CLOTHILDE
The weather was still the same, which was never the same two half-hours running. The sun came out and blazed hotly; a heat intolerable because of humidity. The most inoffensive meadow became a steaming great jungle full of biting insects. The sun went in, and another cloudburst caught you in your shirt, left you sodden and shivering.
It played nasty jokes, like snatching your hat off and emptying a bucket of stinging hail upon your ears.
Even in the city everything that was green and grew, grew too much and too fast. Crowds of flowering shoots poked menacing fingers in your mouth; riots of vulgar foliage slapped you in the eye. It had a lusty smell, like a girl gymnast just off the floor. So, as a trainee posted to crowd control, not yet in the Police Judiciaire, had he first seen Vera, pungent from her ground exercise, pulse hammering in the muscled throat. He’d been standing by the barrier watching – a gymnast himself in a small, police sports club way. He’d said a joking word to her in his funny, broken German.
Wind came in violent gusts, snapping off the fragile, rain-heavy young branches and scattering them in the street. The trees didn’t mind. They were growing so much and so fast. Even in the concrete desert they could afford to show arrogance. In prim suburban streets robust and rustic trunks of wood came and leaned on fences, laughing at the scrawny little trees cowering inside.
She hadn’t understood, and smiled nervously. That was on the first day. A week later, at the end of the competition, the moment when tensions were relaxed and even the watchfulness of women trainers straying (the children allowed to stuff themselves with indigestible food, and even drink a glass of champagne) she had appeared, hair neatly combed, clutching a pathetic overnight bag. Age nineteen. Gawd, like something out of the Constant Nymph. "I’m running away" she said calmly, much too calmly. A lot of trouble she’d brought with her. Ten years back. A lot, and very little.
The Czechs started by making a great fuss, and then suddenly changed tack, laughed it off. No loss. Lousy gymnast anyhow. Only brought as substitute for a good one. Disruptive, disobedient girl. Nasty little bourgeois whore.
He’d had a fearful black eye. "You weren’t put there to seduce little iron-curtain girls" screamed his commissaire. Seduce! If they could have seen her…arms and legs tight-crossed, glaring at him. Nothing had ever been more difficult to get into bed. What a bashing the child had taken. He’d taken one too. Lucky for him he’d passed out from police-school already, and with a high mark. He hadn’t been punished finally. Been sent here, and not to Paris. This was his home, now. He didn’t regret Paris. Vera didn’t regret Bratislava. Scarred, yes, but resilient.
They’d watched the last gymnastics championship together on the television, perfectly detached and professional. Unselfconscious hard little behinds. Tanned thighs barred with chalk powder. The dignity of these children…
"The Hungarians are excellent."
"The Russians aren’t that much, really. Except lovely Nelli."
"She’s worth the other five. Ha." Curt laugh from Vera. "Comaneci has bloody well insisted that she was going to wear underpants."
A drink at the end. "Kim should have had all the gold medals."
"Including a few given to the men. So – to Nelli?"
"Yes, I’m all for married gymnasts myself. Their rhythms are better." The wind took his hat off as he got out of the car. He was tired. There was lead in the boots. The bushes on either side of Clothilde’s little gate leaned over and brushed against him. His hair needed clipping too.
She let him in looking much the same as last time; a lot of silk scarf and jumper, well-cut skirt swinging on those long segments. She got clothes cheap, of course, from that dress-shop. Even so, she had plenty of money to spend. Well, a few part-time jobs, not declared to the tax office or the social security – she’d be making more than he did.
"I thought I was finished with the police. After Mr Thing was here, and turned the desk upside down."
"One is never altogether finished with the police, you see, as long as a homicide investigation continues."
"So I see. I begin to feel quite guilty. What happens, when you don’t catch anybody?"
"These cases aren’t necessarily classified. They can go on for years. They may lie dormant. Waiting for a little fact, trivial-seeming."
"How many years?"
