It was eleven when he opened his eyes, but he didn’t know that yet, because he didn’t bother to reach out to his waistcoat and get his watch out. The shutters were closed, leaving a cellar-like half-light in the room, but there were two small, very deep holes in these shutters.
It was these shining eyes that Loursat always looked at with enormous gravity, with the same kind of gravity that children bring to pointless things, because they helped him to guess what the weather was like outside. Although he wasn’t totally superstitious, Loursat did create little beliefs for his own personal use: for example, that the days when he had guessed right were good days.
Today he decided: sun! Then he turned heavily and reached for the button that set off a bell in the Dwarf’s sepulchral kitchen. The Dwarf was there, serving a glass of wine to a uniformed policeman casually sitting at the table. The policeman asked:
‘What’s that?’
She replied, in an indifferent tone:
‘It’s nothing.’
His eyes open, Loursat waited, listening to the noises of the house, which were too distant and too vague to have specific meanings. He rang again.
The policeman looked at Fine, who shrugged.
‘If only he’d die!’
She took a coffee pot from the corner of the fireplace, shook it, poured some coffee into another pot and grabbed a sugar bowl, covered in flies, from the table. Once upstairs, she didn’t bother to knock, or to say good morning. She put the tray down on a chair that served as a night table, walked over to the window and opened the shutters.
Loursat thought he had lost. The sky was blue-green, the colour of mercury. A moment later it cleared, then darkened again, rain clouds crossing the icy air.
‘Who’s downstairs?’
This was a not very pleasant hour to be got through every morning, but he was used to it, and had formulas of his own to make it less painful. He mustn’t move too soon, because his head was too empty and his stomach easily turned. The Dwarf had time to light the fire, her gestures so abrupt that she gave the impression she resented the objects.
‘There’s lots of people downstairs and upstairs!’ she replied, throwing his shirt on the bed.
‘What about Mademoiselle?’
‘She’s been shut up in the big drawing room for an hour with one of those men.’
The Dwarf’s moods had long stopped being funny: they’d had too many years to get used to them. Nicole was two when Fine had taken charge of her in a way, and since then the woman had hated the rest of the world and Loursat in particular.
Loursat didn’t care. As a rule, he didn’t see anything that happened in the house. Sometimes, though, he would unwittingly open a door and find the Dwarf on her knees, warming Nicole’s bare feet in her hands or against her empty breasts.
Which didn’t stop her from occasionally giving Nicole the cold shoulder for some mysterious reason, sometimes for weeks on end!
A few minutes after the coffee came the turn of the bottle of mineral water. Loursat drank all of it, gargling. Only after that could he get up. But he would be under the weather until an hour later, once he’d had two or three glasses of wine.
‘Has the prosecutor come too?’
‘I don’t know him!’
He seldom used the bathroom, which was in the other wing, adjacent to the bedroom. A basin in a cupboard, a glass for the toothbrush and a comb were enough for him. He would get dressed in front of Fine as she crouched by the stove, which she had never been able to light at the first attempt.
‘How is Mademoiselle?’
To which Fine replied obstinately, seeming as always to bite with her rodent-like teeth:
‘How should she be?’
It was odd, the way it had happened the night before. Rogissart, who was very tall and very thin, like his wife – people called them the two breadsticks! – had assumed a preoccupied air as he shook his cousin’s hand and asked him, with a frown:
‘What was all this you told me over the phone?’
He wouldn’t have been particularly surprised if Loursat had burst out laughing and cried:
‘So you fell for it!’
But no, there really was a body in a bed, and it was almost as if Loursat was quite proud, quite happy to show it off.
‘There!’ he declared. ‘I don’t know who he is, or how he got here, or what happened to him. That’s up to you now, isn’t it?’
The court clerk kept coughing: so interminable were his coughing fits, it was hard not to be impatient with him, and eventually angry. There was a chief inspector from the Flying Squad whose name was Binet or Liset, a short man with fish eyes and sparse hair, who had the habit of apologizing at every opportunity. Without meaning to, he was always getting in people’s way, he and his chocolate-coloured ratine overcoat, and it became exasperating.
‘Is Nicole at home?’ Rogissart had asked, looking more put out than he’d ever been in his life.
‘She’s getting dressed. She’ll join us soon.’
‘Does she know?’
‘She was with me when I opened this door.’
