My Memoirs Part 17

"My paintings will probably be exhibited at the 'Georges Pet.i.t Gallery,'" said M. Steinheil.

"It will be expensive," M. de Balincourt suggested. "Why not have the exhibition here, in this vast studio. When I was organising an exhibition some time ago I made some notes, which I have kept, about art-collectors and lists of addresses of people likely to buy paintings.

I could help you a great deal. We could fit up the studio specially for that exhibition. I am sure it would be a great success."

He came three days later, and again offered to a.s.sist us: "I shall require no payment...." he added, "but perhaps M. Steinheil will charge me less for my portrait."

Shortly afterwards the Count came to sit. He proved full of life and energy--"the very man to push the sale of my pictures when the show takes place," said my husband. At first M. de Balincourt came only to sit for his portrait, but soon he arrived in time for lunch, and remained until after tea-time. I began to be a trifle suspicious, but my husband, who talked a great deal with him, warmly took his part.

One day I overheard a few words of conversation between them, in which, to my intense surprise, the word "doc.u.ments" and the name "Felix Faure"

occurred several times.

I was somewhat alarmed, for a month or so before, the mysterious and dreaded "German" had once more appeared on the scene, and afterwards my husband had told me that he again demanded the ten large pearls and also the famous papers and memoirs. I refused to part with them and said: "Tell the man that I have burnt them."

This strange conversation between my husband and M. de Balincourt, who had only known us a few days, puzzled and irritated me a great deal, and after the Count's departure I asked Adolphe for an explanation. He merely replied that I was mistaken....

M. de Balincourt came more and more frequently, and ingratiated himself with the Buisson family, who were almost constantly with us. He was, above all, on good terms with my husband. I need hardly say that he was extremely attentive to me, and as I was most anxious to find out what was in his mind, and of what it was that he talked with my husband, I pretended to be pleased with his praise and flattery.

M. de Balincourt called on me one evening at Bellevue. Before his arrival I had had a brief conversation with Mariette Wolff, my old cook, who had been in my service, first as an occasional help, and afterwards as cook, for many years.

I had noticed that, in Paris, the Count often went to the kitchen....

Mariette seemed to know a great deal about him, and I asked her how it was.

"Well, Madame," she said, "M. de Balincourt often comes into the kitchen to have his boots cleaned, and also the hunting knife he wears for the portrait which Monsieur is painting. He is very chatty and communicative. I hear that he divorced his wife two years ago, and that he takes a great interest in racing. You know my son, Alexandre, often goes to race meetings. The Count and Alexandre know one another...."

M. de Balincourt arrived and I encouraged him to tell me all about himself. He described his adventurous life to me, his worries, the various "crises" he had gone through, his family affairs. He told me that he had taken an active part in revictualling the famous Fort Chabrol in 1899, and that he often gambled and lost....

He drank wine freely, and talked and talked....

"If you are so often in financial difficulties," I asked, "how are you able to give my husband a commission for a portrait?"

"Oh! I always manage to get out of trouble. Nothing worries me... I have tried my hand at many games, including little political side-games...."

Now was the moment to find out what his conversation with my husband had been about. M. de Balincourt told me that M. Steinheil had talked to him about Felix Faure and the talisman. "He even showed me a very interesting letter written by the late President, on the margin of which there were several notes in your handwriting...."

"You lie," I cried boldly, for I wanted to force him to tell me more....

For a moment M. de Balincourt was taken aback, but he soon pulled himself together, and began to give me such details that it was impossible to doubt his word. "Your husband," he concluded, "tells me everything.... For instance, he told me only yesterday that he does not like to leave the house because he fears burglars; he has received many letters, the contents of which he keeps secret.... He also said the house had been broken into on one occasion...." (That was quite correct.)

It became clearer and clearer that my husband was concealing something from me. I had a further proof of this several months after the tragedy, when Couillard confessed to the examining magistrate that his master had kept up a secret correspondence, and that he, Couillard, had received orders from M. Steinheil, even on May 30th (that is a few hours before the murders were committed) to hide any letter that might come for him under the cloth on the hall-table, and that, above all, Madame must not know anything about them. Two mysterious messages did come by express, and Couillard concealed them as he had been told. These two letters were never traced. Who knows but that if they had been found they might have given some useful clue as to the authors of the murders?

After my conversation with M. de Balincourt I remained at Bellevue for a few days. A mystery yet unsolved is merely irritating, but a mystery which you feel others are determined to prevent you from solving--although you know you must--has a disastrous effect upon the spirit. It is possible to face open danger without flinching, but the bravest of hearts quails before an indefinite peril lurking in the dark and likely to reveal itself you cannot tell when. Imagination inevitably runs amuck and pictures the worst of horrors with a distracting facility.

I spent miserable days at Bellevue, wondering what to do. Sometimes I thought that my anxieties were childish and unfounded, but at other moments, danger seemed as near and real that I half believed that I should touch it if I put out my hand. It was there before me, though I could not see it and could not give a name to it. I thought of President Faure's necklace, of the doc.u.ments, of the mysterious "German," of my husband's reticence and also of his sudden and inconceivable bursts of confidence in total strangers.... He was nearly sixty now, and on several occasions I had heard him speak to certain of his models as he would have to old and intimate friends. He was both imprudent and nervous, easy-going and suspicious.... What was there at the bottom of this relation with that German? Why were those secret meetings with my husband so carefully arranged that not once had I been able to come face to face with him! Why was not one single letter of his shown to me? And why would my husband never give me any details about his transactions and his conversations with the man?

