Vertigo (3 page)

The word ‘ecstasy’ occurred to Flavières. Was this one of those ‘attacks’ Gévigne had spoken of? Had Madeleine gone off into some sort of mystic trance? No. A mystic trance had
certain characteristic symptoms not present here. It was something much simpler: Madeleine must be praying for someone, some member of her family no doubt whose memory was still fresh in her mind, though the tomb looked old enough and quite neglected. That was odd.

Flavières looked at his watch. She had been standing there nearly a quarter of an hour—twelve minutes, to be exact. Now she went back into the central alley, looking around her with the same appearance of being mildly interested, as though in the matter of funereal architecture she had nothing to learn. As he passed, Flavières read the inscription she had been contemplating. It was very short, just:

That, of course, was the name he had expected, but that didn’t make any difference: he was profoundly moved. Gévigne was right: there was something incomprehensible in Madeleine’s conduct—in the way she had stood at the grave, for instance, with neither bowed head nor folded hands, much as a person might stand gazing at the house in which he was born.

He brushed aside that absurd idea, which filled him with a vague uneasiness, and hurried on to overtake her. She was still holding the tulip. She walked down towards the Seine. Again she seemed to droop. Perhaps she was just tired. On the quays, she walked as though aimlessly, as though lost in thought, looking at the rippling water sparkling with points of light. It was hot. Men walked by with their hats in their hands, wiping their foreheads. The water was very blue against the
grey stone quays, on which a few tramps lay sleeping. The first swallows twittered round the bridges. With her severely cut grey suit and high heels, she looked something of a stranger at the fête, like a traveller waiting for a train. And from time to time she rolled the stalk of the tulip between her fingers.

Crossing the Seine, she stopped on the bridge and leant with her elbows on the parapet, stroking her cheek with the tulip. Had she given someone a rendezvous?… Or was she simply resting?… Perhaps she was only nursing her own ennui, as she watched the swirling wake of a steamer or the fascinating undulations of the reflections in the water… She leant over the parapet, looking at herself far below in the water, with the whole sky above her and the long curve of the bridge cutting across her shoulders.

Flavières came quite close to her, not knowing what impelled him to do so. Madeleine didn’t move. She had dropped the tulip, and a little spot of red drifted downstream, turning slowly round and round in the eddies near the bank. It floated past a barge, then farther out into the stream. Flavières found himself, too, getting interested in its fate. The farther it went and the smaller it became, the more impossible was it for him to take his eyes away. Suddenly it was there no longer. Perhaps it had sunk. Madeleine remained, however, staring down at the river. Flavières thought he could see a faint smile on her lips.

She stood up and walked on, returning to the right bank by another bridge. And still with the same unhurried pace and the same indifference to her surroundings, she walked home. It was half past four when she disappeared through the doorway, leaving Flavières high and dry. For that was how he felt—useless, disgusted, not knowing what to do
with himself. What on earth was he going to do during the rest of the day? The hours he had spent watching Madeleine made solitude seem unbearable. He went into a café and rang up Gévigne.

‘Hallo!… Is that you, Paul?… Roger speaking… Can I drop in on you for a minute or two?… No, nothing’s gone wrong. I just wanted to ask you a few more questions… Right. I’ll be round in a jiffy.’

Gévigne had spoken casually of his office, like a
grand seigneur
. In reality it took up the whole of one floor of a large building.

‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting a moment, Monsieur… Monsieur le Directeur is in conference.’

The typist showed him into a comfortably furnished waiting-room. Bluff! thought Flavières. But it wasn’t. A moment later he saw Gévigne showing some visitors out.

‘Delighted to see you,’ said Gévigne when they were alone. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting. We’re in a bit of a flap today.’

His room was big and light. It was furnished in American style with filing cabinets and tubular steel armchairs, ash-trays on chromium pedestals. On the wall hung an immense map of Europe with a red cord running in a jagged line round pins, to indicate the present position of the front.

‘Well? Have you seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She went to a cemetery.’

‘Passy?… To the grave of—’

‘Yes.’

‘You see, Roger!… You see, don’t you?’

On one corner of the desk, near the telephone, there was a photograph of Madeleine. Flavières couldn’t take his eyes off it.

