The Widow (30 page)

She shrugged. Counted perhaps on female curiosity and tenacity – or vanity.

She looked at her hand. Hurting, in a lethargic way. Hadn't the kidnappers been rather stupid? No, they'd expected her to react in a male way, swallow the lesson and profit by it.

That is surely idiotic. If she'd been a man they'd have killed her.

Well, Arthur Davidson being what he was, it was police business now. And they wouldn't have any woman nonsense. They'd move her politely aside, and conduct the matter in their fashion.

A faint stirring of obstinacy moved inside Arlette. But she had better drag herself out and do her teeth before she fell
down in a heap. She'd slept all day. And was quite ready to sleep all night.

Arthur Davidson, doing the washing-up and enjoying it, since for once he could arrange the job properly – no woman had any real idea of how to wash-up – tidied the kitchen, sat for some time in the living-room fiddling with a pipe without smoking it and gazing at the television screen without taking it in – whatever it was … When it started to gabble too much he brought himself to turn it off, thought of something, hunted among records till he found Schubert's
Winter Journey
and put that on. It was right somehow.

An hour and a half later he got up and went to bed. His wife was fast asleep. Flushed, and a bit sweaty. Burgundy, or that stupid menopause, or the radiator she'd forgotten to turn out? Bit of each. Well rolled up anyhow in the complicated ‘nest' she arranged for herself. Peculiar slight obstinate grin she had upon her face. Grin of thorough satisfaction. He opened the window. No other French person one knew liked fresh air at night. Must come from having lived in Holland. French women are a tougher proposition than French men. This was a truism, and like most such, suspect. All that Davidson was prepared to say on the subject was that he was happy with his. Absolute nonsense anyhow. Were she Dutch or English she would be just the same. Nowadays French women didn't even want to cook any more, the silly asses. Blasted pest of a woman, but I'm happy with mine I'm happy with mine. With this little song he fell asleep.

She got up and dressed.

‘Why not?' she said when Arthur tried to be disputatious. Well after all; why not? Washing and dressing was troublesome and laborious, but she wanted to be normal, to behave as though nothing had happened. Rendered gloomy by a long prospect stretching ahead of shopping, cooking, and having the washing-up all to himself – less attractive a notion somehow than it had been last night – he shooed her out of the kitchen altogether.

‘If we're both here we'll only quarrel. My domain; let me handle it my way.' Since this was exactly what she would have said there was nothing but to withdraw, silently forecasting that everything would be unfindable. He'd be popping in cross: where the hell d'you keep lemons? Jacques Ellul would get covered in greaseprints, and all the food would taste of mustard.

Good, now she's gone off in a sulk, barricading herself in the office and going to have a soothing long chat with that tiresome lesbian woman.

A doctor appeared. A bit curt about amateurish treatments – nothing was said about Arthur's student girl. Her pills were looked at, snorted at, and thrown away: new and more sophisticated ones, which would have exactly the same effect, prescribed.

‘Anti-inflammatory, get this thing healing, bring it to me in a couple of days to look at,' as though it were a urine specimen, and fled. This was not, unluckily, the end of the troubles, because Divisional-Inspector Papi arrived a quarter of an hour later.

Just like that damned commissaire to send a Corsican – must have been to pester her! He was tall, thin, dry, knotty; tuft of wiry hair like dunegrass in the middle of a bald brown
forehead, broken nose, strange small curly ears and mouth. Looked like the razor-carrying expert all right. With him, less expectedly, Corinne.

‘I'm just here to carry spears,' she said. ‘To make notes because nobody can read his shorthand. Woman's job. To look after him, carry his shopping bag or whatnot. Be his guardian gorilla a bit. Drive the car you know? All the women's jobs in brief. The boss wants you to lead a normal existence. Nothing reckless, but not so intimidated as to skulk all day in cellars.'

Monsieur Papi paid no attention to this. Sat, made himself comfortable, arranged the biggest ashtray handily and said, ‘Let's have the whole thing from beginning to end.'

‘This'll take all day.'

‘I've got all day.' Cops are the same everywhere. It is always difficult to distinguish between the ones that are dense and the ones who pretend to be dense. France is no exception; neither is Strasbourg.

‘From what I've been told,' he said slowly, ‘you believe that you were seized by a group of professionals. I'd like to hear your definition of professional in this context.'

‘People organizing and exploiting crime like any other business, purely for the purpose of making a large profit.'

‘The profit motive by itself is criminal, some people would say.'

‘What I believe or say isn't perhaps very relevant.'

‘It might colour what you say.'

‘I don't understand at all. Are you thinking that I might claim to have been kidnapped with an idea of embarrassing the administration?'

‘No. I have to start by distinguishing between crapulous crime, which is what we call an act committed uniquely for money, and a crime or what appears to be, committed for publicity, which might turn out to be something political. The first might be my business: the second wouldn't. That's why I want to get it straight.'

‘There's no doubt in my mind at all. The man who seemed
to be the principal said as much. He used these words: “we don't want to draw attention to ourselves”.'

‘So he goes and does so, by cutting your hand.'

‘I've thought about this too. I'm hoping we'll find the answer.'

‘I'm only pointing out to you, Madame, that it seems inconsistent. You did something to arouse the hostility of people. They try to intimidate you by various means. I'm told you had your car shot at, and a sort of little home-made bomb blew your letterbox out.'

‘No, that was pure coincidence. I discovered only that day all this was due to somebody else altogether.'

‘Yes? P'raps you'll let me be the judge of that?' Not very happily, she told about Norma. Corinne was there too, saying nothing, taking notes. This inevitably led to her explaining the narrow squeak from getting raped. Corinne only once glanced up and made a face: Arlette made a face too.

‘I agree. I was very foolish.'

‘All this violent attack, and you didn't make any complaint?' said Monsieur Papi.

‘Well, first of all I wasn't raped. And if I tried to have him chased for assaulting and injuring me, I can't see that it would make him any the less aggressive. More so, if anything, towards women anyhow.'

‘So this is the explanation of the bruising on your neck and arms which the doctor describes,' turning over a piece of paper.

She saw light. Had he really believed she had been beaten up while making love, and invented the kidnapping tale to make it look better?

‘Funnier things have happened.'

‘And that's true, I'm afraid,' added Corinne.

To be very suspicious indeed of anything a woman says in such circumstances is a professional police deformation. However many real rapes there are, there are still a lot of phony ones. There is also a strongly-held legend that women
rather enjoy being beaten up. Arlette supposed such women to exist somewhere, but hadn't ever met one.

‘So you were all that evening out in Hautepierre?'

‘There's a witness to it you know, and she can be found. I had a meal with her in Schiltigheim. I drew it out deliberately to give myself time to get well calmed down. Strangely enough, I didn't want it known. It would worry my husband.'

‘Nobody's disbelieving this, Madame. Just that the coincidence is there. These people then were lying in wait outside your house. They must have waited a long time.'

‘Yes, that has struck me too. I suppose it's conceivable that they went to a lot of trouble anyhow, and took the extra trouble of following me. I was in no state to notice. They bundled me into my own car and not theirs. It must have been prearranged. They had a car which picked them up, out there in the country. So there were four at least, and at least one car.'

He let her talk, nodding sometimes, making an occasional longhand note.

‘We'll look out there, though it's not very likely we'll find anything.'

‘I told the commissaire as much. I'm not even sure of recognizing the exact spot.'

‘So we go over the day's movements. You were out in Geispolsheim. And you had lunch with your husband in town.'

‘I'd been looking up these students. Boys the girl Marie-Line had been going with.'

‘So there's a sequence in time, and perhaps you arranged it in your mind to make it consistent. No intention of misleading, I accept. But the story seems more satisfying this way?'

‘You know I anticipated this. Some connection there is, though I admit slight. That flowershop has an advertisement for this boy's drawings, or whatever they are. Isn't it too much coincidence? Of course any artist sticks up posters wherever he can. But isn't it all too pat?'

