‘He went into the dressing room …’
‘How did he find it?’
‘Just after the performance a crowd of spectators hurried into the dressing rooms to congratulate the actors as they were removing their make-up. I went in myself. It was easy therefore to locate the place. The actors then went back out into the grounds. Mademoiselle Lasquenet returned to her dressing room later so her murderer then took an enormous risk in following her there because an admirer might have tried his luck with her, or a servant might have encountered him or heard him. He acted very swiftly, otherwise someone would certainly have caught him in the act. He entered the room. Mademoiselle Lasquenet was not worried. All she needed to do was to shout and a servant would hear her. Besides, either the murderer was disguised as a valet and she thought he had been sent by the countess, or he introduced himself as one of the guests. If that were the case, actresses are used to this sort of situation and know how to deal with people tactfully. The man took her by surprise and stabbed her twice. She died before she even had time to scream. So, as you can see, this crime is different from the one involving the Polish woman.’
‘But it’s very similar to the one involving the sentry – killing someone outright by stabbing them only twice. Besides, we can’t say whether the murderer would have mutilated his victim or not if he’d had time.’
‘On that subject, there is one detail. The murderer cut out her tongue.’
Margont shuddered. He could never get used to horror. ‘The tongue …’ Now it was his turn to feel unsettled. Fortunately, he had shaken the prince sufficiently to persuade him to provide all the details.
‘I’ve thought about it long and hard. An anecdote can perhaps explain such a cruel act. By the end of the performance, the audience was completely enthralled. Seeing this, Countess Nergiss suggested that the actors should give a repeat performance of certain scenes according to public request. Everyone joined in the spirit. They were even asked to recite speeches from other plays and were then applauded enthusiastically. From time to time someone asked a question. How could such and such an actor play such an odious character? Did they themselves feel anger when their character was angry? Opinions differed. Some of the actors maintained that you had to use your sensitivity and your emotions to “become” your character in order to perform the role properly. Hence a considerable limitation of roles because any given person could not “become” just anyone. Others thought that the actor remained an actor pretending to be the character. Therefore he had to use first and foremost his intelligence. Hence the possibility for a gifted actor to take on any role. In a word it was the insoluble debate begun by Monsieur Diderot.
‘Mademoiselle Lasquenet favoured the second point of view and proclaimed that she could play absolutely any role. Another actress, whose only fault was to be less beautiful and less talented than her stage partner, jealous of being eclipsed, challenged her to play a whore. How childish it was! They were no longer two young women but two adolescent girls ready to pull each other’s hair out. Mademoiselle Lasquenet gave a very convincing demonstration and even went as far as to caress her breasts. At that moment, the real spectacle was not what was happening on stage but on Countess Nergiss’s face. Mademoiselle Lasquenet continued in her role, this time using her tongue. She ran it over her lips quite indecently … The countess suddenly rose to her feet to applaud and the audience did likewise whilst Mademoiselle Lasquenet, whose cheeks were bright red, bowed politely, still surprised by her own boldness. That was what must have infuriated the murderer and driven him to take such risks. That’s why he cut out her tongue. Such cruelty unleashed by the shamelessness of a susceptible adolescent girl!’
The silence that ensued made the two men ill at ease.
‘Your Highness, General Triaire must provide me with an exact list of guests.’
‘Exact, exact … He’ll note down the names of those he saw.’
‘Can he try to establish who was absent at the time of the murder?’
‘That’s impossible. More than an hour elapsed between the moment Mademoiselle Lasquenet went to change and when the housekeeper knocked on the door. We do not know at what precise time the murderer stabbed her and it took only a few moments. His absence was probably not even noticed and, even if it had been, so many people were coming and going to the buffets, flitting from group to group or goodness knows what. In any case, who would care about someone’s absence in such a crush?’
‘Could General Triaire also do a sketch of the state of the bedroom: the position of the body, the—’
The prince gave a nervous laugh. ‘Are you mad? In any case, nobody entered the bedroom except the countess and the investigators.’
‘Do we know how the murderer got rid of any bloodstains that might have—’
‘I don’t know if any attention was given to those details. There was only one thing that struck the investigators. At one point they thought that the murderer had stolen the tongue because it was nowhere to be found but it had in fact been hidden in one of the pockets of the victim’s cloak.’
The prince’s furrowed brow and his tightly folded arms betrayed his tension. If he had hoped that Margont would dispel his doubts, he really did have cause for annoyance.
‘I think I’ve told you everything about this sad event,’ he concluded. His sentence had the ring of a funeral oration.
‘I am indebted to you, Your Highness. May I leave?’
‘Keep me regularly informed by sealed letter addressed to General Triaire. Ask to see me only if you have something new to tell me.’
Eugène then dived into the mass of messengers whilst Margont lingered in the grove. His thoughts were jumbled and incoherent. Could this affair be linked to his investigation or not? He was not at all convinced of the deranged man’s guilt but nor was he convinced of his innocence. On what basis could he assume that the person he was tracking had also killed the actress? What was the significance – if any – of cutting out her tongue? Unable to make up his mind and torn between various suppositions, Margont was struggling to find a connection between these disparate elements.
That same evening, as he was recounting his conversation with the prince to Lefine, he received the list of guests. Almost two hundred officers from IV Corps. And Triaire pointed out that this list was almost certainly incomplete. Predictably, the names of the four suspects were among them.
CHAPTER 17
THE march resumed its tedious course. The road to Moscow, attractively lined with birch trees, was so dusty that every breath was agony for the lungs. Sometimes they advanced laboriously in the unbearable heat, making a rush for any stagnant water hole, even if it meant suffering diarrhoea. Sometimes they were soaked to the skin by rain or bombarded by hailstones. At night they shivered with cold and got very little sleep. Everything in this country seemed to be on an excessive, inhuman scale. There was also the constant smell of putrefaction coming from the thousands of dead horses, a smell that was all the more abominable as it presaged the slaughter to come. More than a third of the army was sick or off foraging for food and three-quarters of the eighty thousand horses that had set off on the campaign had perished. But the French continued to move forward in the sweltering heat through a countryside that consisted of plains, hills, marshes, forests and charred remains.
Jérôme Bonaparte, the Emperor’s brother, King of Westphalia and a poor tactician who was well out of his depth as commander of VIII Corps, manoeuvred particularly badly. He let slip the opportunity of attacking Bagration’s army. Napoleon, furious that this mistake had allowed the Russian army to escape destruction, relieved him of his command. Out of pique, Jérôme left the army and returned home, taking with him his Royal Guard. The consequences of this error were very serious: the two Russian armies had almost linked up with each other and Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were able to meet up at Smolensk, one of the most important and beautiful cities in Russia. The Russians were determined to defend it, at whatever cost. ‘At last I’ve got them!’ exclaimed Napoleon. On 16 and 17 August the battle raged. The French had already seized a large part of the town when, during the night of 17 to 18 August, Barclay de Tolly once more ordered a retreat.