‘Twenty thousand francs might well see you through. But you were quite right to call me in. It’s high time something was done about it. If that was to come down on your good lady’s head!… But what’s the matter, Monsieur Ravinel? You’re looking that queer…’
‘Nothing. Just fatigue. I’ve been driving all night.’ Goutre took measurements and made notes on an old envelope with a carpenter’s pencil.
‘Let’s see… Tomorrow’s Sunday… Monday I’ve a job to do at Vérondis’… Tuesday… Will it be all right if I send a man round on Tuesday? I suppose Madame Ravinel will be here.’
‘Yes… At least I don’t know… Perhaps not… It all depends. I’ll drop in on my way and let you know.’
‘Right.’
Ravinel would have liked to throw himself down on his bed, close his eyes and think things out. There must be something to be done. If only he could understand what had happened! It was inconceivable. Absolutely inconceivable. And here was this man at his elbow who calmly filled his pipe, commented on the lettuce, and inspected the pear trees, nodding approvingly.
‘What do you treat them with? Smoke? No? You may be making a mistake there. Does them a lot of good. Only yesterday Chaudron was saying to me… No, it wasn’t yesterday. It was Thursday…’
Ravinel almost bit through his lips. He would have liked to go down on his knees and beseech Goutre to go away.
‘I’ll be back in a second.’
He must have one more look at the lavoir, though the place was as bare as a barn. After all there were hallucinations which made you see things that weren’t there. Why shouldn’t there be others which had the opposite effect, which made you blind to things which were staring you in the face? A bleak ray of sunshine was now shining right into the lavoir, lighting up the bottom of the water still more clearly. Yes, he could see every stone, and they looked as though they had never been disturbed. Perhaps they had been to the wrong house and left the body in another lavoir, in all respects identical with this one, in some nightmare country which he would never find again…
Goutre would be getting impatient. Bathed in sweat, Ravinel hurried up the path. He found the builder sitting in the kitchen, going on with his calculations.
‘No hurry, Monsieur Ravinel. I’ll get this worked out, now I’m at it. I was thinking of using a concrete beam, but on second thought…’
Ravinel suddenly remembered the Muscadet he had promised the old man. Of course! That’s why he was in no hurry to go!
‘Wait a moment. I’m just going down to the cellar.’
All right. He’d have his Muscadet. And if he didn’t clear out after that, he’d… Ravinel clenched his fists. Suddenly he was seized by something like a spasm. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. There! In the cellar! But why on earth should Mireille be in the cellar? His nerves must be going to pieces for him to be assailed by an absurd fear like that. He opened the door and switched on the light. Of course there was nothing there. All the same, he didn’t linger. Snatching up a bottle, he dashed up again. He couldn’t help being clumsy. He slammed the sideboard door after getting out the glasses and banged the bottle against the corner of the table. He couldn’t control his muscles and almost broke the neck of the bottle when he drew out the cork.
‘Help yourself, Monsieur Goutre. My hands are shaky. It’s extraordinary what eight hours’ driving can do to you.’
‘It’d be a pity to spill any,’ said Goutre, his eye kindling.
He filled two glasses, slowly, like an expert. Then he rose to his feet to drink his host’s health.
‘Here’s to you, Monsieur Ravinel. And to Madame Ravinel too. I certainly hope your brother-in-law isn’t ill. Though with this damp weather… It catches me in the leg.’
Ravinel drained his glass at a go. Then he filled it up, drank, and filled it up again.
‘You certainly know how to put it down!’
‘When I’m tired like this… Brings me back to life.’
‘I should think so! This stuff would bring a corpse back to life!’
Ravinel caught hold of the table. His head really was going round this time.
‘Excuse me, Monsieur Goutre. But I’m afraid I’ve got a good deal to do. You don’t mind my being frank, do you?’
Goutre put on his cap.
‘That’s all right. In any case I’d have to be going.’
He tilted the bottle to read the label. Muscadet Supérieur—Basse-Goulaine.
