The Blue Room Read online

  ‘As for your daughter, now is not the moment, because you might be torn to pieces by the crowd: Léonore Molard had nothing better to do than run door to door with the news. Out in the shed, my men found this tin of strychnine, and I contacted the public prosecutor at Poitiers.

  ‘Now, Falcone, you will come with me. The police station would be more suitable for continuing this interrogation properly. Since you will doubtless not be returning here for a long time, I advise you to pack a suitcase with some clothes and personal effects. I will go upstairs with you.’

  With question after question, Diem made him retell this story, describing his departure from Saint-Justin-du-Loup, suitcase in hand, through the throng of onlookers muttering angrily as he passed, while some stared wild-eyed at him, as if the discovery of a murderer in the village meant that any one of them could have been the victim.

  ‘The law requires that you identify the body.’

  He had had to wait out in a corridor of the hospital with the lieutenant and a gendarme. He was already in handcuffs but not yet used to them, and they hurt him whenever he moved too suddenly.

  Studying him with particular attention, Diem observed, ‘When they let you see your wife’s body, after they’d finished laying her out, you stood a few steps away from her, completely still, without a word. Isn’t that what a guilty man would do, Monsieur Falcone?’

  How could he explain it to the magistrate? At that moment, in his heart, he had indeed felt guilty. He tried to tell him so, in a way …

  ‘She died, after all, because of me.’

  7.

  That interrogation, in the chambers of Examining Magistrate Diem, proved to be the last. The magistrate may have intended to question Tony again on certain points, or to confront him another time with Andrée, but what he was told about the prisoner’s condition persuaded him to abandon any such thought.

  Two days later, visiting him in his cell, Professor Bigot had already found a man indifferent to words, indifferent to everything, who appeared to have lapsed into a vegetative state.

  His blood pressure had dropped significantly, and the psychiatrist had sent him for observation to the infirmary, where, in spite of intensive treatment, his state did not really improve.

  He slept, ate, made a semblance of replying when spoken to, but in a colourless, impersonal voice.

  His brother’s visit had not awakened him from his prostration. Tony looked at him in amazement, surprised, it seemed, to see Vincent – as he knew him, as he was in his café in Triant – suddenly appear within the alien world of the infirmary.

  ‘You mustn’t let yourself lose heart, Tony. Don’t forget that you have a daughter and that your family’s all with you.’

  What was the use?

  ‘Marianne’s settling in quite well with us. We’d sent her away to school, at first.’

  ‘Did they tell her?’ he’d asked dully.

  ‘There was no way to prevent her classmates from talking. One evening she asked me, “Is it true Pop killed Mama?” So I reassured her, told her absolutely not.

  ‘“Is he still a murderer anyway?”

  ‘“Of course not, since he didn’t kill anyone.”

  ‘“Then why’s his picture in the paper?”

  ‘You see, Tony? She doesn’t really understand, so she isn’t suffering …’

  Was it the end of May, or the beginning of June? He no longer counted the days, or even the weeks, and when Demarié came to tell him that he had been charged, along with Andrée, with the murders of Nicolas and Gisèle, he showed no reaction at all.

  ‘They decided against separate trials, which will make it harder for the defence.’

  His condition remained unchanged. Sent back to his cell, instead of rebelling against the monotony of prison life, he adapted with impressive docility.

  Then overnight all visits ceased; the days were empty, the guards themselves less numerous. The judicial recess had coincided with summer holidays, and hundreds of thousands of people were out on the roads, hurrying to the beaches, the mountains, the cottages tucked away in the countryside.

  The newspapers had picked up the scent of a quarrel that would dominate the trial, they hinted: the battle of the expert witnesses.

  After an anonymous letter and the subsequent investigations in Triant, which had confirmed the liaison between Tony and Andrée, Nicolas had been exhumed. The first forensic tests had been carried out by a specialist in Poitiers, Dr Gendre, who reported finding a massive amount of strychnine in the body.

  Twelve days after Tony’s imprisonment, an arrest warrant had been issued for Andrée Despierre.

  The lawyer she had chosen, Maître Capade, had called in a world-famous Parisian specialist, Professor Schwartz, who severely criticized his colleague’s work and reached far less damning conclusions.

  In three months, Nicolas had been exhumed two times and there was talk of a third, for the police forensic laboratory at Lyons, consulted in turn, demanded fresh evidence.

  Discussion centred as well on the mild sedatives taken every evening by the grocer of Saint-Justin if he felt a fit coming on. When questioned, the pharmacist at Triant who had supplied them had confirmed that since the two halves of the capsules were not solidly joined, they could easily be opened and filled with something else.

  What did all this have to do with Tony? He no longer even cared whether he was found guilty or not, or, if guilty, what the sentence would be.

  On 14 October, the crowd in the courtroom of the Assizes and the many lawyers gathered there seemed startled by his attitude, while the newspapers claimed he was both heartless and shameless.

  They were sitting on the same bench, he and Andrée, with a gendarme between them, and Andrée had leaned a little forwards to say, ‘Hello, Tony!’

  He had neither turned nor winced at the sound of her voice.

