After the Crash (35 page)

The bedroom door opened directly into the living room. The washing-up had been done, and a lace cloth had been placed on the
table. Nicole was sitting at the table, in tears. In front of her was the
blue envelope.

Marc pulled up a chair and sat facing his grandmother. He retrieved
the envelope that Mathilde de Carville had given him, and placed
it on the table.

Two blue envelopes. One for each family.
‘I knew Mathilde de Carville had a copy, of course,’ Nicole said
quietly. ‘But I don’t think she knew that Grand-Duc had given a
copy to me.’
‘You’re right,’ Marc told her. ‘She didn’t know.’
Nicole wiped her eyes with a white handkerchief.
‘What exactly did she tell you?’
Marc had no choice. This was why he had come, after all. He
spoke for a long time, describing his visit to the de Carvilles and
summarising the contents of Grand-Duc’s notebook, in particular the final pages: the DNA test, the detective’s guilty conscience.
He omitted only one thing: the fact that Grand-Duc had been
murdered. For some reason, he felt it would be unfair to tell his
grandmother this news so suddenly, and abruptly.
Nicole coughed into her handkerchief.
‘Marc, Crédule did not exactly lie in his notebook, but he didn’t
tell the whole truth either. The reality was slightly different. Crédule
likes to embellish things . . .’
His grandmother’s use of the present tense made Marc
squirm.
‘I was there,’ he said. ‘For Lylie’s fifteenth birthday. I remember
what happened. The vase that broke in Lylie’s hands, Grand-Duc
apologising as he picked up the pieces . . .’
‘Of course. You’re right. But he didn’t write about what happened next.’
Marc went pale. ‘What . . .?’
‘You went out with Emilie, Marc, do you remember? You went
to Manon’s house to celebrate, and you didn’t return until after
midnight.’
Marc’s hand lay on top of the torn blue envelope. He slid it
around the table nervously. Nicole cleared her throat and went on:
‘I stayed here with Crédule. He drank a glass of brandy on the sofa
while I did the washing-up. I was crying.’
‘Crying? Why?’
‘Marc, I’m not stupid. Crédule was working for Mathilde de
Carville. I had always expected her to ask for a DNA test one day.
It was her right. I would have done the same thing, in her place . . .
but not like that. That pathetic little deception. A booby-trapped
birthday present! Crédule was the only friend we invited to Lylie’s
birthday party . . .’
Marc felt increasingly uncomfortable. His grandmother had
never confided in him like this before.
‘When did you guess?’
‘When I saw Emilie’s finger bleeding, and Crédule picking up
the broken pieces of glass. It would have been better if he’d come
here with a syringe, if he’d at least been honest about it. That was
our agreement, from the beginning: I would let him see Lylie, but
he had to share all the information he discovered.’
‘But he did that, didn’t he? He gave you a copy of the results . . .’
Nicole’s eyes filled with tears again.
‘Not exactly, Marc. Let me tell you what happened . . . I was
crying as I did the washing-up, and then suddenly I came to a decision. I had just rinsed a knife. I used it to cut my little finger. Just
a small cut – but enough to make it bleed. I wrapped a dishcloth
around my finger, and I gave Crédule a shot glass containing some
of my blood. He wasn’t stupid – he understood what I wanted.’
‘How did he react?’
For the first time, Nicole smiled.
‘He was a bit embarrassed, like a child caught in the act. But
Crédule isn’t a bad man. He apologised for his behaviour and he
told me he would test the de Carvilles’ blood for Mathilde and the
Vitral blood for me. And then . . .’
Nicole coughed again. The white handkerchief twisted in her
hands.
Marc, embarrassed, said: ‘Nicole, what are you trying to tell me?’
‘You really want to know? Well, it’s not a crime. And I doubt
whether Crédule mentioned it in his notebook . . .’
In fact, Marc did not really want to know. Nicole’s tears were
running down her face.
‘We made love, that night. While you were out celebrating at
Manon’s house. That was the first time . . . since your grandfather
died. The only time. Grand-Duc had wanted me for years. He was
kind. He was practically the only man who ever came to visit us.
He . . .’
‘Nicole . . .’
Marc stood up and clumsily embraced his grandmother, then
put a finger to her lips. He could not rid his mind of the memory
of Grand-Duc’s corpse.
‘You don’t need to tell me all this.’
‘I do, Marc. I do need to tell you.’
Nicole wiped away her tears and stood up.
‘OK, Marc, maybe you’re right. I don’t want to bother you with
the troubles of an old woman.’
She smoothed the tablecloth, then noticed for the first time the
state of the envelope that Marc had placed there.
‘Did you open it?’
‘It’s a long story. Let’s call it an accident, but . . . yes, I opened it.
I read it.’
‘So you understand why I’m crying. Not because of Crédule. Or,
not just that. I’m crying because of Emilie.’
Marc felt lost, submerged by a terrible wave of foreboding. Why
would she be crying because of Emilie? Surely the test results were
exactly what she had wanted, all these years . . .
He picked up the envelope that Mathilde de Carville had given
to him and passed it to Nicole. Then he opened the other envelope.
He read the letter inside.
The room began to spin around him: piano, photographs, tablecloth, sofa, television, all blurred.
The sheet of paper fell from his hands.
The DNA test result made no sense at all.

