their finger to their mouth and tasted it? I remembered that as a boy I used to have a lot of what I would describe to a colleague as epistaxis, but which to me, at the time, were nosebleeds, prolonged and heavy. I would lie on my back while my mother slid a key down my neck to draw the blood away. I think even then I doubted if that was doing any good, but meanwhile I would press a flannel to my nose and wait until the bleeding had stopped, pulling it away to reveal a clotted nose and a white facecloth drenched in red. I must have tasted a lot of my own blood then, but I couldn’t remember what it tasted like.
All these thoughts rumbled along in my mind while I fiddled with the plasters in the shoebox, fumbling with my right hand to find and place a sticking plaster on my left ring finger. Being left-handed, it was my clumsy right that was given the job, and I botched it the first time, and the second. Trying for a third time, my eye fell on Margery’s letter again, and I saw I had dropped it face down on the table, and that it continued on the back.
I saw one word and stopped what I was trying to do with the plaster and my bleeding hand. All thought of that was gone as I saw that one word: beast . I must have stared at the paper as if the words upon it were on fire.
I snatched it up again, and I read that Marian had been found, murdered, it was thought, by a killer who had struck before in the area, and whom the press had dubbed ‘the Beast of Saint-Germain’.
Margery said little more than that, and I could see my letter had dragged up old sufferings. Hunter had been right, and I felt awful, but I didn’t regret what I’d done, because it had given me two pieces of information I needed desperately.
Firstly, I knew that Jean, the barman, had lied to me. He had told me Marian had a weak heart, and had been obliged to go home to the States. Why had he done that? The only, the obvious, conclusion was that he was known to Verovkin, was an ally of his, and I decided that I would perhaps do better to pick up his trail than that of the elusive margrave.
And secondly, I knew where Marian was buried, and I wanted that so much because I wanted to be close to her again. Even just once, though she had been dead under the grass for ten years, because I knew now that she’d been taken. She had not gone naturally into death. She had been taken, against her will, and with horrible violence.
Anger suddenly poured out of me, rising from nowhere so that I cried out and swept the back of my left hand across the table, smashing the shoebox, sending it flying across the room to the kitchen wall, where it scattered its contents on the floor. I hung my head and looked at the mess I’d made, not failing to see the drops of my own blood that had splattered the white wall.
I stood waiting for the anger to subside and of course it did, but it did not disappear altogether. Rather it turned into a sort of determination, so that three weeks later I grimly found my way to Paris again.
I located Marian’s grave, I stood in front of it, and I wept. I hunted in the libraries and found old newspaper cuttings of her death, as well as of two others reported to be the work of la Bête. And I made a nuisance of myself in Saint-Germain itself, asking around, being nosy, accosting anyone who would listen to me, and so it was that one day I had a conversation with an old working man, a local odd-job man, who told me that around eight or nine years ago, he couldn’t remember, he had been paid five hundred old francs to shift boxes from the petit palais at the end of the park on to a small camion . He told me that although no one had told him where the boxes were heading, he had heard the drivers moaning that it would take three days to drive to Avignon.
So I had it. He was in Avignon.
Chapter 4
I arrived in Avignon in August 1961 , having had to wait until I could take more leave without raising too many eyebrows. I had tried to take a sleeper
All these thoughts rumbled along in my mind while I fiddled with the plasters in the shoebox, fumbling with my right hand to find and place a sticking plaster on my left ring finger. Being left-handed, it was my clumsy right that was given the job, and I botched it the first time, and the second. Trying for a third time, my eye fell on Margery’s letter again, and I saw I had dropped it face down on the table, and that it continued on the back.
I saw one word and stopped what I was trying to do with the plaster and my bleeding hand. All thought of that was gone as I saw that one word: beast . I must have stared at the paper as if the words upon it were on fire.
I snatched it up again, and I read that Marian had been found, murdered, it was thought, by a killer who had struck before in the area, and whom the press had dubbed ‘the Beast of Saint-Germain’.
Margery said little more than that, and I could see my letter had dragged up old sufferings. Hunter had been right, and I felt awful, but I didn’t regret what I’d done, because it had given me two pieces of information I needed desperately.
Firstly, I knew that Jean, the barman, had lied to me. He had told me Marian had a weak heart, and had been obliged to go home to the States. Why had he done that? The only, the obvious, conclusion was that he was known to Verovkin, was an ally of his, and I decided that I would perhaps do better to pick up his trail than that of the elusive margrave.
And secondly, I knew where Marian was buried, and I wanted that so much because I wanted to be close to her again. Even just once, though she had been dead under the grass for ten years, because I knew now that she’d been taken. She had not gone naturally into death. She had been taken, against her will, and with horrible violence.
Anger suddenly poured out of me, rising from nowhere so that I cried out and swept the back of my left hand across the table, smashing the shoebox, sending it flying across the room to the kitchen wall, where it scattered its contents on the floor. I hung my head and looked at the mess I’d made, not failing to see the drops of my own blood that had splattered the white wall.
I stood waiting for the anger to subside and of course it did, but it did not disappear altogether. Rather it turned into a sort of determination, so that three weeks later I grimly found my way to Paris again.
I located Marian’s grave, I stood in front of it, and I wept. I hunted in the libraries and found old newspaper cuttings of her death, as well as of two others reported to be the work of la Bête. And I made a nuisance of myself in Saint-Germain itself, asking around, being nosy, accosting anyone who would listen to me, and so it was that one day I had a conversation with an old working man, a local odd-job man, who told me that around eight or nine years ago, he couldn’t remember, he had been paid five hundred old francs to shift boxes from the petit palais at the end of the park on to a small camion . He told me that although no one had told him where the boxes were heading, he had heard the drivers moaning that it would take three days to drive to Avignon.
So I had it. He was in Avignon.
Chapter 4
I arrived in Avignon in August 1961 , having had to wait until I could take more leave without raising too many eyebrows. I had tried to take a sleeper
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