Petite Mort (28 page)

‘But that’s preposterous.’ Durand gets to his feet. ‘If anything, we are the injured party. Mlle Roux ran away a few days ago, leaving us in a fix for our domestic position. Not to mention the worry we naturally felt for her wellbeing.’

Japy thinks:
You have prepared even this little speech
.

‘What has happened to her, then?’ Durand asks.

‘She has been shot through the arm. You understand the
position. We are bound over to investigate where possible.’

‘Shot? Dear me,’ Durand says. ‘Are you sure? She was such a demure little person.’ He pinches his own lip, thinking. ‘A boyfriend, perhaps, someone we didn’t know about.’

‘She will recover.’

‘So glad.’ He sits on the sofa. ‘But I must admit to feeling very poorly used in all this. To accuse us…!’ One hand goes to shade his forehead.

Japy reaches inside his coat for a notepad. ‘Would you mind telling me how she left?’

‘It was two days ago. We simply came back and found her gone.’

‘When you say, you found her gone…’

‘Suitcase, clothes, everything. Nobody saw her leave.’

Japy raises his hands to heaven. ‘My dear sir! A mesmerist’s dream!’

‘Pardon?’

‘You have only to show me to the lady’s chamber, and there I will concentrate my mind and observe the trails left by the missing objects. That will certainly give us a clue to the nature of the mystery.’

He stands, flipping the notepad shut, beaming. Durand starts, as if unsure if this is a joke. ‘Is this a joke?’ he says.

‘I assure you it is quite real.’

Durand pushes the bedroom door open. Japy smiles politely, shoulders past him and looks at the second-rate furniture, the old paint on the shutters, which have been flung wide to air the room.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘oh yes, I can see we are going to have some success here.’

He stands in the centre of the room, pinches middle finger to thumb on each hand and lowers his head.

‘Yes, it was this way,’ he murmurs to himself, a moment later,
walking swiftly to the door. ‘The valise went this way. I can see it. And down towards the stairs, yes, like so.’

He crosses to the landing and starts to descend. Durand waits, arms folded, and then follows him.

Japy leads him all the way back to the ground floor, and hovers in the hallway. The butler has appeared at the sound of footsteps and stands disapproving at the back of the hall.

‘Almost,’ Japy says through clenched teeth. ‘Almost…’

With a swift movement he runs to the great front door and yanks it open, and stands, sniffing the morning air.

Behind him, he hears a cough of laughter.

‘Almost…’ he says again, seems to deflate, then rallies, turning to his audience, which by now includes the chauffeur and a footman he hasn’t seen before.

‘No?’ Durand says.

‘I can sense, definitely so, that she came this way carrying her valise. She left the house, as you told us, through the front door. Everything happened just as you said, Monsieur.’

Durand’s nostrils flare. ‘You will go back to your superiors and they will, they will give your report the credit it deserves?’

Japy: ‘They take me very seriously indeed.’

Durand stretches out a hand. ‘So pleased to have made your acquaintance, Inspector. I hope we meet again in better circumstances.’

Japy shakes the hand gravely. ‘At your service, Monsieur.’

He waits until he is striding down the gravel path, has waved once, twice to Durand and his huddled staff; then turns back. ‘One last thing.’ He starts to walk back towards the house. ‘Might I ask the privilege of seeing round behind, to admire the rear elevation? One never gets to see these fine old houses from the back.’

Durand smiles. There is nothing behind the smile except perhaps another smile, repeating ad infinitum into the distance. ‘Of course,’ he says.

Japy ducks his head appreciatively. ‘And the girl’s effects? They were taken with her?’

Confident: ‘Yes.’

‘You’re quite sure she took everything?’

A flicker: ‘Yes.’

‘Thank you.’ Japy turns and starts to walk around to the side of the house. There is the house wall on the left and then a narrow alley about four metres wide, then on the right a stone wall three metres high, which separates the house from the old stables next door. The space is not much used: nettles and high grass. At the end, sunlight, and a glimpse of a manicured lawn.

He must work fast now: he picks his way over the uneven ground, scanning the grass. The bonfire smell he first noted coming through the girl’s bedroom window: is it stronger here, or here? Invisible trails hang in the air before him, leading him into the alley.

