The Burning Court (3 page)

This would not do. All the while he had been aware that the picture of Marie D’Aubray the First was looking up at him, with something like a jeer behind its ethereal smile. Why didn’t he get down and read what this first Marie D’Aubray had done, and not be half afraid of an Easter-card angel whose head had dropped into the guillotine basket? Why put it off? He picked up the manuscript again, thrusting the photograph behind the first chapter. Cross’s genius, he reflected, was assuredly not for titles. After giving the whole book some ponderous title, this writer had attempted to freshen it up with more sensational story-heads. Each was called “The Affair of the—Something”; and in this instance he had called it, “The Affair of the Non-dead Mistress,” which gave a nasty jar.

It began abruptly, with one of Cross’s hand-grenades flung into the camp of fiction:

“Arsenic has been called the fool’s poison; never was anything less aptly named.”

This is the pronouncement of Mr. Henry T. F. Rhodes, editor of
The Chemical Practitioner,
and Dr. Edmond Locard, director of the Police Laboratory at Lyons, agrees with him. Mr. Rhodes goes on:

“Arsenic is not the fool’s poison, nor is it true that its popularity is due to the unimaginativeness of the criminal. The poisoner is seldom stupid or unimaginative. On the contrary, the evidence is all the other way. As a poison, arsenic is still used for the reason that it is still the safest poison to use.

“In the first place, a physician has the greatest difficulty in diagnosing arsenical poisoning unless he has some reason to suspect it. If carefully graduated doses are administered, the symptoms almost exactly resemble those of gastro-enteritis. …”

Stevens’s eyes stopped there. The type grew to a meaningless blur, because his brain was suddenly full of other things. You couldn’t help the thoughts that came into your mind. You might sneer at yourself; call yourself insane or plain disloyal; but who can keep out a random thought? Gastro-enteritis, of which Miles Despard had died two weeks ago. What he was thinking was a joke, a not-very-funny joke. …

“Evening, Stevens,” said a voice just behind his shoulder, and he became aware that he had jumped a little.

He looked round. The train was slowing down for its first express stop at Ardmore. Dr. Welden of the College was standing in the aisle, his hand on the back of the seat, and looking down with an expression as near curiosity as his solid well-trained face would permit. The lean face had a high framework of bones, like an ascetic’s; the jaws were sharp-angled; he wore a clipped moustache and a rimless pince-nez; he remained expressionless except for an occasional chuckle or roar when he told a story. At such times he would open his eyes wide, and point with the cigar he was usually smoking. Welden was a New Englander, a brilliant man at his job, and friendly behind his reserve. He was always soberly well dressed, and carried, like Stevens, a briefcase.

“I didn’t know you were in the train,” he observed. “Everyone keeping well? Mrs. Stevens?”

“Sit down,” said the other, glad that he had pushed the photograph out of sight. Welden was getting out at the next stop, but he compromised by sitting down gingerly on the arm of the seat. “Oh — fine, thanks,” added Stevens, somewhat vaguely. “And your family?”

“Pretty well. The girl’s had a touch of flu; but we’ve all had it, in this weather,” replied Welden, complacently. During this exchange of the usual Stevens was concentrated on wondering what Welden would have said if he had opened this manuscript and found a picture of his own wife.

“By the way,” Stevens said, with some abruptness, “about your hobby of noted murders: did you ever hear of a poisoner named Marie D’Aubray?”

Welden took the cigar out of his mouth. “Marie D’Aubray? Marie D’Aubray? Ah! I see. That was her maiden name, of course.” He turned round and began to grin, throwing into higher relief the bony framework of his face. “Now you mention it, I’ve always forgotten to ask you——”

“She was guillotined in 1861.”

Welden stopped. “Then we can’t be thinking of the same person.” He seemed a little ruffled that the conversation had gone so suddenly from influenza to murder. “In 1861? Are you sure of that?”

“Well, it’s in here. I only wondered, that’s all. This is Gaudan Cross’s new book. You remember there was a rumpus a couple of years ago, about whether or not he was inventing his facts. Just out of curiosity––—”

“If Cross says it’s so,” declared Welden, looking out of the window as the train gathered speed again, “I should take his word for it; but it’s a new one on me. The only ‘Marie D’Aubray’ I’ve ever heard of is much better known under her married name. In fact, she’s a classic. You must have read the case somewhere. Don’t you remember, I sent you to see her house in Paris?”

