The Erasers (9 page)

Noticing an open stationery shop, Wallas walks in for no particular reason. A young girl who had been sitting behind the counter stands up to wait on him.

“
Monsieur?
”

She has a pretty, slightly sullen face and blond hair.

“
I
’
d like a very soft gum eraser, for drawing.
”

“
Certainly, Monsieur.
”

She turns back toward the drawers that line the wall. Her hair, combed straight up from the back of her neck, makes her look older, seen from behind. She searches through one of the drawers and sets down in front of Wallas a yellow eraser with beveled edges, longer than it is wide, an ordinary article for schoolchildren. He asks:

“
Haven
’
t you any supplies just for drawing?
”

“
This is a drawing eraser, Monsieur.
”

She encourages him with a half-smile. Wallas picks up the eraser to examine it more carefully; then he looks at the young girl, her eyes, her fleshy, half-parted lips. He smiles in his turn.

“
What I wanted
…
”

She tilts her head slightly, as though to pay special attention to what he is going to say.

“
…
was something more crumbly.
”

“
Really, Monsieur, I can assure you this is a very good pencil eraser. All our customers are satisfied with it.
”

“
All right,
”
Wallas says,
“
I
’
ll try it. How much is it?
”

He pays and leaves the store. She accompanies him to the door. No, she
’
s no longer a child: her hips, her slow gait are almost a woman
’
s.

Once out in the street, Wallas mechanically fingers the little eraser; it is obvious from the way it feels that it is no good at all. It would have been surprising, really, for it to be otherwise in so modest a shop
…
That girl was nice.
…
He rubs his thumb across the end of the eraser. It is not at all what he is looking for.

By shifting the dossiers on top of his desk, Laurent covers up the little piece of eraser. Wallas finishes his remarks:

“
In short, you haven
’
t found much.
”

“
You might say nothing,
”
the chief commissioner answers.

“
And what do you intend to do now?
”

“
Nothing, since it isn
’
t my case any more!
”

Commissioner Laurent accompanies these words with an ironically brokenhearted smile. When his interlocutor says nothing, he continues:

“
I was wrong, no doubt, to believe myself in charge of public safety in this city. This paper,
”
he waves a letter between two fingers,
“
orders me in specific terms to let the capital take over last night
’
s crime. I couldn
’
t ask for anything better. And now the minister, you say—or in any case a service that is directly attached to him—sends you here to continue the investigation, not
‘
in my place
’
but
‘
with my cooperation.
’
What am I supposed to make of that? Except that this cooperation is to be limited to handing over to you whatever information I possess
—
which I have just done—and therefore to having you protected by my men, if necessary.
”

With another smile, Laurent adds:

“
So now it
’
s up to you to tell me what
you
’
re
going to do, unless of course that
’
s a secret.
”

Entrenched behind the papers covering his desk, his elbows propped on the arms of his chair, the commissioner rubs his hands together as he speaks, slowly, almost cautiously, then he sets them down in front of him on the scattered sheets of paper, spreading his short, fat fingers as far apart as possible, and waits for the answer, without taking his eyes from his visitor
’
s face. He is a short, plump man with a pink face and a bald skull. His kindly tone is a little forced.

“
You say the witnesses,
”
Wallas begins….

Laurent immediately raises his hands to stop him.

“
There are no witnesses, properly speaking,
”
he says, rubbing his right palm over his left forefinger;
“
you can scarcely call the doctor who has not restored the wounded man to life a witness, or the old deaf housekeeper who has seen nothing whatsoever.
”

“
It was the doctor who informed you?
”

“
Yes, Doctor Juard telephoned the police last night around nine o
’
clock; the inspector who received the information wrote down what he said—you
’
ve just looked at the record—and then he called me at home. I had an immediate examination of the premises made. Upstairs, the inspectors picked up four sets of fresh fingerprints: those of the housekeeper, then three others apparently made by men
’
s hands. If it
’
s true that no outsider has come upstairs for several days, these last could be (he counts on his fingers) first of all, those of the doctor, faint and few, on the stair banister and in Dupont
’
s bedroom; second, those of Dupont himself, which can be found all over the house; third, those of the murderer, quite numerous and very clear, on the banister, on the doorknob of the study, and on certain articles of furniture in this study—mainly the back of the desk chair. The house has two entrances; the doctor
’
s right thumbprint has been found on the front doorbell, and the hypothetical murderer
’
s on the knob of the back door. You see that I
’
m giving you all the details. Lastly
, the housekeeper declares that
the doctor came in through the front door and that she found the back door open when she went upstairs to answer the wounded man
’
s call—even though she had closed it a few moments before. If you want me to, I can have Doctor Juard
’
s fingerprints taken, just to be sure….
”

“
You can also get the dead man
’
s prints, I suppose?
”

“
I could, if I had the body at my disposal,
”
Laurent answers sweetly.

