With a discordant laugh that almost seemed a yell, Jean answered: “Oh, you may be certain that the daughter’s blood will yield him a richer reward than did the father’s. Chupin has been the instrument; but it was not he who conceived the crime. You will have to seek higher for the culprit, much higher, in the finest chateau of the country, in the midst of an army of retainers at Sairmeuse.”
“Wretched man, what do you mean?”
“What I say.” And he coldly added: “Martial de Sairmeuse is the assassin.”
The priest recoiled. “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 wanted to make her his mistress. She had the audacity to refuse the honour; and 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 any one else.” All efforts to convince Jean of the folly of his accusations would at that moment have been vain. No proofs would have convinced him. He would have closed his eyes to all evidence.
“To-morrow, when he is more calm, I will reason with him,” thought the abbe; and then he added aloud: “We can’t allow the poor girl’s body to remain here on the floor. Help me, and we will place it on the bed.”
Jean trembled from head to foot, and his hesitation was perceptible; but at last, after a severe struggle, he complied. No one had ever yet slept on this bed which Chanlouineau had destined for Marie-Anne, saying to himself that it should be for her, or for no one. And Marie-Anne it was who rested there the first—sleeping the sleep of death. When the sad task was accomplished, Jean threw himself into the same arm-chair in which Marie-Anne had breathed her last, and with his face buried in his hands, and his elbows resting on his knees, he sat there as silent and motionless as the statues of sorrow placed above the last resting places of the dead.
In the meanwhile, the abbe knelt by the bed-side, and began reciting the prayers for the departed, entreating God to grant peace and happiness in heaven to her who had suffered so much on earth. But he prayed only with his lips, for in spite of all his efforts, his mind would persist in wandering. He was striving to solve the mystery that enshrouded Marie-Anne’s death. Had she been murdered? Was it possible that she had committed suicide? The latter idea occurred to him without his having any great faith in it; but, on the other hand, how could her death possibly be the result of crime? He had carefully examined the room, and had discovered nothing that betrayed a stranger’s visit. All he could prove was that his vial of arsenic was empty, and that Marie-Anne had been poisoned by absorbing it in the broth a few drops of which were left in the bowl standing on the mantelpiece. “When morning comes,” thought the abbe, “I will look outside.”
Accordingly, at daybreak he went into the garden, and made a careful examination of the premises. At first he saw nothing that gave him the least clue, and he was about to abandon his investigations, when on entering the little grove, he espied a large dark stain on the grass a few paces off. He went nearer—it was blood! In a state of great excitement, he summoned Jean to inform him of the discovery.
“Some one has been murdered here,” said young Lacheneur; “and only last night, for the blood has scarcely had time to dry.”