Iain Pears - Stone's Fall

The next morning, as I went downstairs to the bar for a coffee and some bread, the bar keeper, who was also my landlord, handed me an envelope. I ignored it for a while, until enough coffee had been absorbed into my system to make me human once again, and only opened it when I felt sure that I would be able to read it through without my attention wandering. It was from Jules.

Dear Mr Cort,

As you will see, I am writing this to you from Lyon, and I apologise for taking so long about the task you have given me and for spending so much of your money. I wished to see the job properly to an end. I hope you do not mind.

As you instructed, I went to Lausanne, which took a very long time, but then had difficulty finding out about Dr Stauffer; he was in none of the directories to be found in the town library, even though these were completely up to date. I did eventually come across the name in a listing that was some four years old. I send it enclosed, and hope you do not mind that I tore it out of the library book. I know I am not meant to do that sort of thing. I then went to the house, which is occupied by someone completely different. Dr Stauffer died some three years ago, it seems.

It took some time before I could find out what he died of, and it appears that he hanged himself and was buried in the municipal cemetery outside the town. A woman in a flower shop told me the story. Dr Stauffer had never recovered from the murder of his wife, she said, and eventually found life too much. The newspapers told me a little more, when I read them in the library. He died in 1887, and Madame Stauffer was murdered in 1885. According to the newspapers, she was killed by a servant called Elizabeth Lemercier. She had been taken in by the family and had been showered with every kindness. But, it seems, she had a naturally criminal temper and turned on her mistress, stabbing her to death with a knife from the kitchen. She then fled and was never seen again, but I came across a report that she had been sighted in Lyon, which is why I am now here, trying to discover the truth. I hope you do not consider I am going beyond your instructions.

I found a woman who had worked in the Stauffer family. It took some time and a lot of your money, but eventually she talked to me. I had to tell her that I was an assistant reporter on The Times ; I added that I would be dismissed from my job if I did not produce the information you needed, as you were a horrid man and this made her more helpful. I apologise for this.

She told me the newspapers had left out quite a lot of the story to spare what little remained of Dr Stauffer's reputation. She said the servant Lemercier had seduced the doctor, that he had given her expensive presents and that the wife had eventually found out. When Madame Stauffer confronted them, and threatened to report the girl – apparently you can be sent to gaol, or an asylum, for such behaviour here – she lashed out with the knife, and fled. The town collectively concluded that Dr Stauffer was in the wrong to conduct such an affair in the family home (although I think what they meant was that he was wrong to have it discovered) and so concluded that he could not be invited for dinner any more. It was this neglect which caused him, eventually, to hang himself.

The report that Lemercier had fled to Lyon was not, as far as I can tell, based on anything solid. The idea came from the fact that a citizen of Lausanne was found dead in an inexpensive hotel in the city, and because he had been a friend of the Stauffer family. I believe that the journalist who wrote the story may have exaggerated in order to make his report more interesting. However, now I am here, I can tell you that the hotel in which the man – a Mr Franz Wichmann, who died aged forty-six – was found does seem to be a house of ill-repute. This was not part of the newspaper report.

Here I must apologise for the way in which I was forced to spend some of your money, sir. I do hope you will forgive me. But I went to this hotel all unknowing and it was not until I was inside that I began to realise what sort of place it was. By then the woman who runs it had demanded money of me, and I had paid her, thinking that I was renting a room. It was only when I was asked to choose a girl that I realised my mistake.

I looked up and grinned. Truly Jules was a very poor liar; but I had a sneaking admiration for his cheek.

Naturally, I was horrified, but I decided to disguise my shock, in order to be able to ask questions. So I told the old woman that I wished to wait, and asked to talk a bit. She took this to be a sign of nervousness – and I was really not very comfortable – and got one of the girls to join me.

I will not go into the details, if you do not mind, but we talked for some time. She was really very nice. And she remembered the death of Mr Wichmann very well. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as the house was closed down by the police for a while, and all the people who worked there had to find their work on the streets, which they do not like very much.

The girl involved was called Virginie – none of them have second names – but she knew little else about her. They do not talk very much about their lives, it seems. Mr Wichmann was not a regular visitor, he came once and went with one of the girls, and apparently glimpsed Virginie as he left. He was found the next morning in his room dead, with a knife wound through his heart. Virginie had vanished.

At least, this is what that girl said. The girl Virginie was never seen again, and I do not think the police looked very hard for her. She was, by all accounts, quiet and very well behaved. She associated little with her colleagues, but preferred to sit and read while waiting for a client. She was not very popular with them, as they gained the impression she considered herself better than they were.

I hope, Mr Cort, that you do not consider that I have wasted my time and your money in finding all this out, and that you approve of my efforts. I will take the train back tomorrow morning.

I burned the letter, once I had read it carefully; I do not keep stray pieces of paper around if they are not needed. Then I sat and thought. The connection, from Elizabeth Lemercier to Virginie to Countess Elizabeth Hadik-Barkoczy von Futak uns Szala was easy for me to see. And if all of this, or enough of this, was in the diary, Elizabeth was correct to be worried. If Jules had got the story right, then she could face the guillotine.

But there was no time to do anything today, nor anything to do. I had to wait for Drennan to resurface; I was dependent on him. Still, I thought about the problem carefully as I made my way to Longchamp after lunch. I was not looking forward to it. I hate horse-racing; I have never seen the point of it. Horses I like – I used to go riding quite often when I stayed with the Campbells in Scotland in my youth – and there are few finer experiences than getting up on a good horse at dawn, and riding off over the moors. The beasts have their own personalities; they really can become your friend, if you know how to deal with them. But racing around a course, with thousands of overdressed, pampered spectators shouting them on? The animals are so much more worthy than the people, who generally have little interest in the horses at all. They are there to be there, to be seen and to waste money. My day at Longchamp was not for pleasure.

I had a frantic morning gathering more information on François Hubert than M. Steinberg had been able to give me. And I was still in a state of shock over my encounter with Simon. It had deeply disturbed me; I did not see what else I could have done, but the ease with which I came to that conclusion, and acted on it, I found unsettling in the extreme. So, with François Hubert I was sloppy; I allowed myself to pay far too much for trivial information, gave away too much, because I was in a hurry and over-tired.