"There’s a prescription. After a certain number, a criminal act is deemed in law to have become extinguished. Otherwise there would be cases stretching back to the years after the war."
"And during the war?"
"No – the Germans destroyed all the criminal files when they left. Since then – it’s all there in the archive. Paper, paper. It’s what most of our work consists of."
"So that I’m going down in the archive?"
"As a witness, yes. Not in the archive. You’re part of a very active file," pleasantly.
"This is a sobering thought. I’d like to know why. I had decided you’d understood – that my connection with Etienne was at best – well, narrow. And that you had gathered all the information relevant to it, on your last visit."
"What did Monsieur Richard say?"
"Is that his name, who was here?"
"Yes, he’s the Divisional Commissaire. My chief."
"He asked quite politely whether Etienne had left papers here, and might he look. Rummage, was his word. He did, too. Was that just a pretext? He came really to take a good look at me?"
"He didn’t say, or not to me."
"At least he didn’t make any indecent proposals, as you did, even as a sort of nasty joke."
"Yes, that was unfair. I did apologise. I will again."
"I’ve put it out of my mind. Well, what is it you’re poking at now?"
"As you say, your connection is narrow. Tangential was a word used, in discussion. Fringe, was another, as I recall. There are other figures like yourself, standing as it were on the rim of Monsieur Marcel’s circle."
"I haven’t much interest in them, whoever they are, since I don’t know them. I’m interested in what importance, or significance, I can possibly have."
"You had concluded there was none?"
"Concluded – I don’t know what I concluded. It’s a final sort of word. I’d assumed – you said something about a Judge of Instruction, she might ask to see me. I’d heard nothing, I suppose, yes, I concluded that the matter was finished with. You promised me discretion, if I was frank with you. I’m not all that ashamed about my relations with Etienne, but I don’t exactly go flaunting them from the housetop."
"I’ve come to call on you in mid-afternoon, anonymous in an unmarked car. Nothing indiscreet in that, is there? Friends and acquaintances do drop in? It wouldn’t arouse gossip? Or you wouldn’t care that much if it did?"
"Of course not – I wonder simply why you choose so to spend your time. And mine."
"But I’ll tell you perfectly frankly. We speak of a circle, as a loose image for friends and relations. People like Etienne Marcel have several. Some business, others personal. Figures like yourself, as we agree peripheral, they have their own circle. These groups often interlock. In this way, a man does not know fifty or a hundred people. He knows ten thousand. One of those ten thousand killed Etienne Marcel."
"I’m afraid I’m completely confused, and that I haven’t followed at all."
"Take yourself. You’d say your circle of acquaintance was small. Then start including the people whom you know at work. Customers, say, at the shop, or guests at the restaurant. Whose names you know, with whom you’d exchange a few friendly words."
"You seem to know a good deal about my rather boring doings. Again, I had no idea I was such an object of interest."
"That’s commonplace routine. Exactly the same if you want to do business with, say, an insurance company. They like to gather a bit of information – stroll round the neighbourhood, does this lady seem a trustworthy sort of person? Banks do it, if you ask for an overdraft. Nothing secret or indecently prying, really. We do the same. It’s to be expected. Your phone isn’t tapped."
"I should certainly hope not: I shouldn’t hesitate to complain if I thought it were."
"The purpose of my coming was nothing of any great consequence. To ask, perhaps, whether in your circle – we’re not talking about Etienne now – in the village and around the town, you’d hear first and last a lot of casual personal gossip. Mm?"
"Any woman working in such places, since you seem to know all about them, is bound to hear a lot of gossip. If of course you listen to it, which I don’t much. Much of it’s catty."
"Like who’s sleeping with who and so forth?" lazily.
"Was I right the first time, and the police are really only interested in sex?"
"I don’t remember what I said, then. A joke, possibly. I’ll say now more seriously that the police are interested in human relationships. Sex is a fairly frequent manifestation. And we’re interested in solitude, a thing which makes people join little clubs and groups and clans."
