Fever (17 page)

“Hm,” said Madelin, as he rolled himself a cigarette, a skill Studer much admired. “No
too
badly. I've got a few friends there who tip me the wink if anything's going on. You know the kind of thing. Politics change often enough round here, one moment the wind's blowing from the left, the next it's from the right, one moment you have to learn Marx off by heart and arrest all the royalists, the next you're keeping the communists in order with rubber truncheons and going to church. Between times the king of the chimpanzees and other gorillas comes to Paris and we have problems with his retinue. You have to make sure you're covered. You know what I mean? Still, I think I can say I get on well with the War Ministry.”

“It's something,” said Studer in measured tones, “from a long way back. In 1915, as far as I know, that is during the war, two Germans were executed by firing squad in Fez. The Mannesmann brothers, Louis and Adolf. Could you get a look at the files and tell me if there is any mention of a geologist called Cleman?”

“Of course. I know the man in charge of the archives very well, he'll lend me the files. I'll pop across to the ministry at eleven and we can meet this evening. At
eight, say. At my place? That would be best; I could take the files home with me and you could have a look at them there. But now I've got things to do. See you.”

“Hey! Just a minute. You were in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Koller, the stockbroker, weren't you? We talked about it on the phone yesterday. Have you found out anything more about the man?”

“Oh yes,” said Madelin, and his expression suddenly became serious. “You mean the man who was reported missing by his secretary. Secretary!” Madelin put a particular emphasis on the word as he repeated it.

That almost led to an argument between the two friends, for Sergeant Studer was ridiculously touchy where Marie was concerned.

“She
was
his secretary,” he said in a loud voice, rapping his knuckles on Madelin's desk. “She's a decent girl, I tell you. Do you need proof? There, look.” He pulled Marie's letter out of his breast pocket. “Listen to the way she writes to me. I'll translate it.”

There was a mocking smile playing round Madelin's lips, but Studer did not notice it, he was too occupied with the feminine handwriting. The letters were dancing before his eyes, but eventually they stopped and he completed his translation without too much difficulty.

“All right, all right,” said Madelin in placatory tones, “the girl's a paragon of virtue. But it wasn't the girl I was going to tell you about, but her former employer, Jacques Koller, the man who's disappeared. I think we've got a lead. This morning I had a telephone call from the recruiting office in Strasbourg. The doctor who conducts the medical examinations happened to have read the description we circulated of the missing man: 6′2″ tall, sallow complexion, clean-shaven,
fair hair. The doctor says a man corresponding to that description registered at the recruiting office yesterday, that is 4 January. The doctor felt it was his duty to inform the Sûreté. The surname the man gave was ‘Despine'. He was sent on with a travel pass to Marseilles, where he will report on 5 January, today that is. We cannot demand the Foreign Legion hand him over to us; they only do that in cases involving murder or a theft of over 100,000 francs. Now, Godofrey has examined Koller's papers, but he could find no evidence of fraud. The bankruptcy was the result of incompetence, not of dishonesty. What should we do now, Studère? Let Koller go?”

Studer sat there, forearms on thighs, hands clasped. The Foreign Legion! he thought. So I will see the Foreign Legion in my old age. After a pause he said earnestly, “Yes, leave the man where he is, I'll . . .” But he did not complete the sentence. Was it a presentiment? He suddenly had the feeling it might be an indiscretion to inform a divisional head of the Paris Sûreté that he intended travelling to Africa. He stood up.

“This evening, then, at your place.” He shook Madelin's hand. “By the way, where did Koller live in Paris?”

Madelin rummaged with both hands in a mound of documents. Finally he lit on a tiny scrap of paper: “Rue Daguerre, number eighteen. That's right up in Montparnasse. Go up the boulevard St Michel, keep going till you come to the lion and the rue Daguerre's quite near.
Au revoir, mon vieux
, see you this evening.”

