The Cairo Diary (9 page)

A large cheval glass gave this final room an illusion of depth, by reflecting the most distant corners. Opposite the dressing table, covered with issues of
Picture Show Magazine,
next to the Voltaire armchair hidden beneath a heap of clothes, stretched a double bed with crumpled sheets. At its foot lay a carved wooden bowl, overturned on the carpet, with masses of cigarette butts drowned in a sea of ash overflowing from it.

The photo of a woman decorated the bedside table. Not enough of the night's brightness filtered through the two windows to identify her face.

At the other end of the rail car, the kettle on the cast-iron stove started to whistle.

Jeremy stood up, and grabbed a dirty rag to lift it and make himself some tea. The dried mint leaves swiftly filled the vast room with their fragrance.

Jeremy savored his burning-hot drink, leaning back in his chair. Unusually, he had not removed his boots. His feet were dissolving inside them.

He always wore his shirt with its many pockets, even if he had to keep it open, baring his chest. He was unshaven. He hadn't had time that morning. It suited him, slightly veiling his excessively hollow cheeks, reducing the impression that his mouth was too fleshy.

Jeremy ran a hand across his face.

His nose was slender, hooked.

His eyebrows ebony-black.

And a coppery halo emanated from his bare forehead, which was surrounded by black hair, smoothed back.

To hear the women who chatted on the terraces, sipping their
sahleeb
outside the clubs he frequented from time to time, Jeremy Matheson was “ardently desirable.”

The brutishness of Africa and British elegance had come together in the same man.

Everyone knew that he was a detective, and a brilliant hunter, who had already been on a reckless safari in the wilds of the Great South.

Everyone also knew that no woman in Cairo could boast of having shared her bed with Jeremy Matheson.

People whispered that he was highly selective.

And secretive.

There were rumors …

*   *   *

The glass tinkled as Jeremy placed it on the table. He cracked the joints of his fingers, which were very long and vigorous, like his hands, which attracted many glances from the women of Cairo's colonial society. He rose and opened the door of the rail car.

A flight of three steps led to the canopy that was attached to the side wall. A carpet covered the sand, with chaise longues, a wooden pole, and several cases of equipment and food, labeled
ARMY PROPERTY
.

Jeremy nonchalantly pulled out a chair and sat down in front of the tent.

The night calmed the sun's ardor. It was much nicer now, but it would take another hour or two before the interior of the rail car cooled down.

Opposite him, rails wove across a landscape he loved, a procession of endless worms, undulating in the moonlight, heading toward infinity, just like the skein of existence.

And lower down, behind the building that housed the rail museum, beneath the massive mouth of orange stone, the central rail station cocooned its steel snakes and its anonymous travelers in the shelter of its vaulted roof.

About a hundred yards from the carriage where Jeremy Matheson lived, a streetcar jolted past, wearing its sparking crown of electricity like a headdress. The line served the beautiful districts of Heliopolis, away from the city. Inside, women and men traveled separately.

The faces were smiling; one young woman was even laughing out loud. There were lots of young Westerners.

Jeremy watched them until the streetcar was no more than a blur with shining red lights.

His lips pursed and began to whiten.

He swallowed noisily.

His hand searched the pocket of his beige linen trousers.

From it, he took a small piece of torn paper. Several lines of elegant handwriting filled the first half of it. Jeremy's hand masked its content.

All except what was written at the bottom.

“Samir. 5 years old.”

Jeremy's hand clenched into a fist.

Despite all the resilience he was summoning up to stifle this pain in his throat, the lower rims of his eyes began to swell with moisture.

His jaw jutted beneath the fine skin of his cheeks.

Like veritable Cyclops of the heavens, the millions of stars trained their lone eyes upon him, trembling and immaculate.

A droplet fell beside Samir's name.

The paper absorbed it instantly.

It grew within the fibers, broadening more and more until it touched the edges of the name.

10

When Brother Damien came to fetch Marion that Tuesday morning, she was looking cheerful and trim.

She was wearing a white woollen coat over her sweater and jeans, a hat of the same material, and a bag was slung across her chest. Her abundant hair was hidden under the hat, and Brother Damien paid real attention to her features, in a way he had not yet done. He noticed the green of her irises, which looked less lifeless in the cold. Her rounded cheekbones gave her a Slavic appearance.

He wondered for a brief moment about that injury to her lower lip, before driving the curiosity from his mind.

They reached Avranches before half-past nine, and went directly up to the attic.

They inventoried the works in silence until midday, when the brother suggested going out for lunch. Marion had hoped she could get away on her own to read the journal, which she had brought in her bag, but the circumstances hardly lent themselves to it. The library's curator insisted on inviting them to eat with him, in order to paint them a detailed history of the Mont-Saint-Michel manuscripts.

She didn't know if it was because of the concentration needed to read titles in the semidarkness, or the dust, but she was starting to get a migraine when she got back, late that afternoon.

She found some painkillers in a cupboard in the bathroom, and lay down on the bed until the pain began to fade.

The twilight cradled her until her sight clouded.

She slipped into unconsciousness.

All she could see now was the open wardrobe.

The different-colored stripes of her clothes piled on top of one another.

The colors were mingling …

A sharp focus returned. Suddenly Marion could make out perfectly the details of her clothes.

The sleeves of her shirts weren't properly folded; they were sticking out at the sides. That wasn't like her at all.

She knew she was a fanatic about that sort of thing. Everything had to be impeccably arranged so that she didn't have to iron it again in the morning. And as it happened, she remembered quite clearly having cursed at the lack of coat hangers; she had taken very special care to fold her shirts in piles, the sleeves skillfully folded underneath.

And now they were sticking out. Not all of them, but some.