  The defence lawyers and their clerks were fussing over their papers on a bench in the well of the court. In addition to Capade, Andrée had hired one of the great orators of the Parisian bar, Maître Follier, at whom the spectators gawped as if he were a film star.

  The presiding judge had silky grey hair; one of his associate judges, a very young man, seemed nervous, while the other spent his time doodling.

  Tony observed all this in a detached way, almost as if he were in a train staring out of a window at the landscape streaming past. The jurors fascinated him, and he studied each in turn for so long that, by the second session, he was familiar with the slightest detail of their faces.

  Standing with a respectful demeanour, he answered the preliminary questions reluctantly, with the same neutral tone he had taken way back in catechism class. Here, too, was he not reciting by heart answers he had supplied many times before?

  The first witness called was La Louchote, and it turned out that she had been the first, on a day when she was leaving the train station at Triant, to see Andrée going inside the Hôtel des Voyageurs via the little door on Rue Gambetta.

  As chance would have it, she had been in Rue Gambetta two hours later just as Andrée was leaving, and when she had gone inside the café to wait, as she was too early for her train home, who should be there but Tony.

  That was how it all started, all those rumours Falcone had learned about only much later. It was Inspector Mani who had finally, so patiently, tracked her down.

  One after another they came and went, men and women he knew, many of whom he called by their first names, some of whom he had known since school. They had all dressed in their Sunday best and sometimes their responses, or their unwittingly comical behaviour, provoked ripples of laughter in the court.

  Motionless and impassive, old Angelo was there in the second row, where he would sit in the same seat all through the trial. Vincent would join him after giving his evidence; until then, he had to wait in a room with other witnesses, among whom were Françoise and old Madame Despierre.

  ‘You are the brother of the accused and, as such, you cannot be placed unde
r oath.’

  The courtroom was very warm and smelled of unwashed bodies. A young and pretty woman lawyer, Capade’s assistant, kept handing peppermints to him. Once she turned around to offer one to Andrée and then, after a moment’s hesitation, to Tony.

  Again, his impressions were of jarring images, of noses, eyes, smiles, yellowed teeth in half-open mouths, the startling red of a woman’s hat, and snatches of sentences he did not bother lining up to find out what they meant.

  ‘You say that about once a month your brother Tony would join the Despierre woman in a room in your hotel, room 3, which you called the blue room. Was it your habit to thus welcome such couples in your establishment?’

  Poor Vincent, publicly insulted like that, when from the beginning he had begged his brother to break off the affair!

  There was something else the presiding judge had said, during Tony’s interrogation.

  ‘You were so passionately in love with Andrée Despierre that you didn’t hesitate to hide your guilty lovemaking beneath the roof of your brother and sister-in-law.’

  It was a hotel, wasn’t it? At times he could not help smiling, as if it were all happening to someone else. Playing to the audience, the presiding judge made harsh or sardonic comments the eager journalists could feed to their papers.

  And then Andrée’s famous barrister from Paris, stung, would rise to deliver his own trenchant ripostes.

  Demarié had advised Tony to get a second lawyer as well, but he had refused.

  He just didn’t see the point. The long-drawn-out tale already pieced together in Diem’s chambers would now be retold for the jury and the public.

  The atmosphere was more solemn, with more ritual formulae and flourishes, more actors and bit players, but it was basically the same old story.

  The dates were rehashed one by one, along with the comings and goings of all concerned, but when the letters came up there was a general commotion, with squabbling not only between the prosecution and the defence but within each team itself. Every word was dissected and Follier even brandished one volume of Littré’s dictionary to list the various meanings of certain words used every day by everyone.

  Andrée, dressed in black, took a more intense interest in the proceedings than Tony did and leaned forwards sometimes to smile at him or give him a knowing look.

  The battle of the expert witnesses broke out only on the third day.

  ‘Until now,’ said the presiding judge, ‘I had always thought that the sale of poisons was strictly regulated and that a doctor’s prescription was required to obtain them. But what do we see in this case?

  ‘An old cocoa tin containing more than fifty grams of strychnine, which toxicologists estimate would kill some twenty people, sits in a shed that is open all day long.

  ‘And on the shelves in the back room of the Despierre grocery store, next to the food supplies, we find two kilos – you hear me, two kilos! – of the same poison as well as an equally substantial amount of arsenic.’

  ‘We all deplore this situation,’ replied one of the expert witnesses, ‘but unfortunately, that is the law. Although in pharmacies the sale of poisons is tightly controlled, those used as pesticides are freely sold in agricultural cooperatives, drugstores and some village shops.’

  Day in and day out there they all were in their appointed spots: the magistrates, jurors, barristers, gendarmes, journalists and even the onlookers, who must have had some way of retaining the same seats and whom the witnesses, one after the other, would join after their brief turn in the witness box.

  Now and then one of the lawyers near the little side door would slip out to defend a client in another court, and during any adjournment the room buzzed like a school playground.

  At such times Tony was escorted to a dark room where the only window was three metres high on the wall, and Andrée was doubtless in a similar place. Demarié brought him soft drinks; Tony supposed the magistrates must have had something to drink as well. Then a bell would summon everyone back to their places, as in the theatre or the cinema.

