The Blue Room Read online

  He wanted to protest, to stand up and shout: ‘No! No! Stop this! It’s all a lie! It’s all fake!’

  He just sat there, too confounded to make a move. Could she really believe what she was saying? She was speaking simply, dispassionately, as if all this were perfectly normal, with nothing inexplicable or tragic about it!

  ‘And so, when you wrote “Now you”, what you were thinking was …’

  ‘That I was waiting for him. That it was up to him to do what was necessary …’

  ‘To ask for a divorce?’

  She paused a moment – was it deliberate? – before replying, ‘Yes’.

  Now it was Tony the magistrate glanced at in complicity before continuing to question Andrée, as if to say, ‘Listen to this, it will interest you.’

  And in an even voice, without a trace of irony or sarcasm, he asked her, ‘Did you ever give a thought to the misery this would bring to Gisèle Falcone?’

  ‘She would not have cried for very long.’

  ‘How do you know? Didn’t she love her husband?’

  ‘Not the way I did. Women like that aren’t capable of real love.’

  ‘What about her daughter?’

  ‘Exactly! Her daughter would have been a consolation to her and, as long as they received some small income, they would have had a nice little life.’

  ‘You hear that, Falcone?’

  The magistrate must have regretted having pushed things that far, for Tony’s face was terrifying, almost inhuman with hatred and pain. He rose slowly from his chair, his features frozen, his eyes staring, like a sleepwalker.

  His fists were clenched; his arms seemed abnormally long. The fat lawyer, who had turned casually to look at him, now jumped up to stand between him and his client.

  Diem signalled urgently to the clerk, who ran to the door.

  Although this scene lasted only a few seconds, it seemed to take much longer. The gendarmes came in; one of them roughly slapped handcuffs on Tony, then waited for orders. The magistrate hesitated, looking back and forth between his prisoner and Andrée, who seemed simply surprised.

  ‘I don’t understand, Tony, why you …’

  But at a sign from the magistrate she was the one removed from the room. Her lawyer held her arm and pushed her firmly towards the door. She turned around once more to exclaim, ‘You know very well that you said yourself …’

  The rest was cut off when the door closed behind them.

  ‘I apologize, Falcone. I had to do that. In a few moments, as soon as the coast is clear, you’ll be taken back to prison.’

  That evening, Diem told his wife about the episode as he was finishing dinner.

  ‘Today I had to proceed with the cruellest confrontation of my entire career and I hope never to preside again over anything that painful.’

  As for Tony, back in his cell, he lay awake all night.

  6.

  He spent two days in a kind of stupor, emerging only now and then in a brief burst of rebellion that set him pacing in his cell as if he were going to hurl himself headfirst against the walls.

  It was a weekend, and everyone must have gone off to the countryside.

  Surprisingly, he had got used to prison life almost immediately, obeying its rules and the guards’ orders without protest.

  It wasn’t until the third day that he felt abandoned. No one came to see him. There was no mention of taking him to the law courts. He listened impatiently to the footsteps in the corridor and stood up whenever someone stopped at his spy hole.

  Only later did he realize that the street outside was silent, with almost no traffic, and one of the jailers confirmed at around four that afternoon that that Monday was a holiday.

  At ten o’clock the next morning, a sunburned Demarié arrived to see him in his cell. He took his time setting out the papers he removed from his briefcase and getting comfortable, then offered Tony a cigarette and lit one himself.

  ‘I suppose the past three days must have dragged on for ever for you …’

  He gave a little cough, since Tony hadn’t bothered to reply and was waiting with discouraging indifference.

  ‘I’ve received a copy of the transcript from your last interrogation and the confrontation with Andrée Despierre.’

  Did he believe in his client’s innocence? Was he still making up his mind?

  ‘I’d be lying if I said things look good for us. This business of the letters is a disaster and will have an even worse effect on the jury in that you’ve been denying their existence. The messages as reported by the Despierre woman, are they correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would like you to answer, truthfully, one question. When you stubbornly denied receiving those letters, was it to avoid implicating your mistress or because you thought the messages were dangerous for you?’

  What was the use of trying any more? Men like to think that they act, in all circumstances, for a definite reason. The first time the letters had been mentioned, he hadn’t really thought about it and had never imagined that someone would go and question the postmaster.

  It had taken weeks for him to realize how unbelievably hard Inspector Mani and his colleagues had worked, how many people were visited day after day – until they gave in and started talking.

  Was there a single person in Saint-Justin, a single local farmer, any regular visitor to the fairs, especially the one in Triant, who hadn’t said his piece?

  The reporters had got in on the job as well and churned out whole columns of interviews in the newspapers.

  ‘I met briefly with Diem, and he gave me to understand that the confrontation was particularly upsetting for you. It seems you lost your head at the end. Andrée, on the contrary, kept up her cool self-confidence. I presume she will behave the same way in court.’

  Demarié was making a real effort to rouse him from his apathy.

  ‘I tried to find out what the magistrate thinks, although his opinion will be far from decisive once the judicial inquiry is over. He doesn’t conceal a certain sympathy for you, yet I would swear that in the almost two months now since he began his inquiry, he still hasn’t managed to make up his mind.’

