Читать книгу The Poisoners - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 12

Table of Contents

The two men had reached the entrance into the Impasse; a street of dingy houses mostly let out in apartments lay in front of them; at the corner of the Impasse, now revealed by the moon, and unnoticed by them before, was an ancient statue of a female saint; the tall stone figure much defaced by time and weather was transfixed by a stone dagger, the hilt of which appeared above the bosom; the face was thrown back with a distorted expression of agony, which appeared dreadful in the colourless moonlight.

At the sound of the coach wheels Desgrez and his assistant withdrew into the shadow of this gloomy and sinister-looking statue. Shielding their faces with their cloaks and standing motionless they observed a small, light and fashionable coach, without, as far as they could see, any arms or trappings, drawn by a dark horse, come up the shabby street. The moon light fell clearly on the driver and showed him to be a young Negro or Moor wearing neither livery nor cockade, but a plain grey habit.

At the entrance to the Impasse this equipage, which was proceeding very slowly, stopped; the door opened and a woman descended. Impulsively, without waiting for assistance or for the foot-rest to be put down, she stepped into the muddy roadway. A gust of icy wind blew aside her black cloak and showed a grey satin gown, moulded by the wind to the shape of long limbs, and a square-toed grey shoe with a knot of blue ribbons; a fine black veil was passed over her head and knotted over her face so closely that it was impossible to discern her features. It was, however, easy to see that she was in a state of strong emotion; utterly regardless of the place, the weather or the time, she twisted her hands together, and stumbling forward through the mud, hurried to wards the entrance to the Impasse des Fleurs.

She was instantly followed by a well-dressed man of more than middle age who wore a mask; he hastened after the young woman, put his arm round her and with great agitation addressed to her words of encouragement. Some of these the two police agents could hear distinctly; they were: "Jacquetta, it will soon be over and then you will be free and happy!"

"Monsieur, shall we follow them?" whispered Clement.

"No," said Desgrez, though against his own inclination. "It would be stupid for us to be imprudent now. Besides, it may be some very ordinary though ugly intrigue. You and I know what goes on in Paris, Clement. I wish we could follow the carriage, but see, it is already out of sight."

Indeed, while they were looking after the couple who had passed into the shadows of the Impasse, the little coach driven by the Negro had disappeared along the crooked street, which was full of shadows.

The young police agent was shrewd and hard-headed, not given to imagination or fantasy, but even his clear mind had been touched by a vague, indefinable sense of horror by this last incident. There was something in the sincere despair and terror of the veiled girl, in the grim agitation of her companion, in their sudden appearance in this dreary spot, in the small dark equipage driven by the Negro, that had the air of an evil dream.

Charles Desgrez, though he laughed at himself for the feeling, could almost have imagined the whole scene to have been hallucination produced by the blow on his head. Yet, as he had said to Clement, he knew well enough what went on in Paris after dark, a thousand and one intrigues and tragedies that were by no means his business, that did not come within the scope of the law.

But as he and Clement turned towards his own home, he could not resist connecting the frightened girl and her masked companion with the deserted house behind the garden wall, with the attack on himself, with the man whom he had tracked from "The Lily Pot" and with the Widow Bosse and her trade in poisons; he felt baffled and disheartened by the dark silence of the sleeping city.