CHAPTER VIII
That sunny forenoon on which Dr Bonito (carrying the King’s Commission in his pocket, and M. Léotade, whom he had taken up by the way, on the seat of the chaise beside him) came posting down the valley into Le Prieuré, found the whole village in a flutter of excitement, which the apparent opportuneness of his arrival was presently to inflame into a fervour.
Alighting at the doors of the Prefecture, and conning, acidly sardonic, the perturbed faces which, gathered about him, sought to reconcile this frowzy magnifico with an earlier familiar figure, he was conscious of a moral agitation in the atmosphere, which at first he was inclined to attribute to some shadow of the truth having run before him. But in that he was wrong. The announcement of his mission, when it was made, took the populace like a clap of wind at a street corner. The village staggered in it; then rallied hurriedly to appraise its significance. For the moment the fact was important only in its relation to another more instant and insistent. The two combined ran up the public temperature to fever-heat.
M. le Préfet, it appeared, was absent at the time—opportunely for M. le Préfet, in the light of a certain amazing discovery. There were those, indeed—a boon friend, a sympathising official or two—who would have liked to urge, by secret message, upon M. le Préfet, wherever he might be found, the wisdom of confirming his own absence, practically and for ever. But no one knew where he was. For the rest—M. Léotade being long identified with the popular movement, and personally a local favourite—the change, per se, was accepted with an easy resignation. Events, to be sure, had made such a change problematically inevitable. The wonder was that it had come to occur at the intensely psychologic moment. For how could a Prefect, shown guilty, though on circumstantial evidence, of a startling crime, be made to bring about his own arrest? The advent of the newcomers had resolved that difficulty. Mr Trix was M. le Préfet no longer.
The story, as poured by agitated officialdom into the ears of Dr Bonito and his protégé, was soon related. That very morning, it appeared, a goatherd, emerging from the woods over against the ice-fall of the Glacier of the Winds, had been halted petrified before a sight, the like of which had surely never before astounded human vision. For there, embedded in one of the toppling glassy pinnacles, hung poised, before the very eyes of the man, a human body.
Dumbfoundered, he had presently taken out his spyglass, to inquire more closely into this wonder—only to recoil aghast before the revelation it brought him. The obscene thing, huddled in semi-transparency, appeared squatting like a great toad. There was something horribly unseemly in its attitude—an extravagant pose of limb, which in a mass of its bulk was sickeningly abnormal. It might have been an arm flung over its head, until one saw that it ended in a boot. Its face, twisting from under anywhere, came very close to the surface of the ice. It looked as if flattened against a window, grinning out on the observer. As he, that observer, had brought its features into focus, he had uttered a startled cry, and leapt back. The face was the face of Augias, Marquess di Rocco.
There was no mistaking it, by anyone who had once been familiar with its loathed enormity. The man had stood staring and trembling before it, in a deadly fascination. Possibly it was due to the phenomenal weather that the glacier had thus early yielded up its secret. At any rate it had yielded it—the murder was out.
Yes, and literally murder, it appeared. The dead, slowly travelling down through these years, had claimed at last to be his own damning witness. Even while the onlooker gazed spell-bound, the great ice-turret had tilted over, sunk, torn away, and, still holding to its secret in the main, had gone shattering and waltzing down the slope until it had brought upon against a heap of brash. Whereupon, seeing it settled for the time, the peasant had girded up his terrified wits, and pounded down into the village, half-demented with his news.
He had been heard with incredulity; his urgency had compelled his listeners; in a little, half the village was trooping up the moraine. One of the party, the place being pointed out to him, had descended hurriedly upon the glacier to investigate. The venture was not without peril; death was for ever thundering down in the wash of that icy weir. But he had succeeded in reaching the spot in safety; and the next moment a strange cry was carried from him to the watchers on the moraine. Then they had seen him running furiously back to them.
Young Balmat it was. His face was death-ashy; there was an exultant fury in his eyes; his breath hissed from his lungs.
“It is true,” he had gasped: “and he was murdered! The knife is still sticking in him. I know that knife well—it was M. le Préfet’s.”
It was this news which had run down into Le Prieuré, carried by those who were despatched thither for ropes. Within the next hour or two, the block containing the body, like a hideous mass of spawn, had been salvaged and drawn to the edge of the moraine. Then all, who had the stomach to look, might satisfy themselves.
