“Is there anyone at home?”
I was struck by this conventional question.
I envied the simple, peaceful voice of the man. He wasn’t apprehensive in the least, he didn’t have an inkling. He was uncomplicated and straight as a die. He probably loved his job, good fun, and his fellow man…
I was sorry to be in the dark. I would have liked to keep an eye on Mme Dravet. Would she be strong enough to play her game to the end?
She opened the flat door without a quiver. She led the way into the hall and switched on the light.
She was avoiding my eyes. She was a bit pale, to be sure, but didn’t the man believe she’d just come out of a dizzy spell?
“I’ll take you into the lounge,” she said in a voice that was slightly flat but didn’t waver.
I squeezed Lucienne’s hand.
I would not allow myself to show the child the hideous scene that was lying in wait. Mme Dravet switched on the lounge light then moved back to let us go in too. I stood with my shoulders hunched waiting for the leather-coated man to scream in horror.
“Ah! What a lovely tree,” he muttered as he stepped over the threshold of the lounge.
Then I pushed him aside to see more quickly for myself.
There was no longer any corpse in the room.
“Do sit down.”
Her expression remained impenetrable, but all the same I thought I saw a faint smile flit across her face.
What had she done with her husband’s body? She had perhaps lost the whole game by moving it. I resented her for having done anything so insane.
I glanced around to see if there were any traces of the tragedy. There was none. She had cleaned the leather sofa.
I then turned round to see if Dravet’s overcoat was still hanging on the hook in the hall, but it was not. Obviously the woman had changed her tack. Where the hell could she have dragged the corpse? But if she’d planned on getting rid of it, why had she gone to church so as to pretend to faint at Midnight Mass?
I would have given ten years of my life to have a no-holds-barred talk with her.
“I’m extremely grateful to you gentlemen, you have been so considerate…”
“Don’t mention it,” the man in the leather coat assured her, for he was pleased to have done a good deed right in the middle of Christmas.
He must have been a believer since he went to church. He must surely have told himself that his good behaviour would add to his balance of eternal bliss.
“Do me a favour and have a drink while I put my daughter back to bed…”
“Can I lend you a hand?” I hurried to offer, since it would give me a chance to speak to her alone.
“Certainly not, thank you very much.”
She sounded courteous, but her eyes were ice-cold.
“Sit down!”
The other man undid his leather coat and flopped onto the sofa. I felt a shiver go from the top of my head to my toes.
“What’ll you have?”
She had washed up our glasses and had put them back in place in the metal glass-holder on the trolley.
“Whatever you like, but make it a stiff one,” the car driver said.
“Cognac?”
“Sure.”
“And yourself?”
I looked at her with all my soul. I wanted really badly to seize her by the waist, press her against me and say, “Stop this mad game, I’m going to help you. We’ll try and sort it all out.”
“Cognac for me too.”
She poured our drinks for us. I settled into the small armchair as she dragged the sleepy little girl towards her bedroom.
The man sniffed his glass, then made a face to show he recognized and appreciated top-quality spirits.
“My name’s Ferrie,” he blurted out, suddenly concerned with the social niceties. “Not with a ‘y’, like the boats to England! I’m an ‘ie’: Paul Ferrie, at your service.”
“Albert Herbin…”
He gave me his free hand. I found the situation grotesque.
“A lovely lady, isn’t she?”
He jutted his chin towards the door.
“Very lovely, yes.”
“As far as I can make out, her life’s not a bed of roses.”
“Why not?”
“Well, if her husband leaves her on her own on a night like this…”
“Maybe he’s away on business?”
“Yes, maybe. But I don’t know, she strikes me as sad, don’t you think?”
This guy was my exact opposite. But he had the same feelings about Mme Dravet as I did. It touched me, it even disturbed me.
“A bit, that’s true.”
“Do you think she’s pregnant?”
“Whatever made you think of that?”
“Well, the way she passed out!”
“It would be tricky to ask her,” I muttered.
Ferrie shrugged and then downed his cognac.
“Mine’s in hospital right now, with a big baby boy two days old. If he’d waited a bit longer he would have been baby Jesus! We took a long time having him. We’d lost hope, and then, you see… And that’s why our Christmas is a bit chaotic this year. My wife is very devout and she insisted I go to Midnight Mass in her stead. Religion’s not my strong point, but for the sake of the baby…”
Like any happy man he needed to tell people about himself. The shot of spirits made him even keener to spill his beans. He didn’t even notice I was hardly listening to him.
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“You should think about it. I know, you’re going to tell me to mind my own business. But chaps can still give each other a spot of advice, can’t they? I’m not saying women are always easy, but they settle you down, if you see what I mean. You get settled, and you get kids…”
I was utterly speechless. I was staring wide-eyed at the Christmas tree. There, on the tip of a branch, was my little silvered cage, with its cloth bird inside it.
I tried to recall whether that was the same branch I had hung it on, but I couldn’t be sure. Was I in my right mind? Had I been unhinged by my time inside?
