There were about thirty people in the reception room. The women outnumbered the men. The Rougneux and the Tobies had already arrived. Just after Aimée and Lindquist, senior manager Moutet appeared with a voluptuous brunette. It was his wife. He introduced Aimée to her. The brunette Christiane Moutet had a vigorous handshake and a carnivorous smile and seemed at ease with herself.
“Do you play bridge?” she asked Aimée, and Aimée said yes. “At long last!” exclaimed the brunette delightedly. “We can never find a fourth who doesn’t screw everything up.”
“Oh, come on,” said senior manager Moutet.
“Oh phooey!” said the woman. “Pardon my language.”
Aimée smiled at her. Over the brunette’s shoulder she saw that Dr. Sinistrat had arrived and was standing near the entrance accompanied by a petite young woman with short hair who was wearing slacks. The doctor appeared to be looking for someone in the crowd. The petite woman looked unhealthy and uncomfortable. Twice she covered an ear with the palm of her hand.
“Oh look, here come our hosts,” said Lindquist, who was coming back from the buffet with flutes of champagne.
Aimée looked in the direction in which the realtor was pointing. At the far end of the reception room a group of people had just entered through a small side door: two men side by side, a woman just behind them, and another woman a couple of paces behind the first. Shaking hands and smiling, they made their way through guests filling up on sandwiches and champagne or whiskey and soda or vodka and orange juice. The woman at the back was a skinny blonde with pale eyes and long pale hair and hollows above the collarbone. She was wearing a shapeless pistachio-green dress adorned by a brooch set with rubies. Her eye caught Sinistrat’s and veered away immediately; Sinistrat likewise averted his gaze. Aimée watched him. She took a step sideways, as though trying to keep her balance, so as to get closer to Sinistrat and the petite woman in slacks.
“My ears hurt,” said the petite woman in slacks.
“Oh, give us a break, darling,” said Sinistrat. “It’s psychosomatic.”
He wandered off towards the back of the room. Moments later, Aimée saw him talking to the pale-eyed blonde woman, smiling and handing her a glass of orange juice. Lindquist took Aimée’s arm.
“Come, dear Madame Joubert,” he said, “let me introduce Monsieur Lorque and Monsieur Lenverguez, the pillars of Bléville’s prosperity.”
“I’m just the man with the little jars,” said Lorque.
He and Lenverguez were probably sixty years old. They were both stout. Lorque, the fatter of the pair, was very fat, with skin as smooth as a baby’s and brownish eyelids and a gold chain on his royal-blue vest. Lenverguez was tall and stiff, with a crown of white hair, a strong nose and a severe gaze, beads of sweat on his brow, well-scrubbed fingers and nails square and manicured. Lorque and Lenverguez were smoking Havana cigars.
“Little jars?” asked Aimée.
“Little jars of baby food,” replied Lorque. “Happy Baby baby food, Old Sea-Pilot canned goods, and L and L cattle feed—that’s us.” He looked pointedly at Aimée, teeth slightly exposed and head bent a little forward, as though he was saying something provocative. “He is the head,” he added, digging Lenverguez in the ribs. “And I am the stomach. Better watch out. I swallow everything I touch.”
“I won’t let you touch me then,” said Aimée.
“That’s a good one,” observed Lorque.
“Pay no attention to him,” said the woman who was with the two men. “He loves to play the gangster.”
“My wife,” declared Lorque without turning his head.
Lenverguez looked around and shook his head.
“Where has mine gone?” he asked vaguely. He had a lisp and spoke rarely. He went off grumbling in search of the pale-eyed blonde, but she was no longer in the room. Nor, for that matter, was Dr. Sinistrat.
“Ah! Monseigneur!” cried Lorque suddenly.
Spreading his arms, he almost jostled Aimée in his haste to get to the entrance door, where a bishop had just appeared along with a young priest, both in business suits.
“He is a little bit nutty,” observed Mme Lorque, smiling and following her husband with her eyes. “Do you play bridge, Madame Joubert?”