"Uh?" sounding puzzled.
"A lot of lonely and bored people take up exciting-sounding pastimes. Key parties and stuff. Particularly when they haven’t children. Ever hear gossip of that sort?"
She seemed startled.
"I – no. Dear heaven, no. Sounds," with humour and a touch of malice "as though you’d been reading ‘True Detective’. Seriously, there’s not really much of that, is there? I mean these stories – made up, I’d have thought, for the sort of man that collects girly pictures."
"Some of them."
"I feel that in your eyes I’m a sort of call-girl. Which, dear Inspector, I ain’t. I have a living to earn, yes. I hardly think you’d be so old-fashioned and provincial as to claim I ‘wasn’t respectable’ because of a discreet liaison in my private life and a part-time job. I’ve read these stories, as one does at the hairdresser’s, just as one reads about Amsterdam, or the Bois de Boulogne, and these places I suppose attract the timid and the feeble. But because you’re brought into contact with a lot of people like that you mustn’t imagine too far."
He said nothing, which seemed to disconcert her.
"I suppose I’m very innocent but I swear I don’t know how to take you." Half-laugh; humorous despair in a wrist movement with the big strong hands. "When you were here last I got the idea, clumsily I suppose and over-hastily, that you were the sort who abuses official powers. Since I was in a vulnerable position, without even the protection Etienne could have given me, I was frightened. It doesn’t do – I know that much – to get on the wrong side of the police."
He still said nothing. She looked at him with her face twitching; collected herself by going to take a cigarette from the box.
"I think you’re playing with my fears in a rather odious way."
"Don’t exaggerate," he said, getting up and looking for his hat. "I think you’re well able to look after yourself. I came for no other purpose than I said, to ask whether your acquaintanceship included any other member of Monsieur Marcel’s family or friends."
"I thought it was the second time I’d said no to that."
"Furthermore you can relax. The examining magistrate has shown no great interest in your private affairs, has no desire to pester you, and it’s likely will content herself with asking you for a formal statement concerning your relationship and its extent. There’ll be nothing odious about that. These visits from the Commissaire and myself have been verifications of what we have learned elsewhere. We’re quite satisfied."
"Had you already thought – did you get told – that Etienne and I went out to key parties or whatever these awful games are called? Hadn’t you believed me? I told you – I tell you again – Etienne was terribly discreet. We never went out together. I never met his friends or his family. I know his wife, at the riding club, just enough to say hello to. She probably scarcely knows my name. I told you all this. She’s a business woman. She has no animus against me, nor I against her. It was completely separate."
"Please don’t work yourself up. No doubt has been cast on what you told me."
"Is it true she tried to commit suicide?… Poor woman. But it’s not my fault – I swear it."
"It’s among the things that, you understand, bother us."
"I suppose you’ve asked them at the riding club."
"No more than was necessary. And believe me, they know how to be discreet too. They have to be, you realise. If they started spreading gossip about their customers they’d soon be out of business."
"And you’ll leave me alone? You won’t spread gossip about me? You promise?"
"We have better things to do, you know."
"I mean persecuting people about their private lives."
"Exactly. Infringements of the criminal code are enough to keep our plate full, I promise you."
"Popping in with nasty insinuations. Or twisting my arm about ‘living with’ a man or something."
"This isn’t Libya you know," grinning. "You aren’t in danger of being stoned or whatever. We’ve neither the time nor the inclination. Goodbye then, Madame."
Altogether too much of a hypocrite? wondered Castang. No more than at all times. It’s a government-approved additive, hypocrisy. Passed by the US Department of Agriculture. Nothing that causes any ill-effect in white mice. But to get back home will be good. I only wish I didn’t have to go out again.
If Vera says she won’t have it – then I won’t. And the hell with it. I have, after all, three people tonight at my disposal.
