St-Cyr suppressed the urge to cry out, I’m here, damn you! Come and get me. He did not want to have to shoot her, was still uncertain if she meant to fire that thing at him. Thought again of the condom on the floor in that bedroom, said, Sex, eh? Sex before the killing?
He reached the first staircase to the attic again, this time deciding to go up it and not wait for her to venture down the other staircase. One step was placed ahead of the last. There was a railing. He ignored it and cocked the Lebel, said silently, Mademoiselle, please don’t do this to me.
Just when he realized she had trapped him was not certain. He did not hear her on the floor below. The bolt, when it came, gave a sudden rush of air, splintering the door at the top of the stairs!
He fired once. The girl dropped the crossbow and began cautiously to raise her hands. ‘Monsieur, I …’ She lost her voice and tried frantically to get it back. ‘Monsieur, I … I have not thought it was you. Please, you must understand I hunted another. My father … I thought he had returned to kill me.’
It was Josianne-Michele. As before, the trousers were too big; her belt, that of a man; the heavy shirt and sweater also.
Gingerly St-Cyr went down to her. She was very pale and badly shaken. ‘Please, I would not have wished to kill you,’ she said softly. ‘At the very last moment, I jerked the crossbow away. Ah, it was enough to have saved you! Forgive me.’
She went down on her knees like a stone before him – trembling, shaking so hard, he panicked at the thought of her succumbing to another epileptic fit. But that didn’t come on and at last he was able to say, ‘Please pick up the crossbow for me, mademoiselle. I could so easily have killed you. The second of two mistakes rectified only at the last moment also.’
They were both well aware of what they might have done. ‘Why did you kill your mother?’ he asked.
She sought no defence in tears, was far too agitated and still in shock. ‘I didn’t! Me, I have found the crossbow in the grand salon beside the fireplace where it has always been kept until recently.’
Ah Nom de Dieu, was she lying? ‘When did you get here?’
Was he to be her judge? ‘Two days ago. Two days of trying to keep myself awake knowing he might come for me.’
‘Then who was it made love in Angelique Girard’s bedroom? Come, come, mademoiselle, I saw the evidence. Recent, so recent they can only have left the house as I entered the grounds by the back gate.’
The tears began – perhaps it was the sudden realization of what she’d almost done; perhaps the bitterness of what she’d found.
‘Angelique and my father, Carlo Buemondi. He was rutting at her like a boar in heat, monsieur, while that one cried out her thirst for more.’
‘Then he hadn’t come to kill you, had he?’
Why must he look at her the way he did? ‘No. No, he hadn’t come to kill me.’
St-Cyr fingered the polished ironwood of the crossbow’s stock. The thing was heavy but quite portable. She could have carried it in a rucksack. The arms of the windlass that pulled the powerful bowstring back had been detached. These could also be in that same rucksack. He’d seen it in the kitchen on the floor beside the stove. Ah yes. Merde!
‘Was your father the one to put the crossbow back where it belonged?’ he asked, and when she didn’t answer, he said, ‘Mademoiselle, you were hunting a man you believed would kill you, isn’t that correct?’ He dropped his voice to a gentleness she could only find unsettling. ‘You were very good at it, Mademoiselle Buemondi. In all my days as a detective, and there have been many of them, only once have I found myself pitted against someone like yourself.’
It was not praise; it was a warning. ‘My father put it back,’ she said, proudly facing him, ‘or Angelique. Me, I really do not know which of them did, Inspector. They are in it together. They both wanted mother to sell this place but she had refused absolutely to even discuss it.’
St-Cyr gave her a moment. She wiped her nose with the back of a hand – he knew he ought to get her something to drink, ought to let her sit down, but he could not do so. Not yet. No, someone … someone … Ah Nom de Jesus-Christ! Had he missed it completely? Had there been someone else in the house? The girl hunting for himself, the other one waiting … always waiting for the inevitable to happen. One dead Surete!
Nervously he glanced along the corridor past her, then back over a shoulder. No one. Nothing. Antiques everywhere, porcelains, Old Masters … exquisite paintings. The bric-a-brac of the wealthy. ‘Then if it was not them, mademoiselle, that you thought had come to kill you, who was it?’
She must return his gaze measure for measure. ‘The Inspector Jean-Paul Delphane. The one from Bayonne.’
In room by room the house flew across the screen of the cinematographer’s brain. He saw the bathroom with its copper tub that was flanged and had such a patina of age about it, saw the jewel case open in Madame Buemondi’s room, its spill of baubles interrupted – yes, yes. Angelique Girard had been about to plunder the place for herself.
He saw Carlo Buemondi as Hermann had described him, a walrus in mud rutting at the naked girl because he had found her stealing – yes, stealing!
‘Where is she?’ he gasped, still lost to the screen of his mind. ‘Where are they now, mademoiselle?’
Her shrug was instinctive and irritating. Immediately she was apologetic. ‘I watched them leave the house together, monsieur. It … it was then that I discovered the crossbow had been returned.’
Oh, is that so? he wanted to shout, but the camera of memory revealed the library’s drapes, the open French windows behind them and … and yes, footprints in the snow – not this girl’s. Not this girl’s.
Gripping her by the arm, St-Cyr propelled her swiftly along the hall and into Anne-Marie Buemondi’s bedroom. Delphane? he demanded of himself, his gaze racing over twin armoires to touch briefly on the canopied bed, the bureau with its mirror, a round table in front of the windows, chairs … a settee …‘Here … is he still here?’ he asked. And setting the crossbow down lightly on the coverlet, took out his revolver again.
They waited. There was little time. Already the day was coming to a close. He did not want to be in the house after dark.
‘Josianne-Michele, you did not come here two days ago. Your tracks in the snow are far too fresh. Your boots are still wet.’
The crossbow, it was so dark; the oil of ages had been absorbed into its wood. Beaten silverwork was all along the stock and her father, he had been proud of it. She thought of her sister, of how she herself had always been his favourite, saw herself naked on the table in his studio, felt the Vaseline on his hands as he had covered her body with it and then had made a plaster cast of her. The masks also. The vessel of her virginity.
‘Mademoiselle, please! You must tell me. That man, the Inspector Delphane, wants to kill me and unless we are both very mistaken, yourself also.’
It was no use. She’d have to tell him, but was the one from Bayonne still in the house? Had she been so intent on this one, and he on her, they had both missed his presence?