A Silver Ring in the Ear

by Tony Duvert

  There was nothing of a laboratory about Madam Sauveterre’s kitchen. It evoked rather an ancient room in some farm, in an epoch when there was no gas, electricity or hygiene. A genuine squalour and a bachelor’s disorder, decrepit utensils, dented or cracked, set in no particular order on shelves sticky with grease, two cloths, immaculate but a little torn, a few pieces of silver-plate with the puncheon of a great master but spotted with verdigris, a whole collection of broken chairs, stools, step-ladders, a jumble of dirty dishes and recent peelings: the pigsty of a dirty old woman, almost nuts, or the den, barbarous and discerning, of an exquisite gourmand. Here Julien felt incomprehensibly joyful.

  “So, inspector, they’ve put you in the picture, if I am not mistaken. I was waiting for that, please note. It had been so… incorrect!”

  “In the picture?” asked Sorel. “What had been incorrect?”

  “About Dieudefoi.”

  “Ah yes, I’m with you. I’ve never before drunk such good chocolate, madam! Are you really Mr. Robert Dieudefoi?”

  “Well, yes! I lied to you, inspector.”

  “Professor Brisset received you from 6:30 to 7, and not from 7 to 7:30?”

  “Exactly. I left the house at four minutes past seven. I am being precise: four minutes. I always look at my watch when I reach the street.”

  She got up from her little rush-bottomed chair, and toddled over to the stove. She bent down, opened the oven, and examined her cake: a buttered breath of genoise, orange and almonds invaded the room. Julien Sorel, intoxicated, noted at the same time the ease and vigour of the old lady’s actions. He also got the idea of a trap, he who had never had the spirit for that: so had the pastry-making made him intelligent? or was it those emanations of curacao?

  “And then, from 7 to 7:30, your name, your true name, simply served as a disguise for that…”

  “A financier,” said Madame Sauveterre.

  She had taken from the oven a great mould à manqué. She put the burning cake on a corner of the table where old newspapers were collecting.

  The old lady’s response had disappointed Inspector Sorel: the trap had only half worked. But how to make her give the name of the mysterious patient, to draw out what must be only a morsel of supplementary information? Sorel went on:

  “A financier… No, that’s not the word, I think. Would you yourself really say financier?”

  “I assure you that that’s the word! An authentic financier!”

  “Ah no, madam. I personally don’t consider financier to be right.”

  “Oh well, perhaps you know another name. That can happen.”

  “Another name?”

  “That’s for you to tell me, Mr. Inspector! But for me this cake has always been called a financier. And I promise you that everything is there: genoise paste with almonds, good quality butter, preserved fruit, shredded almonds, and curacao. Ah, I understand! You’ve never seen it as it is in this mould! Obvioiusly! There’s the explanation. My husbands were like you. They would only know a cake once it had been served. But you’ll see, when I’ve taken it out of the mould and sprinkled it with icing sugar…”

  Disheartened, Inspector Sorel stood up and took his leave.

  XVI

  Julien hailed the blue taxi that had just gone by. The car slowed. Julien caught up with it and got in.

  “Rue Losserand,” he said.

  The driver obeyed. Julien was anxious to be home: his days were exhausting both his legs and his nerves. He envied Superintendent Reval, who spent her life on her bum, unruffled: she got excited only for the pleasure of shouting, and she stood up only to go to bed. Julien Sorel would have adored this existence as terror-granny. But he was only a man, a young man, a little cop.

  But where was this taxi going?

  “I say, you’re going the wrong way.”

  “I take the road that pleases me,” grumbled the driver.

  Sorel did not insist: all the drivers are temperamental and coarse: and this one, a huge bearded man with a red complexion, was sure to be a choleric brute. Taxis have inherited the graces and manners of coachmen, the carters of old: all that is missing is the odour. Such were Julien Sorel’s thoughts. An imaginary effluvium of sweat and horse-manure tickled his nostrils.

  The car had gone past Sorel’s district: now it was leaving Paris. The inspector became disturbed:

  “I order you to stop this vehicle! Police.”

  “Pf. The weapon of the tricolour card. Poor fellow.”

  “I tell you to stop!” shouted Sorel.

