“He wanted to settle down in the country, preferably on the Loire, and he asked whether, if he found a suitable house, I’d marry him. Then he said that my little brothers could live with us and he’d give them a good education.”
Alice was crying audibly now, but it was hard to tell whether it was because of fear or sorrow.
“That’s the kind of a man he was,” she went on. “I asked for a day off to go see the house at Cléry, and all the way out he behaved quite properly. ‘A few days from now,’ he told me, ‘there’ll be nothing to keep me in Paris. We can apply for a marriage license’...”
“Just one thing, Mademoiselle,” said the Inspector. “Weren’t you surprised when your new fiancé stopped coming to your department and began directing his attentions to Gaby and her slippers?”
“Yes, on the first day, because he hadn’t given me any warning... But he swore that he wasn’t really interested in her at all and begged me to trust him. As far as that goes, I could watch the two of them from above.”
“And so you thought it was perfectly natural behavior?”
“He’d never spoken to me of his profession, but I imagined he was a...”
“A what?”
“A detective. We’re accustomed to seeing them about the store. When I learned of his death, my first thought was for my little brothers. I’d already told them we were going to live in the country.”
Did Inspector Lucas really need to blow his nose? In any case he did so.
“Are you sure that this time you have told us the whole truth?”
“I believe so. That’s all I remember.”
“Didn’t your fiancé ever say anything else that revealed his character to you?”
“He was always appealing and quite proper,” she repeated. “In spite of the difference in our ages I felt sure he wouldn’t make me unhappy.”
The Little Doctor said to himself that in another minute she’d harp again on her little brothers. But at this point Lucas cut her short.
“You can go now, Mademoiselle,” he told her. “If I need to see you again, I’ll send for you.”
“And I won’t get into trouble?”
She could hardly believe that it was over, that she was free to leave the building into which she had entered so fearfully.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Inspector. If you only realized...”
“Very well. Goodbye.”
He practically pushed her out the door, and when he came back and shut it behind him, his face betrayed involuntary emotion.
“Well, I wasn’t too much of a brute, was I?” he asked the Little Doctor.
“I was just thinking how different events appear from different points of view,” the Little Doctor answered. “It’s a little bit the way it is in the theater. On one side you have the audience, who believe in the action played out before them, and on the other the actors and stage-hands, who are readying costumes and scenery. To this girl, for instance, Justin Galmet’s death has all sorts of sentimental meanings; to us it’s a mystery, a problem to be solved... How do you size the fellow up in the light of what we’ve just heard?”
Lucas merely shrugged his shoulders. The day before, Justin Galmet had been one more of the strange characters that people every big city. Now there was something positively touching about him. Had he really meant to marry the virtuous Alice and take her little brothers to live with him in the country? And if so, why had a bullet wiped out his plan on the very eve of its accomplishment? For he had said: “A few days from now there’ll be nothing to keep me in Paris...” Days, he had specified, not weeks, after all the years that he had lived there. “‘To keep me in Paris,’ ” the Little Doctor murmured over and over to himself, as if to wring all possible significance out of these words. That was it! There weren’t ten questions to be answered, or even two or three; there was only one, so obvious as to seem stupid. What was keeping him in Paris for a few more days? Once the answer to this was found, the rest would reveal itself automatically.
“Where are you going?” asked Inspector Lucas, lighting his pipe and sitting down at his desk.
“I’m going to have a drink... Inspector, do you know why there are so many drunkards?”
“Hm... No... I suppose...”
“Your supposition is probably incorrect. It’s because the only cure for a hangover is a hair of the dog that bit you!”
The Little Doctor was whistling to himself as he went out onto the street. He seemed to be a man breathing in the joy of life through every pore, and no one could have guessed that a question as obsessive as a horsefly buzzing before a storm was preying upon him. What could have kept the fellow in Paris a few days more? Abruptly he quickened his pace and went straight to the department store, where Gaby and Alice were presiding, as usual, over their respective sections.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Mademoiselle,” he said to Alice. “I’m perfectly proper, too. That’s why I’m asking you to lunch with me in a little place on the Chaussée d’Antin. When are you free?”
“At half-past 12.”
“Then I’ll be waiting for you at the subway entrance.”
Dollent had chosen an ordinary little restaurant, and dozens of shop clerks were lunching around them. Alice was not altogether at ease, but the gaiety of her companion, who had downed three drinks before she came, occasionally caused her to smile.
“Don’t hesitate to take all the ‘extras,’ Mademoiselle. The check goes on my expense account, I assure you.”
“Have whatever you like best,” he continued. “What would you say to some lobster?”
“Lobster makes me break out with a rash,” she answered ingenuously.
Someone at the next table was eating her favorite dish, and the smell of it proved irresistible.
“Tripe? Good! I like it myself. Waiter, two orders of tripe.”
There are days when the air is washed clean, when the city breaks out into smiling color, when everything is good and beautiful. There in the cheerful, little restaurant it seemed impossible that someone should have gone to the toy department with a pistol which unfortunately was no toy and shot a poor fellow having a pair of slippers tried on...
“Take it easy, Mademoiselle. I’m only asking you to think things over and see if you can remember certain details, which may not have struck you as important at the time... For instance, when was the last time Justin Galmet came to your department?”
The name obviously depressed her and he was half sorry to spoil her enjoyment of a good lunch.
“It was a Saturday,” she said thoughtfully. “I remember it quite well, because that’s always a particularly busy day and we’re dead on our feet by the end of it.”
“A Saturday, then... Did Galmet sit down?”
“In my department that’s very rare. Occasionally, when a customer looks over a number of items. But he never sat down, to my recollection.”
“So from where he stood, he could see the floor below?”
“Yes, he could look down on the slipper department, the bargain counter, the cashier at ‘No. 89’ and the doors leading out to the street. The same things I see myself every day.”
“Now, don’t answer my next question too quickly. On that last day, didn’t you notice a motion or look of surprise, as if he had suddenly seen a familiar face in the crowd?”
“That I don’t know,” she said at last. “But there’s one thing — he didn’t buy a snap-hook that day.”
“Ah! You didn’t tell us! In other words, he suddenly went away...”
“Yes, he went downstairs.”
“And nothing else struck you as out of the ordinary?”