The Widow (15 page)

Arthur had been drying the draining-board, meticulously lining up all his little mops and sponges.

‘Something of a campaign to discredit you,' he said. ‘Some
woman challenges his authority, undermines his leverage, unheard of. Who's she? Some extortionist, some fortuneteller. Piffling but possible. This is still a small town in many ways, encouraging delusions of grandeur. A friend here and there, in the Prefecture or on the paper. How many consultant psychiatrists are there in Strasbourg – Twenty? Well, if you want one, you go to Paris and get one.' Marie-Line looked delighted with this idea.

‘No,' said Arlette. ‘Running to Paris every time we can't get something done here; idiotic. We defend ourselves right here.' Sounding intensely obstinate.

‘That's my John Wayne,' said Arthur. ‘I must admit that a certain native tenacity, horribly Brit., takes possession of me, and with apologies to you, Marie-Line, your old man's rather a pest.'

Mr Scheffer was stolid, middle-aged, and blunt of feature, with a jacket that needed brushing and a red box of tiny cigars. He wore ankle-length suede boots that zipped up the front, with thick crepe soles, and had thick square fingernails, curved and yellowish.

He was roundabout, with an irritating way of saying ‘Now Madame, I beg you not to be aggressive', ending by making Arlette feel aggressive, which would have been a mistake and she had trouble with it.

The cutting phrase, the stinging retort, etcetera, doesn't do at all for the police.

‘It's difficult to know how to satisfy you,' she said patiently. ‘You talk vaguely about a complaint, and you won't tell me the nature of the complaint or where it originates. In a way I welcome your visit, since you can go back and file a report
stating that I've nothing to hide and less still to be ashamed of. Whatever the complaint is, it's nothing criminal. You're not accusing me of fraudulent extortion of money, or illegal practice of medicine, anything like that. Anyway, Commissaire Berger is aware of my activities and gives me a certificate of moral health or whatever you care to call it.'

‘May I see it?'

‘Certainly. So all right?'

‘Quite in order, Madame,' with no change in expression.

‘There's no municipal regulation being flouted that I'm aware of. Taxes or hygiene or fire-escapes or something?' The thick fingers waved all this aside and squashed a butt out carefully in the ashtray. ‘I'm a thoroughly respectable person, my antecedents are impeccable, and my husband, who does scientific work in the interests of the Council of Europe, is hardly to be thought of as irresponsible.'

‘Na good,' he said after waiting patiently for the end of the tirade. One of the paternal Alsatian expressions; he had the powerful singsong accent and pronounced it ‘gut'. ‘You've been quite open with me even though I could wish you needn't feel so aggressive about it. I'll be open with you.' Generally an indication that they'll be the contrary, but he puffed peaceably on a new cigar and said, ‘Just a shadow of disquiet about this girl. Who's missing from home, see, and whose legally appointed guardian, the most normal thing in the world, entrusts us to make sure she's not frequenting bad company. Mark me well, I suggest nothing of the sort. No corruption of a minor or anything like that, just maybe inciting a minor towards quitting the paternal roof, maybe rebellion.'

‘Come off it, she's eighteen and she's free to go home whenever she likes. I don't try to keep her. In view of her father's autocratic attitude, I believe I'm justified in thinking that at this moment home isn't the best place for her.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘Gone to the cinema with my husband. Do her no harm to take her mind off things for an hour or two.'

‘Mm. She ought to be at school, no? What legally constitutes a major is subject to interpretation. The texts aren't too clear. A young girl still at school, living with her family and dependent upon them… Well, I'll go back and consult –' The phone rang.

‘Excuse me a second.'

‘Arlette Van der Valk.' There was an odd sighing sound along the line, so that she looked to see whether the switch was on record but no, it was through to her. ‘Who is calling, please?' The sighing sound continued; was it a sort of deep asthmatic breathing? ‘Have you got the right number?' A hoarse deep whisper, sounding male but one could not be sure – disembodied and as though distorted – said ‘You'll be sorry about it, dear, sorry about it,' and nothing again but the breathing, and then at last the click and buzz of an open line. She put the phone down and said, ‘Somebody clueless. Sorry.'

