Léon and Louise (13 page)

For all that, he could nearly always arrive at a clear-cut, definitive and exhaustive answer to the simple questions – Arsenic, yes or no? Cyanide, yes or no? – he had to deal with in the laboratory. This he found extremely pleasant, and after years of handling countless cases he could still subscribe without reservation to the moral principle underlying his work: that it wasn't a good thing to dispatch people from life to death by means of poison.

From that point of view, Léon still found the purpose of his job – demonstrating to potential poisoners that they might not get away with it – moral and important and right. As for the repetitive nature of his daily work, which didn't often get him down, he consoled himself with the generous salary that had enabled him to afford the move from the Batignolles to the Rue des Écoles when he married, and with the hope that if all went reasonably well he would sometime be promoted to a more interesting position.

After the potato gratin he tested a glass of white Bordeaux for cyanide, got another negative result, and took the Roquefort he was to test for rat poison from the refrigerator. A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was already eleven. He decided to save the Roquefort for the afternoon and have lunch at home for once. Being so early, he would take advantage of the spare time and make two or three Métro trips back and forth between Saint-Michel and Saint-Sulpice.

When Léon left the Boulevard Saint-Michel and turned off down the Rue des Écoles, the clouds parted. Ahead of him, the Sorbonne emitted a pale radiance such as only exists in the streets of Paris and the sky suddenly gleamed as if impregnated with gold dust. From one moment to the next the blackbirds in the trees began to sing, the hum of the traffic sounded more cheerful, the tap-tap of ladies' heels crisper, the gendarmes' whistles less peremptory.

After a few steps Léon seemed to hear, above the noises of the street, the delighted squeals of his son Michel. As he drew nearer, he saw he hadn't been mistaken: the little boy really was on the little stretch of turf beside the Collège de France which municipal gardeners had laid right below his living-room windows a few weeks ago. Cheeks flushed and eyes shining with all the
joie de vivre
of which a four-year-old is capable, Michel was riding round and round the centrepiece of the miniature park, a stone bust of the deaf poet Pierre de Ronsard, in a bright red pedal car in the form of a fire engine complete with turntable ladder, bell and spotlight.

Seated on a stone park bench, in a pose of utter relaxation, was Léon's wife. Yvonne's left arm was draped over the back of the seat, her right forearm rested horizontally against her forehead. She had stretched out her legs and was as engrossed in the sight of her blissful child as a mother cat that has just given her litter an ample feed. She was wearing a long white linen dress that was new to Léon – her self-confidently swelling little tummy could be glimpsed beneath it – together with a pretty little straw hat and some pink-lensed sunglasses that lent her summery get-up a rather jaunty appearance.

Léon was taken aback. This wasn't the blithely singing girl he'd left at home that morning, nor the tormented domestic prisoner who had kept him company in recent months, but a woman he'd never seen before. She might have been one of those Russian aristos who strolled for hours in the Luxembourg Gardens, or an American film star on her third highball.

When Yvonne spotted him, she waved each of the fingers on her right hand in turn. He waved back, then crouched down beside his little son and got him to show off his fire engine's bell and ladder.

‘Léon, how nice that you're home for lunch for once!' Yvonne said as he sat down beside her. When he kissed her, he felt her nestle against him in a way she hadn't for a long time.

‘Forgive me for asking,' he said, ‘but did you go mad this morning?'

She laughed. ‘Because of these new acquisitions, you mean? Little Michel and I went on a shopping spree at Galeries Lafayette.'

‘You bought all this stuff brand-new?'

‘As you can see. Look how happy the boy is. The bell's solid brass, you know. Michel, sweetheart, ring the bell again for your Papa.'

The little boy tugged at the bell rope so hard, passers-by on the other side of the street glanced across in surprise. Léon did his best to smile at this display of childish happiness, then readdressed himself to his wife. ‘Care to tell me how much that fire engine – '

‘Do you like it?'

‘How much did that fire engine cost?'

‘No idea. It's down on the bill. Probably a bit more than you earn in a month. How much
do
you earn, actually?'

‘Yvonne...'

‘It's made by Renault, you know.'

‘You're out of your mind!'

‘A genuine little Renault, manufactured in their workshops at Boulogne-Billancourt. The salesman explained it to me. The power is transmitted from the pedals to the rear axle by a Cardan drive, just like a real Renault. You must take a look.'

‘Yvonne...'

‘Do you know what a Cardan drive is?'

‘Yes.'

‘What?'

‘A drive shaft with a universal joint.'

‘Correct. How do you like my dress?'

‘Listen to me.'

‘The sunglasses look a bit silly, I admit.'

‘Kindly listen!'

‘No,
you
listen to
me
now, Léon. Will you?'

‘Of course.'

‘What are you trying to tell me – that I've done something silly?'

‘You can say that again!'

‘You see? We're in agreement there. I
have
done something silly, but so have you.'

‘You'll bankrupt us, you and your Cardan drive.'

‘And you did a fair bit of travelling on the Métro today, didn't you?'

Léon didn't answer.

‘I know you too well – I knew you would before you knew it yourself. I watched you from behind when you left the building this morning. I could tell you'd go on the Métro today from the guilty way your neat little boyish buttocks waggled to and fro.'

‘And that's why you took our son to Galeries Lafayette?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Forgive me if I fail to see the connection.'

‘Léon, your Métro rides are a disgrace and an insult – an insult to you and me and us both. I don't want you committing such pathetic little stupidities. You're making a fool of yourself, and you're making me look a laughing stock to myself. It's got to stop. Either you go looking for that dead girl, or you don't.'

‘You're right.'

