A sound, as though someone had moved. Painfully he dragged himself out of his somnolence with the feeling he was re-entering a frame he had already left. What was it he had heard? It had seemed to come from the garden.
A whistle in the distance. The trains were running again.
The fog must be clearing.
This time he heard it quite distinctly. The front door had shut. Next, a click as the hall light was switched on.
He was panting faintly like a dying man, and the air seemed to rend his throat.
The kitchen door was opened. So far there had been no steps, but suddenly they rang out clearly. High heels on the tiled floor, the stride curtailed by a narrow skirt. It was Mireille all right. Another click. That would be the kitchen light. Ravinel screwed up his features as though dazzled by it. Silence. She must be taking off her hat. It was all just as usual, just as before… Her steps again. She was going into the dining room.
He groaned. He was suffocating. He made a great effort to rise from his chair.
She was poking the fire now. A clatter of plates: she was clearing the table. Then one after the other her shoes fell to the floor: she was changing into her slippers.
Huddled in his chair, he sat with tears running down his cheeks. She mustn’t find him like that, but he was incapable of getting to the door to lock it. He knew he was alive. He knew he was guilty. He knew he was going to die.
They were slippered feet this time that were coming up the stairs. They came closer. He must do something. He must break through this brittle frontier which contains our life. His hands groped feverishly.
The landing light went on and shone under the study door. And she was there just behind it.
No. She couldn’t be. It was impossible. She was dead.
Are you really so sure, Fernand Ravinel? On which side of that door is the living, on which side the dead?
Then slowly the handle of the door turned. It was a relief. All his life long he had been waiting for this minute. He was now going to cross over to the other side and become a shadow.
Being a man was too difficult.
He closed his mouth on the barrel of his revolver as though he was literally to drink death. In order to forget.
Suddenly with a jerk he pressed the trigger.
TWELVE
‘Have we much farther to go?’ she asked. ‘We’ll be at Antibes in five minutes,’ answered the ticket collector. Through the rain-splashed window it was impossible to see anything except the lights that drifted by and now and again the trembling reflection of the lit-up coaches as the express went through a cutting. It was difficult to keep a sense of direction, to know whether the sea was on the right or the left, whether they were heading for Marseille or the Italian frontier.
‘Hail,’ said one of the passengers as a sudden patter rose above the rumble of the train. ‘Yes, that’s hail all right. Not exactly the weather to attract tourists to the South.’
Was there some hidden meaning in that remark? Mireille opened her eyes and looked at the man sitting opposite her who had made it. He was looking hard at her. She thrust her hands deeper into her overcoat pockets, but that didn’t stop their trembling. Would he notice? Perhaps it didn’t matter if he did. Couldn’t anybody see that she was feverish?
Yes, she was ill. She had known all along that she’d fall ill. How could she expect to have the strength to see a thing like that right through to the end? And that man… He had been sitting in front of her for ages… Since Lyon. No, since Dijon. Perhaps even all the way from Paris. It was impossible to say. It was impossible to focus her thoughts on anything for long.
But one thing stood out clearly: when you cough and shiver like that, it means you’ve caught something, if not your death of cold, and if you’ve caught cold that could only be because you’ve been wet. Wasn’t that obvious? Even to the man opposite! And if he got that far why shouldn’t he guess the whole story right down to the drive through the night rolled up in a canvas?
All the same there ought to have been some way of preventing her falling ill. It was stupid, that. Still more, it was unjust. Dangerous too, as this was something more than an ordinary common cold that had been neglected.
She coughed again and her back hurt. She remembered a friend of hers who had been an invalid for years just because she’d caught cold leaving a dance. T.B. And everybody said:
‘Poor thing! And how dreadful for her husband! A woman who spends all her life in bed!’
The train jolted. The man opposite got up. He winked. At least, that’s what it looked like, but it might well be that he’d merely blinked to keep a smut from getting into his eye.
‘Antibes,’ he murmured.
The train slid alongside the platform. What should she do? Sit there and wait?… A woman who spends all her life in bed. The words were becoming an obsession, indeed they already were. She stood up, gripping the rack to keep herself from falling. With a desperate effort, she picked up her suitcase and clambered down onto the platform.
She had to fight against giddiness and an intense desire to sleep. Ah, sleep! If only she could sleep. The man had disappeared. The platform seemed endless. Someone was standing on it motionless, not so much as lifting a hand.
How much farther had she to go to reach her? Ten yards? But ten yards seemed more like a mile.
‘Mireille!… But what’s the matter? You’re ill! And are you crying?’
She was, yes, from weakness. But that no longer mattered. Lucienne was strong. One only had to lean on her, to leave everything to her. She always knew what had to be done and was always capable of doing it. Only, it was difficult to hear what she said, because of the wind.
