Part 34 (2/2)
”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.”
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