Dog Will Have His Day (18 page)

‘Where are you going?’

‘To get a beer. See what the cops are up to in the cafe.’

‘Get on,’ said Marc, pointing to his luggage rack.

Louis thought for a nanosecond. He used to be able to ride a bike. He’d never been carried before. But Marc was already turning the bike round in the right direction, and there was clearly no hurtfully condescending purpose in his proposal. He was just offering to help, that was all. Marc wasn’t like him, he never hurt anyone.

Marc braked five minutes later in front of the cafe. On the way he had had time to shout through the wind and rain, telling Louis that after abandoning the lord of Puisaye for a while, he’d hired a bike to take a look round the village, and opposite the supermarket he’d found a fantastic thing. A machine about four metres high, an immense and magnificent mass of iron and copper, very intricate with levers, discs, cogwheels, pistons, and all for absolutely no purpose. And as he was standing looking amazed at this strange machine, a local man came past and showed him how it worked. You turned a handle at the bottom, and the big machine went into action, every single part moving, all the way up and all the way down again, and for what? ‘You’ll never guess,’ Marc had shouted over his shoulder. ‘All that for a lever to come down on a roll of paper and print off: “
That’s quite possible. Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
.” And this chap said, “You can take the paper, it’s for you, it’s free, and there are about a hundred and one other mottos.”’ After that, Marc had turned the handle several times, made the big machine shudder from head to foot, and been rewarded with many maxims and souvenirs of Port-Nicolas. Things like ‘
You’re getting warm. Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
’ or ‘
Don’t overdo it. Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
’, ‘
Why not? Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
’, ‘
Good idea. Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
’, ‘
Why so much hatred? Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
’, ‘
No, getting colder
’, and various others he couldn’t remember. It was a unique machine. By the time of his last try, Marc had grasped the point of it: you had to make up a question in your head, then consult the oracle. He had hesitated between ‘Will I get my medieval accounts finished in time?’ which he found too footling, and ‘Is there a woman somewhere who will fall in love with me?’, but he didn’t want to know if the answer to that was no, so he had finally opted for a question which didn’t commit him to anything: ‘Does God exist?’ ‘Know what it replied?’ Marc added, as he came to a stop outside the cafe, still astride the bicycle. ‘“
Rephrase the question. Souvenir from Port-Nicolas
.” And guess what! This marvellous and pointless machine was constructed by Sevran, four years ago. It’s got his name on it:
L. Sevran 1991
. I’d love to have created something like that, an enormous and totally futile object that gives vague answers to silly or formulaic questions. Ah, look, wishful thinking, eh? The cops are here.’

‘Right, let’s wait for them. Or no, never mind the beer, let’s go over to Sevran’s. Since you mentioned him, and since the cops are slow off the mark, let’s go and talk to both the Sevrans before they get there. Off we go, on your bike.’

THE SEVRANS WERE
just sitting down to lunch. When lina saw the two men arriving, soaked to the skin and apparently determined to stay, she had no choice but to set out two extra plates. Louis introduced Marc, who suddenly had but one thought in his head: keep out of the way of the pit bull if it came into the room. He could think straight in front of ordinary dogs, but a pit bull, and one that ate the toes of corpses, made him go weak at the knees.

‘So,’ said Sevran, sitting down, ‘it’s still about the dog, is it? You want an address? You’re going to get one for your friend?’

‘I’ve made up my mind. But I wanted to talk to you before . . .’

‘Before what?’ asked Sevran, serving each of them with a ladleful of mussels.

Marc hated mussels.

‘Before the police get here. You didn’t see them in front of the town hall this morning?’

‘What did I say?’ said Lina. ‘I told you that dog would get us into trouble.’

‘I haven’t seen anyone,’ said Sevran. ‘I’ve been working on my latest typewriter, an 1896 Lambert in very good condition. Are the cops after Ringo? This is taking things a bit far, isn’t it? Has he done something to you, or what?’

‘He’s made it possible to reconstruct something very important. It was thanks to him that we know now that Marie didn’t simply fall, down on the rocks. She was murdered there. That’s why the cops are here. I’m sorry, this must be unhappy news for you both.’

Lina looked unwell. She glanced at Kehlweiler while gripping the table, as if she didn’t want to faint in front of everyone.

