The Beast Within (31 page)

On the footplate, Jacques, warmly dressed in woollen trousers and smock,
⁸
and wearing a pair of goggles with felt eye protectors fastened at the back of his head beneath his cap, kept a careful eye on the road ahead. He stood on the right-hand side of the cab, leaning out of the window to get a better view, constantly shaken by the vibration of the locomotive, which he hardly seemed to notice. He had his right hand on the reversing wheel,
⁹
like a pilot at the helm of his ship, gradually turning it by degrees in order to increase or decrease the speed of the train, while with his left hand he kept tugging at the whistle, for the way out of Paris is awkward to negotiate. He sounded the whistle at level-crossings, stations, tunnels and sharp curves. In the distance he saw a signal shining red in the fading light. He gave a long blast on the whistle to ask for the road, and the train thundered past. From time to time he glanced at the pressure gauge, turning the injector
¹⁰
on whenever the pressure reached ten kilogrammes. But his eyes quickly returned to the line ahead, looking out for anything that might hinder their progress, with such concentration that he saw nothing else and was not even aware of the wind that blew into his face like a gale. The pressure gauge dropped; Jacques lifted the ratchet on the firebox door and opened it. Pecqueux, from long familiarity, understood what had to be done. With his hammer he broke up coal from the tender and shovelled it evenly over the full width of the grate. They could feel the scorching heat from the fire burning their legs. Then, the firebox door was shut again, and the cold air returned.

It was getting dark, and Jacques needed to be even more vigilant. Rarely had he known
La Lison
respond so well. She was his to command, and he rode her as he willed, in total mastery. Not once did he relax his hold on her, treating her like a tamed animal that needs to be handled with caution. Behind him in the train, hurtling along at full speed, he pictured the delicate figure of Séverine, smiling happily and confidently entrusting herself to his care. The thought sent a slight shudder through him, and he gripped the reversing wheel more tightly. He peered intently into the gathering darkness, on the look-out for signals at red. Once past the junctions at Asnières and Colombes, he breathed more easily. Everything went well as far as Mantes; the line was dead level, and it was an easy run for the train. Beyond Mantes the engine had to be driven harder in order to climb a fairly steep incline for nearly half a league. Then, without any easing up, he ran her down through the Rolleboise tunnel, a gentle descent of two kilometres, which she covered in scarcely three minutes. There remained only one further tunnel - Roule, near Gaillon - before they reached Sotteville, a notorious station that needed to be approached with the utmost care, due to the great number of sidings, the continual shunting operations and the constant movement of trains. Every ounce of his energy was concentrated in his eyes, which were fixed on the track ahead, and his hand, which controlled the locomotive.
La Lison
rushed through Sotteville with her whistle shrieking, leaving behind her a long trail of smoke. She didn’t stop until she reached Rouen. After a brief rest, she set off again, more slowly, climbing the incline up to Malaunay.

The moon had risen, very clear, casting a pale light on the surrounding countryside; despite the speed at which the train was travelling, Jacques could make out small bushes growing beside the railway line and the individual stones used to surface the roads. As they came out of the tunnel at Malaunay, Jacques looked quickly to his right, having noticed a shadow cast across the line by a tall tree, and recognized in a tangle of undergrowth the lonely spot from which he had seen the murder. The countryside rushed past, wild and bare - a continual succession of hills and dark, tree-filled valleys, a desolate wasteland. At La Croix-de-Maufras, Jacques saw the house, standing at an angle to the railway line, with the moon motionless in the sky above it, its shutters, as always, closed, the whole place abandoned and forlorn, cheerless and forbidding. He didn’t know why, but once again, and this time more than ever before, he felt his heart grow chill, as if the place boded him some misfortune.

Seconds later, another image assailed his eyes - Flore, leaning against the level-crossing gate next to the Misards’ house. Nowadays, she was there every time he made this journey, waiting, looking out for him. She stood perfectly still, simply turning her head so that she could follow him for a moment or two longer as the train whisked him past her. All Jacques saw was a tall, dark shadow outlined against the night sky and a glimpse of golden hair shining in the pale light of the moon.