That evening at eight everything was dark in Madelin's apartment. Studer rang and rang. No one came. Assuming he had misunderstood the Commissaire, he
went to Les Halles, to the little bistro where he'd first met the priest. The landlord was still standing behind the bar with his sleeves rolled up and his upper arms were still as fat as a normal man's thigh. Studer waited and waited. At midnight he gave up.

Back in his hotel room, he tried to get to sleep, but in vain. Over the white glass lampshade was a square of purple silk with brown wooden balls at the corners. It reminded him of Sophie Hornuss's kitchen in Bern. He lay there, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the light. As he did so, he was struck by the second remarkable aspect of the case – the first had been its un-Swiss, or rather, expatriate Swiss aspect: he was wrestling with shadows. The man who had mocked him on the telephone was a shadow, the clairvoyant corporal was a shadow, Victor Alois Cleman was a shadow, the geologist, who perhaps – it wasn't proven – was one and the same as Koller the philosophy student from Fribourg. Shadows, too, were the two old women who had died in such a strange way.

The things he had to deal with were shadowy as well: the millions, buried in Gourama, the cards laid out with the jack of spades, the letters, both the yellow envelope in which Corporal Collani had sent the temperature chart and Marie's note. And the Buick, BS 3437, was shadowy, as was the tall man standing lookout by it, at night, outside the house in Gerechtigkeitsgasse. From the lampshade in his hotel room Studer's thoughts floated off to the chipped enamel tins . . . Two kitchens . . . And Studer dreamt of those kitchens.

It was a terrible dream, troubled and laden with fear. Studer was in an isolated oasis, but he knew it wasn't empty. There was something living in it, neither human nor animal, that pounced onto the backs of those who strayed there and rode them into the grave.
The sergeant crept, apprehensive and keeping low, through the virulent green of the feathery-leaved palms. All at once the thing was on his shoulders, its scrawny shanks round his neck, throttling him. And Studer groaned. Father Matthias appeared. He was brandishing a cross and crying, “
Apage, Satanas
.” But the thing was not in the least bothered by this attempted exorcism, it continued to ride on Studer's shoulders and forced him into a trot. He was thirsty. Father Matthias had disappeared, but suddenly the two old women who had died were there, one with a wart by her left nostril, the other's thin lips twisted in a mocking smile. They were dancing a horrible dance, like witches . . . Studer collapsed, but it wasn't earth he fell on to, no, it was tiles. And when he looked up he was in Sophie's kitchen. Everything was there: the brown leather armchair, the gas stove, the kitchen table with the oilcloth over it. But it was Marie sitting in the chair beside the stove, and she was asleep. A man with a curly beard was leaning over her, saying in a hollow voice, “I'll come for them all, I'll come to fetch them.” The man, who could be none other than Cleman the geologist, passed his lean hands in circles round the girl's head, making her blond hair stand on end. Then it wasn't Marie any more, a wart grew beside her left nostril, the kitchen shrank until it was just a passageway and the two gas burners on the little portable stove were hissing in three-four time and the tins on the shelf – “Flour”, “Salt”, “Coffee” – clattered as they danced a lumbering waltz. And in his dream it occurred to Studer that it was the dancing that had chipped their enamel. Studer, still lying on the floor, said out loud, “Victor Alois Cleman, I arrest you on suspicion of murder.” But the kitchen was empty, or at least so it seemed. A shadow danced along the wall and
Studer pursued it with the shadow of his own hand. The shadow started to laugh, louder and louder, a booming laugh . . .

Studer sat up. The windows of his hotel room were rattling and the wall gleamed in the cold light of an arc lamp as a late bus rumbled past down in the street.

No, Commissaire Madelin was not in, said the desk clerk the next day. An investigation meant he had had to go to Angers.

Had he left anything for Inspector Studer?

No, nothing at all.

OK, these things happened. A policeman, even a commissaire, couldn't always do just as he liked. But Madelin could at least have left a note, thought Studer as he strolled along beside the Seine, buffeted by a belated morning breeze. It's not very nice of Madelin, he knows I'm waiting . . . Well, at least it would give him time for a little excursion to Montparnasse to have a look at the house where Marie lived.