Sufficient for her to know that somebody had moved the clothes. Or at least lifted them up.

Marion leaped out of bed. Too quickly. Her head spun.

She stood at the end of the bed until her dizziness disappeared.

Then she inspected the bedroom. The sofa, the bed, the bathroom. She did the same downstairs.

She had difficulty breathing, searching every nook and cranny, ready to shout out and strike the slightest suspect shape.

She came back regularly to the front door, watching the telephone, checking that it was still there.

She didn't know the place well enough. She hadn't yet had enough time to get to know it properly, so it was difficult to know if anything else had moved. And yet a persistent intuition whispered to her that this was indeed the case.

Should she ring the DST straightaway?

The house was empty; there was nobody there, no direct danger.

Someone had got into her house during her absence.

She forced herself to breathe more normally.

Nobody had traced her here, nobody. She was safe. The DST had taken care of that. That was their job, they were professionals; she had nothing to fear.

Her heart gradually started to beat in a more regular rhythm.

The lock hadn't been forced.

Someone from the brotherhood. Whoever had the key to the house.

This time it was too much. She seized the phone and dialed one of the numbers Sister Anne had written down.

She heard the singsong voice of Sister Gabriela.

“Sister Gabriela, it's Marion. Could you put Sister Anne on, please?”

She didn't have to wait long. Sister Anne picked up the handset almost immediately. “What can I do for you? Are you joining us for din—”

“Who has the keys to my house?” asked Marion.

“What? Hasn't something ha—”

“Who has the keys?”

“Well … we do. I mean, the brotherhood. There is a copy of all of our keys here, at the abbot's residence. The majority of the brothers and sisters use them every day to get about, and there are keys to all the doors, including the ones to our different buildings, such as the one you're living in. What's wrong, Marion? I can sense you are nervous. Is there a problem?”

Marion mentally analyzed her reply; she hadn't expected this.

“Marion?”

“Yes … no, no problem. I … I had an attack of paranoia, I'm sorry…”

“Then come up and join us for supper, we—”

“No, thank you, but I shall stay here. I have things to occupy me. Thank you, good night.”

She hung up.

The entire brotherhood had keys to her quarters.

So what now? What was happening to her? It wasn't a case of identifying a suspect, and she wasn't at the heart of a conspiracy either.

But somebody had entered her home to search through her things.

Sister Anne or one of the others,
she assumed,
to reassure herself that I didn't have anything that might be dangerous for me.… No weapons.… She's in charge of my safety, or of keeping an eye on me, and she's making sure that if I get depressed I'm not going to do anything silly.… That's what I'd do in her place.

And what about the letter. The riddle?

A game.

Who from? And what is the point?

To divert me, make me think about something else.…

Marion wasn't convinced.

All of this wasn't clear; the ideas were all mixed up in her head. Her only certainty was, for the time being, not to give too much of herself away. Whether it was a game by the brotherhood to keep watch on her and help her to pass the time here, or the fruit of one mind, working toward a personal goal, Marion must remain in the background and observe, so as to take action when the time was right.

That didn't prevent her taking certain measures.

She couldn't call a locksmith without everyone knowing. But she could at least declare her privacy.

She took the few items off the hall table and pushed it up against the door. As she straightened up she gave a long, slow breath. This would guarantee that nobody got through as long as she was here.

The precaution was rather excessive, it seemed to her.

If she really was at some kind of risk a hall table wouldn't protect her. It would be better to call the DST immediately and tell them about the problem. On the other hand, if she really believed that all of this was the result of measures designed to protect her, she had nothing to fear and her improvised “blockade” had no purpose.

But it does. For me. For my head. So that I can sleep, reassured.

And it didn't do any harm to anyone.

That evening, Marion didn't eat much. She spent most of her time watching the door from the sofa, while half-watching the television.

Her mind came back regularly to Jeremy Matheson's diary. He had a way of talking about his life that was very much his own, a way of describing the place where he stayed, that once-luxurious, untidy railroad car. He presented himself as a handsome man with a total absence of modesty, and put across the melancholy that dwelled within him with an absolute lack of shame that astonished Marion. The choice of words was crucial; it filtered through in the reading. Matheson had taken time composing his journal. And, as he himself confessed, one soon realized that there was no egotistical purpose in it, but just the will to leave a record of a drama that was already making its presence felt in the early pages.

Marion's eagerness to read had been checked by her discovery early that evening. After that, she hadn't felt in the right frame of mind.

But it was returning now.

Curiosity.

Who was Jeremy Matheson, above and beyond this introduction?

What kind of man could he be?

And why this somber story of children, in which he admitted he had wept over the list of victims?

Marion went to fetch the book with the black cover.

She started on a bottle of gin, pouring herself a glass with some orange juice, and she sank back onto the sofa.

The village was going to sleep before her eyes, behind the glazed window.

She opened the book and began again at the exact place she had reached.

11

Detective Jeremy Matheson had connections in Cairo.

Not only through his professional capacity, but because a good part of Cairo's Western society knew of his existence, either by reputation or because they had requested his good offices.

Matheson had no equal when it came to sorting out misunderstandings.

A wayward mistress, a
baksheesh
that turned into a backhander and that had to be forgotten, or quite simply a request for a few judiciously gleaned nuggets of information.

His notoriety had passed into the salons, private clubs, and parties; people whispered his name in one another's ears like a miracle cure. For nothing about him would lead a person to think he could be this man of society. There was nothing worldly about him.

Neither his almost savage appearance, nor his excessively withdrawn behavior. People came to him on the tips of their toes, wary and feverish at the thought of requesting a service from this unfathomable individual. He always regarded the petitioner with the same sidelong glance, lips pursed, then finished with “I'll see what I can do.”