Obviously, Loursat had drunk a lot, rather more than usual, and was lisping slightly. It was embarrassing in front of the court clerk and the chief inspector, as well as the deputy prosecutor, who had just arrived, and the head of the local police.
‘Does anyone in the house know this man?’
Nicole carried her entrance off well. It was surprising to see her behaving like a society lady. She seemed to be entering a drawing room where guests were waiting for her. She held out her hand to the prosecutor.
‘Good evening, cousin.’
Then she turned to the others, as if waiting for them to be introduced.
‘Gentlemen …’
It was a revelation: she had never been like this before.
‘Shall we leave the room,’ Rogissart said, upset at the sight of the corpse with his open eyes, ‘to give you a chance to have a proper look at it?’
They had adjourned to the dining room – the ground-floor drawing room hadn’t been used for years.
‘Loursat, do you mind if I question Nicole?’
‘Go ahead. If you need me, I’ll be in my study.’
Half an hour later, Rogissart had come and joined him, on his own.
‘She claims she knows nothing. This is a very bothersome business, Loursat. I’ve given orders for the body to be taken to the morgue. I don’t want to start the investigation in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to leave a man in the house.’
Loursat didn’t see any harm in that! His eyes were vaguer than ever, and the bottle on the desk was empty.
‘You really haven’t the faintest idea who he could be?’
‘None whatever!’
The tone in which he said this sounded almost like a threat. Either that, or he was making fun of his cousin.
What made the situation all the more delicate was that, even though he had become a drunkard and a recluse, he was still part of society.
True, he didn’t attend any social gatherings, but he hadn’t quarrelled with anyone and people shook his hand when they met him in the street or at the courthouse.
He drank, but he did so privately, all by himself. He was still respectable.
They had nothing to blame him for. On the contrary, they were forced to display a certain pity, to whisper:
‘What a shame! A man who was probably the most gifted in town!’
Which was true, as they realized on the rare occasions he agreed to take on a case.
They hadn’t noticed anything at first when suddenly, eighteen years earlier, a few days before Christmas, his wife had walked out, leaving him with a two-year-old baby. They had even smiled, despite themselves. For weeks, they had come up against a closed door. People like Rogissart, more or less related to Loursat, had lectured him.
‘You mustn’t let yourself go, old man. You can’t live like this, cut off from everyone, like a sick animal.’
But he could live like this – he’d been doing it for eighteen years! Eighteen years during which he hadn’t needed anyone, no friends, no mistresses, not even any servants – Fine, whom he had hired, mainly took care of Nicole.
He didn’t bother with Nicole. He ignored her, quite deliberately. He didn’t hate her – she wasn’t responsible – but he did suspect her, having cross-checked, of being the daughter of the other man, an aide to the then prefect.
This undramatic drama had made an impression on everyone. Precisely because it was more unexpected, because there hadn’t been a breath of scandal, and they hadn’t heard anything subsequently.
Her name was Geneviève. She belonged to one of the ten best families in town. She was pretty and frail. When she had married Loursat, everyone was convinced it was a love match.
For three years, there hadn’t been a bit of gossip, not a single malicious rumour. And all of a sudden she had run off with Bernard, without saying a word, and it came out that she had been his mistress for a long time, perhaps since the start of the marriage, some claimed even before.
Nobody had heard a thing about them since then, except for Geneviève’s parents, who had received a postcard from Egypt, with nothing but a signature.
His mouth furred, he walked along the corridor as far as the top of the stairs. From there he could see two men with hats on their heads, sitting downstairs on the first steps. He looked at them for a moment, with that look he had assumed over the years, a vague, heavy look, hard to interpret and painful to bear, then went up to the second floor, from where a lot of noise was coming.
Walking backwards, Chief Inspector Binet bumped into him, gave a start and stammered profuse apologies. Other men were with him, three of them, including a photographer equipped with a huge camera. They were at work in their own sweet way, with pipes or cigarettes in their mouths, measuring, rummaging, lugging the furniture about in the room where the body had been found.
‘Isn’t Prosecutor Rogissart with you?’ Loursat asked after observing the scene.
‘I don’t think he’s meant to be coming. The examining magistrate is downstairs.’
‘Who’s been appointed?’
‘Monsieur Ducup. I think he’s proceeding with the interrogations. I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’ Loursat asked calmly.
‘For … for all this mess …’
Loursat was already walking away with a shrug. It was time to go down to the cellar and stock up on wine.
