Francesca immediately started work on organizing the meeting. “Let me do it,” she said. “Please. To try to make up for some of my stupidity.”
“Just one thing,” said Heffner, “to save some time. Your electors all have new numbers.”
And, forestalling Francesca’s question: “They all have new telephones, yes. I thought it was preferable.”
He handed her a piece of paper.
“I wrote down their numbers.”
“Shall I learn the numbers by heart and then swallow the list?” asked Francesca.
“Just put the paper in a place where no one will think to look for it.”
“In the tea jar?”
“For example.”
Francesca slipped the paper between her watchband and her wrist.
“Temporary hiding place,” she said. Then, changing her tone, “Did you tell us that Anne-Marie has gone home?”
“Yes. She can travel by car.”
“And Paul? Does he have permission to move around?”
“I was getting there,” said Heffner. “He got out of the hospital last week.”
Néon did not want to set foot in Les Crêts ever again. Heffner had convinced him to go back there for one hour, under his protection, at night, the time he needed to throw his work things into a suitcase. They would worry about his move later on.
Paul grumbled: “I’m not working on anything.”
“Just take whatever is on your writing desk,” Heffner told him firmly. “You have to get ready to get started again.”
On the way back from this lightning visit to Les Crêts (the village was snowed under, and they didn’t meet anyone; Suzon had gone by the day before to get the keys from L’Alpette and hide them on the windowsill of the garden shed), while he was at it, Heffner had driven Néon to his new residence.
“He’s over by Maisons-Laffitte,” he said. “Don’t go thinking he’s in Peru. I found him a detox center. It’s going to be hard work for him. He has to learn how to feed himself all over again—and how to drink.”
Francesca was able to set up the meeting for the following evening. She managed to convince everybody that it was urgent. “In a way,” she told Van, “I’m glad I found out the leak beforehand. I’ll tell all eight right from the start that I alone am at fault, and in no way are they under suspicion.”
One of them did defect, however. Anne-Marie refused point-blank to take part in the meeting, or to show herself in any way, or to see her name mentioned. This was to be expected and, on the line, Francesca didn’t argue. What it amounted to was that Anne-Marie was resigning from the committee. She had no objection to The Good Novel pressing charges—although she herself would not have done so—nor to the list of committee members being made public, provided she was not on it. But she did not want the name of Anne-Marie Montbrun, nor that of Ida Messmer, to be made public, nor that the strange accident in the bend at Les Galardons, near Saumur, be mentioned in any way.
She had to regain her freedom of mind. Arnaud wanted it as much as she did, and they were moving. They would leave the Anjou region. Anne-Marie asked them to forgive her, she had been passionate about The Good Novel, and remained so, but she preferred to keep the place where she would settle with her family a secret.
At this point, I knew about her double life. I shouldn’t have, but the fact was that a few hours earlier, through Ivan, I had learned who hid behind the name of Ida Messmer. If Anne-Marie was leaving the history of The Good Novel behind her, and if future events enabled her to remain anonymous, there were still four of us who knew her secret: Francesca and Ivan, Gonzague Heffner, and I—four people who were firmly determined never to say a word about it.
All things considered, Francesca decided to accept Sarah Gestelents’s offer to use her studio on the rue Alexandre-Dumas to hold the meeting. It was more discreet than at her place on the rue de Condé, or at Ivan’s place, or in an ordinary restaurant.
I wish I could have been there. A lot was at stake for Francesca and Ivan that evening. They were the first to arrive, with a basket full of bottles. (Francesca had brought a bottle of port, a Grave, and some bourbon. When he saw this, in the taxi, Van protested that if people were drinking in front of him, Brother would have a hellish evening. He had obtained permission to leave the center, and it would be preferable to send him home in a decent state. Francesca could have kicked herself. She forced the taxi driver to accept the bottles of alcohol as a gift, then to drive by a grocery store that was open where they could buy some fruit juice.) It was a dark night, and it was snowing.
Sarah’s studio took up the second and top floor of a tiny building opposite the looming church of Saint-Jean-Bosco, which looks like a reinforced concrete rocket. At first glance, the studio reminds you of the office of an architect who is just starting out: twenty feet by twenty feet, wide walls covered with shelves, jute flooring, clip-on lights here and there, a long, low mattress in the place of a sofa, two tables on trestles in front of the two windows, covered with papers and books and, in one corner, more trestles and plywood panels of various sizes so that a third of any size table could be built, if need be.
For nine people, they would need one of the big panels. Sarah brought in some folding chairs and a short-haired Moroccan blanket that served as a tablecloth.
Francesca had invited the six other electors to come between eight-thirty and nine o’clock, so that they wouldn’t all ring the bell at the same time. Though it was a meeting held to deal with a crisis, it began like a game, as the various participants arrived, discovered who the others were, and realize with whom they had formed a team without knowing it. Some of them already knew each other. Armel Le Gall and Gilles évohé had been friends for a long time. Marie Noire and Jean Tailleberne had sat together for three years on the Commission for the Novel of the National Center of Letters. Néon didn’t know anyone; Winter knew everybody, with the exception of Néon, whom he knew by sight.
“We’re all here,” said Francesca shortly after nine o’clock. “Have a seat. Bring your glasses.”
She began by relating the history of The Good Novel, something of which only she and Ivan had an overview. She reminded them of the bookstore’s promising beginnings, then the succession of attacks and their variety. She explained, her voice less confident, how the brutes had stolen her bag—Ivan and I call them the brutes, she said—and identified the committee members.
