by Rumer Godden
‘Look for what?’ Lise tried to unclench the clutching hands and hold them.
‘It’s under the floorboards in her room,’ Sophie was gabbling. ‘They’ll find it. The dog will find it. They always do. I wouldn’t keep it for her.’
‘Keep what?’
‘Stuff – for Gilberte.’
‘Gilberte!’ Lise was truly astonished. What a myth – my happy family! but Sophie was saying:
‘She has only just begun. She hadn’t tried before.’
‘But how?’ asked Lise. ‘How could she – here?’
‘Easily,’ said Sophie. Lise had succeeded in taking her hands, pulling her up to sit on the bed. ‘You don’t know, ma Soeur, I don’t think anybody does … except Soeur Théodore, and she has gone back to Saint Etienne. Oh, if only she hadn’t.’ There was a fresh bout of tears. ‘I’m afraid of Soeur Raymonde.’
‘You needn’t be – but go on, Sophie, tell me.’
‘It creeps in everywhere.’ Sophie gave a terrified look over her shoulder as if the menace were here. ‘There was a girl at Saint Etienne. She knew my Uncle. She didn’t stay more than a month, but that was enough – she told him. If he hadn’t traced me like that, he would have somehow else. They’re so clever. Of course, he isn’t my Uncle, that’s just what we called him. I was never a “pusher”, but that’s what he wanted me for – I soon knew that. I wanted to be clean but I didn’t know how, or how to get away from him or it; I couldn’t go home – my mother and father would never have understood, so I did the only thing I could think of to do …’
‘Go on,’ Lise was holding her.
‘I cut off everything, every label, every tag that could show who I was, and took nothing with me and I burned everything in my bag and all my letters … I couldn’t do this – this – in my lodging so I went to a shop. It was one of those big shops with departments on all floors. It had stairs as well as lifts and on the second floor I jumped down the well of the stairs.’
‘Sophie! Sophie!’
‘I know, but I thought if I hurt myself badly enough they would have to put me in hospital, perhaps for a long long time, and they might help me. If it was more than hurt, well, it didn’t matter, did it? I broke my hip and leg – that’s why I limp – and hurt my head, but then the wonderful thing happened.’ The tears dried and Sophie’s face lifted.
‘The hospital was near Saint Etienne and one of your nuns was there, a sister of Béthanie. I think she was very ill – she had a room to herself and the others came in and out, every day, sometimes twice a day to visit her, sometimes in the night, and they began to visit me. One of them, Soeur Marie Lise, was Soeur Théodore.’ At that name the tears burst out again. ‘Oh ma Mère, ma Mère! if only you were here.’
Lise held her closer. ‘We are here. We’ll help you. But, Sophie – how long ago was this?’
‘Nearly five years.’ Sophie sat up dabbing her eyes. ‘I was almost a year in the hospital, then I went to the clinic and then Soeur Théodore took me to Saint Etienne straight away – she got permission. There I could always stay inside if I needed to. I never went alone into the garden all those years. I thought I was safe, then … then …’
‘Then?’
‘Uncle found me. Though he didn’t come to Saint Etienne he followed me here at Saint Xavier; he found Gilberte too. There’s a place in the domaine where the hedge is broken and you can get through. He spoke to Gilberte first, gave her a message for me and I had to go. She said she would tell if I didn’t.’
‘You should have told,’ but Sophie shrank.
‘No, I couldn’t – I couldn’t. Here it’s not like Saint Etienne; it’s all new, and Gilberte, she was soon hooked. She makes me help her do it – she’s frightened of the “fix”, of using the syringe, so the works are in my room.’ Sophie was again so convulsed with terror that Lise could hardly understand her. ‘The dog will smell them and no one will believe it wasn’t me, but I swear to you I never took even a pinch – I swear – but they won’t believe me. They won’t believe me.’
‘I believe you. Hush! Hush!’ but, ‘Gilberte said she would tell,’ Sophie gabbled again. ‘At first she was just curious, but Uncle has a kind of power’ – like Patrice, thought Lise – ‘Once you have started, Uncle can make you do anything – anything.’ Sophie shivered.
‘No, he can’t,’ said Lise. ‘He couldn’t make you.’
