When Jacques first opened the door, his immediate thought was that he had caught Misard in the act of hunting for Aunt Phasie’s hidden money, and the doubts he had had about his aunt’s suspicions had immediately changed to certainty. However, Misard’s announcement that he had discovered a body came as such a shock that the other private drama being played out in this isolated little cottage was driven straight from his mind, ousted by the recollection of the scene in the carriage, the fleeting glimpse of a man cutting someone’s throat.
‘A man on the track,’ he said, turning pale. ‘Where?’
Misard had been about to explain that he was on his way back with two eels that he had found caught on his ground-lines and that he wanted to get home as quickly as possible to hide them. But why bother telling all this to Jacques?
‘It’s up there,’ he said, gesticulating vaguely. ‘Five hundred metres perhaps... You need a light to see properly.’
Just then Jacques heard a noise from upstairs. He was so on edge that it made him jump out of his skin.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Misard. ‘It’s only Flore.’
Jacques heard the sound of bare feet walking over the tiled floor. She must have been waiting for him to come back. The door had been left ajar, and she had come to listen.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Jacques. ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’
‘That’s what it looked like to me,’ Misard replied. ‘We’ll soon find out. We’ll take the lamp.’
‘What do you think happened to him?’ said Jacques. ‘Was it an accident?’
‘Probably,’ said Misard. ‘Some chap who’s got himself run over, or maybe someone who’s jumped out of a train.’
Jacques shuddered.
‘Come on!’ he said. ‘Hurry up.’
Never had Jacques felt driven by such an all-consuming need to know what had happened. Once outside, Misard, totally unperturbed, walked along the track, swinging his lamp, which cast a little pool of light on the railway lines. Jacques ran on ahead, irritated that Misard would walk no faster. It was like a physical urge, the sort of burning desire that compels lovers to quicken their step as the hour of their appointed assignation draws near. He dreaded what he might find, yet he ran towards it, straining every muscle in his body. When he reached the spot, nearly tripping over a dark shape that lay in a heap beside the down line, he stopped short, rooted to the ground, and a shiver ran from the tips of his toes to the nape of his neck. He could see nothing clearly, and such was his frustration that he began to swear at his companion, who was still dawdling along some thirty paces behind.
‘For God’s sake,’ he yelled, ‘hurry up! If he’s still alive we might be able to save him!’
Misard came ambling towards him, still in no great hurry. He held up the lamp so that he could see the body.
‘He’s had it,’ he said.
The man, whoever it was, had probably fallen from a carriage. He had landed on his stomach, face down, no more than fifty centimetres from the track. All that could be seen of his head was a mass of white hair. His legs were spread apart. His right arm lay on the ground as though it had been torn off, whilst his left arm was pinned under his chest. He was very well dressed, wearing a large blue overcoat, a pair of stylish boots and an expensive shirt. The body bore no signs of having been run over, but his neck had bled profusely, and there were bloodstains on his shirt collar.
‘He wasn’t short of a penny or two,’ said Misard calmly, after a cursory examination of the body. ‘Looks as if someone had it in for him!’
He turned towards Jacques, who was standing there open-mouthed.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ he said. ‘It’s against the law. You stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll run down to Barentin and tell the stationmaster.’
He raised his lamp to look at the kilometre post.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Number 153, exactly!’
He placed the lamp on the ground next to the body and sauntered off down the line.
Jacques was left on his own. He stood looking at the lifeless body slumped on the ground in front of him. He could still not see it clearly; the light from the lamp was too dim. His thoughts were racing inside his head; the excitement that had made him rush headlong to the spot and the horrible fascination that now held him fixed there had resulted in the sudden, acute realization, sensed in every fibre of his body, that the man he had seen in the train, the man who was holding a knife, had dared to do the deed! He had followed his desire to its end! He had killed! If only he were not a coward! If only he could satisfy his desire! If only he could kill! For ten years he had been tortured by the desire to kill. His mind was in turmoil; he despised himself and he admired the man who had committed this murder. Above all, he felt the need to look at the body in front of him, an insatiable desire to feast his eyes on this tattered shred of human life, on the broken puppet, the limp rag that, before the knife had struck, had been a living creature. What he had merely dreamed of that man had actually done, and there was the body in front of him. If he killed, the body would be like that, there, on the ground. His heart was beating fit to burst. At the sight of this tragic corpse his craving to kill grew more intense, like lust that is denied gratification. He took a step nearer, like a nervous child trying to overcome its fear. Yes! He would do it! When the time came, he would do it!
