Bird in a Cage Read online

  The object’s disappearance worried me almost more than the death of the binder.

  I paced up and down with my fists clenched angrily in my coat pockets. I resented humankind’s lack of mercy. After six years mouldering in prison, after exhausting my capacity for remorse, after sleeplessness that was worse than a nightmare, I’d been kicked back into a bloody drama. Anna died because of my own despair, but her end hadn’t cured me of it. I wasn’t free of the shadow of death. In six years, I’d had just two hours of oblivion with Mme Dravet. They didn’t add up to much.

  I should have fled the area and got as far away as possible while other people’s celebrations went on roaring like a brazier.

  But an invisible force kept me prowling round the house. I could not accept such a bizarre situation. I could not allow myself to leave the woman to whom I owed what was perhaps the high point of my life all on her own between a sleeping daughter and her husband’s corpse. All there’d been between us were two kisses that we both knew would lead nowhere, but they had brought us together more solidly than any wild embrace—more permanently than a legal marriage, and more powerfully than a sacrament.

  She’d virtually thrown me out. She had the harsh look of a woman who will not forgive the man she fancies for having deceived her. I’d let her down by being unable to help her. She’d understood that her own interests required me to remove myself; she’d understood, but not accepted it.

  There was a building site behind a slatted fence on the opposite side of the street. Giant cranes and pyramids of construction materials made this former piece of wasteland look like a port. Abutting the fence was a bus stop with a glazed-in shelter. I slipped into this hut-like refuge. I put up the collar of my coat and sat down on the stone bench.

  I meant to wait not too far away from her to see what would happen next. She might even need me. I couldn’t foresee in what way, but I felt it intuitively. The police would be coming. They would make their observations. How would Mme Dravet extricate herself from what was a pretty bad situation? She couldn’t claim to have stayed at home and not heard the bang! On the other hand if she said she’d gone out the cops would ask her where she had gone, and that was something she couldn’t tell them either… Unless… Of course! The idea was a good one!

  I left the shelter and dashed to the nearest café. It wasn’t the one where we’d been a little while before, but a coalman’s dive which for once was staying open very late that night.

  All it had were three tables and a small bar. The narrow room had been divided into two, and in the other half you could buy packs of charcoal and bundles of firewood.

  The barman and his wife were seeing in Christmas with half a dozen regulars. On the table was a pan of fried blood sausage that gave off a wholesome smell of hot butter.

  The partygoers had drunk too much and weren’t talking. They seemed almost sad.

  They looked at me as if I were an intruder.

  “Telephone, please!”

  The short, fat barman, who had a moustache and a nose that looked like it was made of toad skin, sighed as he stood up with his napkin in his hand.

  “Shop next door.”

  He showed me to it and stood there quite shamelessly waiting for me to finish, picking his teeth all the while with the tip of a knife.

  Before leaving the bus shelter I’d seen the Dravets’ telephone number painted on the nameplate on the yard gate. I dialled as fast as I could, but since I’d been in prison I’d lost among many other habits the knack of using a telephone dial. I had to try it several times over.

  At last I could hear the phone ringing at the other end. Heavens above! As long as the police weren’t already on the case!

  The ring tone went on and on with manic regularity. Just as I was about to give up in despair, someone picked up but didn’t make a sound, not even the mechanical and instinctive “Hello!” My throat was dry. No two ways about it: that was an officer on the end of the line. I knew how the police went about things…

  My mind was racing so fast I felt dizzy. What should I do? Keep silent? That would seem suspicious. Pretend I’d dialled a wrong number? I didn’t feel up to bluffing. I was bound to put my foot in it.

  “It’s me,” I blabbed pitifully.

  Mme Dravet’s voice was sweet music to my ears.

  “I thought so. What do you want?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you call…?”

  “The police are on their way.”

  “I thought, I think… Well, you could say you went to Midnight Mass to explain why you were out.”

  “Mind your own business. I must ask you very firmly not to contact me again by any means whatsoever.”

  She hung up.

  The moustachioed coalman had finished cleaning his teeth.

  The café diners were trying to start a conversation but their tongues were so thick they could hardly articulate.

  “Eugène!” the bar lady called out. “Your food will be cold.”

  “Coming.”

  He switched off the light in the second shop even before I was out of it. The diners stared at me strangely, with eyes bleary from red wine.

  In the old days Ma and I had an odd way of celebrating Christmas. We would stay at home. I would lay out my set of chipped plaster figurines on the marble dresser to make a nativity scene. We would dine on cold chicken and a bottle of champagne and spend the evening by the wavering light of the big candles that we sometimes saved up for the following year…

  “What will you have?”

  I looked at the barman.

  “Take off the door handle when you’re done with the gentleman!” his wife instructed, with her mouth full.

  “Brandy!”

  He filled a glass barely bigger than a thimble. A pair of red wine splashes on the counter reminded me of the two tiny stains on Mme Dravet’s cuff. I thought of her great hurry to get rid of them. I was now sure they were bloodstains. The idea worried me.