Christiane Moutet broke in to explain that she had already asked that question. Everyone burst out laughing. Everyone chattered. Sonia Lorque was affable, blonde, excessively thin, excessively tanned. Her white knitted dress set off her tan and her well-maintained body. She was a good twenty-five years younger than Lorque. One sensed that she took very good care of herself. Physically, she was like an aging starlet seeking desperately to preserve her beauty capital. That being said, she seemed neither highly strung nor stupid. She and Christiane Moutet invited Aimée to play bridge one day soon at the Moutets. Aimée accepted, then asked where she might powder her nose. They told her. She left the reception room and went up the grand staircase to the second floor. She was on the qui vive.
On the second floor was a long bronze-green hallway punctuated by white-painted doorways and reproductions of plates from the Encyclopédie of Diderot et al. depicting dock and industrial operations. No sound emerged from behind the white doors. Nor could anything be heard from the ground floor, thanks to the very thick walls and floors.
Near the door to the toilets was a settee with bronze-green upholstery. Aimée sat on it for a moment’s pause. She needed a clear mind to process the information she had just acquired.
But at that instant Baron Jules emerged from the bathroom with his male member in his hand, crossed the corridor, and began to urinate against the wall just below an industrial print.
6
“FUCK! That feels good!” cried the baron once.
He had not seen Aimée, who was sitting motionless on the settee. The urine could be heard continuously battering the wallpaper. A dark puddle was forming on the bronze-green carpet between the two booted legs of this interloper. The man was tall, with a slight paunch, wearing jodhpurs and a brick-colored, roll-neck sweater that was too big for him and darned in several spots. He had a large pink head with a big nose and pale gray eyes and a tangled mass of graying platinum-blond hair. He must have been over fifty. He turned his head and saw Aimée.
“Hell’s bells! A lady!” he remarked.
He turned towards her, still buttoning his fly.
“Let me introduce myself,” he said. “Baron Jules. I must assure you that I am not in the habit of pissing on the floor in the presence of members of the fair sex. All hail beauty!” He shouted the last words. “Respect for the ladies!” He seemed to be calming down. “The fact is,” he went on in a worldly tone, “that I have been holding it in since this morning, when I was released from the psychiatric clinic. I was saving it for the carpet of that fat Lorque, you see what I mean?”
Aimée nodded, nonplussed but hardly bothered.
“You don’t see at all!” exclaimed Baron Jules. “You are a stranger to all this, and young! And very desirable, I might add, even though I prefer a little bit more flesh on the bone.”
“Is that so?” said Aimée.
The baron smiled at her.
“YOU SHOULD EAT YOUR SOUP!” he shouted as loudly as he could.
Because of the noise, or by chance, the white door of a bedroom about ten meters away opened. Dr. Sinistrat and Mme Lenverguez looked out wide-eyed. They were holding hands. The hair of the blonde woman with the pale eyes was all awry and the doctor’s tie was askew. The blonde’s mouth formed an O and her face crinkled with embarrassment when she saw Aimée and the baron in the passageway. The baron smiled and bore down on the couple.
“Aha! Aha!” he whooped. “Adulterous little piglets!”
“Come now,” said Sinistrat. “Come on, Baron, really...”
Mme Lenverguez emitted a mouselike squeak and fled for the stairs. Sinistrat stood his ground before the baron with arms bent and palms facing forward, as though seeking to halt, or merely perhaps to talk with him.
“Baron Jules,” said Sinistrat, “I must tell you—”
The baron grabbed the doctor by the lapels and shook him in a rather pacific way.
“You must tell me what, you little shit?”
“I must tell you that I’m not going to be pushed around anymore.” Sinistrat’s voice was quavering. He was breathing hard. “I’m not signing any more certificates so you can...go on cures—”
“And in exchange for that, you think you can count on my silence?” The baron headed for the staircase. “You stupid humanist!” he cried. “You are laughable.” And the baron laughed a deliberate, forced laugh: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
He disappeared. Mortified, Sinistrat sought to save face under Aimée’s dispassionate gaze.