“What’s that you’re looking at, Mr… er… Herbin?”
I came out of my trance. Everything around me was capsizing, slowly but surely.
I tried to find a viable explanation.
When Dravet came home at some point during the evening he must have gone round in circles in the room before deciding on his fatal course. I imagined he paced up and down, then stopped in front of the tree that had been put up for the little girl he detested, and angrily tore off some of the decorations and threw them in the fireplace or under the furniture.
His wife must have moved the corpse and then come back to tidy up the lounge, and that’s when she would have found the decorations—among them, my cage—and then hung them back up on the tree.
“A decorated Christmas tree is a really pretty thing, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I muttered. “Very pretty.”
Mme Dravet came back in with a smile on her face.
“All done, she went back to sleep in no time. Another drop of cognac, gentlemen?”
“Just a tiny one, because it’s Christmas,” Ferrie joked.
“I ruined the church service for you.”
“Oh, as I was saying to M. Herbin…”
Isn’t it odd that she found out what I was called in that way? She shot me a glance that was slightly less sinister than her previous looks.
“… as I was saying to M. Herbin, religion is not my thing. But we’ve just had a baby boy.”
“Congratulations.”
The most amazing thing was that the lady of the house seemed really fascinated by the news.
“Just a few ounces short of eight pounds! A real man, don’t you think?”
“And what is the young man’s name?”
“Jean-Philippe.”
“That’s lovely.”
“You ought to have a drink as well, after w
hat you’ve just been through,” Ferrie advised. He was a spontaneous sort of fellow, and a bit thick as well.
“Of course you must,” I chipped in. “For instance, some cherry brandy…”
I took it upon myself to pour her a decent measure. She downed it in one go.
“Don’t you want to call a doctor?”
“No need, it was just a fainting fit. It was so hot…”
“You can say that again!”
She uttered a little scream that made Ferrie and me jump.
“Goodness me!” Mme Dravet sighed.
“What’s the matter?”
“I left my handbag in the church!”
Ferrie was too respectful of earthly goods not to share the young woman’s dismay.
“Was there a lot inside it?” he asked with urgency.
“Around thirty thousand francs, and my papers…”
“Wow, I see why you’re upset. We’ll get back down there in no time. There’s no reason we shouldn’t find it. I’m not saying if you’d left it in a cinema… but in a church, in theory… Am I right?”
He was already on his feet, emptying his glass, doing up his coat.
I stood up too. I couldn’t see where Mme Dravet was going with this.
Because I knew she did not have a handbag with her when she left home for the church.
8
The Fourth Visit
“You’re not locking the gate?”
“Bah, whatever for?”
He didn’t press the point. We went back to Ferrie’s Peugeot 403. I opened the door for Mme Dravet. The driver was already at the wheel. I had a few seconds.
“What did you do with the body?” I asked in a single breath.
“Leave me alone, unless you want to get me into trouble. Go back to your flat and I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”
The driver asked in surprise:
“Are you all right?”
By way of reply she just sat down beside him and pretended not to have heard the question.
The car started up. It was just after one by the clock on the dashboard. I was worn out; I felt as if I was about to pass out, and for good.
Three hundred yards down the road I tapped the driver’s shoulder.
“Could you drop me here, please? It’s where I live. There’s no point my coming with you, right?”
He braked straight away.
“Sure thing. It’s not worth your time.”
He was not displeased to be left on his own with the woman. It excited him. He’d spent the last few months tending to a pregnant wife and he needed some rest and recreation.
“My best, Madame.”
She gave me her hand over the back of the seat.
“Thank you for your kindness.”
Ferrie gave my knuckles a vigorous squeeze.
“See you later.”
My heart sank as I got out of the car. I stayed standing on the pavement until the two rear lights had quite disappeared.
The whole area had sunk abruptly into the dull and indifferent drowsiness that always comes after a party. Lights were going out in the windows set in the black cliff faces of the blocks of flats. I felt alone, more alone than I had ever been. More alone than with Anna’s corpse, more alone than in court or in my cell. I could not make head or tail of Mme Dravet’s behaviour. Why had she removed her husband’s body? Why the fainting act? Why was she pretending to have left her bag in church when it wasn’t true in the least?
My mind kept coming back to the two small red spots on her cuff. At one point I thought she’d killed her husband, and with the help of an accomplice… It was a crazy, outlandish idea, but I was prepared to imagine just about anything, and make myself believe it too.
A few yards away the depressing façade of my block rose up before me like a regret. My whole childhood and my mother were lying in wait for me behind that great peeling wall. I’d wrecked it all and killed the lot of them—my memories, and the people who had made them.
I buttoned up my coat as high as it would go, stuffed my hands in my pockets and, keeping myself as much in the shadows as possible, I went back to the building where the Dravets lived.
I was fed up with the inexplicable and I had to have it out with the young woman. I’d made up my mind to intimidate her if necessary in order to make her talk.
I remembered she’d not locked the main gate, so I went into the bindery yard.
