The Book of the Damned Page 4

  But then again, I had accustomed them to obeying me, or to tolerating my commands.

  He stood there stolidly now, feet planted, relaxed.

  "Come on," I said. "We will search him out."

  "Yes monsieur," said Hans.

  He plodded after me. Very likely he thought I was drunk, and was humouring me. For Philippe might abruptly return and chastise him otherwise; Philippe might even be behind it all.

  We searched the lower floor first, the two parlours and the dining room. (We would leave the basement area, I told him, the servants' cells, until the last.) Philippe was not there, so upstairs we went. Still he was not found. In the library he did not conceal himself in the curtains or among the volumes. Beneath the massive desk there seemed some chance of locating him, but neither was he there. We ascended to the bedrooms. Hans was tired now, and had begun to remonstrate with me, for the game was gross and silly.

  "He's here," I said. "Can't you tell?"

  "No, monsieur."

  "He is."

  Beyond the last bedroom - its canopy investigated, and even the chamber-pot dragged from under the niching - the gallery led across to the bathrooms at the rear.

  The lamp faltered in this corridor, trying to give up its ghost, as disillusioned now as Hans.

  "Trim the wick. I mean to find the bastard."

  Unhappily, Hans trimmed away, and the light steadied as I squinted into the stone-panelled privy.

  A kind of coldness seemed to flow along this upper floor, disuse perhaps, for he had apparently been gone all the while, those sixteen nights. Or some essence of demons had been trapped between the walls, left over from his seance, and from the ghost-girl. But it was like absence rather than presence.

  Hans began sneezing nervously.

  "For God's sake quiet," I said, as if afraid to disturb something.

  Why? Surely Philippe must know we were upon him?

  The largest of the bathrooms, the remnant of the bath-house which had formerly stood separate from the rest of the building, raised its marble facade into the lamp-smear. Philippe had favoured this one's round tub most often. I kicked the door wide open, and the watery light fell in.

  The sinking moon was there before it, coming sideways through from the vanes of glass in the roof. And there, below, Philippe lay, in the bath.

  Hans gave a high, pig's squeal. He did not drop the lamp; habit, presumably, not to break his master's things.

  After a long time, I said, "Did you never think to come up here?"

  "Oh monsieur," he bleated, "only yesterday - and the maids, to clean - it was always done, every day - '

  "Then it seems he came home this evening."

  "No, no," he said, panting now and sobbing. "No, not possible —'

  "Not through the front door then," I said. I looked from Philippe's uptilted unlistening face, towards the glass vanes. One stayed open. "Climbing on to the roof over the attics," I said, "they let him down through the skylight. How curious. How agile."

  He was clothed in shirt and breeches, his coat and linen were gone, he was barefoot. He was white with a solid thick whiteness, like plaster. The density of his pallor, though not its colour, clogged the room, which was like a winter vault.

  "Go down," I said. "Get Poire and the others. Send someone for the police." He stuttered, and shook. "Don't take the lamp," I cried out in a ritual fear. He implored me. "Take it then. Christ, there's the moon."

  In the cold moonshine then, and alone, I went and looked into Philippe's waxwork mask of plaster. His eyes were shut, and his lips parted. His hair now was darker than his skin. He did not resemble anyone I knew, and seemed dead a year, though it could not have been more than a day.

  The bruises and cuts of the beating I had given him were all healed. Only the barber's gash had not gone from his throat, or it was a fresh one. Prom the puffy dark mottling on his neck, one long dried trickle of blood had flowed out black, running down under his shirt, down to where the nipple had checked it. There was a similar abrasion on the inside of his left wrist, and the sleeve there was stained, plummy, under the moon.

  Then I saw - he had not been quite dead, when returned. No, not quite, for on the bottom of the bath, in his blood, the artist had been drawing, as he had once drawn in the spilled ink… I looked closely. I thought I could make out the indication of a horse, slender and running, with a slender hooded thing leant forward on its back - and before that, two slender running hounds -

  "Philippe," I said, urgently, as if he would hear me.