‘Why – no! He couldn’t.’ Sophie lifted her face from Lise’s shoulder in amazement. ‘He couldn’t. Ma Soeur, I never thought of that.’ Then the helplessness came back. ‘They’ll never believe me. Gilberte looks so …’
‘Innocent and open,’ said Lise, ‘Yes.’
‘She took you in.’
‘She did,’ Lise admitted it, ‘but I don’t think she took in the others – certainly not Soeur Raymonde. I see now Soeur Raymonde had her suspicions and I can guess that’s why the police have come; they have probably been watching this Uncle, trying to catch him. Listen to me, Sophie. Go now to Soeur Raymonde and tell her what you have just told me.’
‘But they’ll put me out. I can’t bear it. I can’t. It’s my whole life.’
‘Yes, Sophie – your whole life.’ Soeur Raymonde was standing with the Prioress in the doorway and she put out her hands to the distracted girl. ‘Ma petite, come with me and we’ll explain to the police.’
‘Gilberte? She’ll be found out …’
‘We know about Gilberte, poor child, and so do they. The dog found it.’
‘But what will happen to her? Poor Gilberte. Look! She didn’t sell it.’ Sophie’s voice grew shrill. ‘Just taking it yourself isn’t …’
‘We know that too.’ The Prioress, still calm, made way for Soeur Raymonde who lifted Sophie to her feet and kept a strong arm round her. ‘Now come with us, with Mother and me,’ said Soeur Raymonde.
‘But … you’ll keep Sophie?’ Lise asked Soeur Raymonde in astonishment.
‘Doesn’t it say much for Sophie that, in the midst of such temptation, she never fell? Of course we’ll keep her.’
‘And Gilberte?’
Soeur Raymonde gave a sigh. ‘Gilberte’s very sorry now. We’ll have to see.’
‘I wish I had your imperturbability,’ said Lise.
It was not just a shell; Lise herself could keep her face and voice in control when in reality she was in turmoil; this was deeper – the nuns were not perturbed over things like this. ‘When you have seen as much of God’s providence as I have,’ said Soeur Raymonde, as any of the nuns would have said, ‘seen the unfathomable ways in which he works, if you have any sense at all, you learn not to question or to judge – only to trust. Think of Lucette’s story …’
And Lise thought, ‘Think of my own.’
The oddest things brought it back, turning them to the macabre; on one of her first mornings at Belle Source when, utterly happy, she was peeling parsnips in the kitchen, it suddenly came. There had been all the homely things of a quiet domestic busy-ness around her – one blue-aproned sister working at the stove, another, the baker, kneading dough; a good smell of soup from the outsize pans and of onions and herbs hung from the ceiling – it was much like Marcelline’s kitchen; perhaps it was the thought of Marcelline that brought it – but suddenly the wrinkled yellowish outer skin of the parsnip looked like the skin of someone grown old because he was dead – had been dead for five days.
At first, remembered Lise, in my dazed state, stupefied, I had thought Patrice would be in the Rue Duchesne, laid out on his own bed, candles burning each side of it, flowers perhaps, or else he would be in a chapel, then, slowly, I realised he would be in a drawer in the morgue, a drawer slid out as if from a filing cabinet. I had had to go there once to identify a client, a German who had fallen dead on the pavement outside the house; he had been with us just before and no one else seemed to know who he was. Emile made me go; the man had been dead three days, but Patrice would have been worse – they keep them just as they are until after the inquest. He would have
been as I last saw him, as he lay in the geranium bed of that little front garden but, like the German, he would have yellowed, wrinkled, shrunk …
‘Is anything the matter, Soeur Marie Lise?’
‘I … I’m going to be sick.’
‘Madame Lise,’ said Marcelline, ‘Monsieur Patrice has gone out.’
‘Oh?’ It was a stiflingly hot August afternoon but Lise had taken Coco for his usual walk, though a little later than usual, and was bending down to unfasten his lead when Marcelline had come running up to the hall from the kitchen; she was twisting her apron in her fingers, even the coiffure was slightly dishevelled and her blue eyes were distressed.
‘Madame, go – go quickly. I think he has gone after Vivi.’
‘Vivi? But … how?’
