The Woman With the Bouquet (10 page)

And he handed me a white glove, the twin of the one that Emma, on her deathbed, was holding against her heart.

I
n a few minutes, if everything went well, she would kill her husband.

The winding path grew perilously narrow a hundred yards farther up the slope overlooking the valley. At that point on its flank, the mountain was no longer an expanse of slope, but turned into a steep cliff. The least little misstep could prove fatal. There was nothing for the clumsy individual to cling to, no trees, no bushes, no platform; all that emerged from the rocky wall were jagged boulders ready to tear a body to shreds.

Gabrielle slowed down to look all around. No one was climbing the path behind them, there were no hikers in the opposite valleys. No witnesses, therefore. Only a handful of sheep, five hundred yards to the south, were greedily filling the meadows, their heads bent to the grass they were grazing.

“Well, old girl, are you tired?”

She winced at the way her husband called her “old girl”: precisely the sort of thing he shouldn’t say if he wanted to save his skin.

He turned around, anxious to know why she had stopped.

“Hang on a bit longer. We can’t stop here, it’s too dangerous.”

At the back of Gabrielle’s mind, a voice was sniggering at each word the future dead man uttered. “Spot on, you know just what’s coming, it’s going to be dangerous! You may even be in danger of not surviving,
old man!
”

A blazing white sun weighed them down, imposing silence upon the high mountain pastures, where not a breath of air brought relief; you might believe that the overheated star wanted to turn everything it touched, plants and humans alike, into a mineral substance, all life crushed.

Gabrielle caught up with her husband, grumbling.

“Go on, I’m okay.”

“Are you sure, my dear?”

“If I said so.”

Had he read her thoughts? Was she behaving differently, in spite of herself? Her one concern was to carry out her plan, so she endeavored to reassure him with a wide smile.

“In fact, I’m really glad to be back here again. I often came here with my father when I was a child.”

“Wow,” he whistled, as he gazed upon the panoramic view of the steep slopes, “don’t you feel small here!”

Her inner voice shrieked, “And you’re about to become even smaller.”

They resumed their climb; he was leading, she followed.

Above all, she mustn’t lose her nerve. Push him over without hesitating when the time came. Without warning. Avoid his gaze. Concentrate on the right movement. Do it properly, that was all that mattered. As for her decision, Gabrielle had made it a long time ago, and she wouldn’t go back on it.

He was beginning to enter the dangerous bend. Gabrielle was walking faster, but he didn’t notice. Tense, hurried, her breathing hampered by the need to remain discreet, she almost slipped on a loose stone. “Oh no,” exclaimed the voice, “you’re not going to have an accident when the solution is so near!” Her moment of weakness gave her a gigantic burst of energy: she rushed up, and with all her strength she slammed her fist into the small of his back.

Her husband arched his back, and lost his balance. She gave him the
coup de grâce,
kicking him in both calves.

His body slipped from the path and began to fall into the void. Frightened, Gabrielle flattened herself against the slope with her shoulder to keep from falling and to avoid seeing what she had just caused to happen.

It was enough just to hear it . . .

A cry rang out, already far away, filled with a terrible fear, then there was a thud, and another, while his throat screamed with pain, then more sounds of something hitting and breaking and tearing, and stones rolling, and then suddenly, complete silence.

There! She’d done it. She was free.

All around her, the Alps displayed their grandiose, kindly landscape. A bird was gliding, motionless, above the valley, hanging in a pure, cleansed sky. There was no shrieking of sirens to accuse her, no policeman rushing up waving his handcuffs. Nature greeted her—sovereign, serene, an understanding accomplice.

Gabrielle stepped forward from the slope and peered over the edge of the precipice. Several seconds went by until she was able to see the disjointed body that was not where she had expected it to be. It was all over. Gab had stopped breathing. Everything was simple. She felt no guilt, just relief. And already she no longer felt any connection with the corpse lying down there . . .

She sat down and picked a pale blue flower and chewed on the stem. Now she would have the time to be lazy, to meditate; she would no longer be obsessed by what Gab was doing or hiding from her. She would be reborn.