There was a sudden rumble of wheels behind him, and he leaped to one side. A train was approaching; he had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even heard it. He would have been run over; it was only the heat from the engine and the loud hiss of steam that had brought him to his senses. The train roared past him, throwing out fiery clouds of smoke. Yet more people! All on their way to Le Havre for the celebrations the following day! A child pressed its nose to one of the windows, peering out at the dark countryside. He saw faces, men’s faces. A young woman lowered one of the windows and threw out a piece of paper, smeared with butter and sugar. The train with its happy crowd of revellers was already a good way off, unaware that its wheels had passed within an inch of the corpse that lay beside the track. There it was, face down, in the dim light of the lamp. Not a sound disturbed the eerie stillness of the night.
Jacques was suddenly seized by a desire to see the wound while there was no one else there. The only thing that held him back was the thought that if he moved the head it might be noticed. He had reckoned that Misard and the stationmaster wouldn’t be back for another three-quarters of an hour. The minutes slipped by. Jacques thought of Misard; how pathetic he was, how slow and unbothered! But he too had the courage to kill, and to kill as coolly as you please, with poison! It must be easy to kill, then! Everybody did it! He took another step nearer. The thought of seeing the wound made his flesh tingle, as if he had been stung. He wanted to see how it had been done and where the blood had run! He wanted to see the red hole! If he replaced the head carefully, no one would know. But something else held him back — a fear that he refused to admit to, the fear of blood itself. It had always been the same; whatever he had wanted to do, desire had been accompanied by fear. He still had another quarter of an hour before the others returned. He was about to touch the body when a sound beside him made him jump back.
It was Flore. She had come to look at the body, too. Accidents had always fascinated her. The minute she heard that an animal had been knocked down or that someone had been run over by a train she would come running to see. She had got dressed again to come to inspect the corpse. She took one look and, without hesitation, she bent down, raised the lamp with one hand and with the other took hold of the head and turned it over.
‘Watch what you’re doing,’ mumbled Jacques. ‘You’re not supposed to touch it.’
Flore merely shrugged her shoulders. They could now see the face in the yellow lamplight. It was the face of an old man. He had a large nose, hair that had once been blond and big blue staring eyes. Under his chin there was a terrible, gaping wound, a deep gash cut into his neck, a jagged furrow as if the knife had been sunk in deep and twisted. The right side of his chest was drenched in blood. On the left lapel of his overcoat he wore the rosette of Commander of the Legion of Honour; it looked like a stray clot of blood that had fallen there.
Flore uttered a little cry of surprise.
‘It’s the President!’ she said.
Jacques leaned forward closer to see, brushing his hair against hers. He gasped for breath as he gorged his eyes on the sight in front of him.
‘The President... the President...’ he kept repeating, mystified.
‘Yes,’ said Flore. ‘It’s the President... old Grandmorin.’
She continued to examine the face, now deathly white, its mouth twisted into a horrible grimace, its eyes staring in terror. Rigor mortis had begun to set in, and its features were already becoming stiff. Flore let the head drop; it fell back to the ground, and the wound closed up again.
‘That’s the end of your fun and games!’ she muttered under her breath. ‘This is the result of one of his affairs; I’ll bet you anything. Ah! Poor Louisette! ... The swine! He’s got what he deserved!’
There was a long silence. Flore put the lamp back on the ground and waited, casting occasional glances at Jacques, who stood on the other side of the body, unable to move, dazed and totally overwhelmed by what he had just seen. It must have been almost eleven o‘clock. After the embarrassing scene earlier that evening, she was reluctant to be the first to speak. Suddenly they heard voices; it was her father on his way back with the stationmaster. She didn’t want them to see her there, so, plucking up her courage, she said, ‘Are you coming back to sleep?’
The question took Jacques by surprise and for a moment he appeared torn. He searched desperately for some excuse.
‘No,’ he said.
There was no reaction from Flore, but from the way her arms hung limp at her side Jacques could tell that she was disappointed. As if she were trying to make amends for having refused him earlier, she began to plead with him, asking him again, ‘Will you not come back to the house? Will I never see you again?’
‘No!’ said Jacques. ‘No! No! No!’
