Eloïse Petit hesitated before talking about Room 1 with Philippe. She didn’t named Léonine, Anaïs, Océane, and Nadège. Merely said “the children in Room 1,” briefly lowering her eyes before continuing.
It was the last room the supervisors had been to. The girls were already half-asleep when she and Lucie Lindon had gone in to ask them if everything was O.K., give them each a little flashlight in case they needed to get up during the night, and tell them that Lucie was in the room next door, if one of them had a nightmare or a tummyache. A night-light would remain on in the corridor all night.
Then, Eloïse had gone up to her room, and Lucie to see Swan Letellier. Geneviève Magnan was supposed to stay around the ground-floor rooms in the meantime. Before the two supervisors had gone upstairs, they had seen Geneviève sitting in the kitchen. She was cleaning copper pans, all spread out on the large table. She had said good night to them, looking sad, or maybe weary. Eloïse couldn’t have said which.
“I went up to my room, I dozed off. At one point, I got up to close my window, because it was banging against the casing.”
A strange light crossed Eloïse’s blue eyes. As if she were reliving that moment, looking through the window at something going by in the distance. The way one peers over the shoulder of a person one’s speaking to at the sight of a familiar silhouette or some curious, unexpected movement.
“Did you see something?”
“When?”
“When you closed your window.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Them.”
“Who’s them?”
“You know who.”
“Geneviève Magnan and Alain Fontanel?”
Eloïse Petit shrugged her shoulders. Philippe didn’t know what to make of this gesture.
“Is it true you had a relationship with Geneviève?”
“Who told you that?”
“Lucie. She told me that Geneviève loved you.”
Philippe closed his eyes for a few seconds, and then, with a heavy heart, replied to her:
“I’ve come to talk to you about my daughter.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know who switched on the water heater in the bathroom of Room 1. The children were asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. And yet everyone knew that those damn water heaters weren’t to be touched!”
Philippe had shouted too loud. The customers, buried in their newspapers, and in the line at the registers turned around to stare at the two of them.
Eloïse blushed as if it were a lovers’ quarrel. She spoke to Philippe as if he were not in his right mind. The way one speaks gently to the mad so as not to antagonize them:
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Someone switched on the water heater in the bathroom.”
“What bathroom?”
“The one in the room that burned down.”
Philippe could see that Eloïse didn’t understand a wretched word of what he was saying. At that moment, he started to have doubts. This water heater story didn’t stack up, it was nonsense. He had to face facts: either Geneviève Magnan or Alain Fontanel had set fire to Room 1 to take revenge on him.
“Is that what would have started the fire? The old water heater?”
Eloïse’s question drew him away from his grim thoughts.
“No, the fire, that would have been Fontanel . . . to make it look like a domestic accident. He would have been covering up for Magnan.”
“But why?”
“Because, apparently, she went off that evening. She didn’t stay close to the girls, and when she returned, she would have . . . It was too late . . . The children were asphyxiated.”
Eloïse covered her mouth with both hands. Her big, blue eyes started to shine. Philippe remembered the day he had swum in the Mediterranean to fetch Françoise and she had struggled. Eloïse had the same panicked look as her, on the verge of drowning.
Philippe and Eloïse said nothing more to each other for at least ten minutes. They hadn’t touched their plates. Philippe finally ordered an espresso.
“Would you like anything else?”
“Maybe it’s them.”
“Fontanel and Magnan, yes.”
“No, those people.”
“What people?”
“The couple you know, that I saw leaving the courtyard when I closed my window.”
“What couple?”
“The people you came with the day after the fire. Your parents, well, I believe they’re your parents.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying to me.”
“But come on, you must have known that they came to the château that evening, surely?”
“What parents?”
Philippe felt himself losing his footing, as though falling from the top floor of a skyscraper.
“On July 14th, you all arrived together. I thought you knew that they had been to the château the previous day. It happens all the time, families coming to visit their children, but never in the evening. That’s why it surprised me.”
“You’re crazy. My parents live in Charleville-Mézières. They couldn’t have been in Burgundy on the night of the fire.”
“They were there, I saw them. I swear to you. When I closed my window, I saw them leaving the château.”
“You must be mistaken . . . ”
“No. Your mother, her chignon, her appearance . . . I’m not mistaken. I saw them again on the last day of the trial in Mâcon. They were waiting for you outside the court.”
Then Philippe remembered. It was like lightning, a shock, as if a tiny detail buried in his subconscious for years was appearing to him in the full light of day. Something abnormal, incoherent, which, owing to the circumstances, he hadn’t really registered, just sensed, on that July 14th, 1993.
He had phoned his