‘You can give my compliments to the chap that produces that stuff. He certainly knows his business.’
There were still a few polite exchanges to be gone through at the front door. Then at last Ravinel was alone. He shut the door and locked it, dragged himself back into the kitchen and tossed off the remains of the bottle.
‘Inconceivable!’ he kept muttering.
His mind seemed to be perfectly clear, but with the clarity of dreams. You see a wall. You touch it. You know it’s a wall. Yet that doesn’t stop your walking clean through it. You feel the plaster going through your body, and it seems quite natural. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away busily, reminding him of that other one in the room at Nantes.
‘Inconceivable.’
Ravinel shook himself and went into the dining room. Mireille’s bag was still on the table. Nor had her coat and hat moved from the hall. He went upstairs. The house was empty, completely empty. All at once he realized that he was holding the bottle by the neck, as though it were a mace. He was scared, terrified to the marrow of his bones. He put the bottle down on the floor, very quietly, as though from now on no sound were permissible. It was with the utmost care that he opened the drawer of his bureau in which his revolver was kept. It was there all right, wrapped in a greasy cloth. He wiped it, pulled the trigger to bring a live round opposite the barrel. At the click he swung round. Instinctively. He couldn’t help it. What was the matter with him? What had he expected to see? And this revolver—what was the good of it? Can you shoot down a ghost? He sighed and slipped the gun into his trouser pocket. It was absurd, of course, but it was reassuring to have it there. He sat down on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees. Where was he to begin?
Mireille’s body was no longer there. It was a fact, and he was beginning to accept it as such. It wasn’t in the pool, it wasn’t in the lavoir, it wasn’t in the house, it wasn’t… But wait a moment! What about the garage?
He rushed downstairs and opened the garage. Nothing there. Nothing, that is to say, except a few cans of oil and some black greasy rags. Then he had another idea and walked slowly towards the lavoir studying the path. He could make out his own footprints and Goutre’s too. No one else’s. What did that prove? What had been in his mind? He no longer knew. He was at the mercy of sudden impulses, feeling the need to do something. But what? He looked round him despairingly. On either hand were empty building plots. His closest neighbors could see no more than the frontage of the Gai Logis. Should he call on them? Should he go round to all the neighbors to see what he could find out?
He drifted back to the kitchen. What should he say to them if he did?
‘I say! I’ve killed my wife. You haven’t by any chance come upon the body? I’ve mislaid it!’
Farcical, wasn’t it?
If only he could have got hold of Lucienne, but she was still in the train. He couldn’t telephone to her before twelve. Should he go back to Nantes himself? On what pretext? Supposing the body was discovered somewhere during the course of the day—how could he explain his flight? For that’s what it would look like.
It was a vicious circle. He couldn’t do anything until he knew what had happened. But how could he find out if he did nothing? Ravinel looked at the clock. Five past ten. Normally he should have called on his firm, Blache et Lehuédé in the Boulevard Magenta. And that was the best thing he could do. So, after carefully shutting up the house, he got into his car again and drove back towards Paris. It was fine now. The air was fresh, but with no bite in it, in fact it was
more like an early spring day than a November one. An open car passed him heading for the country, its occupants bareheaded, their hair flying in the wind. At the sight of them, Ravinel felt weak, old, and guilty. He thought of Mireille and he couldn’t help a feeling of resentment. She had let him down. And, besides that, she had succeeded where he had always failed: she had crossed the mysterious frontier, she was on the other side, invisible, elusive, and it gave her an unfair advantage. She had seized it to put a spoke in his wheel. Was it possible to be alive and dead at the same time? He had always felt, obscurely, that it was… All the same, her body must be somewhere…
His ideas became confused. He was half asleep. It was really some other self that was coolly and competently driving the car, recognizing every turning, and in the end it was as though the car, not he, chose to stop at the right place in the Boulevard Magenta.
