The King of Fools

by Frédéric Dard

  Now, there was only our version of events to offer to the police.

  If the cops failed to accept it, we were lost. Suddenly everyone rose, like spectators at a football match when a goal is scored. I started in fright. It seemed to me that someone had brought Nevil Faulks’s cadaver onto the podium; it was a while before I realized the show was over, and people were leaving. I looked all around as I left the theatre. I was certain I would see a group of police officers and nurses on the dreaded lawn, but there was no one. Faulks’s corpse lay undiscovered for now.

  I went back to my hotel, without seeing Marjorie. I searched for her desperately in the crowds of spectators flowing back up the paths in Princes Street Gardens. But in vain. I supposed she had left before the end of the show.

  Before returning to the Fort William Hotel, I lingered on Princes Street, on the pavement overlooking the valley. From here, people could see straight down into the gardens. I could see numerous couples still sitting and lying on the lawns. Children were playing ball. Old folks chatted on the park benches. The section of the park that interested me most was hidden from view by the bulk of the open-air theatre. Down there, Nevil Faulks’s bloodied body… Should we have placed the revolver in his hand, to make it look like suicide? Or taken his wallet, to suggest violent robbery?

  Neither solution seemed adequate, and I understood why most killers make clumsy mistakes.

  My hotel was close by. I took refuge there with some relief, but my relative sense of security was short-lived. I was impatient for Marjorie’s telephone call. We needed to confer. Our salvation depended on a perfect match between our stories from now on. In essence, I represented only one half of the drama, and without the other half, I was infinitely vulnerable. The sun paled in the windows of my room, and I felt a sharp stab of nostalgia for Juan-les-Pins. The Côte d’Azur burst into life at this time of day. The noise, the nightlife, the restaurants wafting saffron and hot oil, the women, the casino.

  The casino!

  I remembered seeing Marjorie again across the gaming table. I wasn’t gambling on red or black now. I had staked my worldly goods, my freedom, my life, on this one, straight-up bet. And if my number didn’t come up…

  Ivanhoe! The valiant hero had freed his lady love from her wicked tyrant lord. And what of his reward? No hearty congratulations from good King Richard, but the threat of a hempen noose.

  Denise was right: heroes are the greatest fools.

  There was a knock at my door. It was the hotel maid.

  “Has someone telephoned for me?” I asked.

  “No, sir, I wanted to know whether you would be dining here. Dinner’s served soon.”

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  I waited for more than three hours, stretched out on the bed. Still no telephone call from Marjorie. The clink of cutlery rose from the ground floor through the open windows, followed by the squeak of the rubber-wheeled serving trolley.

  Then the deep, everlasting silence of a Scottish evening.

  A silence that was scarcely broken, from time to time, by the faint gurgle of taps and pipes, or the creak of a door. Then nothing. My watch showed half past ten. I could bear it no longer. I left my room and hurried down the wooden, floral-carpeted stairs.

  The hotel owners and two elderly clients were watching television in a tiny room leading off the hallway. The evil, spasmodic light of the cathode ray tube hardened the strangers’ features, hollowing their eye sockets with deep shadow. On the screen, a big, curly-haired fellow, rather like Danny Kaye, delivered a stream of patter whose meaning I was unable to grasp. From time to time, one of the viewers gave a ridiculous, gurgling chuckle. The old hotel proprietor, with his sad clergyman’s air, noticed my presence in the door frame.

  “Sit yourself down, sir!”

  “No, thank you. I’m just going out for some air. Does the hotel door stay open?”

  He straightened up, irritated by the interruption to his favourite pastime.

  “No, sir. Will you be back late?”

  “I couldn’t say. I suffer from insomnia, and only a good walk…”

  “I’ll lend you a key,” he decided, reluctantly.

  And he went to fetch it from a board behind the cash register.

  I had just closed the door behind me and was preparing to descend the front steps of the hotel when I heard the telephone ring. I dived back into the bright, warm hallway like a man possessed. The ringing continued, and no one seemed in any hurry to answer. I wanted to race over to where the device hung on the wall. But the proprietor of the Fort William had decided to pick it up, finally, and stared at me as he answered the call, surprised to find me standing there, motionless and expectant, when I had only just left.

  “It’s for you, sir.”

  I tore the receiver from his hands.

  “Mr Valaise?”

  It was a man’s voice, deep and aggressive.

  “Speaking.”

  “Mrs Marjorie has asked me to tell you that she’ll be waiting for you in ten minutes at the corner of Princes Street and Frederick Street.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A barman.”

  “It’s Mrs Marjorie I need—”

  But he had already hung up. I replaced the receiver and lingered in the doorway to the television room, watching an Indian youth perform a terrifying juggling act with daggers.

  I was juggling too. Juggling with grenades.

  The artiste dropped one of his blades and everyone in the room let out a cry. I left, wondering whether to take his clumsiness for a bad omen.

