'Absolutely.'
'You are being serious here?'
'I am completely serious.'
He looked at me and shook his head. Slowly.
'Have you suffered hallucinations like this in the past?'
'Inspector, I am telling you the truth.'
'Have you ever been hospitalized – committed – for psychotic disorders? I can – will – run a complete check on your medical history and—'
'I am not delusional, Inspector.'
'And yet you insist that you've been having an affair with a dead woman. That certainly exceeds the definition of "delusional".'
'Show me some proof that she is dead.'
'In time,' he said quietly. 'Describe Madame Kadar to me.'
'Late fifties. Striking face, sharply etched features, not much in the way of age lines, a shock of black hair—'
'Stop. Madame Kadar was thirty when she died in 1980. So the woman you were allegedly seeing was over twenty-five years older.'
But if she was thirty in 1980, wouldn't she be in her late fifties now?
'Do you have a photograph of her in 1980?' I asked.
'In time,' he said again. 'Anything else you wish to tell me about her physical appearance?'
'She was – is – beautiful.'
'Nothing else? No distinguishing marks or characteristics?'
'She had a scar across her neck.'
'Did she tell you how she received such a scar?'
'She tried to cut her own throat.'
Coutard seemed thrown by my answer, but was simultaneously trying to mask his bemusement.
'Tried to cut her own throat?' he asked.
'That's right.'
'The suicide was not successful?'
'Well, evidently not, if she was telling me about it.'
He reached for a file in front of him. He opened it. He turned several pages, then looked up at me again.
'Did she explain why she tried to kill herself?'
'Her husband and daughter were killed in a hit-and-run accident.'
Coutard stared down at the file again. His eyes narrowed.
'Where exactly did this accident take place?'
'Near the Luxembourg Gardens.'
'When exactly?'
'1980.'
'What month?'
'June, I think.'
'And what were the circumstances of the accident?'
'Her husband and daughter were crossing the road—'
'The husband's name?'
'Zoltan.'
'The daughter?'
'Judit.'
'How do you know this?'
'She told me.'
'Madame Kadar?'
'Yes, Madame Kadar told me. Just as she told me the driver of the car—'
'What was the make of the car?'
'I forget. Something big and flashy. The guy was a businessman.'
'Why do you know all this?'
'Because Margit was my lover. And lovers tell each other their pasts.'
'Did your "lover" tell you what happened to the driver of the black Jaguar—'
'That's right – she said it was a Jag . . . and the man lived in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.'
Again he glanced down at the file, then looked up at me. His cool was cracking. He now seemed angry.
'This game is no longer amusing. You have obviously engaged in some sort of warped research about a dead woman who murdered the man who ran over her husband and daughter and then—'
'Murdered?'
'That's what I said. Murdered.'
'But she told me he was killed by a burglar.'
'How was he killed?'
'Knife wound, I think.'
'When?'
'Around three months after the accident.'
'You're right. Henri Dupré—'
'That's the name she mentioned. A pharmaceuticals executive, right . . . ?'
'Correct. And Monsieur Dupré – a resident, as you said, of Saint-Germain-en-Laye – was murdered at his home on the night of September 20, 1980. His wife and children were not at home at the time. In fact, his wife had just filed for divorce. The man was a hopeless alcoholic and the hit-and- run accident which killed Madame Kadar's husband and daughter also ended Dupré's marriage. However, Dupré was not killed by a burglar. He was killed by Madame Kadar.'
'Bullshit.'
He reached into the file and pulled out a faded Xerox copy of a newspaper article. It was from Le Figaro and dated September 23, 1980. The headline read:
EXECUTIVE MURDERED
AT HOME IN SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE
BEREAVED WOMAN SUSPECTED
This story outlined the facts of the murder – how Dupré had been surprised in his bed in the middle of a Saturday night; how the attack had been very frenzied; how the murderer had used a shower in the house, then left a note in the kitchen: For Judit and Zoltan. A neighbor who had been up early saw a woman leaving the house around 5 a.m. and heading to the métro – and the police now wanted to question Margit Kadar, whose husband and daughter had been killed by Dupré in a hit-and-run accident several weeks earlier.
'This is unbelievable,' I said.
