The Shadow of Frankenstein Page 14

  The situation was not improved when the journey—which had been pleasantly untroubled until then—was suddenly interrupted by one of those frequent accidents that were the bane of carriage travel. It was only a broken wheel, not a broken axle, but the wheel broke suddenly rather than giving due warning, and the subsequent upset injured two of the horses. Because it happened an hour before dawn, some distance from the nearest stop, there was no prospect of getting immediate help. The postillion dutifully rode off on one of the uninjured animals, but Temple knew that the vehicle would not be back on the road for several hours. He decided that he would probably get to Paris sooner if he hitched a ride to a coaching inn on one of the carts that were passing along the road, heading for the Parisian markets with all the velocity their plodding dray-horses could muster.

  He had no difficulty in buying a cheap passage before dawn broke, but the morning was bitterly cold and there was no protection on the cart from the wind. The journey to the next coach-stop was not long, measured in miles, but it was not rapid either, and it dragged on for two hours. When he reached the inn, there was no carriage immediately available for hire, and another hour passed before he was able to resume his journey. By the time he finally reached Paris, it was afternoon, and by the time he had found another vehicle that would take him as far as Miremont, the Sun was sinking rapidly in the western sky. The increasing unease he felt as he drew closer to Miremont was further amplified by the fact that the carriage was being followed, not very discreetly, by a lone rider in hooded traveling-cloak.

  The twilight was not quite gone when Temple dismounted at the étoile crossroad, but the rider was no longer visible. He must have turned off the road a minute or two before Temple got down. Temple watched the carriage rumble on, bound for Pontoise, then pulled himself together. It would be dark by the time he had climbed the hill to the château, whether he went through the village or risked one of the smaller paths that followed a more direct route, and he had no lantern with him.

  Fortunately, he did not have to make a decision. Almost as soon as he had picked up his bag again, the silhouette of a man materialized at the entrance of one of the smaller paths leading away from the signpost.

  “Wait a moment, Mr. Temple!” a voice called. “I’ll light my lantern.”

  It was a voice that Temple remembered—that of Pierre Louchet, who once had worked for him briefly in London, after being stranded there, having served as a messenger. In those days, he had been a woodcutter, but now he was evidently employed at the château.

  Lighting the lantern took time; Louchet was still dependent on flint and amadou to strike a light.

  “How long have you been waiting for me, Pierre?” Temple asked.

  “Not long, sir,” Louchet assured him—although Temple deduced that he must have been loitering nearby for several hours, at least, if Ned Knob had assumed that his journey from Calais would go without a hitch.

  “Is there any news?” Temple asked, as they fell into step.

  “None, sir,” Louchet told him. “No communication has been made as yet. Madame la Comtesse has raised 15,000 livres in gold and silver, and Madame Boehm has probably been able to gather a similar amount, but we do not know whether that will be enough. The waiting is the worst of it, sir. Mr. Richard and Madame Thompson have been out of their minds. They’ll be very glad to see you.”

  “There’s very little I can do, Pierre—at least until the ransom demand arrives. Even then...”

  “I understand, sir—but your being here will make a big difference, at least to Madame Thompson. Did you know that their son was once confined to my care for a while, when he was a babe in arms? I was in my cottage then, and the circumstances were strange, but I learned to love him as if he were my own. I never knew, sir, when I worked for you in London, that he was your grandson, or...”

  “I know, Pierre. I didn’t know of his existence then, let alone his whereabouts. I’ve been the very worst of grandfathers ever since, and have not known how to set about repairing that fault. Now...”

  “It’s not too late, sir,” Louchet said, as he hurried along the narrow bridle-path that provided the most direct route to the château. “She has longed to see you, sir, but... she had no news, no address. I think she would have asked Master Ned to find you long ago, if she could have thought of a good reason.”

