The Scapegoat

The novel follows John, a solitary English historian of French culture, who is deeply depressed at the end of a holiday touring France. Despite his fluency in French, he feels permanently shut out from real human connection. On the last day of his trip, he wanders Le Mans, contemplating either getting drunk or seeking spiritual guidance at the Abbaye de la Grande-Trappe, a Cistercian monastery.

At the station buffet, John encounters Jean de Gué, a family man and property owner who is his exact physical double. They confirm the resemblance in a mirror: It is total, encompassing height, coloring, features, and voice. Over hours of drinking, John confesses his existential emptiness while Jean declares that greed is the only driving force in human nature. Jean leads John to a shabby hotel room, where one of them suggests exchanging clothes. John blacks out.

He wakes the next evening to find Jean gone, along with his car, wallet, passport, and every identifying possession. Gaston, Jean's loyal chauffeur, arrives and mistakes John for his master. Unable to prove his own identity, John assumes Jean's identity and lets Gaston drive him to the château of St. Gilles, Jean's home.

At the château, John meets Jean's family without being detected. Paul, Jean's younger brother who helps direct the family glass foundry, greets him with hostility. He meets Françoise, Jean's pregnant wife, and Renée, Paul's wife. Blanche, Jean's elder sister, leaves the room without speaking. The comtesse, or countess, who is Jean's mother, embraces John with fierce affection upstairs; her face is so startlingly like his own that he is momentarily horrified. She presses him about whether Jean renewed a crucial contract with a Paris firm called Carvalet. John lies and says everything is arranged. Later, she pleads for a mysterious "present" from Paris. John finds a package marked "Maman" among Jean's gifts and passes it to Charlotte, the comtesse's maid, without knowing its contents.

That evening, Françoise calls John to their shared bedroom. He gives her a locket and listens as she confides her loneliness and her fear about the pregnancy. Then, from the grounds, he hears a child counting from a turret window. Marie-Noel, Jean's daughter of nearly 11, stands on the sill threatening to jump unless he comes to her. He races upstairs and seizes her. She reveals Jean told her he might one day disappear forever. John promises to tell her first if he ever decides to leave. Lying beside the sleeping Françoise, he is overwhelmed by the realization that Jean's carelessness has caused suffering to everyone in the household.

Over the following days, John visits the verrerie, the family's glass foundry, and tells Paul the Carvalet contract has been renewed. But among Jean's letters he finds the actual Carvalet letter: a definitive refusal. The foundry faces closure. Driven by compassion for the workers, John secretly telephones Paris and accepts unfavorable terms, knowing the verrerie will run at a loss. He also discovers that Renée is not merely Paul's wife but Jean's lover.

The distribution of Jean's Paris gifts at lunch creates disaster. Paul's is a hormone preparation for impotence, which Marie-Noel reads aloud. Renée's is an intimate nightgown. Blanche's contains perfume addressed not to her but to someone named Béla, Jean's mistress. In the nearby town of Villars, John discovers Françoise's Marriage Settlement in Jean's bank safe: Her father tied up a vast dowry accessible only upon the birth of a male heir, and if Françoise dies before 50 without a son, the fortune passes to Jean and any daughters. John also meets Béla, a blonde Hungarian antique-shop owner who is Jean's mistress, and speaks to her obliquely about feeling like a changed person.

Back at the château, Françoise is seriously ill; the doctor has ordered bed rest to prevent a premature birth. John confesses to her alone that the contract was refused and that he renegotiated it on worse terms. She is touched by his confidence. John deliberately burns his hand to avoid the grande chasse, the big annual shoot that the seigneur, or lord, of St. Gilles traditionally organizes, since he does not know how to handle firearms. The shoot is a catastrophe. That evening, the comtesse has a severe episode, and John discovers the truth about the Paris "present": morphine ampoules and a hypodermic syringe. The comtesse has a morphine addiction, and Jean regularly supplies it. Reluctantly, John injects her.

Wracked with guilt, John finds a note from Marie-Noel under his door: She will pray for all his sins to be visited upon her instead, since she is young and strong enough to bear them. Gaston drives John to Villars, where he spends the night with Béla, who provides comfort without asking questions.

The next morning, Marie-Noel has disappeared. John finds her at the verrerie, having spent the night at the bottom of a dry well among broken glass, her palms cut. Julie, the foundry's concierge, reveals what the countryside already knows: During the Occupation, Jean led Resistance fighters to the master's house beside the foundry, called a man named Maurice Duval to the door under false pretenses, and had him shot and thrown into that same well. The killing was framed as the execution of a collaborator, but Julie says it was done from jealousy. This is why Blanche has not spoken to her brother for 15 years.

While the search for Marie-Noel continues, Françoise falls from the bedroom window to her death. At the hospital, Blanche suggests John give blood, stating that both he and Paul are universal donors. John must refuse: He belongs to blood group A, the one physical difference between himself and Jean that he cannot disguise. Françoise dies without regaining consciousness. John confronts the comtesse, who admits she told Françoise that morning that Jean never loved her, wanted only her money, and had affairs with both Renée and Béla. John removes the morphine, demands the comtesse come downstairs and resume her role as head of the household, and sits with her through the night. By dawn, she sleeps peacefully.

John restructures the family. He sends Paul and Renée abroad to modernize the business and tells Blanche to take over the verrerie and live in the restored master's house. The commissaire de police, or police commissioner, investigates Françoise's death, but Marie-Noel resolves the question by finding her mother's locket caught in a duster on the window ledge, proving Françoise leaned out too far and fell accidentally.

Then Jean de Gué telephones. He has seen the death notice and is returning. John retrieves a loaded revolver, intending to kill Jean, but the curé, the kindly parish priest, arrives first and gently takes the gun. Jean climbs through the window armed with his own weapon and reveals he spent the week in London using John's identity: He resigned John's university position, sold his possessions, and cashed all his money. John's former life has been destroyed. Jean proposes they trade identities intermittently. John refuses. They exchange clothes in darkness, and Jean returns to his family.

John drives to Villars for a final visit with Béla, who reveals she always knew he was not Jean: A woman would have to be a fool, she says, not to tell the difference between two men. She assures him that what he gave the family has taken root and cannot be destroyed. Leaving her house, John drives north toward the Abbaye de la Grande-Trappe. He seeks not an escape from failure, as he had a week earlier, but an answer to what to do with love.