How many minutes did she stay like that?

The sound of a bell, although it was muffled by distance, roused her from her ecstasy. Sheep. Ah, yes, she would have to go back down, put on an act, sound the alarm. Damned Gab! No sooner had he left her than she still had to devote time to him, make an effort for him, make sacrifices for him. Would he ever leave her alone?

She sat up, serene, proud of herself. She had done the main thing, and now all that was left was to move a little further to find her reward: peace.

Going back the way she had come, she went back over the scenario. How odd it was to remember it, a plan she had come up with in a different time, a time when Gab’s presence was still a burden to her. Another time. A time that was already far behind her.

She walked lightly, more quickly than she normally should have, because if she were out of breath it would help convince people that she was upset. She would have to suppress her euphoria, mask her joy at seeing these three years of fury disappear behind her, three years of sharp, stinging indignation planting its arrows inside her brain. He could no longer dish out any “old girl” remarks, no longer inflict his pitiful gaze on her as he held out his hand, no longer claim they were happy when it wasn’t true. He was dead. Hallelujah. Long live freedom!

After walking for two hours, she saw some hikers and ran in their direction.

“Please help me! My husband! Help me, please!”

Everything went marvelously. She fell to the ground as she drew near them, hurt herself, burst into tears and told them about the accident.

Her first spectators took the bait and swallowed it hook, line and sinker, both her story and her sorrow. Their group split in two: the women went with her down into the valley while the men went off to look for Gab.

At the hotel Bellevue, someone must have informed the personnel ahead of time by phone, because they were all waiting for her with the appropriate expression on their faces. A gendarme with a pale face informed her that a helicopter was already on its way with a rescue team to the scene of the accident.

At the words “rescue team,” she shivered. Did they expect to find him alive? Might Gab have survived his fall? She recalled his cries, and then how they stopped, and the silence, and she had a doubt.

“Do you . . . do you think he might be alive?”

“That is what we hope, Madame. Was he in good physical condition?”

“Excellent, but he fell over several hundred yards, bouncing on the rocks.”

“We have already encountered more astonishing cases. As long as we don’t know, it is our duty to remain optimistic, dear Madame.”

Impossible! Either she was crazy, or he was. Was he saying this because he had information, or was he mouthing some stereotyped formula? No doubt the latter . . . Gab could not possibly have survived. And even if, through some miracle, he had survived, he must be broken, traumatized, crippled with internal and external bleeding, incapable of speech! After all, if it wasn’t already the case, he would die in the hours that followed. Would he have time to mutter something to the stretcher bearers? Just before they winched him up into the helicopter? Would he denounce her? Unlikely. What had he understood? Nothing. No, no, no, a thousand times no.

She grasped her head between her hands and as she stifled her tears the witnesses thought she was praying; in reality, she was cursing the gendarme. Although she was sure she was right, that nincompoop had filled her with doubts. And now she was trembling with fear!

Suddenly a hand was laid on her shoulder. She jumped.

The head of the rescue team was staring at her looking like a scolded cocker spaniel.

“You must be brave, Madame.”

“How is he?” cried Gabrielle, torn with anxiety.

“He is dead, Madame.”

Gabrielle let out a cry. Ten people ran over to comfort her, console her. Shamelessly, she screamed and sobbed, determined to purge herself of her emotions: phew, he didn’t make it, he wouldn’t say anything, the resident fool had given her the willies for nothing.

All around, everyone was feeling sorry for her. What exquisite delight, to be a murderer yet be taken for the victim . . . She indulged in it until the evening meal which, naturally, she refused to eat.

At nine o’clock, the police came back to inform her that they had to question her. Although she acted surprised, she had been expecting it. Before carrying out her plan, she had rehearsed her testimony, which had to be persuasive regarding the premise of an accident, and refute any of the suspicion that typically might fall upon the spouse when a partner dies.

They took her to the pink stucco police station, where she gave her version of the events while gazing at a calendar with a picture of three adorable kittens.

Although the policemen apologized for burdening her with this or that question, she went on as if she could not for a second imagine being suspected of anything. She cajoled them, signed the statement, and went back to the hotel to spend a peaceful night.

