Out of the Dark (6 page)

I didn't dare ask him in front of Jacqueline if he also knew his other address, in Paris, on the Boulevard Haussmann.

She had a bemused look all of a sudden, as if she thought Van Bever was simplifying things and making them much less confused than they were: a man you meet in a coastal resort in Normandy and who works as a dentist in Le Havre, all very banal, really. I remembered that I'd always waited for boarding time in a café by the docks: La Porte Océane ... Did Cartaud go there? And in Le Havre, did he wear the same gray suit? Tomorrow I would buy a map of Le Havre, and when I was alone with Jacqueline she would explain it all for me.

'We thought we would lose him in Paris, but three weeks ago we saw him again …'

And Van Bever hunched his back a little more and lowered his head between his shoulders, as if he were about to jump an obstacle.

'You met him in the street?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Jacqueline.
'
I ran into him by chance. He was waiting for a taxi on the Place du Châtelet. I gave him the address of our hotel.'

Suddenly she seemed very distressed that we were still talking about this.

'Now that he's in Paris half the time,' said Van Bever, 'he wants to see us. We can't say no ...

Yesterday afternoon, Jacqueline got out of the car after Cartaud had opened the door, and followed him into the building on the Boulevard Haussmann. I had watched them both. There was no trace of unhappiness on Jacqueline's face.

'Are you really obligated to see him?'

'In a way,' said Van Bever.

He smiled at me. He hesitated a moment, then added: 'You could do us a favor … Stay with us, next time he hunts us down …'

'Your being there would make things easier for us,' said Jacqueline. 'You don't mind?'

'No, not at all. It will be a pleasure.'

I would have done anything for her.

THAT SATURDAY Van Bever went to Forges-les-Eaux. I was waiting for them in front of their hotel at about five in the afternoon, as they had asked. Van Bever came out first. He suggested we take a quick walk along the Quai de la Tournelle.

'I'm counting on you to keep an eye on Jacqueline.'

These words took me by surprise. A little embarrassed, he explained that Cartaud had called the day before to say he wouldn't be able to give him a ride to Forges-Ies-Eaux because he had work to do. But Cartaud's apparent thoughtfulness and false friendliness were not to be trusted. Cartaud only wanted to take advantage of his absence, Van Bever's, to see Jacqueline.

So why didn't he take her with him to Forges-les-Eaux?

He answered that if he did, Cartaud would only come and find them there, and it would be precisely the same thing.

Jacqueline came out of the hotel to meet us.

'I suppose you were talking about Cartaud,' she said. She looked at us intently, one after the other.

'I asked him to stay with you,' said Van Bever.

'That's nice.'

We walked him to the Pont-Marie métro station, as before. They were both quiet. And I no longer felt like asking questions. I was giving in to my natural indifference. All that really mattered was that I would be alone with Jacqueline. I even had Van Bever's authorization to do so, since he had asked me to serve as her guardian. What more could I ask?

Before he walked down the steps into the métro, he said: 'I'll try to be back tomorrow morning.'

At the bottom of the staircase he stood still for a moment, very straight, in his herringbone overcoat. He stared at Jacqueline.

'If you want to get in touch with me, you have the phone number for the casino at Forges …'

Suddenly he had a weary look on his face.

He pushed open one of the doors, and it swung shut behind him.

We were crossing the Ile Saint-Louis heading for the Left Bank, and Jacqueline had taken my arm.

'When are we going to run into Cartaud?'

My question seemed to annoy her slightly. She didn't answer.

I was expecting her to say good-bye at the door of her hotel. But she led me up to her room.

Night had fallen. She turned on the lamp next to the bed.

I was sitting on the chair near the sink, and she was on the floor, with her back against the edge of the bed and her arms around her knees.

'I have to wait for him to call,' she said.

She was talking about Cartaud. But why was she forced to wait for him to call?

'So you were spying on me yesterday on the Boulevard Haussmann?'

'Yes.'

She lit a cigarette. She began to cough after the first puff. I got up from the chair and sat down on the floor next to her. We leaned back against the edge of the bed.

I took the cigarette from her hands. Smoke didn't agree with her, and I wished she would stop coughing.

'I didn't want to talk about it in front of Gérard … He would have been embarrassed with you there … But I wanted to tell you that he knows all about it …'

She was looking defiantly into my eyes:

'For now, there's nothing I can do … We need him …'

I was about to ask her a question, but she reached over and turned off the lamp. She leaned toward me and I felt the caress of her lips on my neck.

'Wouldn't you like to think about something else now?' She was right. You never knew what trouble the future might hold.

Around seven o'clock in the evening, someone knocked on the door and said in a gravelly voice: 'You're wanted on the telephone.' Jacqueline got up from the bed, slipped on my raincoat, and left the room without turning on the light, leaving the door ajar.

The telephone hung on the wall in the corridor. I could hear her answering yes or no and repeating several times that 'there was really no need for her to come tonight,' as if the person on the other end didn't understand what she was saying, or as if she wanted to be begged.

She closed the door, then came and sat down on the bed. She looked funny in that raincoat; it was too big for her, and she'd pushed the sleeves up.

'I'm meeting him in half an hour … He's going to come and pick me up … He thinks I'm alone here …' She drew nearer to me and said, in a lower voice: 'I need you to do me a favor … '

Cartaud was going to take her to dinner with some friends of his. After that, she didn't really know how the evening would end. This was the favor she wanted from me: to leave the hotel before Cartaud arrived. She would give me a key. It belonged to the apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann. I was to go and pick up a suitcase, which I would find in one of the cupboards in the dentist's office, 'the one next to the window.' I would take the suitcase and bring it back here, to this room. All very simple. She would call me at about ten o'clock to let me know where to meet her.

