The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [311]
Athos required no more. He rose, bowed, left the house, returned as he had come, and went up to his room. At dawn D’Artagnan entered, asking what they were to do.
“We have but to wait,” Athos replied mechanically.
Two hours later Aramis came back from the convent where he had called on the Mother Superior. The burial, he said, was to take place at noon. Of the poisoner, there were no tidings. She must have escaped by way of the garden, for her footprints were evident on the damp gravel; the garden gate was locked; the key had disappeared.
At the appointed hour, Lord Winter and the four friends repaired to the convent. The bells were tolling; the chapel was open. At the chapel door D’Artagnan felt his courage fail anew and turned to look for Athos. But Athos had disappeared. Within, the grating of the choir was closed. In the middle of the choir, the body of the victim, clothed in her novitiate dress, made a white blur against the dark woodwork. The entire community of the Carmelite nuns was assembled on either side of the choir, behind the gratings opening out onto the convent; the sisters followed the divine service from there, without seeing the profane and unseen by them but mingling their chant with the chant of the priests.
Faithful to the avenging mission he had undertaken, Athos had slipped away and requested to be taken to the garden. There over the damp gravel, he followed the light tracks of the woman who left a trail of horror wherever she passed. Reaching the gate which led to the wood he had it opened and plunged into the thicket.
All his suspicions then found confirmation. The road by which the carriage had disappeared circled the forest. Athos followed this road for a time, his eyes fastened on the ground; slight bloodstains coming from a wound inflicted either on the courier or on one of the horses, speckled the road. About a mile further on some hundred odd yards from the hamlet of Festubert, he distinguished a much larger patch, marking what had been a pool of blood. Here the earth bore traces of the tramping of horses. A little beyond the wood and a few feet short of the churned earth, Athos detected the same footprints he had followed through the garden. Obviously Milady had emerged from the wood and entered the carriage here.
Satisfied with this discovery which confirmed all his suspicions, Athos returned to the inn, where he found Planchet awaiting him impatiently.
Everything had taken place as Athos had foreseen. Planchet, having followed the road as Athos had just done, noticed the bloodstains and noted the spot where the horses had stopped. But he pushed on farther than Athos had. Stopping at a tavern in the village of Festubert, he did not even have to ask of news; his fellow-drinkers volunteered the information that the evening before at half past eight, a wounded man and a lady had driven up to the inn. Apparently the man could go no further. The accident was attributed to robbers who had held up the chaise in the forest. The man remained in the village, the woman had hired a relay of horses and continued her journey.
Planchet sought out the postillion who had driven the chaise and found him. He had taken the lady as far as Fromelles; from Fromelles she had set out for Armentières. Planchet took the crossroad and by seven in the morning he was at Armentières.
There was only one inn at Armentières, the Hôtel de la Coste. Planchet presented himself there as a lackey out of work. He had not spoken ten minutes with the people at the inn before ascertaining that a woman had arrived at eleven o’clock the previous evening, had sent for the innkeeper and told him she intended to stay in the neighborhood for some time.
This was all Planchet needed to learn. Speeding to the appointed meeting place, he found his three