He stopped speaking and looked at them both in turn.
‘You seem to be alright,’ he said after examining them carefully. ‘You don’t look as if you would dismiss it out of hand. But I would still rather wait a bit before I ask you to help me. I went to see Madame Siméonidis’ father at the weekend, in Dourdan. He showed me all his personal archives, and I think I might have found one or two little pointers. I left him my contact number in case he finds any more documents, but he didn’t seem to be listening at all. He is absolutely devastated. And the killer is still at large. I’m looking for a name. Tell me, have you been her neighbours for long?’
‘Only since March 20,’ said Marc.
‘Oh, that’s not long. She won’t have confided in you. She went missing about May 20, didn’t she? Did anyone come to see her before that? Somebody unexpected? I don’t mean an old friend or acquaintance. No, someone she thought she would never see again, or even someone she didn’t know at all?’
Marc and Mathias shook their heads. They had not known Sophia for very long, but perhaps one could ask the other neighbours.
‘Well, someone very unexpected did come to see her,’ said Marc, frowning. ‘Not someone, exactly, something‘
Dompierre lit a cigarette and Mathias noticed that his thin hands were trembling. Mathias had decided he would like this man. He was too thin, and far from handsome, but he was principled, he was following his hunch, his own private conviction. That was how Mathias was, when Marc teased him about hunting the bisons. This fragile-looking man would not abandon his bow and arrow, that was certain.
‘It was a tree, actually,’ said Marc. ‘A beech sapling. I don’t know if that would mean anything to you, because I don’t know what it is you’re looking for. But I keep thinking about that tree, although everyone else has stopped caring. Shall I tell you about it?’
Dompierre nodded as Mathias brought him an ashtray. He listened to the story attentively.
‘Yes. Well,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. And right now, I can’t see what it has to do with anything.’
‘Neither can I,’ said Marc. ‘I suppose it doesn’t mean anything. And yet I keep thinking about it. All the time. I don’t know why.’
‘I’ll think about it too,’ said Dompierre. ‘Can you let me know please, when Relivaux reappears. He may have been visited by this person without realising how important it was. I’ll leave you my address. I’m staying at a little hotel in the 19th arrondissement, Hôtel du Danube, rue de la Prévoyance. I used to live near there as a child. Don’t hesitate to call me, even at night, because I could be recalled to Geneva at any minute. I’m here on official European business. I’ll give you the hotel address and phone number. I’m in room 32.’
Marc gave him back his card and Dompierre wrote his address. Marc got up and slipped the card under the five-franc piece on the fireplace. Dompierre watched him. For the first time, he smiled and for a moment looked almost charming.
‘This is the Pequod, is it?’
‘No,’ said Marc, smiling in turn. ‘It’s a research deck. We do research on all periods, all mankind, all continents. From 500,000 BC to 1918. From Africa to Asia and from Europe to the Antarctic.’
‘“And hence”’,’ Dompierre said, quoting, ‘“not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate feeding grounds could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a meeting.”’
‘Do you know Moby Dick by heart?’ asked Marc, greatly impressed.
‘No. Just that sentence, because I have often had occasion to use it.’
Dompierre shook hands with them warmly. He looked back once more at his card, wedged on the fireplace, as if checking that he had forgotten nothing, picked up his briefcase and left. Each standing at a window, Marc and Mathias watched him walk away towards the gate.
‘Intriguing,’ said Marc.
‘Very,’ said Mathias.
Once one was standing in one of the big window bays, it was difficult to move away. The June sunshine lay serenely over the untended garden. The grass was growing at top speed. Marc and Mathias stayed looking out of their windows for a long while. Marc was the first to speak.
‘You’ll be late for your lunchtime shift,’ he said. ‘Juliette will be wondering what you’re up to.’
Mathias sprang up, went upstairs to put on his waiter’s uniform, and Marc saw him leave at a run, buttoned up in his black waistcoat. It was the first time Marc had seen him run. He ran well. A very good hunter.
XXV
ALEXANDRA WAS DOING NOTHING. WELL, NOTHING USEFUL OR PROFITABLE. She was sitting at a table, her head in her hands. She was thinking about tears, the tears that nobody sees, that nobody knows about, the tears shed in vain and unheeded. But which flow all the same. Alexandra pushed hard on her temples and gritted her teeth. It didn’t help, of course. She sat up. ‘Greeks are free, Greeks are proud,’ her grandmother used to say. She said a lot of things like that, Grandmother Andromache.
Guillaume had said he wanted to spend a thousand years with her. Well, it had lasted just about five. ‘Greeks take a man at his word,’ her grandmother used to say. Maybe so, Alexandra thought, but in that case, the Greeks are stupid. Because afterwards she had had to walk away, trying to hold her head high and her back straight, leaving behind familiar places, sounds, names, and a face. To walk away with Kyril along churned-up paths, trying not to fall headfirst into the bitter ditch of lost illusions. Alexandra stretched her arms. She had had enough of this. She looked at the clock. Time to go and fetch Kyril. Juliette had suggested a special rate for Kyril to have his lunch after school at Le Tonneau. It had been a stroke of luck to find people like this: Juliette, the evangelists. Here she was, in this little house near them all, and it was restful. Perhaps because they all seemed to have plenty of troubles of their own. Talking of troubles, Pierre had promised her he would try to find her a job. If she believed Pierre, she would be believing in someone’s word again. Alexandra quickly pulled on her boots and put on her jacket. Too much crying left you with a headache. Combing her hair with her fingers, she set off for the school.
There were few customers in Le Tonneau at this time of day, and Mathias gave them the table in the window. Alexandra was not hungry and asked him only to give some food to Kyril. While the little boy ate, she went up to the bar and gave Mathias a big smile. He found her brave, and would have preferred to see her eat. To keep her courage up.
Juliette gave her a little dish of olives and Alexandra nibbled them, thinking of her old grandmother who had an almost religious respect for black olives. She had really adored Andromache and all the damned sayings she came out with at every turn. Alexandra rubbed her eyes. She was drifting away, dreaming. She had to pull herself together, and say something. ‘The Greeks are proud.’