Coutard reached into the file and pulled out an eight-by- ten photograph and pushed it across his desk. It was a police photo – black and white, but still shockingly lurid. Dupré was shown strewn across a bloodstained bed – huge black blotches surrounding him – his chest ripped open in several places; his face and head gashed horribly.
I sucked in my breath and pushed the photograph back to Coutard.
'To call this attack "frenzied" would be to exercise understatement,' Coutard said. 'This was a murder committed in white-hot rage; the killer unable to desist even after the fatal blow was struck. What most intrigued the investigating inspector at the time were two interrelated aspects to the case: its meticulous planning and the fact that the murderer clearly wanted the police – and the public – to know that she was responsible. The police checked Madame Kadar's phone records after the attack. It seems she had rung the Dupré household the night before the attack. In his report, the inspector presumed that she was calling on a pretext – perhaps using a false voice to ask for his wife and simultaneously finding out that he was at home that weekend. How did the police work this out? Because Madame Kadar's phone records also show that she called Madame Dupré on the same Friday evening at the apartment in Saint-Germain-en-Laye to which she had moved with her son, having first obtained this new number from Directory Enquiries. Madame Dupré remembered the call when she was questioned by the police – a woman, sounding very French, telling her that she got this number from her husband, and that she was working for a company selling holiday apartments near Biarritz and she would like to send Madame some information, and should she use her husband's address? Madame Dupré then informed her that she no longer lived with her husband, and that she wasn't interested in a holiday apartment near Biarritz, and hung up the phone.
'So Madame Kadar now knew that Dupré lived alone and was at home that weekend. The attack happened the following night around four. Madame Kadar had visited Saint-Germain-en-Laye earlier that day. The same neighbor who spotted her leaving the Dupré home at five that morning saw someone looking carefully at the house the previous afternoon – walking around it, inspecting every aspect of it. But as Dupré had it on the market, the neighbor thought it was just a prospective buyer. When Madame Kadar returned that night, she entered through a window that had been left open on the ground floor. She evidently made no noise, as Dupré was surprised by her in bed. We have no idea whether she briefly woke him before beginning the attack or murdered him while he was asleep . . . though the medical examiner postulated that Dupré must have woken up as soon as the first blow was struck and was therefore aware of his assailant. The police were fairly certain that Madame Kadar wanted Dupré to see it was her – as this was an obvious act of revenge.
'Afterward, Madame Kadar stripped off her clothes and used Dupré's bathroom to have a shower. Sh
e left her blood-splattered clothes on the bathroom floor and the knife by the bed. She had evidently arrived with a small suitcase containing a change of clothes – and after dressing, she went down to the kitchen and made coffee and waited—'
'She made coffee after knifing him like that?'
'The first train doesn't leave Saint-Germain-en-Laye until 5.23 a.m. She didn't want to be waiting outside the station – so, yes, she made coffee and wrote that simple note, For Judit and Zoltan. It sounds like a book dedication, doesn't it? Besides being an act of revenge perhaps she considered this murder to be a creative act. Certainly her planning was most creative. She left the house around five. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the station. She boarded the first train and changed for the métro at Châtelet. There she proceeded to the Gare de l'Est and bought a first-class ticket to Budapest. She even paid for a separate sleeping compartment. She had to give her own name when booking the first-class compartment. This she did. But she evidently gambled that no one would be stopping by the Dupré house on Sunday . . . or that if it was discovered, it would still take the police most of the day to figure out she was the murderer, and to alert Interpol that she was now on the run. In other words she had, at a minimum, a clear twenty-four hours to get to Budapest. As it turned out, she gambled right. Dupré's body wasn't discovered until late Monday afternoon when he failed to show up for work, and his employers called his wife. She went back to his house and came upon the crime scene. Of course, she was immediately considered the prime suspect – the spouse always is in a case of a murder in the home – until the forensics showed that Madame Kadar's fingerprints were on the murder weapon and that the bloodstained clothes left behind were not Madame Dupre's.'
'How did you have her fingerprints on file?'
'All resident aliens are fingerprinted. Also, in 1976 Madame Kadar became a French citizen – so she was re-fingerprinted. However, as she was traveling as a Frenchwoman, she had to apply for a visa at the Hungarian Embassy here in Paris. At the time, the Communist regime didn't allow foreigners to obtain an entry permit at their border . . . especially former citizens. Madame Kadar applied for this visa fourteen days before she murdered Dupré, stating that she wanted to visit family members there.'
