Sunday (15 page)

Although he seldom did so, there was nothing extraordinary about it. The building was cool and damp, and the windows were rarely opened; it was only by accident that the shutters were unlatched.

It was quite natural for him to remove the mustiness from the air, for his siesta, by burning a few vine-stocks.

'I think I'm going to light myself a fire . . .'

It was still in the kitchen that he said this, and still at a time when he knew Berthe to be in the next room.

'Considering the time the chimney was last swept, you'll be smoked out.'

He thought for a moment it was true. The smoke came back into the room, but he used a pair of bellows and when the flames were high enough the chimney suddenly drew with a sucking sound.

He couldn't use one of the kitchen saucepans. Nor did he dare to buy a small aluminium pan from a store.

This experiment alone took more than a fortnight all told. He found an old tin-can which had been opened fairly neatly, used it as a container, and instead of going to sleep, having taken care, of course, not to give the signal to Ada, he devoted himself to his spot of cooking.

First of all he added the arsenic paste to a certain quantity of water. Then he boiled the whole mixture, not too fast, over a low fire, until there was only a little whitish matter left in the bottom of the tin.

He scooped it out with a piece of wood, mixed it with some minced meat and, once again, the meatball was thrown to the dog.

In the meantime he had sown some seeds beneath the two frames and ordered some seedlings. Everything fitted in. His comings and goings were logical. He was not risking a single suspicious move.

The dose was still not strong enough. He almost allowed himself to become discouraged when he found the dog in its place next day, and he nourished a veritable hatred for this old beast which refused to die.

He started again, not immediately, but three days later, and he had taken care to go out fishing as he usually did at this time of year.

Finally, by boiling down his mixture several times, he obtained a powder with metallic glints in it, and on the next day, not seeing the dog, he realized that he had succeeded.

Nor did he see the animal again on the following days.

He played a lot of bowls, nearly every afternoon, for this was the way to discover whether there had been any rumours.

If the owner of the dog had suspected that his animal had been poisoned, he would not have failed to speak about it and the talk would have reached the village. Somebody would certainly have turned up, in that case, and said:

'By the way, old Manuel's dog has been poisoned.'

Nothing. Not a word. Only a patch of freshly dug earth in the small garden, opposite the house.

That meant the animal's death had seemed natural.

There remained one experiment to try, the most disagreeable one, and it was necessary to wait for a Sunday. The books he had read spoke of the taste and smell which in many cases had aroused the suspicions of the intended victims.

In one case, in Scotland, the arsenic had been put into some very hot chocolate and the victim had suspected nothing. But Berthe did not drink chocolate and she never drank anything very hot. The book stressed the fact that the chocolate had been
boiling.

It mentioned a smell similar to that of garlic, which would be found afterwards in the vomit and evacuations.

Now there existed one dish on which Berthe doted, indeed the principal speciality of La Bastide, which all the regular customers asked for and which appeared on the menu once a week, on Sundays: it was the calamary risotto.

He little suspected, at the time when he had been perfecting the recipe—for he had improved on the recipe he had been given—he little suspected that it would one day be invaluable to him. He was lucky in that, as he had been over the herbs, and in his habit of taking a siesta in the Cabin. Everything had its use in the end. One would have thought that providence . . .

He had to allow three Sundays to pass, for it was not so easy as it might seem to remove a portion of risotto without being spotted.

Using the experience he had acquired with the dog, he measured out a certain quantity of powder, which he mixed with the rice soaked in the sauce. At first, a few bright specks remained. Then, little by little, they became absorbed in the ink of the squid, which provided the base for the sauce.

Emile wanted to be sure that the dish had no smell, or anything suspicious about its appearance. Last of all, it was essential to taste it.

He took only a small mouthful, of course, had the courage not to spit it out again. The rice had no suspicious taste. It remained to be seen whether he would feel sick, and he stretched out in the shade, attentive to the reactions of his stomach.

Did his imagination play some part in it? There was no way of telling for sure. The fact remains that he was seized with fits of nausea. He forced himself not to vomit, and towards five o'clock he resumed his normal work, not without feeling drops of sweat on his brow.

Two or three times, as he passed, he looked at himself in the glass, and there was no doubt that he was pale.

It was February. He had spent almost the entire winter at it, preparing enough powder so that, if it should fail the first time, he should be able to start again.

Now that he had finished with the material items, he occupied his mind with putting the finishing touches to the other details, fixing a date for example, then rehearsing all that he would have to do.

One incident disturbed him for a while, since, by its consequences, it might have altered a great many other things. Not only did Madaine Maubi come to help in the kitchen and with the housework during the season but, during the rest of the year, on Madame Lavaud's day off, it was she who took her place.

She was a fairly large woman, with feet that caused her pain, and when she arrived she changed from her shoes into felt slippers. In summer, she would take off her dress and put on an overall with a small black-and-white check pattern. She carried both slippers and overall in a straw bag of the kind used by housewives in the Midi for doing their market shopping.

Emile had never paid any attention to these details, which were part of the household routine. Two or three times he had had occasion to remark:

'Strange! There are only three tins of sardines left . . .'

Or:

'I thought I had left some sausage in the refrigerator . . .'

One evening, when he was at the bar having a glass of wine with the postman, he had heard Berthe's voice in the kitchen.

'One moment please, Madame Maubi.'

The 'please' had made him prick up his ears and, keeping his gaze fixed absently on the postman, he had listened.

'I should like to have a look in your bag.'

'But, Madame . . .'

She must have suited the action to her words, since Madame Maubi protested:

'You have no right to do this. I forbid you . . .'

Berthe was stronger than she seemed and she had got the better of the charwoman.

'I shall complain to the mayor. You think you can do as you please just because you are the boss here . . .'

