And the secretary, who had stopped typing at the same time, felt she had her emotions under control until the silence and constrained atmosphere suddenly got the better of her and, shielding part of her face, she hurriedly left the room.
Hushed voices in the corridor, questions, muted surprise then finally, again, silence. The pall spread through the small gendarmerie as if by osmosis; whispers of death seeping through the cream plaster walls.
Within five minutes, the full complement of nine gendarmes and two secretaries on duty knew. From there, it started spreading through the town. A young sergeant went out to buy some cigarettes; there were two other people in the shop at the time who heard that 'the Rosselot boy had died'. One of the shopper's next calls was the boulangerie, where five more heard the news. It ricocheted through the main town shops.
Echoes of death which, by the time Dominic had fired up a Solex and started heading out towards Taragnon and the Rosselots, had already changed the atmosphere in the town centre. Or was he just imagining it? A nod of acknowledgement from Marc Tauvel re-stacking his front display of vegetables, but then a look that lingered slightly. Madame Houillon following his progress around the square, staring; she was over-inquisitive at the best of times, but now her head was slightly bowed, as if he was a passing hearse. Respect for the dead.
Dominic felt that he couldn't wait any longer before heading out. Poullain was expected back soon, but that could be an hour or more, by which time Monique Rosselot could have started her way to the hospital. Or worse still, by the way the news was spreading through the village, her hearing it clumsily from a neighbour or tradesman calling by. 'My condolences, I'm so sorry to hear.' Hear what?
Dominic didn't want it to happen that way; after a quick consultation with Harrault, they'd jointly agreed to break protocol by not waiting for Poullain, and Harrault signed out a Solex. Twenty five minutes had passed since the call from the hospital.
Nothing in his past had prepared him for this. All those years stuck in back radio and communications rooms both in the Legion and the Marseille gendarmerie, he'd had so little 'people' contact. Between the code and call signature manuals, the gun range and procedural guides for arrest, filing and administration, there had been no special training on consoling grieving relatives. How should he phrase it? How would he even start?
On the edge of town, Dominic passed the tannery and leather workshops tucked into a hillside rock outcrop where the road was cut away. Dyes and acids for stripping and treating the skins were heavy in the air; piquant sauce for the smells of death.
Dominic's eyes watered slightly; he wasn't sure whether they were sensitive with emotions or it was a combination of the fumes and the wind rush on the bike. Eighty yards past, he was clear of the fumes and the smells of the fields took over: ripening vines, lemons, almonds and olives, grass and wheat burnished almost white by the sun. He breathed deeply, but still his eyes watered.
Images flashed before him — the dark brown blood patches against the wheat, the boy being carried to the ambulance, the gendarmes tapping through the field with their canes, Monique Rosselot opening the door to him on that first visit, and the single candle in her daily bedside vigil of begging and praying to God to spare her son. How could he possibly bring her this news? The well of his emotions finally ebbed, a gentle catharsis washing through him without warning, his body trembling against the vibrations of the bike. He bit at his lip and swallowed back the sobs at the back of his throat; no sound emanated, his steadily watering eyes and his trembling body the only release valves.
His reaction confused him. He'd witnessed murder before, battle hardened by his years in Marseille. Was it the age of the boy, or Monique Rosselot's strongly displayed devotion for her son bringing him closer to her emotions, too close: her saddened face in half shadow reflected in the glass against the candle light, tears streaming down her cheeks as he told her that her son was dead. Dead! 'No! Oh God, no!' As he uttered the words breathlessly, what lay ahead of him suddenly seemed impossibly daunting: one simple sentence, destroying Monique Rosselot's life, tearing down any remaining vestige of hope. His grip on the throttle relaxed, the bike slowing slightly, apprehension gripping him full force. His conflict was absolute: he knew he had to go. He cared too much to risk her hearing casually from someone else passing. But he dreaded having to utter the words himself.
And so he switched off part of his mind driving the last few miles. Cared for her? He hardly knew her. Pushed the thoughts back as he turned his Solex bike into the Rosselot's driveway, parked, dismounted. Words shaped in his mind, almost on the edge of his lips, all of them sounding so inept, inadequate. The messenger? Was that what worried him, being the messenger? Always being remembered as the man who brought the news that her son had died.
As he approached the door, he noticed the boy's bike still against the garage wall, waiting in expectation. His mouth was dry. He took a last deep breath to calm his nerves as he reached for the door knocker and flipped it down twice.
But it did little good. His nerves built to a crescendo, blood pounding through his head as the door opened and she stood there, her young daughter Clarisse in the shadows behind.
He fumbled, the words seeming to catch in his throat, but from the quickly distraught look that came back from her, she seemed to already half know, perhaps from his expression and awkwardness, and he only managed to say, 'I'm sorry, I have bad news. I wanted to make sure I caught you before you headed for the hospital…' before she started pleading.
'No, no, no, no, no… No!' A repetitive and steadily rising mantra to hopefully drive the inevitable away, her eyes imploring him as she slowly collapsed to her knees and, her body finally giving way to convulsive sobbing, she let out a single wailing cry.
The cry, painful and desperate, pierced the still morning air, echoing from the walls of the small courtyard and rising up the gentle slope of the fields beyond. Jean-Luc Rosselot had been working in the west field out of sight of the courtyard for over an hour, digging to find the leak in an irrigation pipe. He didn't see or hear the Solex approaching; the cry was the first thing he heard. He dropped his spade and started running the fifty yards that would bring him in sight of the courtyard. Halfway, another wailing cry arose; a gap, then another.
And already he feared what was the cause before he'd thrashed his way through the last of the dried grass in the almond orchard and the courtyard came into view. It was like a frozen tableau: the gendarme trying to stand proud with his wife on her knees before him, one hand clutching out and almost touching his ankles. As another cry of anguish drifted up across the field, he saw the gendarme reach out towards her shoulder as if to re-assure, but the hand hovered just above without connecting.
Each of them stood alone, grief unshared; though Jean-Luc felt even more distanced and awkward, looking on. He tried not to accept what the tableau told him, force it from his mind in search of other explanations; but in the end the imagery was too strong, left nothing to interpretation. His son was dead.
His first instinct was to rush towards his wife, comfort her — but after a few paces he stopped. His legs felt weak and he was strangely dizzy, the field seeming to tilt slowly away from him, the light oddly dim in hues of dull grey. And suddenly it seemed ridiculous for him to bound down the hillside, waving, even if his legs still had the strength to carry him, and so he resigned himself and slowly sank down, gave way to the buckle in his knees until he was sitting.