‘I don’t know how but he took me by the throat and shook me. “So that was your dirty trick! You and that …” I won’t tell you what he called you, Madame. I thought that he would strangle me.’
‘You told him where they are?’
‘I didn’t have to. He knew.’
‘How could he know?’
‘Perhaps she wrote to one of the girls. Perhaps Madame Chabot …’
‘She wouldn’t.’
‘Someone has, Madame. He has taken the car to Ecommoy. Oh Madame, Luigi and the baby! That little family! Be quick.’
Lise was looking at her watch. ‘I think there’s an express to Le Mans some time about now. He won’t be able to drive very fast, it’s the rush-hour. With luck, I’ll get there first. Fetch a taxi, Marcelline, while I get some money.’
I didn’t only get some money; from the drawer in Patrice’s desk in the office I took his gun. It was a small 6.35 automatic.
Lise made sure it was loaded; a calm efficiency had come on her in which she felt nothing, yet knew she would not make a mistake, not this time, thought Lise. What I have to do I shall do. The gun was small enough to go in her handbag.
She remembered how, in the hall, Coco, his lead still on him, had waited anxious at the foot of the stairs. ‘No, mon trésor, you must stay here.’ I gave him a swift pat. I didn’t know it was the last time I should see him.
Lise had made the taxi-driver go like the wind from Le Mans – only in that stifling August there was no wind; the roads were white with dust, the trees, as they passed, looked tinder-dry: they were as dusty as the roads and Lise felt dust in her nostrils and in her hair. They tore through villages bright with flowers where old women in overalls, flowered too, sat in open doorways knitting; the men were still in the fields, finishing the harvest with the younger women and children. Then the taxi swept into a little town – Lise had the impression of a sunlit square, the centre filled with cars, awnings over the shop fronts, an oversize church with a clock face. They drove to a street beyond and another leading off it, and ‘Stop!’ cried Lise.
Patrice had left his car at the end of the street – probably he did not want to attract attention. Lise left the taxi there too, threw the driver some notes and ran.
Patrice was standing on the doorstep of a small two-storeyed house, one of a row; Lise recognised it by Luigi’s geraniums, brilliant in a bed below the windows where the curtains were tightly drawn though it was so hot, the sun still blazing as it moved towards evening; they were crooked too, which gave the house a slatternly look. Mercifully it seemed that Vivi had not heard Patrice; probably she was asleep in one of her lazy kitten sleeps in which she liked to lie most of the day. Lise could hear a baby crying – Giovanni-Battista Giuliano – and she saw a woman’s head looking out from the window of the house next door, a watchful neighbour.
‘She didn’t have to look long,’ said Lise. ‘It only took two minutes.’
‘Patrice.’
‘You!’ He had stopped, astonished. ‘You.’
‘Yes, me. Don’t knock. Don’t dare to knock.’
He had turned. ‘What are you talking about? What are you doing here?’
‘You know very well what I’m doing here. Come away from that door.’
‘Don’t be silly, chérie, and don’t be so theatrical.’ He was laughing. ‘Just keep out of the way.’
Lise stood on the garden path, her hand was steady. ‘This is something you’re not to interfere with. You can’t have her, Patrice.’
‘No?’
‘No. Come away from that door.’
‘And if I won’t?’
‘I shall shoot you.’
‘Shoot then.’ He turned his back and, ‘I shot.’ Lise’s voice was dulled as she told it, first to Jacques Jouvin, then Soeur Marie Alcide – because she still could not believe it. ‘I shot twice; one shot hit the back of his neck, the other between his shoulders. For a moment he staggered, lurched against the door and fell sideways into the flower-bed.’
‘I turned him face upwards; blood was beginning to come up over his collar but he knew me as I knelt in the flower-bed bending over him.’
‘You!’ As if he could not believe that she, Lise, had done this to him – at last.
‘I heard the door open as he began to choke. “You – wouldn’t even let me see her.”’ His eyes were beginning to glaze, the red welling faster. ‘I bent closer, then …’
‘Then?’
‘Then there was no more breath. It was over.
‘I got to my feet, the automatic still in my hand. The front door was open a crack. Vivi had come down, I thought the shots must have woken her. I pushed open the door to go to her, hold her, tell her she was safe, but she was standing at the foot of the stairs like a furious little girl. “Why? Why? Why?” she screamed. “Why did you come?” and she wailed, “You have spoilt it all.”
