Louis did not regard either this glimpse of chaos, or the ensuing silence, as a bad thing. On the contrary. He found it exhilarating to face a world empty of meaning and significance. After all, with meaning and significance gone, he reasoned, treachery, dissembling, and deception lost much of their force, could not ultimately change anything, could not do harm. Things were as they seemed. No, things were as they were. The great wave swept aside all seeming too.
“But we are searching for knowledge now,” said Renard. He immediately regretted having spoken.
“You may be, my friend,” said Louis with a faint smile. “But I am trying to put a stop to something, to bring something to conclusion. To make something terrible which has happened, as though it did not happen. That is all.”
Louis continued with his story. “Dealing mainly with opinion, as it did, treating knowledge a little more lightly, a life in journalism seemed to me a less grandiose, and more honest, way to earn a living, though it did not interest me any more than teaching did. So, I began writing reports on the Middle East for specialty publications like Petroleum Monthly and The Middle East Review . Occasionally, I worked as a consultant for companies doing business in the Middle East. It seemed like fairly honest work. When I finished the work, I was paid for the work I had done. The money was irregular but sufficient.
“The Vietnam War came and went, the race riots, that flared up across the United States in the late 1960s, occurred far in the background of my life. Though I had once worked at the heart of the political world, I hardly noticed these events. I was convinced the war was stupid and unnecessary, but I didn’t join the protests to stop it. I watched the racial animosity, the struggle by black Americans for civil rights, all the social upheaval of the next years, without participating in it in any way. In fact, I only watched because it all occurred within my field of vision. I did not watch with interest or curiosity.
“I saw Hugh Bowes only once more. It was a few years after I had quit teaching, the week after I had left Sarah and the children. I came back to the house to pick up some clothes. I rang the bell, but no one answered, so I let myself in. I heard sounds coming from the bedroom. There I found Sarah sitting astride Hugh Bowes, facing him, her back to me, bouncing up and down and moaning. I had always found her moaning during sex to be disconcerting. It was a high-pitched, drawn-out sound which could as easily have been an expression of pain as one of pleasure. But, as I listened now, it seemed familiar and almost soothing. Hugh lay with his head pressed back in the pillow. His glasses lay on the night table. I had never seen him without his glasses. Seeing the glasses there on the table embarrassed me almost more than the sight of them having sex.
“Hugh’s full lips were pulled back, his small teeth were bared in a kind of ecstatic snarl. They both saw me at the same time. Sarah screamed and jumped up. She grabbed her robe and held it in front of herself. Hugh Bowes quickly pulled the covers above his chin. Only his eyes were visible.”
Renard shifted uneasily in his chair. “Please, don’t tell me this. Please. It has nothing—”
Louis raised his hand to stop him. “Just wait. You will see that it has everything to do with what has happened.
“ ‘You son-of-a-bitch, you’re supposed to ring the bell,’ Sarah shouted, as she wrapped the robe around herself. I paid no attention to her. I looked at Hugh Bowes who was watching me. Was Hugh Bowes actually smiling? I couldn’t believe it. I stepped to the bed. I moved slowly, without thinking. The most important thing to me, at that moment, was to answer that question: Was Hugh Bowes smiling? I took the corner of the sheet in both hands and tore it back. Hugh tried to hold onto the top of the sheet, but he couldn’t and his hands landed at his side.” Hugh had not been smiling. He lay there naked, pale, misshapen. His erection wobbled from side to side. Otherwise, he lay silently. His arms were fat and white, his breasts sagged to the side, the red nipples still aroused. His body hair was wet and matted against his chest, across his stomach, around his groin. His hips were wide, his legs heavy, his feet pink and wrinkled, like the feet of a baby. “Nobody moved,” said Louis. “Nobody said anything.
“Finally, I turned to leave, to get the clothes I had come for, and leave. And Sarah showered me with curses. She followed me to the bedroom door screaming at me to just get the hell out. But I stopped to look at Hugh Bowes once more. He had not moved. He looked back at me with dead eyes.”
