The Eight Strokes of the Clock Part 34

"She does not suffer very much at present. But she has suffered in the past, the most terrible suffering that you can imagine: since the moment when her two children were run over before her eyes, night and day she had the horrible spectacle of their death before her eyes, without a moment's interruption, for she never slept for a single second. Think of the torture of it! To see her children dying through all the hours of the long day and all the hours of the interminable night!"

"Nevertheless," Renine objected, "it is not to drive away that picture that she commits murder?"

"Yes, possibly," said M. de Lourtier, thoughtfully, "to drive it away by sleep."

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand, because we are talking of a madwoman ... and because all that happens in that disordered brain is necessarily incoherent and abnormal?"

"Obviously. But, all the same, is your supposition based on facts that justify it?"

"Yes, on facts which I had, in a way, overlooked but which to-day a.s.sume their true significance. The first of these facts dates a few years back, to a morning when my old nurse for the first time found Hermance fast asleep. Now she was holding her hands clutched around a puppy which she had strangled. And the same thing was repeated on three other occasions."

"And she slept?"

"Yes, each time she slept a sleep which lasted for several nights."

"And what conclusion did you draw?"

"I concluded that the relaxation of the nerves provoked by taking life exhausted her and predisposed her for sleep."

Renine shuddered:

"That's it! There's not a doubt of it! The taking life, the effort of killing makes her sleep. And she began with women what had served her so well with animals. All her madness has become concentrated on that one point: she kills them to rob them of their sleep! She wanted sleep; and she steals the sleep of others! That's it, isn't it? For the past two years, she has been sleeping?"

"For the past two years, she has been sleeping," stammered M. de Lourtier.

Renine gripped him by the shoulder:

"And it never occurred to you that her madness might go farther, that she would stop at nothing to win the blessing of sleep! Let us make haste, monsieur! All this is horrible!"

They were both making for the door, when M. de Lourtier hesitated. The telephone-bell was ringing.

"It's from there," he said.

"From there?"

"Yes, my old nurse gives me the news at the same time every day."

He unhooked the receivers and handed one to Renine, who whispered in his ear the questions which he was to put.

"Is that you, Felicienne? How is she?"

"Not so bad, sir."

"Is she sleeping well?"

"Not very well, lately. Last night, indeed, she never closed her eyes. So she's very gloomy just now."

"What is she doing at the moment?"

"She is in her room."

"Go to her, Felicienne, and don't leave her."

"I can't. She's locked herself in."

"You must, Felicienne. Break open the door. I'm coming straight on....

Hullo! Hullo!... Oh, d.a.m.nation, they've cut us off!"

Without a word, the two men left the flat and ran down to the avenue.

Renine hustled M. de Lourtier into the car:

"What address?"

"Ville d'Avray."

"Of course! In the very center of her operations ... like a spider in the middle of her web! Oh, the shame of it!"

He was profoundly agitated. He saw the whole adventure in its monstrous reality.

"Yes, she kills them to steal their sleep, as she used to kill the animals.

It is the same obsession, but complicated by a whole array of utterly incomprehensible practices and superst.i.tions. She evidently fancies that the similarity of the Christian names to her own is indispensable and that she will not sleep unless her victim is an Hortense or an Honorine. It's a madwoman's argument; its logic escapes us and we know nothing of its origin; but we can't get away from it. She has to hunt and has to find. And she finds and carries off her prey beforehand and watches over it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and twenty days of sleep and another a hundred and twenty-five? What insanity! The calculation is mysterious and of course mad; but the fact remains that, at the end of a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five days, as the case may be, a fresh victim is sacrificed; and there have been six already and the seventh is awaiting her turn. Ah, monsieur, what a terrible responsibility for you!

Such a monster as that! She should never have been allowed out of sight!"

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau made no protest. His air of dejection, his pallor, his trembling hands, all proved his remorse and his despair: "She deceived me," he murmured. "She was outwardly so quiet, so docile! And, after all, she's in a lunatic asylum."

"Then how can she ...?"

"The asylum," explained M. de Lourtier, "is made up of a number of separate buildings scattered over extensive grounds. The sort of cottage in which Hermance lives stands quite apart. There is first a room occupied by Felicienne, then Hermance's bedroom and two separate rooms, one of which has its windows overlooking the open country. I suppose it is there that she locks up her victims."

"But the carriage that conveys the dead bodies?"

"The stables of the asylum are quite close to the cottage. There's a horse and carriage there for station work. Hermance no doubt gets up at night, harnesses the horse and slips the body through the window."

"And the nurse who watches her?"

"Felicienne is very old and rather deaf."

"But by day she sees her mistress moving to and fro, doing this and that.

Must we not admit a certain complicity?"

"Never! Felicienne herself has been deceived by Hermance's hypocrisy."

"All the same, it was she who telephoned to Madame de Lourtier first, about that advertis.e.m.e.nt...."

"Very naturally. Hermance, who talks now and then, who argues, who buries herself in the newspapers, which she does not understand, as you were saying just now, but reads through them attentively, must have seen the advertis.e.m.e.nt and, having heard that we were looking for a servant, must have asked Felicienne to ring me up."