Fatale

10

One or two minutes after alighting from Baron Jules’s 4CV in front of the Seagull Apartments, Aimée was opening the door of her studio when she heard a kind of strangled groan which made her shudder. Standing before her half-open door, she quickly turned her head. Some way down the corridor, another door was ajar. In the opening a little old lady could be seen. Aimée shook her head in irritation. Twice or three times a week she had noticed the old lady spying on her as she passed. She was an especially repulsive old woman by Aimée’s lights, with her pendulous cheeks caked with white face powder and her purplish lipstick. This time, though, she seemed to be trying to address the young woman. Clutching the doorframe with one hand, she cleared her throat in a disgusting way. Aimée opened the door to her studio wide, went in, and slammed it behind her.

She put her bag down on a chair and went over to hang her woolen jacket in the armoire. Rustling sounds came from down the corridor, and then from right outside her apartment; a scratching noise seemed to emanate from the crack beneath the door, followed by snorts, a belch, and a cough. Aimée went back to the door and opened it in exasperation.

“What the hell do you want?” she demanded.

Only then did she see the old woman, silent now, lying on her stomach just outside her door, her face in a pool of vomit. Aimée grimaced in disgust. After a moment of hesitation, she went down on one knee and felt for the little old lady’s pulse. She found none. With the tip of a fingernail she pulled back one of the woman’s eyelids in search of some retinal reflex. Then she stood up, and, leaving the door open, went and picked up the telephone receiver and made an emergency call. Six or seven minutes later a police car and an ambulance pulled up in front of the building. Shortly thereafter, Police Commissioner Fellouque’s personal car also drew up. A bald-headed doctor of about fifty, whom Aimée did not know, examined the old woman. She was dead. They took her away on a stretcher.

“She must have dragged herself along to your room to ask for help,” said Commissioner Fellouque. Tall and dark, with a light mustache and dazzling white teeth, Fellouque was the cop whom Aimée had seen tossing Baron Jules out of Lorque’s house. The young woman now poured him a cup of tea that she had just made. “Then,” he went on, “she turned around intending to go back to her room and phone. Which is what she should have done in the first place. I doubt it would have made much difference though.”

“Commissioner, is something unusual going on?” asked Aimée.

“What do you mean? What do you mean, something unusual?”

“Well, you are the commissioner, and you have taken the trouble to come out here,” said Aimée. “The emergency services could have handled this. But perhaps…” She hesitated. “I saw a baby die in the same kind of way early this afternoon.”

The commissioner rose from the bed, where he had sat down without being invited. He began gesturing with both arms and hunched his head back into his shoulders.

“I don’t want people going crazy and spreading wild rumors!” he cried. “There’s some kind of food poisoning going around, that’s all.” He dropped his arms and suddenly seemed calm and disdainful. “I have another dead person on my hands, the third, and there are a dozen or so people in the hospital, if you must know. I want no panic. You’re not going to get on the phone, I hope?”

“The phone?”

“Yes, yes,” said the commissioner. “You know how you women are amongst yourselves.”

Aimée and the policeman looked wordlessly at each other for a moment. Fellouque seemed suspicious and exasperated. Aimée’s attitude was contemptuous.

“Do you have any canned goods here?” asked the commissioner. The door to the studio, which had been pushed shut, was now opened wide by someone who was simultaneously knocking on it. “Ah, not you!” cried the commissioner. “Get the hell out of here! Leave us be!”

“This is a private residence,” observed the intruder, a small man in his fifties with blue eyes and iron-gray hair as spiky as a bird’s nest. He was wearing a long, beat-up leather jacket. “You have no right to kick me out, Fellouque,” he added, turning to Aimée. “Press, my dear little lady. DiBona, Dépêche de Bléville. Might I speak with you?”

“You can not! You can not!” said Commissioner Fellouque, attempting to bar the fifty-year-old’s way as he moved smiling towards Aimée.

“Lorque and Lenverguez are busy poisoning half the town, my dear madame,” said DiBona. “We have cattle dying too. I must appeal to your public spirit. Don’t tell me you are going to let this cop cover it all up?”

“It’s not about covering anything up!” exclaimed Fellouque. “Malice is leading you astray, DiBona. You are raving.” He turned to Aimée. “He is raving!”

“He wants to cover it up!” insisted DiBona.

“People are waiting for me to play bridge, gentlemen,” said Aimée. “You must excuse me.”

It took her a few minutes to get rid of the two men, but eventually Aimée found herself on her bicycle in the streets of Bléville. Her appointment was at five o’clock at the Moutets, for tea and a rubber of bridge with the couple and Sonia Lorque. She was not quite sure, in point of fact, considering the baby’s death and the other alarms, that the game would take place. But she smiled as she pedaled. She liked crises.

In the end they did play bridge.

“We are completely shattered by this business,” said the voluptuous Christiane Moutet, and indeed she seemed somewhat worried and overwrought. (Her husband was on the telephone in his study down the hallway, and his anxious and disgruntled exclamations could be heard.)