  14

  It was barely half past ten, but already people were emerging from a theatre. Life stops early in Edinburgh. The crowd of theatregoers quickly dispersed and I found myself alone in a smart, empty neighbourhood, its stone tenements rising like fortresses in the moonlight. Frederick Street stands perpendicular to Princes Street, sloping down towards the gardens. I reached the corner, but Marjorie hadn’t yet arrived. I waited, leaning against the metal blind of a closed shop. The sky was as clear as a bright winter’s night. No sound echoed in the still air. From time to time, a hurried figure loomed in the circles of lamplight, then melted into the darkness between. An empty bus clanked and rattled around the corner; doubtless the last of the day.

  The thought of seeing Marjorie again cheered me. I felt a renewed sense of hope.

  Together, maybe, we could get ourselves out of this mess. My need to hold her against me was so strong that I was no longer frightened, even by the prospect of my arrest. A few hours with her was all my heart desired! Tomorrow, in the light of day, life would do its worst, but none of that would matter, because I would have the memory of this night with Marjorie, at last.

  But a distant clock chimed eleven, swiftly echoed by every clock in the city, and still Marjorie had not appeared. For the first twenty minutes, I was so certain she would come that her absence hadn’t worried me. Now I was seized with sudden terror! An appalling anxiety, acute as any physical pain. A hand of steel crushed my throat. I paced back and forth, sometimes along Princes Street, sometimes along Frederick Street, then ran suddenly from one street to the next, when I thought I glimpsed a shadow or heard footsteps. There was nobody about now. In the sky, the moon’s big, stupid face shone down on my distress. Marjorie was not coming. She must have been arrested in the bar, the one from which she had had me called. In fact, she had asked someone else to make the call because she was being followed. I could think of no other explanation. There was no other explanation! At this very moment she was sitting in front of a police officer, answering questions. I imagined her, fragile and terrified, sitting on a police station chair while gruff men tried to force her to admit she had killed her husband. The thought was intolerable, and I gave a howl of despair. Marjorie’s dear face, with her freckles and her beautiful, heartbreaking eyes. The smell of Marjorie! The taste of her lips! Her timid, birdlike warmth.

  “Something the matter, sir?�
��

  I was startled to see a police officer standing motionless before me. With his black uniform and flat-topped cap, he looked like the driver of a hearse. He fixed me with a watchful eye.

  “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Out on the street at this time of night!”

  At this time of night! I wanted to tell him about Juan-les-Pins at this time of night! Anywhere else in the world at this time of night! He was guarding a necropolis, and he didn’t even know it.

  I couldn’t stay there. I had been waiting for over an hour, and I was under no illusion now.

  “You should get along home, sir!”

  He thought I’d had too much to drink. Edinburgh was full of drunks. During the day, I regularly came across characters talking to themselves, struggling to put one foot in front of the other, their eyes half closed.

  “Lovely night, sir!”

  “Lovely night!” I agreed, hurrying in the direction of the Royal bar.

  It was a lovely night, indeed.

  A lovely night to live through the blackest of nightmares.

  I clung to one last hope. But the crossroads was deserted. Frederick Street marched uphill and seemed to stop somewhere in the sky. Grey, moonlit clouds scudded and collided, blown inland from the sea.

  I heard a tiny noise, but it was only the wind blowing a piece of paper. What had happened to Marjorie? Had she been arrested? Or had she taken fright and fled the city? I would call at the bed and breakfast where she had been staying. But to turn up asking for her at this hour was the ultimate act of madness.

  15

  A marmalade cat skirted the foot of the buildings, its gait as smooth as a centipede. It spotted me and slipped away through a basement window. Its sudden disappearance heightened my sense of despair. For three or four seconds, the unknown cat had been a companionable presence.

  I stood at the foot of the grand entrance to the townhouse where the Faulkses were staying. The moon was full and bright, and the ashen steps filled me with horror. The steps to the scaffold.

  The black-hinged door looked more forbidding than a prison gate. I climbed the steps, telling myself I would never summon the courage to ring the bell; and rang the bell, certain I would have no idea what to say, should anyone happen to answer. The silvery chime must have been heard all along the street. The sound surprised even me, as if someone behind me had just called out my name.

  Clearly, the noise had done nothing to disturb the slumbering neighbourhood, nor indeed this house. The tinkling vibrations sank into the depths of the night and silence was restored, as thick and impenetrable as before.

  My nocturnal visit posed far too great a risk. I stole away like a thief caught in the act. I had reached the bottom step when a voice came out of the darkness:

  “What is it you want?”

  It was coming from the first floor. I looked up, terrified. The voice was not coming from Marjorie’s window, but another much farther to the left. I could just make out the pale blur of a face.

  “I, er… I have a message for Mrs Faulks!”

  Voilà! There was no going back now. If Marjorie had been arrested, the same fate would very soon befall me.

  The voice clearly belonged to the owner of the bed and breakfast. I seemed to recognize her mannered tones.

  “A message for Mrs Faulks! And from whom does the message come?”

  In the darkness, she had not recognized the visitor from earlier in the day (or more precisely, the day before, for it was close to one o’clock in the morning now). There was still time to seize the moment and make a run for it. But a compelling force kept me rooted to the spot. And the force was love. My thoughts came in a dizzying rush. “She’s here!” I told myself. If Marjorie wasn’t in the house, the old woman would have told me before quibbling over the sender of the message. We were to be reunited, at last. Calling here was madness, but I didn’t care about that now.