  What must I feel? I had spent it all, all emotion, all sickness, for her. I was bled out and had nothing over to offer him. Drained like the window of its light, like Philippe of his blood.

  I sat down on the floor by the bath, in the coldness of his death, to wait a while, to see if he could catch me up.

  Called to a painted hall in the Senate Building, I, with several others, was asked various questions. Russe, my surety, described to the officials, while clerks busily scribbled, how I had been taken sick, and spent a night and day in his home, overseen continuously by himself and Mademoiselle Y - , whom he did not wish to bring into the affair unless it were unavoidable. Philippe could not have been dead more than an hour or so, when found in the bath-house, this the doctors had quickly verified. Besides, the operation across the roof, the lowering through the vanes, these postulated several persons labouring in unison.

  One by one, forming into irked and vocal groups, Philippe's friends, amours, money-lenders, debtors, and scavengers extraordinary were summoned, quizzed, and dismissed to pace the antechambers.

  One sensed that, with all the muck that came swiftly to the surface, the murder of Philippe seemed not only inevitable but perhaps aesthetically fitting, to the members of this Senate Investigatory Committee.

  At no time did I think I would be apprehended for anything, despite having arrived at an unsocial hour and plainly knowing the exact whereabouts of the body. Such behaviour was too pat for an assassin, or if I were one, they could not be bothered with me. At length, they turned us all out on the street, as innocent. The Committee had got hold of the idea that some enemy from Philippe's past had done the heinous deed, then fled over the northern borders. This was deemed a proper programme. They liked it, and did not like any of us. If a single murderer had been proved in our midst, I think it would have disgusted them, for evidently the itinerary of Philippe's life had not pleased. They desired the whole thing filed rapidly and put in a cabinet.

  The death of Philippe was discussed generally after that. Many theories, including that of an ingenious suicide, were aired. At the Iron Bowl a fight broke out, and at the Cockatrice two more, though the Surprise and the Imago remained quiet. Indeed, under the black beams of the Imago's medieval roof, they concocted weird scenarios of witchcraft. It was the Devil who rode over Philippe's attics and dropped the corpse into the tub. Had there not been a drawing, in blood, to that effect, all over the walls, ceiling and floor? Better ask Andre, who had found the remains.

  When any of them came to badger me, they found me out, asleep, or drunk.

  "Well, and are you to grace the funeral?" said Le Marc, who had cornered me at last, partially sober, in a library of the Scholar's Quarter. "You had better go. You may want to write about it later on."

  This was quite true. Besides, I had known him almost all his life. I would have to put him to rest somehow, and to see the lid of the

  The Book of the Damned coffin's ponderous cigar-box closed on him might be the only way.

  What a funeral this was. What a brave quantity of followers. Ancient fragile aunts had come from their towered and chimneyed crannies in the pastoral suburbs of Paradys, supported by equally elderly retainers. They doddered on each others' arms in black lace mittens, stove-pipe hats, and veils. Had Philippe ever met any of them, or remembered them? Relics outliving his disastrous sprint of youth, did they hope to be his heirs? (It transpired that in a way I was, he had left me a quantity of largely unspecif
ied, useless and bizarre treasures from the attics, to be collected by myself at my own inconvenience. A patronising, perfectly suitable bequest. Odd he had made a will. We stood amazed.)

  His friends, if such we were to be called, also arrived at the graveyard gate. And, apart from this gathering of vultures, the morbidly curious of the neighbourhood strolled up to take a stare.

  The memorial was to be conducted in the Martyr Chapel of the Sacrifice; he was then to be ladled into the ancestral vault behind the Temple-Church.

  "Hallowed ground," said Russe, to whom Philippe had bequeathed three huge clocks and a dresser too big for any of his rooms. "But he died godless, of course."

  The most savage of the vultures had found dark clothes to wear. I wore the coat I had stolen from him the last time, when I crushed the cherries into his mouth and hair.

  The absurdities of his will, as I had heard them out, kept recurring in my mind. The jokes were too contemporary. They would not have worked when we had all grown old. He must have known he would die young.