The house was cold this morning, full of unaccustomed draughts and unusual noises. You met people you didn’t know going up and down the stairs. Occasionally the bell rang, and a police officer went and opened the door.
Along the street, the neighbours’ servants must be spending their time in the doorways or at the windows. Loursat climbed back up from the cellar, breathing heavily and clutching his three bottles, and kept straight ahead, heedless of all the police activity.
He was just passing the large drawing room when the door opened.
Nicole appeared, very tall and very upright, with an exaggerated impassivity, and instinctively stopped when she saw her father. Behind her loomed the figure of Ducup, dressed to the nines, curly-haired, with his weaselly face and that ironic smile he had adopted once and for all and which he thought gave him a categorical expression.
Loursat was holding a bottle in one hand and two in the other and he wasn’t embarrassed by it, despite the insistent look Ducup gave him. Nicole was also looking at the bottles, but instead of saying anything, as she’d had a vague desire to do, she sighed and walked away.
‘My dear maître …’ Ducup began.
He was thirty. He’d had strings pulled for him. He always would, because he did what was required of him. He had married a woman who squinted but who, through that marriage, connected him to the families in positions of power in the town.
‘They told me you were asleep, so I didn’t think it was right to disturb you.’
Loursat walked into the drawing room and put his bottles down on the table, a table they must have fetched from somewhere else, because it wasn’t usually there. The room was vast and bare. The waxed parquet floor was covered in dust, and there were gilded seats lined up along the walls, as if for a ball. Only the shutters on one of the four windows had been opened and, as there was no fire, Ducup had kept on his guardsman’s coat. A court clerk sitting in front of his paperwork stood up when Loursat appeared. With each step, the chandelier tinkled, a huge chandelier with crystal drops that vibrated musically at the slightest quiver in the air.
‘On the advice of Prosecutor Rogissart, I started by questioning your daughter.’
No, Loursat definitely had no desire to stay here, in this excessively vast, cold, grey room. Seeing him looking around, you had the impression he was searching for a corner in which to settle down, or perhaps for a glass for his wine.
‘Come to my study!’ he grunted, picking up his bottles again.
The court clerk wondered if he should follow. Ducup also wasn’t sure what to tell him. It was Loursat who said:
‘You’ll be called when you’re needed!’
He hadn’t yet lit the cigarette he’d had between his lips since morning and which was starting to crumble. He climbed the stairs, with Ducup following. He kicked the study door shut behind them, and now that he was in his lair he at last became himself again. He sniffed and snorted, blew his nose, took a glass from the cupboard, poured himself a drink, looked at Ducup and said, with the bottle in his hand:
‘How about it?’
‘I never drink at this hour, thank you … I’ve just had a long interview with your daughter, an interview that lasted nearly two hours. I was finally able to convince her that she would be wrong not to speak out.’
After going round in circles like a boar in his wallow, Loursat at last found the right position in his worn leather armchair, from which he only had to reach out his hand to poke the stove or pour himself a drink.
‘I don’t need to tell you, my dear maître, that when, this morning, the prosecutor gave me the somewhat daunting honour of …’
It was difficult with Loursat, because he wasn’t listening, just looking, and what his look said was:
‘Stupid idiot!’
‘It was only when he insisted that I agreed and—’
‘Cigarette?’
‘No, thank you! … It struck me as obvious that someone in the house must know where this man came from. Starting with that idea, all I had to do was choose between—’
‘Look, Ducup, why don’t you come straight out and tell me what my daughter told you?’
‘I was coming to that! I admit she took some convincing, but, having understood that she was acting on noble impulses, in this case the desire not to betray certain friendships—’
‘You’re boring me, Ducup!’
He didn’t say ‘boring’, but a coarser word, and sank further into his armchair, beginning to be suffused with the combined warmth of the wine and the stove.
‘You may now comprehend why I was so embarrassed earlier. We’re all of us happy to believe in appearances, in the superficial realities that surround us, and we find it hard to imagine that beneath these reassuring surfaces, there exists a subterranean life that—’
Loursat blew his nose loudly, cynically, just to get it over with. Offended, Ducup stiffened.
‘As you wish! The fact of the matter is that, some evenings, Mademoiselle Nicole goes out with friends, and other evenings they come here.’
He waited for the effect of this revelation, but Loursat didn’t flinch. On the contrary, he seemed rather delighted by what he was hearing.
