Wallas arrives at the little glass door the commissioner has mentioned to him. He knocks on a pane with his forefinger doubled up. Since the old housekeeper has disappeared again, he tries to turn the handle; the door is not locked. He pushes it open, it creaks on its hinges, like the door in an abandoned house—haunted maybe—where each movement provokes a flight of owls and bats. But once the door is closed, no rustle of wings disturbs the silence. Wallas takes a few hesitant steps; his eyes, growing used to the dimness, glances around the woodwork, the complicated moldings, the brass column at the foot of the staircase, the carpets, everything that constituted the ornaments of a bourgeois residence early in the century.
Wallas starts, suddenly hearing Madame Smite’s voice calling him from the end of the hallway. He turns around and sees the figure silhouetted against the glass door. For a second he has the impression that he has just been caught in a trap.
It is the kitchen she has asked him to come into, a lifeless kitchen that looks like a model: the stove perfectly polished, the paint spotless, a row of copper pots fastened to the wall, and so well-scrubbed no one would dare use them. There is no suggestion of the daily preparation of meals; the few objects that are not shut away in the cupboards seem fixed forever ia their places on the shelves.
The old lady, dressed in black, is almost elegant despite her felt slippers; besides, this is the only detail that indicates she is at home here and not visiting an empty house. She tells Wallas to sit down opposite her and begins immediately:
“Well, it’s some story!”
But her loud voice, instead of sounding distressed, seems to Wallas like a clumsy exclamation in a play. He would swear, now, that the row of pots is painted on the wall in trompe-l’oeil. The death of Daniel Dupont is no more than an abstract event being discussed by dummies.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” the housekeeper shrieks, so loudly that Wallas moves his chair back a few inches. He is already preparing a sentence expressing his condolences, but without leaving him time to get it out, she continues, leaning a little closer to him: “Well, I’m going to tell you, my boy, I’m going to tell you who killed him, so listen to me!”
“You know who killed Dupont?” Wallas asks, flabbergasted.
“It’s that Doctor Juard. The one with the sly face. I went to call him myself because—it’s true—I was forgetting to tell you: they cut the telephone wires here. Yes! Since the day before yesterday…no, even before that: I’m losing track now. What is it today…Monday…”
“Tuesday,” Wallas corrects timidly.
“What did you say?”
“Today is Tuesday,” Wallas repeats.
She moves her lips as she watches him talk, then squints incredulously. But she continues: you have to make such concessions to stubborn children.
“All right, say Tuesday. Well, as I was saying, the telephone hasn’t been working since…Sunday, Saturday, Friday…”
“Madame, are you saying it was Doctor Juard who murdered Daniel Dupont?” Wallas interrupts.
“Of course that’s what I’m saying, young man! Besides, everyone knows he’s a murderer; go out and ask anyone in the street. Oh, I’m sorry now I ever listened to Monsieur Dupont; he insisted on Doctor Juard—he had his notions, you know, and he never paid any attention to whatever I might think of them. Well, people are what they are; I’m not going to start speaking ill of him now.…I was here, washing the dishes after dinner, when I heard him call me from upstairs; when I passed, I noticed the door had been opened—the one you just came in. Monsieur Dupont was on the landing—and as alive as you or I, you know—only he had his left arm against his chest and a little blood on his hand. He was holding his revolver in the other hand. I had a terrible time getting rid of the little bloodstains he made on my carpet, and it took me at least two hours to clean the bedspread where I found him lying when I came back—when I came back from telephoning. It’s not easy to get off, you know; luckily, he wasn’t bleeding much. He told me: ‘It’s just a flesh wound in my arm; don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.’ I wanted to take care of him myself, but he didn’t let me, stubborn as he was—I told you—and I had to go call that miserable doctor who took him away in a car. He didn’t even want me to hold him up, coming down the stairs! But when I got to the clinic early this morning to take him a change of linen, they suddenly told me he was dead. ‘Heart failure’ that murderer told me! And he wasn’t any prouder than that, no indeed, young man. I didn’t make a fuss; still, I’d like to know who killed him if it wasn’t that Doctor Juard! For once in his life, Monsieur Dupont would have done better to listen to me …”
It is almost a note of triumph that sounds in the old woman’s voice. Most likely her master kept her from talking, so as not to be deafened by that terrible voice; now she’s trying to make up for it. Wallas attempts to put some order in this flood of words. Madame Smite, apparently, has been more disturbed by the bloodstains she had to wash off than by her employer’s wound. She has not checked whether it was really his arm that had been hit: moreover, Dupont had not let her get too close a look; and the blood on his hand does not prove much. He was wounded in the chest and did not want to terrify his housekeeper by admitting it. In order to deceive her, he even managed to stand up and walk to the ambulance; it may even have been this effort that finished him off. The doctor, in any case, should not have let him do it. Obviously it is the doctor who must be questioned.
