The Main

She looks levelly at LaPointe, not a flutter in her eyelids. After a moment, her gaze falls to the marble-and- gold cigarette lighter, and she stares at it, motionless. Then she takes a cigarette from a carved teak box, lights it, tilts back her head with a bounce of her hair, and jets the uninhaled smoke over the heads of her guests. She delicately plucks an imaginary bit of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.

“Oh?” she asks.

“Presumably you were lovers,” LaPointe says matter-of-factly, ignoring Guttmann’s quick glance.

Mlle. Montjean shrugs. “We screwed, if that’s what you mean.” More of that precious bomb-dropping, a kind of counter-attack against LaPointe’s ballistic use of Green’s death. Her control had been excellent throughout her long pause… but there was the pause.

“Our information says that he was learning English here,” LaPointe continues. “I assume that’s right?”

“Yes. One of our Italian-speaking instructors was guiding him through an intensive course in English.”

“And that’s how you met him?”

“That’s how I met him, Lieutenant. Tell me, do I need a lawyer now?”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Then you probably don’t need a lawyer. Unless you intend to withhold information, or refuse to assist us in our inquiry.”

She taps the ash from her cigarette unnecessarily, gaining time to think. Her control is still good, but for the first time she is troubled.

“You’re thinking about the others, of course,” LaPointe says.

“What others?”

LaPointe bends on her that melancholy patience he assumes during examination when he lacks the information necessary to lead the conversation.

“All right, Lieutenant. I’ll cooperate. But let me ask you something first. Does this have to get into the papers?”

“Not necessarily.”

“You see, my school is rather special—expensive, elite. Scandal would ruin it. And it’s everything I’ve worked for. It represents ten years of work. What’s more, it represents the ten thousand miles I’ve managed to walk away from the Main. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand. Tell me about the others.”

“Well, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Mike was killed the same way: stabbed in the street.”

“Mike?”

“Michael Pearson. Dr. Michael Pearson. He used to run the Language Learning Center at McGill.”

“And you were lovers?”

She smiles thinly. “You do run to circumlocution, don’t you?”

“And what about the other one. The American?”

Her eyes open with confusion. “What other one?”

“The American. Ah…” He looks to Guttmann.

“John Albert MacHenry,” Guttmann fills in quickly.

Mlle. Montjean glances from one to the other. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think I ever met anyone by that name. I can assure you that I never… screwed… your Mr. MacHenry.” She reaches over and squeezes LaPointe’s arm. “That’s just my homey way of saying we were not lovers, Lieutenant.”

“You seem sure of that, Mlle. Montjean. Do you keep a list?”

Her smile is fixed and her eyes perfectly cold. “As a matter of fact, I do. At least, I keep a diary. And it’s a fairly long list, if you will forgive my bragging. I enjoy keeping count. My analyst tells me that it’s rather typical behavior in cases like mine. He tells me the reason I use so many men is because I detest them, and by scoring them one after the other I deny them any individuality. He talks like that, my analyst. Like a textbook. And can you guess when he told me all this crap? In bed. After I had scored him too. Later, he sat right there where you’re sitting and told me how he understood my need to screw even him. A typical gesture of rejection, he told me. And when I mentioned that he wasn’t much of a lay, he tried to laugh it off. But I know I got to him.” She grins. “The phony bastard.”

“The point of all that being that you don’t know this American, this MacHenry?”

“Precisely. Oh, I’ve had my share of Americans, of course. One should have an American at least once a quarter. It makes Canadians look so good by comparison. And at least once a year, one should have an Englishman. Partially to make even the Americans look good, and partially as penance. Did you know that making love with a Brit shortens one’s time in purgatory?” The intercom on her desk buzzes; Mlle. Montjean butts out her cigarette and rises, flattening her skirt with her palms. “That will be my luncheon appointment. I assume I’m free to go to it?”

LaPointe rises. “Yes. But we have more to talk about.”

She has crossed to her desk and is taking up a folder of material pertaining to her working lunch. She glances at her calendar. “I’m tied up all afternoon. Are you free tonight, Lieutenant?”

“Yes.”

“Say nine o’clock? Here?”

She shakes hands with Guttmann, then offers her hand to LaPointe. “You really don’t remember me, do you, Lieutenant?”

“I’m afraid not. Should I?”

Still holding his hand, she smiles a montage of amusement and sadness. “We’ll talk about it tonight. Armagnac, isn’t it?”

She shows them to the door.

By nine o’clock it is dark in the little park of Carre St. Louis. For the first time in weeks, the wind is from the north and steady. If it remains in that quarter, it will bring the cleansing snow. But its immediate effect is to hone the edge of the damp cold. LaPointe has to fold in the flap of his collar against his throat as he cuts across the deserted park, picking his way carefully over the root-veined path because the dappled light from distant streetlights serves more to confuse than to illuminate.

Suddenly he stops. Save for the hiss of wind through gnarled branches, there is no sound. But he has a tingling in the back of his neck, as though someone were watching him. He looks around through the zebra dapple of black trees and shadows interlaced with the silver of streetlights bordering the park. There is nothing to be seen.

He continues across toward Mlle. Montjean’s school, where there are lights behind drawn shades on the first and third floors; probably late students learning French or English in a hurry. His knock is answered by the fussy man he met earlier. Mlle. Montjean is not in, but she is due any minute; she has left instructions that the Lieutenant is to be shown up to her apartment. The nervous man looks LaPointe over, his lips pursed critically. It isn’t his business who Mlle. Montjean’s friends are. He doesn’t care what his employer does on her own time. But there are limits. A policeman, really. Oh, well, he’ll show him up anyway.

Three lamps light the apartment, pooling three distinct areas. There is a porcelain lamp on the escritoire by the windows overlooking the square; a dim hanging lamp picks out the sunken “conversation island”; and beyond that, over the bar, is a glass ball confected of bits of colored glass and lit from within. The room is centrally heated, the dwindling fire in the fireplace largely decorative. LaPointe takes off his overcoat and makes himself at home to the extent of putting two kiln-dried, steam-cleaned logs on the fire and poking at the embers. He enjoys fiddling with open fires, and he often pictures himself in his daydream home in Laval, turning logs or pushing in burnt-off ends. The bark has begun to crackle and flutter with blue flame when Mlle. Montjean enters, her coat already off, her fur hat in her hand.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. But you know how these things are.” She does not mention what things. “Oh, good. I’m glad you’ve tended the fire. I was afraid it would die out; and I set it especially for you.” She ducks under the bar flap and begins to pour out two Armagnacs, light from the ball of glass shining in her carefully done hair. When LaPointe sits on a bar stool across from her, he realizes that she has been drinking fairly heavily, not beyond control, but perhaps a little beyond caring.