Jacques worked
La Lison
hard up the Motteville incline and then allowed her to coast along the level section through Bolbec before a final burst of speed over the three leagues between Saint-Romain and Harfleur, down the steepest gradient on the line, a stretch which locomotives charge over, like horses galloping madly for the stable when they sense they are near home. By the time the train reached Le Havre, Jacques was exhausted. Séverine got down from her carriage, but before going up to her apartment, she ran along the platform under the station roof, amidst all the smoke and noise of the train’s arrival, went up to Jacques and said sweetly, ‘Thank you, Jacques. See you tomorrow.’

A month went by. Calm had returned to the Roubauds’ apartment above the waiting rooms on the first floor of the station building. For the Roubauds, for their neighbours along the corridor and for everyone employed at the station, life had begun to return to its old monotonous pattern, measured by the clock and the repetitive sameness of the daily routine. It seemed that nothing violent or out of the ordinary had ever happened.

The scandal and rumours surrounding the Grandmorin affair were quietly being forgotten. The trial was to be postponed indefinitely, because the law seemed incapable of identifying the criminal. Cabuche had been detained for a further fortnight, at which point Monsieur Denizet, the examining magistrate, had dismissed the charge against him on grounds of insufficient evidence. The murder became a subject of romanticized fantasy - centred on a mysterious and elusive killer, a devotee of crime, in all places at the same time, blamed for every murder that was perpetrated, and who vanished in a puff of smoke the minute the police arrived on the scene. Occasional jokes about the mythical assassin continued to appear in the opposition newspapers, all of which were now devoting their energies to the forthcoming general elections. The general state of political tension and the harsh measures being taken by the local prefects provided them with a daily supply of other material to get their teeth into. They lost interest in the Grandmorin affair. It had ceased to be a matter of public concern. It was no longer even talked about.

What finally restored calm to the Roubauds’ household was the fact that the legal complications, which the implementation of President Grandmorin’s will had threatened to raise, had been successfully ironed out. At the insistence of Madame Bonnehon, the Lachesnayes had eventually agreed not to contest the will. It risked reawakening the scandal, and there was no guarantee that their objection would be upheld. Consequently, the Roubauds had received their legacy and for the last week had been the owners of La Croix-de-Maufras. The house and garden were valued at about forty thousand francs. They had immediately decided to sell it. It was a place associated with murder and debauchery and it haunted them like a nightmare. They would never have dared sleep there for fear of ghosts from the past. They had decided to sell it as it stood, with the furniture intact, without having it repaired and without even sweeping up the dust. Thinking that it would fetch very little at a public auction, there being few people likely to want a house in such an out-of-the-way spot, they had decided to wait until someone showed any interest and had simply fixed a large notice on the front of the house which could be read from the passing trains. The announcement in large letters ‘Abandoned House for Sale’ merely emphasized the desolate character of the place, with its shutters closed and the garden overrun by brambles. Roubaud wanted nothing to do with the house; he refused to go near it. So, as certain arrangements needed to be made, one afternoon, Séverine went there herself. She left the keys with the Misards, with instructions to show prospective buyers over the property, should there be any. Anyone wanting to do so could have moved in immediately; there was even linen in the cupboards.

The Roubauds’ worries were over. They lived each day in quiet expectation of the next. Sooner or later the house would be sold. They would invest the money, and their difficulties would be at an end. In fact, they forgot all about it, happy to remain in the three rooms they were living in - the dining room, which opened directly on to the corridor, the large bedroom to the right and the tiny, airless kitchen to the left. Even the station roof, sloping up in front of their windows, blocking the view and hemming them in like a prison wall, instead of infuriating them as it used to do, seemed to have a calming effect and added to the sense of perfect repose, peace and tranquillity which enveloped them. At least they couldn’t be seen by the neighbours and they didn’t have nosey people constantly peering in at them. Their only cause for complaint, now that spring had come, was the stifling heat and the dazzling reflections that came off the cladding of the station roof when it was heated by the early-morning sun. After the dreadful trauma that for nearly two months had kept them in a state of constant trepidation, they were blissfully happy to be free from care. They just wanted to stay where they were, to exist, without feeling afraid or worried sick. Never had Roubaud displayed such commitment and dedication to his job. During the weeks he was on day shift, he would be down on the platform by five in the morning, would not return for a meal until ten, would be back at work by eleven and would then continue without a break until five in the evening - a full eleven hours on duty. During the weeks he was on night shift, he would be on duty from five in the evening to five in the morning without even taking a break for a meal at home, snatching a bite to eat in his office. It was a demanding workload. Yet he shouldered it without complaint and seemed even to enjoy it. He overlooked nothing, insisting on inspecting and doing things himself, as if by working himself to a standstill he had found a way of forgetting, a way of once more living a normal, balanced existence. Séverine for her part found herself more often than not on her own, a widow one week in two, and during the other week only seeing her husband for lunch and dinner. She seemed to develop an obsession for housework. Previously she had sat about doing needlework; she hated housework and had left it to Madame Simon, an old lady who came in every day from nine till midday. But now that she felt happier to be at home and was sure that they would be staying there, she had an irresistible urge to do the cleaning and make things tidy. She would only sit down when everything had been seen to. Both she and her husband were sleeping well. On the rare occasions they had a chance to speak to each other, over meals, or on the nights they slept together, the murder was never mentioned. The whole thing seemed to be dead and buried.