“Juard Clinic. Gynecology. Maternity Home.” The nurse who opened the door did not even tell him to come in; she was standing in the opening of the door, ready to close it again: like a guardian afraid that some stranger would try to force his way in, but at the same time she insisted on keeping him:
“And what is it you wish, Monsieur?”
“I wanted to speak to the doctor.”
“Madame Juard is in her office—it’s always Madame Juard who receives our clients.”
“But I’m not a client. I must see the doctor in person.”
“Madame Juard is a doctor too, Monsieur. She is in charge of the clinic, so of course she’s in touch with all the…”
When he finally told her that he had no need of the clinic’s services, she stopped talking, as though she had found out what she wanted; and she looked at him with the vaguely superior smile of someone who knew perfectly well what he wanted from the start. Her politeness assumed a nuance of impertinence:
“No, Monsieur, he didn’t say when he was coming back. Don’t you want to leave your name?”
“It’s no use, my name won’t mean anything to him.”
He had distinctly heard: “They’re all the same!”
“…that murderer told me…”
On the hallway carpet downstairs, the old woman shows him the scarcely perceptible traces of five or six spots of something. Wallas asks if the inspectors who came the evening before took the victim’s revolver with them.
“Certainly not!” Madame Smite exclaims. “You don’t suppose I let those two loot the house? I put it back in his drawer. He might have needed it again.”
Wallas would like to see it. She leads him into the bedroom: rather a large room, of the same impersonal and old-fashioned comfort as the rest of the house, stuffed with hangings, curtains, and carpets. A complete silence must have reigned in this house, where everything is arranged to muffle the slightest sound. Did Dupont wear felt slippers too? How did he manage to speak to his deaf servant without raising his voice? Habit probably. Wallas notices that the bedspread has been changed—it could not have been cleaned so perfectly. Everything is as neat and orderly as if nothing had ever happened.
Madame Smite opens the night table drawer and hands Wallas a pistol he recognizes at first glance: it is the same model as his own, a serious weapon for self-defense, not a plaything. He takes out the clip and notices that one bullet has already been fired.
“Did Monsieur Dupont shoot at the man running away?” he asks, although he knows the answer in advance: when Du-pont ca
me back with his revolver, the murderer had disappeared. Wallas would like to show the gun to Commissioner Laurent, but the housekeeper hesitates about letting him take it, then she gives in with a shrug:
“Take it with you, young man. What use is it here now?”
“I’m not asking you for a present. This pistol is a piece of evidence, you understand?”
“Take it, I tell you, since you want it so much.”
“And you don’t know if your employer had used it before, for something else?”
“What do you think he would use it for, young man? Monsieur Dupont was not a man to shoot off his revolver in the house to amuse himself. No, thank God. He had his faults, but…” Wallas puts the pistol in his overcoat pocket.
The housekeeper leaves her visitor; she has nothing else to tell him: her late employer’s difficult character, the strenuous washing of the bloodstains, the criminal doctor, the continuing negligence of the telephone company… She has already repeated all this several times; now she has to finish packing her suitcases in order not to miss the two o’clock train that will take her to her daughter’s. It is not a very nice time of the year to be going to the country; still, she has to hurry. Wallas looks at his watch: it still shows seven-thirty. In Dupont’s bedroom, the bronze clock on the mantelpiece, between the empty candlesticks, had also stopped.
Yielding to the special agent’s urging, Madame Smite finally admits that she is supposed to give the house keys to the police; somewhat reluctantly she gives him the key to the back door. He will close it himself when he leaves. The housekeeper will leave by the front door, for she also has the keys for it. As for the garden gate, the lock has not been working for a long time. Wallas remains alone in the study. Dupont lived in this tiny room, he left it only to sleep and to take his meals, at noon and at seven at night. Wallas approaches the desk; the inspectors appear to have left everything as it was: on the blotter is lying the sheet of paper on which Dupont had written only four words so far: “which can not prevent…”—”…death…” obviously. That is the word he was looking for when he went downstairs to eat.
CHAPTER TWO
1
It is certainly the sound of footsteps; footsteps on the stairs, coming closer. Someone is coming up. Someone is coming up slowly—no: carefully; perhaps cautiously? Holding on to the banister, judging from the sound. Someone who becomes breathless from a climb which is too stiff for him or who is tired from having come a long distance. They are a man’s footsteps, but deliberate, muffled by the carpet—which gives them, at moments, something of a timorous or clandestine quality.
But this impression does not last. At closer range, the footsteps sound spontaneous, uninhibited: the footsteps of a relaxed man peacefully climbing the stairs.
The last three steps are taken more vigorously, probably in haste to reach the landing. The man is in front of the door now; he stops a moment to catch his breath…
( … one knock, three short quick knocks…)
But he does not remain there more than a few seconds and begins to climb the next flight. The steps die away toward the top of the building.
It was not Garinati.
It is ten o’clock, though: Garinati should be coming. He should even have been here over a minute ago; he’s late already. Those footsteps on the stairs should have been his.