  Why all this nattering, this tedious talk?

  ‘By the way, I happened to run into Bigot, too, on Friday night, at a bridge party given by friends, and he took me aside to tell me he’d learned something rather interesting but, unfortunately, too late for us.

  ‘You have essentially admitted that with Andrée you did not take the usual precautions you did with the other women and that you were not worried that she took none herself, which will lead the jury to conclude that you were not concerned about making her pregnant.’

  Tony listened, curious to see where this was going.

  ‘Andrée, as you know, kept track of her periods in her diary. Bigot was intrigued enough to compare the dates with those of your meetings in Triant during the eleven months of your affair. Diem hadn’t thought of that, and neither, I admit, had I.

  ‘Do you know how those dates matched up? In absolutely every case, the meetings took place when your mistress was not fertile.

  ‘In other words, Andrée Despierre was taking no chances, a detail that would have been in your favour – without those earlier statements. I’ll use it anyway, but it won’t have the same impact.’

  Tony sank back into indifference, and the lawyer soon gave up.

  ‘I believe you’ll be going to the courthouse this afternoon.’

  ‘Will she?’

  ‘No. Just you this time. You still don’t want me there?’

  What for? Demarié was like the others. He understood no more than they did. His interventions would only complicate things. Still, Tony was glad to know that the little magistrate liked him …

  He saw him again at three o’clock in his chambers. It was drizzling outside, and an umbrella stood dripping in the corner, the clerk’s, probably, since the magistrate came to the courthouse in his black Renault 4CV.

  Diem h
ad not been out in the sun, for, as he soon explained: ‘I took advantage of the long weekend to review the entire dossier. How do you feel today, Falcone? I should warn you, this interview may last some time, because we’ve reached Wednesday, 17 February. Will you go over your movements on that day in as much detail as possible?’

  He had been expecting this. Each time they had taken him away after a meeting, he had wondered why they hadn’t reached this point yet.

  The 17th of February was the end, the end of everything, an end he had never foreseen, not even in his worst nightmares, and which he had later realized, however, was logical and fated to happen.

  ‘Would you like me to help you by asking specific questions?’

  He nodded. On his own, he would not have known where to begin.

  ‘Your wife got up at the usual time?’

  ‘A little earlier. It had rained all Tuesday morning, so the laundry hadn’t dried until mid-afternoon. She was planning to spend the entire day ironing.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I came downstairs at 6.30.’

  ‘Did you eat breakfast together? Was there any discussion of your appointments that day? Try to be as accurate as possible.’

  Diem had spread out the transcripts of his other statements, the first ones, from interrogations by the lieutenant at Triant – Gaston Joris, with whom Tony had often had an aperitif at his brother’s place – and Inspector Mani, a Corsican.

  ‘I’d told her the evening before, that’s Tuesday night, that I would have a full day, that I would not be back for lunch and might even be late for dinner.’

  ‘Did you tell her where you’d be as the day went on?’

  ‘I mentioned only the fair at Ambasse, where some clients were expecting me, and a repair job over at Bolin-sur-Sièvre.’

  ‘Wasn’t that outside your area?’

  ‘Bolin’s only thirty-five kilometres from Saint-Justin, and I was beginning to extend my territory.’

  ‘Did you know at the time that your itinerary was inaccurate?’

  ‘It wasn’t completely wrong.’

  ‘You went upstairs at seven to awaken your daughter. Did you often do that?’

  ‘Almost every morning. I’d wake her up before having my wash and shave.’

  ‘You selected your best suit, a blue suit you saved for Sundays.’

  ‘Because of my appointment in Poitiers. I wanted to look prosperous when I saw Garcia.’

  ‘We’ll get back to him later. When you came downstairs, your daughter, in the kitchen, was getting ready for school. Before heading for Ambasse and Bolin-sur-Sièvre, you had to drop by the post office, then the station, where you were expecting a package.’

  ‘A piston I’d ordered for my client in Bolin.’

  He had glanced automatically a few times at the empty chair in front of Diem’s desk and finally realized it was the one Andrée had used the week before.

  Although just an ordinary chair, it seemed to have remained in the same place since that Friday – and to be bothering Tony, so the magistrate, as he walked up and down the room, set it back against a wall.

  ‘You offered to drive your daughter to school in the van.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wasn’t that unusual? Did you have no reason, that morning, to be particularly affectionate with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask your wife if there were any errands to run in the village?’

  ‘No. And I told the inspector that. I was on my way out when Gisèle called me back. She said, “Would you drop by the grocery store to pick up a kilo of sugar and two packets of soap powder? That way I won’t have to change clothes.” Those are her exact words.’

  ‘You often did that sort of thing?’

  Did he have to go through their complete household routine yet again? He had already done that with Mani. Almost every day, as in every household, there were different purchases to make in different places, including the butcher’s shop or the charcuterie. Gisèle avoided sending him there, where customers almost always had to wait.

  ‘She used to say that it wasn’t a man’s job.’

