were bright red, bowed politely, still surprised by her own boldness. That was what must have infuriated the murderer and driven him to take such risks. That’s why he cut out her tongue. Such cruelty unleashed by the shamelessness of a susceptible adolescent girl!’
The silence that ensued made the two men ill at ease.
‘Your Highness, General Triaire must provide me with an exact list of guests.’
‘Exact, exact … He’ll note down the names of those he saw.’
‘Can he try to establish who was absent at the time of the murder?’
‘That’s impossible. More than an hour elapsed between the moment Mademoiselle Lasquenet went to change and when the housekeeper knocked on the door. We do not know at what precise time the murderer stabbed her and it took only a few moments. His absence was probably not even noticed and, even if it had been, so many people were coming and going to the buffets, flitting from group to group or goodness knows what. In any case, who would care about someone’s absence in such a crush?’
‘Could General Triaire also do a sketch of the state of the bedroom: the position of the body, the—’
The prince gave a nervous laugh. ‘Are you mad? In any case, nobody entered the bedroom except the countess and the investigators.’
‘Do we know how the murderer got rid of any bloodstains that might have—’
‘I don’t know if any attention was given to those details. There was only one thing that struck the investigators. At one point they thought that the murderer had stolen the tongue because it was nowhere to be found but it had in fact been hidden in one of the pockets of the victim’s cloak.’
The prince’s furrowed brow and his tightly folded arms betrayed his tension. If he had hoped that Margont would dispel his doubts, he really did have cause for annoyance.
‘I think I’ve told you everything about this sad event,’ he concluded. His sentence had the ring of a funeral oration.
‘I am indebted to you, Your Highness. May I leave?’
‘Keep me regularly informed by sealed letter addressed to General Triaire. Ask to see me only if you have something new to tell me.’
Eugene then dived into the mass of messengers whilst Margont lingered in the grove. His thoughts were jumbled and incoherent. Could this affair be linked to his investigation or not? He was not at all convinced of the deranged man’s guilt but nor was he convinced of his innocence. On what basis could he assume that the person he was tracking had also killed the actress? What was the significance – if any – of cutting out her tongue? Unable to make up his mind and torn between various suppositions, Margont was struggling to find a connection between these disparate elements.
That same evening, as he was recounting his conversation with the prince to Lefine, he received the list of guests. Almost two hundred officers from IV Corps. And Triaire pointed out that this list was almost certainly incomplete. Predictably, the names of the four suspects were among them.
CHAPTER 17
THE march resumed its tedious course. The road to Moscow, attractively lined with birch trees, was so dusty that every breath was agony for the lungs. Sometimes they advanced laboriously in the unbearable heat, making a rush for any stagnant water hole, even if it meant suffering diarrhoea. Sometimes they were soaked to the skin by rain or bombarded by hailstones. At night they shivered with cold and got very little sleep. Everything in this country seemed to be on an excessive, inhuman scale. There was also the constant smell of putrefaction coming from the thousands of dead horses, a smell that was all the more abominable as it presaged the slaughter to come. More than a third of the army was sick or off foraging for food and three-quarters of the eighty thousand horses that had set off on the campaign had perished. But the French continued to move forward in the sweltering heat through a countryside that consisted of plains, hills, marshes, forests and charred remains.
Jerome Bonaparte, the Emperor’s brother, King of Westphalia and a poor tactician who was well out of his depth as commander of VIII Corps, manoeuvred particularly badly. He let slip the opportunity of attacking Bagration’s army. Napoleon, furious that this mistake had allowed the Russian army to escape destruction, relieved him of his command. Out of pique, Jerome left the army and returned home, taking with him his Royal Guard. The consequences of this error were very serious: the two Russian armies had almost linked up with each other and Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were able to meet up at Smolensk, one of the most important and beautiful cities in Russia. The Russians were determined to defend it, at whatever cost. ‘At last I’ve got them!’ exclaimed Napoleon. On 16 and 17 August the battle raged. The French had already seized a large part of the town when, during the night of 17 to 18 August, Barclay de Tolly once more ordered a retreat.
Bagration was appalled. The two generals were proving to be exact opposites. Barclay de Tolly had a cold disposition. A man of unfailing composure, he was polite, patient and methodical. He never got tired and frequently went without a meal. He was a very competent general and continued to implement a scorched-earth policy even though his general staff, his soldiers and the Russian people were unanimously against it. His unpopularity was growing as the French army progressed. Bagration seemed to have an aura of heroism about him and was feted all the way from St Petersburg to Siberia. He was combative, courageous to the point of foolhardiness, and each step backwards by the Russian army mortified him. But Barclay de Tolly’s main objective was to protect his troops, and to continue fighting in Smolensk would have prejudiced any attempted retreat. The Russians would have been hindered by the congested streets and would probably have ended their withdrawal at the very bottom of the Dnieper, the river that ran through the city. So the Russian army abandoned its positions under cover of darkness, taking with it the icon of Our Lady of Smolensk and setting fire to the city.
IV Corps did not reach Smolensk until 19 August, too late to take part in the confrontation but early enough to witness the consequences.
Working separately, Lefine and Margont had each been gathering information about their suspects. Three days earlier they had decided they would pool the results of their investigations the moment they arrived in Smolensk. Since then Lefine had disappeared. Margont had organised a search for him but to no avail and he was becoming increasingly worried.
Three-quarters of Smolensk had been burnt but it was still a superb and fascinating city. It stretched out
