‘Oh no,’ she protested, ‘I don’t want to be indoors; I would rather we went for a walk ... in the open air ... wherever you want.’
She gently slipped her arm into his. Now that he was no longer covered in dirt from driving the train, she found him quite handsome. He was wearing a suit, which made him look quite well to do, yet, despite his smart appearance, there was about him a sort of proud independence, a sense of being out in the open air, braving danger day by day. Never before had she noticed how good-looking he was - a round face with regular features, a very dark moustache and white skin. Only his eyes disturbed her. They were flecked with gold, but there was something shifty about them, and he held them constantly averted. Was he refusing to look at her because he didn’t want to become too involved, because he wanted to remain free to do as he chose, perhaps even to denounce her? A shudder ran through her whenever she thought of the Secretary-General’s study in the Rue du Rocher, where her fate was being decided. What would become of her? All she wanted was to feel that the man whose arm she was holding was hers, hers completely; she wanted to be able to raise her head towards him and see him look long and deeply into her eyes. Then she would know that he was hers. It was not that she was in love with him; the thought had not entered her head. She simply wanted to have him under her control, to know that she need no longer fear him.
For a few minutes they walked together without speaking, picking their way through the throng of passers-by, at times even having to step off the pavement and walk in the road amongst the traffic. Eventually they reached the Square des Batignolles. At this time of year it was almost deserted. The sky, washed clean by the morning’s rain, was a beautiful clear blue, and the lilac trees were coming into bloom in the warm March sunshine.
‘Can we get away from the street?’ Séverine suggested. ‘These crowds make me feel giddy.’
Jacques too wanted to find somewhere quieter. Without realizing it, he wanted to have her more to himself, to be away from all these people.
They were walking past the entrance to a little park.
4
‘What about here?’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go in.’
They walked slowly down the path along the edge of the lawn, beneath the bare trees. There were a few mothers taking their young children for a walk and people, obviously in a hurry, using the park as a short cut. They crossed the stream and walked up through the rock gardens. They turned to come back, not knowing quite what to do next. They wandered through a clump of pine trees, whose evergreen foliage shone dark green in the sunlight. There happened to be a bench there, in a quiet corner hidden from view. Without exchanging a word, they sat down, seemingly led to this spot by some mutual understanding.
‘What a lovely day it is now,’ she said, in an effort to break the silence.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘the sun’s come out again.’
But their minds were on other things. Jacques, who normally avoided the company of women, had been pondering the chain of events that had brought him and Séverine together. Here she was, sitting next to him, touching him, threatening to invade his life. How had it happened? Ever since the last interview with the examining magistrate at Rouen, he had absolutely no doubt that she had been an accomplice in the murder at La Croix-de-Maufras. But how had she come to do such a thing? What passion or motive had driven her? He had asked himself again and again, without ever finding any obvious answer. Eventually, he had worked out a possible explanation, based on a self-seeking and violent husband who sought to get his hands on the legacy as soon as possible, fearing the will might be changed to their disadvantage and perhaps thinking that his relationship with his wife might be strengthened by a shared act of murder. This was the only explanation that seemed to make any sense; it left many questions unanswered, and they intrigued him, but he hadn’t attempted to pursue them further. He had also been in two minds whether it wasn’t his duty to tell the law what he knew, and it was this that was uppermost in his mind as he sat beside her on the park bench, so close in fact that he could feel the warmth of her thigh against his.
‘It’s amazing to be able to sit outside like this in March,’ he said. ‘It’s like summer.’
‘Yes!’ she replied. ‘The minute the sun comes out you can feel it.’
Séverine, for her part, was thinking that Jacques would have to be unbelievably stupid not to realize that they were guilty. It must have been so obvious how they had tried to win him over; even now, she knew that she was sitting too close to him. In the silences which punctuated their banal conversation, she tried to gauge his thoughts. Their eyes met briefly. She could tell that he was wondering whether the black shape he had seen in the train had indeed been her, pinning down the victim’s legs with all her strength. What could she do, what could she say that would bind him to her irrevocably?