Malvina shifted uncomfortably on the hard, cold shingle. The
beach was dimly lit by the half-moon. This was the only place
Malvina could find to spend the night. The young female ticket
inspector had discovered her a long time after the train had arrived
at its destination in Dieppe. The woman had been quite polite and
understanding as she asked Malvina to leave the carriage, but her
attitude had changed when Malvina had called her a ‘stupid whore’.
Two other ticket inspectors had helped her to forcibly evict Malvina
from the station.

Now Malvina was having to sleep rough. Thanks to that idiotic
kite festival, there wasn’t a single vacant room to be had in the entire
town.

Malvina had spent the evening wandering around. She hadn’t
even eaten, but then she wasn’t hungry. She had roamed the streets
for a long time, before returning to the beach. She had been waiting for the festival-goers to disappear, along with their stupid kites
and their music and their balloons and the waffles, chips and
other inedible substances sold by the Vitrals’ successors along the
seafront.

Finally, close to midnight, it was all over. Only a few shapes
remained hovering in the sky, tethered by long strings to stakes
hammered into the ground. Malvina did not like kites. She wanted
to cut all those strings so that the floating objects would come
crashing down into the sea.
Cut the strings, and cut the cord that connected her to her horrible, lying grandmother.

Malvina turned her head towards the voice. Three men were
standing on the beach, about thirty feet from where she lay. Each
of them was holding a mineral water bottle containing an orange
liquid which was, almost certainly, neither water nor juice.

‘It’s dangerous for you to be out here all alone, sweetie. What if
some bad men were to find you?’
The tallest of the three was speaking. There was a ring through
his right eyebrow. A smaller one, bald, and wearing cowboy boots,
was having trouble keeping his balance. The third man reminded
her of the bear Banjo.
The one wearing the eyebrow ring came closer, and the others
followed. Malvina sat up.
‘Fucking hell, she’s not a kid, she’s an old woman!’ said the
one with the cowboy boots. ‘I thought we might have found a
virgin . . .’
‘Well we might have,’ said Eyebrow Ring. ‘She’s not exactly
Sophie Marceau.’
Banjo and Cowboy Boots burst out laughing. Malvina rummaged through her handbag, then remembered with a surge of
anger that Marc Vitral had taken her Mauser.
Eyebrow Ring took another two steps closer.
‘Are you looking for an adventure, sweetheart? Well, it’s your
lucky day. Three handsome men, all for you . . .’
‘Fuck off, you prick!’
The men froze for a moment. Then Eyebrow Ring moved forward again.
‘Listen to that, lads! This one’s a right little whore!’
‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ Banjo reassured her. ‘We just want
to have some fun.’
‘Yeah, you’re just my type,’ said Eyebrow Ring. ‘I love your look.
It’s Fifties, right? I’ve always wanted to get sucked off by a grandmother.’ He moved closer and added: ‘Then again, my grandmother
doesn’t have any teeth now . . .’
Banjo and Cowboy Boots laughed loudly again. They were
easily amused. They walked behind their leader, closing in on their
prey.
Crawling backwards, Malvina attempted to get away from them.
‘Come any closer and I’ll kill you!’ she screamed.
The three men watched with amusement as the skinny little girl
crouched down on the pebbles.
‘Come on, don’t be shy,’ said Eyebrow Ring. ‘You know you want
it . . .’
A second later, he heard a whistling noise and saw a shadow. The
next moment, he couldn’t see anything. The silver ring hung there,
held in place by a scrap of shredded, bloody eyelid. A few seconds
later, another stone flew through the air and hit him on the nose.
‘Fuck!’
The third stone missed his mouth but crashed into his jaw.
You can kill a man with a stone, if you throw it from the right
range. Malvina probably didn’t realise that, but the three men did.
In certain circumstances, even the most stupid people learn quickly.
It’s a question of survival. They scarpered, as a storm of stones rained
down on them. Cowboy Boots slipped on the shingle and a stone
smashed into his collarbone. Banjo was hit on the back and the
neck. Malvina was throwing blindly now, rage lending strength to
her skinny arm.
‘You’d better watch out, you little bitch!’ Eyebrow Ring yelled at
her, when he was beyond range of her throws. ‘You haven’t seen the
last of us!’
‘Yeah, right!’ Malvina said. ‘I don’t think the police will have too
much trouble finding the guy who tried to rape me. I’ll just tell
them to look for an ugly, one-eyed twat.’