Even as the tale was ended into the ears of Dr Bonito and the other, there came down the village street a hushed and solemn company bearing its awful burden. Silence sowed itself before them, even as if Death walked there, scattering his grain. They carried it to the Church, and laid it on the stone floor of the vestry. There it rested alone, like an infected thing shut away into quarantine. Not a soul would approach it, when once it was delivered to the law.
And how did the law accept its trust? Sourly, as represented by Dr Bonito. This ugly visitation, indeed, was the least agreeable to his schemes. He saw on the instant how, were Cartouche to stand convicted of the crime, his own hold on Madame Saint-Péray would be loosened for ever. If, on the other hand, he were to reveal a certain secret, of which likely only he and the deposed Prefect were cognisant, the indictment of the actual murderer would end, only the more certainly, his chances of extortion—perhaps, even, would be used to claim him as an after accessory to the deed. He was in a villainous quandary, that was the truth. This accursed accident had confounded all his plans.
And to increase his perplexity, the new Prefect—who once secure in his promotion, was already showing an aggravating tendency towards self-importance and independence—betrayed what he thought was an unwarrantable officiousness in taking the matter promptly and masterfully into his own hands. He had Jacques Balmat brought before him at once.
“You have no doubt,” he demanded, “that this body, so astonishingly brought to light, is the body of the late Marquess di Rocco?”
“No doubt whatever, Monsieur.”
“Nor that Monsignore met his death by foul means?”
“Not even he, Monsieur, could resist the full length of that blade. It lies buried in him to the hilt.”
“And it is by that hilt that you identify it?”
“Precisely so, Monsieur.”
“How?”
“It was familiar to me of old, as to many others, in the hand of M. Trix, Monsignore’s protégé. The haft was of jade, surmounted by a golden rat’s head. It was Monsieur’s hunting-knife, well-known.”
“Granted that the knife was Monsieur’s, there remains the question of a motive.”
“It is not for me to suggest one. Monsieur, at least, it is to be believed, foresaw no advantage to himself in the event of his padrone’s marriage. It was whispered, indeed, that he had every interest in preventing it. The two came to words, it was reported, on the subject of a settlement—compensation—what you will. That was just before Monsignore’s disappearance. M. Trix also had disappeared—it would seem opportunely. I know nothing more than that. I repeat only to Monsieur the common gossip.”
Gossip, to be sure; but quite reasonably damning. That evening, Monsieur the ex-Prefect, returning unconcerned to the village, was arrested in the street, and conveyed to the prison of the Belfry. He had still friends; there had been voices timely to warn him; he had laughed them away unheeding. Here, perhaps, was to end his part in that pantomime of necessarianism which men played to the gods. He hoped, in the transformation, that he would be found worthy to be made a harlequin. But he was not sure, judged by his present fooling at Fate’s hands, that he was not destined for pantaloon. He took his deposition and the rest with an imperturbable coolness and good humour.
And apart in the dark church lay the body of his father—a hideous thing. Yet there was one, as inhuman though living, who, moved by a sardonic curiosity, could be found to dare the terrors of that mortuary. In the dead of the night Bonito, candle in hand, stood to look upon the corpse. What he saw is not to be described. The ice had preserved it as whole as when, seven years before, it had plunged into the crevasse—as whole, but—It had enclosed as it had caught it—a thing writhed and racked obscenely—a horrible thing like a Guy-Fawkes. They had chipped its glassy prison away from the dead form. In the warmer air, the frosty glaze remaining had already melted, and the body lay in a pool. It looked as if it were struggling to relax its contortions; to settle into the lines of an ancient repose. Sometimes it actually moved. The terror of the suggestion woke no responsive thrill in the watcher’s nerves. He was as stoic, as callous as a Mongol—not unlike one, indeed, in feature and temperament. He bent down, searching with his candle flame. Yes, there was the rat’s head fastened into the shattered breast—gleaming on it, like Death’s own order. There was even a stain of red about its teeth.
He stood up, frowning, grating his chin.
“The same,” he thought—“No doubt about it. What am I to do?”
The lines on his harsh face deepened.
“If I were to see her—bid her a last price, a great price, a fine sufficing price against my keeping silence at the trial? Would she agree—close—see him condemned unwinking—damn herself to this? Is the venture worth? How now, di Rocco?”
The dead man seemed to nod up his head.