‘Murdered?’ she said. ‘
Murdered?
And it was the dog –’

‘No, no, the dog didn’t kill her,’ said Louis quickly. ‘But, and I’m afraid this is not easy to say . . . he must have been on the beach right after the murder, and I’m really sorry – he bit off one of her toes.’

Lina didn’t cry out, but Sevran jumped up and went to clasp his wife’s shoulders, standing behind her chair.

‘Calm down, Lina, calm down,’ he said. ‘Can you explain please, Monsieur . . . sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘Kehlweiler.’

‘Please explain yourself, Monsieur Kehlweiler, but be quick, Marie’s death was a terrible shock for us, she helped bring up my wife and the children, so you will understand that it’s upsetting for Lina to talk about her. What’s this all about? Where does the dog come into it . . .?’

‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Marie was found down on the beach, barefoot, you know that, the tide had washed away her boots. And, something that wasn’t in the papers was that her left big toe was missing. They thought it might have been the seagulls. But the toe had been lost
before
the tide came up. So somebody must have killed her on the Thursday night, and one of her boots slipped off. The murderer finished the job on the rocks and went back to find the missing boot. But in that time, the dog must have come along and bitten her foot. The murderer can’t have noticed, because it was getting dark, put the boot back on the foot and it was another three nights before Marie was found.’

‘But how do you know all that?’ asked Sevran. ‘Are there some witnesses?’

He was still gripping Lina by the shoulders. The meal was forgotten by everyone.

‘No, no witnesses, just your dog.’

‘
My
dog? Why him? He’s not the only dog running around the village, for heaven’s sake.’

‘No, but he’s the only one who excreted the bone, on Thursday night, before 1 a.m., on the Place de la Contrescarpe, in Paris.’

‘I can’t make head nor tail of this,’ said Sevran.

‘I found it there, and followed the trail down here. I’m sorry but it
was
your dog. As it happens, he was very useful. If it hadn’t been for him, nobody would have suspected a murder.’

Suddenly, Lina gave a cry, wrenched herself free from her husband, and ran out of the room. They heard a loud clatter outside, and Sevran rushed out in turn.

‘Quick, quick,’ he cried to them. ‘She adored Marie!’

They caught up with Lina fifteen seconds later. She was in the courtyard behind the house, facing the growling pit bull. Lina was holding a rifle. She leaned back, shouldered the gun and took aim.

‘Lina, no!’ cried Sevran, running towards her.

But his wife didn’t even turn round. Teeth clenched, she fired two shots and the dog convulsed and fell bleeding to the ground. She threw the gun down on the dog’s corpse without a word, her jaw trembling, and went back inside, not deigning to glance at the three men standing round.

Louis followed her, leaving Marc with Sevran. Lina had taken her place at the table again. Her hands were shaking, and her face was so contorted that she was no longer beautiful. Her features were so frozen that, for all the trembling of her body, nobody could have felt sympathy for her. Louis poured her some wine, pushed the glass towards her, and handed her a lit cigarette. She accepted both. She looked at him, breathed deeply, and her face relaxed into a milder expression.

‘He paid for it,’ she said, taking breaths between each word, ‘that damned dog from hell. I knew it would hurt us one day, me or my children.’

Marc came back inside.

‘What’s he doing?’ Louis asked.

‘Burying the dog.’

‘Good,’ said Lina. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish. I’ve taken revenge for Marie.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘I know, I’m not stupid. But I couldn’t spend another minute in the same house as that piece of filth.’

She looked at them in turn.

‘What? Are you shocked? Are you going to mope over that filthy dog? I’ve done everyone a good turn by shooting it.’

‘You’re a cool customer,’ said Louis. ‘You didn’t miss.’

‘Just as well. But it’s not being cool, to kill a dog that scares you. That dog has always scared me. When Martin was younger – Martin’s my son – the dog bit him on the face. He’s still got the scar on his chin. Nice dog, eh? I begged Lionel to get rid of it then, he didn’t want to know, he promised to train it properly, he said it would settle down as it got older, and Martin had been teasing it. Never the dog’s fault, always someone else’s.’

‘Why did your husband keep Ringo?’