Rue Daguerre was a small street branching off the avenue d'Orléans. Potin, the well-known grocery chain, had a branch on the corner with a window display full of geese, rabbits, vegetables. Beside the shop a flower-seller had shivering mimosas for sale. No. 18 was a courtyard with a one-storey building huddled at the back.

Oh yes, the baker whose shop was in the building opposite No. 18 remembered the Kollers well.
Les Kollère
, stressed on the last syllable, of course, as the French always did.

“Such a charming woman, Madame Kollère, always polite, always cheerful, never losing heart, even when her husband suddenly disappeared. And
monsieur
!
Such a cultured man. Lots of friends came to see him. He was interested in philosophy, you know, the last things.”

“The last things?” Studer asked in astonishment.

The fat baker, whose sparse hair was the colour of carrots, blew out his cheeks. “Oh yes, the last things. Monsieur Kollère could see into the future, the dead obeyed him.”

“The dead?”

“Yes! They came and spoke to him and told him things. I was present myself once. It was fascinating. You could talk to the dead, they rapped on the table, sometimes they spoke through Monsieur Kollère. Yes, there are strange things between heaven and earth.”

Poor Marie! So she'd lived with a spiritualist. And here they called him a philosopher!

But what the woman who looked after the house at No. 18 had to tell him was more agreeable. Marie never took part in the spiritualist seances that her husband – Her husband! “
Son mari,
” the concierge said! – organized. Instead she took refuge with the concierge. “I'm so afraid, madame,” she would say.

Marie afraid?
Chabis!
was Studer's irritated reaction.

He left the voluble woman and set off with his long strides through the chattering crowds of pedestrians. It was close on midday. Studer felt alone, lonely, still vaguely troubled by the previous night's dream. Perhaps that was what was causing the unpleasant sensation he had on the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades. For a moment he had the feeling he was being followed, but when he turned round all he could see were normal pedestrians, housemaids, women, men, workers . . .

He continued on his way. On the boulevard St Michel the feeling was back again. The sergeant stopped to
look at a window display and checked the street . . . Nothing . . . Or perhaps . . . A man in a bowler hat was strolling along the pavement opposite and stopped to look at a shop window. Studer went on, there was a Chinese restaurant he knew in a little side street. He had his lunch there, drank lots of cups of thin, refreshing tea, enjoyed fried bean sprouts and a pork stew that was in such a hot curry sauce it burnt his tongue. When he came out, the man in the bowler hat was on the other side of the street looking straight at the sergeant. Studer ignored him.

As he was crossing the Seine to enquire at the Palais de Justice whether Madelin had returned yet, he felt the uncomfortable sensation in his back again. He turned round.

Without bothering to conceal himself, the man in the bowler hat was walking ten paces behind him. When he saw Studer's questioning look, he gave an impudent grin.

And Commissaire Madelin had not returned from Angers yet.

Studer spent the evening in the little bistro by Les Halles. He wrote a picture postcard to his wife and for ten minutes he didn't feel alone any more. But then the loneliness returned with double the force. He felt as if the other customers in the bistro were mocking him and even the landlord was laughing at him.

But outside, in the street, clearly visible through the high window, the man was patrolling up and down, the man in the bowler hat.

That night Sergeant Studer tried to get drunk. You need to do that from time to time, when you're tired, nervous, irritated and annoyed. But it didn't work.
The effect of the alcohol was only superficial; the relaxation of drunkenness did not reach the deeper levels of Studer's mind. There everything was in chaos, and beneath it all lurked cold despair. The lonely sergeant had the impression someone was playing a game with him – a cruel game, cruel because he did not know the rules.

He woke up late the next morning, with a fairly clear head, strangely enough. And since Commissaire Madelin was still unavailable, Studer decided to go and see Godofrey. When he made his request, the desk clerk became confused.

“Yes . . . perhaps . . . I'm not sure . . .” Then whispering behind a closed door. His request seemed to have caught them unprepared.