The Devil in Love (Bantam Series No. 24) Read online

  No fox was likely to walk down the path from the woods or to approach—not at any rate in the daytime—a trap that was so far from the shelter of the trees.

  But Comte Raoul would return down the path to enter the garden the way he had left it and as he passed he would hear the bleating of the lamb that had been put in the hole.

  It was obvious that he would go to investigate what was happening, and Larisa was certain that the gun would not be pointed so as to kill a fox but at the height of a man’s heart.

  She was so certain that her supposition was right that the realisation of what Monsieur le Comte had planned seemed to hit her like a physical blow.

  She could only hold on to the railing in front of her and feel helpless and unable to think of what she should do.

  Then she knew that she must warn Comte Raoul.

  Once again she must save him.

  “Come, Jean-Pierre,” she said insistently, “we have to go and find your father.”

  “Max go for a run?” Jean-Pierre asked.

  “Yes, we will take Max for a run,” Larisa answered.

  For a moment she had thought of leaving Jean-Pierre and Max in the School-Room.

  Then she knew that that would invite questions.

  How could she run off on her own across the garden and up into the wood without the child who was supposed to be in her charge?

  No, she would take Jean-Pierre with her, and if Monsieur le Comte questioned her as to why she had disobeyed his order she would have to think of some excuse.

  At the moment the only thing that mattered was to save Comte Raoul.

  She hurried Jean-Pierre down from the roof and they descended the back stairs which were nearest to the side of the Chateau where she wished to emerge.

  The door which led into the garden was open and taking Jean-Pierre’s hand Larisa ran towards the gate which led into the field.

  It seemed to take much longer when they were down below than she had expected it would when looked down on from the roof.

  They were both rather breathless by the time they reached the gate in the wall.

  Larisa pulled it open.

  As she did so she heard the lamb bleating, just as she had expected, crying for its mother, from whom it had been taken.

  “Come along, Jean-Pierre,” Larisa said. “We will go and find your father.”

  They walked along the path and the lamb’s belating cry sounded piteous to Larisa although it did not seem to concern Jean-Pierre.

  They walked the whole length of the field and entered the wood.

  Larisa looked doubtfully ahead.

  How could she be sure that Comte Raoul would return the same way he had gone?

  Suppose he came back by another route?

  She stood still, undecided as to what she should do.

  Max was dragging at his lead, anxious to run into the wood, and Jean-Pierre pulled at her hard.

  “Come on, Mademoiselle.”

  The only thing she could do, Larisa thought rather helplessly, was to keep looking back into the field in case she should see Comte Raoul emerge from the wood from a different direction.

  Then even as she worried and turning her head felt hopelessly undecided, she heard someone moving through the trees.

  To her utter relief she saw Comte Raoul coming towards them.

  “There he is!” she exclaimed with a note of joy in her voice. “There is your father, Jean-Pierre!”

  As if her enthusiasm animated the small boy, he let go of her hand and ran through the pine trees towards Comte Raoul.

  The Comte was leaning his gun on his shoulder and he smiled at Jean-Pierre when he saw him.

  “Hello, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  Then he looked over the boy’s head at Larisa and she saw the gladness in his eyes.

  “We came to warn you,” she said when she reached him.

  “To warn me?” he asked.

  “There is a gun-trap in the field,” she said breathlessly. “Bernard set it after you had left. I was afraid you might go and look at it because there is a lamb in it.”

  “How do you know this?” Comte Raoul asked quietly.

  “Monsieur le Comte said we were not to go out this morning because there would be a gun-trap set for the fox,” Larisa answered, “so we went up to the roof.”

  “And you saw Bernard set it after I had passed through the field?”

  Larisa nodded.

  The Comte was still for a moment and then he said:

  “I would of course have gone to see why the lamb was bleating. Once again, Larisa, I am in you debt.”

  Quite suddenly the full implication of what Monsieur le Comte had planned swept over her so that she felt as if the Comte’s face swam before her as she said in a whisper:

  “I am frightened!”

  “It will be all right!” Comte Raoul said. “I will speak to my father. I have a suspicion there was no fox and that this was just a ruse to get me out of the house.”

  “If we had not gone on the roof.” Larisa said in a low voice, “you might have been killed!”

  There was so much emotion in her voice that the Comte put out his hand and took hers.

  For a moment he did not speak, then almost beneath his breath he said:

  “We cannot live like this! It is impossible!”

  Then as he saw the anxiety and the pallor on Larisa’s face he added:

  “It is all right at the moment. I am safe and we will walk back to the house together.”

  Larisa took Jean-Pierre by the hand.

  “Come along, Jean-Pierre,” she said, “we are going home with your father.”

  Jean-Pierre pulled at the lead because Max was nosing around the brushwood lying on the ground.

  “Hold on to Max tightly, Jean-Pierre,” Larisa said. “Would you like me to take him?”

  “No, I will hold Max,” Jean-Pierre replied.

  He tugged at the dog again almost roughly as they all three set off along the path which led back to the garden.

  “What are you going to say to Monsieur le Comte?” Larisa asked when they had walked a little way.

