Supposing M.Massol had been led to think of the brother who had disappeared, what then? Where were the traces of that brother to be found? Where and how? If Edmond and Jacques had been accomplices in the crime, would not their chief care be to contrive a means of correspondence which should defy the vigilance of the police? Did they not cease for a time to communicate with each other by letters? What had they to communicate, indeed? Edmond was in possession of the price of the murder, and Jacques was occupied in completing his conquest of my mother's heart.
I resumed my argument; all this granted again, but, although M.
Massol was ignorant of the essential factor in the case, although he was unaware of Jacques Termonde's passion for the wife of the murdered man, my aunt knew it well, she had in her hands indisputable proofs of my father's suspicions; how came she not to have thought as I was now thinking.And how did I know that she had NOT thought just as I was thinking? She had been tormented by suspicions, even she, too; she had lived and died haunted by them.
The only difference was that she had included my mother in them, being incapable of forgiving her the sufferings of the brother whom she loved so deeply.To act against my mother was to act against me, so she had forsworn that idea forever.But if she would have acted against my mother, how could she have gone beyond the domain of vague inductions, since she, no more than I, could have divined my stepfather's alibi, or known of the actual existence of Edmond Termonde? No; that I should be the first to explain the murder of my father as I did, proved only that I had come into possession of additional information respecting the surroundings of the crime, and not that the conjectures drawn from it were baseless.
Other objections presented themselves.If my stepfather had employed his brother to commit the murder, how came he to reveal the existence of that brother to his wife? An answer to this question was not far to seek.If the crime had been committed under conditions of complicity, only one proof of the fact could remain, namely, the letters written by Jacques Termonde to Edmond, in which the former recalled the latter to Europe and gave him instructions for his journey; these letters Edmond had of course preserved, and it was through them, and by the threat of showing them to my mother, that he kept a hold over his brother.To tell his wife so much as he had told her was to forestall and neutralize this threat, at least to a certain extent; for, if the doer of the deed should ever resolve on revealing the common secret to the victim's widow, now the wife of him who had inspired it, the latter would be able to deny the authenticity of the letters, to plead the former confidence reposed in her respecting his brother, and to point out that the denunciation was an atrocious act of revenge achieved by a forgery.And, besides, if indeed the crime had been committed in the manner that I imagined, was not that revelation to my mother justified by another reason?
The remorseful moods by which I believed my stepfather to be tortured were not likely to escape the observant affection of his wife; she could not fail to know that there was a dark shadow on his life which even her love could not dispel.Who knows but she had suffered from the worst of all jealousy, that which is inspired by a constant thought not imparted, a strange emotion hidden from one? And he had revealed a portion of the truth to her so as to spare her uneasiness of that kind, and to protect himself from questions which his conscience rendered intolerable to him.There was then no contradiction between this half-revelation made to my mother, and my own theory of the complicity of the two brothers.
It was also clear to me that in making that revelation he had been unable to go beyond a certain point in urging upon her the necessity of silence towards me--silence which would never have been broken but for her unforeseen emotion, but for my affectionate entreaties, but for the sudden arrival of Edmond Termonde, which had literally bewildered the poor woman.But how was my stepfather's imprudence in refusing money to this brother, who was at bay and ready to dare any and every thing, to be explained?
This, too, I succeeded in explaining to myself.It had happened before my aunt's death, at a period when my stepfather believed himself to be guaranteed from all risk on my side.He believed himself to be sheltered from justice by the statute of limitations.
He was ill.What, then, was more natural than that he should wish to recover those papers which might become a means of levying blackmail upon his widow after his death, and dishonoring his memory in the heart of that woman whom he had loved--even to crime--at any price? Such a negotiation could only be conducted in person.My stepfather would have reflected that his brother would not fulfil his threat without making a last attempt; he would come to Paris, and the accomplices would again be face to face after all these years.A fresh but final offer of money would have to be made to Edmond, the price of the relinquishment of the sole proof whereby the mystery of the Imperial Hotel could be cleared up.In this calculation my stepfather had omitted to forecast the chance that his brother might come to the hotel on the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg, that he would be ushered into my mother's presence, and that the result of the shock to himself--his health being already undermined by his prolonged mental anguish--would be a fresh attack of his malady.In events, there is always the unexpected to put to rout the skillful calculations of the most astute and the most prudent, and when I reflected that so much cunning, such continual watchfulness over himself and others had all come to this--unless indeed these surmises of mine were but fallacies of a brain disturbed by fever and the consuming desire for vengeance--I once more felt the passage of the wind of destiny over us all.