What was in this suitcase? She smiled sheepishly and said, 'Some money.' I wasn't particularly surprised. And how would Cartaud react when he found it missing? Well, he would never suspect that we were the ones who had stolen it. Of course, he had no idea that we had a copy of the key to his apartment. She had had it made without his knowledge at the 'Fastkey' counter in the Gare Saint-Lazare.

I was touched by her use of the word 'we,' because she meant herself and me. All the same, I wanted to know if Van Bever was in on this plan. Yes. But he preferred to let her tell me about it. So I was only to play a minor role in all this, and what they wanted from me was a sort of burglary. To help me overcome my qualms, she went on to say that Cartaud wasn't 'a good person,' and that in any case 'he owed it to her …'

'Is it a heavy suitcase?' I asked her.

'No.'

'Because I don't know if it would be better to take a taxi or the métro.'

She seemed amazed that I wasn't expressing any misgivings.

'It doesn't bother you to do this for me?'

She probably wanted to add that I would be in no danger, but I didn't need encouraging. To tell the truth, ever since my childhood, I had seen my father carrying so many bags – suitcases with false bottoms, leather satchels or overnight bags, even those black briefcases that gave him a false air of respectability … And I never knew just what was in them.

'It will be a pleasure,' I told her.

She smiled. She thanked me, adding that she would never again ask me to do anything like this. I was a little disappointed that Van Bever was involved, but there was nothing else at all that bothered me about it. I was used to suitcases.

Standing in the doorway of her room, she gave me the key and kissed me.

I ran down the stairs and quickly crossed the quai in the direction of the Pont de la Tournelle, hoping not to meet tip with Cartaud.

In the métro, it was still rush hour. I felt at case there, squeezed in with the other travelers. There was no risk of drawing attention to myself.

When I came back with the suitcase, I would definitely take the métro.

I waited to switch to the Miromesnil line in the Havre-Caumartin station. I had plenty of time. Jacqueline wouldn't call me at the hotel before ten o'clock. I let two or three trains go by. Why had she sent me on this mission rather than Van Bever? And had she really told him I would be going after the suitcase? With her, you never knew.

Coming out of the métro I was feeling apprehensive, but that soon faded. There were only a few other pedestrians in the street. and the windows of the buildings were dark: offices whose occupants had just left for the day. When I came to number
160
I looked up. Only the fifth-floor windows were lit.

I crossed the lobby in the dark. The elevator climbed slowly and the yellow light of the ceiling lamp over my head cast the shadow of the grillwork onto the stairway wall. I left the elevator door ajar to give me light as I slipped the key into the lock.

Around the vestibule, the double doors of the rooms were all wide open, and there was a white glow coming from the streetlights on the boulevard. I turned to the left and stepped into the dentist's office. Standing in the middle of the room, the chair with its reclining leather back made a sort of elevated couch where you could stretch out if you liked.

By the light from the street I opened the metal cabinet, the one that stood near the windows. The suitcase was there, on a shelf, a simple tinplate suitcase like the ones soldiers on leave carry.

I took the suitcase and found myself back in the vestibule. Opposite the dentist's office, a waiting room. I flipped the switch. Light fell from a crystal chandelier. Green velvet armchairs. On a coffee table, piles of magazines. I crossed the waiting room and entered a little bedroom with a narrow bed, left unmade. I turned on the bedside lamp.

A pajama top lay on the pillow, crumpled into a ball. Hanging in the closet, two suits, the same color gray and the same cut as the one Cartaud was wearing in the café on the Rue Cujas. And beneath the window, a pair of brown shoes, with shoe trees.

So this was Cartaud's bedroom. In the wicker wastebasket I noticed a pack of Royales, the cigarettes Jacqueline smoked. She must have thrown it away the other night when she was here with him.

Without thinking, I opened the nightstand drawer, in which boxes of sleeping pills and aspirin were piled up next to a stack of business cards bearing the name Pierre Robbes, dental surgeon,
160
Boulevard Haussmann, Wagram
1318
.

The suitcase was locked and I hesitated to force it. It wasn't heavy. It was probably full of banknotes. I went through the pockets of the suits and finally found a black billfold holding an identity card, dated a year earlier, in the name of Pierre Cartaud, born 15 June
1923
in Bordeaux (Gironde), address
160
Boulevard Haussmann, Paris.

So Cartaud had been living here for at least a year … And this was also the address of the person known as Pierre Robbes, dental surgeon. It was too late to question the concierge, and I couldn't very well appear at his door with this tinplate suitcase in my hand.

I had sat down on the edge of the bed. I could smell ether, and I felt a sudden pang, as if Jacqueline had just left the room.

On my way out of the building I decided to knock on the glass door of the concierge's office, where a light was on. A dark-haired man, not very tall, opened it a crack and put his head out. He looked at me suspiciously.

'I'd like to see Dr. Robbes,' I told him.

'Dr. Robbes isn't in Paris at the moment.'

'Do you have any idea how I could get in touch with him?'

He seemed more and more suspicious, and his gaze lingered on the tinplate suitcase I was carrying.

'Don't you have his address?'

'I can't give it to you, monsieur. I don't know who you are.'

'I'm a relative of Dr. Robbes. I'm doing my military service, and I have a few days' leave.'

That seemed to reassure him a little.

'Dr. Robbes is at his house in Behoust.'

I couldn't quite make out the name. I asked him to spell it for me:
BEHOUST
.