“A dog howled, nothing more,” Dubois answered in an irritated voice, lowering himself heavily onto her. But in a few minutes he had to acknowledge with shame and disgust that he couldn’t perform: the damned howl had distracted him and prevented him from concentrating. Upset and red with rage, Dubois left Jeannette’s bedroom.
The next morning, having looked out of a window, Dubois noticed the groom walking through the yard with a bucket in his hand. The master called the servant and asked whether there were dogs on the estate.
“No, monsieur!” the fellow answered, coming closer to the window.
“No? But the village is quite far; what dog then howled last night?”
“Dog, monsieur?”
“Yes, of course; didn’t you hear the howl?”
“It was not a dog, monsieur. It was a wolf howling in the forest.”
“Wolf?” Dubois was surprised. “Are there wolves in this area?” He suddenly remembered that a wolf was on de Montreux’s coat of arms and, sneering, he assumed he was going to hear a rural legend about a werewolf howling every time somebody from the count’s family died. But instead of a legend the fellow simply answered:
“There are, monsieur, though not so many of them. Usually they don’t bother us, especially now, at the end of summer, when there is still is enough food in the woods.”
“Well, so I’ll have something to hunt,” Dubois said. Hitherto he hadn’t participated in this landowners’ entertainment, but he intended to make up for lost time.
Several days passed. Life in the estate became routine; nobody remembered, at least aloud, the tragic incident which had marred the arrival of the new owner. Dubois received mail reports from his managers, according to whom his business affairs were excellent. Even the wolf howl didn’t disturb inhabitants of the house anymore. However, the feeling of vague anxiety still hadn’t left Jeannette completely; she found it difficult to explain its reason herself, while Dubois believed that the cause was the baleful architecture of the ancient building and ordered it to be lit better in the evenings. However, he made no other changes in the archaic furnishings, wishing to keep the style of “an authentic home of a noble family.” He was especially tender with Jeannette these days, and, in order not to look ungrateful, she hid from him her lingering feeling of discomfort.
But early one morning Dubois was awakened by a loud knock at the door.
“Monsieur, a very unpleasant incident!” he heard the majordomo’s voice.
“What happened?”
“The gardener, monsieur… Usually in the mornings he came to the kitchen to drink a glass of milk and to chat with the cook. But today he didn’t come, and the cook was worried whether he fell ill…”
“Briefly, what’s the matter with him?”
“It looks like he is dead, monsieur…”
Swearing angrily, Dubois got out from under his blanket. Walking down the corridor, he saw Jeannette standing in a dressing gown at the threshold of her bedroom. Her face was pale and fear could clearly be read in her eyes.
“I hope, this time it’s not a violent death?” Dubois inquired.
“I do not know, monsieur. Direct signs of violence are not perceptible. You’d better look yourself. The doctor and police were sent for already.”
Mentally damning such an idiotic coincidence, Dubois followed the majordomo through the garden; his shoes and the tail of his gown immediately became wet with dew. On a bench in front of the gardener’s cabin an old woman, the cook, cried and loudly blew her nose; one of the young maids tried to calm her. Dubois entered the cabin.
The old man lay in his underwear on the floor about a meter from his bed, twisted, with his bony white fingers grasping his breast. His blue face was distorted in a grimace of horror; on his lips foam had dried. “It’s better to touch nothing till the police arrive,” Dubois thought.
Soon Doctor Clavier arrived After greeting the owner of the estate and expressing an appropriate regret about the “sad incident,” he passed into the room of the gardener. Then Leblanc appeared.
“It’s unlikely there will be work for you, Inspector,” Clavier informed him.
“You believe, it is a natural death?”
“No doubt. A heart attack which is certainly no wonder at his age.”
“But the servant from the estate who fetched me said that the old man was strangled.”
“No, nothing like that. Though such mistake is quite understandable just from looking at the body. In some way he really died of asphyxia, but it was caused by completely internal, not external, reasons.”
“Well, Doctor, I rely on your competence. To tell the truth, untangling a murder case would be the least desirable thing for me. Monsieur Dubois, I regret very much that I have to pay a second visit to you due to such an unpleasant occasion. I hope that will not happen again. As my acquaintance, a lieutenant of artillery, says, shells don’t land twice in one place.”
Certainly, the death of the gardener made a depressing impression upon everyone in the house, and most of all on Jeannette. But Dubois did not let her even open her mouth.
“The old man died in his sleep from a heart attack; there is absolutely nothing unusual,” he said in a peremptory tone. “We just have to hire a new gardener, that’s all.”
Jeannette sadly sighed.
Three days passed. On the morning of the fourth day a postman delivered a letter to Dubois. Having read it, the businessman declared to Jeannette that business affairs required his presence in Paris. Having heard this news, Jeannette turned away and bit her lip; it seemed she was just about to burst into tears.
“I will return tonight,” Dubois said, “at the latest—tomorrow afternoon.”
“And you will leave me alone in this awful house for all that time!”
“Alone? What are you talking about? The house is full of servants. Doesn’t Marie entertain you anymore? And there is nothing awful in my house!”
“Jacques, please, don’t leave me! I am so wretched here… without you.”
“Jeannette, but I must go! The outcome of an important bargain depends on it.”
“A bargain is more important to you than me!” Jeannette wanted to exclaim, but held her tongue. Dubois certainly would have answered: “Of course it is.” He would have said this even to a wife, and she after all was only a concubine. Bought for trinkets, for expensive dresses, for the maid Marie… and, already unable to conceive her life without all this, thus was obliged to obey her master.
Dubois ordered the carriage prepared for travel and went to his office once again to look through some papers. After a while, having finished reading, he discovered with surprise that the carriage was still not ready. “How long is he going to dawdle?” the businessman impatiently muttered, meaning the coachman, and went out to the yard to clarify this question personally. The door of the stable was half-open; when nobody responded,to his loud call, Dubois, obeying an instinct, returned to the house and took a pistol with him back to the stable. His own alarm however seemed to him ridiculous: “Have I really begun to catch Jeannette’s fears?” But any desire to laugh disappeared when he looked inside the stable through the half-opened door.
The coachman lay inside near the entrance with his head smashed; it seemed that after a crushing blow he had managed to crawl away to the doors before death overtook him. His murderer, the black stallion who never had demonstrated a violent temper before, was snorting, his eyes wildly staring, his blood-stained hoof kicking and beating the ground. In the next instant it broke its tether and charged directly at the startled Dubois. The latter, however, brought up his pistol and shot the horse almost point-blank. It fell and thrashed in agony; blood splashed from the wound in pulses. Dubois turned away in disgust.