Sonia Lorque arrived one or two minutes after Aimée. The factory owner’s wife also seemed tense and worried. But she was strikingly well turned out. Her eyebrows had been plucked recently, possibly that very afternoon. Her makeup had been applied with the greatest care, as though she had purposely sought to dazzle at this particular moment.

At first everyone agreed that it would be unthinkable to play a game of cards as if everything was normal after the ghastly event of the early afternoon.

“At least we can have a drink,” said senior manager Moutet, who had finished his phoning. He wore a worried, slightly stupid expression. He nibbled at his reddish mustache.

They had drinks in the living room. The Moutets occupied a five-room apartment in the old town, completely refurbished. There was modern furniture, wall-to-wall carpeting, and reproductions of abstract paintings.

Since everyone was present, and no one knew what to say, the voluptuous Christiane Moutet ended up suggesting that after all they might play a little bridge. And play they did. But their hearts were not in it. Players were continually making remarks or engaging in chatter quite unrelated to the cards.

“One no trumps.”

“No bid.”

“No bid.”

“Two spades,” said Aimée.

“DiBona is an ass,” said Sonia Lorque when Aimée told her about the reporter bursting into her studio earlier. “He takes himself for an American-style tabloid journalist,” the blond woman went on. “Always unearthing scandals that don’t exist.”

“But this time,” said Christiane Moutet in a soft voice, her eyes fixed on her cards, “there have been three deaths. A strange mixture of deaths: cows, babies, adults.” She looked up. “This is really screwed up!” she cried. “Does nobody have any conception of what has happened?”

“Damn it! Damn it! They are looking into it!” said senior manager Moutet. “Are we here to play cards or to talk drivel?”

The telephone rang in his study. He got up from the table with a groan of disgust.

“Damn!” he said again.

He went into his study without closing the door. The women waited. They heard him saying hello, then shouting.

“What?”

Sonia Lorque brought her hand to her face. Her features passed through a series of changes that Aimée could not interpret but that she observed with curiosity. Down the hallway, senior manager Moutet went over to pull his office door closed. He could still be heard in an altercation with his interlocutor, though the details of the conversation were not discernible. Christiane Moutet lit a cigarette. Everyone pretended to be studying their hands or gazed at the green baize of the card table. With eyelids lowered, Aimée paid closer and closer attention to Sonia Lorque. The blonde covered her face with both hands when Moutet emerged from his study and came back into the living room. The man seemed beside himself.

“The bastard!” he cried. “Fucking hell!” The women stared at him. Sonia Lorque kept her hands over her face, but peeked at Moutet between her fingers. Moutet slumped into an armchair, then sprang up again and returned to his place at the table. He hunched forward. As he planted his elbows on the green felt his cards were swept off the table and fell to the floor. At the same moment Sonia Lorque rose and moved away from her chair, turning her back on the table. She did not make for a door, but instead toward a corner of the living room nowhere near an exit. Christiane Moutet gazed at her husband in alarm. Aimée watched Sonia Lorque with curiosity.

“The bastard!” said the senior manager again. “It’s in my contract! And he thinks I’m going to take this lying down?”

“What are you saying?” demanded Christiane Moutet. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is I’m responsible for the cold-storage rooms. It’s in my contract.” Moutet spoke in slow tones. He seemed concerned to articulate clearly. “SON OF A BITCH! THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE! IMPOSSIBLE! CRAZY!”

“But what’s going on?” Christiane Moutet asked again, very calmly, eyebrows barely raised.

Wheeling around, Sonia grabbed Christiane Moutet’s wrist very roughly, startling her. Aimée kept watching.

“The cold rooms in the new fish market have been breaking down,” said the blonde, speaking very fast. “That’s what’s going on. All three processing plants were working for three hours with rotten fish. And your husband is getting the blame for it.”

“You must be joking,” said Christiane Moutet.

“No.”

Christiane Moutet stared at the blonde reflectively.

“No,” repeated Sonia. “I heard my husband and Lenverguez talking. They were talking for an hour. It’s your hubby who’s going to be the fall guy.”

“You little bitch!” said Christiane Moutet in a placid tone of voice. “You already knew about it. Bitch!” she said again, sounding surprised.

“Listen,” said Sonia Lorque. “I am in a position to propose an arrangement.”

Christiane Moutet rose. She delivered a resounding slap across the cheek to Sonia, which must have been audible ten meters away. Then she spat in her face. She careened into the bridge table, overturning it. The cards scattered. Aimée, sitting, drew on her cigarette. Sonia Lorque headed for the door. The side of her face was scarlet. Her makeup was running.

“Go ahead,” said Christiane Moutet. “Piss off. Run and find your pantywaist of a husband.”

“Too bad for you, sweetie,” said Sonia.

