D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,79

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