For Séverine, life once more became very pleasant. She left the housework to Madame Simon and resumed her life of idleness, like a young lady of leisure whose sole purpose in life was to sit making delicate embroideries. Her present piece of handiwork was an embroidered bedspread, an endless undertaking that might have lasted her a lifetime. She rose quite late, happy to remain in bed on her own, lulled by the departure and arrival of trains which marked the passing hours as precisely as a clock. In the early days of her marriage, the noises from the station had disturbed her - engines blowing their whistles, turntables being slammed into position, rumblings and sudden vibrations like earthquakes that made her shake, along with all the furniture. But gradually she had grown accustomed to it; the station with all its noise and bustle had become a part of her life, and now she liked it. Its clamour and activity brought her a strange peace of mind. She would wander from one room to another until it was time for lunch, chatting with her cleaner and doing nothing. She would then spend the whole afternoon sitting in front of the dining-room window, her needlework more often than not lying untouched on her lap, happy to be left undisturbed. The weeks when her husband returned to bed in the early morning and lay snoring until evening were the weeks that Séverine looked forward to most, weeks when she could live as she used to do before she was married, with the bed to herself, and doing just as she pleased all day long. She hardly ever went out; all she saw of Le Havre was the smoke from the factories near by, great black clouds swirling up into the sky above the zinc-clad ridge of the station roof, which shut off the horizon a few metres in front of her. Beyond this immovable wall lay the town; she sensed its presence constantly. But her irritation at not being able to see it gradually softened. She had put five or six pots of wallflowers and verbena in the valley of the station roof
¹
and she tended them with care; they provided her with a little garden and brought a touch of colour into her life of solitude. Sometimes she spoke of herself as a recluse living in the depths of a wood. Whenever he had nothing else to do, Roubaud would climb out through the window on his own, walk along the valley to the end of the station roof, clamber up to the ridge and sit looking down at the Cours Napoléon. He would take out his pipe and sit smoking, high up in the sky, with the town spread out beneath him - the docks with their forest of tall masts and the wide open sea, pale green, stretching to the ends of the earth.

A similar sort of lethargy appeared to have affected the Roubauds’ neighbours. The corridor on which they lived, which was normally buzzing with rumour and gossip, was now silent. When Philomène came to call on Madame Lebleu, they hardly raised their voices. Both women had been surprised by the way things had turned out and now, when they spoke of Roubaud, it was with a mixture of scorn and pity. It was quite obvious what madame had got up to in Paris in order to keep him in a job! Anyway, Roubaud’s name was mud, and nothing would ever convince them he was innocent. The cashier’s wife was now confident that her neighbours were no longer in a position to take her apartment from her and she treated them with contempt, walking past them very stiffly and refusing to acknowledge them. In the end she even managed to alienate Philomène, who came to see her less and less, finding her too stuck up and irritating. Madame Lebleu, for want of anything better to do, still kept an eye open for any goings-on between Mademoiselle Guichon and the stationmaster, Monsieur Dabadie, not that she ever discovered anything. In the corridor the only sound to be heard was the shuffle of her felt slippers. One day followed another, and nothing stirred. A whole month went by. Peace reigned. After all the turmoil, everything seemed to sink into a deep slumber.