Renard breathed a deep sigh and sat back in his chair. His back hurt from sitting so long. The evening sun was poised just above the horizon, too low for Louis’s umbrella to do any good. Renard shielded his eyes with one hand. “And this makes you think it is Hugh Bowes.” He was astonished. “How do you know it is Bowes? How could it possibly be Bowes? That is madness. The whole idea is insane. Why would he? The whole business with pulling off the sheet. It’s crazy.”
“Because everything points away from him,” said Louis. He was unmoved by Renard’s incredulity. “It points away from him, just as it did then. That is how he operates. When I was fired, he was my mentor. He was in Hawaii. He wrote me a letter of recommendation. That is why I am sure it was him.” Louis did not sound bitter or angry. And he did not sound crazy. He sounded as though he were simply stating an absolute fact.
“But that is not proof,” cried Renard in mounting exasperation. “That is not proof. Everything points away from everyone. Everything points away from. . . Madame Lefourier,” he waved his arm in the direction of the neighbor’s house. “Everything points away from. . .from your wife, Sarah?” It was the first time Renard had known her name.
“Sarah.”
“From Sarah. Everything points away from Sarah. That is no proof.”
“You are wrong. Everything does not point toward Sarah. That is different from pointing away from her.” It was a subtle but important distinction.
Renard looked at Louis for a long moment. “That is still not proof,” was all Renard could think to say. This was what you got when you dealt with a man who did not believe in knowledge.
“If it is Hugh Bowes,” said Louis, looking into the evening sky, “if Hugh Bowes is the murderer, then he will deliver the proof himself.”
“How do you mean?”
“He may have already begun to, though not intentionally, of course.” Louis sat up a little straighter. “Tell me: Why did the national police not come to investigate the case? Why do you think they did not come?”
“You think they did not come because the American secretary of state is involved and was able to stop them from coming.”
“That seems like one very good possibility.”
“It is only a possibility,” said Renard, lighting a cigarette. “It is a possibility. But that is all. There are other possibilities. All we have are suppositions.”
“All we ever have are suppositions,” said Louis. “If it is Bowes, then he knows by now that I know it is him.” Louis smiled. “I sent him a message.”
“A message?”
“My body. My naked body in bed.”
Now it was the policeman’s turn to sit up straight. He peered intently across the table into Louis’s face. “You’re not serious,” said Renard. Louis did not smile. “Do you really believe he remembers that moment from thirty years ago? Do you honestly think, if he even hears about what you did, throwing the covers aside, that he will make the connection?”
Louis looked across the fields as though he had been asked to assess the coming weather. “If the dead body was a message from him, then he will be waiting for a response from me, and he will certainly remember that moment. In that moment in my wife’s bedroom, Hugh Bowes was humiliated by me. I believe it is possible that not a day passes when he doesn’t think of it.” Louis paused. The policeman shifted in his chair, rubbing his hands together, while the smoke from his cigarette curled about his face.
“I know. You cannot imagine,” Louis said, “that such a small thing as this humiliation could stay with anyone, with Hugh Bowes, all these years, much less
that it could elicit such strange and extreme measures.” Renard did not answer. “That is because you are unfamiliar with the psychology of the powerful. It does not seem possible to you that Hugh Bowes, a man of power, a man occupied with important affairs of state, a man who spends his days negotiating with other world leaders, would even remember a moment like that.
“But Hugh Bowes regards his life in the same way as a painter regards a painting.” Renard let out an exasperated groan. He certainly did not want to hear another dissertation on painting, especially now. He drew deeply on his cigarette and angrily exhaled a cloud of smoke into the darkening sky. “Bowes’s life,” said Louis, ignoring his friend’s reaction, “is to Bowes’s way of thinking his own creation, his masterpiece. One could say he sees it as a work of art which, whatever its contradictions, has to have its own internal consistency if it is to be great. And it must be great. He wants his life to be a public monument to power and to achievement.