The next morning, her son and two daughters arrived, accompanied by their spouses, and this time the situation was awkward. She felt genuine remorse when faced with her beloved children’s sorrow; it wasn’t regret over having killed Gab, but shame at inflicting this pain upon them. What a pity he had also been their father! How stupid of her not to have conceived them with another man, to spare them these tears for him . . . In any case, it was too late. She took refuge in a sort of vacant speechlessness.

The only practical advantage of their presence was that, in order to spare their mother, they went to identify the body in the morgue. Which she appreciated.

They also tried to intercept any articles in the regional press reporting the tragic fall, scarcely imagining that the titles “Accidental Hiking Death,” or “Victim of his own lack of caution,” were a boon to Gabrielle, because they confirmed, in black and white, that Gab had died and she was innocent.

There was one detail however, that displeased her: when she got back from the coroner’s office her eldest daughter, eyes red, felt obliged to whisper in her mother’s ear: “You know, even dead, Papa was very handsome.” What on earth was she on about, that kid? Whether Gab was handsome or not, that was no business of anyone’s but Gabrielle, and Gabrielle alone! Hadn’t she already suffered enough because of it?

After that remark, Gabrielle kept herself to herself until the funeral was over.

When she went back to her house in Senlis, neighbors and friends came to offer their condolences. While she greeted her neighbors with pleasure, she quickly became exasperated with having to tell the same story over and over only to hear them echo identical platitudes. Behind her sad, resigned expression, she was boiling with anger: what good was it getting rid of her husband if she had to talk about him all the time! All the more so that she was impatient to run up to the third floor, knock down the wall, ransack his hiding place and uncover the very thing that was tormenting her. Couldn’t they just hurry up and leave her alone!

Their private mansion, very nearly a fortified château, was like something out of a book of fairytales, for under the tangle of climbing roses there were a multitude of turrets, crenellations, arrow slits, sculpted balconies, decorative rosettes, sweeping staircases, windows with gothic points and colored panes. With experience, Gabrielle increasingly relied on her visitors’ exclamations to determine how little culture they might have, and she had classified them into four categories, from the barbarian to the bore. The barbarian would give a hostile glance at her walls and grumble, “Kind of old, here”; the barbarian who thought he had some culture would murmur, “This is medieval, is it not?”; the truly cultured barbarian would detect the illusion: “Medieval style, but built in the 19th century?”; and finally the bore would cry out, “Viollet-le-Duc!” before boring everybody with a running commentary on each element that the famous architect and his workshop might have deformed, restored, or invented.

There was nothing surprising about a residence like this in Senlis, a village in the Oise, to the north of Paris, which featured many such historical dwellings on its hillside. Alongside stones dating from the time of Joan of Arc or buildings erected in the 17th and 18th centuries, Gabrielle’s home seemed, in fact, to be one of the least elegant, for it was recent—a century and a half—and its taste was debatable. Nevertheless, she had lived there as one half of a couple from the time she had inherited it from her father, and she found it very amusing that her walls denounced her as a nouveau riche, for she had never considered herself to be either rich or newly so.

On the third level of the dwelling, which would have enchanted Alexandre Dumas and Sir Walter Scott, there was a room that belonged to Gab. After their wedding, in order to make him feel well and truly at home when he moved into her house, they had agreed that he would have the total use of that part and Gabrielle would have no say in the matter; she had permission to go and fetch him there should he be late for any reason, but otherwise she was not to go there.

There was nothing exceptional about the place—books, pipes, maps, globes—and it offered only minimal comfort in the form of torn leather armchairs, but there was an opening in the thick wall, obstructed by a vertical trap door. Gab had made room for it twenty years earlier when removing some bricks. Whenever he put something in there, he would cover the surface over again with roughcast in order to hide the recess from view. Because of his precautions, Gabrielle knew that she could not be indiscreet without providing proof of it. Out of love initially, then out of fear, she had always respected Gab’s secret. Often, he made fun of it, and joked about it, testing her resistance . . .