A Silver Ring in the Ear

by Tony Duvert

  “So what can I do for you?” said the doctor, as though speaking to a patient. He was in a fine swivelling arm-chair: his visitor, though, had only an infirmary chair.

  “You will realize,” said Sorel, “that your testimony is of capital importance. May I know how you discovered the body?”

  “Oh! by all means!”

  The policeman’s question visibly amused doctor Rousseau:

  “I didn’t take the lift,” he said. “I was happy to use the stairs!”

  Sorel suppressed a grimace. Another customer who scorned the cops. These rich people were all the same: one worked only for them, but they pissed all over you.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s about a crime,” Sorel said softly, “and my job is to find a killer. I’m sure you’ll be able to help me.”

  “I don’t know any killers, inspector!” mocked Dr. Rousseau. “But do interrogate me; as I said, I am entirely at your disposal.”

  “No one has told me why you went up to the professor’s room,” continued Sorel with resignation.

  “The soup was getting cold!” roared Rousseau. “Do you see that?”

  “You were dining together, and the professor’s family was becoming impatient with his absence.”

  “That’s it. Except that I was not dining. I had come over to talk to him about my projects, about this new research.”

  “Doctor, who asked you to go up to his study?”

  “Madame Brisset suggested it, but I refused: there was no reason to bother Brisset when he was expected to appear at any moment. And then, at some point, I don’t know when, that child, you know…”

  “Marc,” said Sorel.

  “Yes, Marc, he asserted that his grandfather was dead.”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead. That’s right.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “I was rather surprised. Kids say all kinds of things, and that urchin is particularly ill-mannered: but as a pleasantry it was a bit much.”

  “Did you often come to see the professor’s family?”

  “No, not at all,” said Dr. Rousseau. Professor Brisset had been my teacher, and we would meet mostly at the hospital. I don’t even know how many children or grand-children he had.”

  “Oh really?” said Sorel, writing. “And as you see it, Marc said that by chance? A simple co-incidence?”

  “A co-incidence,” said Rousseau.

  “It was however that… pleasantry that inspired you to go and look upstairs, yes?”

  Dr. Rousseau sighed. This artless young cop was annoying him.

  “No, inspector. Let’s be serious! If a kid of twelve swears to you that there’s an atomic bomb in the middle of the street, would you go and check?”

  “No, certainly not,” said Sorel. “But it was his grand-father, whom I believe he loved a lot. Why would he have invented that?”

  “The need to make himself interesting, sillyness, pretentiousness, what do I know? These spoilt brats are mountains of narcissism. And then, at ten or twelve years old, they talk but say nothing. Just like that. To make themselves sparkle.”

  “Eight years old, I made a note that he is eight,” corrected Julien Sorel. “Perhaps you are right, doctor… but – this will surprise you – Marc is quite simply my number one suspect, and I cannot rest with the explanation you suggest.”

  “Ha!” shouted Rousseau, almost hilarious. “Ha! Marc!”

  Sorel disregarded the doctor’s reaction. He said:

  “All right, let’s forget Marc. Let’s come back to you. And, I beg of you, tell me now why you went up. What time was it?”

  “I’m frightfully sorry,” said Rousseau, “but I didn’t look at my watch.”

  “Come on,” said the inspector, “every one there was worried about Brisset’s lateness, and you don’t know what time it was? I find it difficult to believe you.”

  “Behaviour is never as rational as the police would like it to be,” said Rousseau. “You investigate as though each of our actions were deliberate, programmed, completed. A fragment of scenario carefully built up. Well, no. I grant you that it might seem absurd, but we did not use a watch, that evening, to see how late Professor Brisset was. The members of his family whom you have already interviewed, were they more precise?”

  “I confess that they were not,” said Sorel. “Madame Brisset thinks it was about half past eight.”

  “Ah.”

  Doctor Rousseau appeared to reflect.

  “Yes, it must have been something like that.”

  He crossed the fingers of both hands and raised them towards the inspector, pursing his lips evasively.

  “…but I don’t know anything definite.”