‘Like I was saying, it might be cleverer to conquer your scruples, don't you know, and send the girl home because you know, the matter might get more complicated. Like I'm not saying anything now but I might find myself sending you out a summons, you know, and you'd maybe find yourself at the Magistrates' Court with something to answer for. Well,' getting to his feet, ‘I'll be off.' He didn't apologize for taking up her time, but the police never do.

Lot of bullshit about Magistrates' Courts. She couldn't feel sure, but that sounded like the cops disconcerted and kicking up dust behind which they could retire in good order.

But what was that phone call?

That didn't sound like the worthy dentist. His idea of a menace – she'd had plenty of proof, no? – was more bureaucratic.

But was it the sort of call Albert Demazis said he'd had – before he died?

One couldn't tell: Albert had been vague. He'd talked about menaces, and used some expression like ‘funny phone calls', or maybe ‘anonymous calls'.

She didn't know whether she was frightened or not. On the one hand, not. It was the kind of thing one would expect of Arthur, if Arthur had been the quite unspeakable type of Englishman that thought practical jokes funny. There – hadn't Albert said he thought, at first, it was somebody playing a joke…?

I mean really … You were supposed to tremble, and for goodness' sake, you didn't go trembling at some loony on the phone. She'd had plenty of loonies already, either direct on the phone or on the recorder, and no reason to suppose she'd exhausted all the ways there are of being loony. Any telephone girl, surely, would have ripe tales on the subject: it was as standard as having your bottom pinched on the Metro.

It stayed though in her mind, like a grain of grit. Albert Demazis was dead, and wasn't it too much of a coincidence? Police business? When the phone rang again she felt an aversion, a slight creeping of the flesh which she had to conquer, and it was a relief to hear Arthur, sounding crisp.

‘Silly film. I'm having a cup of tea with the child, more for her enjoyment than mine. I'll bring her home; I've some letters to sign at the office. I was thinking – during the silly film. Might get a legal opinion. I thought of somebody good – Paul Friedmann. I phoned him; he was at the Palais pleading but I caught him, and he said he'd be through around five and intended to go home, so if you'd like to have a chat with him you could pick him up at the Palais, and it might be a bright thing to do. Bye; my tea's getting cold.'

Arlette had a stew in the oven simmering nicely, so she picked up the cassette and said, ‘Take the stew out about a quarter to seven if I'm not back, and I think plain boil those spuds. Would you be a love and cook me the spinach, it's all washed and ready.' She shot out into the Lancia; Arthur and the girl had taken the bus.

The Palace of Justice in Strasbourg is gloomily neo-classic outside in a Teutonic way, vaguely Nuremberg, and a dirty yellow within, huge edifice constructed as though of Marseille soap. There is a gigantic staircase with lions, something between
Rome and Egypt seen on a drizzling day through a dirty bus window after too much lunch.

Maitre Friedmann was discovered in a criminal corner full of lockers, disrobing, smoking a little cigar like Monsieur Scheffer, but not looking a bit like him. Handsome, young, Jewish, sparkling in that particular Jewish fashion with lovely blue-black hair that would never need brushing, magnificent eyes, a lovely grey suit, everything lovely. And a person needing no damned explaining.

‘Hallo there, you're Arlette, how splendidly you've timed your arrival. My car's in front, insolently, is yours too? Double parked, wicked cow, we'd better take both, no, of course not that ghastly office, home, I'm dying for a cup of coffee – I'm a coffee maniac.'

He drove very fast in a white Alfa Romeo as far as one of the flats near the Orangerie that she fancied but couldn't afford. All very modern.

‘Claire! Claire … blast the cow, she's gone out. Make yourself comfortable.' He was very quick. Arlette had scarcely time to close her eyes hard and breathe deeply and wish herself into a state of calm when whisk, he was back from the kitchen with a coffee-maker and a bowl of ice-blocks. Whisk, in her hand was a big glass of ice and something colourless which turned out to be Cointreau and delicious. The tornado sat down opposite with a large china mug, which had a gaudy picture of a satyr on it and read, “You'll tell the Vicar? I AM the Vicar”, and became still.

