Act of Passion (24 page)

I killed her that she might live, and our eyes continued to embrace to the very end.

To the very end, your Honour. After that our immobility, hers and mine, was identical. My hand was still round her neck, and it stayed there for a long time.

I closed her eyes. I kissed them. I rose, staggering, and I am not sure what I would have done if, at that moment, I had not heard a key turning in the lock. It was Elise coming home.

You heard what she said, both in court and in your office. She did nothing but repeat:

'Monsieur was very calm, but he didn't seem like an ordinary man ...'

I said to her:

'Get the police.. .'

I never thought of the telephone. I waited for a long time sitting on the edge of the bed.

And it was during those moments that I realized one thing: that I would have to live, for, so long as I lived, my Martine would live.

She was in me. I bore her within me as she had borne me. The Other was dead, for ever, but as long as there was one human being, myself, to keep the real Martine in him, the real Martine would continue to exist.

Wasn't that why I had killed the Other?

That, your Honour, is why I have lived, why I endured the trial, that is why I didn't want your pity, yours or anybody's, or all those tricks that might have got me acquitted. That is why I don't want to be pronounced mad, or irresponsible.

For Martine.

For the real Martine.

So that I shall really have delivered her. So that our love may live, and it is only in me that it can live.

I am not mad. I am just a man, a man like other men, but a man who has loved, who knows what love is.

I shall live in her, with her, for her, as long as I possibly can, and if I imposed upon myself this waiting, if I inflicted on myself that sort of circus which was called a trial, it was so that she, no matter what the cost, may continue to live in someone.

If I am writing you this long letter, it is so that the day I finally weigh anchor, someone will succeed to our heritage, so that my Martine and her love will never wholly die.

We went as far as it was possible to go. We did all we possibly could.

We wanted the totality of love.

Goodbye, your Honour.

Chapter Eleven

The very day that examining magistrate Coméliau, 22 bis Rue de Seine, Paris, received this letter, the newspaper announced that Dr Charles Alavoine, born at Bourgneuf in the Vendee, had committed suicide in the infirmary of the prison, under rather mysterious circumstances.

'In deference to his past life and his profession
,
and considering his calmness and what the chief doctor of the prison calls his good humour
,
he was sometimes
left
alone
for a few
moments in the infirmary where he was receiving medical attention.

'He
had access
,
in this way
,
to the cabinet where toxic drugs are
kept
and was able to poison himself
.
'An
inquiry has been opened.'