“He is mad,” said the doctor. “He’s completely—” He broke off. Then: “I must count on your discretion too,” he added hastily.
Aimée shrugged, rose, and walked towards the stairs. Sinistrat followed in her footsteps, frantic. His curly hair flopped over his eyes and he tossed his head to get rid of it.
“That man is appalling,” he was saying. “He pops up everywhere without being invited, and—”
“A priest! A priest!” The baron’s voice thundered up from the ground floor.
“My God!” said Sinistrat.
With the doctor at her heels, Aimée quickly reached the bottom of the stairs. When she reentered the reception room, Baron Jules had just reached the bishop.
“Ugh!” he cried. “What an ugly priest he is!”
“My dear Baron, I beg you,” began the bishop. He raised a pudgy hand, shaking his head and smiling, and the baron delivered a straight right to his jaw.
The bishop went down. Exclamations and horrified cries went up. People thrust themselves between the bishop and the baron, who was kicking at his victim and shouting that the black beetle should be left to croak. On the floor, the bishop was drooling. A very big guy in a striped suit, with a red ribbon on his lapel, a black mustache, and white teeth, grabbed the baron’s arm and put him in a half-nelson.
“A cop! That’s all we need,” exclaimed the baron, stamping his heels onto the feet of the man with the mustache.
The bishop was helped to his feet and stood shaking his head in bewilderment. Lorque plonked himself in front of Baron Jules, jowls atremble with fury, and waved his Havana at him threateningly.
“You poor old fool,” said the factory owner. “Nobody dares say it to your face, but I’ll say it: You are not welcome here, you are not invited. You think you can do whatever you like because everyone in Bléville is afraid of you. Well, I’m not afraid of you.” Lorque glanced at the man with the mustache. “Commissioner, throw this man out!”
“My pleasure,” said the commissioner.
“I don’t give a fuck!” cried Baron Jules as he was hustled towards the door. “I’ll be back. I’ll be back to piss all over the place.” He broke into laughter. The commissioner and the servants threw him down the front steps. He rolled into the gutter. “I don’t give a fuck,” he cried once more. “You’re all done for.”
7
AFTER the eviction of Baron Jules the cocktail party at Lorque’s house soon came to an end. Back in her studio apartment, after making herself a cup of tea and taking a bath, Aimée stood in front of the bathroom sink and, looking at her reflection in the mirror, spoke to herself:
“Well, it’s the same as ever, isn’t it? It seems slow, but actually it is quite fast. Sex always comes up first. Then money questions. And then, last, come the old crimes. You have seen other towns, my sweet, and you’ll see others, knock on wood.” She tapped her head. In the mirror, poorly illuminated by the fluorescent lighting built into the bathroom cabinet, her white reflection likewise tapped its head without smiling. “Come on, my sweet,” she repeated, “the crimes come last, and you have to be patient.”
She drank her tea and went to bed and slept soundly.
8
OVER THE next three weeks Aimée got into a routine. Accompanied by Maître Lindquist, she viewed several properties that were for sale in Bléville and the surrounding area. Each time she wavered, but was so charming that the realtor could not hold her rejections against her; on the contrary, he was more and more willing to humor her every whim.
Aimée’s life was well ordered and well filled. She took tea in the morning, lunched on grilled meat at the Grand Café de l’Anglais, and had eggs or soup for dinner. The moment seemed far off when she would once more crave a choucroute. (Her weight had dropped to forty-five kilos. It was always like that when she was focused.) In the daytime she mingled with the local elite and made connections. Twice a week she went horseback riding at a country club, three times a week she played tennis. She also golfed, and on Friday nights she went to the casino, where she gambled very little. Twice a week, too, she honed her martial-arts skills at the Jules Ferry Center, a place where the elite were never to be seen. (She familiarized herself with the nunchaku, a weapon hitherto unknown to her.) And she became well known to the well-to-do of Bléville, and they to her. She observed their manners and customs, and especially the tensions and passions that existed amongst them; she observed them ceaselessly, attentively, patiently.
