‘Because I have again seen the fly that Maman was looking for.’
And it was only after drinking off Henri’s own glass of wine that I realised he had answered my unspoken thought.
‘I did not know that your mother was looking for a fly.’
‘Yes, she was. It has grown quite a lot, but I recognised it all right.’
‘Where did you see this fly, Henri, and – how did you recognise it?’
‘This morning on your desk, Uncle François. Its head is white instead of black, and it has a funny sort of leg.’
Trying to look unconcerned, I went on, ‘And when did you see this fly for the first time?’
‘The day that Papa went away. I had caught it, but Maman made me let it go. And then after, she wanted me to find it again. She’d changed her mind,’ and shrugging his shoulders just as my brother used to, he added, ‘you know what women are.’
‘I think that fly must have died long ago, and you must be mistaken, Henri,’ I said, getting up and walking to the door.
But as soon as I was out of the dining-room, I ran up the stairs to my study. There was no fly anywhere to be seen.
I was bothered, far more than I cared to admit.
For the first time I wondered if Charas knew much more than he divulged. For the first time also, I wondered about Héléne. Was she really insane? A strange, horrid feeling was growing in me, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt that, somehow, Charas was right: Hélêne was getting away with it.
The thought that my sister-in-law had perhaps deliberately and calmly killed my brother – her own husband – in such a cruel, abominable way, made me feel sick.
What could possibly have been the reason for such a monstrous crime? What had led up to it? Just what had happened?
Refined, well bred and well read, Charas was more than just an intelligent police official. He was a keen psychologist and had an amazing way of smelling out a fib or an erroneous statement. I knew that he had accepted as true the few answers Hélène had given him. But then there had been all those questions which she had never answered: the most direct and important ones.
And from the beginning, Hélène had adopted a very simple system. ‘I cannot answer that question,’ she would say in her low, quiet voice. And that was that! The repetition of the same question never seemed to annoy her. She would simply say, ‘I cannot answer that question,’ as though it was the very first time that particular question had been asked.
Hélène had shown the Commissaire that she knew how to set and operate the steam-hammer.
‘Why are you prepared to show us how you killed your husband, and yet so reluctant to give us a reason? You have not even tried to invent one. After all, can you prove that you killed Professor Delambre?’ Charas had asked her the morning after my brother’s death.
Hélène then showed the Commissaire a girder which she claimed to have gripped with her left hand as she manipulated the switchboard buttons with her right hand.
‘I think your experts will find my fingerprints there easily enough,’ said Hélène.
They did.
Charas could find only one fact which did not agree with Hélêne’s statements: the fact that the hammer had been used twice. This flaw in Hélène’s defence seemed a crack which the Commissaire might possibly enlarge. But my sister-in-law finally cemented it by saying ‘All right, I lied to you. I did use the hammer twice. But do not ask me why, because I cannot tell you.’
The horror I had felt at my brother’s death had so far been purely passive; now that I suspected Héléne of pretending to be insane, it seemed to become active and to focus on her.
I now thought of calling on the Commissaire, but the knowledge that he would inevitably start questioning Henri made me hesitate. Another reason also made me hesitate, a vague sort of fear that he would look for and find the fly Henri had talked of.
You must work this out alone, I kept repeating to myself as I thought of all the detective stories I had ever read. No matter how complicated the intrigue, the unravelling of the clues, detective stories have some sort of basic logic. Here, nothing was logical; there was a clue all right, but no culprit to unmask. Hélène had killed her husband and proved it beyond all possible doubt. But why?
My brother was certainly the most level-headed of all the scientists I had met at different times at his house. I do not think he ever made a guess or allowed himself to jump to conclusions in his research work. If one successful experiment seemed to prove something, he would never allow himself to think more than ‘Maybe,’ and would go stolidly on with more experiments.
It seemed there were only two possible explanations of André’s death. Either he had gone mad, or else he had a reason for letting his wife kill him in such a strange and terrible way.
Having finally decided not to tell Charas about my nephew’s innocent revelations, I thought I would try to question Hélêne.
On my next visit to her, I sat for a while tracing vague designs on the floor with the end of my umbrella, searching for the right way to broach the subject of André’s death.
‘Francois, I want to ask you something,’ said Hélne after a while.
‘Anything I can do for you, Hélène?’
‘No,just something I want to know. Do flies live very long?’ Staring at her, I was about to say that her boy had asked the very same question a few hours earlier, when I suddenly realised that here was the opening I had been searching for, and perhaps even the possibility of striking a blow powerful enough to shatter her stonewall defence, be it sane or insane.
Watching her carefully, I replied, ‘I don’t really know, Hélène; but the fly you were looking for was in my study this morning.’
No doubt about it, I had struck a shattering blow. She swung her head round with such force that I heard the bones crack in her neck. She opened her mouth, but said not a word; only her eyes seemed to be screaming with fear.