  I paid and left without drinking the brandy. Only after I’d gone some paces along the street did I remember the thimbleful.

  I went back automatically to the bus shelter to keep watch on the house on the other side of the street. There was no police car parked in front of J. Dravet & Co. Were the emergency services overstretched that night? Why were they taking so long? More than a quarter of an hour had gone by since I’d left the flat.

  When I had first got to Mme Dravet’s home with her daughter asleep in my arms, I’d felt a flash of anxiety. It was as if I were crossing the threshold of a mysterious labyrinth and pushing on into a weird and lightless maze. Now I had that feeling again, only with a stronger sense of it being real.

  The big black gate with its yellow lettering was like the cover of a scary book telling the murky tale of the couple inside.

  A woman on her own with her child on Christmas Eve. A husband turning up to kill himself in front of the Christmas tree.

  Two spots of blood on a cuff. A decoration that vanishes from a branch of the tree…

  And a fourth character: Me! I played what was after all an important part—the witness.

  I jumped on hearing a slight grating noise. The factory gate was opening.

  Mme Dravet in her astrakhan overcoat was going out, holding her daughter by the hand.

  6

  The Diversion

  She closed the heavy gate behind her but did not lock it. She looked left and then right like someone who’s not sure which way to go.

  In fact, I think she was looking to see if I was there. I sensed it and squeezed into the darkest corner of the shelter. She was scared of coming face to face with me. From now on my wish to help her could only bring her harm.

  The wakened child was whimpering as she trotted alongside her mother. Where could they be going? I suddenly feared that Mme Dravet had taken a fateful decision. Maybe it was the only way out that the woman could imagine? Maybe she had had enough of the struggle? When she�
��d dialled the emergency number she’d nearly fainted.

  When I’d had Anna’s lifeless body before my eyes, I too felt that my own life could not go on. I’d wanted to leave, to get off, like getting out of a moving car. That’s why I put the smoking barrel of the gun between my teeth. But the smell of the gunpowder was asphyxiating, and I think a convulsive bout of coughing was the only thing that prevented me from going all the way.

  The two silhouettes grew smaller as they made their way through the icy night. They were going towards the centre of town. Far beyond them, a luminous haze in the sky signalled Paris. I let them get some distance ahead of me before leaving my shelter.

  They stopped from time to time. Mme Dravet leaned over her daughter to say something to her. Then they started off again, hesitantly. The mother walked slowly but the little girl still had to make an effort to keep up.

  They crossed a deserted square and suddenly, seeing the looming mass of a church with light in its stained-glass window at the other side of the esplanade, I understood that the young woman was taking my advice. She was going to Midnight Mass. Instead of lying to the police, she was setting up a genuine alibi. That was much cleverer.

  When I entered the building myself, the tinny bell was ringing for the elevation. The church was packed and I had to stand near the door, in the middle of a heap of worshippers. All their heads were bowed. I would have liked to try and pray too, but all my thoughts were with the woman lost in the crowd of churchgoers.

  She was all that counted. She was playing a dire hand at this minute, and I felt ever more forcefully that I needed to help her. Taking advantage of the fact that everyone else was bowing down in devotion, I looked around. Mme Dravet was at the back of the main aisle. She was looking at the altar where the priest was holding up the host, and appeared to be in ecstatic communion. What was she actually thinking? Was she frightened of the danger hanging over her? Or was she thinking of when she had loved Jérôme Dravet? What was she asking of God? The salvation of her body, or of her soul?

  Then the great organ expelled its inexhaustible, vibrating breath.

  A huge rustling noise ran through the congregation—the sound of chairs and feet being shifted and shuffled. Then the choristers began to sing. Since some worshippers were already leaving the church, Mme Dravet moved up the aisle in search of a pew.

  She slipped into a row not far from the pulpit and was lost to view.

  I think I was then on the point of leaving myself. The heavenly peace of the church brought all the weariness of the day down on me and, even more, the weight of the emotions I’d had in the course of the evening. I needed a decent hotel room, preferably not facing the street. Ah! To be able to draw the curtains, drop onto a bed and pass out! I’d spent my first night of freedom on a train and I’d not got a wink of sleep because of the abrupt change of environment. The nightlight in the compartment reminded me of the light in my prison cell. Was I not still in a prison? A prison moving at seventy miles an hour, and with cellmates as depressing as those I’d had at Baumettes!

  The service went on with flaming candles. Now everyone was singing to the birth of Jesus. I felt faint. I shifted from one foot to the other in an effort to overcome my fatigue. I was slightly dizzy.

  Suddenly, as one hymn ended, the noise of a chair falling over echoed through the nave and then came the sound of a child crying. A foreboding made me look towards the pulpit. I saw there was some kind of to-do in that part of the church. Then a small group emerged from the silent commotion and came down the aisle.

  I felt like I’d just been punched in the chest! Two men were carrying a lifeless Mme Dravet towards the exit, and a lady was leading a weeping Lucienne by the hand.

