“I’ve taken a room in a cafe, Rue des Arpenteurs, a few steps away from the house itself.”
“You have! Who told you about that?”
“No one; I found it by chance. It’s number ten.”
“Is there a telephone?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, I’ll find it in the book if I have anything to tell you.”
Without waiting. Laurent begins leafing quickly through the phone book, licking his index finger.
“Arpenteurs, here we are. Number ten: Cafe des Allies?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“Telephone: two-zero-two-zero-three. But it’s not a hotel.”
“No,” Wallas says, “they only rent out a few rooms.”
Laurent goes to a shelf and picks out a ledger. After a moment of fruitless search, he asks:
“That’s strange, they’re not registered; are there many rooms?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Wallas answers. “You see, your facts aren’t so exact after all!”
A broad smile lights up the chief commissioner’s face.
“On the contrary, you have to admire our resources,” he says. “The first person to sleep in this cafe comes to tell me about it himself, without even giving the landlord a chance!”
“Why the first person? Suppose the murderer had slept there last night, what would you know about it?”
“The landlord would have registered him and reported to me, as he’ll do for you-he has until noon.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Wallas asks.
“Well, in that case, we would have to admire your perspicacity in having found the only clandestine rooming house in town so quickly. It would even be bad for you in the long run; you’d be the first serious suspect I’ve found: recently arrived in town, living twenty yards from the scene of the crime, and completely unknown to the police!”
“But I only arrived last night, at eleven!” Wallas protests.
“If you weren’t registered, what proof would there be?”
“At the time the crime was committed, I was a hundred kilometers from here; that can be verified.”
“Of course! Don’t good murderers always have an alibi?”
Laurent sits down again behind his desk and considers Wallas with a smiling expression. Then he suddenly asks:
“Do you have a revolver?”
“Yes,” Wallas answers. “This time I took one, on the advice of my chief.”
“What for?”
“You never know.”
“Right, you never know. Would you show it to me please?”
Wallas hands him the gun, a 7.65 millimeter automatic revolver, a common model. Laurent examines it carefully, after having removed the clip. Finally, without looking at Wallas, he says in the tone of an obvious comment:
“One bullet’s missing.”
He hands the weapon back to its owner. Then, very quickly, he clasps his hands, separates the palms though keeping the fingers interlaced, brings his wrists together again and rubs his thumbs against each other. The hands separate and stretch; each doubles over with a faint clapping sound, opens once more and finally comes to rest on the desk, lying flat, the fingers spread apart at regular intervals.
“Yes, I know,” Wallas answers.
In making room for his ledgers, the commissioner has shifted the dossiers that cover his desk, thereby causing the piece of grayish eraser to reappear, an ink eraser probably, whose poor quality is betrayed by several worn, slightly shiny places.
5
Once the door is closed, the commissioner walks slowly back to his chair. He rubs his hands with satisfaction. So it is Roy-Dauzet who has had the body taken away! This kind of conspiracy story is worthy of the old lunatic’s grotesque imagination. And now he is sending his clan of secret agents and detectives all over the country-even the great Fabius and his consorts.
Political crime? That, of course, would explain the complete failure of his own investigation-in any case it is a good excuse-but Laurent greatly distrusts the minister’s tendency to hysterical storytelling, so that he is delighted to see others besides himself set foot on this dangerous path. He has no difficulty imagining the mess they will be getting into: it is apparent, to begin with, that the confidential agent sent to the scene of the crime hadn’t heard of the hasty transfer of the body to the capital-his surprise was not made up. He seems full of good will, this Wallas; but what could he do with it? Besides, just what is his job anyway? He has not been very talkative; what does he really know about these “terrorists”? Nothing probably; and with good reason! Or has he been given orders to keep quiet? Maybe Fabius, who is the best sleuth in Europe, proved to him that Laurent himself was in the gang’s pay? You have to expect anything from these geniuses.
First of all, they operate as if their chief concern is to see the police stop their investigations (that was what they were most anxious about, they even ordered him to abandon the house without so much as sealing it or stationing a man there, even though the old servant who is still there alone does not seem to have all her wits about her) and then they pretend to come and ask his advice. Well, they will have to continue to get along without him.
Before sitting down, the commissioner straightens up his desk a little; he puts back the phone book, replaces the loose sheets in the dossiers. The one marked “Dupont” joins the left-hand pile, that of closed cases. Laurent rubs his hands again and repeats to himself: “Perfect!”
But a little later, when Laurent is finishing his mail, the man on duty announces Doctor Juard. What does this one want now! Can’t they leave him in peace about this case he’s not even supposed to be concerned with?
When he has the doctor shown in, Laurent is struck by his exhausted look.
“Monsieur,” the latter begins, almost in a whisper, “I’m here about the death of this unfortunate Dupont. I’m Doctor Juard.”
“Of course, Doctor, but we’ve already worked together once, if my memory doesn’t deceive me?”
“Oh, ‘worked’!” the little doctor says modestly. “My cooperation was so insignificant. I didn’t think you would even remember it.”
“We’ve all done what we could, Doctor,” the commissioner says.
After a slight pause, the doctor continues, as though reluctantly:
“I sent you a death certificate, but I thought you might want to see me anyway…”
He stops. Laurent watches him calmly, his hands lying on the desk which he absent-mindedly taps with one finger.
“Of course, Doctor, I’m glad you did,” he says at last.
This is a purely formal encouragement. Doctor Juard is beginning to regret having rushed here so soon, instead of waiting until the police sent for him. He wipes his glasses to gain time, and continues with a sigh:
“All the same, I don’t know what I could tell you about this strange crime.”
If he has nothing to say, why has he come? He has preferred to come of his own accord rather than seem to be afraid of questioning. He thought we were going to ask him specific details-for which he has prepared himself-and now we’re letting him get out of it by himself, as if he were the one in the wrong.
“Why ‘strange’?” the commissioner asks.
He doesn’t think it’s strange. It’s the doctor he thinks strange, sitting there stringing out his empty phrases instead of simply saying what he knows. What he knows about what? He hasn’t been called to give evidence. He has been particularly afraid that the police would come and rummage through his clinic: that’s why he’s here.
“I mean: out of the ordinary; there aren’t murders in our city very often. And it’s extremely rare that a burglar making his way into an inhabited house should be so upset at the sight of the owner that he feels it necessary to shoot him.”
Another thing that has kept him from staying home is his need to find out exactly what the others know and don’t know.
“You say ‘a burglar’?” Laurent asks in surprise; “did he take anything?”