‘To her room?’ he asked.
‘There’s a room on the second floor, apparently, a kind of storeroom, that they’ve dubbed the Chaos Bar.’
The telephone rang. Loursat did as the Dwarf had done that morning: he didn’t reply for a long time and only made up his mind when the ringing became far too insistent.
‘What is it? … Oh, it’s you, Rogissart … Yes, he’s in my study right now … No, I don’t know anything yet, he was just starting to … All right, I’ll put him on.’
Trembling, Ducup grabbed the receiver.
‘… Yes, prosecutor … Of course, prosecutor … You want me to … All right, prosecutor …’
A look at Loursat.
‘Yes, he’s here … I’m sorry? … Of course, prosecutor … I was just telling him about a group of young people who are in the habit of getting together, sometimes in town, in a bar near the market, sometimes right here … Yes, in a room on the second floor … No, not that one, another one nearby. Two weeks ago, a newcomer was introduced to the group. As a game, they got him drunk. After which, to put him to the test, they challenged him to steal a car and drive the whole group to a country inn located about ten kilometres out of town … Yes, of course I’ve made a note of the names … That’s right! I thought of it straight away. It was the deputy mayor’s car, the one that was found one morning with one wing damaged and blood on the … What? … I beg your pardon, prosecutor. I’ll just fetch the paper where I noted them down …’
What impulse other than that of annoying him could Loursat be acting on in walking round and round the room? The more impatiently, even imploringly Ducup looked at him, the more he wandered about, breathing heavily as he did so.
‘Here we are, prosecutor … First there’s Edmond Dossin … Yes, Charles Dossin’s son … I don’t know exactly. It’s hard to work out what role they each played … Then there’s Jules Daillat, the son of the pork butcher in Rue d’Allier … That’s right! I intend to get back to that. I’ve simply noted down the names … There’s a bank clerk. His father’s a cashier at the Crédit du Centre, and the son works in the same bank. Destrivaux’s the name … Yes, prosecutor … Then there’s someone named Luska, and finally the newcomer, Émile Manu. His mother’s a widow who gives piano lessons … On the way back from the country inn, Manu was in a very excitable state. They all saw something on the road, a tall figure holding his arms out. There was a thud, and the young people stopped the car, got out and found an injured man … Yes, prosecutor, Mademoiselle Nicole was with them. They must have been in a terrible fright. Apparently, this individual threatened them, and Nicole suggested taking him to her house … That’s right, unbeknown to Monsieur Loursat … No, the cook was informed the next day … Yes, of course, I’ll question her later … It was Edmond Dossin who went to fetch Dr Matray. The man had a broken leg, with a tear in the skin ten centimetres long … Yes, he’s still here …’
Obviously, they were referring to Loursat, who at that moment was calmly pouring himself a drink!
‘What’s that? … I’m sorry, there was a noise next to me … I asked her. They’ve met several times since, yes … She claims the injured man was unbearable and made all kinds of demands.’
Loursat smiled as if it had amused him to learn that for two weeks an injured man had lived under his roof, unbeknown to him, not to mention the visits of Dr Matray (they had been at school together) and the get-togethers of these young people, at least one of whom he knew: Dossin, the son of his sister, the pain in the neck, as he thought of her.
‘Obviously, yes … Yes, I see what you mean. That’s the point I myself insisted on … I got the impression she was being perfectly honest. She admitted that Émile Manu came to see her yesterday evening … Yes, the son of the widow who gives piano lessons. In fact, she gives Mademoiselle Nicole lessons too … Hello? I didn’t quite catch that … They went upstairs together to see the injured man. Then Mademoiselle Nicole took him to her room.’
An anxious glance at Loursat, who didn’t seem the least bit upset! On the contrary, it was as if he was gloating!
‘Definitely! I was surprised too … It’s possible. I did think of that. I read this book. There are examples of young women who falsely accuse themselves. But the thing is, she’s quite positive. Anyway, Manu left her at about twenty to twelve. She didn’t see him out.’
What observation did the prosecutor make at the other end? Ducup couldn’t help smiling.
‘It’s true, people just walked in and out. Apparently, the little door that leads to a side alley was never locked … She heard the gunshot soon after Émile Manu left her. She wasn’t sure whether or not to leave her room. She was just about to make up her mind when her father appeared in the corridor … Yes, it’s all going to take a lot of checking … All right, I’ll tell him … Goodbye, prosecutor.’
