The Widow (33 page)

‘My dear mother,' said Arlette, ‘used to say always make sure your underclothes are clean in case of a road accident.'

‘Very sensible of her. What else is there to be afraid of?'

‘Losing you.'

Arthur looked at her, and said, ‘No, don't let's lose one another.'

‘Are you all right?' He was a lot more shaken than she was, she realized. Surprised.

‘Foot in the stirrup. One must remount at once after a fall. I haven't a scratch. Good car that. Stable.'

The German police had found the two girls, in the company of two Canadian airforcemen in, of all places, Ludwigshafen. They'd been looking for a pale blue Audi reported stolen an hour before in Mainz, so naturally their eye had lighted on a pale grey Ford. There were at the present no further explanations: plainly the story would be a confused one. Arlette came in handy to persuade the farmer's wife that she was not disgraced throughout eternity, and in soothing the farmer, who had already taken his belt off and was swinging it about in ominous fashion. Arthur, who'd had one beer in a café and time to imagine sinister machinations, drove home through villages. He'd had enough, he said, of autoroutes for the time being.

The Rue de l'Observatoire was amazingly quiet and un-dramatic. Nobody was hanging about in shadowy corners. Life was normal. It was quite inconceivable, they both decided, that any sinister machination should have taken place. Things like that happened – they quite agreed – when one was a little over-nervous and perhaps a little clumsy. The Lancia was a sensitive car, and reacted at once to any heaviness of foot or hand. Really Arthur preferred bicycles. Arlette's hand was throbbing a little, so they both had some linden tea.

Lead a normal life. What is normal life? Podsnappery, as Dickens called it: getting up at eight o'clock and shaving clean at a quarter past.

‘Go to work,' said Arlette. ‘I'll manage.' If it hadn't been for the daily paper … With all its antique euphemisms on parade.

There was a big headline. “A Masterly Throw of the Net”. Provincial newspapers are always like this. Their French, like
detective stories, got enshrined about the time of the Stavisky scandal. A naughty man is always an individual little to be recommended, whose habits society reproves. He goes to houses of ill-fame, where he shows somewhat special tastes.

Briefly, our active and resourceful Police Judiciaire had been hard at work. It has Dismantled a Veritable Network. And the Commissaire had not abstained himself from commentary. Unusual. As Arthur said, nobody knew better ordinarily how to keep his trap shut.

There was nearly a whole page of the stuff, causing the more belated obituaries to get held over. Profiting by a recently tightened spirit of cooperation with the German and Swiss police, dating from the time when the whole corner had been full of real or imagined terrorists – that Swiss frontier was a piece of Gruyére cheese – but shorn of all the verbiage, plants in pots had been used as a cover for distributing narcotics. The honourably known horticultural commerce – oh, yes, Mr Taglang – didn't know a damn thing about it, was thrown into total consternation, but the Judge of Instruction wasn't having any of this. There was a naughty man in Munich – ramifications – and a naughty man in Lucerne. It was not yet altogether clear, said the Commissaire, who was the moving spirit in all this. One laid hands upon small fry. There was, further, a person who had met his end in dubious circumstances – that had attracted the attention of the ever-watchful – upon a railway line. Enquiry would determine whether or not he had been a cat's paw. People who dealt in drugs were very cunning. They employed ‘straw men'.

‘It's all a lot of nothing,' said Arlette. It was a funny sensation to realize that one knew a lot more, without knowing anything worth knowing. She couldn't imagine Demazis as a master mind. Nor Mr Taglang either. Nor to be sure the artistically talented Monsieur Michel; pegged, that one, for possession, and not released on bail: Madame le Juge had signed a committal order. ‘Do you make anything of it?'

‘Not much,' said Arthur. ‘Cops like narcotics cases because of the publicity. A thing like this pleases the Prefect. Can't do
one any harm, point of view of promotion. Otherwise I'd think it a clumsy affair, clumsily leaked, and that's not like our friend the Commissaire. I suppose there might be grains of truth somewhere. This bit about the fruitful side-effects of the terrorist hunt is rather sweet. The Germans were complaining like hell about the Swiss and the French both. All the frontiers, naturally, are cheese.'

‘Go to work,' said Arlette again. She wanted to be by herself.