'Indeed? . . . And what about this? . . . Will you complain to the mayor of that too?'

The postman, who had not been listening, gave Emile a conspiratorial wink.

'A tin of tunny, a tin
of pâté de foie,
a lump of butter, a tin of peaches in svrup. I'm the one who'll be complaining to the police . . .'

'You'd do that?'

'I'm entitled to, aren't I? I can tell you, I've been watching you for a long time. I wanted to make quite sure. Are you going to tiy and say you don't get enough to eat in the house?'

'It's not for myself.'

Madame Maubi spoke in a dry voice. She didn't ask to be forgiven, didn't apologize.

'It's for my daughter, who's married a good-for-nothing, and my husband refuses to help because she did it without his consent.'

'It's not my business to feed her either. You can go. Maubi will continue to work for us, but I don't want to see your face in this house again Is that clear?'

'Are you going to tell him?'

'Who?'

'My husband.'

There was a silence. Berthe must be working out that although she could easily replace the woman, a new gardener would cause her much more trouble.

'I shall tell him I no longer need your services.'

'Nothing else?'

'Now go. But first put back what you have stolen.'

They were not to see Madame Maubi again, except in the distance, and if Maubi suspected the truth, he gave no sign of it. He too was attached to La Bastide, where he had already been working before Big Louis arrived.

Emile was relieved, for an upheaval in the household might have upset his plans.

Berthe said nothing to him. It was a matter that was no concern of his.

Next day he heard her telephoning to Cannes, to a domestic agency.

'. . . It doesn't matter . . . Resident or non-resident . . . She doesn't need any special training . . . It's for the heavy work . . .'

Berthe appeared to have decided to take on an extra member of the household, which, with the ever-increasing clientele, was beginning to become essential.

They saw, first of all, the arrival of a Polish woman, as strong as a horse, who eyed the kitchen around her as if to size up an enemy. An hour later, she was already on her knees, scrubbing the tiles with a brush.

She had been given the attic beside Ada's. During the night they could hear her moving about, and Emile knew that Berthe, like himself, was listening. Then the noises stopped. They had heard no footsteps on the stair, no door opening and shutting. Yet next morning the room was empty. In order to ensure that nobody would oppose her departure, the woman had left by the window.

Berthe telephoned again. The agency sent a woman of about thirty, who squinted and appeared to be permanently on the verge of tears.

This was the one they kept, however, for she never stopped working and above all she lowered her eyes in a docile manner whenever Berthe spoke to her.

Little was changed, after all, apart from the fact that the new woman, whose name was Bertha, but they now called her Marie, managed to get up before Ada, without an alarm, and was nearly always the first downstairs. Madame Lavaud made no changes in her habits, contenting herself with an occasional shrug at the uncomely face of the woman imposed upon her as companion.

Easter was approaching. There were two residents and others had booked rooms by post.

It was better for the house to be kept busy, from now on, for it made the time of waiting seem less long. Ada above all was becoming nervous, and if the others noticed nothing, in Emile's eyes she was taking on the appearance of a cat expecting kittens. Sometimes she wandered round in circles, had occasional black-outs.

'What are you thinking about, Ada?'

'Nothing, Madame.'

To cheer her up he would make the signal to her, after lunch. She had a special way of creeping to his side with curious humility. Each time, one might have thought she was silently asking his permission and, when she was in her place, one almost expected to hear her purring with contentment.

Sometimes, increasingly often, a shiver would run tJarough her as she lay motionless, her eyes open. Hoping to encourage her, he would say:

'Only two months to go.'

Then, only six weeks, one month.

If Emile had been asked how he proposed to organize his life with her when it was all over, he would have had difficulty in replying. To tell the truth, he did not think about it.

Certainly Ada was part of his plans, since she had been at the origin of what was about to take place. He did not envisage parting with her, and probably she still had the same importance.

At least so he supposed. In reality she existed, and that was all there was to it. She formed part of his life, both of his present life and of his future life, but he did not know in what capacity.

It was rather as if Ada had been superseded. The game was no longer being played on quite the same ground. Or again, at a certain moment, on account of Berthe. Ada had acquired an importance which was not really her own.

Emile sometimes reflected that he would no longer need to go and take his siesta in the Cabin, that Ada would sleep with him in the big walnut bed, that they would go upstairs together, in the afternoon, without hiding from anyone.

It was not, however, these images which he called to the rescue in moments of vacillation. It was in the past that he would delve to find his reasons, and even, more often than not, in the past in which Ada had not yet appeared on the scene.

It was no longer a question of causes, motives, still less of excuses. It was a matter of life and death to be settled between Berthe and himself, and it was urgent for one of them to win.

Who knows what Berthe might not be engineering all on her own? She had not accepted the situation with a light heart. A cold rage must be gripping her from morning to night, and nobody grows used to living with rages of that kind.

She said nothing, made no complaint. She had not even complained to her mother. Out of pride.

And, out of pride as well, she was bound to want it to change, at any cost.

He was suspicious, was careful not to eat just anything that came to hand, which was easier for him than for her. He was in the stronger position. It was he who reigned in the kitchen, and he had had plenty of time to bring his plan to maturity.

Easter was too soon, for there would not be enough disorder around them. Disorder was one of his trump cards. One does not react in the same way on a quiet Sunday as when there are forty guests on the terrace, people drinking at the bar and filling every corner of the house.

He must get through the period of calm, following the holidays, without impatience, must wait for the first flood of tourists.

He sometimes felt tired. It was inevitable. But he was conscious of having achieved what few other human beings have the courage to achieve: ten months, soon eleven months of preparation under the mistrustful eye of Berthe, sleeping each night in her bed, without giving himself away on one single occasion.