Things happened fast. There was a timid little pip-pip at the front door bell, and in the same moment there was a loud terrifying shattering explosion.
Arthur, who had just put on a resigned ‘I’ll take it’ expression, ran. Arlette ran. Everybody in the house was suddenly running. As in a movie when a swirl of patterns will freeze into sudden immobility they were all standing still, grouped in silly attitudes, hands and feet poised in mid-air, mouths open, at the bottom of the staircase. In the hallway was smoke, a sharp pungent smell of explosives, a tremendous mess. There were bits of paper and debris everywhere. The groundfloor tenant, Monsieur Lupescu, an inscrutable oriental gentleman who was an expert on East European languages, was standing unperturbed in his doorway. Doctor Joachim Rauschenberg, tall and thin, was arranged in a storklike attitude, contemplating the unhappy follies of deranged humanity. The third floor, an impressive technical something in Electricité de France, was absent but the owner, from the top, known to Arthur as ‘Little Miss Flite’ because she had always a reticule stuffed with documents, was in hands-on-hips indignation. As is also usual everybody started talking at once.
‘Somebody rang and I thought who on earth can that be at this hour…’
‘Nothing like plastic; plastic leaves a disgusting mess.’ ‘Cops; journalists; I was just wondering what next?’
‘Just like New Year’s Eve. Horrible children put bangers in the letterboxes.’
‘There was nothing in them anyhow but publicity rubbish.’
‘They needed replacing anyhow, tatty old things.’
Nobody was worried, nobody looked accusingly at Arlette and said, ‘This is your fault.’
‘I’ll get on to the carpenter straight away; obliging little man.’
‘They won’t try that again. However, one will keep one’s eye open.’
‘A nasty mess – it drew my attention, I thought well, I must tell Doctor Davidson –’ Arlette, going back to get the vacuum cleaner and a wet rag, stopped dead at her freshly painted front door. A big smear of blood. A pinkish heap of guts or lungs. Somebody had asked the butcher for debris: somebody with lots of cats … It was much nastier than the bits of red paper from bangers tied in a bundle and dropped in a confined space.
She set her teeth, dumped the filth in the bucket, threw it down the lavatory and returned with disinfectant. When she got back she was touched to find Miss Flite picking up splinters, Mr Lupescu energetically pushing the vacuumcleaner and Arthur scrubbing at the smoke stains. Doctor Rauschenberg was on her landing, taking a professional look at the woodwork.
‘Not nice for you,’ said Arlette, setting to.
‘Oh my dear girl! That’s nothing. Adolescent theatricals; if one allowed oneself to be shaken or intimidated by such things! Ask Madame Fuchs to tell you the tale of a rather tiresome patient of mine who pursued her all over the house with a loaded revolver. He was cross because I was away.’
‘What did she do?’ she asked, fascinated with this new light on Miss Flite.
‘She asked him in, sat him down, talked uninterruptedly for three quarters of an hour and when rather naturally the poor chap fell asleep she crept out still as a mouse and called the police. This house has seen more. When you’ve finished that I’d be grateful if you’d find a moment to come in to me …
‘You see, I owe you an apology. Would you like a kirsch? A small cigar? I snubbed you over poor Siegel. Who’s a good enough chap but tiresomely up-in-arms about all sorts of things, as I rather gather you’ve had cause to find out.
‘You see, he came from quite a humble background, and is conscious, uncomfortably, of an arriviste streak. A smack of the nouveau riche? Marrying into the professor’s family … he wanted very badly to acquire the life-style. He felt – this is important – dreadfully let down by the wife who ran away. Was that, just a bit, he wonders secretly and it eats him; due to his rigidity, to his straining to attain? You follow. He missed a professorship. Is it surprising that a certain rancour is transferred, without his being in the least aware, to the girl? I recognized little whatsaname, Marie-Line isn’t it, on your staircase. Remember seeing her as a child. You understand too, her being a girl was a disappointment.’
‘Isn’t there a brother?’
‘There is indeed, a somewhat priggish young man, a goody-goody y’know, a model of virtue whom one instinctively desires to kick in the constipated fundament.’
‘This becomes a classic.’
‘But naturally. Now what I thought of asking – would it be of any service to you were I to ring Freddy Ulrich – in your presence – and ask him to have a word with you?’
‘That would help a lot,’ gratefully.
‘You know where he lives?’ dialling. ‘That new block in the Contades. Doctor Ulrich please … Not my own taste, but … Freddy – Jo Rauschenberg. My friend and neighbour, Madame Davidson, would much like to exchange a word with you, on a subject you both have somewhat at heart. Be a good idea, I rather think? … Yes, I should think that would fit in fine; I’ll ask her shall I? If you dash, he’ll fit you in before his first patient – yes, that’s splendid; right then: how’s the world with you? Great, and my regards to Julie. Till one of these days then old boy.’
‘That’s very kind. Tell me, purely as a general opinion, people who make attacks like this – are they dangerous?’
‘Dangerous – no. People who smear blood about the place, would they commit a crime of blood; that could be difficult to say. In rare combinations one would have to say, possibly. But putting bundles of fireworks in the letterbox, no. Violent yes, in the sense of a personality unable to express itself through normal channels. Emotionally crippled and of course frequently intellectually retarded. Not the pattern of our friend Armand Siegel,’ smiling. ‘That’ll settle down and sort itself out.’
‘I’m really grateful.’
‘Excellent,’ approved Arthur. ‘You whizz off and I’ll hold the fort. Masculine presence, to soothe Miss Flite. Rather odd though,’ added Doctor Davidson. ‘Have to ask old Joachim. Things in the paper, quite small things, often provoke hostile manifestations, but this seemed too elaborately planned for that.’
‘As long as nobody takes it seriously,’ she said. ‘It’s awfully comforting to see everyone show such solidarity.’
‘Us bourgeois my love, clubbing together instinctively. Off you go or Freddy’ll be getting his duodenum in a twist.’
‘I’m whizzing,’ snapping her lipstick shut and making a bolt for the lavatory.
‘Don’t you drive too fast,’ recommended Arthur.