  When the procession drew level with me I dashed out. I was crazy with worry in case the woman had poisoned herself before coming here…

  “What happened?” I asked one of the two men.

  “She passed out.”

  We all went outside. Under the porch I looked at Mme Dravet and noticed the strange look in her eyes, under her long lowered eyelashes. They weren’t the eyes of a woman who’d fainted. Quite the opposite, in fact. They were dreadfully alert.

  “Do you know her?” the lady asked.

  “Er… By sight. We live in the same area.”

  “We must take her home,” one of the men decided. “If you would be so kind as to help my friend to keep her upright, I’ll go and get my car which is parked round the corner.”

  The man who stayed behind with me must have been about fifty, and I quickly worked out that the woman who was looking after Lucienne was his wife.

  “I was completely taken aback,” he said. “She was sitting next to me. She put her hand to her forehead and then just keeled over… Do you think it’s serious?”

  Mme Dravet was pale and her nostrils were pinched. She was acting her part to perfection.

  “I feel sorry for the wee mite,” the lady confided.

  She was stroking Lucienne’s cheek as the child sniffled sorrowfully and looked all around her in a daze.

  “The wee one went to sleep in church. When her mother fell over it woke her up…”

  I was afraid the little girl might recognize me. But she had only set eyes on me at the restaurant, and hadn’t paid me any special attention.

  The man with the car came back at the wheel of a black Peugeot 403 and drew up at the foot of the church steps. He opened the rear door and motioned to us to come on down. As we were holding the pseudo-patient upright she let her head loll towards me and whispered:

  “Keep away!”

  Straight after, as we reached the car, she heaved a deep sigh and opened her eyes.

  “Are you feeling better?” the sympathetic lady asked.

  “What happened to me?”

  “A turn. It was so hot in the church… We were next to a heating vent, in fact…”

  “What about my daughter?”

  “She’s here. We’ll drive you home.”

  “Thank you.”

  The husband then said to the driver of the Peugeot:

  “Seeing as she’s better and this gentleman is with you…”

  He must have had a party on at his place or else chums to see.

  “No problem,” the driver conceded gladly. “Happy Christmas to you both!”

  He was older than I was, maybe forty or so. He was tall and ruddy and wore a leather coat and a big woollen scarf. A likeable fellow, kind-hearted and practical without a doubt.

  We got Mme Dravet and Lucienne onto the rear seat.

  “Which way?” the man in the leather coat enquired.

  “On the other side of the square, turn left.”

  Before switching on the engine he took a look at his passenger.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she stammered.

  My being in the car scared her stiff. I could easily undermine her plan of action.

  “Wait a minute, I’ll put your window down. Nothing like a spot of fresh air for cases of this kind,” the helpful driver continued.

  I was holding the little girl tight. The driver rounded a wide bend then put his foot down.

  “Do you want to go see a medic?”

  “It’s not worth the trouble. Thank you all the same, you are most considerate…”

  He shrugged and mumbled contentedly:

  “If you say so…”

  I felt physically sick when the dark gate with its bright lettering came into view once again. Back to square one. The young woman must have felt the same dizzying frustration. What right had I to intervene in her fate once again after she had sent me packing?

  The leather-coated man got out of the driving seat and went round the car to help his passenger get out. As he passed in front in the yellow light of the headlamps she said without moving her head:

  “Please, do me a favour and get lost!”

  The man opened the car door and held out his large and helping hand.

  “Gently does it. Y
ou think you’ll be all right? Wouldn’t you prefer to be carried by the two of us?”

  “No, no. If you would just see me up to my flat.”

  “The least I could do!”

  The big jolly fellow then gave me a salacious wink that suddenly filled me with an icy rage quite beyond my control.

  “I’ll prop her up. You look after the kid.”

  Mme Dravet couldn’t stop looking at me with burning eyes. It was a look that contained everything—despair, fear, and anger as well.

  I behaved as if I’d not seen her forceful glance.

  I swept the girl into my arms with resolve.

  We walked to the gateway.

  It was starting a second time over.

  7

  The Third Visit

  The bells were ringing out the end of the midnight service. Those happy chimes sounded nonetheless like a dirge, since I knew what was in store. I knew I would see the corpse a second time and would have to behave as if it were the first. What treacherous devil was propelling me back to this accursed place to act in the most dangerous of plays?

  A short while before I’d had only one thing in mind, to relieve this house of my discreditable self so as to give Mme Dravet free rein. But now, against all caution and in breach of her pleas, I was imposing myself on the young woman. It was not logical. There was still time to invent an excuse and clear off. But still I went on across the courtyard.

  “He’s a binder, is he, your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m in wallpaper. Not so very different, is it?”

  We’d got to the door. The second door. I stepped ever on into the labyrinth.

  “It’s black as pitch in here…”

  “The bulb went.”

  “I’ve got a lighter. Don’t move. Hang on, I can see the stairs.”

  “No need. There’s a goods lift…”

  She opened the door and we went into the cage. The door made its characteristic swishing sound as it closed.

  The leather-coated man asked in a tentative manner: