The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (27 page)

     —Eventually. In the end Catherine told him he had to choose and he chose Natalie because she needed him more. My son was a good man. But it ended up being the worst choice he ever made, and he knew it. Look what it led to. I’m still in touch with Catherine. I rang just now and told her. She was devastated. She lives up in Rheims. She got married again and they adopted two little girls from China, and then managed to have one of their own, quite unexpectedly. That really upset Pierre, discovering she wasn’t infertile after all. It triggered something in him. Unleashed all the regrets maybe. I guess he couldn’t help thinking what a fool he’d been, and that if only he’d stayed with her ... That’s when he began to wonder if Natalie had been harming Louis.

     —What? I asked sharply. My heart started to bang fast.

     —Harming Louis, she said clearly. I could feel her eyes on me. How much did she know? How much might she have guessed about my feelings for Natalie? Do certain older women have X-ray eyes, that can locate and identify illicit love? It felt that way. She continued slowly, still watching me. —So he insisted on Louis seeing a psychologist. Marcel Perez. Natalie wasn’t keen, but she agreed to it. But she fired him after a few months. I don’t know how far it got.

     She kept her voice level. But I could feel that the effort it took was enormous.

     —And the rape? Suddenly, I had to know. I could hear the catch in my throat.

     She looked at me steadily. The sign to Clermont-Ferrand appeared and I stepped on the accelerator. Still she said nothing. I could feel her watching me. Could she sense the turmoil I was in?

     —But why? I said at last. —Why on earth would someone pretend they’d been raped when  ...

     —Pity, said Lucille Drax bluntly. —Natalie knew about pity, and how to work it.

     It had a logic to it, the kind of logic that takes you to places you don’t want to believe exist.

     I hated this. Doubt was blossoming inside me like a crude fungus. I couldn’t stop it.

     —When Pierre was staying with me in Paris, he confided in me, she went on. —It was such an unhappy marriage – almost from the start. I’d always known something didn’t add up about Natalie, so that was when I tracked down her sister. I found out the reason she and Natalie fell out was because Francine knew Natalie had tried to trap Jean-Luc into marriage, and that he’d called her bluff. And that now she was claiming it was rape. Francine told Natalie she knew, and that was the end of that.

     —You told Pierre this?

     —I felt he should know.

     —When?

     —Just a week before the picnic.

     —So when they went on the picnic, he’d just found out that she’d lied to him about being raped?

     —Yes.

     —Do you think it came out in the row they had?

     —I have no way of knowing, said Lucille. —And nor does anyone.

     We drove on in silence as this sunk in. Absurdly, I wanted to cry, or scream, or both.

     —I want to know what happened to my son, Lucille managed finally. —He didn’t commit suicide. And he would never have harmed Louis.

     —So what are you saying? I kept my eyes on the road, which seemed to bulge before me. My perspective felt strange, skewed. Perhaps, I wondered suddenly, I was actually on the wrong road. Driving in the wrong direction. Going nowhere.

     —I think she killed him, said Lucille quietly. —That’s what I think.

     —She said they had a row about sweets, I blurted. —Pierre didn’t want Louis eating sweets. (Why did the sweets suddenly bother me so much? Why didn’t anything hang together?) —And Louis? I asked. My throat felt very dry. —Do you think she tried to kill Louis too?

   
I saw his face as he was falling
, Natalie had said.
His mouth was open like he wanted to tell me something
. Something twisted inside me. It can’t have happened like that. It can’t have. Unless–

     —Yes, she said softly. —Yes. I think she tried to kill Louis too.

     There was a service station up ahead. I indicated and turned off the slip road. We drove to a quiet corner of the car-park in the shade of some birch trees, next to a play area. We got out and made our way to a picnic table where we sat facing one another. I was sweating. Children were running and jumping all over a complicated system of slides, hanging rubber tyres and tunnels, laughing and screaming. Lucille watched them with dry eyes. Reaching in my pocket, I took out the prescription I had written and handed it to Lucille. She read it in silence, puzzled.

     —What does it mean?

     I explained the circumstances in which I had written it.

     —Arsenic, sarin gas, lupin seeds, she murmured. —That’s a lot of poison.

     —It’s almost like he wants revenge for something, I said. —Don’t you think?

     I felt like Judas.

     —Phone Detective Charvillefort, she said. —Do it now.

     —But it doesn’t prove – I said feebly. I didn’t want it to mean what it might mean. —I wrote it in my sleep. My subconscious might have–

     —Phone her, she said harshly. —Now. Or do you want me to?

     I got out my mobile and reached Charvillefort right away. —Listen, I told her. —This is important. You have to keep Natalie Drax away from Louis. You can’t let her near him.

     —Georges Navarra is with her. But we can’t stop her seeing Louis.

     —Why not?

     —There’s no proof, Dr Dannachet. Don’t you realise that? There’s absolutely no proof!

     I sighed and closed my eyes.

     —You asked me to tell you what Natalie said about the accident, I said slowly. I hated myself. —She said she saw Louis’ face as he fell. His mouth was open as though he was trying to say something.

     Across from me, Lucille winced. —You’re sure she said that? said Charvillefort sharply. I had to jam the phone hard against my ear to hear her. I could see Lucille tensing. —You’re quite sure she said she saw his face as he fell?

     —Yes. Quite sure.

     —You know that doesn’t fit with what she told us, Stephanie Charvillefort said slowly. —She said she was too far away to stop it.

     —I know, I said. —She said that too. There was a contradiction. I didn’t notice it at the time.

     —I’ll need you to put that in a statement.

     —Of course, I said flatly. —Of course.

     —Though it may not be enough to get a conviction. In the meantime, I have bad news, said Charvillefort.

     —I don’t think I can take any more.