Seeing Wallas
’
questioning look, he asks:

“
Haven
’
t you heard? The body was taken away from me at the same time as the control of the investigation. I thought it was sent to the same organization that sent you here.
”

Wallas is obviously amazed. Could other services be concerned with this case? This is a supposition Laurent receives with obvious satisfaction. He waits, his hands lying flat on his desk; his kindly expression is tinged with compassion. Without insisting on this point, Wallas continues:

“
You were saying that Dupont, after being wounded, had called to the old housekeeper from upstairs; for the latter to have heard him, deaf as she is, Dupont would have had to shout quite loudly. Yet the doctor describes him as greatly weakened by his wound, almost unconscious.
”

“
Yes, I know; there seems to be a contradiction here; but he might have had strength enough to go get his revolver and call for help, and then have lost a lot of blood while waiting for the ambulance: there was a relatively large bloodstain on the bedspread. In any case, he wasn
’
t unconscious when the doctor got there, since Dupont told him he hadn
’
t seen his attacker
’
s face. There
’
s a mistake in the account published by the papers: it was only
after
the operation that the wounded man didn
’
t recover consciousness. Moreover, you
’
ll obviously have to go see this doctor. You should also ask for details from the housekeeper, Madame
…
(he consults a sheet from the dossier) Madame Smite; her explanat
ions are somewhat confused: she
told us, in particular, some elaborate story about a broken telephone that seems to have nothing to do with the case—at least at first glance. The inspectors haven
’
t made a point of it, preferring to wait until she calms down; they haven
’
t even told her her employer was dead.
”

The two men do not speak for a moment. It is the commissioner who resumes, delicately rubbing his joints with his thumb.

“
He may perfectly well have committed suicide, you know. He has shot himself with the revolver once—or several times
—
without managing to finish himself off; then he has changed his mind, as so often happens, and called for help, trying to disguise his unsuccessful attempt as an attack. Or else—and this would be more in accord with what we know about his character—he has prepared this setting in advance, and managed to give himself a mortal wound that allowed him a few minutes
’
survival in order to have time to bequeath the myth of his murder to the public. It
’
s very difficult, you
’
ll say, to calculate the consequences of a pistol shot so exactly; he may have fired a second shot while the housekeeper was going for the doctor. He was a strange man, from many points of view.
”

“
It must be possible to verify these hypotheses from the position of the bullets,
”
Wallas remarks.

“
Yes, sometimes it
’
s possible. And we would have examined the bullets and the revolver of the supposed victim. All I have here is the death certificate the doctor sent this morning; it
’
s the only thing we can be sure of, for the time being. The suspect fingerprints can belong to anyone who came during the day without the housekeeper
’
s knowing it; as for the back door she mentioned to the inspector, the wind might have opened it.
”

“
You really think Dupont committed suicide?
”

“
I don
’
t think anything. I find it
’
s not impossible, according to the facts I have. This death certificate, which is drawn up quite correctly, by the way, giv
es no indication as to the kind
of wound that caused death; and the information furnished last night by the doctor and the housekeeper is all too vague in this regard, as you
’
ve seen. Before anything else, you
’
ll have to clear up these few details. If necessary, you could even get the additional details that might interest you from the coroner in the capital.
”
Wallas says:

“
Your help would certainly have made my job easier.
”

“
But you can count on me, Monsieur. As soon as you have someone to arrest I
’
ll send you two or three good men. I
’
ll be eager to get your telephone call; just ask for one-twenty-four
—
twenty-four, it
’
s a direct line.
”

The smile on the chubby face widens. The little hands spread out on the desk, palms smooth, fingers wide. Wallas writes:
“
C. Laurent, 124-24.
”
A direct line to what?

Wallas again considers the isolation of his situation. The last bicyclists ride off in a group toward their work; standing alone, leaning on a railing, he abandons this support as well and begins walking through the empty streets in the direction he has decided on. Apparently no one is interested in what he is doing: the doors remain closed, no face appears in the windows to watch him pass. Yet his presence on these premises is necessary: no one else is concerned with this murder. It
’
s his own case; they have sent him to solve it.