“I am certain Hugh regards his own frailty as a mortal sin against the life he is constructing. It is a terrible violation of who he wishes he were. And I am just as certain that he loathes me for having been witness to it, worse, for having called it to his attention.”
“And why just now, after all these years?” Renard demanded.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Louis answered quickly. He had wondered the same thing. Perhaps it was because the murder, whoever it might have been and for whatever reason entirely unrelated to Louis, finally offered him a convenient opportunity to even the score. “To kill two birds with one stone. But your question is a proper one. And I don’t know.”
“And what did he hope to achieve by doing this thing, by leaving a dead body on your doorstep?” Renard asked.
“I don’t know that either,” said Louis with a sigh.
“And you?” asked Renard. “Have you thought of him all these years?” Louis turned to look at the policeman, then looked away. The evening star had appeared. The two men sat silently as night fell. The sky darkened gradually, imperceptibly. The evening star brightened, and other stars appeared. On the next farm, the Ducloses’ dog barked. Both men turned to watch as an owl swept through the yard above them. Its heavy head and thick body made its flight improbable, and yet it flew slowly, silently, gracefully, and without apparent effort.
Louis finally broke the silence, his voice a whisper. “All these years,” was all he said.
It was dark by the time Renard spoke again. He spoke calmly now. “If he is the murderer, and he receives and comprehends your message, all of which seems extremely unlikely, but if it is as you say it is, then he might now try to have you killed.”
Louis corrected him. “If he wants to, he will have me killed. There is very little you or I, or anyone else, can do to stop him. Perhaps that has been his purpose: to set up a little duel with me, to play with me, in order to restore his superiority, before he kills me. That doesn’t seem like his style to me. But I don’t know.”
“That is unacceptable,” said Renard. “It cannot be allowed to happen.” Louis could imagine the scowl on Renard’s face. He breathed deeply to smell the smoke from his cigarette. The smell of the smoke was reassuring. He liked the policeman. He was glad to have him there.
“I have a plan,” said Louis. Renard waited, but Louis did not say anything more.
XI
RENARD AND ISABELLE SAT OVER THE REMAINS OF THEIR SUPPER. IT was nearly midnight. They had eaten a rabbit Isabelle had bought from Madeleine Picard. Isabelle had stewed the rabbit in a red wine sauce made with garlic and shallots. The sauce was almost black. They ate the rabbit along with roasted new potatoes, red peppers, and onions from the garden.
Renard had mopped up the last of the sauce with a piece of baguette. Now he used his knife to press the last few crumbs of a goat cheese onto the bread. Isabelle had begun to clear the table. Renard had told Isabelle what he had learned about Louis Morgon and the trouble he was in. “I am worried,” he confessed. “My job is to protect the old man, but I cannot protect him from this.”
“You cannot protect him at all,” she said. “You do not need to protect him.” She said this in such a way that it caused Renard to stop, a morsel of baguette and cheese halfway to his parted lips, and look at her. “He looks like an old man, but he is not.” She was right. “Besides, he is operating in a world we know nothing about. I would let him take the lead. I would go to him tomorrow and tell him that you trust him to take the lead, that you will follow his lead.”
“This is a deadly business, Isabelle.” He thought a long moment before he corrected himself. He hated exaggeration, so he avoided extreme words when he could. “A dangerous business.”
“You could stay out of it,” said Isabelle, knowing that he couldn’t stay out of it.
“I will go see him first thing in the morning,” said Renard.
When he arrived at Louis’s house the next morning, the chain hung across the driveway. He stepped across the chain and walked up the driveway, but he knew what he would find. The house and barn were locked. The shutters were closed and bolted. The old Peugeot was gone. “He left before dawn,” said Solesme Lefourier. “I will water his geraniums. I can’t take care of the garden. Dominique will have to do that, although somehow she never gets all the weeds. Quite likely things will be in a terrible state by the time Louis Morgon gets back.” She spoke his whole name in this peculiar, elegiac way, which caused Renard to look at her more closely and wonder what she knew that she wasn’t telling him.
