The Voyeur (21 page)

Now, if Julian knew about the salesman's questionable status, it was obviously because he
had
been at the farm at the time of Mathias' supposed visit; he knew no one had knocked at the door. Which was why he had stared at the stranger so insolently at the very moment he was accumulating his fictitious details . . .

The question then remained the same as before: what was the boy's reason for supporting Mathias' position? Why, having told his father from the start that he had remained in the doorway, could he not defend himself against the declarations made by a passer-by to his grandmother? Was he afraid that the latter had a better chance of being believed than he himself?

No. From the moment Julian began lying—so recklessly— it seemed more likely that things had happened differently: the boy was not at the farm that morning. (On the other hand, he certainly was not in the hollow of the cliff—where he was accused of being; he was somewhere else, that was all. ) And he believed the salesman had visited the farm. But since his father demanded actual proof, he had needed to invent some precise detail—hit upon by chance. In order to ask Mathias' help—for he would think the whole matter was of no importance to Mathias—Julian had looked him straight in the eyes, hoping to communicate his distress and obtain the salesman's complicity. What Mathias had attributed to insolence was really supplication. Or else the young man was trying to hypnotize him . . .

All the way back down the little road, between the gnarled trunks of the pines, the salesman examined the many aspects of the problem over and over again. He reminded himself that his headache might have prevented him from arriving at a solution, for he would certainly have established one indisputably if all his forces had been at his disposal. In his haste to escape that inhospitable kitchen and the young man's overinsistent stares, he had left without asking for the aspirin tablets he had counted on. Words, efforts of attention, all these calculations had now increased his discomfort to considerable proportions. He would be better off having avoided that damned farm altogether.

On the other hand, wasn't it worth having provoked such testimony? Julian Marek's public declaration, no matter how confused his motives, nevertheless was the desired proof that he had been waiting for some time in a place far from the scene of the accident. ... A place "far" from the scene? Waiting for "some time"? How much time? As for the distance, the whole island measured only four miles from end to end! With a good bicycle . . .

After having struggled so hard to establish this alibi—supposing it could free him from all suspicion—Mathias now realized its inadequacy. He had stayed much too long on the cliff to be able to account for his time in this manner. There was still a hole in his schedule.

Mathias again began to recapitulate his movements since leaving the café-tobacco shop-garage. It had been then eleven-ten or eleven-fifteen. The distance to the Leduc house being virtually negligible, his arrival there could be set at eleven-fifteen exactly. This first stop certainly accounted for less than fifteen minutes, although the woman's chatter had made it seem exasperatingly long. The subsequent stops had been both rare and brief—two or three minutes altogether. The mile or so on the main road, between town and the turn, at full speed and without a single side-trip, had taken scarcely more than five minutes. Five and three, eight; and fifteen, twenty-three. . . . Less than twenty-five minutes had therefore elapsed between his start at the square and the place where the salesman had encountered Madame Marek. That made it eleven-forty at the most, more likely eleven-thirty-five. Yet this meeting with the old country woman had actually occurred an hour later.

In order to reduce the difference as much as possible, Mathias tried getting back to the same point figuring backward from the moment he had looked at his watch (seven minutes after one) in the café at Black Rocks. He had been there about ten minutes, fifteen perhaps. It had taken ten minutes, at the most, for the second sale (to the exhausted-looking couple), and approximately fifteen for the first (including a long conversation with Madame Marek). This part of the road, traveled without any particular haste, might figure on the schedule as ten extra minutes. Unfortunately all these figures seemed a little excessive. Their total, nevertheless, scarcely exceeded three-quarters of an hour. The meeting with the old lady must therefore have occurred at twenty after twelve at the earliest—probably at twelve twenty-five.

The abnormal, excessive, suspicious, inexplicable time amounted to forty minutes—if not fifty. It was more than enough to account for the two successive detours: the trip to the farm and back—including the minor repair to the gearshift in front of the closed door—and the trip to the cliff and back—including. . . . Mathias would merely have had to hurry a little.