“My handbag was stolen at the beginning of June. The following months must have been spent making lengthy inquiries. In November, one after the other, three committee members were physically attacked, and on December 4 one of them had a very close call that would have been disastrous had he not been warned—as you all were, I presume.”
“It’s probably not worth describing each attack in detail,” interrupted Néon.
Francesca did not intend to do so, she said, nor to name the victims. If any of them wanted to tell the story of what had happened, they were free to do so, or to remain silent.
“Any questions?” she asked.
They all had questions. They talked about this and that for over an hour. They had questions about The Good Novel’s stock, its image in the press, sales, support, the investigator who had suddenly showed up not so long ago, who asked a lot of questions but didn’t give much away, and about the brutes, obviously—who could they possibly be?
Ivan put an end to the discussion to move on to the “action” items on the agenda: what should their response be? He had a plan.
“It’s a suggestion,” he said. “We’ll discuss it. It goes without saying nothing will be done without your consent.”
“Two things,” he began. “First of all, we will file a complaint against ‘unknowns.’ Then, the same day or the day after, we issue a three-point press release: our decisions to take legal action, a summary outline of the succession of attacks that are the grounds for our action, and the composition of the committee at the same time that we announce our intention to dissolve it.”
“Obviously,” said Tailleberne.
Winter, slowly, as if to convince himself he was not having a bad dream, said: “The end of the committee.”
Both of them looked distraught.
“I’m listening,” said Van. “Already, one committee member preferred not to come this evening, in order to remain anonymous and take the initiative to resign. That is his—or her—right.”
“So there were eight of us,” said Marie Noir, although you could not tell whether the number surprised her, annoyed her, or left her indifferent.
“Please,” said Sarah Gesteslents. “I have an idea.”
She approved of the idea of filing a complaint and of going public with the makeup of the committee. She saw three advantages: they were not backing down, or giving in; denouncing the attacks was a way to make them stop; and all in all, the operation was bound to create a favorable buzz around The Good Novel, reinforcing the wave of support and sympathy.
“Personally,” said Sarah, “you have my consent to give out my name. I have absolutely no objection to showing, at last, my solidarity with the bookstore.”
She looked like a little stable boy from the Middle Ages, with her boyish beige and black clothing, her pageboy haircut, and her strong jaw set in her thin face.
“Here’s my idea,” she said. “Once we have dissolved the committee, there is nothing to stop us from setting up a new one where the incumbents could be secretly reappointed, a second time round, in a way. As far as I’m concerned, I would like to continue to work for The Good Novel. I constantly have new ideas for titles to recommend. My additional list for next year is already quite full.”
She paused. Nobody said a thing, and then she asked, somewhat curtly, “Does that sound idiotic?”
“Not at all,” said Jean Tailleberne. “That’s fine with me. I’d be very happy to join a second time round committee.”
“Me too,” echoed évohé, Néon, Le Gall, and Winter, who added, “There is no better way to remain unnoticed. Classic secret-service strategy.”
Marie Noir had her reservations: “We won’t work in the same way, now that we know each other.”
The others did not share her opinion. Nothing would prevent them from remaining independent, or even breaking off all ties. Le Gall, however, did meet with the group approval’s when he suggested that the committee ought to give itself a year. They all agreed that in the long run, it would be a good idea to renew the sort of clandestine management behind The Good Novel.
“I may withdraw my participation,” said Marie Noir again.
Van suggested they move on to preparing the press release.
“It’s going to take us a while to get it ready,” he said, not looking at anyone in particular, “and that will give you time to think before signing. Today is Wednesday, December 14. Let’s date the press release December 15. We have three items to announce, agreed? The summary of events, the decision to file a complaint, and the dissolution of the committee.”
It was half past midnight when they adjourned.
“Let’s all leave together,” said Marie Noir. “We’ve had enough of being careful.”
She had signed the press release along with the six others.
In the street, wet snow was still falling. Le Gall dropped back to talk to Van.
“So, I won’t get to see Strait-laced?” he asked. “After what you told me the other day in Rennes, I had built up an exquisite image of her.”
“What makes you think you didn’t see her this evening?” suggested Van.
“I did not see any English roses. Those were the words you used to describe her.”
“I’m afraid that neither you nor I will ever see her again,” said Van. “She will now become one of all the Morgan le Fay and Isolde fairies of our dreams in the country of improbable creatures, unlikely ever to have existed. As for the fact that a touching person who was not the least bit strait-laced belonged to the committee: even now, I am no longer sure she ever did, and as for you, you would do better to forget it.”
Obviously, Heffner remarked the next day, when he saw they were revealing the seven names, the brutes, who had been informed that there were eight electors, seven of whose names they now knew, would have no difficulty in pinpointing the identity of the eighth member not on the list. They could reveal what they knew very easily, through their own press release, for example—saying there was an eighth member, by the name of Anne-Marie Montbrun.
“But that would surprise me,” said Heffner calmly. “They would have nothing to gain from it, and it could lead to their discovery.”
Van had thought of this, and at length. He had lost sleep over it, the previous night, after the meeting. He had only managed to fall asleep once he had convinced himself that Anne-Marie had made an inspired move by bowing out, to hide both herself and her writing. In any case, if her name surfaced now, no one would be able to make the link between that unknown woman and the writer Ida Messmer.