He had to go to the hospital, to see what shape Noelle was in. The reception here, for the Police Judiciaire, was chilly.
"Doctor Beauvois wants to see you." An elusive pimpernel, but run to earth at last. Very unforthcoming.
"I’m not going to let you see her, you know. And I’ll take full responsibility for that. Neither physically nor psychologically is she in any shape for being nagged at. I won’t compromise on that, and I’ll tell the Judge of Instruction as much, or anybody else. A week, at least. If then. Her condition is no longer critical but it is dangerous. I’m not having my patient put at risk and that’s flat."
"You’ll discuss it though. Do me this credit. It was myself that followed her, found her, brought her in. And gave the details to the Emergency Receiving Officer. Okay? Ten minutes of your time?" The medical person rifled through his papers, glanced suspiciously up at this police person.
"You’re Monsieur Castang? Hm. All right. I’m not sure how much credit you should have. Apart from rescuing her from this state it seems to me likely that you put her into it. Still, I’ll give you the ten minutes."
"Description of her condition?"
"Weak, profoundly exhausted, danger of pulmonary infection, apathy: she’s under sedation. Psychologically of course no diagnosis has yet been possible. Profound depression and anxiety. Apart from all else you could place no reliances on anything she said."
"What if anything has she said?"
"Covered under professional confidence. No soap. Nothing, I’ll tell you, fit for you to hear."
"Does she speak of her husband, her family, of other persons – who is uppermost in her mind? No harm in that." But the face was unyielding.
"Good; shock, and loss of blood, and a toxic condition, okay, I understand the gravity. But perturbed, in a real psychiatric sense?"
"A suicide attempt, dear sir, is itself a sign of gravely impaired equilibrium, even when faked or feigned. Is the expression ‘cry for help’ either too simple or too sentimental for you? I have no means yet of knowing what brought on this condition, whether it be chronic or deep-seated. Before risking an opinion I would take a colleague into consultation. I wish to see her first healed, reassured, rested. Meaning I’ll keep her well away from the likes of you," looking at his watch, "and those will be the instructions I’ll give to all the personnel."
Castang was too used to the hostility of medical persons to be bothered. Richard would shrug. If Madame le Juge, armed with majesty of the law, sought a confrontation with the quacks, she was welcome to go ahead.
"One question then. As far as you can judge from what you’ve seen and heard, do you feel able to say this: an attempt like this is an effort to escape from a position felt to be intolerable?"
"Platitude. Truism. Not too fine a point on it, cliché."
"A situation that is painful? Or a threat, a definite menace, even if undefined?" Ferocious frown.
"You’re muddling terms you don’t understand. The wish to escape, to flee, is precipitated by fear. Use layman’s terms like shame, or disgust, or inability to cope, and you’ll get nowhere. Insecurities, anxieties: it’s the child that hides under the bedclothes."
"We’re talking about a basically tough person. Hardy, independent, strong-willed, highly self-reliant."
"There’s no such thing as a basically tough person. All that you describe may be compensation factors, developed to defend a personality. This is all futile. You people see things in terms of guilt or innocence, and we’re not in court. No diagnosis can be arrived at without clinical observation, and what your judge can do is name experts, to conduct or confirm the same. Attempt to invalidate if he so desires; somebody generally does."
"A state like this, just as a hypothesis that could be helpful, in general terms, would easily be brought on by knowledge of a crime? I don’t say participation. Perhaps a certain sense of responsibility? One could have forewarned or one could have prevented, say for example."
The medical person adopted a humorous air.
"Such a state, we could say equally accurately and with even less fear of contradiction, might be brought on just by having you people under one’s feet. I’d better run before I start thinking about an overdose of barbiturates. Time’s up, mon vieux, and I’m a busy man."
"Incidentally, was there any other drug besides aspirin?"
"No. If you must come back at all, come back in a fortnight."
He’d have to do the best he could, with Thérèse.