‘The gravestone has only one name on it. Aren’t her parents…’

‘No. They’re buried somewhere in the Ardennes. On my side we’ve a family vault at Saint-Ouen… Pauline Lagerlac is the only relation she’s got at Passy. That’s what frightens me… Frankly, what do you think of this visit? Can you see any rhyme or reason in it?… And you can be sure it’s not the first time she’s been there.’

‘It certainly didn’t look like it. She didn’t ask anybody the way. Though she meandered about a bit, she obviously knew where she was going.’

‘Of course she did. I tell you she’s absolutely obsessed by this Pauline.’

Gévigne paced to and fro behind his desk with his hands in his pockets. On his neck, a roll of fat protruded above his collar. The telephone rang. He snatched up the receiver impatiently. Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he said quietly:

‘She thinks she’s Pauline Lagerlac. You can’t be surprised if I’m worried about her.’

A muffled voice sounded in the earphone, which he quickly lifted to his ear.

‘Hallo!… Yes, Gévigne speaking… Oh, it’s you,
cher ami.
I was going to get in touch with you. The thing is—’

Flavières didn’t listen. He looked at Madeleine. The face of a statue, the eyes hardly bringing it to life at all. Gévigne barked back his answers, his eyebrows knitted, then banged down the receiver. Flavières was sorry he’d come. He suddenly
felt that Madeleine’s mystery had to do with herself alone: Gévigne could only obscure the issue. A preposterous idea kept nagging at him: supposing Pauline’s soul—

‘I lose patience with them,’ snarled Gévigne. ‘You can’t imagine the muddle we’re in at the moment. Better you shouldn’t! It’s discouraging.’

‘Is Lagerlac your wife’s maiden name?’ asked Flavières.

‘No. She was called Givors, Madeleine Givors. She lost her mother three years ago. Her father had died not long before. He had paper mills near Mézières. A big concern. Her grandfather founded it. He came from those parts.’

‘But Pauline Lagerlac must have lived in Paris, I suppose?’

Gévigne drummed on his blotter with his podgy fingers.

‘It’s all rather vague, I’m afraid… One day my mother-in-law pointed out an old house in the Rue des Saints-Pères—at least I think it was the Rue des Saints-Pères—saying that it was where her grandmother Pauline had lived. There was a shop on the ground floor—antiques, I believe… But tell me: what do you think of Madeleine now you’ve seen her?’

Flavières shrugged his shoulders.

‘I can’t say much yet.’

‘But you agree with me that there’s something queer about her, don’t you?’

‘It seems to me… yes… Do you know if she’s really given up painting completely?’

‘Completely. To the point of doing away with her studio, turning it into an ordinary sitting-room.’

‘Why did she drop it?’

‘Why indeed?… Of course she’s versatile—plenty of interests… And people do change…’

Flavières got up and held out his hand.

‘I mustn’t take up any more of your time. I can see how busy you are.’

‘You mustn’t take that line. All this simply doesn’t count. Not compared to Madeleine… Honestly, do you think she’s mad?’

‘Certainly not mad,’ answered Flavières. ‘Tell me: does she read a lot?’

‘No. I wouldn’t call her a reader. Like most people, she reads the best-sellers. And magazines.’

‘Any special fads or fancies?’

‘I can’t think of any.’

‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

‘I’ve got such a strong feeling we’re wasting our time.’

He didn’t want to tell Gévigne he had made up his mind to follow Madeleine week in, week out, for months if necessary; that he wouldn’t recover his peace of mind till he’d got to the bottom of the mystery.

‘Sorry to put it all on you,’ said Gévigne, ‘but you see how I’m placed. What with this office and Le Havre, I don’t get a minute to myself. It took a load off my mind when you took on the job.’

He led Flavières out to the lift.

‘Give me a ring if you find out anything.’

‘All right. I will.’

In the street Flavières found himself in the six o’clock rush. He bought an evening paper. Two enemy planes had been brought down near the Luxemburg frontier. The leading article proved conclusively that the Germans were losing the war. They were blockaded; they were contained. The General
Staff had envisaged every possibility and were only waiting for the enemy to embark on a last despairing venture.

Flavières yawned and stuffed the paper into his pocket. He couldn’t take any further interest in this war. What mattered was Madeleine. He took a seat on the terrace of a café and ordered some mineral water… Madeleine dreaming in front of Pauline’s tomb… Homesick! For the grave!… No, it was impossible. But who really knew what was possible or not?