An hour later, the wind began to blow. Malvina was cold. She
stood up and rubbed her arms and legs, then walked slowly
through town until she reached the train station. It was closed,
of course. Finally she fell asleep on a bench overlooking the car
park.

Marc bent down, his hand trembling, and picked up the fallen
sheet of paper. It looked identical to the one he had read on the
train: same letterhead, same typeface. It differed by only a few
words.

Results negative.
No family relationship possible.
Results 99.94513% reliable.

Marc dropped the letter on the table. Nicole did the same thing,
then collapsed on the sofa.
Both families’ tests had come out negative . . .
‘What . . . what does this mean?’ Marc stammered.
Nicole wiped a tear from her cheek, then smiled strangely.
‘What a joker he is, that Crédule Grand-Duc!’
‘Did you know?’ Marc asked.
‘No. Honestly, Marc, I had no idea. Nobody knew, apart from
Crédule of course. For three years I’ve been so certain that the girl I
raised as a granddaughter was Lyse-Rose de Carville. I had come to
accept the idea. I gave her that ring, for her eighteenth birthday. In
fact, I was even glad . . .’
Nicole went silent for a second. She pulled at the woollen shawl
she wore around her shoulders, rearranging it over her blouse. She
looked tenderly at Marc.
‘For you, I mean. For you and Emilie. It was so much simpler
that way.’
Marc said nothing. He stood up and placed the two letters next
to each other, to compare them. They looked completely genuine.
‘Grand-Duc must have made a mistake!’ he said, his voice unnaturally loud. ‘Maybe he got the samples mixed up . . . or maybe the
lab made a mistake. There has to be an explanation!’
‘Maybe Crédule just gave us the results we were expecting,’
Nicole said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only he knows which blood samples he gave to the lab. Maybe
these were the results he wanted. I mean, he’d spent fifteen years
investigating the case . . . maybe he wanted to write the end of the
story himself.’
Nicole thought for a moment, then continued: ‘Two negative
tests . . . maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. It worked perfectly, if
you think about it. Mathilde de Carville was finally convinced that
her granddaughter was dead. She would never have left us alone
otherwise. And I don’t think Grand-Duc ever liked her. As for me,
he knew I would get over the pain. When I first read that result,
three years ago, I cried myself to sleep, for several nights running,
but in the long term it made me feel so much better: it relieved the
terrible tension I felt whenever I saw the way you and Emilie looked
at each other.’
Marc sat down next to Nicole and rested his head on her shoulder. He put one arm around his grandmother’s thick waist and his
fingers played with the ends of the woollen shawl.
‘You understand, don’t you, Marc? Of course you do. This meant
that you weren’t brother and sister. You were free. Crédule had seen
the two of you together, and he loved you, in his way. He was perfectly capable of coming up with such a strategy.’
She looked at the blue envelopes on the table.
‘As long as the two results were never read together, his plan
worked perfectly . . .’
Marc stood up again and paced around the room. No matter
what Nicole said, he could not bring himself to believe this theory.
In his notebook, the detective seemed just as dismayed by the DNA
test results as they were. Although it was possible that he was lying
about that. It was possible he was lying about everything.
‘I’m going out for a walk, Nicole. I’ll be back later.’
Nicole said nothing. She wiped her eyes with the corner of her
handkerchief. Marc put his hand on the doorknob. When Nicole
spoke again, her voice was even shakier than before:
‘You haven’t asked me where Emilie is.’
Marc froze.
‘Do you know?’
‘Not exactly. I don’t know where she is geographically. But I do
understand what she meant by the “one-way trip”, by the crime she
kept talking about. My God, how could she call that a crime?’
Marc felt his heart pounding again. His world had been turned
upside down so many times today. Yet all the symptoms of his agoraphobia seemed to have vanished, like hiccups cured by a sudden
fright.
‘Call what a crime?’
In a very quiet voice, Nicole replied: ‘Emilie is pregnant, Marc.
She is pregnant with your child.’
Marc’s hand lost its grip on the doorknob.
‘She’s going to have an abortion, Marc. That’s why she’s in
hospital.’