“You said you’ll kill Daniel Dupont now?”
“I swear I will!”
“Don’t swear anything, Garinati: it’s too late.”
“It’s never…”
It’s never too late. The failure automatically goes back to the starting point for the second try… The hands go once around the dial and the condemned man makes his theatrical gestures again, pointing to his chest once more: “Aim for the heart, soldiers!” And again…
“Don’t you read the papers?” Bona asks.
He leans over to look for something in his briefcase. Garinati takes the folded newspapers that is handed to him and reads the first paragraph his eyes focus on:
“A daring burglar made his way at nightfall yesterday…” He reads slowly, carefully; when he reaches the end, he starts over to be sure he has not missed anything: “A daring burglar…” He looks up at Bona, who is staring over his head, without smiling.
Garinati reads the article through once again. He says in a low voice:
“He’s dead. Of course. I had turned out the light.”
All right, this man is crazy.
“It must be a mistake,” Garinati says. “I only wounded him.”
“He died of it. You’re lucky.”
“Maybe this newspaper’s made a mistake?”
“Don’t worry: I have my own informants. Daniel Dupont is dead—a little late, that’s all.”
After a pause, Bona adds less severely:
“After all, you did kill him.”
The way you throw a dog a bone.
Garinati tries to make Bona explain; he is not convinced; he wants to tell about his reservations. But his chief soon wearies of this weak man’s “probablys” and “maybes”:
“All right, that’s enough. We won’t talk about it any more, now that it’s settled.”
“Did you find the man named Wallas?”
“I know where he spent the night.”
“What is he doing this morning?”
“This morning, I had to…”
“You’ve let him get away. And you haven’t picked up his trail?”
“I had to come here and…”
“You were late. Anyway you had several hours to do it in. Where do you expect to find him now? And when?” Garinati does not know what to answer any more.
Bona stares at him sternly:
“You were supposed to report to me last night. Why didn’t I see you?”
He would like to explain his failure, the light, the fact that he did not have time enough. … But Bona does not give him a chance; he interrupts him harshly:
“Why didn’t you come?”
That is just what Garinati was going to talk about, but how can you make someone understand things if he does not want to listen to you? Still, he will have to start with that light, it is the cause of everything: Dupont turned it on again too soon and saw him before he could shoot, so that he did not…
“Now about this Wallas they’ve sent us, what’s he done since he’s been here?”
Garinati tells what he knows: the room in the Café des Allies, Rue des Arpenteurs; his departure very early this morning….
“You’ve let him escape. And you haven’t picked up his trail?”
Of course that’s unfair: how could he know Wallas would be leaving so early, and it is not easy to find someone you have never seen, in a city this size.
Besides, why bother spying on this policeman who cannot do anything more than anyone else? Wouldn’t it be better to get ready for tonight’s job? But Bona seems reserved; he pretends not to hear. Garinati goes on nevertheless: he wants to make up for his mistake, go back to Daniel Dupont’s house and kill him.
Bona seems surprised. He stops staring at the horizon to look at his interlocutor. Then he leans over toward his briefcase, opens it, and takes out a folded newspaper:
“Don’t you read the papers?”
Garinati holds out his hand without understanding.
Even his footsteps have changed: they are slow, almost sluggish; they have lost their vitality. They gradually fade away down the staircase.
Far away, the same bluish-gray color as the chimneys and the roofs, blending into them despite slight movements whose direction, moreover, is difficult to determine because of the distance, two men—chimneysweeps maybe, or roofers—are preparing for the early approach of winter.
Downstairs the door to the building can be heard closing.
2
The latch clicks as it falls back into place; at the same time the door has just slammed against the jamb and vibrates noisily, producing unexpected echoes in the frame as well. But no sooner has it started than this tumult suddenly stops; in the calm of the street a faint whistle can then be heard—something like a jet of steam, thin and continuous—which probably comes from the factories opposite, but so dissolved in the air that no precise source could accurately be attributed to it—so faint, in fact, that it might be, after all, just a buzzing in the ears.
Garinati hestitates in front of the door he has just shut behind him. He does not know in which direction he will follow this street he is standing in the middle of, where on one side as on the other… How can Bona be so sure of Daniel Dupont’s death? There was not even any question of arguing about it. Yet the mistake—or the lie—in the morning papers is easily explained, and in any of several ways. Besides, no one, in so serious a matter, would be satisfied with that kind of information, and it is obvious that Bona either found out for himself or used some informant. Garinati, moreover, knows that his victim did not seem seriously hurt—that he had not, in any case, lost consciousness right away, and that it is unlikely he did so before help arrived. So then? Did the informants make a mistake? Maybe Bona does not always pay enough…
Garinati raises his hand to his right ear which he covers and releases several times; then he does the same thing to the other ear.…His chief’s conviction still bothers him; he himself is not absolutely certain he only hit the professor on the arm; if the professor was seriously hurt, he might have been able to take a few steps to get away, guided by the instinct of self-preservation, and then collapsed later on …
Again Garinati covers his ears to get rid of that irritating noise. This time he uses both hands, which he keeps pressed close to each side of his head for a minute.
