“I am in despair,” he said. “She’s dead. My Natalie is dead.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I have a little apartment in Montmartre. In the Rue des Martyrs. Just a room really, to entertain friends. Catherine always keeps number 11 so neat, you know, a man can’t spread himself out. Natalie used to spend a lot of time with me there: everyone in the house knew her. She was so good natured, so beautiful. She was studying to go into Medical School. Bright. And she loved me.”
Phillipe was still handsome. In fact, as the fashion in looks came full circle his elegance, his almost dashing face, his unhurried charm were the order of the day. A breath of a lost age, perhaps.
“I went out on Sunday morning: to the patisserie. And when I came back. . .”
The words failed him for a moment.
“Lewis…”
His eyes filled with tears of frustration. This was so difficult for him his mouth refused to make the necessary sounds.
“Don’t —” Lewis began.
“I want to tell you, Lewis. I want you to know, I want you to see her as I saw her — so you know what there is. . . there is . . . what there is in the world.”
The tears ran down his face in two graceful rivulets. He gripped Lewis’ hand in his, so tightly it ached.
“She was covered in blood. In wounds. Skin torn off hair torn out. Her tongue was on the pillow, Lewis.
Imagine that. She’d bitten it off in her terror. It was just lying on the pillow. And her eyes, all swimming in blood, like she’d wept blood. She was the dearest thing in all creation, Lewis. She was beautiful.”
“No more.”
“I want to die, Lewis.”
“No.”
“I don’t want to live now. There’s no point.”
“They won’t find you guilty.”
“I don’t care, Lewis. You must look after Catherine now. I read about the exhibition —”
He almost smiled.
“— Wonderful for you. We always said, didn’t we? before the war, you’d be the one to be famous, I’d be —”
The smile had gone.
“— notorious. They say terrible things about me now, in the newspapers. An old man going with young girls, you see, that doesn’t make me very wholesome. They probably think I lost my temper because I couldn’t perform with her. That’s what they think, I’m certain.” He lost his way, halted, began again. “You must look after Catherine. She’s got money, but no friends. She’s too cool, you see. Too hurt inside; and that makes people wary of her. You have to stay with her.”
“I shall.”
“I know. I know. That’s why I feel happy, really, to just…”
“No, Phillipe.”
“Just die. There’s nothing left for us, Lewis. The world’s too hard.”
Lewis thought of the snow, and the ice-floes, and saw the sense in dying.
The officer in charge of the investigation was less than helpful, though Lewis introduced himself as a relative of the esteemed Detective Dupin. Lewis’s contempt for the shoddily-dressed weasel, sitting in his cluttered hole of an office, made the interview crackle with suppressed anger.
“Your friend,” the Inspector said, picking at the raw cuticle of his thumb, “is a murderer, Monsieur Fox. It is as simple as that. The evidence is overwhelming.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Believe what you like to believe, that’s your prerogative. We have all the evidence we need to convict Phillipe Laborteaux of murder in the first degree. It was a cold-blooded killing and he will be punished to the full extent of the law. This is my promise.”
“What evidence do you have against him?”
“Monsieur Fox; I am not beholden to you. What evidence we have is our business. Suffice it to say that no other person was seen in the house during the time that the accused claims he was at some fictional patisserie; and as access to the room in which the deceased was found is only possible by the stairs —”
“What about a window?”
“A plain wall: three flights up. Maybe an acrobat: an acrobat might do it.”
“And the state of the body?”
The Inspector made a face. Disgust.