“I still remember her as Alma,” said the other. “She had the thinnest lips of anyone I’d ever seen.”
At some point the conversation began to repeat itself.
“I had no expectations in regard to this visit,” Tom said. “My mother said she thought it would be an educational experience for me.”
“She thought that visiting you father would be an educational experience?”
“That visiting London would be. You make a gesture and then you never follow through on it. It’s okay. I mean, it no longer comes as a surprise to me. I don’t expect anything from you any more so you can’t disappoint me.”
“I think it would be best it you went home in a few days,” Terman said.
“If that’s what you want. You once told me, though I doubt you’d remember, that any place you were living was also my home.”
“I remember.”
“It doesn’t hold any more, right? Or you never meant it in the first place?”
At some point the conversation among shadows came full circle. Terman came down the steps in the dark with both hands on the bannister, each step a plunge into the unimaginable.
“I understand you’ve been looking for me,” a disembodied voice announced.
“I may have been. I don’t remember.”
A middle-aged man in a dressing gown is looking at his face in the wall mirror of an oversized bathroom. He rubs the back of his hand across his cheek, decides he needs a shave, is putting lather on his face when the phone rings. He considers not answering but after several rings picks up the phone which is on a marble table next to the toilet and says, “Monsieur Lange ici.”
“This is Henry Berger,” the voice says. “A mutual friend gave me your number.”
“Pardon.”
“I understand that you spoke English.”
“Not so good I’m afraid. What may I do for you, Mr. Barber?” He takes the receiver with him to the mirror and continues lathering his face.
“Is there anyone in the house with you?”
“Pardon, monsieur. I fail to understand.”
“Monsieur Lange, I’ll say this as plainly as I can. I have a strong reason to believe that your life may be in immediate danger.” Monsieur Lange looks at the razor in his band, then puts it down as if distrustful even of himself. “And how do you know such things if it is not youself who is the assassin?”
We cut to Henry Berger, who is calling from a phone booth in front of a service station. “It is possible,” he says, “that the assasssin is someone you know, someone you may even trust.”
Monsieur Lange resumes shaving. “Quite alarming,” he says with some irony. “Have you notified the police, Monsieur Becker? Do you not think the police ought to be informed of so serious a matter?”
“I can understand your skepticism. A man you don’t know calls you m the middle of the night to tell you your life is in danger. Why should you believe him? Still, there’s no harm in taking precautions, is there? One of the precautions I would have you take is not to stand near a window, at least not so your silhouette is revealed to someone watching outside. And another is not to inform the local police.”
Lange turns the light out in the bathroom. “You are either mad, my friend, or have been given misinformation. There’s nobody who wishes me evil. Now I think it is time to say goodnight.”
“Your name was found in a certain notebook among other names,” Berger says quickly. “You know what I’m talking about. The men whose names were on the list above yours, all except two, have died under what the police call suspicious circumstances.”
M. Lange lights a cigarette and sits down on the commode. “So it follows that I’m to be rubbed out next. Yes? I promise to be wary of every suspicious sound, Monsieur Barber. Now if you’ll excuse me.” M. Lange hangs up the phone abruptly. After putting out the cigarette and turning on the light, he returns to the mirror to shave the left side of his face. While he is shaving he hears footsteps outside or perhaps from another part of the house. He puts down the razor and goes to the phone, checking first to see that the bathroom door is locked from the inside.
M. Lange phones the Chief of Police, mentions the call from Henry Berger. As they talk, we cut to Henry Berger driving through the woods presumably toward M. Lange’s estate.
Standing in the dark, M. Lange listens for footsteps and hears none. He puts the light on and continues shaving. He studies his aristocratic face in the mirror, admiring his profile, distressed by the blemishes, the inevitable demarcations of age. He salutes himself, one formidable figure to another. At that moment, he hears a crash as if something, a vase perhaps, had been knocked off a table. “Merde,” he whispers. The faint footsteps resume and he concentrates on them, trying to determine if they arc from within the house or outside. He looks at bis watch. Perhaps it is someone he knows, his son returned or one of the servants.
“C’est toi, Jacques?” he calls.
There is no answer. He looks at his watch again. The footsteps have stopped and he waits for them to renew, then goes to the phone and calls the Chief of Police a second time. “My men should be there at any moment,” the Inspector says. Abruptly the doorbell rings. “I’m not going to hang up,” Lange says. “Hold on until I get back.” Lange puts on a shirt, brushes his hair, then lets himself out of the bathroom. He goes warily down a long corridor toward the frontdoor, announcing himself in aloud voice. There is another corridor, then a small foyer to pass through. “Un moment,” he calls, dismayed that the police haven’t rung a second time.
When Lange gets to the front door he has some difficulty unlatching it, pressured by panic. He is again in control of himself, all icy dignity, as he opens the door to confront a figure in a ski mask, holding a gun. Two shots are fired point blank before M. Lange can protest and he stumbles back into the cavernous house. He plunges into a sitting room, trailed by his own blood. He collapses, then revives and pulls himself laboriously toward a phone, knocking over a Chinese vase m bis path.
“Je suis assassiné,” he says into the phone, dragging it off the table as he falls.
Sunlight was in his eyes when Terman got up from the couch, unaware of the date or time of day. The kitchen cupboard was even barer than he anticipated, as if rats or thieves had been there first. There was nothing to satisfy his hunger in this borrowed house, the refrigerator and cupboards seeming to empty of themselves.
He remembered putting certain things away, remembered carrying a box of groceries in his arms, a pint of milk, box of tea, six croissants, half dozen brown eggs, bottle of claret, package of McVittie’s digestives, jar of Wilkinson’s raspberry conserves. He tended to shop as need demanded, rarely bringing in provisions with anything but the forthcoming meal in mind. Still, nothing, nothing at all, had survived the night.
“You’ve been behaving like a mad person,” Isabelle said, “do you know?”
“The madness is unintentional,” he said, meaning it as an apology. He was looking in a parlor closet for a walking stick he was postive he had seen in there, riffling among boots and umbrellas.