When he takes them away, the whistling noise has stopped. He begins walking, carefully, as if he were afraid of making the noise start again by some excessively lively movement. Maybe Wallas will give him a clue to the riddle. Doesn’t he have to find him anyway? He has been ordered to. That’s what he has to do.
But where to find him? And how to recognize him? He does not have any clues, and the city is a big one. Nevertheless he decides to head toward the center of town, which means he has to turn around.
After a few steps he again finds himself in front of the building he has just left. He raises his hand to his ear with irritation: will that damned machine never stop?
3
Wallas, already half turned around, hears the latch fall back into place; he lets go of the doorknob and looks up at the house opposite. He immediately recognizes, at a third-story window, that same net curtain he has noticed several times during his morning walk. It probably is not very healthy to make a baby drink from the ewe’s teats that way: certainly not very sanitary. Behind the wide mesh of the netting. Wallas glimpses a movement, discerns a figure; someone is watching him and, realizing he has been seen, gradually moves into the dark room to keep out of sight. A few seconds later there is nothing left, in the window frame, but the two shepherds carefully bending over the body of the newborn baby.
Wallas walks along the garden fence toward the bridge, wondering if, in an apartment building of that size and inhabited by middle-class people, one can calculate that there is always at least one tenant watching the street. Five floors, two apartments per floor on the south side, then, on the main floor…In order to estimate the probable number of tenants,
he glances back; he sees the embroidered net curtain fall back—someone had shoved it aside to watch him more easily. If this person had remained watching all day long yesterday, he could be a useful witness. But who would carry curiosity so far as to watch the comings and goings of some hypothetical passer-by after dark? There would have to be some specific reason—suppose his attention had been attracted by a scream, or some unusual sound…or in any way at all.
***
Fabius, having closed the garden gate behind him, inspects the premises; but he does not look as if that is what he is doing: he is an ordinary insurance agent leaving his client’s house and looking up at the sky to the right and to the left to see from what direction the wind is coming… Suddenly he notices someone odd watching him behind the curtains at a third-story window. He immediately looks away, to avoid arousing any suspicion that he has noticed, and walks at an ordinary pace toward the parkway. But once he has crossed the bridge, he veers right, taking a winding course that brings him back, in about an hour, to the Boulevard Circulaire; without wasting any time he crosses the canal, taking the footbridge at this point. Then, furtively keeping to the base of the houses, he returns to his point of departure, in front of the apartment building at the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs.
He walks into it boldly, through the door that opens onto the canal side, and knocks at the concierge’s window. He is representing a shade and blind establishment; he’d like to have the list of tenants whose windows look south, exposing them to the excessive ravages of the sun: faded rugs, pictures, draperies, or even worse—everyone has heard about those masterpieces that suddenly explode with a terrible noise, those ancestral portraits that suddenly begin to run, creating in the bosom of a family that disturbing impression whose fatal consequences are dissatisfaction, bad humor, quarrels, sickness, death….
“But winter’s coming now,” the concierge observes judiciously.
That doesn’t matter: Fabius knows that perfectly well, but he is preparing his spring campaign, and, besides, the winter sun that people worry about least is all the more to be feared I
Wallas smiles at this thought. He crosses the street and turns into the parkway. In front of the main entrance of the apartment building, a fat man in a blue apron, his face calm and cheerful, is polishing the brass doorknob—the concierge probably. He turns his head toward Wallas, who nods politely in reply. With a sly wink, the man says:
“If you’re cold, there’s still the bell to do!”
Wallas laughs pleasantly:
“I’ll leave you that for tomorrow: the good weather seems to be over.”
“The winter’s coming now,” the concierge answers.
And he begins polishing vigorously.
But Wallas wants to take advantage of the man’s good mood to engage in conversation:
“By the way, do you take care of the other wing of this building too?”
“Yes, of course! You think I’m not big enough to take care of two bells?”
“It’s not that, but I thought I recognized the face of an old friend of my mother’s up there, behind the window. I’d like to go say hello to her if I was sure I wasn’t mistaken. On the third floor, the apartment at the end…”
“Madame Bax?” the concierge asks.
“Yes, that’s right, Madame Bax! So it was Madame Bax. Funny how things happen: yesterday we were talking at dinner and we were just wondering what had become of her.”
“But Madame Bax isn’t old “
“No, of course not! She’s not at all old. I said ‘an old friend’ but I didn’t mean her age. I think I’ll go up. You don’t suppose she’s too busy?”
“Madame Bax? She’s always glued to the window watching the street! No, I’m sure she’d be delighted to see you.”
And without a moment’s hesitation, the man opens his door wide, then steps aside with an agreeably ceremonious gesture:
“This way, Prince! It doesn’t matter, the two staircases meet. Number twenty-four, on the third floor.”