  But the driver accelerated, chose deserted streets, ran through red lights and reached the outskirts.

  “You’re nuts,” spluttered Julien Sorel. “What do you want from me?”

  “You’ll find out, shark-face,” said the driver.

  A violent jerk of the brakes. A right-angled turn brought them into an impasse at the end of which stood a delapidated garage. The car pushed open the wooden doors and entered the darkness.

  The bearded red-complexioned man leaped out of the car. His height was enormous. He was a mountain of muscle and fury. He tore Julien out of his seat and threw him onto the ground. Sorel fell into a pool of dirty oil, smelly and sticky.

  “You’re going to make my acquaintance, shark-face,” growled the driver.

  He grasped inspector Sorel, tore off his trousers with a savage gesture, and brutally sodomised him. His enormous cock was like the handle of an axe, the axe of some giant woodcutter. Julien Sorel, crushed by the enormous man, broken, weeping, groaning, floundered in the sludge. The bearded man with red complexion ejaculated while hammering Julien’s skull with his fists and gasping:

  “Rahh, rahh.”

  “Are you going out again?” asked Sorel.

  “Yes,” said Gabriel, “I need to take the taxi back to Maurice, he wants it for eight o’clock. The idea of the dirty oil, that was terrific! Only, the cleaning up afterwards…”

  “You didn’t get too much on you, did you?”

  “No, darling,” joked Gabriel. “It was you who got it, always you, always you.”

  “How good it was.”

  Gabriel had been the first to bathe and change. Julien, who had dressed for this suburban episode in a suit he wanted to scrap, threw his clothes into a rubbish bag, and then began his diesel-toilet. He congratulated himself on having had the idea: rarely had a rape given him so much pleasure. And Gabriel, with his dummy abdomen and his brick-red cheeks, was as amused as a little boy. Conjugal life has its days of miracle, its moments of harmony, its hours of total communion between the pair.

  At last soaped, showered and perfumed, Julien poured himself an aperitif. He sought out his attaché-case. He found in it two purchases he had made that afternoon: they would also, perhaps, amuse Gabriel. There was a tube of Travelox and a very small pink lady’s slip, with machine-made lace borders, style Aubade.

  Marc, for the first time, had agreed to accompany the unknown man, who was dressed as a man to-day, to the latter’s home.

  The apartment was a simple bachelor-flat, a fairly small studio, badly lit, where the boy could see nothing of interest.

  “You go and sit down over there,” said the man. “I’m going to change.”

  Marc made himself at home on the edge of the bed. There were a few magazines to look at. The man went into the bathroom.

  He reappeared five minutes later. He had metamorphosed himself in a twinkling. He was wearing a long vamp dress in flaming-red silk, black boots with very high heels; and an extraordinarily brilliant blond wig: he had immense curved eye-lashes, scarlet false finger-nails, and red lips, almost purplish-blue. No jewellery. His bosom was half naked.

  “Do you find me beautiful now, Marc?” asked the lady.

  “Yes, you are beautiful,” said the boy, in ecstasy. “You are more beautiful than my mother!”

  “Nevertheless she’s very pretty, I think.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “Marc, you are my lover and we are going to toss off
the champagne.”

  Astounded, the little boy fingered his ring in joy: he who so much loved to pick his nose!

  There was no sand on the table offered by the golden-haired lady. The champagne was in a pail, as customary, with blocks of ice. It was evident that this was champagne for children: it came with a great quantity of boudoir biscuits, spoon biscuits, and both white and pink Reims biscuits. Without ceremony, Marc began to dip a big spoon biscuit into his very-long-based tulip glass. The liquid was cold, and the cake was sugared. The lady was beautiful: being a lover was a good idea. Much better than pretending to be a corpse in a garden wheelbarrow.

  “Marc,” the lady said suddenly, in a gentle, serious and melodious voice, “I don’t have to get undressed! But you can. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “We’re celebrating our wedding to-day. You should get undressed, darling.”

  “All right, if you like. Wait till I’ve finished these.”

  The boy attacked the pink biscuits.

  XVII

  “Gilberte, you can’t imagine how happy it makes me to see you!” declared Oriane Brisset. “I’m making this afternoon a celebration! It’s been so long.”

