Monsieur Lecoq - Émile Gaboriau (inspiring books for teens txt) 📗

It was icy cold; the arm was rigid as iron.

“Poisoned!” he murmured; “poisoned with arsenic.”

He rose to his feet, and cast a bewildered glance around the room. His eyes fell upon his medicine-chest, open upon the table.

He rushed to it and unhesitatingly took out a vial, uncorked it, and inverted it on the palm of his hand⁠—it was empty.

“I was not mistaken!” he exclaimed.

But he had no time to lose in conjectures.

The first thing to be done was to induce the baron to return to the farmhouse without telling him the terrible misfortune which had occurred.

To find a pretext was easy enough.

The priest hastened back to the wagon, and with well-affected calmness told the baron that it would be impossible for him to take up his abode at the Borderie at present, that several suspicious-looking characters had been seen prowling about, and that they must be more prudent than ever, now they could rely upon the kindly intervention of Martial de Sairmeuse.

At last, but not without considerable reluctance, the baron yielded.

“You desire it, curé,” he sighed, “so I obey. Come, Poignot, my boy, take me back to your father’s house.”

Mme. d’Escorval took a seat in the cart beside her husband; the priest watched them as they drove away, and not until the sound of their carriage-wheels had died away in the distance did he venture to go back to the Borderie.

He was ascending the stairs when he heard moans that seemed to issue from the chamber of death. The sound sent all his blood wildly rushing to his heart. He darted up the staircase.

A man was kneeling beside Marie-Anne, weeping bitterly. The expression of his face, his attitude, his sobs betrayed the wildest despair. He was so lost in grief that he did not observe the abbé’s entrance.

Who was this mourner who had found his way to the house of death?

After a moment, the priest divined who the intruder was, though he did not recognize him.

“Jean!” he cried, “Jean Lacheneur!”

With a bound the young man was on his feet, pale and menacing; a flame of anger drying the tears in his eyes.

“Who are you?” he demanded, in a terrible voice. “What are you doing here? What do you wish with me?”

By his peasant dress and by his long beard, the former curé of Sairmeuse was so effectually disguised that he was obliged to tell who he really was.

As soon as he uttered his name, Jean uttered a cry of joy.

“God has sent you here!” he exclaimed. “Marie-Anne cannot be dead! You, who have saved so many others, will save her.”

As the priest sadly pointed to heaven, Jean paused, his face more ghastly than before. He understood now that there was no hope.

“Ah!” he murmured, with an accent of frightful despondency, “fate shows us no mercy. I have been watching over Marie-Anne, though from a distance; and this very evening I was coming to say to her: ‘Beware, sister⁠—be cautious!’ ”

“What! you knew⁠—”

“I knew she was in great danger; yes, Monsieur. An hour ago, while I was eating my supper in a restaurant at Sairmeuse, Grollet’s son entered. ‘Is this you, Jean?’ said he. ‘I just saw Chupin hiding near your sister’s house; when he observed me he slunk away.’ I ran here like one crazed. But when fate is against a man, what can he do? I came too late!”

The abbé reflected for a moment.

“Then you suppose that it was Chupin?”

“I do not suppose, sir; I swear that it was he⁠—the miserable traitor!⁠—who committed this foul deed.”

“Still, what motive could he have had?”

Jean burst into one of those discordant laughs that are, perhaps, the most frightful signs of despair.

“You may rest assured that the blood of the daughter will yield him a richer reward than did the father’s. Chupin has been the vile instrument; but it was not he who conceived the crime. You will have to seek higher for the culprit, much higher, in the finest château of the country, in the midst of an army of valets at Sairmeuse, in short!”

“Wretched man, what do you mean?”

“What I say.”

And coldly, he added:

“Martial de Sairmeuse is the assassin.” The priest recoiled, really appalled by the looks and manner of the grief-stricken man.

“You are mad!” he said, severely.

But Jean gravely shook his head.

“If I seem so to you, sir,” he replied, “it is only because you are ignorant of Martial’s wild passion for Marie-Anne. He wished to make her his mistress. She had the audacity to refuse this honor; that was a crime for which she must be punished. When the Marquis de Sairmeuse became convinced that Lacheneur’s daughter would never be his, he poisoned her that she might not belong to another.”

Any attempt to convince Jean of the folly of his accusation would have been vain at that moment. No proofs would have convinced him. He would have closed his eyes to all evidence.

“Tomorrow, when he is more calm, I will reason with him,” thought the abbé; then, turning to Jean, he said:

“We cannot allow the body of the poor girl to remain here upon the floor. Assist me, and we will place it upon the bed.”

Jean trembled from head to foot, and his hesitation was apparent.

“Very well!” he said, at last, after a severe struggle.

No one had ever slept upon this bed which poor Chanlouineau had destined for Marie-Anne.

“It shall be for her,” he said to himself, “or for no one.”

And it was Marie-Anne who rested there first⁠—dead.

When this sad task was accomplished, he threw himself into the same armchair in which Marie-Anne had breathed her last, and with his face buried in his hands, and his elbows supported upon his knees, he sat there as silent and motionless as the statues of sorrow placed above the last resting-places of the dead.

The abbé knelt at the head of the bed and began the recital of the prayers for the dead, entreating God to grant peace and happiness in heaven to her who had suffered so much upon earth.

But