  That Wednesday she wanted to get to her ironing as quickly as possible. Since they’d had a leg of mutton the previous evening, there were leftovers for that day’s supper, and there was only the one errand to run.

  ‘So you left with your daughter.’

  He could still see, in his rear-view mirror, Gisèle at the front door, wiping her hands on her apron …

  ‘You dropped Marianne off at the school and headed for the post office. Then?’

  ‘I went inside the grocery store.’

  ‘How long had it been since the last time?’

  ‘Perhaps two months.’

  ‘You hadn’t been back there since the last letter, the one that said simply, “Now you!”?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Monsieur Falcone, were you nervous? Excited?’

  ‘It wasn’t that. I would rather not have been in Andrée’s presence, especially while several people were watching.’

  ‘Were you afraid of giving yourself away?’

  ‘I was uncomfortable.’

  ‘Who was in the store when you came in?’

  ‘I remember a child to whom I paid no attention, one of the Molard sisters and an old woman with a squint whom everyone calls La Louchote.’

  ‘Was old Madame Despierre there?’

  ‘I didn’t see her.’

  ‘Did you wait your turn?’

  ‘No. Andrée immediately asked me, “And what can I get you, Tony?”’

  ‘She waited on you before the others? No one objected?’

  ‘It’s customary. Just about everywhere, they serve the men first.

  ‘I said, “A kilo of sugar and two packets of soap powder.” She fetched them from the shelves, then said, “Wait a minute, I got in the plum jam your wife’s been asking after for two weeks.” She disappeared into the back room and returned with a pot of jam of the same brand I usually saw at home …’

  ‘Was she gone long?’

  ‘Not very long.’

  ‘One minute? Two?’

  ‘The time seemed normal to me.’

  ‘Long enough to pick up a pot of jam and bring it into the shop? Or to look around for it among other piles of things?’

  ‘Between the two. I don’t know.’

  ‘Did Andrée Despierre show any emotion?’

  ‘I avoided looking at her.’

  ‘Still, you saw her at some point. You heard her voice.’

  ‘I think she was glad to see me.’

  ‘She said nothing more to you?’

  ‘When I was opening the door, she called out after me, “Have a good day, Tony!”’

  ‘Did her voice sound natural?’

  ‘At the time, I wasn’t paying any attention. It was a day like any other.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Perhaps her voice sounded more affectionate.’

  ‘Did Andrée ever behave affectionately towards you?’

  Wasn’t he obliged to tell the truth?

  ‘Yes. It’s hard to explain. With a particular kind of affection, like the kind I show Marianne on certain days, for example.’

  ‘Maternal affection?’

  ‘That’s not it either. “Protective” might be closer.’

  ‘So, the first coincidence: your wife asks you, rather exceptionally, to go to the grocery store in her place. Second coincidence: the kitchen has been out of a certain jam, which only she eats, for several weeks. There’s been a delivery at the store, and you’re given a pot. Third coincidence, which Inspector Mani did not fail to point out: that day you did not go straight home but stopped by the station.’

  ‘I’d had the piston sent to me express mail and—’

  ‘That’s not all. The station at Saint-Justin, like most buildings, has four sides: one facing the tracks; the one on the opposite side, through which passengers come and go; and a third, on the left,
with the stationmaster’s door. The fourth side, to the north, has neither door nor window. It’s a bare wall, a blind wall, and it’s beside this wall that you parked your van.’

  ‘If you’ve been there, you must know it’s the logical place to park.’

  ‘The stationmaster, busy with paperwork, told you to get your package yourself from the freight room.’

  ‘All the local people did that.’

  ‘How long were you in or near the station?’

  ‘I didn’t look at the time. A few minutes.’

  ‘The stationmaster has said that he heard your car leave only after a rather long time.’

  ‘I wanted to make sure that they’d sent me the right piston, because they make mistakes fairly often.’

  ‘You opened the package?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the van?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where no one could see you? Let’s add this coincidence to the others. Home again, you place your purchases on the kitchen table. Your wife, in the garden, was taking the laundry off the lines and putting it in a basket. Did you go outside to her? Kiss her before leaving again?’

  ‘That wasn’t our way. I wasn’t going off on a trip. I called to her from the doorway, “See you this evening!”’

  ‘You didn’t tell her that the jam had arrived?’

  ‘Why would I? She’d find it on the table.’

  ‘You didn’t linger in the kitchen at all?’

  ‘At the last moment, I saw the coffee pot set at the side of the burner and poured myself a cup.’

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, that makes at least the fifth coincidence.’

  Why was Diem making such a big point of all this? Tony could not change what had happened. What did they want from him? Protests, outrage? He had got past all that long ago. Now he answered their questions impassively. The weather was as dreary and damp as it had been on that 17 February, with its flat grey sky, its dull light, the empty-looking countryside, the puddles left by a recent downpour.

  ‘Why did you go through Triant?’

  ‘Because it was on my way.’

  ‘You had no other reason?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to my brother.’

  ‘To ask his advice? Did you often do that, even though you are the elder brother?’