  “I have so much difficulty with walking,” said Superintendent Rênal. “It makes me ashamed. When I see your slimness, your suppleness, Oriane! We’re the same age, and any one would give me fifty years more than you. I do admire you.”

  “Come on, drink, dear, instead of talking nonsense.”

  “I really don’t like tea.”

  “My goodness, Gilberte, just a little effort. For the sake of convention. Later I’ll introduce you to my husband’s cognac cabinet.”

  “You are as adorable as you are beautiful,” said Madame Rênal with emphasis. “But this cat’s piss. All the old biddies like me have a cat, Oriane, they go mad about them. But I want nothing to do with them even in a stew. Oh, I’m not a drunk, I swear! But one picks up bad habits, in this job.”

  “An extraordinary job, Gilberte! I waste my time planting flowers and watching little pots. What luck you have had!”

  “But I watch them too, those little pots; I watch them!”

  “And those fabulous trials. Those abominable killers. What lovely crimes, Gilberte, what a career!”

  “You flatter me, darling. I’m not at the outset of any crime, believe me. And I’ve not arrested a lot of people. That’s not my style. Sometimes I make out a balance, and it surprises me. Shabby criminals, cretins, the nabbed, the bewildered. But this country lacks first-rate murderers. Of the criminals that you admire, Oriane, I’ve never even seen the fag-end of one.”

  Madame Brisset did not point out the ambiguity of expression. She summoned Peter, who would serve the cognac and the confectionery.

  “Peter is going to leave us,” she revealed when the Englishman was in the room.

  “No. Peter, is that true?” asked the superintendent.

  “I’m taking off, yes madam,” said Peter. “In just three weeks, madam.”

  “Will you go back to England?”

  “Certainly not. The English make me sick, I can’t stand them.”

  “To the country, then?”

  “No madam. I’ve decided to stay in Paris. In Pigalle. I’ve set up a studio there. I’ll abandon myself to a life of debauchery,” Peter added in a serious tone.

  “The district is suitable, that’s true,” remarked Oriane.

  “Better than here!” said Gilberte. “No, Peter, choose the cognac yourself; this is an extraordinary collection, strictly speaking, I know nothing about it. I just swallow everything without regard to etiquette. You can confirm, Oriane, that I don’t even have the excuse of being a connoisseur. No. A great vaguely alcoholic sack, with legs like lamp-posts. Your other friends are not like me at all, I hope.”

  “Gilberte, you’re doing yourself an injustice.”

  “A propos, darling, do you have any recent news about that Madame Sauveterre? A person who intrigues me greatly, I confess.”

  “Carole? Well I don’t know,” answered Oriane. “So what’s so odd about her?”

  “Oh, nothing, perhaps you’re right. I was thinking of my investigation.”

  “Ah yes. You’d be looking for a loony, perhaps.”

  “Not exactly, Oriane. I’ve ruled out Madame Sauveterre from my list of suspects, and now I’m becoming less categorical. Do you understand why?”

  “Obviously not, my dear.”

  “Follow me carefully. Every one agrees about the fact that your husband was strangled. With a shoe-lace.”

  “Yes, Gilberte, and it seems that it is extremely easy.”

  “That’s not so!” cried superintendent Rênal.

  “Ah. It’s not easy?”

  Madame Rênal took out her meerschaum pipe. She stuffed it with Amphora, the sweet variety. Madame Brisset smiled and reached for her box of havanas. The ladies smoked. One of them, at the same time, picked at the variously formed fruit pastilles; the other took a few drops of cognac into her chops, and slowly diluted it with tobacco flavoured saliva, by chewing her tongue.

  “Oh yes, it’s easy!” continued the superintendent. “The problem is not the squeezing. There have been people who strangled themselves all alone while sleeping, with a little neck chain, a little medal chain, they moved in their sleep, and the little chain was pulled about, twisted. A squeezing of the carotides, of the larynx: no more blood, no more oxygen, and the brain pops at once. No, no. Not that! The difficulty, Oriane, in your husband’s case, is before.”

  “Before? Good Lord, before what?”

