And, thereupon, leaving Denis to
settle everything down below, he decided to see Constance.
Up above, however, when Mathieu was on the point of turning into the
communicating passage, he paused once more, this time near the lift. It
was there, fourteen years previously, that Morange, finding the trap
open, had gone down to warn and chide the workmen, while Constance,
according to her own account, had quietly returned into the house, at the
very moment when Blaise, coming from the other end of the dim gallery,
plunged into the gulf. Everybody had eventually accepted that narrative
as being accurate, but Mathieu now felt that it was mendacious. He could
recall various glances, various words, various spells of silence; and
sudden certainty came upon him, a certainty based on all the petty things
which he had not then understood, but which now assumed the most
frightful significance. Yes, it was certain, even though round it there
hovered the monstrous vagueness of silent crimes, cowardly crimes, over
which a shadow of horrible mystery always lurks. Moreover, it explained
the sequel, those two bodies lying below, as far, that is, as logical
reasoning can explain a madman's action with all its gaps and
mysteriousness.
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