He went home with a headache. He turned over the pages of his encyclopaedia—the volume with the L’s, of course—and naturally found nothing. He knew very well the name of Lagerlac wouldn’t be mentioned, but he couldn’t have gone to sleep before making sure. An off-chance, but it had to be checked… He had a feeling he was going to do lots of silly things ‘on the off-chance’, from now on. He had only to think of her to lose his sense of proportion.
La femme à la tulipe!
He tried to make a sketch of her, leaning over the parapet, staring at the river. No good. He crumpled up the sheet of paper and took a couple of aspirins.

Madeleine walked past the Chambre des Députés, in front of which a sentry, with fixed bayonet, was pacing up and down. As on the previous afternoon, she had left the house almost immediately after Gévigne. This time, however, she walked quickly, and Flavières kept close on her heels, afraid she would be run over, for she sailed across the road without the least regard for the traffic. Where was she going to in such a hurry? She was dressed quite differently today. Instead of her smart grey suit, she wore a very ordinary brown one, with a simple beret on her head. But that only made her look younger: there was something of the bachelor girl about her. She took the Boulevard Saint-Germain, keeping to the shady side. Was she making for the Luxembourg? Or the Salle de Géographie? To a lecture on occultism, perhaps, or a
séance
.

All at once Flavières understood. He drew closer behind her, to be all the more sure of not losing her.

He could smell her perfume. A complicated smell, which had affinities with rich earth and dead flowers. Where had he come across it before? The previous day, of course, in the deserted part of the Cimetière de Passy… He liked it. It reminded him of his grandparents’ house near Saumur, built on the side of a steep rocky hill with caves in it. People lived in the caves. To reach their houses, they had, like Robinson Crusoe, to use a ladder. Here and there a stovepipe peeped
out of the rock, and above it a long smudge of black stained the white stone. During his holidays he had loved to explore this strange settlement, peering in through the openings at the beautifully polished furniture inside. Once he had gone into one of those dwellings that had been abandoned. Only a little light penetrated to the far end of the cave. The walls were cold and gritty and the silence was terrifying. At night they must have been able to hear moles burrowing in the ground, and perhaps an occasional worm would fall writhing from the ceiling. A rickety door at the back led into the ‘basement’ which was rank with mouldy air. He hadn’t dared explore further into the forbidden world of galleries and passages which ramified in all directions, extending beyond the sprawling clumps of grey toadstools growing just beyond that door.

The whole place was imbued with that scent—the scent of Madeleine. And there on the sunny boulevard under the budding trees, Flavières experienced once again the fearful attraction of the shades, and he understood why, at the first glance, Madeleine had touched him.

Another image surged into his brain. At the age of twelve, under the shadow of that hill, he had read a translation of that unforgettable book of Kipling’s
The Light that Failed
. The frontispiece was a picture of a boy and a girl who were leaning over a revolver, and the absurd caption had remained in his mind and had never failed to bring tears to his eyes:
C’était the Barralong qui faisait route vers l’Afrique Australe
… The young girl, dressed in black, resembled Madeleine—he was sure of it now—and had made no less an impression on him. He had thought about her as he went to sleep and heard her footsteps in his dreams.

All this was ridiculous, of course. It would be, at any rate to a man like Gévigne. On another level it was true enough, with the truth of a lost dream found once again and full of mysterious evidence. Madeleine walked in front of him, a slim dark figure, a prey to the shadows, smelling of chrysanthemums. When she turned down the Rue des Saints-Pères, Flavières felt a sort of bitter satisfaction. Of course that didn’t prove anything, either. And yet…

There was the house Gévigne had spoken of. It must be that one, because there was an antique shop on the ground floor, and because Madeleine at once went in through the entrance at the side of it. There was only one thing which didn’t tally with Gévigne’s description: the house from the first floor upwards was a hotel. An English name:
Family Hotel.
It couldn’t have more than twenty rooms by the look of it. A card hung at the door bearing the word
complet
. Flavières went in. An old woman knitting at the reception desk looked at him over her glasses.

‘No, I don’t want a room,’ said Flavières. ‘I merely wanted to know the name of the woman who has just come in.’

‘Who are you?’

