by Michel Bussi
Don’t read me the riot act, I know I’m just a stubborn old woman. But I have to get to Nettles Island, one last time. For one last pilgrimage. It’s there, and nowhere else, that I will choose my weapon.
Of course, just as I’m about to set off again, Richard appears from behind the metal wall of the water tank. I should have recognized his blue 4L parked behind the barrier. Richard Paternoster, the last farmer in Giverny, who owns three-quarters of the meadow, a countryman with the face and the name of a priest, who has never forgotten to wave at me in over thirty years, even when he was choking me from up there on his tractor and sending all kinds of insecticide into our lungs, mine and Neptune’s, as he drove his engines of torture, sending death chasing after me every time I crossed the meadow.
And, of course, here he is now, stopping to tell me about his wretched life and share the misery of the world with me. As if I would feel sorry for him, with his fifty hectares classified as a historic monument!
Yet it’s impossible to avoid him. He gestures to me to come back, to stay awhile longer in the shade of the water tank.
I have no choice, I walk toward him. I just have time to see in the distance the cloud of smoke on the path, like the plume from the old trains in the Wild West. The motorbike passes by the spot without slowing down. But not so fast that I can’t recognize it.
A Tiger Triumph T100.
75
Stéphanie is breathless as she arrives at Nettles Island. She ran through the field in a straight line, like an impatient teenager. As if every second that kept her from her amorous rendezvous counted.
Laurenç is waiting for her, she knows.
She pushes aside the last waist-high stems and steps into the clearing.
It’s as silent as a cathedral beneath the poplars of Nettles Island.
Laurenç isn’t there.
He isn’t hiding, he isn’t playing with her. He simply isn’t there. His Triumph must be parked somewhere.
She didn’t want to listen when she was crossing the field, she didn’t want to look, but she distinctly heard the noise of that engine that she has learned to recognize, the engine of Laurenç’s Triumph. She saw the smoke rising in the distance. She wanted to believe that she was wrong. She wanted to believe that Laurenç was coming, even if the sound seemed to be moving away; that the wind, just the wind was responsible for the illusion. It was impossible to believe that the Triumph was leaving, that Laurenç was fleeing.
Why would he have left before she even arrived?
Laurenç isn’t there.
Her eyes can’t miss the sheet of paper nailed to the trunk of the first poplar. It’s plain white paper with some words scribbled on it.
She walks over. She already knows that she won’t like what she’s about to read, that those words will contain something like a death notice.
She steps forward as if sleepwalking.
The writing is jerky, nervous.
Four lines.
There is no happy love…
Except those loves that our memory cultivates.
For ever, for always
Laurenç
Stéphanie feels her legs giving way beneath her. Her hands claw desperately at the bark of the poplar. She falls. The vertical trunks spin around her like giants dancing in a satanic circle.
There is no happy love…
Only Laurenç could have written those words, she’s aware of it. A memory. A pretty memory is all that the inspector was looking for.
Her light cotton dress clings to the damp earth. Her arms and her legs are filthy. Stéphanie weeps, refuses to acknowledge the truth.
What a fool!
A memory.
For ever, for always.
She will have to settle for the memory. All her life. Go back to Giverny, to the classroom, to her house. To resume the ordinary round of things, like before. To close the door of her own cage.
What an idiot!
What was she thinking?
She is trembling now, trembling with cold in the shade of the trees. Her dress is wet. Why is it wet? Her thoughts are muddled. She doesn’t understand—the grass of the meadow is bone dry; it seems to have been grilled under the sun. It doesn’t matter. She feels so dirty. She runs her hand over her eyes and clumsily tries to wipe away her tears.
Good God!
Stéphanie’s pupils are fixed on her palms, appalled: they are red. Blood red!
Stéphanie feels that she’s about to faint; she no longer understands. She raises her arms: they, too, are covered with blood. She lowers her eyes. Her dress is marked with large stains that drench the light cotton.
She is bathing in a pool of blood.
Red blood. Bright. Fresh.
Suddenly, the leaves of the trees rustle behind her.
Someone is coming.
76
“What are you hiding? What are you hiding in that package?”
Paul turns around and gives a huge sigh of relief. It’s Vincent. He should have expected it, the boy’s still spying on him. But anyway, it’s only Vincent. Even if his friend’s voice sounds strange and there’s a weird glint in his eye.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
Fanette is right. Vincent is a pain.
“Right then, since you want to know. Have a look.”
Paul leans toward the wrapped parcel and opens the brown paper. Vincent has come over to him.
Wait until you see this, you busybody!
Paul pulls aside the wrapping. The colors of the Water Lilies painted by Fanette shimmer in the light of the sun. On the canvas, the lily flowers vibrate with the movement of the water, floating like unmoored tropical islands.
Vincent doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t seem to be able to take his eyes off the painting.
“Come on, let’s go,” Paul says energetically. “Help me wrap it up again. I have to take it to Teacher. It’s for the Young Artists competition, but you’ve probably guessed that already.”
He stares at Vincent, his eyes filled with pride.
“So, what do you think? Our Fanette is a genius, isn’t she! The most talented of everyone. She’s going to be spoiled for choice. Tokyo, New York, Madrid—all the painting schools in the world are going to be fighting over her.”
