The Beast Within (58 page)

That night, as on previous nights, Cabuche had walked through the hedge into the garden and had been waiting beneath Séverine’s window. He knew that she was expecting Roubaud and wasn’t surprised to see a light shining through a gap in one of the shutters. What did surprise him and root him to the spot, however, was the sight of a man rushing down the steps at the front of the house and making off into the fields like some crazed animal. He had disappeared before he had time to set off after him. Cabuche was worried. He stood before the open door, peering into the dark entrance hall, wondering what he should do. What was going on? Should he go in? The dead silence and the complete stillness of the house, even though there was still a light in the room upstairs, made him feel increasingly uneasy.

He finally decided he must go in and groped his way up the stairs. He stopped outside the bedroom door, which also had been left open. From where he stood, he thought he could see a pile of underclothes lying on the floor in a pool of light cast by the lamp. Séverine must have got undressed. He called softly. Suddenly he was frightened; his heart was beating wildly. Then he saw the blood. He immediately knew what had happened. He leaped forward. A terrible, heart-broken cry came from his mouth. Oh God! It was Séverine! Murdered! Flung in pitiful nakedness to the floor! He thought she might still be breathing. He was filled with such despair, such an agony of shame, to see her dying naked in front of him, that he threw his arms around her in a respectful embrace, raised her from the floor and laid her on the bed, drawing up the sheet in order to cover her. As he had lifted her in his arms, in the one and only demonstration of love that he was ever able to offer her, he had got blood on his hands and chest. He was covered in her blood. At the same moment he saw that Roubaud and Misard had entered the room. They too, finding the doors of the house wide open, had decided to climb the stairs. Roubaud was late because he had stopped to talk to the crossing-keeper, and Misard had accompanied him to the house while continuing their conversation. They looked at Cabuche in disbelief. His hands were dripping with blood, like a butcher’s.

‘Just like Grandmorin,’ Misard finally commented, after examining the wound.

Roubaud nodded, without saying anything. He could not take his eyes from Séverine, from the mask of sheer terror which congealed her face, from the black hair tied up over her head, and the blue eyes, staring wildly, beseeching ... ‘Why?’

Three months later, on a warm night in June, Jacques was driving the Le Havre express, which had left Paris at six thirty. His new locomotive, number 608, was fresh from the works. Jacques had been entrusted with running her in — with her ‘initiation’ as he put it. Although he was getting to know the locomotive, she didn’t handle easily; she was awkward and temperamental, like a young horse that has to be broken in before it will accept the harness. He swore at her frequently; he really missed
La Lison.
He had to watch her very carefully; he could hardly take his hand off the reversing wheel. That night, however, the sky was so beautifully calm that Jacques felt more able to relax and give the locomotive its head. He breathed in the sweet night air. He had never felt better. He felt no remorse; he even seemed relieved and quite at peace with himself.

Although he didn’t usually talk when driving the engine, he was teasing Pecqueux, who had been allowed to stay with him as his fireman.

‘What’s up with you?’ he was saying. ‘How come you’re so wide awake? Have you given up drinking?’

It was true, Pecqueux seemed for once to be perfectly sober, and not at all his usual jovial self.

‘You have to be wide awake,’ he answered gruffly, ‘if you want to see what’s going on around you!’

Jacques looked at him uneasily, as if there were something on his conscience. The week before, he had enjoyed the favours of Pecqueux’s mistress, the redoubtable Philomène, who had been pestering him for some time, like a scrawny cat on heat. He had taken her, not for sexual gratification, but to find out whether, having satisfied his desire to kill, he was finally cured. Could he make love to Philomène without wanting to slit her throat? He had made love to her twice already, and there had been no sign of his old malady, not a flicker, nothing. Without him realizing it, his present good humour and happy, relaxed manner must have been due to the pleasure of discovering that he was now no different from other men.

Pecqueux had opened the firebox door to put on more coal, but Jacques stopped him.

‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to overdo it. She’s running well.’

Pecqueux started to mutter and swear.

‘Running well, is she? Call this running well! She’s a load of rubbish! She’s bloody useless! When I think what we got out of
La Lison!
She did what you asked her to do! All this lousy thing’s worth is a kick up the arse!’