  Trap after trap drew up with its black horses and black ribbons, disgorging more and more derelict aunts. Then at last came the coal-black coach, whose black horses, like the steeds of Pluto, had each a black flame of plume upon its head. The overcast was also turning black. It was a hot and airless afternoon, with a sudden rough, similarly airless wind, that tore between the trees of the burial garden, while the immovable massive hills of the Temple-Church pushed up at the monumental sky. We, whipped and blown about below, were of no importance, but anxious not to face the facts, we went on playing at our r61es. Out came the coffin, nails already firmly hammered home. Supposing he had changed his mind? That would be like him, crashing forth in the midst of the service, cursing and shouting for his valet, in ineffable bad taste.

  But the professional porters of death had the coffin up on their shoulders now, and bore it away along the gravel path. The aunts were permitted to go next, then the rest of us. Somehow I walked the very last, an afterthought.

  I was not paying much attention to any of it, the stony fields of asphodel, the shaggy bear-like cypresses. The Chapel, with pale windows, lay ahead, and we would all get there.

  Then came a noise behind me, another carriage, arriving late, pulled up, horses snorting, passengers dismounting, the gawpers at the gate, with a murmur, giving way. I halted, and turned. Along the path towards me walked the illustrious banker-baron, von Aaron, in darkest, greyest mourning, and on his arm, her feet scarcely touching the gravel, she. I took two long steps back, out of their path, standing as if at attention beside an angel on a pedestal of basalt.

  As they went by, von Aaron nodded to me, not looking into my face, but quite courteously, as if out of consideration for my grief. She did not look anywhere, but straight ahead. Her habitual black was augmented by a strange dramatic black veil, like a mantilla, raised on a pearl comb, covering her hair and also most of her face.

  When they were gone, when they and the rest of the funeral had quite vanished into the Chapel, I went after. The usher was shutting the door as I stayed him to get in.

  A full house. I did not look for anyone, but stood at the back, alone.

  The windows had closed with the afternoon's darkness. When the wind clawed at the building, the candles flounced. Quickly, quickly, let it be over with. I rested my head a moment on the stone of a pillar, wondering how many others, overcome by this insidious faintness, might have done so. I must think. But why, and of what?

  For example, had that running man come up the very path we had taken, had he reached this place? I considered. Not the Church, certainly, with its sacred altar of sanctuary, not that, for then how could Satan have claimed him. Where, among the angels and gargoyles, the marble praying children and stone wreaths, had the black hounds pulled him down? I had trodden in the face of his ghost. Or imagined the whole episode. Did I find the red ring in a drain?

  The Chapel was mumbling now with spoken responses, the words of the priest in a magpie gown of white and black stripe. Everything swung to and fro, like a ship in a sluggish storm. Rain pummelled the windows. The shut doors shook. Another latecomer was wanting to get in. What was out there? What rider on what long-maned mare of the daytime night? Of the endless night, inescapable night, washing round us, which would have us all. Antonina, save me from this dark, this precipice into which I, with all the world, must fall -

  Thank God, it was finished. I drew aside again, and let the porters and the cigar-box go out, and the tide of flesh and crepe, the aunts twittering and sniffling now. And caught in the tide, the cameo of a face under the water of its veil -

  The graveyard had become a desert sailed by cloud.

  It was an old mausoleum, and it leaned. Through the tilted doorway they took him, and left him behind there. Some of the aunts were now being assisted. The smell of aqua-vitae travelled up the slope to me. His friends broke and ran, waving their arms. They must hold a wake now, what else was to be done? Drink the man down.

  As the crowd thinned, separated, dissolved, some of it toiling or hurrying past me, I realised the rain had begun.

  I stood in the rain, indifferently trembling, and watched the banker talking quietly to the priest. The door to the vault stayed open. She was inside. Did no one think that strange?

  Of course, none of them mattered. Props, strawboard things, not real at all.

  I walked down the slope in great strides, and went past them and by them, as probably they gazed at me distractedly, and up to the narrow, lopsided door of the darkness, and through.