Halfway down, he destroys a dandelion clock with a single kick and squats to part the long grass. Sure enough, a cloud of little ash ribbons flies up at his face. On the ground in front of him are blackened chunks of suitcase leather; you can make out the remains of a handle, and brass studs, which of course did not ignite, lying in a little heap to one side.

He reaches for the handle, and turns it over. There is the silver back of a hairbrush, the bristles burnt away. And underneath that, a sodden lump of half-burnt paper is nestled in the grass. He picks it up, looks at the faded velvet ribbon tying the bottom half of the letters into their charred bundle. Holds them up to the light.

Only the top half of the page remains, written on with a crabbed, cramped hand, on paper so fine as to be almost transparent.

3. juin 1913. Dear Adèle…

At the other end of the alleyway, the light is suddenly
blocked. It’s the butler: white-faced, sent to pre-empt the discovery, but too late.

Japy scoops the burnt offerings of the girl’s suitcase into his handkerchief and pockets them.

The butler is still waiting. His lips quivering as if he wants to speak, but in the end there is nothing to say.

Juliette, viii
.

PHILIBERT Marc

Guard – Night Shift

On my rounds at a quarter to seven I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I was unable to check the door because I had lent my key out the previous night to a director, but I observed that it was fastened and there was no evidence of disturbance.

The archivist threads her way between the filing cabinets and bookshelves towards me. I point to Marc Philibert’s statement. ‘Would it have been normal for a security guard to lend a key to a director?’

She peers. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Security was very tight. They didn’t want anyone stealing their ideas.’

I say: ‘Edouard Rey, the day guard, says that there was no break-in. So whoever got in must have had access. And Philibert mentions that a director borrowed his key the night before.’

She frowns. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘Something else. Isn’t it strange that there are only a few witness statements, and just this photo – no others? It’s as if someone’s looked into the dossier already.’

We look together at the photograph. ‘Do you know who any of these people are? The directors, I mean? The ones in the back row?’

She scans the print. ‘No. We do have some material from the bigger name directors, but I don’t recognise any of them.’

She drums her fingers on the desk. ‘But there’s someone who might know. His name is Rinaldi. I think he was at Pathé back in the day. He’s a professor of modern cinema now. He lives just outside Paris.’

THE HALL WAS LINED
with eager faces in police uniform – every able-bodied man from colonel to private must have turned out to see the show – and from beyond the large, closed double doors to the gendarmerie came a sound like the baying of fairy-tale wolves.

My lawyer Denis Poperin – a thin, serious youth with a consumptive death rattle – took my forearms in his hands and looked at me.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

I nodded. He reached up and pulled the veil I was wearing down over my face.

He nodded to the youngest police officer, who removed the bar and opened the doors.

I saw the street crammed with people, all faces turned towards me. Half of them had notepads; one enterprising soul had set up a camera; a blinding flash of light caught me with my arm half across my face. The crowd surged forward and the police guard pushed them back. A car purred twenty metres down the street, surrounded by a ring of policemen.

‘Did you invent your story? Did you make it up?’ someone shouted as Denis manhandled me through the crowd. ‘You should be ashamed!’ cried a woman, and spat, though her aim was bad, and the gobbet landed on the man next to her.

Someone threw the first projectile as Denis tore open the cab door and bundled me in; it slithered down the glass of the window. ‘All right? All in?’ said the driver, his big, anxious face
peering back at us through the partition, and Denis nodded, too breathless to speak. The car began to move. Disappointed faces followed us; the crowd howled louder and some began to run alongside. The police driver swore and shaded his eyes, as if trying to see a clear path.

I sat, listening to the crowd call my name. Denis said: ‘Are you clear on your lines?’ I nodded. ‘But are you?’ he asked. He looked out of the cab window, white-faced. We were rolling along the rue de Rivoli now, past the Galeries St Paul with gaggles of shoppers queuing outside.

The low walls of the Pont au Change seemed to fall away on either side, exposing the churning water beneath. Then we were on the Ile de la Cité, and the same noise, the baying, rolled towards us. Looking ahead, I saw the Boulevard du Palais blocked with people.

