old woman is leaning just far enough out of the left one to catch sight of him.
“Who do you want?” she cries when she realizes she has been seen. “No one’s here. You’d better leave, young man.”
Her tone is suspicious and cold, but nevertheless something about it hints at the possibility of getting around her. Wallas assumes his most agreeable manner:
“You’re Madame Smite, aren’t you?”
“What did you say?”
“You’re Madame Smite, aren’t you?” he repeats, somewhat louder.
This time she answers as if she had understood long before:
“Yes, of course! What do you want Madame Smite fori” And without waiting she adds in her shrill voice: “If it’s for the telephone, I can tell you now that you’ve come too late, young man: there’s no one here any more!”
“No, Madame, that’s not what it’s about. I’d like to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time to stay and talk. I’m packing my things.”
Wallas is shouting now, by contagion and almost as loudly as the old woman. He insists:
“Listen, Madame Smite, I only want to ask you for a little information.”
The old woman still does not seem to have made up her mind to let him in. He has stepped back so that she can see him more easily: his respectable clothes certainly count in his favor. And finally the housekeeper declares, before disappearing into the room: “I can’t understand a word you’re saying, young man. I’ll come down.”
But quite a while passes, and nothing at all happens. Wallas is on the point of calling, fearing she has forgotten all about him, when suddenly the window in the front door opens without his having heard the slightest noise in the hall, and the old woman’s face presses up against the grill.
“So you’re here for the telephone, are you?” she shrieks stubbornly (and just as loudly, though she is now six inches from her interlocutor). “That makes a week we’ve been waiting for you, young man! You’re not coming from an asylum, at least, like the one last night?”
Wallas is somewhat baffled.
“Well, I…” he begins, supposing she’s referring to the clinic, “I stopped by there but…”
The old housekeeper interrupts him at once, outraged:
“What? Does the company hire only lunatics? And you’ve probably stopped in every cafe on the way too, before you got here, haven’t you?”
Wallas remains calm. Laurent has suggested that the woman sometimes said funny things; still, he did not think she was this crazy. He will have to explain the matter to her carefully, articulating each word so she can understand what he is saying:
“No, listen, Madame, you’re making a mistake “
But Wallas suddenly remembers the two cafes he was in this morning-and the one he has slept in as well; these are facts he cannot deny, although he does not see why he should be blamed for them. Besides, why should he bother himself about these grotesque accusations?
“It’s a misunderstanding. It’s not the company that’s sending me.” (That, at least, he can state without any ambiguity whatever.)
“Then what’s this all about, young man?” the suspicious face replies.
An interrogation is not going to be easy under these conditions! Probably her employer’s murder has unsettled the housekeeper’s mind.
“I told you I’m not here for the telephone,” Wallas repeats, forcing himself to be patient.
“Well,” she exclaims, “you don’t have to shout so loud, you know. I’m not deaf!” She reads lips, obviously. “And if you’re not here for the telephone, there’s no use talking.”
Preferring not to bring up the subject again, Wallas quickly explains the purpose of his visit. To his great surprise, he makes himself understood without the slightest difficulty: Madame Smite agrees to let him come in. But instead of opening the door, she remains staring at him, behind the grill that half conceals her face. Through the opening in the window which she is about to close again, she remarks, finally, with a touch of reproach (shouldn’t he have known about it long since?):
“Not through this door, young man. It’s too hard to open. You can walk around to the back.”
And the window closes with a click. As he walks down the steps to the gravel path, Wallas feels her eyes fixed on him from the darkness of the hall.
Nevertheless old Anna hurries toward the kitchen. This gentleman has a nicer look about him than the two who came last night, with their red faces and their big boots. They went all over the place to do their dirty work and did not even listen to what they were told. She had to keep a close watch over them, for fear they might take something; their looks did not inspire much confidence. What if they were accomplices who had come to look for what the thief had not been able to steal when he ran away? This one looks less shrewd-and keeps getting mixed up in a lot of nonsense before coming to the point-but certainly he is better brought up. Monsieur Dupont always wanted her to let people in through the front door. The locks are too complicated. Now that he is dead, they can just as well walk around.
Wallas arrives at the little glass door the commissioner has mentioned to him. He knocks on a pane with his forefinger doubled up. Since the old housekeeper has disappeared again, he tries to turn the handle; the door is not locked. He pushes it open, it creaks on its hinges, like the door in an abandoned house-haunted maybe-where each movement provokes a flight of owls and bats. But once the door is closed, no rustle of wings disturbs the silence. Wallas takes a few hesitant steps; his eyes, growing used to the dimness, glances around the woodwork, the complicated moldings, the brass column at the foot of the staircase, the carpets, everything that constituted the ornaments of a bourgeois residence early in the century.
Wallas starts, suddenly hearing Madame Smite’s voice calling him from the end of the hallway. He turns around and sees the figure silhouetted against the glass door. For a second he has the impression that he has just been caught in a trap.
It is the kitchen she has asked him to come into, a lifeless kitchen that looks like a model: the stove perfectly polished, the paint spotless, a row of copper pots fastened to the wall, and so well-scrubbed no one would dare use them. There is no suggestion of the daily preparation of meals; the few objects that are not shut away in the cupboards seem fixed forever ia their places on the shelves.
The old lady, dressed in black, is almost elegant despite her felt slippers; besides, this is the only detail that indicates she is at home here and not visiting an empty house. She tells Wallas to sit down opposite her and begins immediately:
“Well, it’s some story!”
But her loud voice, instead of sounding distressed, seems to Wallas like a clumsy exclamation in a play. He would swear, now, that the row of pots is painted on the wall in trompe-l’oeil. The death of Daniel Dupont is no more than an abstract event being discussed by dummies.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” the housekeeper shrieks, so loudly that Wallas moves his chair back a few inches. He is already preparing a sentence expressing his condolences, but without leaving him time to get it out, she continues, leaning a little closer to him: “Well, I’m going to tell you, my boy, I’m going to tell you who killed him, so listen to me!”
“You know who killed Dupont?” Wallas asks, flabbergasted.
“It’s that Doctor Juard. The one with the sly face. I went to call him myself because-it’s true-I was forgetting to tell you: they cut the telephone wires here. Yes! Since the day before yesterday…no, even before that: I’m losing track now. What is it today…Monday…”
“Tuesday,” Wallas corrects timidly.
“What did you say?”
“Today is Tuesday,” Wallas repeats.
She moves her lips as she watches him talk, then squints incredulously. But she continues: you have to make such concessions to stubborn children.
“All right, say Tuesday. Well, as I was saying, the telephone hasn’t been working since…Sunday, Saturday, Friday…”
“Madame, are you saying it was Doctor Juard who murdered Daniel Dupont?” Wallas interrupts.
“Of course that’s what I’m saying, young man! Besides, everyone knows he’s a murderer; go out and ask