Feeling that he had taken a degree of revenge, Ducup hung up and turned to Loursat.
‘The prosecutor asked me to tell you that he’s very upset about all this and will do everything he possibly can to keep Mademoiselle Nicole’s name out of the newspapers. You heard what I told him, so I don’t think there’s much to add. I agree with the prosecutor: this is an extremely delicate and extremely unpleasant case for everyone.’
‘Would you mind spelling all those names for me and giving me their addresses?’
‘I don’t have all of them. For some, like Manu, your daughter wasn’t very sure … It just remains for me to ask you, on behalf of the prosecutor, to be so kind as to submit to an official interrogation. It is in your house that—’
Loursat, who had already opened the door, yelled into the corridor:
‘Get the court clerk up here! … Hey, someone down there! Get Monsieur Ducup’s court clerk up here!’
Rogissart must by now be telephoning the doleful Madame Dossin, who always dressed in pale clothes, mostly mauve, and dragged herself elegantly from one divan to another, her only real effort being to arrange flowers in vases with her slender fingers.
She was as unlike Loursat as it was possible to be. She was the refined element of the family! She had married Dossin, who affected the same elegance, and they had built the most sumptuous villa in Moulins, one of the few in which service was provided by a white-gloved butler.
‘Hello? Is that you, dear friend? How are you? … I’m sorry, but I have to inform you that your son … Oh, of course, we’ll do everything we can …’
Loursat could almost hear the telephone call and see his sister, surrounded by cushions and flowers, fall into a panic, call for a maid and treat herself to a complete swoon.
‘You called me, sir?’
‘Please take down Monsieur Loursat’s statement.’
‘Hector Dominique François Loursat de Saint-Marc,’ Loursat recited with fierce irony. ‘Lawyer at the Moulins bar. Forty-eight years old. Husband of Geneviève Loursat, née Grosillière, who walked out without leaving an address.’
The court clerk raised his head and looked at his boss, wondering if he should transcribe these last words.
‘Write this: “I have no idea what Mademoiselle Nicole Loursat did or may have done. I have no idea what happened in the rooms of my house that I do not occupy, and in any case it is no concern of mine. Having thought I heard a gunshot on Wednesday night, I made the mistake of taking an interest in the matter, and discovered a man I do not know, lying dead of a bullet wound in a bed on the second floor. I have nothing else to say.”’
He turned to Ducup, who was crossing and uncrossing his legs.
‘Cigarette?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Burgundy?’
‘I already told you.’
‘That you never drink at this hour. Too bad! Now …’
He waited, clearly indicating that he wanted to be alone in his study.
‘I must also ask your permission to question your servant. As for the maid who was dismissed yesterday evening, she is already being sought. You should understand better than anyone—’
‘Than anyone, yes!’
‘The dead man’s photograph and prints have been sent to Paris, thanks to Chief Inspector Binet.’
At which Loursat grunted for no reason, as if humming a refrain:
‘Poor Binet!’
‘He’s a valued public servant who—’
‘Oh yes, much valued!’
He hadn’t even finished his first bottle. On the other hand, that morning’s foul mood had gone, as had the bad taste in his mouth and the feeling of emptiness in his head.
‘It’s possible I may need to—’
‘Do whatever you have to do!’
‘But …’
To hell with Ducup! Loursat had had enough and opened the door.
‘You must see that I’ve done all I can to—’
‘Yes, Monsieur Ducup.’
In his mouth, the name sounded like an insult.
‘As for the reporters—’
‘You’ll sort that out, won’t you?’
Just get out and do it, for heaven’s sake! Impossible to think clearly with a face like Ducup’s in front of one’s eyes! He’d even managed to fill the study with the reek of his scent or his brilliantine!
So, Nicole …
He shook hands with Ducup, and even with the court clerk, just to get it over with, and locked the door behind them.
Nicole …
He went to stoke the stove, and the flames almost licked his legs.
Nicole …
He walked twice round the study, poured himself a full glass of wine, knocked it back standing up, then sat down and stared at the piece of paper on which he had scribbled the names Ducup had mentioned.
Nicole …
And he’d taken her for a big, gawky, obtuse girl!
A car drove away: probably Ducup. People were wandering all over the house.
What could Nicole possibly be doing?