‘But if you go looking for her, you must do it properly. Otherwise, I'll show you how to commit some really big stupidities, not pathetic little ones. If you continue to go on your pathetic little Métro rides, I'll commit some stupidities that'll make your hair stand on end.' She took his right hand and clamped it between her knees, then rested her head on his shoulder.

‘Am I going to lose you, Léon?' Her voice had gone suddenly reedy and her expression was as pained as if she were plucking her eyebrows or ripping a depilatory off her leg. ‘Are you going to leave me? Am I losing you?'

‘How can you even ask such a thing? I certainly won't leave you, it's out of the question.'

‘Nice of you to say so, but we know better, don't we? You probably won't leave me, that's true, but either I've already lost you or I never had you. That's the way it is. From now on, things can get either worse or a little bit better. It's entirely up to us.'

‘I'm sitting here beside you, Yvonne, surely you can see that? I'm here because I want to be. I won't leave you, I promise.'

‘And you always keep your promises, I know.' She sighed and patted his flank like a dog. ‘For all that, Léon, you mustn't waste any time. Go looking while the trail is fresh.'

‘There's no point.'

‘I order you to. Think of some way of finding the woman. After all, you're with the police.'

They sat there in silence for a while, watching little Michel circling the gravel path in his fire engine. When the pressure of her knees relaxed he took her right hand and pressed it firmly to his lips. Having released her, he nodded as if in confirmation of some decision he'd come to. Then, without another word, he rose and walked swiftly, resolutely off. It felt as if the Rue des Écoles were leaving him behind, not the other way round.

T
he express to Boulogne was heading out into Picardy. Seated on his own in an overheated second-class compartment, Léon was trying to read the afternoon edition of
Aurore
but looking out at the autumnally brown countryside every few moments. After leaving his wife in the park and returning to the Boulevard Saint-Michel, he had only briefly contemplated calling in at headquarters and enlisting police assistance in his search for Louise. Then he realized that nothing good could come of it. For one thing, he would make himself look a fool in front of his colleagues; for another, if the police actually launched a search contrary to all expectations, it would very probably yield no result. Thirdly, if Louise were actually run to earth, she wouldn't find it very romantic if the first sign of life made by the long-lost friend of her youth was to send a posse of uniformed gendarmes chasing after her.

So Léon had decided to look for Louise by himself. Although the detective methods employed by the Police Judiciaire were known only in broad outline to him, who spent his days in the seclusion of the laboratory, he was familiar with one basic rule of criminology: that a perpetrator often returned to the scene of the crime. And since he and Louise were both, in a sense, perpetrators and accomplices as well as victims and investigators, he took the Métro to the Gare du Nord and bought a ticket to Le Tréport. The direct route via Épinay was closed for construction work in September 1928, so he had to make a detour by way of Amiens and Abbeville.

Like most townsmen, Léon seldom left the city. Like all Parisians, he always swore that he would, if only it were possible, gladly exchange the noise, dirt and bustle of the City of Light for a quiet, peaceful life somewhere in the provinces, and that he would happily exchange the Opéra, the Bibliothèque Nationale and all the theatres in Paris for a glass of burgundy in the southern sun, a game of
pétanque
with friends, and a long walk through the woods and vineyards with the dog he would then acquire – possibly a black and white cocker spaniel by the name of Casimir or Patapouf.

But because there were no jobs for Léon in the vineyards of the South and he secretly realized, like all Parisians, that he would very soon get bored to death in the provinces, he stuck it out in the unloved city. Once or twice, at the best time of year, he would take a
bateau mouche
trip down the Seine with his wife and child or picnic in the woods at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and at Christmas and the New Year he took the train to Cherbourg to visit his father and mother. The other three hundred and fifty days he spent within the city limits, and on three hundred of them he saw little more of the city itself than the handful of streets between the Rue des Écoles and the Quai des Orfèvres.

Not for the first time, Léon was surprised at how abruptly the sea of buildings petered out and the green and brown undulations of field, meadow and ploughland began. At Porte de la Chapelle the railway line was still flanked by factories and warehouses and the banks of the Seine by sheds and barns; but immediately beyond the gasometer at Saint-Denis, where dense smoke billowed from tall chimneys, a farmer's boy could be seen herding some cows across a meadow, a dead straight avenue of poplars stretched away to the horizon, and golden yellow willows were bending before the keen north-east wind.

Léon experienced an almost irresistible urge to get out at the next station, buy a bicycle – or, better still, steal one – and ride to the sea beneath the open sky, in the fresh air and rain and against the wind. His buttocks would hurt as they had then, his muscles would ache as they had then, and he would collect some strange odds and ends on the way and keep an eye on the horizon in the insane hope that a girl with a red and white polka-dot blouse and a squeaking bicycle would appear. He would buy some bread and ham and drink water from a fountain, relieve himself behind a hedge like a farmer's boy, and seek shelter from storms in empty barns like a tramp. And it would all be pointless and nonsensical – a pathetic little stupidity unworthy of his Yvonne, unworthy of his Louise, and unworthy of himself.

The journey took two hours thirty-five minutes. Between Amiens and Abbeville the track followed the asphalted highroad he had cycled along with Louise. He thought he could remember this or that farmhouse or corn mill, maybe also some lone lime tree or particularly pretty villa, and he kept a sharp eye open for the range of hills on which Louise and he, only a stone's-throw apart, had lain in their respective shell-holes. The most noticeable traces of devastation had disappeared in the ten years since the war's end. Roads had been repaired and houses rebuilt, and nature had filled in the trenches and clothed the shell-holes in merciful greenery.