‘It was very cold in Le Havre this morning,’ she said.
‘There was a lot of rain, too,’ he replied.
Séverine had a sudden inspiration. She didn’t stop to reflect or think about it; it came to her instinctively, from somewhere deep within her psyche. Had she stopped to give it thought, she would have said nothing; she simply felt that it was the right thing to do. She could win him over merely by talking to him.
She gently took his hand in hers and looked at him. They were hidden from passers-by in the nearby street by the green covering of trees. The only sound to be heard was the distant rumble of traffic, reaching them faintly in the sunlit solitude of the park. At the end of the path, a child was silently absorbed in shovelling sand into a little bucket with a spade. Without any change in her voice, but with a sudden intensity of feeling, she quietly asked him, ‘Do you think I am guilty?’
He shuddered slightly and looked steadily into her eyes.
‘Yes, I do,’ he answered with the same quiet intensity in his voice as her.
She had kept his hand in hers and squeezed it more tightly. For a while she remained silent, sensing the two of them being drawn together in a rush of unspoken feeling.
‘You are mistaken,’ she said. ‘I am not guilty.’
This was not so much an attempt to convince Jacques as a plain assertion that in the eyes of the world she must surely be considered innocent. She hoped that by simply and steadfastly denying the truth she could make the truth go away.
‘I am not guilty,’ she repeated. ‘Please don’t continue to make me unhappy by thinking that I am.’
He looked into her eyes long and deeply, and her heart was gladdened.
She realized that what she had just done was to give herself to him. She had surrendered herself, and if later he claimed her, she would be unable to refuse. But there was now a bond between them, and it was indissoluble. She need no longer worry that he would denounce her; he was hers and she was his. She had confided in him and they were now united.
‘Promise me you won’t be unkind; tell me that you believe me.’
‘Yes, I believe you,’ he answered with a smile.
Why force her to go through all the painful details of this sordid affair? She would tell him about it in due course if she felt she needed to. He was deeply touched by the way she had sought to reassure herself, confiding in him whilst admitting nothing; it seemed a sign of great affection. She was so trusting, so vulnerable, with her soft periwinkle-blue eyes! She seemed to be pure womanhood, made for man, ready to submit herself to him in her search for happiness! Above all what pleased him, as they sat holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, was that she didn’t cause him to feel the dreadful unease, the terrifying sickness that usually came over him in the presence of a woman when he thought of possessing her. With other women he had not even been able to touch them without wanting to sink his teeth into them to satisfy his abominable appetite for slaughter. Was this the woman he could love, and not want to kill?
‘Rest assured that I am your friend,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘You have nothing to fear from me. I will not pry into your affairs, I promise you. I will do as you wish. You may make use of me as you choose.’
His face was now so close to hers that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his lips. Only that morning, sitting close to a woman like this would have made him tremble with fear, lest one of his dreadful attacks should begin. What was happening to him? He felt perfectly calm and pleasantly weary, like someone recovering from an illness. Now that he knew she had committed murder, she seemed different, more impressive, someone special. Perhaps she wasn’t merely an accomplice but had even done the deed herself. Jacques was convinced she had, although he had no proof. From that moment, as she sat there utterly oblivious of the fearful desire she aroused in him, she became as someone sacred to him, someone beyond the reach of mere reason.
They were both chatting happily away to each other like a couple who had just met and were beginning to fall in love.
‘You should let me take your other hand so that I can warm it in mine,’ he said.
‘Not here,’ she answered. ‘Someone might see us.’
‘Who’s going to see us here?’ he responded, ‘We’re alone ... Anyway, what harm would it do? That’s not how babies are made.’
‘I should hope not too!’ she exclaimed, laughing out loud.