  There was an array of stone boxes, the family of Philippe already foregathered, but the coffin, being brand new, was shining on its slab in the light of the white candles.

  She was poised the slab's other side, her veil off her face, her naked hand lying on the coffin top, with a crimson rose between the fingers. As I entered, she let the flower go. She let it lie there, a drop of reckless colour on the dark. It might only have been her excuse for coming in, but was not even that - what had she said to me? - rather improper? To drop the bloody tear of a flower on the coffin of one's salon's mere occasional visitor. A cliche, too, madame, of the worst, and you waited, static as a doll, for me, or someone, to come in and see you do it.

  I said, "But you do not like red. Are you insulting him then, madame, his poor helpless body?"

  She said, "My husband is just outside."

  "Don't be afraid," I said, "the extensive branches of his horns would never let him through the doorway."

  "You are so very insolent. Arrogant and rude. You were from the very first. Do you suppose the earth turns around you, monsieur?"

  "Around you," I said. "As I see it."

  The candles lit her eyes, still veiled always from mine.

  "You observe," she said, "how I am placed. I have a husband, and a position in society."

  "And a lover, previously."

  "There is nothing," she said, "for you."

  I could not mention that they had murdered Philippe, one or other or both of them, for she would then resort to the former accusation of blackmail. Otherwise everything just said was irrelevant. Neither the slab nor the box was very wide. I leaned across them and slid my hands around her throat and brought my mouth against her pale cool skin. Beause she did not struggle, there was nothing turbulent or unwieldy, nothing to ruffle the deathly serenity of the tomb. It was also quite fitting that I should kiss her over his corpse.

  She let me, did not stay me or cry to implore help, but her lack of resistance was itself a stay. Neither did she concede. She had no scent, no odour at all, only perhaps the faintest fragrance in her hair, like the clean fur of a cat that has been out on a chill moonlit night. Her eyes were shut, to exclude me, no concession either there. Then they opened, and I saw them stare beyond me, to the horizon. I had only pressed her lips gently. I set my mouth to her cheek, and temple, and the smooth bone of the jaw beneath the ear. The lobe of the ear held no jewel, but a tiny incision remained in i
t, for a jewel's piercing. With that, where I had not ventured to part her lips, I allowed my tongue an instant for its curiosity. Then I took her hands and kissed them in their turn, the palms, the strong and slender backs, where the two silver rings pressed against the knuckle-bones, the wrists; they were icy cold, dipped up from some lake within a piano of snow mountains, rinsed in liquid music, over and over, they burned ten freezing notes across my mouth, before I let her go.

  "You say to me," I told her, "there is nothing for me, of you. Perhaps not, perhaps not." I, now, did not look at her. It seemed to me that, this being the case, her eyes were fixed on me intently, terribly. "But there's no use your telling me anything, or warning me in this conventional mode. I am beyond any such pale. What you say is meaningless. Do you think I have no spirit, Antonina, that I can be told, can be instructed, how I may or may not desire you? Do you believe my emotions are so volatile they will simply evaporate at one sensible soulless little word? What am I? Your servant? No. You are in my blood now. You've coloured everything, stained me, just the way blood stains. I'm marked by you indelibly. It will never come out, the bloody dye of what you are. Stained through and through."

  Each act, even unfinished, or unbegun, knows for itself its proper completion. I left her at once, and went out, into the air and daylight which seemed neither.

  The wet heat almost struck me down, the darkness. Von Aaron was standing solicitously at my elbow.

  "Monsieur St Jean, you do not look well."

  "How is it," said I, "that you know my name?"

  "But you have been so good as to call on us, in company with your friend."

  "Yes. I hardly thought it was through my literary glories."

  "I must repeat, monsieur, you are not at all well. This shocking business of the gentleman who has died… Our carriage is below. May we have the pleasure of driving you to your home?"

  "Why did you come here?" I said. The rain teemed round me, making everything unstable, shifting and falling down; my condition would not matter.