Again Garinati covers his ears to get rid of that irritating noise. This time he uses both hands, which he keeps pressed close to each side of his head for a minute.
When he takes them away, the whistling noise has stopped. He begins walking, carefully, as if he were afraid of making the noise start again by some excessively lively movement. Maybe Wallas will give him a clue to the riddle. Doesn’t he have to find him anyway? He has been ordered to. That’s what he has to do.
But where to find him? And how to recognize him? He does not have any clues, and the city is a big one. Nevertheless he decides to head toward the center of town, which means he has to turn around.
After a few steps he again finds himself in front of the building he has just left. He raises his hand to his ear with irritation: will that damned machine never stop?
3
Wallas, already half turned around, hears the latch fall back into place; he lets go of the doorknob and looks up at the house opposite. He immediately recognizes, at a third-story window, that same net curtain he has noticed several times during his morning walk. It probably is not very healthy to make a baby drink from the ewe’s teats that way: certainly not very sanitary. Behind the wide mesh of the netting. Wallas glimpses a movement, discerns a figure; someone is watching him and, realizing he has been seen, gradually moves into the dark room to keep out of sight. A few seconds later there is nothing left, in the window frame, but the two shepherds carefully bending over the body of the newborn baby.
Wallas walks along the garden fence toward the bridge, wondering if, in an apartment building of that size and inhabited by middle-class people, one can calculate that there is always at least one tenant watching the street. Five floors, two apartments per floor on the south side, then, on the main floor…In order to estimate the probable number of tenants, he glances back; he sees the embroidered net curtain fall back-someone had shoved it aside to watch him more easily. If this person had remained watching all day long yesterday, he could be a useful witness. But who would carry curiosity so far as to watch the comings and goings of some hypothetical passer-by after dark? There would have to be some specific reason-suppose his attention had been attracted by a scream, or some unusual sound…or in any way at all.
Fabius, having closed the garden gate behind him, inspects the premises; but he does not look as if that is what he is doing: he is an ordinary insurance agent leaving his client’s house and looking up at the sky to the right and to the left to see from what direction the wind is coming… Suddenly he notices someone odd watching him behind the curtains at a third-story window. He immediately looks away, to avoid arousing any suspicion that he has noticed, and walks at an ordinary pace toward the parkway. But once he has crossed the bridge, he veers right, taking a winding course that brings him back, in about an hour, to the Boulevard Circulaire; without wasting any time he crosses the canal, taking the footbridge at this point. Then, furtively keeping to the base of the houses, he returns to his point of departure, in front of the apartment building at the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs.
He walks into it boldly, through the door that opens onto the canal side, and knocks at the concierge’s window. He is representing a shade and blind establishment; he’d like to have the list of tenants whose windows look south, exposing them to the excessive ravages of the sun: faded rugs, pictures, draperies, or even worse-everyone has heard about those masterpieces that suddenly explode with a terrible noise, those ancestral portraits that suddenly begin to run, creating in the bosom of a family that disturbing impression whose fatal consequences are dissatisfaction, bad humor, quarrels, sickness, death…
“But winter’s coming now,” the concierge observes judiciously.
That doesn’t matter: Fabius knows that perfectly well, but he is preparing his spring campaign, and, besides, the winter sun that people worry about least is all the more to be feared I
Wallas smiles at this thought. He crosses the street and turns into the parkway. In front of the main entrance of the apartment building, a fat man in a blue apron, his face calm and cheerful, is polishing the brass doorknob-the concierge probably. He turns his head toward Wallas, who nods politely in reply. With a sly wink, the man says:
“If you’re cold, there’s still the bell to do!”
Wallas laughs pleasantly:
“I’ll leave you that for tomorrow: the good weather seems to be over.”
“The winter’s coming now,” the concierge answers.
And he begins polishing vigorously.
But Wallas wants to take advantage of the man’s good mood to engage in conversation:
“By the way, do you take care of the other wing of this building too?”
“Yes, of course! You think I’m not big enough to take care of two bells?”
“It’s not that, but I thought I recognized the face of an old friend of my mother’s up there, behind the window. I’d like to go say hello to her if I was sure I wasn’t mistaken. On the third floor, the apartment at the end…”
“Madame Bax?” the concierge asks.
“Yes, that’s right, Madame Bax! So it was Madame Bax. Funny how things happen: yesterday we were talking at dinner and we were just wondering what had become of her.”
“But Madame Bax isn’t old “
“No, of course not! She’s not at all old. I said ‘an old friend’ but I didn’t mean her age. I think I’ll go up. You don’t suppose she’s too busy?”
“Madame Bax? She’s always glued to the window watching the street! No, I’m sure she’d be delighted to see you.”
And without a moment’s hesitation, the man opens his door wide, then steps aside with an agreeably ceremonious gesture:
“This way, Prince! It doesn’t matter, the two staircases meet. Number twenty-four, on the third floor.”
Wallas thanks him and walks in. The concierge follows him in, closes the door and goes into his room. He has finished his work. He’ll polish the bell another day.
Wallas is received by a woman of uncertain age-perhaps still young, in fact-who, contrary to what he suspected, shows no surprise at this visit.
He simply tells her, showing her his police card, that the necessities of a difficult investigation oblige him to question, at random, all the people in the neighborhood who might provide any information at all. Without asking him any questions, she leads him into a room crowded with period furniture and indicates a tapestried chair. She herself sits down facing him, but some distance away, and waits, her hands clasped, looking at him earnestly.
Wallas begins speaking: a crime has been committed the evening before in the house opposite…
Her face carefully composed, Madame Bax indicates a slightly surprised-and pained-interest.
“You don’t read the newspapers?” Wallas asks.
“No, very rarely.”
In saying this, she gives him an almost mournful half-smile, as if she did not often have the daily papers at her disposal or else did not have time to read them. Her voice is like her face, gentle and faded. Wallas is an old relative come to pay a call, on her visiting day, after a long absence: he is telling her about the death of a mutual friend, whose loss she laments with well-mannered indifference. It is five in the afternoon. In a little while she will offer him a cup of tea.
“It’s a very sad story,” she says.
Wallas, who is not here to receive condolences, puts the question in precise terms: the position of her window might have allowed her to see or hear something.
“No,” she says, “I didn’t notice anything.”
She is very sorry.
Hadn’t she at least noticed some prowler, some suspicious-looking types she could identify: a man in the street, for instance, who might have been paying abnormal attention to the house?