In the evenings, in her studio apartment, she made notes or added to earlier ones on record cards of some kind. She wrote with a small green fountain pen with a gold nib, using violet ink, and she moved her lips as she wrote.
Returning after a game of bridge or a long conversation with the voluble Christiane Moutet, she would write such things as: Sonia Lorque had a foul life before she met Lorque. Mixture of gratitude and love. A solid couple, more solid than either thinks. Or else she might write: They say that L and L controls the construction business Géraud and Sons, which built the fish market. No competitive bids invited.
When she finished writing, she would reread her notes several times before tidying them away in one of the drawers of the chest.
During the third week after Aimée’s arrival in Bléville, the young woman left town briefly. She took the train one evening, arrived in Paris before midnight, changed stations by taxi, and caught another train. She had her slim attaché case and a large Delsey vanity case she had bought in Bléville. She had not reserved a seat on the train, but there were few travelers at that time of year, and she easily managed to find a comfortable spot.
About five thirty in the morning her train stopped for three minutes in a small town in the center of France. Aimée got off, walked out of the long gray railway station, crossed the Place de la Gare, and awoke the night man at the Grand Hôtel du Commerce et des Étrangers. At this time she was wearing a flowered dress beneath her coat and an opulent auburn wig. She took a room, awaking automatically at eight thirty as she had intended. She had rather good command of her body. At an earlier stage of her life she had been alienated from it in many ways. In particular, she could not get to sleep without a strong dose of barbiturates, nor wake up properly without a strong dose of stimulants, nor for that matter put up with her husband and the rest of her existence without quantities of appetite suppressants and tranquilizers, not to mention glasses of wine. But these days all that had changed. Aimée had control over her body; she had fallen asleep instantly and she woke up at the time of her choosing.
She showered, put her wig back on, and picked up the room phone. Croissants and hot chocolate were brought up to her. She ate heartily. Her demeanor had changed. A little later, smoking a menthol cigarette, she telephoned her financial adviser.
“Madame Souabe, what a marvelous surprise!” cried Maître Queuille when they met at the hotel for an aperitif and dinner together. “You haven’t changed at all, how wonderful!”
“Nor have you, Roland,” replied Aimée.
They talked business. They examined operating accounts and extracts from the land registry. Aimée gave the accountant sixt
y thousand francs that she had brought with her.
“Always cash! Highly suspect, I must say,” joked Maître Queuille without malice.
He wrote out a receipt. He remarked that his sister had spent the month of September in England with her husband. The couple had not, however, been lucky enough to see Aimée on British television. The adviser asked Aimée, whom he continued to address as Madame Souabe, whether she had any thoughts of returning to France and finding work here. Aimée answered that she had grown accustomed to living and working in England.
“Well, of course,” said Maître Queuille. He only half believed that this young woman was an actress in Great Britain, as she claimed, and he was even less convinced that she appeared in television commercials. Maître Queuille had a lively, prurient imagination. He rather suspected that his client was in fact a call girl.
A while later Aimée and the adviser exchanged smiles and parted company. Aimée ran a few errands, then boarded a Chausson country bus. During the eighteen-kilometer ride, she browsed through a local newspaper. For quite some time now she had stopped buying the Paris papers. But in this local sheet she suddenly came upon the information she had searched for in vain in the national press two or three weeks earlier. DEADLY HUNTING read the headline of a short piece on a bloody accident in which the father of a family was killed and his two sons wounded. This, concluded the article, brings to a total of six the number of victims of hunting accidents since the beginning of the month. On the 2nd, M. Morin and M. Cardan shot each other in the vicinity of Saint-Bonnet-Tronçais (Allier). Two days later came the sad news from eastern France that M. François Roucart, a stock breeder, had been killed by a hunter not only inept but as yet unidentified. Are we heading for a time when hunting is more lethal to humans than to game? It is a fair question.
Fatale Page 3