Monsieur Monde Vanishes (2 page)

“In a moment.”

She remained standing. No doubt her two feet, in their trim shoes with inordinately high heels, were resting on the dirty floor; nonetheless she gave the impression of being perched on one leg, like a heron. She saw nobody. She stared icily down at nothing in particular, perhaps at the cinders that had rolled out of the stove, and her lips were quivering like those of old women at prayer in church.

A door opened. The Superintendent appeared.

“Madame? …”

He closed the door behind her, waved her to a chair upholstered in green cloth, then walked slowly around his Empire-style desk, with her visiting card in his hand, and sat down.

“Madame Monde?” he queried.

“Yes, Madame Monde. I live at 27b, Rue Ballu.”

And she glared at the smoldering cigar butt which the Superintendent had crushed out in the ash tray.

“And what can I do for you?”

“I have come to let you know that my husband has disappeared.”

“Very good … Excuse me.…”

He reached out for a writing pad and picked up a silver pencil.

“Your husband, you said? …”

“My husband disappeared three days ago.”

“Three days … Then he's been missing since January 13.”

“Yes; it was on the 13th that I saw him last.”

She was wearing a black astrakhan coat that gave out a faint scent of violets, and her gloved fingers were twisting a flimsy handkerchief steeped in the same perfume.

“A sort of widow,” the secretary had announced.

But she was not a widow, or at least she had certainly not been one on January 13, since at that date she still had a husband. Why did the Superintendent feel that she ought to have been one?

“Forgive me if I don't know Monsieur Monde, but I was only appointed to this district a few months ago.”

He was waiting, ready to take notes.

“My husband is Norbert Monde. You have no doubt heard of the firm of Monde and Company, brokers and exporters, whose offices and warehouses are on Rue Montorgueil?”

He nodded, more from politeness than from conviction.

“My husband was born and has always lived in the house on Rue Ballu where we still live.”

He nodded again.

“He was forty-eight years old.… I've just remembered: it was actually on his forty-eighth birthday that he disappeared.…”

“January 13 … And you've not the slightest idea? …”

No doubt the visitor's stiff bearing and tight-lipped air implied that she had not the slightest idea.

“I suppose you want us to investigate?”

Her contemptuous pout might mean that this was obvious or, on the other hand, that she did not care.

“So then … January 13 … You must forgive me for asking: had your husband any reason to attempt suicide?”

“None whatever.”

“His financial position?”

“The firm of Monde, which was founded by his grandfather Antonin Monde in 1843, is one of the soundest in Paris.”

“Your husband did not speculate or gamble?”

On the mantelpiece, behind the Superintendent, there stood a black marble clock that had permanently stopped at five minutes past twelve. Why did this always suggest twelve midnight rather than twelve noon? The fact is that one always thought of five minutes past midnight when one looked at it. Beside it there stood a noisy alarm clock that told the right time. It was right in front of Madame Monde's eyes, yet she kept twisting her long thin neck to look at the time on a tiny watch that she wore fastened to her dress, like a locket.

“If we rule out money worries … I suppose, madame, your husband hadn't any personal problems? … I'm sorry to be so persistent.”

“My husband hadn't a mistress, if that's what you mean.”

He dared not ask her if she herself had a lover. It was too improbable.

“His health?”

“He's never been ill in his life.”

“Good … Very good … Right … Will you tell me what were your husband's movements that day, January 13?”

“He got up at seven as usual. He has always gone to bed and risen early.”

“Excuse me; do you share the same bedroom?”

A curt, unfriendly “Yes.”

“He got up at seven and went to his bathroom, where in spite of … never mind … where he smoked his first cigarette. Then he went downstairs.”

“You were still in bed?”

The same stony “Yes.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“He said good-by as he always does.”

“Did you remember then that it was his birthday?”

“No.”

“He went downstairs, you said …”

“And had breakfast in his study. It's a room that he never uses for work, but which he's fond of. The big bay window has stained glass in it. The furniture is more or less Gothic.”

She must have disliked stained-glass windows and Gothic furniture, or perhaps she'd had other plans for the use of that room which her husband had insisted on keeping as a study.

“Have you many servants?”

“A concierge and his wife; she does the rough work and he acts as butler. We have a cook and a housemaid as well. I don't include Joseph the chauffeur, who is married and lives out. I usually get up at nine, after I have given Rosalie the orders for the day.… Rosalie is my maid … She was with me before my marriage.… I mean before my second marriage.…”

“So Monsieur Monde was your second husband?”

“I was first married to Lucien Grandpré, who was killed fourteen years ago in a motor accident.… Every year he used to compete, as an amateur, in the twenty-four-hour race at Le Mans.…”

In the waiting room, the people sitting on the greasy bench moved up one place from time to time, and others slipped out humbly, barely opening the door.

“In short, everything was just as usual that morning?”

“Just as usual. I heard the car start off about half past eight to drive my husband to Rue Montorgueil. He liked to read his mail himself and that's why he went to the office so early. His son left a quarter of an hour after him.”

“Your husband had a son by a first marriage?”

“We each had one. He has a married daughter, too. She and her husband lived with us for a while, but now they're living on Quai de Passy.”

“Good … very good … Did your husband actually go to his office?”

“Yes.”

“Did he come home for lunch?”

“He nearly always lunched in a restaurant close to Les Halles, not far from his office.”

“When did you begin to feel anxious?”

“That evening, about eight o'clock.”

“In short, you've not seen him again since the morning of January 13?”

“I called him up soon after three to ask him to send Joseph along with the car, as I had to go out.”

“Did he sound his usual self when he spoke to you over the telephone?”

“Absolutely.”