Flavières held out his old card giving his status as a detective. He had kept it as he kept everything: old pipes, broken fountain pens, and documents that were no longer of the slightest interest. His wallet was stuffed with yellowing letters, receipts for registered packets, old coupons and counterfoils. For once he could congratulate himself on this otherwise foolish habit. The old woman, still looking askance at him, answered:

‘Madeleine Gévigne.’

‘This isn’t the first time you’ve seen her, is it?’

‘Oh no. She often comes.’

‘Does she have a… a visitor in her room?’

‘She’s a most respectable lady.’

Looking down at her knitting, she smiled knowingly.

‘Would you mind answering my question? Does she see people here, friends or otherwise?’

‘No. No one has ever come to see her here.’

‘Then what does she do here?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t spy on my customers.’

‘What’s the number of her room?’

‘Nineteen. It’s on the third floor.’

‘Is it one of your best rooms?’

‘No, though it’s comfortably furnished. I offered her No. 12, but she wouldn’t look at it. She wanted the room on the third floor which gave on to the yard. It was that or nothing.’

‘Why?’

‘She didn’t say. It’s a sunny room—perhaps it was that.’

‘She keeps the room permanently, does she?’

‘She has it by the month. At least, she took it for one month.’

‘When did she come?’

The old woman stopped knitting and turned over the pages of the register.

‘Three weeks ago, I think. Yes, here we are—April 5th.’

‘Does she stay long in her room as a rule?’

‘Sometimes an hour, sometimes two.’

‘Has she got any things up there?’

‘No. She’s never brought any luggage.’

‘She doesn’t come every day, does she?’

‘No. Two or three times a week.’

‘Have you ever thought there was anything queer about her?’

The old woman pushed her glasses up on to her forehead and rubbed her wrinkled eyes.

‘Everybody’s queer in one way or another,’ she said. ‘If you’d spent your life at the reception desk of a hotel, you wouldn’t ask such a question.’

‘Does she use the telephone?’

‘No.’

‘How long has this house been a hotel?’

‘For the last fifty years.’

‘What was it before?’

‘A private house, I suppose, like the others.’

‘Have you ever heard of a certain Pauline Lagerlac?’

‘No. Do you want me to search the register?’

‘That would be useless.’

For a moment they looked at each other in silence.

‘Thank you,’ said Flavières.

‘Don’t mention it!’ said the other a little tartly, and went back to her knitting.

Flavières didn’t go at once. For another minute he stood with his elbow on the desk, fidgeting with the lighter in his pocket.

‘I’ve lost the knack,’ he thought. ‘I no longer know how to squeeze the truth out of people.’

He would have liked to go up and look through the keyhole of No. 19, but he knew very well he would see nothing. With a nod and a grunt to the old woman, he turned and went out.

Why had it got to be the back room on the third floor? Unless in its day it had been Pauline Lagerlac’s bedroom. Only, if it had been, Madeleine couldn’t possibly know it. She didn’t even know of the woman’s suicide… In that case?… What mysterious appeal could have brought her to this particular
room in this particular house? Various explanations occurred to him—clairvoyance for instance—but he rejected them one after the other. Madeleine was a perfectly normal woman: there were specialists to vouch for it… No. The answer had to be sought for in some other quarter.

At the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain he looked back, and he almost broke into a run at the sight of Madeleine walking in the opposite direction, down towards the Seine. She had been in the hotel barely half an hour. Walking briskly along the quays, she passed the Gare d’Orsay, then suddenly hailed a taxi. Flavières just had time to secure another.

‘Follow that Renault,’ he shouted, jumping in.

Perhaps he ought to have brought his own car. Madeleine had almost given him the slip.

On the Pont de la Concorde and all up the Champs-Elysées the traffic was as thick as on the busiest days before the war. Madeleine’s taxi was heading towards the Etoile. She was obviously going home. There were uniforms everywhere and big cars flying pennants as on Bastille Day. There was something a little feverish about it all which even Flavières couldn’t ignore. He didn’t really dislike this sensation of slightly heightened life on the brink of danger… No. She wasn’t going home. The taxi rounded the Arc de Triomphe and then went straight on down the Avenue de Neuilly towards the Porte Maillot. The cars were less numerous here; they dawdled along with windows down and roofs open.

‘Seems they’re going to cut down the petrol ration, even for taxis,’ observed the driver.