And now M. de Balincourt had gained M. Steinheil's confidence. He had gained mine, too, but not for long, for, after I had seen him two or three times, I read through him!

I had so little to go by that in spite of every effort to concentrate my whole mind on it I could not solve the problem, and at last gave up all hope of doing so. I was in despair. Years ago I had dismissed the whole matter from my thoughts, but now the mystery had returned with renewed perils. It held me in its tentacles, and I felt that not only was I threatened by it, but also my mother, my husband and my only child, whose lives were so intimately bound up in mine.

Thank Heaven, my little Marthe was with me, and we took long walks with her _fiance_ and his parents in the Meudon Park. And in the evening we played and sang together....

One morning my husband, whom I had asked to join me at Bellevue, telephoned from Paris, where he had remained to put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to a number of paintings destined for the proposed exhibition of his works. He informed me that a very wealthy foreigner had called to order a small portrait of President Fallieres, which he wanted for a magnificent alb.u.m containing drawings by great painters and also a few bars of music by celebrated composers.... He knew a great number of prominent Germans who were coming to Paris for the Horse Show, and whom he would bring to the studio....

"I cannot come to Bellevue," my husband concluded, "for I must do this portrait at once. The foreign gentleman says he is to be received at the Elysee very soon, and he wants to ask the President to sign his name at the foot of my picture.... I should, of course, paint the portrait from a photograph which the gentleman has brought...."

To me all this sounded suspicious, and I told my husband so. "I don't like the idea of President Fallieres' autograph under your drawing....

Why don't you tell this wealthy collector to apply to our friend Bonnat?"

The telephone worked indifferently that day, and I could not quite catch the meaning of my husband's reply, so I said: "Please refuse to draw that portrait. At any rate, let the matter stand over for a day or two.

Find some pretext and come to see me here."

He came.... The Buisson family were present when he explained to me that the foreigner was quite reliable and that he had promised to bring to the studio two German Princes....

I asked him whether the wealthy foreigner was a German, and he replied in the affirmative. Then, reading a question in my eyes, he said hastily: "No, no... he is not the same man as the German you are thinking of!"

My husband spoke so well of the stranger that I felt almost ashamed of being so suspicious.

He returned to Paris and I remained with my daughter and the Buissons at Bellevue; but, try as I might, I could not keep the mysterious German out of my thoughts, and, becoming anxious about the safety of the Felix Faure doc.u.ments, I returned to Paris twenty-four hours after my husband had left Bellevue.

At lunch my husband said: "I really must finish that portrait to-day, for this evening a messenger from the 'Grand Hotel' will come to fetch it. So please see that no one disturbs me this afternoon. The gentleman who ordered the Fallieres portrait is dining to-night with the German Princes I told you about, and with several other personages, and he wishes to show the picture to them all."

He then asked me several times whether I would go out or remain at home, and it was quite clear that, for some reason which I could not guess, he was most anxious that I should not be in that afternoon. I had a presentiment that it would be better for me to remain at home, and that by doing so I might, perhaps, find out something about this strange commission.

Besides, my dressmaker was there, and I was expecting a few friends. My time was, therefore, fully occupied, and I did not go up to my husband's studio.

In the evening, at about seven-thirty, I told Remy Couillard to have dinner served. He said: "... Monsieur is not ready.... He is upstairs with the gentleman who brought a large photograph of the President.

(Couillard had himself opened the parcel for his master.) The gentleman called this afternoon, and he is still in the studio."

"When did he come?"

"At tea-time, Madame."

I went up to the dressmaker, who was still at work.

"Oh! Monsieur Steinheil was looking for you a little time ago, to show you the portrait of M. Fallieres. I saw it--it is very nice...."

It was clear that my husband had come down to find where I was, so that he might let the "foreigner" out of the house without my seeing him.

I was about to go up the stairs leading to the studio when I heard steps coming down in the dark. I was at the door of the sewing-room in the corridor on the first floor. To my intense surprise I saw a man lift the tapestry shutting off the corridor from the landing. The man walked straight on, my husband following him. When he saw me, the man exclaimed in French, but with a p.r.o.nounced German accent: "Oh! excuse me, Mademoiselle."

"No, no," said my husband, "that is not my daughter, but my wife."

"You are not on the ground floor, Sir," I said coldly, "but on the first floor where the private apartments are."

(It had struck me that he seemed to know his way to the corridor, and perhaps to the boudoir where the doc.u.ments were kept. The tapestry hid the entrance to the pa.s.sage so well that it could not possibly occur to any one not familiar with the topography of the house to raise the heavy drapery--in the thought that it led to the hall--for it looked for all the world as if it were hung against the wall of the landing.)

"Ach!" said the German, apologetically... "I have made a mistake. As a matter of fact, I pa.s.sed through here this morning when M. Steinheil wanted to show me some old bibelots and prints in a small sitting-room you have up here... I came here quite accidentally, and we were going down, your husband and I...."

He stammered and looked most embarra.s.sed. "It is really most extraordinary," I said to him in German, "that you should have found your way in here, especially in the dark. There is a light in the hall, whilst there is none in the staircase at present." Then, as I wished to see this person in a full light, for the pa.s.sage where we stood was only faintly lit by the light coming from the sewing-room, I added: "If you are fond of old prints, I can show you some downstairs."