The Walnut Tree (16 page)

I kept walking, but now I was calling Alain's name. Madeleine was right, it wouldn't do for him to be out in this cold for very long. I hadn't thought to see if he had taken his powders with him to his appointment. If he had, then if he was in great pain, he could take one. But that would make him drowsy, not alert enough, perhaps, to hear me call.

I came out of the trees into another small clearing. And as soon as I did, I saw him lying there.

“Alain!” I cried, and rushed toward him, nearly tripping on an exposed root. Was that what he'd done? Had he fallen and injured that shoulder beyond bearing, losing consciousness?

I knelt beside him. He was lying on his good shoulder, his face turned away. Certain he had fainted, I gently pulled him over on his back, into my arms, saying as I did, “My dear, I've come, I'm here, we'll have you home and in bed—”

And as I gathered him close, to warm him a little, his face turning toward me, I saw for the first time the small round hole in his temple, the dark trickle of blood down his cheek, soaking into the cloth of his coat.

And beneath him, half hidden by his left hand, lay his service revolver.

Chapter Thirteen

I
remember crying out, too shocked to think, and then my training took over. Stripping off my gloves, I felt frantically for a pulse, hoping against impossible hope that I would feel the thread of his heartbeat.

But there was none, and his body was already cooling, the warmth that was Alain slipping away here on the half frozen ground.

And still I sat there, cradling him in my arms, unable to cry.

There was Madeleine, waiting anxiously.

I got to my feet, saw that I had his blood on my hands, and stared at them for what seemed like hours but was only a matter of seconds. All I could think of was that Alain's blood was darker than the ruby on my finger.

I stumbled back the way I'd come, to see Arnaud standing patiently by his horses, just as he had done before while Alain brought the revolver up to his temple.

He hadn't heard the shot. He hadn't known, when he was waiting for Monsieur to return, that Alain Montigny was already dead.

What in God's name am I to tell Madeleine?
The thought was like a blow.

When I was close enough for the old man to hear me, I called to him. “You must turn the horses. We shall have to find another way through the trees to a small clearing. Monsieur is there.”

He helped me into the carriage and then did as I asked, but it took us a quarter of an hour to find our way through a tangle of undergrowth to where Alain lay.

By that time I'd told Arnaud that Monsieur was dead.

We collected his body and between us laid it gently in the carriage.

I picked up the service revolver, thrust it under the carriage robe that covered Alain, and told Arnaud to return to the Villard house.

Sitting there in the carriage beside his body, I tried to make sense of what Alain had done.

That was when I decided to carry Alain back to Dr. Lorville's surgery, not to the house. For one thing it would be better for Madeleine. For another I wanted to know what the doctor had told him during his examination.

As the horses trotted along the hard packed earth of the forest track and finally reached the cobblestone streets of the city, turning toward the doctor's surgery, my shock and horror gave way to a numbness that was a blessing. For I would have to be strong for Madeleine. There was no one else.

When Arnaud pulled up by the door, I got down, walked into the doctor's crowded reception room, and said to the young woman sitting there, “I have Monsieur Montigny in the carriage outside. It's urgent that I speak to the doctor at once.”

“He has just finished with a patient, Mademoiselle. Is there something I can do for you? Has Monsieur taken ill? Or hurt himself?”

“Please. I must see the doctor.”

She nodded, and after a five-minute wait that felt like an eternity I was shown into the inner officer where Dr. Lorville spoke to patients after his examinations.

“Mademoiselle?” He offered me a chair across from his desk. “Are you the sister of Monsieur Montigny? I understood that she was married?”

“I'm a close friend of the family. I am here on Madame Villard's behalf. Today did you lead Monsieur Montigny to believe that more surgery was imminent?”

“On the contrary, I told him that his wound and the site of the amputation had healed well, and that I saw no reason why he could not live a fairly normal life. I released him to the care of his own physician. Has he not told you this?”

“There was no—no bad news?”

“Not at all, Mademoiselle. I was quite pleased that he was well enough to get on with his life,” he said again, a touch of impatience in his voice.

