A pause.
“Marchat, tell me the truth, you really don’t want to go get those papers, do you?”
“Yes I do…oh yes I just think it isn’t…exactly safe.”
“It is for you! That’s just why I’m not asking someone in the group to do it. They don’t have anything against you! You know they don’t kill just anyone whenever they feel like it. In the last nine days there’s been a murder committed regularly, between seven and eight at night, every day, as if they had made this little detail into a rule. I’m yesterday’s victim and my case seems to have been closed. Today they’ve chosen their new victim, and it’s obviously not you-it probably won’t even be in this city. Besides, you’ll be going to my house in broad daylight, when no one has anything to fear.”
“Yes, yes…Of course.”
“Will you go?”
“Yes, I’ll go…as a favor to you…if you think it’s essential…I don’t want to look like I’m working for your group either This is no time to seem to be on too good terms with you…is it? Don’t forget, I’ve never agreed with you on fundamental issues… I’m not saying this in defense of…of these…of this…”
The doctor listens to the regular breathing. The young woman is sleeping. He will come back in an hour. It is just eight. Dupont will not leave the clinic until seven tonight, he said. Why did Dupont have to call him in? Any doctor…Bad luck.
Seven tonight. A long day. Why do people always call him in for things like this? Refuse? No, he has already accepted. He will do what is asked of him one more time. And then? With the other one, he had not had any choice! All he needed was this new problem
The other one. It’s not so easy to get away from him. Wait.
Until seven tonight.
Why does Dupont have to get his friends mixed up in a mess like this! Marchat decides it’s just nerve; and he is supposed to seem pleased into the bargain! What about his wife? Why couldn’t she go? He has plenty of time to meet her; she or anyone else, until seven tonight.
About to leave the little white room, he turns back toward the wounded man:
“And your wife-she knows about this?”
“The doctor has informed her of my death by letter. It was more correct. You know we haven’t met for a long time. She won’t even ask to see ‘my remains.’ On that score, everything’s going to be fine.”
Evelyn. What is she doing now? Maybe she will come anyway, why not? A dead man’s not exactly her type, though. Who else might try? But no one will know which clinic. They just have to say it’s not this one. Until seven tonight.
5
Since they all agree, it’s perfect. Commissioner Laurent closes the dossier and lays it with satisfaction on the pile to the left. The case is closed. Personally, he has no desire to get involved with it.
The investigations he has had made already have not produced the slightest result. Many distinct fingerprints left all over the place, as though intentionally, have been picked up; they must belong to the murderer, but they do not match anything registered in the enormous police file. The other details collected have offered no suggestion as to what lead to follow. Nothing has been brought in by the usual informers either. Under such conditions, where do you start? It’s highly unlikely that the murderer belongs to the criminal circles of the port or the city: the file is too complete and the informers too numerous for a criminal to be able to escape their networks altogether.
Laurent knows this from long experience. At this hour he would normally have heard something already.
What then? A chance beginner? An amateur? A lunatic? Such cases are so rare; and besides, amateurs always leave traces and can be picked up right away. One solution, obviously, would be that they were dealing with someone coming from far away just to commit this murder, and then leaving immediately after. Yet his work seems a little too well done not to have required a good deal of preparation…
After all, if the central services want to take the whole thing over themselves, even to the point of taking away the victim’s body before an inquest, it’s all right with him. He is certainly not going to complain. For him, it’s as if the crime had never happened. After all, if Dupont had committed suicide it would have come down to exactly the same thing. The fingerprints could be anyone’s, and since no one alive saw his attacker…
Better still: nothing at all has happened! A suicide still leaves behind a corpse; and now the corpse is vanishing without a word, and his superiors are asking him to keep out of it. Perfect!
No one has seen anything, heard anything. There is no victim. As for the murderer, he has fallen from the sky and must be far away by now, well on his way back to wherever he came from.
6
The scattered fragments, the two corks, the little piece of blackened wood: now they look like a human face, with the bit of orange peel for the mouth. The oil slick finishes off a grotesque clown’s face, a Punch-and-Judy doll.
Or else it is some legendary animal: the head, the neck, the breast, the front paws, a lion’s body with its long tail, and an eagle’s wings. The creature moves greedily toward a shapeless prey lying a little farther on. The corks and the piece of wood are still in the same place, but the face they formed a moment ago has completely disappeared. The greedy monster too. Nothing remains, on the canal’s surface, but a vague map of America; and even that only if charitably interpreted.
“And suppose he turns the light on again before opening the door wide?” Bona, as usual, was not willing to admit the objection. There was nothing to argue about. Still, it turned out, as a matter of fact, as if Dupont had turned the light on again: even if Garinati had been able to turn out the light in plenty of time, suppose Dupont, coming in, had turned on the light again before pushing the door all the way open-it came down to the same thing. He would have been seen in the room with the light on, anyway.
Besides! Bona has made a mistake in any case: Since he-to whom the job had been entrusted-had not turned out the light.
Forgotten? Or done on purpose? Neither one nor the other. He was going to turn out the light; he was going to do it just at that moment. Dupont came back upstairs too soon. What time was it exactly? He did not act fast enough, that’s all; and all things considered, if he did not have time enough, it was still a mistake in calculation, a mistake of Bona’s. How is he going to fix that now?
Dupont was wounded, apparently. But not seriously enough to keep him from running away, getting out of danger; Garinati distinctly heard him turning the key in the lock. There was nothing else for him to do but leave. The gray carpet, the twenty-two steps, the shiny banister with its brass finial at the end. Things lost a little of their consistency again. The revolver shot made such a funny noise; unreal; phony. It was the first time he had used a silencer. Ping! Like an air pistol; not loud enough to scare a fly. And right afterward everything was filled with cotton.
Maybe Bona knows already. From the papers? It was too late for the morning papers; and who would bother to report this nonexistent crime? “Attempted murder: a marauder fired a silent pistol at a harmless professor “ Bona always knows.
Coming home the night before, Garinati found a note in his chief’s handwriting. “Why didn’t you come afterward, the way we’d planned? I have a job for you: they’re sending a special agent. A Monsieur Wallas who’ll take a room in the theater of operations. You should have come this morning! Everything’s going fine. I’ll expect you Tuesday morning at ten. J.B.” It was as if he had already heard about the success of the job. The fact is, that he does not imagine that it could have failed. When he has made up his mind about something, it can only happen the way he has planned. “You should have come this morning.” No! It’s time for him to come now.
He has not had much trouble catching up with him, this Wallas, but he missed him, him too. He’ll find him again easily. But for what? To tell him what? Early this morning, methodically looking for him in the neighborhood,