  “She did, once,” Temple said. “I came while the old Marquis was still alive—but I did not see her then. She was not yet in residence—I think she was in Paris, with Jeanne. I could have... but no matter. Tell me—is there any information at all regarding the kidnappers? You’ve questioned the villagers, I dare say?”

  “Nothing’s known in Miremont, sir—and nothing escapes the eyes of those gossips unless it’s truly invisible. Whoever they were, they came across country and not by road. They knew the terrain well, and they picked the season well enough—there was no one abroad in the fields that day, for the weather was too cold. The livestock has been gathered in for the winter. I saw four, but there must have been more. I couldn’t see their faces but they were strongly-built and purposeful—former soldiers, I’d judge. But who isn’t a former soldier nowadays? They weren’t the Emperor’s men, I hope—but who can tell to what depths the poorer remnants of a humiliated army might sink? I never thought to cry à l’avantage, but it would have made me weep to receive a reply. Madame Boehm asked me whether they might have been Germans, but the one who spoke seemed French—Belgian French, mayhap, but French nevertheless. Mr. Knob asked me whether their skin was at all discolored, but I have no memory of any such thing. They were pale, not bronzed like southerners, but I couldn’t tell whether they were Normans.”

  “They were mere mercenaries, Pierre. Even if we knew such details, it wouldn’t tell us who sent them, or why. Until we know exactly what they want, we shall have no real idea what we are up against. If it’s only the money...”

  “Madame la Comtesse says that she is willing to pay. Madame Sarah is very angry, but she has agreed. If it’s just the money they want, they’ll release the children, won’t they, sir?”

  “I believe so. The children are too young to identify them in court, or give information that might lead to their capture; there’s no profit in hurting them, and it always make good business sense to keep such vile bargains, for it encourages cooperation on the part of future victims.”

  “Madame Thompson is afraid that they might hurt young Richard, merely to put pressure on the Comtesse and Madame Boehm.”

  “That’s unnecessary, and hence unlikely,” Temple assured him—although he was far from certain that he was right in that estimation. If little Richard really were surplus to their requirements, the kidnappers might well think him useful for demonstrative purposes—and he had to be surplus, had he not? It was surely unthinkable that the real target of this whole insidious plan might be Gregory Temple, and not the Comtesse or late Comte Henri de Belcamp at all.”

  Louchet had the key to the main gate of the château in his pocket, and he locked it behind him when they had gone in. They went into the house by the main door, which the servant also locked behind them. Another Pierre—the Marquis de Belcamp’s old manservant—hurried to meet them.

  “Madame Thompson has fallen asleep,” he said, in a whisper. “Mr. Thompson is with her, but Madame la Comtesse asked that you be taken in to see her before you see anyone else. Is that agreeable?”

  “Of course,” Temple said. “Lead on.”

  Chapter Three

  The Comtesse de Belcamp’s Distress

  The drawing-room was lit by two candelabras, one of which was on the mantelpiece while the other stood on a small table set beside the armchair in which Jeanne, Comtesse de Belcamp, was waiting. She got up when Gregory Temple was shown in, and came towards him. He bowed politely.

  His eyes darted around the room, taking its appearance in at a single glance. The décor was much as he remembered it, although the portraits had been rearranged. The late Marquis now had pride o
f place above the mantel, while his miscreant wife’s portrait had been added to a recess beside the chimney-breast.

  Temple was tempted to pause and study the portrait of Helen Brown at his leisure. When he had had been confronted by John Devil in the cell in Newgate where he had expected to find Richard Thompson, John Devil had told him a fantastic story concerning the locket he sometimes wore around his neck, claiming that the woman whose portrait was within it had been Helen Brown, and that the outlaw Tom Brown had been the result of her brief pseudonymous affair with Temple. The latter part was nonsense, of course—but as to the former, Temple had never been entirely sure. He resisted the temptation, knowing that contemplation would only add to his uncertainty, and hence to his torment.

  “It’s good to see you, Mr. Temple,” the Comtesse said, a little hoarsely. “Last time we met, circumstance made us adversaries, but things are very different now. You are welcome in my home. Please sit down.”