‘Are you listening?’ asked Mireille. ‘I said: is he following us?’
Everything was becoming confused, but she was clearly conscious of Lucienne’s firm hand holding her up, and she heard her say:
‘Give me a hand, will you? This lady’s ill.’
After which there was nothing but blackness traversed by occasional wisps of consciousness—consciousness of being in a taxi, of going up in an elevator, of the wind that prevented her grasping what Lucienne said. Lucienne couldn’t understand that all was lost. She must. She must be made to see that…
‘Keep still, Mireille.’
Mireille kept still. But she had to speak. She had to explain to Lucienne something that was of the utmost importance. That man… the one who had sat opposite her… who had…
‘Nonsense. Nobody’s been following you. Nobody’s taken any notice of you at all.’
The wind had died down, or at any rate it was incapable of intruding into this peaceful room lit only by a bedside lamp. Was that a syringe in Lucienne’s hand? Mireille didn’t want an injection. Hadn’t she swallowed enough drugs already?
Lucienne pulled down the bedclothes. The needle went in, but the prick was gone in a second. The bedclothes were pulled up again. The sheets were cool. They made her think of a cold bath, of the one she had been put into fully dressed when Fernand thought her unconscious, and got into a second time when Fernand thought her drowned, dead for two whole days. The details suddenly came back to her. It was as though she were going through it all again, and she kept rigidly still for fear of giving away the fact that she was still alive.
It was Lucienne who’d really done everything. What had Fernand seen? Practically nothing. She had been dragged out of the bathtub and instantly rolled up in the canvas. The awful thing had been that drive. How she had ever stuck the cold?… And cramp too… And then to finish with another ducking in the lavoir, with Lucienne making as much noise as possible in case she spluttered.
When Fernand had gone she ought to have followed Lucienne’s instructions straight away, instead of putting off… But she wouldn’t do it again: she’d do just what she was told. And with that resolution she was immediately invaded by a sense of well-being and security. And her forehead was not so hot… If only she had always taken Lucienne’s advice…
/> For wasn’t she always right? Hadn’t she all along foretold exactly how Fernand would react? He couldn’t lend a hand in the drowning; he couldn’t look fairly and squarely at the body of the woman he had helped to murder, he couldn’t unravel the mystery, think as he might. In fact the more he thought the farther he’d get from the solution… Yes, Lucienne had been splendid, and though she had had to go back to Nantes, she had kept her finger on the pulse, ready to intervene in a moment if anything went wrong… And supposing he had found out—they weren’t risking anything. Attempted murder: that was still crime enough to keep Fernand’s mouth shut.
And now Lucienne was there, bending over the bed. Mireille shut her eyes. She felt good now, now that she could ask her friend’s forgiveness for having disobeyed her, for having nearly ruined the whole show by that silly visit to her brother’s, for having sometimes doubted… For Lucienne was so hard that it was impossible at moments not to suspect her of acting from self-interest.
‘Stop worrying,’ murmured Lucienne.
There you are! You see! She could hear everything, even your most secret thoughts. Or had Mireille spoken out loud in her semidelirious condition? She opened her eyes. Lucienne’s face was close to hers, but it was difficult to see her features clearly. Mireille made a great effort to pull herself together. For she knew she had forgotten something, something important. She hadn’t yet completed her task. Clutching the bedclothes she raised herself up a little.
‘Lucienne… I put everything straight at home… in the dining room… in the kitchen… Nobody could possibly suspect that…’
‘What about the notes you’d written to him?’
‘I found them… in his pockets…’
Of course Lucienne would never realize what that had cost her. To go through Fernand’s pockets… with blood everywhere… Poor Fernand…
Lucienne put her hand on her patient’s forehead.
‘You must go to sleep now. Don’t think any more about him. He was a condemned man anyhow. Some day or other, he’d have found that way out. It was the only way for him.’
How sure she was of herself. But Mireille was uneasy. There was still something on her mind, though it was difficult to take hold of. She was falling asleep, but with the last shreds of consciousness she was able to think:
‘Since he never suspected anything… Since he never gave another thought to the insurance policy—the one he had taken out on his own life to induce me to take out the one on mine…’
Then sleep came and her breathing deepened. Kind sleep! She was never even to know that she had been on the verge of remorse.
The sun was shining. Life was beginning again after hours and hours of unconsciousness. Mireille turned her head, first to the right, then to the left. She was fearfully tired; she was nevertheless able to smile at the sight of a palm tree in a garden, a tall palm tree with a funny hairy trunk. As it moved in the breeze its leaves waved a fanlike shadow across the curtains. It gave an impression of… Mireille groped for a word… of luxury: that was it. The anxieties of the previous day were banished. She had a lot of money. Or rather they had. Two million francs. The insurance company couldn’t raise any objection. The stipulated two years were up, weren’t they? Everything was strictly in order. She had only to get well.