I said without softening the blow, “Monsieur Montigny left your surgery this morning and asked his driver to take him to the Bois, where he wished to walk a little. The driver is old and deaf. He didn't know where Monsieur went or why. But growing anxious, he searched a little and then came to the Villard house to tell us that he couldn't find Monsieur. I went back to the Bois with him—and I did find him. He had taken his service revolver with him and at some distance from the main road, he had shot himself.”

As I recounted what had happened, I watched the growing alarm on the doctor's face as he realized why I had come to him.

Rising from his chair, he said, “Where is he? Still in the Bois?”

“I couldn't leave him there,” I said, rising as well. “I couldn't take him to the Villard house. And so I brought him to you.”

“Yes, quite right. I'll make the necessary arrangements. The undertakers . . .” He cleared his throat. “An accident with his revolver while practicing with his other hand. Yes, that will do.”

He ushered me out of the office, following me outside to where the carriage waited.

Arnaud was sitting in the box, a statue in a blue uniform, staring straight ahead, as if refusing to acknowledge what lay in the carriage just behind him.

He turned as we came out of the surgery and watched as the doctor confirmed what I had known from the moment I had knelt beside Alain and gathered him into my arms.

“Yes. Dead. I will have him carried into the surgery through the side door there. I'll sign the death certificate. And I will summon the undertakers. Is there anything more that I can do? I would go to Madame Villard myself, but you can see, my surgery is full. But I advise you to send for her own physician.”

“Madame Villard shouldn't be alone at such a time as this. Could you—would it be possible to arrange for compassionate leave for her husband, Major Villard?”

“I shall see to it. The Captain was quite a hero on the Marne. The Army will appreciate the need for a proper funeral.”

I waited in the cold while an orderly was summoned. Alain's body, still covered by the carriage rug with the coat of arms of the Villard family in its center, was carried inside through the private entrance to the surgery.

Dr. Lorville said, “And you, Mademoiselle? Will you be all right? This has been a great shock.”

“I was a battlefield nurse for the British Army,” I said. “I have seen death before.”

“But not,” he said, considering me, “that of someone close to you.”

“I have seen that too. But thank you for your concern.”

He wasn't satisfied, but he nodded, then helped me into the carriage.

I spoke to Arnaud, and he turned the horses, taking me back to the Villard house.

I looked away from the seat beside me where Alain's body had lain, instead staring out the window and concentrating on how best to break such news to my friend. At least I wouldn't have to tell her Alain was a suicide. Mercifully, Dr. Lorville had seen to that. She would be spared gossip and speculation.

B
etween us, Marie and I got Madeleine upstairs and into her bed after she collapsed.

I went to Alain's room, thinking to find laudanum, hoping to give Madeleine a drop or two in warm milk, to allow her to sleep until her own doctor arrived.

There had been no time for me to mourn. But I could hear, over and over again, what the doctor had said, the words running through my mind like a chorus ever since Arnaud had driven me away from the surgery.

. .
 . released him . . . a normal life . . .

Then why had Alain chosen to die?

I found the laudanum in his dressing room. It wasn't until I was walking back through his bedroom that I saw the small envelope lying at the base of the gilt carriage clock that stood in the middle of the mantel shelf above the hearth.

I expected it to be addressed to Madeleine.

I was so afraid when I lifted it to look at Alain's elegant writing on the front that it might be addressed to me.

But it was not. Henri's name was there in black ink.

I stood there debating whether I should go ahead and open it. In the end, I left it where it was and took the laudanum back to Madeleine.

It was late the next afternoon when Henri walked through the door of his house, climbed the stairs without even stopping to remove his cap and greatcoat, and went directly to his wife's room.

I was sitting with her at the time, and I don't think I will ever forget the look on her face as her husband came toward her, his arms outstretched.

And then she was sobbing on his shoulder as if her heart would break, and I slipped quietly out and into the passage, closing the door gently behind me.

Henri came to find me later. I was sitting in the small morning room where the fire burned cheerfully on the hearth, but my hands felt as cold as death.

He had removed his hat and coat, and his uniform showed the rigors of travel, dusty and unpressed.

“They sent for me straightaway. I thought at first it must be Madeleine . . . or my son. I never dreamed it would be Alain.” He was pacing up and down in front of the fire, unable to settle. “What happened? Do you know? She couldn't tell me, it was too difficult. Some nonsense about Alain practicing to fire his revolver with his left hand.”

