The cook hesitated, touched by the recollections evoked by the poor tramp; she looked at the gendarme for a sign of encouragement. Morand shrugged his shoulders and turned a patronising gaze on Bouzille.
“Give him something, if you like, Mme. Louise. After all, he is well known. And for my own part I don’t believe he could have done it.”
The tramp interrupted him.
“Ah, M’sieu Morand, if it’s a matter of picking up trifles here and there, a wandering rabbit, perhaps, or a fowl that’s tired of being lonely, I don’t say no; but as for anything else—thank’ee kindly, lady.”
Louise had handed Bouzille a huge chunk of bread which he immediately interned in the depths of his enormous bag.
“What do you suppose that other chap can have to tell Mr. Paul Pry? He did not look like a regular! Now when I get before the gentlemen in black, I don’t want to contradict them, and so I always say, ‘Yes, my lord,’ and they are perfectly satisfied; sometimes they laugh and the president of the court says, ‘Stand up, Bouzille,’ and then he gives me a fortnight, or twenty-one days, or a month, as the case may be.”
The sergeant came back, alone, and addressed the gendarme.
“The other man has been discharged,” he said. “As for Bouzille, M. de Presles does not think there is any need to interrogate him.”
“Am I to be punted out then?” enquired the tramp with some dismay, as he looked uneasily towards the window, against the glass of which rain was lashing.
The sergeant could not restrain a smile.
“Well, no, Bouzille,” he said kindly, “we must take you to the lockup; there’s the little matter of the rabbit to be cleared up, you know. Come now, quick march! Take him to Saint-Jaury, Morand!”
The sergeant went back to the library to hold himself at the magistrate’s disposal; through the torrential downpour of rain Bouzille and the gendarme wended their way to the village; and left alone in her kitchen, Louise put out her lamp, for despite the shocking weather it was getting lighter now, and communed with herself.
“I’ve a kind of idea that they would have done better to keep that other man. He was a villainous-looking fellow!”
The sad, depressing day had passed without any notable incident.
Charles Rambert and his father had spent the afternoon with Thérèse and the Baronne de Vibray continuously addressing large black-edged envelopes to the relations and friends of the Marquise de Langrune, whose funeral had been fixed for the next day but one.
A hasty dinner had been served at which the Baronne de Vibray was present. Her grief was distressing to witness. Somewhat futile to outward seeming, this woman had a very kind and tender heart; as a matter of course she had constituted herself the protector and comforter of Thérèse, and she had spent the whole of the previous day with the child at Brives, ransacking the local shops to procure her mourning.
Thérèse was terribly shocked by the dreadful death of her grandmother whom she adored, but she displayed unexpected strength of character and controlled her grief so that she might be able to look after the guests whom she was now entertaining for the first time as mistress of the house. The Baronne de Vibray had failed in her attempt to persuade Thérèse to come with her to Querelles to sleep. Thérèse was determined in her refusal to leave the château and what she termed her “post of duty.”
“Marie will stay with me,” she assured the kind Baronne, “and I promise you I shall have sufficient courage to go to sleep tonight.”
So her friend got into her car alone at nine o’clock and went back to her own house, and Thérèse went up at once to bed with Marie, the faithful servant who, like Louise the cook, had been with her ever since she was born.
After having read all the newspapers, with their minute and often inaccurate account of the tragedy at Beaulieu—for everyone in the château had been besieged the previous day by reporters and representatives of various press agencies—M. Etienne Rambert said to his son simply, but with a marked gravity:
“Let us go upstairs, my son: it is time.”
At the door of his room Charles deferentially offered his cheek to his father, but M. Etienne Rambert seemed to hesitate; then, as if taking a sudden resolution, he entered his son’s room instead of going on to his own. Charles kept silence and refrained from asking any questions, for he had noticed how lost in sad thought his father had seemed to be since the day before.
Charles Rambert was very tired. He began to undress at once. He had taken off his coat and waistcoat, and was turning towards a looking-glass to undo his tie, when his father came up to him; with an abrupt movement M. Etienne Rambert put both his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. Then in a stifled but peremptory tone he said:
“Now confess, unhappy boy! Confess to your father!”
Charles went ghastly white.
“What?” he muttered.
Etienne Rambert kept his eyes fixed upon him.
“It was you who committed the murder!”
The ringing denial that the young man tried to utter was strangled in his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to find something to support him in his faintness; then he pulled himself together.
“Committed the murder? I? You accuse me of having killed the Marquise? It is infamous, hateful, awful!”
“Alas, yes!”
“No, no! Good God, no!”
“Yes!” Etienne Rambert insisted.
The two men faced each other, panting. Charles controlled the emotion which was sweeping over him once more, and looking steadily at his father, said in tones of bitter reproach:
“And it is actually my own father who says that—who suspects me!”
Tears filled the young fellow’s eyes and sobs choked him;