He hurried on. Then, having crossed the main road, he continued down the opposite path—broad enough at the outset but subsequently narrowing to a vague dirt track—twisting to avoid roots and stumps, briar patches, and clumps of stunted gorse. The fields had disappeared. The last wall of fieldstone, half in ruins, indicated the beginning of the road beyond. On either side stretched a series of low ridges covered with reddish vegetation and relieved only occasionally by a gray rock, a thorn bush, or some vaguer, more distant silhouette which was harder to identify—at first sight.

The terrain sloped down. Mathias noticed ahead of him, at eye level, a darker line separating the uniform and motionless gray of the sky from another gray surface—similarly flat and perpendicular—the sea.

The path came out onto the central section of a horseshoe-shaped ridge facing the open sea, enclosing between its two arms a kind of elongated basin which extended to the very edge of the cliff, its dimensions not exceeding twenty by thirty yards. A bright speck attracted the salesman's notice; he was upon it in a few strides, and leaned over to pick it up; it was only a tiny pebble, cylindrical, smooth, and white, shaped deceptively like a cigarette.

The flattened bottom of the hollow, where the sparse vegetation of the moor gave way to richer grass, came to an end thirty steps away—without transition—in a steep rock face, plunging down about fifteen yards into the eddying water. After an almost perpendicular fall came an irregular series of sharp, protruding ridges, and at the very base, rising out of the foam between the more imposing rock masses, a cluster of conical reefs against which the waves dashed with great violence, countered by the backwash in the opposite direction, producing bursts of spray that sometimes reached higher than the top of the cliff.

Higher still, two sea gulls described interlacing circles in the sky—sometimes executing them so that the loops occurred side by side, sometimes combining their circuits into a perfect figure eight—their maneuvers achieved without a single movement of their wings. The fixed, round eye which the slightly tilted head directed toward the interior of the horseshoe, stared immutably downward like the lidless eyes of fish, as if complete insensibility precluded any need to blink. He was watching the water rising and falling against the wet, polished rock, the runners of whitish moss, the periodic bursts of spray, the intermittent cascades, and farther away the rough stone outcroppings.. . . Suddenly Mathias noticed, a little to his right, a piece of cloth—knitted cloth—a piece of knitted gray wool hanging from a projecting rock two yards beneath the upper edge—that is, at a height the tide never reached.

Fortunately this spot looked accessible without too much difficulty. Without a moment's hesitation, the salesman took off his duffle coat, put it on the ground, and advanced along the edge of the precipice, making a detour of several yards to reach—still farther to the right—a point where the descent would be possible. From there, clinging with both hands to the outcroppings, moving his feet cautiously from fissure to projection, pressing his body against the granite flank, he reached, at the cost of more effort than he had supposed, not his goal but a point about two yards below it. Then he had only to stand up as high as he could, stretch out one arm (holding on with the other), and seize the desired object. The cloth came away from the rock without difficulty. There was no doubt about it, it was the gray sweater Violet had been wearing—had not been wearing, rather—but which had been lying on the grass beside her.

Yet Mathias was certain he had thrown it away with the rest, checking everything piece by piece to assure himself that nothing had caught on the rocks halfway down. It would have been better to leave the sweater at the top of the cliff in the hollow where the timid sheep were walking round and round their pickets. Since she had taken it off herself, it would have been more natural for her to fall without it. In any case, it seemed peculiar that she had lost her balance with it on, so that a projecting rock had stripped it from her as she fell without turning it inside out or even tearing it a little. It was lucky no one had discovered it during the search.

But at the same moment Mathias realized the uncertainty of such a conjecture, for the person who might have seen the sweater hanging there would doubtless not have risked trying to get it, regarding such an attempt as unnecessarily dangerous. Under such conditions would it not be a still graver error to remove it now? If someone had noticed it down there on the rock, would it not be better to put it back where he had found it, trying, in fact, to make it hang in exactly the same way?