“Never mind. Go on.”

Though he did not ask a question, Welden was puzzled. “She was the celebrated Marquise de Brinvilliers, a fleshly charmer who will probably remain the outstanding example of fascination allied to gentle murder. Read the report of her trial; it’s sensational enough. In her age, the word ‘Frenchman’ was almost synonymous with the word ‘poisoner’; there came to be so much of it that a special court had to be—” He stopped. “Look it up, and read about the teakwood box and the glass mask and the rest of it. Anyhow, she disposed of a pretty large number of people, including her own family, and used to get her hand in by practising on the patients in the hospital at the Hôtel Dieu. Arsenic, I believe it was. Her confession, read at the trial, would be a curious piece of hysteria for psychologists to study nowadays: it contains, among other things, some remarkable sexual statements. So you are warned.”

“Yes,” said Stevens; “yes, I remember something about it. What were her dates?”

“She was beheaded and burnt in 1676.” Welden got up, brushing ash off his coat, as the train slowed down again. “Here’s my station. If you’ve got nothing better to do over the week-end, you might ring us up. My wife instructs me to tell you that she’s got hold of that cake recipe Mrs. Stevens wanted. Good night.”

His own station was only two minutes farther on. Automatically Stevens put the manuscript into its container, and then into the briefcase. This was all wrong, and nonsensical. This unnecessary confusion with the Marquise de Brinvilliers, he thought, only threw him off and had nothing to do with the case. He kept thinking of only one sentence: “If carefully graduated doses are administered, the symptoms almost exactly resemble those of gastro-enteritis.”

A spectral voice bawled, “Cris-pen!” somewhere at the head of the train, and they pulled to a stop with a clanking sigh. When he got out on the platform he found that this nonsense was blown away by the high, cool night. He went down a flight of concrete steps, and out into the little street. It was rather dim there, for the druggist’s was some way down; but he saw the lights of the familiar Chrysler roadster waiting by the curb.

Marie was inside, holding the door open for him. The moment he saw her, values shrank and altered; there had been some sort of infernal spell about that photograph, which distorted even ordinary flesh. And it was gone now; so much so that he merely put one foot on the running-board, looked at her, and was amused. She was wearing a brown skirt and a sweater, with a light coat thrown over her shoulders like a cloak. Through a shop window near by, a very faint glow fell on her dark-gold hair. She stared back at him, puzzled. Her voice, a contralto despite her apparent slenderness, made the world practical again.

“What on earth,” she said, with a sort of annoyed amusement, “are you standing there grinning for?
Stop
it! Have you been having some dri—” She struggled, and then joined in the inane mirth. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Here you are disgustingly drunk, and I’ve been dying for a cocktail, but I wouldn’t have one until you got here, so that we could get disgustingly drunk together——”

“I am not drunk,” he said, with dignity, “disgustingly or otherwise. It was only something I was thinking. You—here!”

He glanced past her shoulder to see the origin of the very faint glow which was touching her hair and which stood out with such pallor in the dark street. Then he stopped. It came from a shop window. He could see a few small and rather shapeless marble blocks, and black shapeless curtains hung waist-high on brass rings from an iron rail. The pallor appeared to issue from beyond these curtains; it emphasized the iron rather than the brass. Just beyond the curtains, in silhouette, a man was standing motionless. He appeared to be looking out into the street.

“Good Lord!” Stevens said. “It’s J. Atkinson at last.”

“I don’t suppose you’re really drunk,” she observed, “but you seem to have got light-headed. Jump in! Ellen has got something special in the way of dinners.” She glanced over her shoulder at the motionless figure in the window. “Atkinson? What about him?”

“Nothing at all. It’s only that this is the first time I’ve ever seen hide or hair of anyone inside that place. I suppose,” Stevens added, “he’s waiting for somebody.”

She turned the car round, with her own broad style of driving. They went down under the elms and copper beeches, across the Lancaster Highway, and beyond into the gloom where King’s Avenue curved up the hill for half a mile to the gates of the Park. The thought occurred to Stevens that this ought to be Halloween instead of the end of April, for, as they moved away, he could have sworn he heard some one in the street calling his name. But the exhaust of the car was sputtering rather loudly, because Marie had begun to race the engine when they turned round, and he could not be sure. He stuck his head out to look behind, but he did not mention the matter to Marie—especially since the street was empty. She was so completely normal, so delightedly glad to see him, that his notions began to wake self-distrust. He wondered whether over-tiredness could produce such things as he appeared to be seeing and even hearing. Which was nonsense, for he was as strong as an ox, and, Marie sometimes complained, as dense-minded as one.