  “Before strangling him, dear. Strangulation with a shoe-lace is a very rapid operation, very simple, but… impossible to perform without the co-operation of the victim. Or without having immobilised him, shackled him, beforehand. And there was no battle in the professor’s office.”

  “You alarm me, Gilberte.”

  “Yes. Everything leads to the belief that he intentionally allowed himself to be strangled.”

  “Ah. Ah hold on. He let himself be strangled.”

  Oriane selected a strawberry pastille. The idea that superintendent Rênal had just expressed no longer astonished her.

  “So it would be,” she said, “a kind of suicide.”

  “Yes, a variant of euthanasia, perhaps,” said the superintendent. “And that, Oriane, is why I ask myself two little things. Why did he want to commit suicide. And who ‘helped’ him – who loved him enough for that?”

  “Oh, certainly not I, dear friend!” said Oriane.

  XVIII

  ‘Mr. Brunet. It’s you, eh. Don’t move. That’s a revolver. Here in my pocket. We’re going for a walk. Ducon.’

  Two men, no, three, no, two, the third is waiting in the car, take Dr. Brunet, who offered no resistance.

  Yes, he resisted. he grated out, with his little castrated voice: ‘What, what, with what right, but still, but still.’

  Ah what a shit. Now they’re in the car. One of the fellows beside the driver, and the other fellow beside Brunet, in the back. He lands Brunet an elbow in the stomach.

  ‘There’s a sample, and shut your dirty mouth,’ says the fellow. They, the fellows, are wearing hoods. Or rather not, they’ve disguised their faces, but marvellously well. Not the beards and dark glasses. Highly calculated gadgets, false noses and cheeks, coloured contact lenses, the lot. It’s clear that they won’t be recognised.

  The car charges on. Brunet, the cad, pisses out all he knows. They’re going to the country.

  ‘We’re taking you to the country, dung-heap. You’re going to sweat.’

  Here they are. A completely deserted spot. A huge old mansion, some-time nazi headquarters. Not a neighbour for two miles around.

  ‘As you see, penis face, we’ve got a castle for you,’ said one of the toughs to the miserable Brunet.

  ‘But what, but how,’ stammers the defeated biologist.

  They enter discreetly, and land a murderous kick on dirty Brunet’s di
rty scrawny bum. He falls flat on his face in a sumptuous candle-lit drawing-room. Some one very elegant, and very superior, is sipping champagne and crunching caviar toast: it is Philippe.

  Philippe looks at his stinking stepfather and gives a mocking laugh:

  ‘Old piece of shit, what are you doing there? There are fleas in that box, eh chaps.’

  ‘Philippe!’ cries Dr, Brunet, in his final stupefaction, as he sees his step-son.

  ‘Hey, he said something!’ remarks Philippe with disdain. He lights a Dunhill long, and then condescends to add:

  ‘You moron, there’s a kennel for you in the cellar. Take him there.’

  At once the men seize Dr.Brunet under his armpits and drag him towards the cellar stairs, which, with kicks, they force him to go down.

  Brunet receives some beastly knocks, he reaches the bottom almost unconscious, and his face is bleeding.

  Philippe, who is splendid – fifteen, bronzed, muscled, very elegant – has casually followed the group. He wants to explain personally to his stepfather what is waiting for him in the kennel.

  With further kicks, Brunet is made to stay upright. He is haggard.

  ‘Philippe, what does this mean?’ he manages to say. But his puny jaws tremble like castanets.

  ‘Don’t pretend to chat, it doesn’t suit you,’ says Philippe with a finely ironic smile.

  They are in one of the rooms of the cave, the deepest, which had evidently been made ready to receive the moron: it is a real torture chamber.

  ‘You know, moron, we haven’t got time, we’ll have to leave you,’ says Philippe. The powerful muscular men look at him with respect: they are waiting for his verdict. Dr. Brunet had been knocked down again, onto a cement floor. His eyes burned with indignation, he looked rebellious.

  ‘We’ve got a bed ready for you,’ says Philippe with an elegant laugh.

  Then the superb adolescent steps back a little, and, with an offhand gesture of his cigarette, gives his men the command for action. The toughs, full of enthusiastic zeal, obey.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ is the order from one of the toughs to the sinister Dr. Brunet.