The approaching voices were now very near. Without attempting to shake his hand, for Jacques seemed to be trying deliberately to keep the corpse between them, without even saying cheerio as she always used to do when they had been friends as children, Flore walked away and vanished into the night. Jacques heard the sharp intake of her breath, as though she were fighting back tears.
A moment later the stationmaster arrived with Misard and two other railwaymen. He too checked the identity of the body. Yes, it was certainly President Grandmorin. He recognized him because he used to see him getting off the train at Barentin every time he came to visit his sister at Doinville. He said that the body could be left where it had fallen. He covered it with a coat, which one of the men had brought with him. The stationmaster had sent one of his assistants on the eleven o’clock train from Barentin to report the news to the Public Prosecutor at Rouen, but there was little chance that he would be able to get there before five or six in the morning because he would also have to bring the examining magistrate, the clerk of the court and a doctor. The stationmaster arranged with his men to guard the body; they would take turns throughout the night so that someone was there all the time, keeping watch with the lamp.
Jacques thought that he might sleep in one of the station buildings at Barentin; his train wasn’t due to leave for Le Havre until seven twenty.
13
But he couldn’t bring himself to leave; he stood there for a long time, unable to tear himself away, mesmerized. The thought of the examining magistrate coming to inspect the scene disturbed him, almost as if he considered himself to be an accomplice to the murder. Should he say what he had seen as the express went by? He decided at first that he would; after all, he had nothing to fear. Besides it was his duty to speak; of that there was no question. But then he wondered whether it was worth it. There was nothing he could tell them for certain, not a single thing about the murderer that he could swear to. It would be silly to get himself involved; it would be a waste of time, he would find it stressful, and it would do nobody any good. He decided he would say nothing. Eventually he walked away, turning round twice to look at the black shape of the body humped on the ground in the yellow circle of lamplight. The sky was still overcast, and a distinct chill had fallen over the empty hillsides and the desolate countryside. Several trains had gone by, and another was approaching, a very long train, heading towards Paris. As they all passed each other, speeding towards their destinations somewhere far away, in the future, these powerful, inexorable machines had, without realizing it, passed within inches of the half-severed head of a man whom another man had murdered.
III
On the following day, a Sunday, early in the morning, the bells in Le Havre had just struck five when Roubaud came down to the station to begin his day’s work. It was still dark, but the wind blowing in from the sea had freshened and was dispersing the mists that covered the hilltops from Sainte-Adresse to the old castle at Tourneville; out to the west, over the open sea, there was a clear patch of sky in which the last stars still twinkled. Under the platform roof the gas lamps burned palely in the chill, damp air of early morning. The first train, for Montivilliers, was already in the station, being coupled together by a gang of shunters under the direction of the night foreman. The waiting rooms had not yet been opened, and the platforms were deserted as the station sluggishly began to come back to life.
As Roubaud was leaving his apartment in the upper part of the station above the waiting rooms, whom should he meet but Madame Lebleu, the cashier’s wife, standing in the central corridor that gave access to the employees’ lodgings. For weeks now Madame Lebleu had been getting up in the middle of the night to snoop on Mademoiselle Guichon, who worked in the office and whom she suspected of having an affair with the stationmaster, Monsieur Dabadie. Not that she had ever seen anything; there was not the slightest bit of evidence, nothing at all. That morning she was just about to dodge back into her room, when Roubaud opened his door. In the three seconds or so that it took Roubaud to open and close it again, she was surprised to catch sight of his wife, the delectable Séverine, standing in the dining room, already fully dressed, with her hair done and her shoes on. Usually she lazed about in bed till nine in the morning. Madame Lebleu had immediately woken her husband up to impart this extraordinary piece of news. The evening before, they had both stayed up waiting for the Paris express to arrive at five past eleven, itching to find out what had happened about Roubaud’s clash with the Sub-Prefect. But there was nothing they could glean from just looking at them; they had seemed their usual selves. They had stayed up till midnight, straining their ears, but to no avail; there was not a sound from their neighbours. They must have gone to bed straight away and fallen into a deep sleep. The trip to Paris had obviously not gone well. Why else would Séverine have got up so early? Lebleu asked how Séverine appeared, and his wife tried to describe her; she seemed stiff and pale, her big blue eyes looked very bright under her dark hair, and she was standing completely still, like someone who was still asleep. No doubt they would find out all about it later on in the day.