From the Boulevard Magenta, the car took him on into the center, stopping outside a small café-restaurant in the neighborhood of the Louvre. It was a quarter he never frequented, but today he wasn’t altogether master of his movements. He was making a mental calculation in which he kept on getting the times wrong.
Lucienne’s train got in at eleven twenty. Or was it eleven forty? No, that was impossible: the journey took five hours. Five hours from six four. That made it eleven four. The hospital was no more than five minutes from the station, so she must be there by now. He went into the restaurant.
‘Lunch, Monsieur?’
‘Oh. If you like…’
The waiter stared at this unshaven customer who ran his hand over his eyes. Had a night out, perhaps.
‘The telephone?’
‘At the far end on the right.’
‘Can I make a long-distance call?’
‘See the girl at the cash desk, will you?’
The telephone was by the door to the kitchen, which was never shut for more than five seconds at a time, and, as he stood there, Ravinel was conscious of a constant volley of orders behind his back.
‘Three hors-d’oeuvres. And isn’t that entrecôte ready yet?’
There were wheezings on the line and Lucienne’s voice was hardly recognizable. It sounded far away, terribly far. And with all the row and bustle behind him…
‘Lucienne!… Can you hear me?… Yes, it’s Fernand speaking… She’s gone… No, they haven’t come to fetch her—she’s gone, disappeared. When I got back there was no sign of her.’
Someone was standing near him waiting to take his place, filling in the time by combing his hair at the mirror over the washbasin.
‘Are you there, Lucienne?… You must come back… What?… A confinement? To hell with the confinement… No, I’m not ill. Nor drunk either! I know perfectly well what I’m saying… Not a trace… What? You don’t imagine that I’m inventing it just to make you come back?… What?… Of course I should have preferred it. But if it’s absolutely impossible to come straight away… All right, then. Tomorrow at twelve forty… Go back and have another look? Where do you want me to look?… Of course I don’t understand any more than you do… Very well, then. Tomorrow.’
Ravinel rang off and chose a seat by the window. He couldn’t blame Lucienne. If someone had telephoned the news to him, would he have believed it? He waded through the meal absent-mindedly, then got back into the car. Once again the Porte de Clignancourt, then the road to Enghien. Of course he must get back to the house. Lucienne was quite right about that. He’d even have another look round. Just in case. And he’d better be seen by the neighbors. The thing was to gain time. And to behave as though he had nothing on his conscience.
He opened the front door. Everything was exactly as he had left it. He was vaguely disappointed. Why? What was he expecting?
As a matter of fact he expected nothing. His mind no longer looked forward into the future. All he wanted was peace, quiet, and forgetfulness. Going upstairs, he put his revolver down on the bedside table. To make sleep doubly sure, he took a pill. Then without stopping to undress he threw himself down on the bed. In half a minute he was sound asleep.
SIX
It was nearly five when he woke up, limbs stiff, stomach heavy, face puffy, hands clammy. But when he asked himself where the body could have got to, the answer came in a flash:
‘It’s been stolen.’
For some reason, this answer was consoling, and, as he washed and shaved, he was relatively calm.
‘That’s what it is. Someone’s pinched it.’
That was serious enough. Indeed it was very serious. But the danger was of a different sort. You can come to terms with a thief. He has his price.