  “Let’s leave it. I assure you that I understand that, er, gaps of that kind can occur. Let us continue from the moment when you arrived upstairs.”

  “Yes. It’s quite simple. The anxiety of his relatives, my standing as a doctor: I was delegated. I went up the stairs. Total silence on the first floor. I knocked on the door, several times. No response. I took the decision to go in. I was almost certain of what I would see.”

  “Certain?”

  “You may not be aware that Professor Brisset was a bon vivant, he loved to eat and drink, he was fat, his blood pressure was high: he was very exposed to the possibility of a cardiac or cerebral accident. Not necessarily fatal, of course: but the risk was there.”

  “Yes. Did you take his pulse?”

  “I took his pulse. The wrist was lukewarm; the man was dead. In the same position in which the police photographed him. I insist on the fact that the body was warm, indubitably warm. And I would have reached the conclusion that it was a natural death, were it not for that mark around his neck. Some one had strangled the professor.”

  “The police arrived very quickly,” remarked Sorel.

  “I was able to ensure, that is to say, that the removal of the body and the autopsy took place as soon as possible. Simply the name of the victim justified…”

  “Certainly,” interrupted the inspector. “In that regard, is it true that obese persons become cold slowly? I’ve been told that that is the case.”

  “The fat… a well-heated room… thick clothing… let’s say an extra hour,” answered Dr. Rousseau.

  “He had been dead for at most an hour,” Sorel repeated.

  “No! I know nothing about that. But it’s possible. There again, inspector, is a collection of circumstances which rule out, quite definitely, the possibility of being precise. Note that I understand your irritation.”

  “No, no,” said Sorel. “It doesn’t bother me, doctor! Every investigation has its little imperfections!… Ah, one last detail, if you please.”

  “Of course. I’ve been so… disappointing!”

  “Let us suppose, doctor. Let us suppose that some one strangled Professor Brisset, for example just a minute before you came into the consulting-room.”

  “Unimaginable, but I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you. In that case, would the body have presented an identical appearance, temperature, pliability, etc?”

  Dr. Rousseau lifted his head high, burst into a dry laughter, and struck his metal desk with his fist, so that it resounded like a gong:

  “Yes, inspector! Absolutely identical to what I saw. To be even more specific, had it been I who strangled Professor Brisset, I would have found him in exactly that condition when I examined him one minute later. Does that satisfy you?”

  IX

  Julien Sorel went home before his usual time. He felt tired, and discouraged.

  ‘Of course, they all know who killed Professor Brisset, and I’m sure that they would all adore being the killer!…’ thought Julien.

  His ridiculous role was no longer bearable. How many days was superintendent Rênal going to let him fumble around before she took the case back and produced a culprit from God knows where?

  Gabriel wasn’t in. Sorel made himself a martini-gin, enjoyed the smell of fresh fish when he opened the frid
ge, found some magnificent mackerel and salivated in anticipation. He nibbled a few olives.

  He lay down on the sofa. The material was an imitation of Chinese-style duck designs. Sorel had put down beside him Professor Brisset’s appointment book and card-index. He detested reflecting, analysing, and deduction, so the examination and cross-checking of the two documents terrorised him in advance: a nightmare!

  Suddenly he realized what he had no need to examine: since the old man had been dead, at the earliest, at around seven thirty – that is to say, at the same time that the last patient left, Madame Sauveterre – it would be useless to investigate the nut-cases.

  To be exact, he would interview the two last patients.

  ‘All kinds of imbeciles have been talking about this for the past week,’ he sighed. ‘But you my girl are good for nothing. You’re a fat-head.’

  Inspector Sorel mixed himself a second martini.

  ‘I need to take a chance, my bum is becoming unscrewed,’ thought Sorel: in fact he was feeling a kind of anguish in his fundament, a vague palpitation of desire, a confusion in his anus.

  ‘I was never good at maths.’

  He remained standing, undecided.

  ‘They’re all scientists. They’ll fuck you up, Juju.’

  He went up to the little Regency-style desk where Gabriel did his writing for necesssities. There was one unfinished letter, in large English letters, very copper-plate.