'But she hated Hungary . . . especially after what had happened to her father.'
'What had happened to her father?'
I told him everything Margit had told me. Several times during this recitation, he looked down at the file, as if he was comparing the story I was telling with that which he had inside this battered, thick manila folder. When I finished, I asked, 'Does that correspond with the information you have?'
'Naturally the Hungarian police – who cooperated with us during our investigation – also informed us of the findings of their investigations into the two murders that Madame Kadar committed on her return to Budapest.'
'She killed Bodo and Lovas?'
Long silence. Coutard glared at me. He put down the file. He lit a cigarette. He took several deep thoughtful drags, never once taking his eyes off me. Finally: 'I am trying to discern the game you are playing, monsieur. You are under investigation for two murders, and you simultaneously show extensive knowledge of a sequence of murders carried out here and in Budapest by a woman who killed herself in Hungary shortly after murdering her second victim there.'
'She cut her throat after killing Bodo?'
'No, after killing Lovas. But let us not digress from the issue of concern to me: why you know so much about this case. Please do not repeat that preposterous alibi that she told you all about this. I will not accept such absurdities. So how and why did you garner all this information? You are a writer, yes? Perhaps someone told you about this case – it got quite a bit of publicity at the time. You were intrigued, and using the Internet, you found out all the details of the case. And now, under suspicion for two murders yourself, you spin this absurd tale of an affair with a dead woman in an attempt to—'
'Were there any reports in the Hungarian papers about the reason why she returned to Budapest to murder Bodo and Lovas?'
'You interrupted me again.'
'Sorry.'
'You do that once more, I'll send you back to the cells for twenty-four hours.'
Won't you be sending me back there anyway?
Coutard reopened the file and spent several minutes studying some more old photocopied pages.
'We have a selection of the Hungarian press clippings about the case, and a French translation provided for us. Given the nature of the regime back then, the official reason given as to why she murdered Bodo and Lovas was, "These two brave defenders of Hungary had arrested Madame Kadar's father when he was spreading 'seditious lies against the homeland'" . . . that's an exact quote. According to the State media, he subsequently killed himself while in prison after it was revealed he was an agent working for the CIA. There is no mention in any report – either police or in the press – of the incident you describe, in which Madame Kadar was forced, as a seven-year-old girl, to watch her father's hanging. Then again, the Hungarian police in 1980 would never have shared such information with us. Instead, in their reports – and in the State press – Madame Kadar was depicted as a mentally unbalanced woman who, having recently lost her husband and daughter in a tragic accident, was on a rampage of revenge. The State newspaper printed all the French reports about Dupré's murder. They also intimated that the attacks on Bodo and Lovas were savage ones.'
'Did the Hungarian police let you know how she tracked the two men down?'
'Of course not. According to the inspector's report at the time, the police in Budapest only nominally cooperated with us. And no, they didn't inform us that Bodo and Lovas were members of the security services – though in all the Hungarian press reports, they constantly referred to the two men as "heroes" who had "given their lives to protect the security of the homeland" . . . which is usual State doublespeak for members of the Secret Police.'
'And Margit killed herself after murdering the two men?'
He opened the file and found a document, glanced at one page, then turned to those stapled beneath it.
'This is a translation of a telex – remember the telex? – sent to us from the police in Budapest. First victim, Béla Bodo, aged sixty-six, was found dead in his apartment in a residential district of Buda on the night of September 21, 1980. He was found bound and gagged to a chair in front of his kitchen table. His hands had been taped to the table using heavy duct tape, of the type generally employed for patching leaky pipes. The victim's ten fingers had been severed from his hands, his eyes had been gouged out, his throat cut.'
'Jesus Christ,' I whispered.
'There was nothing frenzied about such an attack. One must surmise that the murderer was very slow and deliberate in her maiming of her victim, in order to inflict maximum pain and terror on him. The coup de grâce when his throat was cut must have been a desperate relief to him.'
'Did the police tell you how she had managed to bind and gag Bodo in the first place?'
'No, but like us, they too intimated that she must have entered his apartment carrying a firearm – thus forcing him to "assume the position" at the kitchen table while she bound and gagged him. Had he known what was awaiting him, I've no doubt he would have tried to escape. Being shot to death is so much cleaner than the torment he suffered.'
The Woman In The Fifth Page 30