Mysterious reflections gleamed on the large windowpanes. A wild world of imaginary beings pranced about on those tall slats of frosted glass. You had to concentrate on them for quite a while to work out that what you could see were the passing clouds of a foul December night.
I waited for nearly a quarter of an hour and looked over the premises designed for industry. I liked the strong and wholesome smell of paper, and all those reams stacked up like a fortress touched my heart.
Mme Dravet was taking her time. As it was getting colder and colder I took shelter in the cab of one of the lorries. They were parked with their bonnets facing the gate, so I could keep watch on the entrance through the windscreen.
What was she doing with Ferrie? They’d gone to the church; she’d pretended to look for her handbag, and they might even have asked the priest about it. What then? A dummy hunt like that wouldn’t take a quarter of an hour! But they’d been gone more than half an hour already!
Fatigue was making me even more numb than I had been in the church. I pulled up my collar, twisted myself round on the bench seat, and put my legs up. I dropped off in no time.
It wasn’t proper sleep, but a kind of second state that stood in lieu, with my body in complete repose. I remained alert, only the things around me lost their reality. I was losing my sensitivity to the cold and my interest in the situation. My curiosity was ebbing, and Mme Dravet was turning into the memory of a woman I’d loved and murdered a long time ago.
A car purred to a halt outside the gateway, its engine suddenly switched off, and two doors slammed shut! I woke in a flash with a clear mind made all the sharper by the rest I’d just had.
I wanted to get out of the cab, but it was too late because the gate was already being opened.
I quickly pulled down the sun visor and squeezed myself to the back of the bench seat… I reckoned I would be invisible in the dark.
Mme Dravet came in with Ferrie beside her. The leathercoated gentleman was holding her arm in a familiar manner. She leaned on the gate for a moment.
“Thank you…” she mumbled. “Thank you for everything.”
He let go of her arm and stroked her neck as if he had already won her. I was on the point of rushing out of the cab and smashing his face in. It was a bout of acute jealousy like the one I’d suffered one day long ago. A need to destroy what had betrayed me. I saw red. Then suddenly my anger evaporated: she’d just grasped his wrist to make him withdraw his hand.
“So you see, you got a Christmas party in the end,” Ferrie was saying.
I allowed myself to make a move inside my hideaway. I released my forearm to look at my watch and it startled me out of my skin. The hands pointed to five ten. So they had been away for more than four hours.
I had a moment of doubt and even put the watch to my ear to check it was still working. Its tranquil tick-tock was a familiar sound. When they’d given it back to me the day before yesterday, the first thing I did was to wind it up and adjust the little second hand. It went back to work obediently.
“You see, Mme Dravet, this has been a special Christmas for me…”
“For me, too.”
“Honestly?”
The fool! His voice was all soupy and I’m sure he must have been ogling her like a dead fish.
“You are such an extraordinary woman.”
“Nobody has said that to me for such a long time!”
She must have told him about her marital problems as well. Perhaps she also served him up the story of Lucienne’s arrival.
“Would you like to come up for one last d
rink?”
He wasn’t expecting this invitation and didn’t answer straight away. I was sure he’d been making a play for her energetically throughout the night. She’d put up with it graciously but kept her distance, and then suddenly, when all his hopes were dashed…
“You think I should dare to?”
“Why not? It’s Christmas, isn’t it?”
They crossed the yard and came within inches of me. Mme Dravet opened the door to the corridor. Then I heard the grating of the lift door. I waited a while before getting out of the lorry.
Instead of going away, I went into the building. I fumbled my way to the stairs and began to go up cautiously, stopping on each step to listen.
I could hear them talking but I could not make out what they were saying. Their voices made a continuous low hum. And all of a sudden came a call:
“Jérôme!” Mme Dravet was shouting. “Jérôme, are you in?”
My blood ran cold. Was the woman mad? Why had she started to call for her husband when she knew he was dead?
I put my back to the wall. My heart was racing.
“Jérôme?”
Suddenly, a loud scream. A scream of shock, a scream of madness.
Ferrie’s dull voice was stuttering “Madame… Come now, Madame… Madame…”
Then nothing. An abyss of silence that was made even more piercing by the total darkness on the stairwell.
I couldn’t move. I was barely breathing. I don’t know how long I stayed like that. I should have gone away but some mysterious force kept me there. I wanted to know. Obviously “they” had found the body of Jérôme Dravet. But where had his wife hidden it? And why had she moved it? Why had she delayed the time of discovery? Why? Why? The nightmare was becoming unbearable.
The door on the landing above opened. A tall rectangle of white light plastered itself on the wire surround of the lift shaft. The slim outline of the young woman was silhouetted on the screen of brightness.
A game of shadows. No: a tragedy of shadows. The man in the leather coat was trying to hold her back because she was running away.
“Please stay. The police will be here in a minute. Keep calm, Madame. I’m asking you… I know it’s horrible, but you have to… Come, come in… come…”
Bird in a Cage Page 6
