Now was the moment to find out what his conversation with my husband had been about. M. de Balincourt told me that M. Steinheil had talked to him about Félix Faure and the talisman. "He even showed me a very interesting letter written by the late President, on the margin of which there were several notes in your handwriting...."
"You lie," I cried boldly, for I wanted to force him to tell me more....
For a moment M. de Balincourt was taken aback, but he soon pulled himself together, and began to give me such details that it was impossible to doubt his word. "Your husband," he concluded, "tells me everything.... For instance, he told me only yesterday that he does not like to leave the house because he fears burglars; he has received many letters, the contents of which he keeps secret.... He also said the house had been broken into on one occasion...." (That was quite correct.)
It became clearer and clearer that my husband was concealing something from me. I had a further proof of this several months after the tragedy, when Couillard confessed to the examining magistrate that his master had kept up a secret correspondence, and that he, Couillard, had received orders from M. Steinheil, even on May 30th (that is a few hours before the murders were committed) to hide any letter that might come for him under the cloth on the hall-table, and that, above all, Madame must not know anything about them. Two mysterious messages did come by express, and Couillard concealed them as he had been told. These two letters were never traced. Who knows but that if they had been found they might have given some useful clue as to the authors of the murders?
After my conversation with M. de Balincourt I remained at Bellevue for a few days. A mystery yet unsolved is merely irritating, but a mystery which you feel others are determined to prevent you from solving—although you know you must—has a disastrous effect upon the spirit. It is possible to face open danger without flinching, but the bravest of hearts quails before an indefinite peril lurking in the dark and likely to reveal itself you cannot tell when. Imagination inevitably runs amuck and pictures the worst of horrors with a distracting facility.
I spent miserable days at Bellevue, wondering what to do. Sometimes I thought that my anxieties were childish and unfounded, but at other moments, danger seemed as near and real that I half believed that I should touch it if I put out my hand. It was there before me, though I could not see it and could not give a name to it. I thought of President Faure's necklace, of the documents, of the mysterious "German," of my husband's reticence and also of his sudden and inconceivable bursts of confidence in total strangers.... He was nearly sixty now, and on several occasions I had heard him speak to certain of his models as he would have to old and intimate friends. He was both imprudent and nervous, easy-going and suspicious.... What was there at the bottom of this relation with that German? Why were those secret meetings with my husband so carefully arranged that not once had I been able to come face to face with him! Why was not one single letter of his shown to me? And why would my husband never give me any details about his transactions and his conversations with the man?
And now M. de Balincourt had gained M. Steinheil's confidence. He had gained mine, too, but not for long, for, after I had seen him two or three times, I read through him!
I had so little to go by that in spite of every effort to concentrate my whole mind on it I could not solve the problem, and at last gave up all hope of doing so. I was in despair. Years ago I had dismissed the whole matter from my thoughts, but now the mystery had returned with renewed perils. It held me in its tentacles, and I felt that not only was I threatened by it, but also my mother, my husband and my only child, whose lives were so intimately bound up in mine.
Thank Heaven, my little Marthe was with me, and we took long walks with her fiancé and his parents in the Meudon Park. And in the evening we played and sang together....
One morning my husband, whom I had asked to join me at Bellevue, telephoned from Paris, where he had remained to put the finishing touches to a number of paintings destined for the proposed exhibition of his works. He informed me that a very wealthy foreigner had called to order a small portrait of President Fallières, which he wanted for a magnificent album containing drawings by great painters and also a few bars of music by celebrated composers.... He knew a great number of prominent Germans who were coming to Paris for the Horse Show, and whom he would bring to the studio....