A phrase suddenly echoed in her memory. A woman who spends all her life in bed. A faint flush came to her cheeks. It certainly was a dreadful fate. But it wasn’t going to happen to her. Of course not. Lucienne was looking after her. Lucienne would know how to treat her. She was a doctor and a good one too.
In spite of herself, Mireille’s mind went back to the house on the Quai de la Fosse and Fernand filling her glass from a carafe. A woman who spends all her life in bed… There was a carafe here too, on the bedside table, a cut glass one that split the light up into delicate colors. She stared into it like a crystal-gazer. She didn’t know how to read the future in a crystal, but she nevertheless started when the door opened and hastily looked elsewhere, as though she had been caught doing something wrong.
‘Good morning, Mireille. How do you feel?’
Lucienne was dressed in black. She smiled as she walked up to the bed with her man’s stride. She felt Mireille’s pulse.
‘What’s the matter with me?’
Lucienne looked at her steadily, as though weighing her chances of pulling through. She said nothing.
‘Is it serious?’
A pause. Then:
‘It’ll be a long business.’
‘Tell me what it is.’
‘Not now.’
Lucienne took the carafe away to refill it. Mireille raised herself on one elbow and with her large eyes peered through the half-open door. From the sounds, she could follow everything Lucienne did. She could hear the water pouring into the carafe, the note rising rapidly as the level rose to the neck. But did it really take so long to fill a carafe? With a forced laugh which ended in a fit of coughing, she called out:
‘All the same! I had to trust you, didn’t I? Right up to the last moment you could have tossed up to decide which of us it was to be!’
Having turned off the tap, Lucienne carefully wiped and polished the outside of the carafe. With her teeth set, she muttered under her breath:
‘What makes you think I didn’t?’
Did you know?
The prolific, multi-award winning duo of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac wrote dozens of thrillers together, subverting the mechanics of traditional mystery and focusing on unsentimental characters, tension and shocking plot twists. Forsaking the logical investigations typical of pre-war detective fiction, they focused on created disorienting worlds where, as they put it, ‘man is out of place’. For a thriller to really hold the reader under its spell, they argued, it must be less about ‘who’ and ‘why’ and more about ‘how’.
While few English readers know their names, their impact on crime fiction and cinema, in particular, has been considerable. Their novels inspired two of the greatest, and possibly most influential crime films ever made; Les Diaboliques, based on She Who Was No More, adapted and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1955, and Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958.
Clouzot changed several key details for his version of the story—the victim of the murder plot is not the seemingly innocent wife, as in the book, but a tyrannical husband who probably had it coming. Still, the authors praised this liberal adaptation, which they say brought to life in images what they meant to convey in words.
The film version ended with a request to the audience to keep the details of the plot secret, so as not to spoil others’ enjoyment of the film, as did the first British edition of the book. We’d like to repeat it here:
This amazing novel is a story of suspense and terror so perfectly constructed that not even a hint of the plot can be given away. The publishers respectfully request early readers to resist the temptation to reveal it.
So, where do you go from here?
If you’ve not already read it, you really should give Boileau-Narcejac’s Vertigo a try—another disorienting and heart-stoppingly tense masterpiece.
But if you feel like putting those little grey cells to work on a more traditional murder, Piero Chiara’s The Disappearance of Signora Giulia could be the book for you—a classic mystery from one of the most celebrated Italian writers of the post-war period.
AVAILABLE AND COMING SOON FROM PUSHKIN VERTIGO
Augusto De Angelis
The Murdered Banker
The Mystery of the Three Orchids
The Hotel of the Three Roses
Boileau-Narcejac
Vertigo
She Who Was No More
Piero Chiara
The Disappearance of Signora Giulia
Martin Holmén
Clinch
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
I Was Jack Mortimer
Leo Perutz
Master of the Day of Judgment
Little Apple
St
Peter’s Snow
Soji Shimada
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
PUSHKIN PRESS
Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books—everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.
Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman and Ryu Murakami.
Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again. Here are just some of the titles from our long and varied list. For more amazing stories, visit www.pushkinpress.com.
THE SPECTRE OF ALEXANDER WOLF
GAITO GAZDANOV
‘A mesmerising work of literature’ Antony Beevor
BINOCULAR VISION
EDITH PEARLMAN
‘A genius of the short story’ Mark Lawson, Guardian
TRAVELLER OF THE CENTURY
ANDRÉS NEUMAN
‘A beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart’ Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Guardian
BEWARE OF PITY
STEFAN ZWEIG
‘Zweig’s fictional masterpiece’ Guardian
THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY
STEFAN ZWEIG
‘The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed’ David Hare
JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT
ANTAL SZERB
‘Just divine… makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soul’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
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