In the cab, the driver hunched over the wheel and slowed down, unable to make any headway; the crowd scattered on either side of the vehicle, their faces changing into sneers of recognition. Pointing, shouting: I watched the news spread. Up ahead, policemen lining the high railings of the Palais’ forecourt moved towards the gates, and started to open them; swearing, our driver swung the car round.

‘Come on,’ muttered Denis, craning his neck to see what the delay was. I turned to my left and saw that it was another car, inching forward, arriving at the same time from the opposite direction. It was black and official-looking, with two figures sitting in the back seat.

The car swung round and drew level, competing with us for the front spot. The person looking back at me from the cab window, not three metres away, was Luce.

She was very changed; lines in the corners of her eyes and reaching down from her mouth had not been there a month before. I also saw that she was frightened, the muscles in her throat moving. The wide, dark eyes snapped shut and open,
then stayed open, staring at me. I looked at her waist, just visible above the level of the window; it was as flat as when I had first met her.

She gave the ghost of a smile and shifted her shoulders sadly. I remembered her in the house last summer, inspecting a new dress that had been sent to her in the wrong size.
My, Adèle. What a pretty pass we are in!

I felt myself want to smile back. Just then, our cab driver swore again, and the car lurched forward and gathered speed.

Juliette and Adèle
1967

‘What happened to the baby?’

Adèle says: ‘She’d given birth prematurely.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘She was in custody. Her family took it away with them.’

She looks at me and shrugs: a bitter smile. ‘Rich people closing ranks.’

I say: ‘What did you feel?’

Adèle looks at the back of her hands. ‘The papers said that André took it hardest. He broke his cell, threatened guards, and made wild predictions about the end of the world.’

‘GIVE ME YOUR HAND,’
Denis said as we stepped out of the car. The noise hit us: from the line of people queuing for seats in the public gallery, which snaked round the courtyard, to the crowd stuck outside, gripping the bars. Some were screaming my name; some were screaming Luce’s name, or André’s. Denis’s fingers closed round mine and he drew me onwards; a tight ring of policemen formed around us and ushered us through the tall doors and into the Vestibule d’Harlay.

‘Wait here,’ said the officer.

I stood looking up at the decorated ceiling, high overhead, and down at the red marble swirls of the floor, and I didn’t feel anything very much.

‘All right?’ Denis asked. He gave me a sickly smile, pale to the gills, the hair plastered to his forehead. ‘All right?’ he said again. I nodded.

The officer reappeared. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘we are to seat you before the crowd is let in, the judge says, to save a riot.’ He ducked his head to invite us to follow him, and led us towards the doors at the end of the vestibule.

They opened onto an audience room seating about two hundred. At first it seemed a mass of fluted oak, but then the different levels asserted themselves: the judges’ raised bench at the front, and the jury’s to the left-hand side. Denis led us to a bench in front of the judges’, and fussed about organising his papers. He shot me a look: ‘You’ll want to look nervous,’ he said, as I folded my arms across my chest. ‘Like we discussed.’ He
fiddled with the collar on his red prosecutor’s gown.

Just then there was the creak of a small door opening in the panelling on the right-hand side of the room; a police officer appeared, followed by André, then Luce; then by a walrusmoustached man dressed in the defending lawyer’s black. Denis met his level stare, then cleared his throat and began to shuffle papers again.

The defendants were led straight to the dock and sat. Luce looked down at her hands. André looked up at me, his face blank. He stared, as if searching for something; from my eyes down to my hands and back up; he frowned. I looked back at him, until he too folded his arms and looked away.

A clatter at the back of the hall; the policeman had crossed to the main doors to open them, and a moment later the hall was flooding with people fighting past each other to secure the best seats in the gallery. They were all men, women not being allowed as spectators, and they were consequently unafraid to be seen staring. The front row of the seats came up to five feet behind my chair; I heard the whispering assessments of my dress, my shoulders and my waist. For the first time, I felt my stomach squirm, and looked to Denis; he saw my face and said: ‘Not bad. If you could just be a little paler.’