Ah, Madame Hermant, how nice. Imagine, I just saw your husband yesterday evening. With someone. Don’t worry, she’s much too young for him. Be patient and he’ll come back, believe me, and crawling, too.
Thank you, thanks, Viviane stammers in confusion. I was wondering if he’d left any mail in the box.
Um, no, I think he took it up. But I still have the key for upstairs. If you like, we can go take a look.
Viviane couldn’t have asked for more, to be invited in without appearing to have her own key. She carefully avoids the damp area where the mop has passed while the concierge looks in her lodge for the keys and then follows her upstairs, where she opens the apartment door without a qualm, as if she spent every day snooping around empty premises. She peeks under both a cushion on the sofa and the TV schedule in the kitchen, then announces without further details, well I’m going to look around in the bedroom. Viviane hurries down the hall after her, then nips into the second bedroom. While the other woman inspects the master bedroom, Viviane puts the knife case back.
Aha, looky here, crows the concierge on the other side of the wall. Joining her, Viviane sees that she has picked up, at the foot of the bed, a scrap of shiny plastic that might well be a condom wrapper, but once the concierge has unfolded it, disappointment: the contents were simply chewing gum. Viviane shows her the old slippers snatched up from the back of the closet to justify having lingered in the other bedroom: I thought I’d pick these up as long as I’m here. Oh, go right ahead, dear, whyever would you leave that man any presents, after all. They finish touring the apartment; there is no mail anywhere. Viviane leaves the concierge to lock up. Thanks anyway, Madame Urdapilla, it was really nice to see you.
Then she walks to Place Félix-Éboué, where she orders a plain ham baguette sandwich and a sparkling water in a brasserie — no, give me a glass of wine instead, white, yes, that’s fine. Outside the glass-enclosed terrace, the eight bronze lions of the fountain spit out water like lamas. Tiring of the lions, Viviane chews on a bite of sandwich, spots a copy of a daily paper lying on the end of the counter, and stops chewing.
Flipping through the front pages of Le Parisien, of no interest to her, she stops at page thirteen, which has news-in-brief items, then homes in on the lower left column headed “Homicide”: “A secretary kills her ex-boyfriend.” Nothing to be learned there. The thirty-nine-year-old woman was questioned three hours after the incident in her home in Normandy. Detectives know their job, they’re specialists in this kind of amateur murderess. So what are the police doing? It’s half past twelve. The doctor has been dead since yesterday evening and must have been found quickly — a patient, a worried wife stuck with the leg of lamb and parsley potatoes getting cold. There would have been weeping and wailing; a neighbor would have rushed to the scene of the crime and dialed the emergency number in front of the wild-eyed widow.
Sooner or later, the phone will ring: a detective would like to know how Viviane spent her evening, why she asked for an urgent appointment, because the patient who was there with the doctor that morning when he took the call will have reported their conversation. All they had to do was go through the doctor’s address book to find out with whom he was speaking; you’re so stupid, Viviane, really so stupid, you should have taken his phone, it was right there on the desk, you remember that perfectly.
Before folding up the paper, she consults the horoscope on the last page: “Love: Something is changing in your relationship. Success: You might find yourself at a kind of turning point. Health: A little nervous tension.” She drains her glass and leaves the brasserie, considers taking the métro, then decides to proceed on foot. She walks and thinks faster and faster beneath the methodically aligned clouds overhead. With a bit of luck, the police will be swamped with work. And anyway, the success rate in homicides is what? — 80 percent according to government statistics, not counting judicial errors, so that makes at least a 20 percent chance of going scot-free she thinks as she goes along Rue Faidherbe and Rue Saint-Maur. Besides, there is no criminal record or motive, and the doctor considered her such a boring patient that his files can’t possibly contain anything suspicious. Viviane goes around the Hôpital Saint-Louis on its north-northwest side. About five hundred feet to the right and she’s back at Place du Colonel-Fabien, and now it’s a straight shot home, and now in the pocket of her big gray coat the phone begins to vibrate.
4
Set back from Place Maubert and hidden by a row of local shops, the police headquarters of the 5th arrondissement occupies a large city block bounded by Boulevard Saint-Germain, Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, Rue des Carmes, and Rue Basse-des-Carmes. Intentionally or not, its architecture seems to have been inspired by a military esthetic exemplified by the bunkers, blockhouses, and submarine bases built by the Germans along the French coasts during the Occupation. In short, it’s pretty ugly.
Crossing the lobby, their clenched fists clammy with perspiration, Viviane and her daughter arouse no interest among the officers in confab around the security gate. The clerk at the information counter, however, studies this mother with a touch of suspicion upon learning that she has been summoned by Inspector Philippot of the Criminal Investigation Division. Well of course she has no idea what he wants, shut up Viviane, you’re getting confused, digging yourself in deeper, shut up. Go to the fourth floor, replies the clerk, and wait there until you’re called.
Stepping out of the elevator, she sees plastic chairs lined up in front of offices with blue-tinted glazed partitions and Venetian blinds. It all looks exactly like the cop shows on television. Upon closer inspection, though, police housekeeping leaves much to be desired and the walls could use a lick of paint.
An officer signals to Viviane to sit down and she sits down. Watching the comings and goings in the corridor, she can easily tell the plainclothes police, moving casually around the offices, from the real civilians tiptoeing in or dashing for the exit. After fifteen minutes the baby begins to fuss, cry, and finally scream outrageously. Everyone looks at Viviane, who blushingly rises to pace the corridor. She whispers comforting words to her daughter but so unconvincingly, since she herself has little reason to feel reassured, that the child only wails even louder.
A door opens to reveal a very tall, very handsome man. He towers over the mother by a good head and slips a sidelong glance at the infant, who clams up. Come in, says Inspector Philippot, let’s end this agony. They enter an office with a table piled high with files, a chair on either side, an old computer in a corner, and no charm whatsoever.
So, my dear lady, you are a patient of Dr. Jacques Sergent. How did you learn about his death? Then he stares piercingly at Viviane who has gone completely mindless. The policeman’s head is perfectly smooth and he has full lips, like a pale-eyed Yul Brynner. His sky-blue shirt matches his eyes, his sandy jacket matches his skin. He’s about fifty-three, fifty-four. She likes him a lot. She likes him a lot and he’s going to nab her because he doesn’t seem like an idiot.
He’s dead? she asks innocently but without much hope. How could he be dead? I saw him the other day, he was fine, and who’s going to take care of me now?
Funny, that’s what they all say, notes the inspector ironically. When was your last appointment?
I was there Friday. Yes, Friday, I had a noon appointment. That’s been my schedule for the last two months, with the Wednesday one at ten a.m. Before that I was pregnant, she explains, indicating her daughter with a tiny jut of her chin, the way one points to vegetables at the market or change lying on a counter.