  Temple waited until the Comtesse had taken her own armchair again before sitting in the one facing it. Once she was seated again, the light from the candles shone directly on the Comtesse’s face. The last time Temple had seen her, in 1817, Jeanne had seemed an exceedingly young woman, little more than a child. In the intervening four years, she had aged a great deal. She was a woman in her prime now, and a mother; she was very beautiful, but her beauty was sorely distressed by pain, some of it recent and acute but some of longer duration and chronic. She seemed ten years older than she really was.

  “I never considered you as an enemy, my lady,” Temple assured her. “You may rely on my friendship now, if there is any way I can be of service.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Jeanne said. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t ask my servants to wake Suzanne immediately, but I wanted to see you alone first.”

  “I have not had any contact with Suzanne in four years,” Temple said, grimly. “Another hour will make no difference.”

  “I have always thought that your refusal to communicate with Suzanne must have much to do with her intimate friendship with me,” the Comtesse said. She did not phrase it as a question, but it was a question, and Temple knew that it demanded an explanation—one that he was unready to give.

  “No, milady,” he said. “That was not the reason. Have you any more news to add to what Pierre Louchet has told me?”

  “Alas, no. Do you think that you will be able to help us, Mr. Temple?”

  “I don’t know,” Temple confessed, frankly. “Until the kidnappers make contact, we shall not know exactly what they want, and even when we know what their demands are, it will be difficult to estimate whether they intend to play fair. Unless you intend to involve the Prefecture of Police, we have no alternative but to do as we are instructed and hand over the ransom. If we can get the children returned safely, we might then be able to make plans for its possible recovery, but I cannot be optimistic on that score. I shall act as your intermediary in the negotiations, if I may, and will do my utmost to make sure that the children are returned safely. In all probability, the best we can hope to achieve is that we shall be able to set someone to follow the money once it is handed over—but the kidnappers will expect that, and it will not be easy. Ned Knob is, I’m told, an accomplished bloodhound; I’m sure that he will do his best.”

  “And is Ned Knob the only assistant you have, Mr. Temple?” the Comtesse asked, with brutal directness.

  Temple hesitated a moment, then sighed. “Madame la Comtesse,” he said, “I am an honest man, although I am sometimes required by the necessities of my employment to practice deceit and dissimulation. I do not know what Ned had told you, or has refrained from telling you, but I must make my own judgment in any case. To be perfectly frank, milady, I do not know whether I am alone in having rushed to your aid. Another man was supposed to travel with me from Dover to Paris, but he did not appear to be on the packet-boat. Perhaps he was merely delayed, or perhaps he always intended to make his own way here—in which case, given that I was delayed on the road, he might have arrived in Miremont ahead of me. I dare not call him my assistant, and he has no right to think of me as his, but in this instance, if in no other, we are working to the same end. I do not know what resources he has to deploy, but I am forced to admit that he is a more ingenious man than I am, with a far greater capacity for working apparent miracles. Whatever little I can do to assure a successful outcome to this tragic business, he will more than double—but exactly what he will do, and how, I cannot tell.”

  “Who is this man?” the Comtesse asked.

  “Your husband, milady,” Temple told her. “Comte Henri de Belcamp, alias Percy Balcomb.”

  She did not show any obvious sign of shock or disbelief, but Temple judged that she had not had the news already from Ned Knob. The little man seemed more inclined to honesty now than he had been in 1817, but it seemed that his first loyalty was still to John Devil. It was, after all, to John Devil that he had taken Suzanne’s letter in the first instance.