Flavières said to himself that, thanks to Gévigne, he’d get all the coupons he wanted. He reproached himself for the
thought, then proceeded to smother his conscience—a gallon or two more or less in the wholesale wastage would make no difference to anyone.

‘Drop me here, will you?’

Madeleine was getting out at the far end of the Pont de Neuilly. Flavières had his money all ready in his hand, so as not to lose a moment, but this time Madeleine sauntered off with as leisurely a pace as on the previous day. She walked along the quays, apparently with no aim in view, just for the pleasure of walking. It was impossible to think of any link between the hotel in the Rue des Saints-Pères and the Quai de Courbevoie. If she just wanted to walk, why come all this way? The quays in the centre of Paris were far more beautiful. Was it the need to get away from the crowd? If she wanted to think something out, or merely to dream, it was certainly quiet enough here beside the smoothly flowing river. He thought of the days when he had wandered along the banks of the Loire, with its little islands, its tongues of sand, hot underfoot, the osier-beds in which the frogs croaked out their joy at being alive. Madeleine was like him: he felt sure of it; and he was tempted to overtake her. They wouldn’t need to talk. They would simply walk side by side watching the barges gliding through the water. It wouldn’t do, of course, and to curb the impulse he stopped altogether and allowed her to get well ahead. He even thought of going home. But there was something a little intoxicating and more than a little questionable in this pursuit which fascinated him, obsessed him. He went on.

Heaps of sand, heaps of stones, then more heaps of sand… Here and there a rustic wharf, a crane, some tip-trucks on narrow rusty rails. They were opposite the Ile de la Grande Jatte.
What was she doing in this dismal suburb? Where was she leading him? They were all alone there, one behind the other, yet she showed no sign whatever of being conscious of his existence. She was too absorbed in the river to look behind her.

Little by little, Flavières was assailed by a vague fear. No, she wasn’t out for a walk. Was this some eccentric escapade? Or an attack of amnesia? He knew something of the latter, as the police often had to deal with people who had lost their memories, strange bewildered people who spoke like sleepwalkers. He was overtaking her again. They were approaching an isolated building, one of those little
bistrots
which cater for bargees. Outside it were three iron tables under a discoloured sunblind. She sat down at one of them. Flavières hid behind a stack of barrels on the quay, but without taking his eyes off her.

She took a piece of paper out of her bag, and a fountain pen. With the back of her hand she made sure the table wasn’t wet. The innkeeper didn’t put in an appearance. She wrote carefully, her features slightly puckered.

‘She loves someone,’ thought Flavières, ‘someone who’s been called up.’

But that supposition was worth no more than the others. Nor did it explain why she should come all this way to write a letter she could have written just as easily—more clandestinely, in fact—at home. Her pen went steadily on; she never paused to grope for a word. Perhaps she had been composing the letter in her head while walking. Or during that half-hour at the hotel. Suppositions again! Really he had nothing to go on… Was she breaking with Gévigne?… That might explain her restless ambulations. Not her visit to Pauline Lagerlac’s grave, however.

No one came to serve her. The innkeeper was no doubt at the front, like the others. Madeleine folded up her letter, put it in an envelope, addressed it, and carefully licked it up. She looked round her, rapped on the table to attract attention. Still no one came. Finally she got up, holding her letter in her hand. Was she going to retrace her steps? She hesitated. Flavières would have given anything to have been able to read the name on the envelope.

Still uncertain, she wandered down to the edge of the quay, passing quite close to the barrels, so close that once again he caught a whiff of her perfume. A soft breeze was blowing, just strong enough to make her skirt flutter. Her face, side-view, was calm. If there was any expression on it at all, it was one of discouragement. She looked down, turned the envelope over, then suddenly tore it in two, in four, and finally into tiny pieces, which she scattered in the breeze. They fluttered down, some on to the stone coping, some on to the water, where they floated for a while; and she stood gravely contemplating them. She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger as though wanting to rid herself of an undesirable contact. With the toe of her shoe, she extricated some fragments caught up in a tuft of grass, and they too disappeared. Quite calmly she took a step forward.

The splash came up right on to the quay, almost wetting Flavières’ feet.

‘Madeleine!’

For a moment, Flavières stood where he was, non-plussed. The last fragments of the letter had blown into the water except one solitary bit which fluttered along the quay, stopping, then going on again in sudden spurts, like a white mouse.