‘Why? Because he found the creature half dead in a ditch. He took it in, he coddled it and the dog recovered. Lionel is capable of getting sentimental over some clapped-out old typewriter when it gets back in working order, so I’ll let you imagine how he was when this puppy leapt into his arms. He’s always had dogs. I didn’t have the heart to object. But this was the last straw, Marie, my dear old Marie, no.’

‘What will Lionel say now?’

‘He’ll be very upset. I’ll get him another dog, something gentler.’

Just then Sevran came into the room. He leaned a muddy shovel against the wall, and sat down at the table, though not in his place. He ran his hands over his face and hair, transferring more earth to them, before going out again to wash his hands. Then he went and held on to his wife’s shoulder, as he had before.

‘I should thank you all the same for getting here before the police,’ he said. ‘Better have that happen in front of you than in front of them.’

Louis and Marc rose to leave and Lina gave them a pale smile. Sevran joined them at the door.

‘Can I ask you,’ he said, ‘if it’s possible . . .?’

‘Not to mention this to the police?’

‘Yes. Of course. What would they think if they knew my wife had fired a gun? At the dog, yes, but you know what the police are like.’

‘So what will you tell them if they ask to see the dog?’

‘That he ran away, that I don’t know where he is. We’ll say he never came back. Poor dog. Don’t judge Lina too hastily. Marie was her nanny, they’ve known each other for thirty-eight years, and she was due to be moving in with us. Since Diego disappeared, that’s her husband, Marie had been a bit of a lost soul in her house, and Lina had decided she’d better come and live here. Everything was ready. So Marie’s death gave her an awful shock. Bad enough that it was an accident, but if it was a murder, even worse, and then the dog . . . she lost control. You have to understand her, Kehlweiler, she’d always been scared of my dog, especially for the children.’

‘It bit Martin.’

‘Yes, yes, three years ago, he was still a very young dog and Martin had provoked him. So? What will you tell the police?’

‘Nothing. They can find things out for themselves, that’s their job.’

‘Thank you. If I can help you at all, about Marie.’

‘Have a think, both of you, when you’ve got over the business about the dog between you. What time did you leave the house that Thursday night?’

‘What time? I always leave at about six o’clock.’

‘With the dog?’

‘Yes, it’s true, that night he wasn’t around the house. He’d got out again. One time too many, you’ll think. I was furious, because I don’t like getting to Paris too late, I need to sleep before lecturing in the morning. I took the car and drove around a bit. I found him much nearer here than Vauban Cove – he was running into the village. I caught him, gave him a row and put him in the car. I couldn’t have guessed . . . what he’d been up to, could I?’

‘As I said before, Sevran, your pit bull did us a good turn. If it wasn’t for him, nobody would know Marie had been murdered.’

‘That’s true, one should try and see things in that light. He did a good turn. But look, you haven’t had any lunch.’

‘It’s fine,’ Marc interposed quickly, ‘we’ll manage.’

‘I’m going back to Lina then. She’s probably already regretting it, and thinking of getting a puppy for me, I know what she’s like.’

Marc said goodbye, telling himself now wasn’t the time to ask him questions about the fabulous and pointless machine, and took hold of the bike. He pushed it along slowly, while Louis walked beside him.

‘Did you see her face when she shot the dog?’ Marc asked.

‘Yeah, a sight to see.’

‘Weird how someone so good-looking can become horrible. And then she went back to normal.’

‘What do you think of her? Would you want to go to bed with her if she asked?’

‘You’re a funny guy. I’d never have asked myself that.’

‘Never asked yourself that? What the hell do you do with your life? You should always ask yourself that, Marc.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know that. So
you
asked yourself? And was it yes or no?’

‘Ah, well, it depends. With her, it would depend on the circumstances.’

‘So what’s the point of asking the question, if you can’t give a better answer than that?’

Louis smiled. They walked on in silence for a while.

‘I could do with a beer,’ said Louis suddenly.

LOUIS AND MARC
had lunch at the counter of the market cafe. The room smelt of damp clothes, cigarette smoke and wine. Marc loved the smell, it made him want to sit straight down with his work in a corner, but he had left the lord of Puisaye’s accounts on the bedside table in the hotel.