Yes, it was evident that I had crashed through something, but what? Undoubtedly, the Commissaire would have known what to do with such an advantage; I did not. All I knew was that he would never have given her time to think, to recuperate, but all I could do, and even that was a strain, was to maintain my best poker-face, hoping against hope that Hélêne’s defences would go on crumbling.
‘François . . . Did you kill it?’ she whispered, her eyes no longer fixed, but searching every inch of my face.
‘No.’
‘You have it, then. You have it on you. Give it me!’ she almost shouted, touching me with both her hands, and I knew that had she felt strong enough, she would have tried to search me.
‘No, Hélène, I haven’t got it.’
‘But you know now. You have guessed, haven’t you?’
‘No, Hélène. I know only one thing – you are not insane. But I mean to know all, and, somehow, I am going to find out. You can choose: either you tell me everything, and I’ll see what is to be done, or–’
‘Or what? Say it!’
‘Or I assure you that the Commissaire will have the fly first thing tomorrow morning.’
She remained quite still, looking down at the palms of her hands on her lap and, although it was getting chilly, her forehead and hands were moist.
‘If I tell you. . . will you promise to destroy that fly before doing anything else?’
‘No, Hélène. I can make no such promise before knowing.’
‘But, François, you must understand. I promised André that fly would be destroyed. That promise must be kept, and I can say nothing until it is.’
I could sense the deadlock ahead. I was not yet losing ground, but I was losing the initiative. I tried a shot in the dark. ‘Hélène, of course you realise that as soon as the police examine the fly, they will know that you are not insane, and then . .
‘Francois, no! For Henri’s sake! Don’t you see? I was expecting that fly; I thought it would find me in the end. But I suppose it couldn’t, and so it went to you.’
&nb
sp; Was she really mad, or was she pretending again? But mad or not, she was cornered. I said very quietly, ‘Tell me all, Héléne. I can then protect your boy.’
‘Protect my boy from what? Don’t you understand that I am here merely so that Henri won’t be the son of a woman who was guillotined for having murdered his father? Don’t you realise that I would by far prefer the guillotine to the living death of this lunatic asylum?’
‘I understand, Hélène, and I’ll do my best for the boy whether you tell me or not. If you refuse to tell me, I’ll still do the best I can to protect Henri, but the game will be out of my hands, because Commissaire Charas will have the fly. I must and will know how and why my brother died, Hélène.’
‘All right. I’ll give you what your Commissaire would call my confession.’
‘Do you mean to say that you have written it?’
‘Yes. It was not really meant for you, but more likely for your friend, the Commissaire. I had foreseen that, sooner or later, he would get too close to the truth.’
‘You have no objection to his reading it?’
‘You will act as you think fit, Francois. Wait for me.’
Leaving me at’the door of the parlour, Héléne ran upstairs to her room.
In a few minutes she returned carrying a large brown envelope.
‘Francois, all I ask is that you read this alone. After that, you may do as you wish.’
‘That I promise you, Hélène,’ I said, taking the precious envelope. ‘I’ll read it tonight and, although tomorrow is not a visiting day, I’ll come to see you.’
‘Just as you like.’ Without even saying goodbye, she went back upstairs.
It was only on reaching home, as I walked from the garage to the house, that I read the inscription on the envelope:
To whom it may concern
–probably Corninissaire Charas
Having told the servants that I would have only a light supper to be served immediately in my study and that I was not to be disturbed afterwards, I ran upstairs.
I threw Hélène’s envelope on my desk, and made another careful search of the room before closing the shutters and drawing the curtains. All I could find was a long-since-dead mosquito stuck to the wall near the ceiling.
Asking the servant to put her tray down on a table by the fireplace, I poured myself a glass of wine, and then locked the door behind her. I disconnected the telephone – I always did this now at night – and turned out all the lights except the lamp on my desk.
Slitting open Hélène’s fat envelope, I extracted a thick wad of closely-written pages.
I read the following lines which were neatly centred in the middle of the top page:
This is not a confession because, although I killed my husband, I am not a murderess. I vey faithfully carried out his last wish by crushing his head and right arm under the steam-hammer of his brother’s factory.
Without even touching the glass of wine by my elbow, I turned the page and started reading.
For very nearly a year before his death, my husband had told me about some of his experiments. He knew full well that his colleagues at the Air Ministry would have forbidden some of them as too dangerous, but he was keen to obtain positive results before reporting his discovery.
Whereas sound and pictures had been, so far, transmitted through space by radio and television, André claimed to have discovered a way of transmitting matter. Matter, any solid object, placed in his transmitter was disintegrated instantly, and then reintegrated in a special receiving set.
André considered his discovery as perhaps the most important since that of the wheel sawn off the end of a tree trunk. He reckoned that the transmission of matter by instantaneous ‘disintegration-reintegration’ would completely change life as we had known it so far. It would mean the end of all means of transport, not only of goods including food but also of human beings. André, the practical scientist who never allowed theories or daydreams to get the better of him, already foresaw the time when there would no longer be any aeroplanes, ships, trains, or cars, and, therefore, no longer any roads or railway lines, ports, or airports. Transmitting and receiving stations would replace all these. Travellers and goods would be placed in a special apparatus and, at a given signal, would disappear, to reappear almost immediately at the chosen receiving station.