Vincent gets up. He’s staggering as if he is drunk.
Paul is worried.
“Are you all right, Vincent?”
“You… you’re not going to do that,” the boy stammers.
“What?”
Paul starts folding the brown paper over the painting again.
“Give that painting to Miss. Send Fanette to the other end of the world… so that they will take Fanette away from us…”
“What are you saying? Come on, help me.”
Vincent steps forward. His shadow falls over Paul, who is still crouching down. Suddenly Vincent’s voice assumes a strident tone that Paul has never heard from his lips before.
“Throw the painting in the river!”
Paul looks up and wonders for a moment whether Vincent is being serious or not, then bursts out laughing.
“Don’t talk nonsense. Go on, help me.”
Vincent doesn’t reply. He freezes for a few moments and then suddenly steps forward, raises his right foot, and pushes the painting from where it lies on the steps.
The painting slides. The stream is only a few inches away.
Paul’s hand blocks the package. He holds it solidly with one hand and rises furiously to his feet.
“You’re insane! It could have landed in the water.”
Paul knows that Vincent isn’t up to a fight. Paul is stronger. If Vincent goes on like that he’ll make him understand.
“Move it. Get out of the way. I’m going to take the painting to Miss. After that you and I can settle our scores.”
Vincent retreats under the weeping willow whose branches dip into the stream. He rummages in his trouser pocket.
“I’m not going to let
you do it, Paul. I’m not going to let you take Fanette away from us.”
“You’re crazy! Clear off!”
Paul steps forward. Vincent leaps at him.
He is holding a knife.
“What the—”
Paul is stunned.
“You’re going to give me that painting, Paul. I’m just going to damage it a little. Just enough…”
Paul isn’t listening to Vincent’s ravings. He is concentrating on the knife that Vincent is brandishing. A broad, flat knife. The same kind that Fanette uses when she is painting. The same one that painters use to clean their palettes.
Where could Vincent have found that tool?
Who could he have stolen it from?
“Give me the painting, Paul,” Vincent insists. “I’m not joking.”
Paul instinctively looks for help, a passerby, a neighbor, anyone. His eyes turn toward the window of the keep of the Moulin des Chennevières. Inside no one is moving. Not a cat. Not a dog. Not even Neptune.
The river seems to be spinning around him.
A name whirls around inside his skull, unreal, surreal.
James.
Paul stares again at the knife that Vincent is holding. A dirty knife. A painter would clean his knife.
Not Vincent.
The knife blade is red.
Blood red.
77
Stéphanie’s bare legs slip in the mixture of soil and blood, trying to find purchase.
Someone is coming.
Her hands reach out to the trunk of the poplar in front of her, gripping it like the body of a man at whose feet she lies. She struggles to her feet. She feels as if she is covered with excrement, with human remains, as if she’s been thrown into a mass grave; as if she’s climbing over corpses to get out of it.
Someone is coming.
Stéphanie clings to the poplar, rubs herself against it, twisting to wipe herself against the bark, as if to marry herself to its strength.
Someone’s coming.
Someone is following the banks of the Epte. She clearly hears the sound of footsteps, brushing through the ferns along the confluence of the Seine, coming closer. Against the light, she sees a body standing by the row of poplars.
Laurenç?
For a moment Stéphanie thinks it is her lover. There is no pool of blood now. No filth. She is going to tear off that dirty dress and throw herself into Laurenç’s arms.
He has come back. He’s going to take her away.
Her heart has never beaten so fast.
“I… I found him like this.”
Jacques. It’s Jacques’s voice.
Frozen.
Stéphanie’s hands scratch the wood. Her fingernails break against the trunk, one by one, each with its own fresh shard of pain.
The shadow steps forward into the sunlight.
Jacques.
Her husband.
Stéphanie no longer has the strength to think, to wonder what he’s doing here, at Nettles Island, to try to put some order into the sequence of events. She merely goes through them, moving like a sleepwalker, bumping into the obstacles hurtling toward her.
Stéphanie can’t take her eyes off the dark form that Jacques is holding in his arms. A dog. A dead dog whose muzzle has been torn half off and whose blood is dripping down Jacques’s thighs.
Neptune.
“I found him like this,” Jacques Dupain murmurs again in a blank voice. “It must have been a hunting accident. Someone killed him. A stray bullet. Or some bastard. He… he didn’t suffer, Stéphanie. He died instantly.”
Stéphanie gently slides along the tree trunk. The bark lacerates her arms, her legs. She can no longer feel the pain. There is no pain at all.
Jacques smiles at her. Jacques is strong. Jacques is calm.
He sets Neptune’s body down delicately on a bed of grass.
“That’s enough, Stéphanie.”
Stéphanie feels all her resistance ebbing away. It’s lucky that Jacques is there. Where would she be without him? What would she do without him? He’s always been there. Never complaining, never judging her, never asking anything of her. Just there. Like the poplar that she’s clinging to, Jacques is a tree that’s been planted beside her, that doesn’t react when she goes away, that knows she’ll always come back to seek refuge in its shade.