‘“Spoilt it?” I must have stammered because she mocked me.
‘“Yes, s-sp-spoilt it. Don’t you see we were going away? He had come to fetch me.”
‘“Fetch you? But who told him? I never gave anything away, nor did Marcelline. How did he know?”
‘“Because I told him.” Vivi stamped her foot.
‘Neither of us heard the lorry that drew up at the gate among the crowd that was gathering; we didn’t hear the voices either and I had forgotten I had the gun still smoking in my hand.’
‘Told him!’ Lise could not believe it. ‘But … you knew what he would do.’
‘That’s what I wanted. Did you think I was going to stay here in this hole of a place all my life?’
‘But Luigi …’
‘That oaf!’
‘And your baby – Giovanni …’
Vivi shuddered. ‘Squalling, messing, driving me mad … and everyone talking, talking, scolding. Monsieur Patrice was going to take me away and I need never have come back, never, never. Now …’ She began to sob. ‘I hate you. I hate Luigi. I hate his brat.’
There was a sound like a whimper, the last whimper that comes after the screams of a tiny animal in mortal hurt, but it came from big Luigi as he stood at the open door. Then he looked at what was lying in his prize geraniums. Luigi moved slowly closer to it and bent down.
‘Is he …?’ The crowd had come into the garden. It was the woman from next door who spoke over the fence.
‘Mort.’ Luigi said it, stood up and ground the heel of his boot into Patrice’s face. The crowd gasped.
Vivi screamed and put her hands over her face. It was only then that Lise saw she was wearing a smart new suit and had a small suitcase.
Luigi had already seen. There was a babel now outside – voices, shouts. Luigi took no notice. He took no notice either of Vivi or of Lise but went straight up the stairs. He came down carrying a bundle, Giovanni-Battista Giuliano, wrapped in a blanket.
Luigi strode through the crowd and, with the bundle, got into his lorry.
The next moment they heard it drive away.
7
‘Jurez-vous de dire la vérité, toute la vérité, et rien que la vérité?’
‘Je le jure.’
‘Will you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?’
I suppose that is how hundreds of novels about crime begin, thought Lise, but this isn’t in a book. It’s real.
‘… rien que la vérité.’
‘Je le jure.’ I swear.
Vivi said that, Vivi who did, and meant to do, just the opposite.
Lise had been brought into the big courtroom of the Cour d’Assise in handcuffs between two gendarmes, who took them off when she reached the ‘box’; she sat down chafing her wrists.
Below her was Maître Jacques Jouvin in his robes and wig, his junior beside him. They were sideways to the court and Lise could see in its well twenty or so men and women waiting to be chosen as the jury; ordinary men and women, some stolid, some nervous, none speaking, or even whispering, but all of them were staring at her. The raised benches at the top of the court where they would presently sit, with the tall chairs of the Président and his two assistant magistrates, were still empty. On one side was the box like a pulpit for the Public Prosecutor; opposite was the slanted desk of the Greffier, the Clerk of the Court, while facing Lise was the press gallery, crowded to overflowing and from which rose an excited hum. There, every line of Lise’s face with its scar – deep red, she was sure – her dress, her handbag, her least movement and word would be noted – and twisted and exaggerated, thought Lise in despair.
‘What are you going to wear?’ Maître Jouvin had asked.
‘I have only the Chanel suit Marcelline brought to me at Sevenet.’
‘Not Chanel. That might prejudice the jury.’
‘Well, I have nothing else,’ and, ‘What does it matter?’ asked Lise.
‘It matters a great deal. You must make a good impression. Oh, Lise, do please try and help yourself a little.’
‘Dear Jacquot.’ Lise had smiled. ‘I promise you I’ll be clean and tidy.’
‘But not too soignée, Lise. I know it’s part of your courage, but it can look like arrogance.’
The far end of the room, the public gallery, was in turbulence as the police fought to control the crowd; there was, Lise knew, an enormous crowd outside. ‘This is something after their own hearts,’ Jouvin had said in disgust, ‘and Vivi has become notorious.’