Louis had driven to Le Mans and caught an early TGV, the fast train, to Paris. Though he considered the trip urgent and necessary, he still had left early enough so that he could drive slowly. He would have driven slowly even if his car had been newer and faster. He did not like leaving. He wanted to drive in such a way that he could watch the countryside emerging from the night. There were no other cars on the road. The farms he passed were dark and shuttered. The ponds were capped with shallow clouds of fog. In the fields, the cows were lying down, some sleeping, some already chewing, clouds of steam coming from their nostrils.
In the little towns he came to, one after another, the houses were shuttered. There were no lights. In Courdemanche, a woman emerged from a barn as he passed. She wore a patterned smock over her black dress and woolen stockings. She held a silver milk pail in each hand. She leaned against the great wooden doors in order to close them.
The little road passed over a series of bridges where the narrow Dême snaked its way back and forth, its grassy banks sheltering trout, rows of newly planted poplars casting pale reflections on the water. The first rose color shone in the sky. An ancient willow hugging the bank had, for the hundredth time, sent out new branches from its scarred and knobby trunk where those from the year before had been cut back. A thin column of smoke rose straight up from the chimney of a cottage. Eventually, the country gave way to the city.
As the train sped toward Paris, he watched the countryside go by in the dawn. It passed too quickly for him to feel any further connection to it. He saw his own face reflected in the glass, superimposed over the undulating fields, the villages, manor houses, and woods. He looked at his face looking back at him. He looked like someone other than the person he thought himself to be.
In less than an hour, he stepped from the train into the noise and tumult of Montparnasse station and Paris. Solesme Lefourier had been to Paris a few times. But, as she had assured him, she had no desire to go back. “There is nothing there I want. Would I be able to sleep in Paris? That is really all I want: to be able to sleep.”
As strange as it might have seemed, Louis had never enjoyed travel either. One summer long ago, he had gone to Cape Cod with Sarah and the children. He and Sarah had sat beneath a fluttering yellow umbrella on a glorious beach. Little white clouds drifted far overhead, while the children laughed and played in the gentle surf. Another time, they had driven to the Smoky Mountains where they had camped in the misty silence and hiked up and down s
teep trails. But to his mind, these vacations and the other brief excursions they had made out of Washington were for Sarah and the children. His part had been as the driver, organizer, and tour guide. And like everything else he did, his participation had been somewhat perfunctory and of less interest to him than it should have been.
Louis had not traveled widely in Europe either. He had been stationed in Germany for eighteen months in the army, but he had used up most of his leave returning to the United States to be with his dying parents, and he had never gone back. However, some years after his divorce from Sarah, after Jennifer had left Washington for the first time and Michael had left college, Louis decided to visit France. Someone had suggested it. He or she—who had it been?—had said, “There is a reason that the rich—people who could live anywhere in the world—choose to live in France. And the misanthropic.” Whoever it was had presumably included the misanthropic for Louis’s benefit.
The suggestion that he see France had somehow stuck in his mind. Who knew how or why? It was perhaps for no other reason than that it had been made at just such a moment as Louis was feeling caught in his unhappiness over how things had turned out, no, how he had turned out, how he had misread life, how things had all gone wrong, and how he, though further along down the road, was still as far as he had ever been from understanding anything. He was feeling sorry for himself. Running away to some other part of the world, leaving the world he eventually came to call “the sordid world” for a while, seemed the perfect thing to do.
After doing some research, Louis decided that he would walk across France, across the entire country. He would follow one of the ancient Christian pilgrim routes that crossed the country and eventually led over the Pyrenees and along the northern coast of Spain to Santiago de Compostela. During the Middle Ages and later, pilgrims had come from every corner of Europe, converging along trails, finding their way from sanctuary to sanctuary, from church to church, wearing the scalloped shell which came to be the universal symbol for this journey.
A French Country Murder Page 7