  “It’s from her husband!” I called out, amazed at my own audacity.

  “Oh! I see. Wait, I’ll come down.”

  A rectangle of yellow light cut into the shadowy mass of the façade. In the window, framed like a shadow puppet, I recognized the round silhouette of the lady with the lorgnette. I kept a careful eye on Marjorie’s window, hoping to discover the anxious face of my beloved behind the glass, but there was no sign of her. I waited a good five minutes before hearing the swish of slippers. Slowly, the front door opened a crack after much pulling back of bolts. A safety chain kept it from opening farther. Through the gap, I saw a portion of the elderly guest house owner. She was wearing a nightgown heavily bedecked with lace, under a blue satin housecoat that must have dated from the reign of Queen Victoria. In the heat of the moment, she had left her lorgnette on her bedside table. Without her corset, and the attendant harness work of large ladies such as herself, she looked like a sack of flour. She peered anxiously into the darkness, where I held back, as if by instinct.

  “Mrs Faulks is here, is she not?”

  “She’s sleeping!”

  O joy! I had found Marjorie. We were mere metres apart. An old lady and thirty centimetres of chain were all that lay between us.

  “I must speak to her immediately.”

  “Oh, but I see who you are!” the old lady exclaimed. “You called here today, inquiring about a room.”

  “Indeed. But that’s of no concern now. I have a message for Mrs Faulks, from her husband!”

  “So you know him, then?”

  “It was he who gave me your address,” I asserted, with some aplomb.

  I was prepared to blurt out anything at all. I just wanted to see Marjorie right away, and scarcely knew what I was saying.

  “But how can this be?”

  “A misunderstanding. I had no idea he would be in Scotland during my visit. And then we ran into one another just now, on Princes Street. And he asked me to get a message to his wife. It’s most important!”

  No sooner had I formed the thought than my words came tumbling out. Hempen strands for the noose that would hang me soon. Nothing mattered now.

  “Please, Madame. It’s of the utmost importance! Très important!”

  My exhortations touched her heart. Awkwardly, she removed the safety chain and opened the door.

  “Sit down, sir. I’ll go and tell her you’re here.”

  Two banquettes covered in purple velvet stood on opposite sides of the hall. I sat on one and watched the fat old lady climb the stairs, breathing heavily. She disappeared from view at the turn of the landing, but her increasingly laboured breathing left no doubt as to the route she had taken. She knocked at a door, softly at first, then a little louder. My blood thundered in my ears. Was Marjorie really in her room? Perhaps the owner thought she was, when in reality she had slipped out during the evening to telephone me. Some unimaginable incident had prevented her from keeping our rendezvous.

  “What is it?”

  A voice answered the knock. Low, fearful, sleepy. But unmistakeable. It was Marjorie.

  “Forgive me, dear Mrs Faulks, but there’s a gentleman here who wants to speak with you on behalf of your husband.”

  “One moment!”

  I sensed a light tread of feet directly over my head. The door opened, and the two women began whispering. Then the owner made her way slowly downstairs once more.

  “She’s just coming!” she announced. “She seems very worried. I trust nothing unfortunate has happened to Mr Faulks?”

  Something very unfortunate indeed had happened to Mr Faulks, but I wasn’t about to enlighten her. Now was not the time. Not the time at all!

  The good lady waited with me, hoping for information. She didn’t dare question me herself, and was doubtless wondering how she might listen in on the conversation without appearing indiscreet.

  Marjorie appeared on the half-landing. She was wearing a pale pink dressing gown knotted tight at the waist, and her hair tumbled about her shoulders. In the light of the hallway, she looked far blonder than usual. She
resembled Ophelia. Clutching the balustrade, she shot me a look of complete incredulity.

  “What are you doing here?” she called out. “I’ve had just about enough of this! Get out! Get out now or I’ll call the police! And Nevil! What have you done with Nevil?”

  A sleepwalker coming to his senses stark naked in the middle of the Champs-Elysées has but a pale inkling of my own astonishment at that moment. Marjorie, my beloved Marjorie, for whom I had undertaken this mad journey, for whom I had killed a man – Marjorie had become my enemy. She was staring at me now with the self-same expression as almost every inhabitant of this city: troubled and hostile.

  I moved towards the stairs. The large proprietress, finding herself in my path, threw up her arms to protect her face, as if she feared I might strike her! Marjorie moved two steps back up the stairs, careful to maintain the distance between us.

  “Marjorie,” I begged. “My darling! Please, I beg you!”

  She shrieked out loud now. And worse still, her cry sounded perfectly genuine.

  “Get out of here! Mrs Morton, throw him out for the love of God! This man is mad!”

  The old lady whimpered in terror. It was a frightful scene.

  “Marjorie. You…”

  She didn’t wait for me to finish my phrase, but hurtled up the stairs. Her door slammed hard. I heard the sharp click of the key in the lock.

  Dumbstruck, I stared at poor Mrs Morton as she if might offer an explanation for Marjorie’s behaviour.