Jacques didn’t want to lose his temper, so he said nothing. But he knew that the old
menage à trois
was a thing of the past. With the death of
La Lison,
the close, working partnership between him, his colleague and the locomotive had gone for good. They argued over the least little thing — a nut that was too tight, a shovelful of coal not put on properly. He would have to tread carefully where Philomène was concerned; he didn’t want it to come to open war between him and his fireman, when the two of them had to work together in such a confined space. Until now, Pecqueux had been devoted to Jacques, like a faithful dog, and would have done anything for him, grateful for being left to his own devices, allowed to have the occasional nap and finish the leftovers in Jacques’s lunch box. The two of them had lived together like brothers, resolutely facing the constant dangers of their job and understanding each other without the need for words. If they could no longer get on together, life was going to be hell, having to work side by side so closely, at daggers drawn. Only the week before, the Company had had to separate the driver and fireman of the Cherbourg express, because of a quarrel over a woman, the driver having physically attacked the fireman for not following instructions. They had come to blows, and there had been a fight, on the footplate itself, in complete disregard of the trainload of passengers they were carrying behind them.

Twice Pecqueux opened the firebox door and threw on more coal, deliberately trying to antagonize his driver. Jacques pretended not to notice, keeping his eye on the controls, each time carefully putting the injector on to reduce the pressure. The air was so soft, the night was warm and there was a lovely fresh breeze as the train sped along! When the train reached Le Havre at five past eleven, the two men cleaned down the locomotive, apparently the best of friends as always.

Just as they were leaving the engine shed and setting off for the Rue François-Mazeline to get some sleep, a voice called them: ‘Hey, you two, what’s the rush? Why don’t you come in for a minute?’

It was Philomène; she must have been looking out for Jacques from the door of her brother’s house. She seemed put out when she saw that he was with Pecqueux; she only decided to call them because she wanted to speak to her new lover, even if it meant doing so in front of her old one.

‘Sod off!’ snarled Pecqueux. ‘You’re a bloody nuisance. We need to get some sleep.’

‘Charming!’ Philomène retorted merrily. ‘What about you, Monsieur Jacques? You’ll come and have a little drink, won’t you?’

Jacques, thinking it best to err on the side of caution, was about to refuse when Pecqueux suddenly accepted the invitation, realizing that it would give him a chance to observe the two of them together and find out what was going on between them. They went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, on which she placed some glasses and a bottle of brandy.

‘We must try to keep our voices down,’ she whispered. ‘My brother’s asleep upstairs and he doesn’t like me having people in.’

She poured them a drink.

‘By the way,’ she continued, ‘did you know old mother Lebleu kicked the bucket this morning? I always said it would kill her if she was put into one of those rooms at the back. It’s like living in a prison. She stuck it for four months, going on and on about how all she could see out of her window was a zinc roof ... What finished her off, when she couldn’t get out of her chair any more, was not being able to spy on Mademoiselle Guichon and Monsieur Dabadie. I’m sure of it. It was all she ever did. She was absolutely furious she never managed to catch them out. It killed her.’

Philomène paused to swallow her brandy.

‘They must be sleeping together,’ she said with a laugh. ‘But they’re too clever. You’ll never catch that pair napping ... I think Madame Moulin saw them together one evening, but she’s not likely to say anything, she’s too stupid. Besides, her husband’s an assistant stationmaster and ...’

She paused.

‘Hey!’ she continued excitedly. ‘It’s the Roubaud trial next week, in Rouen!’

So far, Jacques and Pecqueux had listened to her without saying a word. Pecqueux couldn’t help but notice how talkative she was; she never had much to say when she was with him. He couldn’t stop looking at her, gradually becoming more and more jealous as he saw how animated she was in the presence of Jacques.

‘Yes,’ said Jacques calmly, ‘I’ve had the summons.’

Philomène moved herself closer, happily allowing her elbow to rest against him.