  Her complexion more chalk-white than ever, old Madame Despierre made a spectacular entrance. And with her, the judge took a softer tone, for she was, in a way, one of the victims.

  ‘I never encouraged my son in this marriage, as I knew no good would come of it. Unfortunately, he loved the woman, and I hadn’t the heart to oppose …’

  Why did he remember some words but not others?

  ‘I am obliged, madame, to remind you of unhappy events and to speak of your son’s death.’

  ‘If she hadn’t pushed me out of my own house, I would have watched over him, and nothing would have happened. She never loved him, you see. All she wanted was our money. She knew he wouldn’t live long. When she took a lover …’

  ‘You were aware of her affair with the accused?’

  ‘Like everyone else in Saint-Justin, except my poor Nicolas.’

  ‘In August of last year, he seems to have grown suspicious.’

  ‘I was so hoping he would catch them in the act and would throw her out – but she managed to twist him around her little finger.’

  ‘What was your reaction upon finding your son dead?’

  ‘I felt right away that he hadn’t succumbed to one of his attacks and that his wife was somehow involved.’

  ‘Of course, you had no proof.’

  ‘I waited for them to go after his wife.’

  She pointed at Tony.

  ‘It was only a matter of time. And I was right.’

  ‘Was it not you who, two days after the death of Madame Falcone, sent an anonymous letter to the public prosecutor?’

  ‘The experts have not formally identified my writing. The note may be from anyone.’

  ‘Let’s talk about the pot of jam. Who took delivery of it in the shop?’

  ‘I did, the day before it happened, meaning Tuesday, 16 February.’

  ‘Did you open it?’

  ‘No. I knew from the label what it was and I set it aside in the back room.’

  This was one of those rare moments when Tony paid attention. He was not the only one to show particular interest in this testimony: his lawyer had risen and moved several steps closer, as if intent on hearing better, perhaps – but in reality in the vain hope of disconcerting the witness.

  The answers Madame Despierre was about to give would largely determine Tony’s fate.

  ‘That morning, at what time did you go to the store?’

  ‘The morning of the 17th? At seven o’clock, as always.’

  ‘You saw the package?’

  ‘It was still in the same place.’

  ‘Was the string intact and the sealing tape unbroken?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You remained at the counter until 7.50, when your daughter-in-law took your place, and you went home for a bite to eat. Is that correct?’

  ‘It is the truth.’

  ‘How many people were in the shop when you left it?’

  ‘Four. I had just served Marguerite Chauchois when I saw that man come across the street towards us. I went home through the garden.’

  She was lying. And unable to help herself, she looked defiantly at Tony. If the package was open at that moment, as it certainly was – and all the more obviously if it had been open overnight, as was quite probable, then Andrée had had more than enough time to mix the poison into one of the jam pots.

  If, on the contrary, the package was intact, then she could not possibly have poisoned the jam during the minute or two he had stood waiting in the shop.

  It was not enough for old Madame Despierre that Andrée should pay for killing Nicolas. Tony had to pay for it as well.

  ‘May it please Your Honour, I should like—’ began Demarié, as murmuring swelled in the room.

  ‘You will have ample time to present your case in due course to the jury.’

  Tony was not looking at Andrée, but the newspapers claimed that at that moment she had smiled, with what one article described
as a “greedy” expression.

  For the first time, Tony noticed the Molard sisters sitting way at the back of the courtroom, to the left of the exit, in similar hats and dresses, with identical handbags in their laps, their faces even more moonlike in the dreary courtroom light.

  Andrée had preceded Tony in the witness box, where she had proudly declared or, rather, proclaimed to the court and the public, as if making a profession of faith, ‘I did not poison my husband, but if he had taken too long to die, then perhaps I would have. I loved Tony and I love him still.’

  ‘How did you mean to get rid of Madame Falcone?’

  ‘That had nothing to do with me. I wrote so to Tony. I told him: “Now you!” I had confidence, and waited.’

  ‘Waited for what?’

  ‘Waited for him to free himself, as we’d decided he would as soon as I gained my freedom.’

  ‘You did not anticipate that he would kill her?’

  Then, holding her head high, she had exclaimed in her rich, throaty voice, ‘We love each other!’

  So great was the uproar that the judge had threatened to clear the court.

  The die had been cast on the very first day. And that was not the day Nicolas died, or the day of Gisèle’s agonizing death.

  The first day had been 2 August of the previous year, when Tony, naked and self-satisfied in the scorching heat of the blue room, stood in front of a mirror showing him Andrée lying as if splayed wide open.

  ‘Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you angry with me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is your wife going to ask you any questions?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Does she ever ask any?’

  Gisèle was still alive, and, shortly after those words were spoken, he would go home to her and Marianne in their new house.

  ‘You have a beautiful back. Do you love me, Tony?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  Had he loved her? A gendarme was sitting between them, and at times she leaned forwards to look at him with that same expression she had worn in the room at Triant.

  ‘Would you like to spend your whole life with me?’