The last wisps of sleep were brushed from his head. Once more he was in contact with his surroundings, the rooms, the furniture. His legs felt better. The stiffness soon wore off and he strode about firmly, purposefully. The house seemed friendly and familiar now. No mystery about it. Things weren’t so bad, after all. So long as he kept his head… The body had been stolen: with that once accepted…
But the more closely he looked at the idea, the more difficult it was to accept. Steal a corpse? Why should anyone want to? And what a frightfully risky business for the thief. As regards his neighbors, he knew them pretty well. On the right as you faced the street was Bigaux, a railway clerk of fifty. A conscientious, dull little man who knew his place, and kept it. His work, his garden, his family, his game of belote of an evening—that was his world. Bigaux hiding a corpse! The idea was unthinkable. And his wife had a gastric ulcer. A flimsy creature you could knock down with a feather. On the other side, Poniatowski, who was in the accounts department of a furniture factory. Divorced. Hardly ever there. It was said that he wanted to sell the place…
In any case neither Bigaux nor Poniatowski could have witnessed the scene that morning. Admittedly they could have gone into the lavoir afterwards, but not without trespassing. And what was the use of a body if you didn’t know who’d committed the crime? For there was only one conceivable reason for wanting it—blackmail. Even then, nobody knew about the insurance policy, and that was the one thing that could make blackmail worth while. A traveling salesman isn’t a capitalist. Everyone knew that Ravinel made a decent living—no more. Admittedly there were blackmailers who were patient men and squeezed you slowly drop by drop over a long period. But that needed a lot of nerve. Who else was there? A passer-by? A burglar?… To steal a corpse on the spur of the moment was enterprising, to say the least!
As theory after theory passed through his mind, he became once more overwhelmed by a sensation of helplessness. After a while he decided that the body hadn’t been stolen after all. But it wasn’t there. So it must have been. But nobody could possibly want to steal it…
And so it went on, round and round in a circle. Ravinel felt a little pain beneath his left temple and rubbed the spot. No question of his falling ill at this juncture. He simply hadn’t the right to! But what was he to do, Bon Dieu, what was he to do?
He wandered about the room, biting his lips, crushed by an overpowering sense of loneliness. He hadn’t the energy even to straighten the crumpled counterpane, let the dirty water away from the washbasin, or pick up the empty bottle. Instead, he merely kicked it under the wardrobe. Taking his revolver, he went downstairs. Where should he go? He looked out of the front door. It was getting dark, though streaks of pink still trailed across the western sky. An airplane flew overhead. A dreary, mournful evening. Like the one on which he’d first met Mireille on the Quai des Grands-Augustins, where the second-hand booksellers have their queer little stalls perched on the parapet. He was fingering some volumes. And there she was, turning over the pages of a book. The lights were going on one after the other. They could hear the whistle of the policeman at the bridge. It was silly to recall such things. They hurt.
Ravinel went to the lavoir. The water still trickled quietly over the dam, making little bubbles which caught the red of the sunset. A goat bleated in the field on the other bank of the stream. It belonged to the postman. Somet
hing clicked in Ravinel’s brain. The postman’s goat! Every morning his young daughter led it into the field and tethered it to a stake. Every evening she came to fetch it. Was it possible that?…
The postman was a widower and there was no other child. The girl was called Henriette. She was generally at home. To tell the truth, she was a bit simple-minded. Not that she was an idiot. Far from it. She did the housework and the cooking and acquitted herself pretty well for a girl of twelve.
‘I wonder if you could tell me something, Mademoiselle.’
Nobody had ever called her Mademoiselle before, and she was too intimidated to think of asking him in. For that matter, so was he. He was out of breath from running, and he was uncertain how he ought to begin.
‘Did you take the goat into the field this morning?’ he ventured. The girl reddened, instantly alarmed.
‘What has she done?’
‘I live just across the stream—the Gai Logis. The lavoir belongs to me.’
She squinted slightly and he studied each of her eyes in turn, on the lookout for any sign of lying.
‘My wife left some handkerchiefs hanging up to dry. They must have been blown away.’
It was an absurd pretext, but he was too tired to think up anything better.
‘You didn’t see them lying about or floating in the stream, did you?’
She had a long narrow face. A plait of hair fell on either side. Even with her mouth shut, two teeth protruded. Ravinel felt vaguely that there was something pathetic in this interview.
‘You picketed the goat quite close to the stream. You didn’t look at the lavoir, did you?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘Try and remember. Was there anything?’
‘No. I didn’t notice anything.’
‘At what time were you there?’
‘I don’t know.’
A sizzling noise came from the end of the passage. She reddened still more and squirmed.
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