  “It is hard to know how to begin,” Comte Raoul replied with a sigh. “Even now I cannot believe that it is true; that he really hates me to such an extent that he would do anything to be rid of me.”

  “And Bernard is involved in it too,” Larisa said.

  It somehow seemed worse that Monsieur le Comte, with his dignity, his grandeur, and his unmistakable authority, should use as an accomplice a servant in an attempt to murder his own son.

  It made the plot even more sinister than it would otherwise have been.

  It was Bernard who had poisoned the wine; Bernard who had set the gun-trap.

  Larisa could not help wondering what Monsieur le Comte would pay the man for his cooperation.

  It was obvious that if they were successful and Comte Raoul died, Bernard would be able to blackmail Monsieur le Comte for the rest of his life.

  Would he then have to murder his servant who had such a hold over him?

  The whole thing was a kind of nightmare from which she longed to wake up to find that it had no substance in fact.

  But it was true, she thought.

  True that if Comte Raoul had drunk the wine last night he would not now be walking beside her, and true too that the gun-trap had been set in place after he had left for the woods and he had not been warned of its existence.

  They were getting nearer to the trap and now Larisa could hear the lamb bleating.

  She knew that Comte Raoul heard it too and he turned his head in its direction to note where the trap was situated.

  She saw the sudden pain in his eyes and his lips tightened.

  ‘This hurts him,’ she thought, ‘to think that his father should wish to destroy him. However bad a parent he may be, Raoul is still his son and their blood is the same.’

  She had the feeling that Comte Raoul must have been proud of his father when
he was a little boy just as he had been proud of Valmont.

  It was from “belonging” that one achieved a feeling of security and trust, and for it to turn to something like this would hurt any man.

  Perhaps especially one as perceptive as Comte Raoul.

  That was the strange thing about him, Larisa thought. Although he had a reputation which shocked and horrified so many people, he was the most perceptive person she had ever met.

  She fancied too, although she was certain that most people would deny it, that he was extremely sensitive.

  The garden door was just ahead of them, and then at the side of the path a small rabbit which must have been crouching down in the thick grass hoping to be unobserved sprang up and started to streak across the field.

  Max let out a yelp and wrenched the lead from Jean-Pierre’s hand to go after it.

  “Stop, Max! Stop!” Jean-Pierre cried.

  Then he was running after his dog.

  It all happened so quickly that Larisa hardly had time to realise it before Jean-Pierre was tearing across the field in pursuit of Max, who was yelping after the rabbit.

  She screamed, “The trap! The trap!” and moved forward.

  As if he too suddenly realised what was happening Comte Raoul, who had been moving on ahead, turned back and started to run.

  He was hampered by the gun and by the fact that Jean-Pierre had several yards’ start on them both.

  Larisa was running and at the same time she was holding her breath.

  Suddenly there was a violent explosion.

  It rang out deafeningly, ringing in her ears, and she saw Jean-Pierre fall to the ground.

  She tried to reach him but Comte Raoul was there before her.

  He was bent over the little boy, then as she came nearer he stood up and turned towards her.

  “Do not look!” he said, and the words were a command. “Go to the Chateau and get help.”

  For a moment she could not obey him, but he put his hand on her shoulder and turned her round and she knew that it was because he did not wish her to see Jean-Pierre.

  “Do as I say!” he said. “And get two of the men-servants to come here immediately!”

  She could not speak and it was hard to get her breath but she did as he commanded.

  She started to run frantically towards the gate in the wall.

  She pulled it open and still running reached the door of the Chateau with her breath coming sobbingly from between her lips.

  She moved into the cool passage, not quite certain which direction to take. Then coming towards her she saw the dark, sinister face of Bernard.

  For a moment she hardly recognised him in her agitation.

  “What happened, M’mselle?” he asked.

  “Go at once and take someone with you,” she said. “The gun-trap...”

  As she spoke she thought there was a sudden gleam in the man’s dark eyes.

  “Is someone hurt?” he asked.

  “Le petit Monsieur!” she replied. “Jean-Pierre!”

  It seemed to her that Bernard’s face was transformed into a mask of horror.

  “Monsieur Jean-Pierre?” he repeated, and his voice was gratingly harsh.

  “Find someone and go to Comte Raoul immediately!” Larisa said again.

  She leant back against the wall, feeling as if she were being suffocated by a compression in her breast and the effort of getting her breath.

  Bernard turned on his heel and walked down the passage in the direction from which he had come.

  Larisa found it impossible to move and could only lean against the wall, fighting a sudden faintness; trying to compose herself; trying to realise what had happened.

  She knew that Jean-Pierre was dead. He had been killed by the gun-trap that had been set for his father.

  Two footmen came running down the passage towards her.

  When they saw her they stopped.

  “We have been told there has been an accident, M’mselle. Where is it? Where are we to go?”

  “In the field outside the garden,” Larisa managed to gasp, “and hurry. Monsieur Raoul is there. He will tell you what to do.”

  The footmen disappeared through the open door into the garden and slowly, as if she were a very old woman hardly able to walk, Larisa found her way to the staircase.

  Holding on to the banister, she pulled herself up the stairs until she reached the first floor and then up again.