‘You realize that I have to be sceptical of things. This sort of auto-suggestion is a commonplace.'

‘Of course I realize that, and that's why I try to answer patiently.'

‘Right. What we have is this. A plainclothes type checked up a bit, discreet-like. This arty guy, and these cafés around the university quarter. It's obvious, and it's known about. All of them do a bit of trafficking in a small way. Stimulant or sedative pills – doctors hand this shit out, and people sell it. Likewise there's always smallish quantities of weeds and hash. The long-distance lorry drivers come across the border here, you're aware, and there's always stuff seeping in from Iran and Turkey. Not much, because the Germans and ourselves keep a close eye. Drivers making pocket money for themselves, mostly. Okay? Now there doesn't seem to be any evidence that any traffic is any less trivial than usual.'

‘The commissaire remarked that any real distribution network wouldn't operate on its home territory.'

‘That's right, and I only bring the point up to say you needn't worry about getting this kid Siegel involved. We know Doctor Siegel. Like we know him enough not really to want to know him any better if you take my meaning.'

‘I do,' with a faint grin.

‘Now I'll come to the big question. We don't know, so we agree to hypothesize, and see if any known fact tends to confirm that hypothesis. Okay we're talking about narcotics, real ones, not students popping pills. Good, there's what the movies call the French Connection and we've busted that, or supposed to, right? Thing like that isn't ever really busted but what we do is take the profit out of it, and put too much publicity into it. Find an illegal lab., seize a large amount of morphine-base and kick up a lot of newspaper comment, those boys don't enjoy that, stands to reason.

‘So now we hear the morphine comes down from Holland. Maybe that's so and maybe it isn't, we'll leave that aside. Assume it. Good, here's a plant place in Geispolsheim gets a lot of merchandise out of Holland. I'll go this far. It just maybe could be so.

‘Now we come to Demazis. Accountant, but he buzzed
around a good deal. He doesn't draw attention to himself, to pick up your phrase. No unusual signs of affluence, say. He owns this flat in the Rue de Labaroche, bit more property in the town, that's the wife's. Nothing inconsistent. Pursue the hypothesis. They do plenty of business in Switzerland, he could salt money away there, little at a time, nice flat in Zurich say; we'd know nothing about that. Done all the time, hundreds of examples. He's a nice little business. Now why should he suddenly upset the applecart by running to you with this ridiculous story he's getting threatening phone calls?'

‘I have simply no idea. The fact is that he did. I can only think that he was trying to be clever. Build up some insurance, or create a pretext for getting out of a tangle that was beginning to worry him. If I started nosing around in his existence – maybe he could have used that as an excuse. He might have thought me very naive and inexperienced – which heaven knows I am. He might have planned to say I was blackmailing him. But he got killed, so we'll never know.'

‘We've no proof whatever he was killed,' reprovingly.

‘Then perhaps he killed himself. He might have been showing signs of unease or instability for a long time. The wife won't say. Whatever happens he's not going to have any news for us. But suppose this. I went to see Madame Demazis. Say that fact is noted, and if she has any knowledge of anything, she could pass this further item along. And then – by sheer coincidence, this other interest – I went to the plant place, and then – look, I was in the street hanging about that flower shop. In fact I was gaining ten minutes, waiting for my husband. But if I were seen, and if it were noticed further that I'd been at that studio on the pretext of my interest in Marie-Line … would that add up to a warning sign? Would they conclude that Demazis actually had said something to me that might lead to a giveaway?'

‘But in fact he didn't?'

‘I give you my word of honour, no, he didn't. I don't have any ambitions at all to be a detective. I went down to the PJ to ask whether there was anything funny about his death.'

‘Yes, I know …'

‘But I didn't know,' she said tartly.

‘Mm hm,' said Monsieur Papi, and retreated into silence, turning papers over and making marks on them.

She took hold of what was rapidly becoming frenzied irritation, and sat on it firmly.