I gave him an account of finding Alain's body and taking him to Dr. Lorville's surgery, then said, “There's an envelope on the mantel shelf in his room. I saw it when I went to find laudanum for Madeleine. It's addressed to you.”

He stopped in midstride. “Is there indeed!”

And then he was gone, out the door, his boots ringing on the stairs. Ten minutes later, he came back, the letter in his hand.

“What is it? Please, you must tell me.”

His voice was husky as he spoke. “He has given me certain information, such as where his will can be found and what he wishes to be done with his body. He asked me to beg Madeleine's pardon for his lack of courage. And he asked me to tell you that he loved you too much to tie you to half a man. But that he wished for you to keep his ring, in remembrance of him. He hopes you will be happy, think of him kindly, and understand why he had to make the decision to end his life.”

“Then he knew—he knew, before he kept the appointment with the doctor.”

“Yes. I imagine it was the only way to leave the house without arousing suspicion.” Henri shook his head. “The fool.
The bloody damned fool.
”

And for an instant I thought he would ball up Alain's letter and hurl it into the fire.

Instead he set it carefully on the table, then walked to the cabinet against the wall, took out a glass and a decanter, and poured himself a brandy. Turning, he saw the grief I couldn't conceal, and said, “My dear, you need one as much as I do. You were to marry him. I would give anything—
anything
—to have spared you finding his body.” He poured a small measure into another glass and brought it to me.

I drank it in one swallow, coughed a little, and then set the glass aside as the brandy warmed me a little. “I thought my being here would make a difference. I thought that if I let Alain know that nothing had changed, that I wanted to marry him whatever had happened, he would have a reason for living. But what I have done,” I went on, my voice breaking, “what I have done is make him see all too clearly how bleak his future would be, that he couldn't go on. If I hadn't come, Alain would still be alive. He would have had no reason to kill himself, because he could live in this house as long as he liked, and never have to face what had been done to him by the war. He would have been safe, he could have come to terms with his lost arm in time, and found some measure of peace. Don't you see? It's all my fault.”

For the first and only time since I had known Henri Villard, he took me in his arms, held me tightly for a moment, then moving his hands to my shoulders, he shook me.

“You're wrong, Elspeth. Wrong, do you hear me? Alain killed himself because he was in despair. He wrote to me soon after he arrived in Paris, after the first surgery. He told me that he wanted nothing more in life than to see you again. He got his wish. And after that, what was there to live for, in his mind?”

I hadn't known about that letter. Still, it was hurtful that I had come to Paris to be with him, and still I couldn't save him. I loved Alain. I had learned over these past weeks that I loved him in the same way I loved my cousin Bruce. Perhaps I had from the start, and confused it with more in the excitement of his going off to war. So long ago, it seemed another lifetime. I loved him enough that I would have given anything to save him. And I couldn't.

I don't think Alain ever guessed what I felt. I was so grateful for that. Even so, my sense of guilt was dreadful.

It was something I could never confess to Henri.

Henri let me go with a sigh.

“I must speak to the undertaker. Madeleine is sleeping at last, and they are expecting my visit.”

“I don't know how she will go on,” I replied. “But there is little Henri, he will be her anchor.”

“Yes, but she will be changed forever. I can already see it. That lightness of heart, that intense feeling for those she loved, that need to have the rest of the world be happy with her. I remember the first time I saw her, she was like a lovely butterfly, touching everyone around her with happiness.”

“You have changed as well,” I said. “The war—”

“It has changed all of us. I don't know when it will end. Or how. But we will never go back to the innocence of our youth. That's over. A dream that we can barely remember.”

His voice was so heavy with grief, for himself, for Madeleine, for Alain, that I wanted to cry. But he shrugged off the dark mood, put a comradely hand on my shoulder, and added, “Thank God you were here. That it wasn't Madeleine who found him. You saved my son, and now you have saved my wife. I will not forget.”

He walked to the door without looking back and closed it behind him. I listened to his footsteps fading down the passage.

The funeral, I thought. How am I to get through the funeral, when all I can see is Alain's lifeless body in my arms, his fair hair stiff with drying blood, his blue eyes closed forever, and the warmth that was
Alain
slowly seeping away.