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘They’ve called me as a witness ... Ah, Monsieur Jacques! They asked me all sorts of questions about you! They wanted to know the exact truth about you and poor Madame Roubaud. What I said to the judge was: “Monsieur, he adored her. He couldn’t possibly have hurt her!” I’d seen you both together, you understand, and I could tell them all about it.’

‘Oh,’ said Jacques with a shrug of the shoulders, ‘I wasn’t worried. I was able to tell them what I was doing every hour of the day. The Company kept me on because they knew I’d done absolutely nothing wrong.’

They sat in silence, slowly sipping their brandy.

‘It makes you cringe,’ said Philomène. ‘That beast they arrested, that Cabuche, covered in her blood! Some men must be mad! Why kill a woman just because he fancies her! What good’s she going to be to him when she’s dead? Anyway, I’ll never forget it, as long as I live, that day when Monsieur Cauche came and arrested Roubaud too. He was on the platform. I was there. It was only a week afterwards. He’d started back at work the day after his wife’s funeral and he seemed quite normal. Then Monsieur Cauche came and tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had orders to take him to prison. Can you imagine it! They’d been inseparable. They’d played cards together, night after night! Still, there you are! If you’re a policemam you’d send your own mother and father to the guillotine! That’s your job! Monsieur Cauche couldn’t care less! I saw him again the other day, shuffling the cards in the Café du Commerce and never giving his friend a thought!’

Pecqueux clenched his teeth and banged his fist on the table.

‘God Almighty! His wife was running rings round him! If I was in Roubaud’s shoes ... Look, you were the one sleeping with her, someone else murders her, and it’s Roubaud who gets sent for trial! It makes me mad!’

‘Listen, you idiot,’ said Philomène, ‘Roubaud is accused of persuading Cabuche to get rid of his wife for him. It was something to do with money. It seems they found President Grandmorin’s watch at Cabuche’s place — you remember ... the one who was killed on the train eighteen months ago. They say the two murders are connected; it’s a long story, and all very complicated. I couldn’t begin to explain it, but it was in the paper — two whole columns of it!’

Jacques’s mind was on something else; he didn’t seem to be listening.

‘What’s the point of getting worked up about it?’ he muttered. ‘What’s it got to do with us? If the law doesn’t know what it’s doing, there’s not much we can do to help.’

He suddenly turned pale and sat looking into space.

‘The only one I feel sorry for is that poor woman,’ he said. ‘That poor woman!’

‘Well, I’ve got a woman,’ Pecqueux exclaimed angrily, ‘and if anyone started messing with her, I’d strangle the pair of them. They could cut my head off — I couldn’t care less!’

There was another silence. Philomène shrugged her shoulders dismissively and refilled the glasses. Deep down, Pecqueux disgusted her. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He wasn’t looking after himself; he was dirty, and his clothes were in tatters. Since breaking her leg, Madame Victoire had been unable to get about; she had had to give up her job at the lavatories and had been admitted to a home. She was no longer there to molly-coddle him, to slip him the odd silver coin and mend his clothes, in case his other woman, the one in Le Havre, accused her of neglecting ‘their man’. She pulled a face. Jacques looked clean and smart and so much more attractive.

‘Is it your Paris woman you’d strangle?’ she gibed. ‘Who’d want to run off with her?’

‘Never you mind!’ he muttered.

Philomène raised her glass, taunting him: ‘Here’s to you! You can bring me your dirty washing. I’ll get it washed and mended. You’re a disgrace ... to both of us. Cheers, Monsieur Jacques!’

Jacques shuddered, as if he were emerging from a dream. Since the murder, he had felt absolutely no remorse and had experienced a sense of relief and physical well-being, but now and then the thought of Séverine moved his gentle nature to the point of tears. Trying to hide his emotion, he raised his glass and suddenly blurted out: ‘Did you know there’s going to be a war?’

‘Surely not!’ exclaimed Philomène. ‘Who against?’

‘Against the Prussians, of course ... just because some prince of theirs wants to be King of Spain!
¹
That’s all they talked about yesterday in the Assembly.’

‘That’ll be fun!’ Philomène grumbled. ‘As if they haven’t caused us enough trouble already, with their elections and plebiscites and riots in Paris
²
... If there’s going to be fighting, will all the men get called up?’