At last, the door opened and the lady I had seen on the previous day sidled in – I say sidled because she was turning her head back and down, talking to what turned out to be a frog-faced, wheezing, black bulldog, which seemed reluctant to waddle in.
'Remember my sapphire,' she said giving me her little cold hand. She sat down on the blue sofa and pulled up the heavy bulldog. 'Viens, mon vieux,' she panted, 'viens. He is pining away without Helene,' she said when the beast was made comfortable among the cushions. 'It's a shame, you know, I thought she would be back this morning, but she rang up from Dijon and said she would not arrive till Saturday (today was Tuesday). I'm dreadfully sorry. I did not know where to reach you. Are you 'very disappointed?' – and she looked at me with her chin on her clasped hands and her sharp elbows in close-fitting velvet propped on her knees.
'Well,' I said, 'if you tell me something more about Madame Graun, perhaps I may be consoled.'
I don't know why, but the atmosphere of the place drove me somehow to affected speech and manner.
'And what is more,' she said, lifting a sharp-nailed finger, 'j'ai une petite surprise pour vous. But first we'll have tea.' I saw that I could not avoid the farce of tea this time; indeed, the maid had already wheeled in a movable table with glittering tea things.
'Put it here, Jeanne,' said Madame Lecerf. 'Yes, that will do.'
'Now you must tell me as explicitly as possible,' said Madame Lecerf, 'tout ce que vous croyez raisonnable de demander а une tasse de thй. I suspect you would like some cream in it, if you have lived in England. You look English, you know.'
'I prefer looking Russian,' I said.
'I'm afraid I don't know any Russians, except Helene, of course. These biscuits, I think, are rather amusing.'
'And what is your surprise?' I asked.
She had a funny manner of looking at you intently – not into your eyes though, but at the lower pan of your face, as if you had got a crumb or something that ought to be wiped off. She was very lightly made up for a French woman, and I thought her transparent skin and dark hair quite attractive.
'Ah!' she said. 'I asked her something when she telephoned, and – ' she stopped and seemed to enjoy my impatience.
'And she replied,' I said, 'that she had never heard the name.'
'No,' said Madame Lecerf, 'she just laughed, but I know that laugh of hers.'
I got up, I think, and walked up and down the room.
'Well,' I said at length, 'it is not exactly a laughing matter, is it? Doesn't she know that Sebastian Knight is dead?'
Madame Lecerf closed her dark velvety eyes in a silent 'yes' and then looked again at my chin.
'Have you seen her lately – I mean did you see her in January when the news of his death was in the papers? Wasn't she sorry?'
'Look here, my dear friend, you are strangely naпve,' said Madame Lecerf. 'There are many kinds of love and many kinds of sorrow. Let us assume that Helene is the person you are seeking. But why ought we to assume that she loved him enough to be upset by his dying? Or perhaps she did love him, but held special views about death which excluded hysterics? What do we know of such matters? It's her personal affair. She'll tell you, I suppose, but until then it's hardly fair to insult her.'
'I did not insult her,' I cried. 'I am sorry if I sounded unfair. But do talk about her. How long have you known her?'
'Oh, I haven't seen much of her these last years until this one – she travels a lot, you know – but we used to go to the same school – here in Paris. Her father was a Russian painter, I believe. She was still very young when she married that fool.'
'What fool?' I queried.
'Well, her husband, of course. Most husbands are fools, but that one was hors concours. It didn't last long, happily. Have one of mine.' She handed me her lighter too. The bulldog growled in its sleep. She moved and curled up on the sofa, making room for me. 'You don't seem to know much about women, do you?' she asked, stroking her own heel.
'I'm only interested in one,' I answered.
'And how old are you?' she went on. 'Twenty-eight? Have I guessed? No? Oh, well, then you're older than me. But no matter. What was I telling you?… I know a few things about her – what she told me herself and what I have picked up. The only man she really loved was a married man and that was before her marriage, and she was a mere slip of a girl then, mind you – and he got tired of her or something. She had a few affairs after that, but it didn't much matter really. Un coeur de femme ne ressuscite jamais. Then there was one story which she told me in full – it was rather a sad one.'
She laughed. Her teeth were a little too large for her small pale mouth.
'You look as if my friend were your own sweetheart,' she said teasingly. 'By the way, I wanted to ask you how did you come to this address – I mean, what led you to look up Helene?'
I told her about the four addresses I had obtained in Blauberg. I mentioned the names,
'That's superb,' she cried, 'that's what I call energy! Voyez vous зa! And you went to Berlin? She was a Jewess? Adorable! And you have found the others too?'
'I saw one,' I said, 'and that was enough,'
'Which?' she asked with a spasm of uncontrollable mirth. 'Which? The Rechnoy woman?'
'No,' I said, 'Her husband has married again, and she has vanished,'
'You are charming, charming,' said Madame Lecerf, wiping her eyes and rippling with new laughter, 'I can see you crashing in and being confronted by an innocent couple, Oh, I never heard anything so funny, Did his wife throw you downstairs, or what?'
'Let us drop the matter,' I said rather curtly, I had had enough of that girl's merriment. She had, I am afraid, that French sense of humour in connexion with connubial matters, which at another moment might have appealed to me too; but just now I felt that the flippantly indecent view she took of my inquiry was somehow slighting Sebastian's memory, As this feeling deepened, I found myself thinking all of a sudden that perhaps the whole thing was indecent and that my clumsy efforts to hunt down a ghost had swamped any idea that I might ever form of Sebastian's last love. Or would Sebastian have been tickled at the grotesque side of the quest I had undertaken for his sake? Would the biographee have found that special 'Knightian twist' about it which would have fully compensated the blundering biographer?
'Please, forgive me,' she said, putting her ice-cold hand on mine and looking at me from under her brows, 'You must not be so touchy, you know,'
She got up quickly and went to the mahogany affair in the corner. I looked at her thin girlish back as she bent down – and I guessed what she was about to do.
'No, not that, for God's sake!' I cried.
'No?' she said, 'I thought a little music might soothe you. And generally create the right atmosphere for our talk. No? Well, just as you like.'
The bulldog shook himself and lay down again.
'That's right,' she said in a coaxing-and-pouting voice.
'You were about to tell me,' I reminded her.
'Yes,' she said sitting down again at my side and pulling at the hem of her skirt, as she curled one leg under her. 'Yes. You see, I don't know who the man was, but I gathered he was a difficult sort of man. She says she liked his looks and his hands and his manner of talking, and she thought it would be rather good fun to have him make love to her – because, you see, he looked so very intellectual, and it is always entertaining to see that kind of refined, distant – brainy fellow suddenly go on all fours and wag his tail What's the matter now, cher Monsieur?'