‘Tell,' he said. He stayed perfectly still. He did not interrupt once. He asked no questions. The smell of coffee mixed deliciously with that of Cointreau. The expression on his face did not change even when she rambled and became aware she was rambling. Without his having moved at all a pad of yellow paper appeared on his knee, a yellow pencil, and a page of neat small writing had taken shape.

He took a swig of coffee.

‘Right. Now we don't want to bother you with a lot of legal dinkydoo, so I leave that out. You're being harassed and I'll
put a stop to that. I guarantee you'll hear no more from the cops. This Scheffer, that's a load of unmitigated cock. They're always telling you what the law is, and they don't know themselves. The Statute book pours forth simply mountains of texts, endless amendments to this or that, all so ambiguous and so badly drafted that the law is what anybody chooses to say it is. So you challenge a point. Plead it, get it disentangled, get a bit of proper jurisprudence on it.

‘Matter of psychology. Who pleads it? I do. Tell you why. Get a juicy rape case, or even, as here, matter of parental control over a young girl, and you're dead right, that's rape. People think, get a sharp woman down from Paris, sexist, feminist, pretty, and she'll plead like a fury; you horrible old men, it's me you're raping.

‘Court sees her coming from afar with her knickers aflame. Question like this, matter of male machismo, man's got to plead it. Court's terribly bad, you think, dirty old men, one half yids one half protty old Huguenots nodding away there: yes yes, support parental discipline; young girl's giving backchat, lock her up in the convent.

‘Wrong in fact. Court can be surprisingly supple and sympathetic. All a matter of choosing the right moment, hitting the nail, but how hard d'you hit the nail? Most successful advocacy's this question of timing.

‘Now I can see you coming. Oh dear, firebrand young yid, just longing to stir up a fuss, blasted eager boy wanting to make a name for himself. Dragging you into court amidst a wilderness of interjections and injunctions, rejoinders and counter-rejoinders. Blaze of publicity, rebounding to credit of brilliant young advocate, what? Not on your life.

‘Don't want a lot of confrontation with this old hound of a dentist. If we have to, nothing easier. May-it-please-the-Court, let this old cowskin stand up and show cause why he should be thought fit to have parental control over his own socks: as first witness we'll call the housemaid he was screwing last week in the broom cupboard.

‘But would that be doing you any good? Or Marie-Line?
She's the one concerned – is it such a splendid idea for her to be a bone of contention? She'd enjoy it no doubt, but you don't think so and neither do I. Two little girls of my own.

‘Tact, and a light hand. I'll pin this dentist's ears back enough to give him pause. Comes to Court I can drive a bus up and down his spine.

‘Stopping the harassment of yourself, easy; he's already overreached himself badly. Newspaper will be pretty careful. Print a piece that's not objective reporting, it's practically paid publicity, and they'll footnote it with a legal disclaimer refusing responsibility. You've a legal “right to reply” if you want to use it.

‘Marie-Line's presence in your house is a weakness and an embarrassment. We must get her out from underneath your feet. Send her over to us here; Claire will enjoy that. I won't mind it. Got my domestic moo, two calves, what's a heifer more or less?'

Arlette was about to voice a mild protest at this ruminant classification of all the women, when the ‘domestic moo' arrived herself, scooting the children to their rooms to do their homework and drifting in, delicately built but looking durable; slim, quiet, vastly pretty.

‘What's he on about now? Calling us all cows again? Oh I know, simply awful, as though one's bra was soaking with milk: when the children were tiny he'd come cuddling up and say “Give me a licky too”.'

Put firmly thus back in his place Maitre Friedmann grinned and said ‘Have we got room for a ravishing blonde of eighteen? Arlette's got one she needs to get rid of.'

‘I daresay,' said Claire comfortably.

It was darkening rapidly out, and was dark by the time she got home. She parked on the pavement opposite, under the trees of the Observatory garden, turned her light out, set her handbrake and began collecting female attributes, like a high-heeled shoe one couldn't wear while driving and which had slid under the seat: she was doubled up awkwardly when there was a loud noise.

A complex noise, that she could not understand. There seemed to be a loud clap and a duller thud. An impact there had been: the car quivered on its suspension. She unfolded herself puzzled. The windscreen had frosted across.