“He didn't tell you he would be late, or mention the possibility of a journey?”

“No.”

“He just failed to come home to dinner at eight o'clock? Is that right?”

“That's right.”

“And since then he's given no sign of life. I suppose they've seen nothing of him in the office either?”

“No.”

“And what time did he leave Rue Montorgueil?”

“About six. He never told me, but I knew that instead of coming straight home he used to stop at the Cintra, a café on Rue Montmartre, for a drink.”

“Did he go there that evening?”

With dignity: “I have no idea.”

“May I ask you, madame, why you have waited three whole days before coming to inform us of Monsieur Monde's disappearance?”

“I kept hoping he would come back.”

“Was he likely to go off like this?”

“It never happened before.”

“Did he never have to go off into the provinces suddenly on business?”

“Never.”

“And yet you went on waiting for him for three days?”

Without replying, she stared at him with her little black eyes.

“I suppose you informed his daughter, who, you tell me, is married and lives on Quai de Passy?”

“She came to the house herself and behaved in such a way that I had to throw her out.”

“You don't get on with your stepdaughter?”

“We never see one another. At least, not for the last two years.”

“But your husband still saw her?”

“She used to hunt him out in his office when she needed money.”

“If I understand you correctly, your stepdaughter recently needed money and went to Rue Montorgueil to ask her father for some. I suppose he usually gave it to her?”

“Yes.”

“And there she learned that Monsieur Monde had not reappeared.”

“Probably.”

“And then she rushed off to Rue Ballu.”

“Where she tried to get into the study and search the drawers.”

“Have you any idea what she wanted to find?”

Silence.

“In short, supposing Monsieur Monde should be dead, which seems to me unlikely …”

“Why?”

“… unlikely, the question would arise whether he had left a will. What were the terms of your marriage?”

“Separate maintenance. I have an income of my own and some property on Avenue de Villiers.…”

“What is your stepson's opinion about his father's disappearance?”

“He hasn't got one.”

“Is he still on Rue Ballu?”

“Yes.”

“Did your husband make any arrangements before he left? About his business affairs, for instance. I suppose these require some working capital.…”

“The cashier, Monsieur Lorisse, has his signature.…”

“Did the cashier find the usual sums in the bank?”

“No. That's the point. On January 13, just before six, my husband went to the bank.”

“It must have been closed?”

“To the general public, yes. Not to him. The clerks work late, and he went in by the side door. He withdrew three hundred thousand francs, which he had had in his account.”

“So that next day the cashier was in difficulties?”

“No, not next day. He had no important deal to put through that day. It was not until yesterday that he needed to pay out certain sums, and then he learned that the money had been withdrawn.”

“If I understand correctly, your husband, when he disappeared, left no money either for his business or for yourself and his children?”

“That's not quite correct. The greater part of his capital, represented by various securities, is in his safe at the bank. Now he has withdrawn nothing from the safe lately, he has not even visited it, so the bank manager tells me. As for the key, it was in its usual place at home, in a small drawer in his desk.”

“Have you power of attorney?”

“Yes.”

“In that case …” he said, with unintentional off-handedness.

“I went to the bank. I had promised the cashier to let him have the money. I was refused access to the safe on the pretext that I could not certify that my spouse was still living, according to the accepted formula.”

The Superintendent heaved a sigh, and nearly took a cigar out of his case. He had understood. He was in for it.

“So you want us to make an investigation?”

She merely stared at him once again, then rose, twisting her neck to look at the time.

A minute later she walked through the waiting room, where the woman in the shawl, leaning sideways under the weight of the baby she was carrying on her arm, was humbly explaining that for the last five days, ever since her husband had been arrested during a brawl, she had been penniless.

When Madame Monde had crossed the sidewalk, on which the police-station lamp shed a red glow, and when Joseph the chauffeur had swiftly opened the door of the car and closed it behind her, she gave him the address of her lawyer, whom she had left an hour previously and who was expecting her return.

Everything she had told the Superintendent was true, but sometimes nothing is less true than the truth.

Monsieur Monde had wakened at seven o'clock in the morning; noiselessly, and without letting any cold air under the covers, he had slipped out of the bed where his wife lay motionless. This was his invariable habit. Each morning, he pretended to believe she was asleep. He avoided lighting the bedside lamp, and crept around the huge bed in the darkness, which was streaked by faint gleams of light filtering through the shutters; barefooted, holding his slippers in his hand. And yet he knew that if he glanced at the pillow he would see his wife's little black eyes gleaming.

Only when he reached the bathroom did he take a deep breath; he turned the bath on full and plugged in his electric razor.

He was a stout, or more precisely a corpulent, man. His scanty hair was fair, and in the morning, when it was ruffled, it gave his rosy face a childish look.

Even his blue eyes, all the time he watched himself in the glass while shaving, wore an expression of surprise that was like a child's. It was as if every morning, when he emerged from the ageless world of sleep, Monsieur Monde felt surprised to meet in his mirror a middle-aged man with wrinkled eyelids and a prominent nose topping a sandy toothbrush mustache.

Pouting at himself to stretch the skin under the razor, he invariably forgot the running bath water and would rush to the faucets just as the sound of the overflow betrayed him, through the door, to Madame Monde.

When he had finished shaving he would look at himself a little longer, complacently yet with a certain pang of regret because he was no longer the chubby, somewhat ingenuous young man he had once been, and could not get used to the idea of being already embarked on the downward slope of life.

That morning, in the bathroom, he had remembered that he was just forty-eight years old. That was all. He was forty-eight. Soon he would be fifty. He felt tired. In the warm water he stretched out his muscles as though to shake off the fatigue accumulated during all those years.