A sense of anti-climax, she supposed. She'd done the work on Demazis and they'd pinched the credit. As for her getting kidnapped, which did or didn't have anything to do with the matter, they plainly didn't give a damn. She was little use, as a witness. If confronted with Mr Taglang, she couldn't say positively that he had cut her hand, and she couldn't really say he hadn't. Squashed into the back of a car, with sticking plaster all over your face, you aren't very good at recognizing people.

It was possible, she supposed. About twenty-five people worked for that nursery. He'd have a couple of acolytes. No – more likely nobody there was involved. If you had a network you'd want as few people to know about it as might be. It only took one man to unpot a plant here and there, tuck in a little plastic sachet, and repot. You left, one supposed, a special mark on the pot. She had known nothing about any of this but she could understand: if Demazis had known, and presumably he did, he could have told her.

Were the acolytes the men in Munich or Lucerne, who knew which pot to look for, which flowershop to go to?

Well, she'd save something out of it all anyhow. She didn't know whether her phone was tapped or not, but decided she didn't care.

‘Doctor Ulrich, please … Arlette Van der Valk. You've seen this morning's local paper?'

‘Yes, indeed. I am grateful. I'll mention no names.'

‘No, don't.'

‘A young lady I know was plainly – probably without
realizing it – on the fringes of that, wouldn't you say? Quite unwittingly.'

‘Quite possibly. I thought it in any event unsuitable companionship and I decided to say a word where I thought it might do good. I think that did do some good.'

‘I appreciate it, Madame, you may believe me. My uh, relative is much relieved. I think we can regard the matter as closed. Er – you may be assured: there'll be no further doubt cast upon your uh, activities. Quite the contrary. Should it come within my capacities to make a recommendation … That is purely hypothetical but could eventually arise. You see? I would in fact do so. I don't puff myself up, but such a recommendation could be of value to you.'

‘You are very kind.' And a recommendation costs you nothing, Mister, which is always a consideration. ‘For my part, should I be asked in matters of this kind for a reference, with of course total discretion – you wouldn't mind my giving your name?' He thought about that.

‘Er – in confidence, it would have to be in complete confidence – I'll be glad to.'

Marie-Line won't be around any more. She won't want to think about any of this. Never mind, I got a doctor out of it. And a lawyer, and that's a thing I'll need. Something to set against the cut hand.

And poor old Robert … Living all by himself with his fantasies in Hautepierre. Pinning paper women to the wall and shooting them.

It took her the whole morning to make an eatable meal. The weather had changed too, probably for good now. Arthur returned complaining about a chilly drizzle. He couldn't complain about the food, which was a bit Germanic in character. Eintopf; everything in one pot: she made a bit of comedy showing how she'd got the pot out of the oven with one hand and one wrist.

She had to do some shopping in the Boulevard de la Marne. And with an idea of a breath of fresh air, as much as anything else, she pottered up the Rue Goethe, into the Botanic Garden, out very quiet and leisurely across the Rue de l'Université, over into the Boulevard de la Victoire. She could swear, following this manoeuvre, that absolutely no one was dogging her footsteps.

She wondered who, if anybody, would take trouble to dog her footsteps. The indiscretions of the Commissaire were calculated all right, but to what end? This emphasis on straw men and stalking-horses: more to the story than Taglang Enterprises. Nor was Mr Taglang a man who cut people; his razorblade was kept for delicate operations on small plants. A likelier candidate was perhaps the gentleman with the elegant red car, but the paper had made no mention of any such.

The likeliest stalking-horse hereabouts is me, surely!

Because – this loquacity of the police: what had been the commissaire's sources of information? The eagle eye? – that might do for the local paper but not for her. Nor the razor-artist. Been a lot of soothing talk about protection : what protection?

Apart from naughty men in Lucerne, suppose there are still a couple of acolytes loose? There is nobody in the garden, over-casually raking dead leaves, save gardeners. A henchman dressed up as a gardener is quite ludicrous, as much so as Papi with a wheelbarrow, or Corinne as a botanizing Miss Marple. She decided that even if the police were using her as a decoy of sorts she didn't care. I want to get my hand healed, please. It's a nuisance when I want to try to write things down. And Arthur, frankly, is equally bored by now with the kitchen. She dropped in
Chez Mauricette
for a cup of coffee. This as she expected was funny because of the topic of conversation,
which was plainly unchanged since that morning and was making them some money as well as something to roll on the tongue. The voices were loud.