He walks upstairs somewhat in that way, but he makes even less noise, though setting his feet down more firmly, step after step without any particular attention, without the least…
No! It’s impossible to involve Garinati in this business any longer: after tonight, someone else will have to replace him at his job. For a few days at least he will have to be kept under cover and watched; afterward, maybe, he could be given some new job, but one without any serious risks.
For several days he has seemed somewhat tired. He complained of headaches; and once or twice, he said peculiar things. During the last meeting he even went so far as to be downright difficult: uneasy, hypersensitive, constantly asking about details long since settled, and more than once raising unreasonable objections and turning sullen if they were rejected too quickly.
His work has suffered from it: Daniel Dupont did not die immediately—every report confirms this. It does not matter really, since he died all the same and, what’s more, “without regaining consciousness”; but from the point of view of the plan, there is something irregular about it: Dupont did not actually die at the time his death was scheduled for. Without any doubt, it is Garinati’s exaggerated nervousness that is responsible. Afterward he did not come to the prescribed meeting place. Finally, this morning, despite the written order, he is late. No question about it, he is not the same man any more.
Jean Bonaventure—called “Bona”—is sitting on a garden chair, in the middle of an empty room. Beside him, a leather briefcase is lying on the floor—a pine floor distinguished by no particular quality save an obvious lack of care. The walls, on the other hand, are covered with a paper in good condition, if not new: tiny multicolored bouquets uniformly decorating a pearl-gray background. The ceiling too has obviously been whitewashed recently; in the center, a wire hangs down with an electric light bulb at the end.
A square window without curtains provides what light there is. Two doors, both wide open, lead into a darker room on one side, and on the other into a little hall to the entrance door of the apartment. There is not a stick of furniture in this room except for two wrought-iron chairs painted the usual dark green. Bona is sitting on one; the other, facing him, about six feet away, remains empty.
Bona is not dressed for sitting indoors. His overcoat is tightly buttoned up to the collar, his hands are gloved, and he keeps his hat on.
He is waiting, motionless on this uncomfortable chair, bolt upright, his hands crossed on his knees, his feet riveted to the floor, betraying no impatience. He is looking straight ahead at the little spots left by the raindrops on the windowpanes and, beyond, over the huge blue-glazed window of the factories on the other side of the street, at the irregular buildings of the suburbs, rising in waves toward a grayish horizon bristling with chimneys and pylons.
Usually this landscape has little relief and looks rather unattractive, but this morning the grayish yellow sky of snowy days gives it unaccustomed dimensions. Certain outlines are emphasized, others are blurred; here and there distances open out, unsuspected masses appear; the whole view is organized into a series of planes silhouetted against one another, so that the depth, suddenly illuminated, seems to lose its natural look—and perhaps its reality—as if this over-exactitude were possible only in a painting. Distances are so affected that they become virtually unrecognizable, without it being possible to say in just what way they are transformed: extended or telescoped—or both at once—unless they have acquired a new quality that has more to do with geometry… Sometimes this happens to lost cities, petrified by some cataclysm for centuries—or only for a few seconds before their collapse, a wink of hesitation between life and what already bears another name: after, before, eternity.
Bona watches. Eyes calm, he contemplates his work. He is waiting. He has just astounded the city. Daniel Dupont died, yesterday, murdered. Tonight, at the same hour, an identical crime will echo this scandal, finally wrenching the police from their routine, the papers from their silence. In a week, the organization has already sown anxiety in every corner of the country, but the powers that be still pretend to regard these acts as unconnected accidents of no importance. It will take this highly unlikely coincidence that is being prepared to set off the panic.
Bona cocks his ears. The footsteps have stopped in front of his door.
A pause. No one.
Lightly, but distinctly, the agreed-upon signal is given…a faint knock, three quick, almost imperceptible knocks, a faint knock….
“We won’t talk about it any more, now that it’s settled.”
But Garinati does not quite understand the meaning of these words; he insists: he will begin again, and
this time he will not make any mistakes. Finally the admission escapes him: he will put out the light, if this precaution is indispensable, although from another point of view…”
“You didn’t put it out?” Bona asks.
“I couldn’t. Dupont came back upstairs too soon. I barely had time to recognize things around me.”
“But you saw him come down, and you went up right after that?”
“I had to wait until the old woman left the kitchen too.”
Bona says nothing. Garinati is even guiltier than he thought. It is fear that made him confuse his actions, as it is making him confuse his words now:
“I went up right away. He probably wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t see in the dark either, could I? But I’ll start over, and this time…”
He stops, seeking encouragement from his chief’s stern face. Why has Bona suddenly abandoned the friendly tone he had been using the last few days? That stupid detail of the light switch is only an excuse….
“You should have turned out the light,” Bona says.
“I’ll go back, I’ll turn out the light. I’ll go tonight.”
“Tonight is someone else’s job.”
“No, it’s my job: it’s my job to finish the job I started.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Garinati. What are you talking about?”
“I’ll go back to the house. Or I’ll go find him wherever he’s hiding. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”
Bona stops examining the horizon to stare at his interlocutor.
The Erasers Page 8