Wallas thanks him and walks in. The concierge follows him in, closes the door and goes into his room. He has finished his work. He’ll polish the bell another day.
Wallas is received by a woman of uncertain age—perhaps still young, in fact—who, contrary to what he suspected, shows no surprise at this visit.
He simply tells her, showing her his police card, that the necessities of a difficult investigation oblige him to question, at random, all the people in the neighborhood who might provide any information at all. Without asking him any questions, she leads him into a room crowded with period furniture and indicates a tapestried chair. She herself sits down facing him, but some distance away, and waits, her hands clasped, looking at him earnestly.
Wallas begins speaking: a crime has been committed the evening before in the house opposite.…
Her face carefully composed, Madame Bax indicates a slightly surprised—and pained—interest.
“You don’t read the newspapers?” Wallas asks.
“No, very rarely.”
In saying this, she gives him an almost mournful half-smile, as if she did not often have the daily papers at her disposal or else did not have time to read them. Her voice is like her face, gentle and faded. Wallas is an old relative come to pay a call, on her visiting day, after a long absence: he is telling her about the death of a mutual friend, whose loss she laments with well-mannered indifference. It is five in the afternoon. In a little while she will offer him a cup of tea.
“It’s a very sad story,” she says.
Wallas, who is not here to receive condolences, puts the question in precise terms: the position of her window might have allowed her to see or hear something.
“No,” she says, “I didn’t notice anything.”
She is very sorry.
Hadn’t she at least noticed some prowler, some suspicious-looking types she could identify: a man in the street, for instance, who might have been paying abnormal attention to the house?
“Oh, Monsieur, no one ever walks through this street.”
Many people walk along the parkway, yes, at certain times: they walk fast and disappear at once. No one comes along this street.
“Still,” Wallas says, “someone had to come last night.”
“Last night…” It is obvious she is searching her memory. “Yesterday was Monday?”
“It might just as well have been the day before too, or even last week: apparently their work was carefully prepared in advance. Even the telephone was out of order: it might have been a case of sabotage.”
“No,” she says after a moment’s thought, “I didn’t notice anything.”
Last night a man in a raincoat tore something out at the gate. It was hard to see because it was getting dark. He stopped at the end of the spindle-tree hedge, took out of his pocket a small object which might have been pliers or a file, and quickly stuck his arm between the last two bars to reach the top of the gate inside It only took half a minute: he pulled his hand out immediately and went on his way, with the same casual gait.
Since this lady assures him she knows nothing, Wallas is ready to say good-bye. It would obviously have been surprising if she had happened to be at her window at just the right time. Besides, on thinking it over, did this “right time” ever exist? It is rather unlikely that the murderers have come here in broad daylight to plan their attack so calmly—to inspect the premises, make a false key, or dig trenches in the garden to cut the telephone lines.
The first thing he has to do is get in touch with that Doctor Juard. Afterward, if no clue turns up there and if the commissioner has not learned anything new, the other tenants in the building could be questioned. The slightest opportunity must not be neglected. Meanwhile, he will ask Madame Bax not to give away the little story he used as an excuse to the concierge.
To prolong this rest period before continuing his wanderings, Wallas asks two or three more questions; he suggests different noises that might have caught the y
oung woman’s attention, unconsciously; a revolver shot, footsteps running on the gravel, a slamming door, an automobile starting up suddenly… But she shakes her head and says with her strange smile:
“Don’t tell me too many details; you’ll end up making me think I saw the whole thing.”
Last night a man in a raincoat did something to the gate and since this morning you cannot hear the automatic buzzer when it opens. Yesterday, a man…No doubt she’ll end up telling him her secret. Moreover, she does not exactly know what it is restraining her.
Wallas, who since the start of the conversation has been wondering how to ask her politely if she has been watching much from her window recently, finally stands up. “May I?” He walks over to the window. It was in this room that he saw the curtain moving. Now he reconstitutes the image which, on the spot and from such close range, does not seem the same any more. He raises the material in order to see more clearly.
From this new angle, the house in the middle of its meticulous garden looks as though it were isolated by the lens of an optical instrument. His gaze shifts to the high chimneys, the slate roof—which in this part of the country strikes a note of preciosity—the brick front ornamentally framed by two field-stone courses which are also echoed, above the windows, by projecting lintels, the arch over the door and the four steps of the stoop. From the street level one cannot appreciate so fully the harmony of the proportions, the rigor—the necessity, one might say—of the whole structure, whose simplicity is scarcely disturbed—or on the contrary, accentuated—by the complicated grillwork of the balconies. Wallas tries to decipher some pattern in these intertwining curves, when he hears the slightly bored voice behind him declaring, as though it were an insignificant thing without any relation to the subject:
“Last night, a man in a raincoat…”
At first, Wallas did not believe in the truthfulness of a recollection so belated. Somewhat confused, he turned around toward Madame Bax: her face was still as calm, with that expression of polite exhaustion. The conversation continued in the same mundane tone.
The Erasers Page 9