“It’s in my contract,” repeated Moutet, still sitting motionless at his seat, hunched over, looking defeated and distraught. “I’m responsible. I’m screwed.”

Sonia Lorque left the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

“Was I dreaming,” Christiane asked Aimée, “or did that bitch talk about an arrangement?”

“About money,” answered Aimée.

“What?”

“Someone has to go down,” explained Aimée, “and they picked him. But they want to do it nice and quietly. They’ll pay money for your guy to take everything on the chin without complaint.”

“What do you know about it?” Suspicion flared suddenly in the brunette’s eyes.

“It stands to reason, that’s all,” said Aimée.

Christiane Moutet looked at her blankly, even stupidly. She seemed to be finding it hard to focus on her own thoughts. Then she nodded and a little smile touched the edge of her mouth. Suddenly her face contorted with fury, as though the truth had just dawned on her.

“Without complaint!” she repeated. “Not a chance! We’ll drag them through the mud, that’s what we’ll do!”

“Yes,” said Aimée. “You should do that. If they are offering a deal, it means they have things to hide. You should stir the shit, all the shit you can.” Aimée took two steps forward and used both hands to grab the brunette by the shoulders. “I’ll help you,” she said quickly. “I can dig stuff up.”

“Stuff?”

“The dirt. I’ll call you.” Aimée let go of Christiane, turned on her heel, and for a moment stood facing senior manager Moutet, who was still sitting in his chair, shattered.

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him, and walked out the door, left the building, and almost crashed into Sonia Lorque on the sidewalk.

“How are they taking it?” Sonia wanted to know.

Aimée shrugged. She reached down to unlock the heavy motorcycle antitheft device fitted to her Raleigh. “Badly,” she said. And, straightening up, she added, “They’re going to fight.”

“I am not involved in all this,” said Sonia. “I am merely trying-” She broke off. “No one can stop me from sticking with my husband.”

“Of course, of course. Good for you. Bravo,” said Aimée as she straddled her bicycle. “You can all stick with your husbands. Stupid cows.”

She rode away on the Raleigh, pedaling vigorously. Whichever way you go, there is a big hill to climb before you get out of Bléville. Aimée headed east, inland. She climbed the entire hillside standing. By the time she reached the top of the hill, she was panting, her forehead was running with sweat, and her armpits smelled rank. Sitting back down on the saddle, she raced along the even road. Her teeth were bared; she was excited. In a few minutes she reached the hamlet where Baron Jules lived. The baron invited her in. He was wearing blue jeans and a check cotton shirt frayed and fluffy at the collar and cuffs, along with a velvet jacket. Aimée told him what had been happening. She described the scene at the Moutets. The baron asked her why she had come straight to him to retail all this.

“I thought it would amuse you,” she answered.

“You certainly thought no such thing!” scolded the baron with irritation. The approach of nightfall made it very dark in the cluttered living room. The nobleman switched on a lamp with a shade and stared suspiciously at Aimée, who had sat down in an armchair with broken springs. “Think how long I have been observing those people, my God! I have been observing them for thirty years and more, it must be nearly forty now, yes indeed! Well, in all that time they have not given me a single moment’s amusement. They make me want to vomit and destroy them.”

“Yes,” said Aimée, “precisely. But I’ll believe it when I see it.” She shook her head violently, as though to get her thoughts straight or shake off an unpleasant memory. She had the blank look of someone suddenly unable to see the necessity of what they have decided to do. But she quickly collected herself. “Yes, yes, yes, precisely,” she repeated, nodding and leaning forward excitedly. “Moutet is going to fight this. He needs weapons to do it-and allies. I daresay someone like Dr. Sinistrat will line up with him. And then there’s this guy DiBona, from the Dépêche de Bléville, I think-yes, that’s it. If they dig up stuff against Lorque and Lenverguez, there’ll be havoc.”

“Why should I give a shit?” demanded Baron Jules.

“The dirt-you’ve got to have it, considering all the time you’ve been observing Bléville,” said Aimée. “If you really want to vomit and destroy them, this is your moment.”

The baron gazed at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. His laugh was painful to him. It literally doubled him up.

“You’re insane,” he said, with tears in his eyes.

“I’ve said what I had to say,” replied Aimée tranquilly. She got out of the armchair with the broken springs and made for the door with her hands thrust into her pockets.

“Wait!” cried the baron, plunging after her. “You are a terrifyingly negative and beautiful person.” He tripped over one of the filthy rugs and fell to one knee. “Listen up!” he said. “Just what is your interest in all this?”

Aimée was already through the hall and out the front door. She ran down the steps, mounted her bicycle, and set the dynamo for light, for night had fallen. Puffing, the baron emerged at the top of the darkened front steps. He was rubbing his knee.

“Wait, for God’s sake!” he cried. “What is your interest in this, for God’s sake? Don’t leave. Explain!”

But Aimée, her tires creating a crackle and spray of gravel, was heading full-tilt for the gate, then she was through it and gone.