  She wanted to find Nurse.

  She knew she had to tell her what had happened and that she must prepare her for the body that the footmen and Comte Raoul would bring back to the house.

  Nurse was in the School-Room, as Larisa had expected.

  She was sitting at the table, darning one of Jean-Pierre’s little white socks.

  She looked up as Larisa entered and saw her face and rose to her feet.

  “What has happened?” she asked.

  “He … is … dead!” Larisa gasped, and seeing the expression in the old woman’s eyes she added hastily:

  “No … not Comte Raoul … Jean-Pierre!”

  “Jean-Pierre?” Nurse exclaimed incredulously.

  “He ran into the gun-trap Bernard had … set for Comte Raoul. I have not seen him … but I know he … is … dead!”

  The words came gasping from between her lips and she sat down in a chair at the table and put her head in her hands.

  “I should not have taken him into the … field after Monsieur le Comte told me not to,” she said in a whisper, “but I had to … save Comte Raoul…”

  She felt Nurse’s hand on her shoulder.

  Then, as she buried her face, still fighting against faintness, still trying to think coherently, she felt Nurse put a glass into her hand.

  “Drink this, M’mselle,” she said quietly, “and I will make you a cup of tea.”

  Larisa lifted her head and now tears were streaming down her face.

  “It is so horrible! So … brutal! So … unnecessary!”

  Nurse did not answer, but surprisingly she was not crying as she busied herself with boiling the kettle on the fire that was burning in the grate even though it was such a warm day.

  “Monsieur le Comte meant to … kill Comte Raoul,” Larisa said almost as though she spoke to herself.

  “I felt sure he would try again after you had saved him last night,” Nurse said. “He is no longer sane! We have to face that fact, M’mselle. He is no longer sane!”

  “How can we ever … tell him,” Larisa asked, “that Jean-Pierre is … dead?”

  “Who knows it now?” Nurse enquired.

  “I met Bernard in the passage,” Larisa answered. “He was expecting to hear that his trap had killed Comte Raoul.”

  “You told him that Jean-Pierre was dead?”

  “I told him to go and help Comte Raoul,” Larisa answered, “and he sent two footmen. When I told them where to go I came upstairs to you.”

  “Then Bernard will have told Monsieur le Comte what has happened.” Nurse said. “There is no need for you to break the news to him.”

  “How will he … bear it?” Larisa asked. ‘He loved the … child.”

  “But he hated his son,” Nurse answered, and her voice was hard.

  “It was my … fault,” Larisa said. “If I had not taken him with me he would still be alive. Monsieur le Comte said that we were to stay in the Chateau.”

  “It was an accident?” Nurse asked.

  “Max ran after a rabbit,” Larisa explained, “and Jean-Pierre went after the dog. I do not think Max was hurt, but Jean-Pierre must have run straight into the … trap.”

  She gave a little sob. It was nearly impossible to speak the last word.

  Even now she could hardly realise that it had happened.

  One moment Jean-Pierre had been holding her hand and they had been walking beside Comte Raoul.

  The next minute they had” all been running across the held desperately trying to catch the child; to save him from the diabolical instrumen
t of death set there by Bernard.

  “How could Monsieur le Comte and his servant have concocted anything so cruel and so horrible?” Larisa asked herself. Yet if the Comte had died it would have been difficult to prove that it had been anything but an accident.

  She could see it all so clearly: the way Monsieur le Comte had sent Comte Raoul to look for the fox; how he had warned her and Jean-Pierre not to go into the garden!

  Who would ever be able to say that he had not warned his son that there would be a gun-trap in the field.

  No-one would doubt Monsieur le Comte’s word, and if he had succeeded it would be the body of Comte Raoul they would be bringing back to the house and Jean-Pierre would be, as his grandfather had intended, the heir to Valmont!

  If it had not been so tragic, Larisa thought, it would seem almost poetic justice that Monsieur le Comte should have destroyed the person he loved best; the person for whom he was prepared to commit the crime of murder,

  Even knowing what she did about Jean-Pierre—that he was not normal and was beginning to show, although she hardly dare express it even to herself, the unpleasant tendencies of the mentally deranged—she would not wish the child dead.

  In many ways she had loved the little boy.

  It was only when she thought of what lay ahead for him in the future that she had felt apprehensive and afraid.

  Nurse set a cup of hot, strong tea down in front of Larisa and she drank it because she knew that it would please the old woman.

  It also took away, as it was intended to do, the feeling of faintness. After she had drunk it Larisa wiped away her tears.

  She had to be sensible about this.

  She had to think not of herself but of Comte Raoul.

  What, she wondered, would he say to his father?

  Would he now face him with the fact that he had twice tried to murder him and only succeeded in killing his grandson?

  She wanted so much to help him and yet she felt helpless.

  “What do you think is happening?” she asked Nurse in a low voice.

  “That is what I am going to find out,” Nurse answered. “Stay here, M’mselle. There is nothing you can do. I’ll do everything that needs to be done.”

  “I feel I should go with you,” Larisa said.

  Nurse shook her head.

  “No,” she said, “Monsieur Raoul would not wish it—I feel sure of that! Stay where you are!”