to talk again.
Ah! I’m too kind-hearted... I should have left her at the orphanage!
So she would have learned what
the hand feeding you means.
Then? Mary Jane is not your daughter; and whose? If I may ask?
the Commissioner inquired, attentively, following the movements of all
in the room around him.
She is the daughter of my stepsister and her husband, the infamous Count Ladurée.
My sister died of a strange and unknown debilitating illness.
Her beauty faded day by day,
she slowly went out,
as if carried away by the wind.
About the Count, I guess, you well know
the story of his diabolical madness.
The Little Girl was brought to the orphanage.
I still did not live here and when I came back, I immediately had the good heart to take the baby with me.
Madame Tussauds said, while Reverend Dumas nodded with his hands clasped in a monotonous prayer.
I'm not completely informed about this nasty story, please Madame, would you tell it to me?
And so saying the commissioner C. Monet
moved his chair and sat in wait
to hear this strange story.
- It all began with the slow death
of my adoptive stepsister.
The Count had gone a little mad, he began
doing strange and meaningless things.
He did not want to bury his great love,
he embalmed her, saying that he would keep her close forever.
I remember that in those days the Count was as crazy or invaded, perhaps demeaned or who knows what.
He was studying all day and all nights,
then he wrote; he wrote millions of formulas
which for me have no meaning.
Oh! But me, Commissioner, I am a smart woman and I understand things.
I know what the Count was studying! He was studying
the Magic... The Dark Magic, Commissioner!
More and more the Count Ladurée
lived in a straight-up fantasyland,
an impalpable world made up of visions.
He talked to his wife, as if she was still alive, but she was motionless, embalmed, a stuffed puppet! He talked to plants and animals! He no longer talked to people! He didn’t say any other word! He didn't say a word!
We are one of the wealthiest families in Paris, Mr. Monet, and we cannot afford certain rumors on our behalf.
We can’t! It’s trashy!
Oh! But me... I am a woman of high society, of great nobility and I know well certain things! So, I took my fur and my puppy dressed for the occasion and went to Reverend Dumas to denounce the facts and confess everything to God!
Then I went to the police with Count Ladurée’s documents and denounced him for his magic rituals and his heresies.
Thus, Count Ladurée had to take all of his stuff and run away from Paris, otherwise people would pilloried him as a heretic and / or Satan's follower!
Reading through his things I think he has fled to some distant or exotic country,
bringing the embalmed body of his beloved wife with him.
So he disappeared in a flash leaving their only beautiful daughter
in a shelter for orphans.
My adoption papers are all in the parish of Reverend Dumas.
Anyway,
what Count Ladurée left before escape his properly punishment, is all in his office; you can visit it whenever you want!
I left it as it was to facilitate the course of the investigation and now it is still as it was at the time.
Madame Tussauds said looking at
Dumas with a cunning glance.
It’s not a great story! ... It’s not a great story at all!
Commissioner Monet mumbled
beneath his long black mustaches,
while he was a long way off from hearing.
Her voice was too irritating for his ears. As a music that does not sound good. A scratched disc that stops the pin and blows up ruining
the melody of things.
Would you like something to drink?
A brandy or some coffee? Maybe some tea?
The waitress said to all
the guests in the salon.
In that night of shock-white snow
on the windows steamed up.
In this strange story, full of
unsolved mysteries.
It seemed that everyone, listening to the story about Count Ladurée, they had completely forgotten why they were there.
At that late hour in a night
a few days before Christmas.
They had completely forgotten about
Mary Jane and little Jean Baptiste.
They drank and had conversations again, about this and that, they talked about the weather changes and Madame Tussauds was a very good host. Then they drank a toast again,
making wishes each other.
Meanwhile, a few kilometers from there,
the two children slept with the animals in the warmth of the stable, dreaming of a happy Christmas.
Only