Jacques holds out his hand to her. Stéphanie takes it.
She trusts him. Just him. He is the only man who has never betrayed her. She bursts into tears against his shoulder.
“Come on, Stéphanie. Come away. I’m parked nearby. We’ll put Neptune in the trunk. Come on, Stéphanie, we’re going home.”
78
Inspector Laurenç Sérénac rests his Triumph against the white wall of the police station. It has taken him only a few minutes to travel the four miles that separate Giverny from Vernon. He bursts inside. Maury is on reception talking to three girls, one of whom, almost hysterical, is endlessly repeating that her handbag has disappeared from the sidewalk café in the Place de la Gare. Her two friends are nodding.
“Have you seen Sylvio?”
Maury looks up.
“Downstairs. In the archives.”
Sérénac doesn’t slow his pace. He races down the stairs and pushes open the red door. Sylvio Bénavides is hunched over a pad, scribbling notes. He has spread out the contents of the file on the table: the photographs of Jérôme Morval’s mistresses and the crime scene, the lists of children from Giverny School, the autopsy, the graphology reports, the photocopies of Water Lilies, his handwritten notes…
“Chief! Good timing. I think I’ve made some progress.”
Sérénac doesn’t give his deputy the time to say anything more.
“Forget it, Sylvio. We’re dropping the case.”
Bénavides looks at him with astonishment and goes on:
“But I’ve got some news. First of all, I’ve found the fifth mistress, the girl in the blue smock. I’ve made dozens of phone calls. Her name is Jeanne Thibaut. Basically she slept with Morval to keep her job, she told me. Since then she’s moved to the Parisian suburbs. She lives with a postman. She has two kids, aged three and five. So you see, nothing suspicious. We’ve reached another dead end.”
Sérénac looks bleakly at his deputy.
“A dead end. So we agree, it’s—”
“Except,” Bénavides jumps in enthusiastically, “I’ve also been to the regional archives—I spent a huge amount of time there—and in the end I managed to unearth some copies of the Républicain de Vernon dating back to 1937. There are articles about the death of that boy, Albert Rosalba. There is even an interview with the mother of the drowned child, Louise Rosalba, and she didn’t think it was an accident. She—”
Sérénac raises his voice.
“You don’t understand, Sylvio. We’re dropping the case! Our investigation is going nowhere; all that nonsense about Water Lilies hidden in the attics of Giverny, and an accident involving a little boy that took place before the war! Jealous husbands… We’re a laughingstock!”
Bénavides lifts his pen from his notepad.
“Excuse me, but you’re right, Chief, I don’t understand. What do you mean, exactly, when you say we’re dropping it?”
With the back of his hand, Sérénac sends a pile of papers on the table flying and sits down in their place.
“Let me put it another way, Sylvio. You were right. All along. Mixing personal feelings with a criminal investigation is folly of the worst kind. I’ve realized that a little late, but at least I’ve realized it.”
“You’re talking about Stéphanie Dupain?”
“If you say so.”
Sylvio Bénavides darts him a smile and patiently gathers up the scattered pages.
“So Jacques Dupain is no longer public enemy number one?”
“We’d have to say no.”
“But… the—”
Sérénac brings his fist down on the table.
“Listen, Sylvio. I’m going
to call the investigating magistrate and tell him I’m struggling with this case, that I’m hopelessly incompetent, and that if he wants to, he can hand the investigation over to someone else.”
“But…”
Sylvio Bénavides takes in the exhibits on the table and casts an eye over his notes.
“I hear you, Chief. It may even be for the best, but…”
His eyes come to rest on Laurenç.
“Good God, what’s happened to you?”
“What?”
“Your sleeves, your jacket! Have you been carrying a corpse about or something?”
Laurenç sighs.
“I’ll explain later. You had a ‘but’?”
“The thing is, the more I try to put all the pieces of the puzzle in order, the more I keep coming back to this child who’s in danger, this eleven-year-old. If we drop the case now we risk—”
Sylvio Bénavides doesn’t manage to finish his sentence. Officer Maury, who has come down the stairs two at a time, bursts into the archive room.
“Sylvio! We’ve just had a call from the maternity ward! It’s happening. I think they said her water broke, but the midwife didn’t say anything more, just that you need to get there double quick…”
Bénavides leaps from his chair. Laurenç Sérénac gives him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
“Hurry up, Sylvio. Forget everything else.”
“Right… OK.”
“Run, you idiot!”
Sylvio slips his arms clumsily into the sleeves of his jacket. Sérénac urges him on:
“What are you waiting for? Off you go!”
“Before I leave, can I call you by your first name… Laurenç?”
“It was high time, you fool.”
The two men smile at each other. Inspector Bénavides casts one last glance at the sheets of paper on the table, particularly the photograph of Stéphanie Dupain, then says as he leaves: “In the end, I really do think you’re right to drop this investigation.”
Laurenç Sérénac listens to his deputy running up the stairs. The heavy footsteps fade, a door slams, then nothing. Sérénac slowly places all the pieces of the dossier together in the red filing box. The photographs, the reports, the notes. He runs his eyes along the alphabetic classification on the shelf, then puts the red box in its place.