     —Well I’m sorry. It’s Marcel Perez. He’s in hospital with alcohol poisoning. He went on a huge binge. I’m on my way there now, but he may not make it.

You can’t see anything in the cave, just the white stone, and Gustave’s bloody bandages on the floor like we’re standing in spaghetti Bolognese. His hand’s growing more and more cold and more and more like bones. But I’m holding it anyway because there’s nothing else to hold. I must’ve always known it was him even when he scared me, even when he said weird things and I could feel the danger all around me. His voice is just a croak now, like it’s in my head.

     —Once upon a time there was a boy whose mother and father loved him, and one day–

     —Blah blah blah.

     —And one day–

     —I don’t want to hear that one, I’m not a baby and I don’t want to hear stupid fairy stories for babies cos they suck! I’m shouting but he doesn’t shout back. He’s quiet.

     —How do you know what the story is?

     —Cos I’ve heard it before. It’s
The Strange Mystery of Louis Drax, the Amazing Accident-Prone Boy
, blah blah blah. Tell me one that doesn’t suck.

     —OK. Once upon a time there were two princesses.

     —I don’t want princesses. I want bats.

     —OK. Bats. Once upon a time there were two bats. No, three. Three bats, a male and two females. And one of the female bats was always laughing and the other female bat was always crying, and the male bat had to choose between them.

     —To mate with?

     —Yes. So he chose the laughing one, but then he had second thoughts. He felt sorry for the crying bat. She seemed to need him more. He thought if he loved her enough, he could stop her crying. But he was wrong.

     —Why was she crying?

     —Because it made people feel sorry for her, and she liked that feeling, more than she liked jokes or stories or love.

     —What happened to her?

     —She ended up all alone.

     —And the laughing bat?

     —She fell in love with another male bat, and they had three bat babies and lived happily ever after.

     —And what happened to the male bat?

     But Gustave doesn’t say anything because I guess the story – which sucked – is finished. He probably knows it sucked, and that I thought it sucked, because most stories suck, if they’re about stupid love stuff, even if it’s bats. So we just sit there in the cold cave that’s like a creepy skull and I’m still holding his hand that’s made of bones but there’s a warm feeling, like a fizzing fire in your chest, like the pine cones in the forest whooshing up, because you can love someone, even if they’re dead, and they can love you too, that’s the thing I just found out.

     —I have to go soon, Young Sir, he says. —There’s going to be a funeral.

I left Lucille on the ward with Louis and went to my office, where I called Jacqueline and asked her to join me. Noelle had already gone home for the day. While I was waiting for Jacqueline, I rang the girls’ apartment in Montpellier hoping to reach Sophie, but I got the answerphone. I didn’t know what to say so I hesitated and hung up. That felt cowardly, so I rang back and left the briefest message I could.

     —Sophie, it’s Pascal. We need to talk.

     Then, at a loss, I watered my bonsais. They looked dusty and neglected. I wiped a few leaves and sprayed them, but I suddenly couldn’t seem to care if they lived or died. Jacqueline knocked, came in, and told me that I looked terrible, and that I shouldn’t even be here.

     —So where should I be?

     —In Montpellier, with Sophie, she answered, rather too quickly. —Have you spoken to her?

     —I don’t know what to say. I’m in a mess, Jacqueline.

     She didn’t reply to that, but patted me on the arm in such a quiet, human way that I felt like breaking down there and then. I didn’t. Instead, with a painful effort of will, I told her about my trip to Vichy, and what I had learned from Philippe Meunier and Lucille Drax. It wrenched my heart to confess the core of the matter: that I now feared that Natalie Drax – the woman I loved – might have harmed her own child. ‘Might have harmed’: saying it aloud made me feel sick, but it had a different effect on Jacqueline. And an instantaneous one.

     —
Might have harmed
? Pascal, what you’re saying is that
she tried to kill him
.

     I’d never seen her angry before, hadn’t known how it looked: her mouth went a different shape, the shape I imagined she might use for crying. I’d never seen her cry either. She walked over to the window and looked out.

     —There’s more, I told her heavily. —Lucille Drax thinks Natalie killed Pierre. I put a laugh into my voice, to show how absurd the idea was. But it sounded forced.

     —There’s always been something strange about her, Jacqueline said eventually, almost to herself. —She never wanted any contact. Jessica Favrot said it was like she thought she had a monopoly on grief. But I guess she was just scared we’d see through her. It’s not something that crosses your mind though, is it? Why would it cross anyone’s mind?

     —Charvillefort mentioned it, I said, slowly remembering. —Right at the beginning. When we were in Vaudin’s office, she said that one of Louis’ parents could have harmed him.

     —But we didn’t want to think about it being her, did we? said Jacqueline. Her back was still to me, I could hear that she was angry with herself. —Everything pointed to her husband. We believed what we wanted to.

     But now we had to swivel our thoughts a hundred and eighty degrees. When Jacqueline turned to face me, her eyes were glittering. I could tell she was thinking of her own son, Paul.

     —If Natalie’s determined to lie about about her role in Louis’ accident – and possibly also the death of her husband – then what can we do? she asked simply. —What on earth can we do, Pascal?

     I stared at my phrenological chart, losing myself in the chambers of the brain. Where quietly, from nowhere, a very clear and very obvious thought hatched.

Although I wasn’t officially at work, I spent the next hour with Isabelle and her parents. Madame Masserot had come down from Paris, at the request of her ex-husband, and it appeared that they had finally reached a shaky truce. Isabelle had responded well to the encouraging atmosphere and there had been a few more small, hopeful signals that she was coming back to consciousness. She had opened her eyes again, and cleared her throat as though preparing to speak. Her mother had combed her hair, and she had protested.