  There was a long pause before the Comtesse spoke again, but when she broke the silence, her voice was almost steady. “I would be a liar if I said that I had always known,” she said, softly, “but I had always felt something that would make such news, if and when it came, seem reasonable and expectable. I would be a liar, too, if I said that I had hoped—for how could I hope that the man I loved was withholding himself deliberately, refusing even to let me know that he was still alive? And yet... strangely, I do not feel betrayed. I think I came to understand what kind of man he is during our few precious days together. He warned me often enough that things might go badly awry—that he would be called murderer, traitor, madman—and that the path of our love might run anything but smooth. I do not know how he could bear to be alive and not to see his wife or his son, but I do believe that he has not found it easy, and must have thought it a necessity. But he will come now, will he not? Nothing will prevent him but actual death.”

  “He believes it to be possible, milady,” Temple told her, thinking it best to put everything out into the open, “that he may be the real objective of this vile affair—that what the kidnappers want might not be limited to money. He has a secret, which might be reckoned valuable.”

  “He has a secret!” Jeanne de Belcamp echoed. “How can I be surprised by that? Secrets have always been his chief stock-in-trade. How could it be otherwise?” Her eyes flickered sideways, towards the portrait of the late Marquis, from whom the young Henri had had to keep the terrible secrets of his own identity, and his mother’s fate.

  “As yet, we have no way of knowing for sure whether he might be right,” Temple went on. “It may be, though, that the reason he did not catch the packet-boat from Dover to Calais is that he was certain that I would be followed and did not want to be seen with me. I was followed—and something more insidious than that occurred on the coach between Calais and Amiens, where I believe that I may well have made contact with one of the people behind the kidnapping.”

  This time, the Comtesse did seem startled. “Morbleu!” she exclaimed, in a fashion that was not entirely ladylike. “Who?”

  “He called himself Giuseppe Balsamo, but I think that was a teasing lie, intended to be suggestive. He judged that I would recognize the name as that of the self-styled Count Cagliostro, who made such an impact in pre-Revolutionary France as an alleged magician and alchemist.”

  “Magic and alchemy? Does he think that Henri has the secret of the philosopher’s stone, then?”

  “No, milady—but he may well believe that your husband has the secret of resurrecting the dead. The Comte de Belcamp certainly convinced Ned Knob that he has that secret, and, no matter how much I would like to doubt it, I have to admit that he almost certainly does. I have seen the results of his work. They are more horrible than hopeful, at present, but it seems that he and his associate—a Parisian physician named Germain Patou—had barely begun their research. Reanimating the body is, it seems, far easier than reanimating the mind. Most
of his reanimated corpses were mindless idiots—but some were not, and he seems to have been exploring means to help the others remember who and what they had been, with some limited success. His work in London was cut short—but not, it seems, before attracting attention from more than one interested party.”

  “I do not want to be indelicate, Mr. Temple,” the Comtesse said, “but there have been persistent rumors since the beginning of 1817 that you had gone mad. This story is not likely to dissuade its hearers from wondering whether the rumors might be true.”

  “The rumors may well be true,” Temple said, flatly, “but my madness is an obsessive one, not a delusional one. If I am forced to believe and say things that are incredible, it is not because I have lost touch with reality but because the reality that has caught me in its web is one that presents a stern challenge to the imagination of ordinary people. No matter what you think of me, and no matter how this unfortunate business develops, you will discover before very long that the dead can be reanimated, after a fashion—and that the world of the future will be very different from the world of the past, no matter what the limitations of the process eventually prove to be. Ned Knob can tell you more about it than I can, for he has seen a resurrection accomplished, and has talked to a close friend who had been hanged. Your husband can tell you far, far more... if he will deign to show himself and dare to face you.”

  “My husband never lacked daring, Mr. Temple,” Jeanne de Belcamp said. “No matter what you think of him, you cannot deny that. Whatever his reasons have been for letting me think that he was dead these last four years, a lack of daring was not among them.”

  “No,” Temple conceded, “it was not. His madness is a more reckless sort than mine. Young Ned is not mad, though. I do not like the man, or his politics, but I cannot call him mad. With his sanity to support us, our history compels belief.”

  “You think, therefore, that when the ransom demand comes, it will not demand money?”