Woman in the Fifth

He reached into the file and pulled out a faded Xerox copy of a newspaper article. It was from Le Figaro and dated September 23, 1980. The headline read:

EXECUTIVE MURDERED

AT HOME IN SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE

BEREAVED WOMAN SUSPECTED

This story outlined the facts of the murder — how Dupre had been surprised in his bed in the middle of a Saturday night; how the attack had been very frenzied; how the murderer had used a shower in the house, then left a note in the kitchen: For Judit and Zoltan. A neighbor who had been up early saw a woman leaving the house around 5 a.m. and heading to the metro — and the police now wanted to question Margit Kadar, whose husband and daughter had been killed by Dupre in a hit-and-run accident several weeks earlier.

‘This is unbelievable,’ I said.

Coutard reached into the file and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph and pushed it across his desk. It was a police photo — black and white, but still shockingly lurid. Dupre was shown strewn across a bloodstained bed — huge black blotches surrounding him — his chest ripped open in several places; his face and head gashed horribly.

I sucked in my breath and pushed the photograph back to Coutard.

‘To call this attack “frenzied” would be to exercise understatement,’ Coutard said. ‘This was a murder committed in white-hot rage; the killer unable to desist even after the fatal blow was struck. What most intrigued the investigating inspector at the time were two interrelated aspects to the case: its meticulous planning and the fact that the murderer clearly wanted the police — and the public — to know that she was responsible. The police checked Madame Kadar’s phone records after the attack. It seems she had rung the Dupre household the night before the attack. In his report, the inspector presumed that she was calling on a pretext — perhaps using a false voice to ask for his wife and simultaneously finding out that he was at home that weekend. How did the police work this out? Because Madame Kadar’s phone records also show that she called Madame Dupre on the same Friday evening at the apartment in Saint-Germain-en-Laye to which she had moved with her son, having first obtained this new number from Directory Enquiries. Madame Dupre remembered the call when she was questioned by the police — a woman, sounding very French, telling her that she got this number from her husband, and that she was working for a company selling holiday apartments near Biarritz and she would like to send Madame some information, and should she use her husband’s address? Madame Dupre then informed her that she no longer lived with her husband, and that she wasn’t interested in a holiday apartment near Biarritz, and hung up the phone.

‘So Madame Kadar now knew that Dupre lived alone and was at home that weekend. The attack happened the following night around four. Madame Kadar had visited Saint-Germain-en-Laye earlier that day. The same neighbor who spotted her leaving the Dupre home at five that morning saw someone looking carefully at the house the previous afternoon — walking around it, inspecting every aspect of it. But as Dupre had it on the market, the neighbor thought it was just a prospective buyer. When Madame Kadar returned that night, she entered through a window that had been left open on the ground floor. She evidently made no noise, as Dupre was surprised by her in bed. We have no idea whether she briefly woke him before beginning the attack or murdered him while he was asleep … though the medical examiner postulated that Dupre must have woken up as soon as the first blow was struck and was therefore aware of his assailant. The police were fairly certain that Madame Kadar wanted Dupre to see it was her — as this was an obvious act of revenge.

‘Afterward, Madame Kadar stripped off her clothes and used Dupre’s bathroom to have a shower. She left her blood-splattered clothes on the bathroom floor and the knife by the bed. She had evidently arrived with a small suitcase containing a change of clothes — and after dressing, she went down to the kitchen and made coffee and waited—’

‘She made coffee after knifing him like that?’

‘The first train doesn’t leave Saint-Germain-en-Laye until 5.23 a.m. She didn’t want to be waiting outside the station — so, yes, she made coffee and wrote that simple note, For Judit and Zoltan. It sounds like a book dedication, doesn’t it? Besides being an act of revenge perhaps she considered this murder to be a creative act. Certainly her planning was most creative. She left the house around five. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the station. She boarded the first train and changed for the metro at Chatelet. There she proceeded to the Gare de l’Est and bought a first-class ticket to Budapest. She even paid for a separate sleeping compartment. She had to give her own name when booking the first-class compartment. This she did. But she evidently gambled that no one would be stopping by the Dupre house on Sunday … or that if it was discovered, it would still take the police most of the day to figure out she was the murderer, and to alert Interpol that she was now on the run. In other words she had, at a minimum, a clear twenty-four hours to get to Budapest. As it turned out, she gambled right. Dupre’s body wasn’t discovered until late Monday afternoon when he failed to show up for work, and his employers called his wife. She went back to his house and came upon the crime scene. Of course, she was immediately considered the prime suspect — the spouse always is in a case of a murder in the home — until the forensics showed that Madame Kadar’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon and that the bloodstained clothes left behind were not Madame Dupre’s.’

‘How did you have her fingerprints on file?’

‘All resident aliens are fingerprinted. Also, in 1976 Madame Kadar became a French citizen — so she was re- fingerprinted. However, as she was traveling as a Frenchwoman, she had to apply for a visa at the Hungarian Embassy here in Paris. At the time, the Communist regime didn’t allow foreigners to obtain an entry permit at their border … especially former citizens. Madame Kadar applied for this visa fourteen days before she murdered Dupre, stating that she wanted to visit family members there.’

‘But she hated Hungary … especially after what had happened to her father.’

‘What had happened to her father?’

I told him everything Margit had told me. Several times during this recitation, he looked down at the file, as if he was comparing the story I was telling with that which he had inside this battered, thick manila folder. When I finished, I asked, ‘Does that correspond with the information you have?’

‘Naturally the Hungarian police — who cooperated with us during our investigation — also informed us of the findings of their investigations into the two murders that Madame Kadar committed on her return to Budapest.’

‘She killed Bodo and Lovas?’

Long silence. Coutard glared at me. He put down the file. He lit a cigarette. He took several deep thoughtful drags, never once taking his eyes off me. Finally: ‘I am trying to discern the game you are playing, monsieur. You are under investigation for two murders, and you simultaneously show extensive knowledge of a sequence of murders carried out here and in Budapest by a woman who killed herself in Hungary shortly after murdering her second victim there.’

‘She cut her throat after killing Bodo?’

‘No, after killing Lovas. But let us not digress from the issue of concern to me: why you know so much about this case. Please do not repeat that preposterous alibi that she told you all about this. I will not accept such absurdities. So how and why did you garner all this information? You are a writer, yes? Perhaps someone told you about this case — it got quite a bit of publicity at the time. You were intrigued, and using the Internet, you found out all the details of the case. And now, under suspicion for two murders yourself, you spin this absurd tale of an affair with a dead woman in an attempt to—’

‘Were there any reports in the Hungarian papers about the reason why she returned to Budapest to murder Bodo and Lovas?’

‘You interrupted me again.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You do that once more, I’ll send you back to the cells for twenty-four hours.’

Won’t you be sending me back there anyway?

Coutard reopened the file and spent several minutes studying some more old photocopied pages.

‘We have a selection of the Hungarian press clippings about the case, and a French translation provided for us. Given the nature of the regime back then, the official reason given as to why she murdered Bodo and Lovas was, “These two brave defenders of Hungary had arrested Madame Kadar’s father when he was spreading ‘seditious lies against the homeland’” … that’s an exact quote. According to the State media, he subsequently killed himself while