  Dear Sir, If it has not become a blemish, as a mother who nevertheless supports liberty of expression, if you insert my letter, I dare not doubt, in your next number for readers… all mothers subscribe to what I… because we are revolted that you permit to be written in your columns those opinions which, besides, no longer even shock any one… end of the article expressed an odious and even evil sexism… do children no longer have the right to love their parents and when will there be prison for mums I ask you… Is that what you… is that your… do you support this…

  ‘He went off to get drunk,’ concluded Sorel. Clearly the unfortunate Gabriel had there an appalling profession: if all fails, become a killer… A terrible dilemma.

  ‘He’s going to cook himself dead,’ sighed Julien Sorel, heart-broken. He went back to the sofa, finished his drink, and felt like having a third one. But he restrained himself. First a look at the appointment book.

  Yes. No problem. Sorel took up his note-book and wrote: last patient Madam Sauveterre, from 7 to 7:30.

  This indication from the appointment book co-incided exactly with what Peter the servant had written on his piece of paper.

  ‘Look for the Sauveterre file, the address…’

  Sorel fingered the card-index, then stopped, disconcerted, started again, grunted, and decided to go through the files one by one, from A to Z. Nothing doing. The Sauveterre file had disappeared.

  ‘Good,’ reflected Julien. ‘If chief Rênal has cleaned up Sauveterre for me, that’s because Sauveterre is somebody else. One of the important patients.’

  He jumped to his feet, reinspired.

  ‘Oh but how that pleases me. What luck that I took a chance,’

  He poured a pure gin for himself and held his nose as he drank it.

  ‘It’s working, I’m becoming intelligent!… But wait on, Juju old bean, at least look at the other chap.’

  Julien fell to his knees amidst all the documents, and resumed his research.

  ‘The previous patient, Robert Dieudefoi, from 6:30 to 7. Not even a break for a pipi, old Brisset. The neuro’s going well, what. Dieudefoi… What did Peter write?… Good, confirmed. And now, Juju, I bet you this Dieudefoi is no longer in the card-index either.’

  Sorel had guessed right: Robert Dieudefoi’s file had also been taken out by superintendent Rênal.

  ‘She’s really been fucking me up,’ thought Sorel. ‘Oh well, if that amuses you fatty, I’m going to amuse myself too.’

  And Julien Sorel decided that, starting from to-morrow, he would pester all the Dieudefois and all the Sauveterres in the telephone book. He who loved so much to force his way into people’s homes! What a chance! A feast.

  ‘So, are you going to a disco, or to the sauna, old Juju?’ Sorel, a little tipsy, asked himself.

  “But look, darling, you’re not telling the truth! You’ve told me things I can’t believe. And your father’s coming back this evening! Marc, I implore you,” said Beatrice. “I want to know. I need to know.”

  She grasped the two arms of her child. She was sitting in front of Marc, who, standing and cold, submitted to being shaken. This was in Marc’s bedroom.

  The little boy had just been surprised by his mother as, all alone, he had inserted his ring into his ear, as he did every evening, and, happy to be disguised in such a small way, he was on all fours, playing with an animal farm in Kenya. Bedtime had been forgotten.

  Beatrice was panic-stricken.

  “You’re not telling the truth,” she repeated. “My darling, my darling, it’s… but you’re not telling the truth! Marc. Darling. Don’t make that face. Come on. Marc. Marc!”

  Marc, raising his trapped right arm, made as though to slap his mother with the back of his hand. He didn’t seem angry. A killer’s face, rather.

  “Let go of me,” the little boy suddenly murmured.

  Beatrice hesitated, looked at the child’s eyes, and obeyed.

  As soon as she released Marc’s wrists, he retreated. On the skin of each wrist was a dark-red circle, the mark of his mother’s fingers. He didn’t look at them, but Beatrice noticed these prints.

  The silver ring was dancing pliably in the young boy’s ear.

  “Tell me who. Just who!” insisted Beatrice, frightened at how her son had receded so far from her.