She was delighted to know that he was now her friend. She didn’t love him; of that she was sure. She may have offered herself to him, but she was already thinking of ways she might refuse him. He seemed a decent sort of chap, someone who wouldn’t give her a lot of trouble; it was all working out very nicely.
‘Good!’ she said. ‘We are friends. That’s just a matter between you and me. No one else, not even my husband, need know about it. And now I think you should perhaps let go of my hand and stop staring at me. You’ll wear your eyes out.’
But he continued to hold her hand, her delicate fingers entwined in his.
‘I love you,’ he whispered softly into her ear.
She pulled her hand away quickly and stood up. Jacques remained seated on the bench.
‘Don’t be silly!’ she said. ‘Behave yourself, there’s somebody coming.’
A nursemaid was coming along the path towards them with a baby asleep in her arms. A young girl walked past, clearly in a hurry. The sun was beginning to sink, slipping beneath the horizon in a purplish haze; its rays gradually receded from the lawns and faded in a cloud of gold over the green tops of the pine trees. A sudden lull seemed to interrupt the continuous rumble of traffic. A nearby clock struck five.
‘Goodness me!’ exclaimed Séverine. ‘It’s five o’clock. I’m supposed to be seeing someone in the Rue du Rocher.’
Her joy quickly faded. Once again the agony of not knowing returned as she remembered that she was still not out of danger. She went very pale, and her lips trembled.
‘What about the foreman you wanted to see at the engine shed?’ said Jacques, standing up and offering her his arm.
‘It can’t be helped,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to see him some other time. Look, Jacques, you don’t need to stay with me; I can go on my own. What I have to do won’t take me long. Thank you for looking after me. It really was very good of you.’
She shook his hand and rushed off.
‘I’ll see you on the train,’ she called.
‘I’ll be there,’ he shouted back.
She hurried away and disappeared between the trees in the square. Jacques wandered slowly back towards the Rue Cardinet.
Monsieur Camy-Lamotte had been having a long conversation with the General Manager of the Western Railway Company. He had originally been called there to discuss some other matter but had spent most of the time remonstrating with the Secretary-General about how much damage the Grandmorin affair was doing to the Company’s reputation. There had been complaints in the newspapers about the lack of security for passengers who were travelling first class. In addition, the affair now implicated nearly every member of his staff, several of whom were actually suspected of being involved, not to mention this Roubaud character, who had more to answer for than most and who might be arrested at any moment. To make matters worse, there were all sorts of unpleasant rumours circulating about the President’s private life and, because he had been on the board of directors, it reflected badly on the entire management. The end result was that a supposed crime by one insignificant assistant stationmaster, who no doubt had some sordid personal grudge to settle, was spreading upwards through the whole organization and upsetting the entire operational system of a major railway company, including its board of directors. In fact, the repercussions of the affair went even further. It affected the ministry and threatened the state. These were uncertain times, politically. They had reached a critical juncture in which the whole social structure was at risk; the least sign of infection could precipitate its collapse. Monsieur Camy-Lamotte realized this only too well, which was why, when the General Manager had announced that the Company had that morning decided to dismiss Roubaud, he had resolutely opposed the idea. No, he had insisted, that could prove awkward. The press would be up in arms if it thought that we were trying to make Roubaud a political scapegoat. Everything could fall apart. God knew what other unsavoury revelations might come to light! The scandal had gone on too long. They needed to put an end to all the gossip as soon as possible. The General Manager was eventually persuaded and undertook to keep Roubaud on, even allowing him to remain at Le Havre. It would be made clear that there was no blame attached to anyone. The problem had been dealt with, and the inquiry would be shelved.
When Séverine once again found herself in Monsieur Camy-Lamotte’s austerely furnished study, she was out of breath, and her heart was beating rapidly. The Secretary-General looked at her for a moment in silence, fascinated by the extraordinary effort she was making to appear calm. Yes, he thought to himself, she was most attractive, this shy little criminal with her bright blue eyes!