Then, on consideration, Mathias wondered who such a witness might have been. Maria Leduc, discovering her sister's sweater, would certainly have decided she had fallen here, and brought a searching party in this direction, where no one had thought of looking yesterday. As for the fishermen who had found the body this morning, they had been down below, looking through the seaweed exposed at low tide, too far away to make out anything in particular. The compromising object had hitherto escaped notice.

Since, on the other hand, it was now impossible to put it back in the grassy hollow where Maria would have found it the day before, there remained only one solution. Mathias steadied himself by spreading his feet farther apart on the narrow ledge, wadded up the sweater into a compact mass, and grasping the rock wall behind him with one hand, threw the sweater out to sea with all his strength.

It landed gently on the water—floating between the rocks. The two gulls screamed, left off their circling, and plunged down together. They did not need to go as far as the water itself to recognize a simple piece of cloth, and immediately rose again, screaming still louder, toward the top of the cliff. Standing near the spot where he had left his duffle coat, at the edge of the vertical rock face, someone was leaning over the precipice, looking at the sea. It was young Julian Marek.

Mathias lowered his head so quickly that he almost fell in. At that moment the gray sweater, already half-saturated, was caught between a little wave and the backwash. Engulfed in the collision, it slowly sank, soon drawn out to sea beyond the rocks. When the surface rose again with the next wave, everything had disappeared.

Now he would have to raise his head toward the boy. The latter had obviously seen the sweater and the salesman's incomprehensible gesture. . . . No; he had certainly seen the gesture, but perhaps only a piece of gray cloth, wadded up into a ball. It was important to make him say just what it was he had seen.

Mathias also took into account his own bizarre position at the moment; he would have to furnish some explanation for that. He estimated the distance separating him from the cliff top. The silhouette against the sky frightened him all over again. He had almost forgotten its immediacy.

Julian watched him in silence with the same fixed eyes, thin lips, frozen features.

"Hey! Hello there, boy!" Mathias cried, pretending surprise, as if he had only then discovered his presence.

But the boy did not answer. He was wearing an old jacket over his work-clothes, and a cap that made him look older— at least eighteen. His face was thin, pale, and rather ominous.

"They thought I was throwing them a fish," the salesman said, pointing to the gulls spiraling over their heads. And he added, embarrassed by the persistent silence: "It was an old rag."

As he spoke he looked hard at the water moving under the parallel lines of foam between each wave. Nothing returned to the surface . . .

"A sweater."

The voice came from above, neutral, smooth, unchallengeable—the same voice which had said: "Before leaving you took a key out of a little bag fastened to the seat. . ." The salesman turned to face Julian. The latter's attitude and expression, or rather lack of expression, were exactly the same. It was as if he had never opened his mouth. "A sweater?" Had Mathias heard right? Had he heard anything?

Considering this distance of seven or eight yards, considering the noise of the wind and the waves (even though they were not so strong today), he could still manage to pretend he had not understood. His eyes swept over the gray wall again, examined the humps and hollows, then stopped in an indentation protected against the eddying waves, where the water level rose and fell more markedly along the polished surface of the rock.

"An old rag," he said, "I found it here."

"A sweater," corrected the voice of the imperturbable onlooker.

Although not shouting, he had spoken more loudly. No doubt remained. The same elements were repeated: the eyes raised toward the top of the cliff, the body leaning forward, the motionless face, the closed mouth. With a movement of his hand, Mathias specified: "Here, on the rocks."

"I know. It was there yesterday," the young man answered. And when Mathias had lowered his eyes: "It was Jackie's."

This time the salesman decided on an obvious interruption to give himself time to understand what was happening and to determine what line to take. He began climbing up the rocky slope by the same path he had taken down. It was much easier than the descent; he reached the top almost immediately.

But once on the moor at the cliff edge, he was still not certain what would be best to do. He walked as slowly as possible across the short distance still separating him from Julian Marek. What did he need to think about? Actually he had merely retreated before the threat, hoping, perhaps, that the other would say something more of his own accord.