“It’s nice, it’s nice,” she was saying. “Don’t you feel the way it’s in the air? There’s a lovely show of crocuses by that big tree out by the fence. You remember? And I noticed some primroses this afternoon. Oh, it’s
all
lovely!” She breathed deeply, and flexed her muscles, and threw back her head. Then she turned round, smiling. “Tired?”

“Not a bit.”

“Sure?”

“No, I tell you!”

She looked puzzled. “Ted dear, you needn’t snap my head off. You do need a cocktail. Ted—we’re not going out tonight, are we?”

“I hope not. Why?”

Marie kept her eyes fixed intently on the road, frowning a little.

“Well, Mark Despard has been calling up all evening and asking to speak with you. He wants to see you. He says it’s terribly important, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Then he made some kind of slip, and I thought it must be about his uncle Miles. He sounded very queer.”

She turned round on him that same “spiritual” look he knew so well, and which, with her eyes wide open in the flash of a street lamp—staring straight at him—gave to her face a complete sugary loveliness.

“Ted, whatever it is he wants, you won’t pay any attention to it, will you?”

“Does he?” said Stevens, mechanically. “You know I won’t go out if I can help it. It depends on whether he’s… really got something on his mind, or——”

He stopped, because he did not know what he meant himself. There were times when Marie’s expression retreated from him; he touched fog. That look had doubtless been an illusion of light from the street lamp. For she dismissed the matter of Mark Despard from her mind, and went on talking about some slip-covers she was having made for the living-room furniture in the New York apartment. After he had had a cocktail, he thought, he would bring the matter up, and make a joke of it; and then they could forget it.

He tried to remember whether she had read any of Cross’s books. She might have seen the manuscripts, since she did a great deal of reading for him. Her own reading had apparently been surprisingly large, though sketchy: it was concerned mostly with details of places and people. He glanced at her, and saw that the sleeve of her coat had fallen back. On her left wrist she wore the bracelet—it was a wrought bracelet, having a clasp like a cat’s head with a ruby in the mouth—which he had seen in that accursed photograph.

“By the way,” he said, “did you ever meet up with any of Cross’s work?”

“Cross? Who’s that?”

“He writes those accounts of murder cases.”

“Oh! That! No; but then I haven’t got a morbid mind like some people.” She seemed to grow serious. “You know, I’ve often thought that you—you and Mark Despard and Dr. Welden—being interested in those murders and ugly things—don’t you think it’s a little unhealthy?”

Stevens was flabbergasted. Even in what he called her Elsie-Dinsmore moods, he had never heard her talk quite like this; it struck a wrong note; it was all wrong. He looked at her again, and saw that the plump face was quite serious.

“It has been stated by a high authority,” he said, “that, so long as the American people preserve their wholesome interest in murder and adultery, the country’s safe. And if you should happen to feel morbid”—he tapped the briefcase—“here’s Cross’s new one. It’s a book of women poisoners. I believe there’s a ‘Marie’ in it, too.”

“Oh? Have you read it?”

“Just glanced into it.”

She showed not even any mild curiosity; she dismissed the matter with a frown of concentration as she maneuvered the car into the drive beside their house. He got out, feeling suddenly very hungry and very tired. The frame cottage, built after the New England fashion, and painted white with green shutters, was cheerful with lights through fresh curtains. There was a smell of new grass and lilac; a hill of trees tumbled away behind it, and up the hill, a hundred yards or so, the great wall of Despard Park ran at the end of the avenue which had been named for King Charles the Second.

Inside the house, he would have liked to sit down in a chair and stay there. To the right of the hall was the living-room: with the sofa and deep chairs covered in some reddish-orange material, the fat-bowled lamps on the tables, the shelves of bright-jacketed books let into white panelling, the one good copy of the Rembrandt over the fireplace—even the cocktail-shaker, which has become a part of our lares and penates—in short, typical of a hundred thousand homes. Through the glass doors to the dining-room across the hall he could see fat Ellen creaking about, setting the table.