‘Imagine the blasted cheek – this Corsican bastard coming in here and insinuating that we were handing out dope to students – I ask you!'

‘Place a hotbed of vice, what.'

‘These kids do a bit of trafficking in pills – well, that's nothing to do with me, is it? That I should go ringing him up – no Inspector, I said, I deal in what my licence says I deal in, and don't you go making no insinuations,' Plainly a word she enjoyed.

‘They take all sorts of speed and stuff before their examinations.'

‘And smoke joints – but they don't do that in here. Botanic Garden's full to the brim of cannabis, I'm telling you!'

‘What's this stuff look like?'

‘How should I know? Grow it onna windersill they tell me. Go smoking geranium leaves fr'all I care.'

‘What's this thing here all hanging down?'

‘My asparagus you silly bugger and keep your great paws off.' Arlette paid and went.

Arthur came back from work in good fettle.

‘Did you go out?'

‘Oh, I walked around the block before doing my shopping.'

‘Did anything happen?'

‘What on earth should happen?'

‘I suppose not. A faint shadow of disquiet.'

‘I don't see what there is to be uneasy about. Even if there were, what are we supposed to do about it? Stay cowering in the cellar?'

‘Well good. That's fine then. We've an invitation for drinks.'

‘Parties!' said Arlette, no great party-lover. ‘I'm fairly tired.'

‘I thought it might do you good. We've lived rather in one another's hair. It's only Philippe.' A young assistant lecturer in Psychology, with anarchist leanings, whom she rather liked.

‘Be full of students.' Having brought up three children, Arlette said occasionally that she'd had enough of students. ‘Oh all right then.'

‘We needn't stay late.'

‘Shall we take the car?' asked Arthur after supper, helping to zip his wife into a gay frock ‘suitable for students'; one should never try to dress like them, she said, and least of all in blankets.

‘No, why? It's stopped raining and it's only the Rue de Palerme.'

‘All right by me. Bound to be terribly stuffy anyhow. And noisy. As well as full of marijuana smoke. Bit of fresh air on the way back will do us good. What do we contribute?' rummaging in the drinks cupboard, ‘perhaps as it's getting colder, gluh-wein?' coming up with a couple of bottles.

‘As long as it's not spiked too heavily: the last one had vodka or something in it and I got a bit pissed.' They set out, Arthur with a shopping bag – ‘I like to eat the peel; is this a biological lemon?' – and Arlette with her gloved hand in her pocket. Explanations were so boring. ‘I got into a fight with a tin of cannelonis.'

A pleasant five-minute walk, just what one needed on the way back to get rid of fumes. No fog. A fairly mild atmosphere with a bit of scotch mist, not enough to make one wet. Tiny beads of moisture on one's coat and hair.

The Esplanade is the most campussy part of Strasbourg University: a big space that had never been built on, having been jealously held onto by the Army ever since the town had been fortified by Vauban. When the Army finally decided that the war of 1870 was over, roughly ninety years after that traumatizing event, one had this huge area. The building promoters fell upon about half of it with the usual expensive results, draughty outside and rickety within. The University made a better job of the other half and planted a lot of trees. All they had to do was cross the Boulevard de la Victoire and take an alleyway running straight across, dignified with the suitably academic name of Rue Blaise Pascal, but it is nice,
because there are no cars and there are four rows of lindens. In the evenings this is fairly deserted, but you don't run much risk of getting mugged. There is plenty of light from fairly high street lamps with quite pleasant white mushrooms on them.

You pass by the Library, and the big boring administrative building, with the tall tower of the Chemistry Institute on your left: an ellipse with its ends clipped like a cigar: quite a good-looking building. You pass a variety of shapeless things devoted to Biology and Molecular Something or other, and come out on a big oval space half enclosed by the wings of the Law Faculty, with a decorative pavement and such shrubs as survive the gale-like draughts. It would be quite good for skateboarding if it wasn't so flat.