  “Who what?” growled Marc. His eyebrows were furrowed like those of a little gorilla: he was beside himself.

  “The one who bought that for you, that ring,” asked Beatrice.

  Marc shrugged his shoulders.

  “Some one bought it for you, you didn’t steal it, right?”

  Marc paused. Then he lowered his face and opened his eyes wide:

  “I was going to tell you. But now I don’t want to. You’re a slut. Slut!” he shouted.

  And to be on the safe side, he moved towards the door.

  But he didn’t go out. He waited, teeth clenched. His hair, low over the forehead, seemed, as in a tragedy, to be plastered down in anger.

  Beatrice did not like these tense scenes. She had (she thought) never hurt her little boy. When a girl, her own parents had treated her gently and with kindness: if she was sharp, she owed it to herself alone. She knew that.

  She made an effort to keep calm, and said:

  “Marc, I don’t wan’t to hurt you. Right now you hate me. But why? Why? What’s happened to you?”

  Marc hesitated, his back to the door.

  “It was grandpa,” he said suddenly, “who bought it for me, the ring!”

  With his big beautiful intelligent eyes, he watched his mother’s face.

  Professor Brisset had worhshipped Marc: and everyone in the house would have accepted the little boy’s wearing of an ear-ring if he had expressed the wish. But Brisset would not have made this odd gift without speaking of it at the table: it would have been an event. Marc was lying.

  “It wasn’t grand-dad,” murmured Beatrice, crushed. “And the hole in your ear, did grand-dad make that too? Was it he?”

  Marc spun round, abruptly opened the door, and bounded onto the staircase.

  X

  When Sorel announced to superintendent Rênal his intention to interview all the Dieudefois and all the Sauveterres of Paris, Madame Rênal had looked at him dreamily without responding, and then she scribbled something on a scrap of paper:

  “You are a pain, my boy,” she said. “Here’s Madame Sauveterre’s address. As for Mr. Dieudefoi, well, how shall I put it… unscrew yourself!”

  “Yes, it is I, sir,” old Madame Sauveterre said courteously.

  �
�I’m looking into the death of Professor Brisset, I’m inspector Sorel,” said Sorel.

  “It’s terrible! I think like you, it’s terrible!” exclaimed Madame Sauveterre. She let the inspector in. “According to the newspapers, listen, my belief is that the government had him assassinated!”

  “Is that what the papers say?” asked the inspector.

  “No, not at all. It’s my own idea.”

  They had to go along a long and narrow corridor, with old and rather mouldy wall-paper; then they passed through a little room on the right, a kind of antichamber, unfurnished, before entering a luxuriant octogonal winter garden, entirely glazed. At last Sorel and Madame Sauveterre sat down in the very crowded salon where she spent her quiet life.

  A log fire burned quietly in the hearth of a fireplace with sculpted wooden facings, glossy, and polished so as to give them a soaped or moist appearance. The cushioned arm-chairs were so numerous, so jumbled, that Sorel wondered where to sit: but Madame Sauveterre directed him politely to a seat and he fell into it.

  “According to the professor’s appointment-book, you, madam, were the last who saw him alive.”

  “Yes indeed!” said Madame Sauveterre. “I understand that. You’ll make a note of it! And whether I met the killer? One never knows what might happen with people of that sort. I’m still frightened in the evening, when I retire!”

  “You didn’t encounter any one, then?”

  “No, no one. No one unusual.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Oriane came to say good-bye to me. We’re acquainted, of course.”

  “Did you chat?”

  “I didn’t stay, no. The night comes early at this time of the year: I don’t like to be out at that hour.”

  “And what time was it when you left the professor?”

  “The professor, I don’t know. The house, yes. I always look at my watch when I leave, when I get to the street. It was seven thirty-four, definitely. Thirty-four.”

  “Have you been having this treatment for long, may I ask?”

  “Seven years, inspector. Yes, Oh! don’t think I’m that crazy! No: but I’m alone, and Professor Brisset was such a delightul conversationalist! We talked about cuisine. He was a great gourmand, he often wrote down my recipes.”