André’s receiving set was only a few feet away from his transmitter, in a room adjoining his laboratory. His first successful experiment was carried out with an ash-tray taken from his desk.
I had no idea what he was talking about the day he came dashing into the house and threw the ash-tray in my lap.
‘Hélne, look! For a fraction of a second, a bare ten-millionth of a second, that ash-tray has been completely disintegrated. For one little moment it no longer existed. Gone! Nothing left, absolutely nothing. Only atoms travelling through space at the speed of light. And the moment after, the atoms were once more gathered together in the shape of an ash-tray!’
‘André, please.. . please! What on earth are you raving about?’
It was then that he first told me of his discovery and, as I still did not seem to understand, he started sketching all over a letter I had been writing. He laughed at my wry face, swept all my letters off the table, and said, ‘You don’t understand? Right. Let’s start all over again. Hélêne, do you remember I once read you an article about mysterious flying stones that seem to come from nowhere in particular, and which are said to fall occasionally in certain houses in India? They fly in as though thrown from outside, in spite of closed doors and windows.’
‘Yes, I remember. I also remember that your friend, Professor Augier, remarked that if there was no trickery about it, the only possible explanation was that the stones had been disintegrated after being thrown from outside, had come through the walls, and then been reintegrated before hitting the floor or the opposite walls.’
‘That’s right. And I added that there was, of course, one other possibility, namely the momentary and partial disintegration of the walls as the stone or stones came through.’
‘Yes, André, I remember. And I suppose you remember, too, that I failed to understand, and that you got quite annoyed. Well, I still do not understand why and how disintegrated stones are able to come through a wall or a closed door.’
‘But it is possible, Hélène, because the atoms that go to make up matter are not close together like the bricks of a wall. They are separated by relative immensities of space.’
‘How can there be immensities of space between the atoms of an ordinary door?’
‘The space between the atoms is immense in relation to their size, Hélène. You, for instance, with your fifty-five kilos, and one metre sixty of very agreeable womanhood – if all the atoms of which you are composed were to be packed tightly together without any space between them, you would still weigh fifty-five kilos, but you would make a little heap that would easily sit on the head of a pin.’
‘So, if I understand you correctly, you claim to have reduced that ash-tray to the size of a pin?’
‘No, Hélène. To start with, that ash-tray, which only weighs a few hundred grammes, would be barely visible under a high-powered microscope if its atoms were packed together. And, in any case, my explanation was only a picture to help you understand. However, it is true that, once disintegrated, this ash-tray can quite easily be projected through a wall or a door, or even through you.’
‘Do you mean to say that you have disintegrated that ashtray, transmitted it, and then put it together again?’
‘Precisely, Hélène. I projected it through the wall that separates my transmitter from my receiving set.’
‘And would it be foolish to ask how humanity is to benefit from ash-trays that can go through walls?’
André seemed quite offended, but he soon saw that I was only teasing and, again waxing enthusiastic, he told me of some of the possibilities of his discovery.
‘Isn’t it wonderful, Héléne?’ he finally ga
sped, out of breath.
‘Yes, André. But I hope you won’t ever transmit me; I’d be too much afraid of coming out at the other end like your ashtray.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you remember what was written under that ash-tray?’
‘Yes, of course: Made in Japan.’
‘The words are still there, André, but – look!’
He took the ash-tray out of my hands, frowned, and walked over to the window. Then he went quite pale.
The three words were still there, but reversed, and reading: napaJ ni edaM.
Without a word, having completely forgotten me, André rushed off to his laboratory. I saw him again next morning, tired and unshaven after a whole night’s work.
A few days later André had a new setback, which made him irritable for several weeks. I stood it patiently for a while, but being myself bad-tempered one evening, I reproached him for his moroseness.
‘I’m sorry, chérie. I’ve been working my way through a maze of problems. You see, my very first experiment with a live animal proved a complete fiasco.’
‘André! You tried that experiment with Dandelo, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. How did you guess?’ he answered sheepishly. ‘He disintegrated perfectly, but he never reappeared in the receiving set.’
‘Oh, André! What became of him then?’
‘Nothing. There is just no more Dandelo; only the dispersed atoms of a cat wandering somewhere in the universe.’
I saw little of André during the next few weeks. He had most of his meals sent down to the laboratory, and I would often wake up in the morning and find his bed untouched or, if he had come in very late, the room would have that storm-swept aspect which only a man can give a bedroom when getting up very early and fumbling around in the dark.
One evening he came home to dinner all smiles, and I knew that his troubles were over.
‘At last everything is perfect, and I want you to be the first to see the miracle,’ he announced.
I ran down to the kitchen and told the cook that she had exactly ten minutes in which to prepare a celebration dinner.
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