The Stone Boy (24 page)

“Don’t get worked up, Doctor.”

Then something unusual happened: someone rang the bell for the second time, and it was only nine o’clock.

“One of your colleagues?” Martin asked.

“I came alone.”

“Don’t bother, Martin, I’ll get it!” Audrette shouted down the stairs.

She put on a jacket and went out. Martin took the opportunity of the break to go to the toilet. He was fuming. How many times had he heard that? That his mother should be in a straitjacket? “A tea party turned massacre” the headlines would read in the “other news” column in the papers.
Paris Match
had rereleased images dating back to the time of the trial, and
Detective
was making it their cover story. Several journalists and two law firms in Paris had already tried to contact Martin at his office. Fortunately the ICU enforced truly draconian visiting policies when it came to accessing his mother’s room—otherwise Elsa Préau would already be naked on the Internet. The media technology was clearly superior to that used during the trial. How soon before an iPhone app and SMS voting can decide whether or not Madame Préau should live or die?

And so the
danse macabre
began again.

Martin lifted the lid of the toilet and relieved himself.

Audrette returned a minute later.

“A Christmas present from my parents,” she said, walking across the living room and kissing her husband on the cheek before he sat back down on the couch.

She disappeared into her office with the package under her arm, leaving a scent of vanilla in her wake. Still on the edge of his seat, the police officer waited, almost smiling.

“Do you have other questions to ask me?” asked Martin darkly.

“One or two, Doctor, don’t you worry. I was a bit clumsy just now…”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“What I wanted to tell you, actually, was that with regard to the search, knowing that your mother had knowingly put the sleeping pills in the cakes, knowing that, according to Mr. Desmoulins’s testimony, at the time of the assault she was not of sound mind, and taking into account the fact that she had stopped taking her medication, it’s hard to imagine that this story about the abused kid is true. Rather, it would be all the more reason to suspect—to quote Dr. Mamnoue from memory—a hallucination linked to her mental illness. Do you know what that means?”

“But the ball in the fridge, the bloody stones… you’d have to take samples, analyze and compare the DNA with the guy my mother suspects of having beaten the kid and who then literally butchered her!”

“Mr. Desmoulins defended himself. He defended his family.”

“You can’t say that! Did you see the state my mother was in?”

“In an assault, appearances are often deceiving.”

“But… what about the little girl’s drawing?”

“For us, the investigation stops here, Doctor.”

Martin felt his stomach heave. He felt as sick as a dog.

“You can’t do that! There’s the photo my mother talked about. Did you ever find it? And what about her notebooks? It seems that she wrote everything down in notebooks. She hid them somewhere in the house… You have to go back to her place and look for them!”

“That’s up to the prosecutor to decide. You seem to forget, Doctor, that whatever her motivations, your mother committed a crime. And it wasn’t the first time.”

Martin stood up and took a few steps toward the bay window. Frost hemmed the yellow leaves on the trees in the garden. He ran a hand over his stomach to calm the nervous spasms. Everyone was accusing his mother. Poisoning, assault with her own hammer, irrefutable evidence of premeditation. The report from the search pointed in the direction of a confused mental state. This time, Madame Préau wouldn’t escape a chemical straitjacket; they would destroy her brain cells and turn her into a vegetable.

“The prosecution is going to have trouble putting my mother on the stand,” Martin quipped.

“That’s what he’ll set about doing if she ever opens her eyes.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Sevran stood, too, making his knees crack.

“Mr. Desmoulins will probably be investigated for involuntary manslaughter of a vulnerable person.”

So Martin wished the best for his mother: “Ah, well. Let’s hope she dies.”

The day that Madame Préau died was a magnificent November day. The red and gold leaves blazed in the town. The sun warmed the façades of the graying buildings on Rue Jean Jaurès, and Audrette filled bags with dead leaves on the garden path. She did not expect to see Martin turn up in front of her in the middle of the afternoon, bag in hand, like a student expelled from school, eyes bloodshot. She took off her gardening gloves and went up to him, her muddy rubber boots weighing down her steps. Martin noticed that her nose and cheeks were pearly pink in the sunlight, and that the old and threadbare sweater she wore to work in the garden was too wide for her; it had belonged to him when he was still in medical school. She had appropriated it the first day they made love, slipping it over her bare skin to cross his room and go to the toilet on the landing. Martin had coveted that sweater back then.

“You’re home early,” Audrette said softly, hugging her husband.

Martin didn’t have the courage to say the words. The man just dropped his bag and squeezed his wife in his arms. They stayed like that until they went numb.

By nightfall, Mr. Philippe Desmoulins had been taken into custody and presented to the prosecution. He was being investigated for the involuntary manslaughter of a vulnerable person, taken before the judge, released on bail, and required to appear at the police station once a week for the duration of the trial.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is ChildLine. I’m listening…”

“A lady told me I could call this number…”

“Yes, hello. I’m listening to you.”

“She gives me piano lessons. She told me that this was a secret number and that she knew it because she was a teacher before. But it’s not a secret number.”

“No. It’s a number you must have seen on a poster in your school.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why children call this number?”

“Yes. When someone’s hurting them.”

“What’s your name?”

“… My name is Laurie.”

“Hello, Laurie. Could you tell me how old you are?”

“I’m seven years old.”

“My name’s Odile and I’m here to help you. Now that we know each other’s names, can you tell me why you called?”

“For Kévin.”

“Who is Kévin?”

“My little brother.”

“Are you worried about your little brother?”

“Yes. Because of my dad.”

“Your daddy isn’t nice to your brother?”

“No.”

“Does he hurt him?”

“… I wouldn’t want Kévin to go down into the basement.”

“Why are you afraid of your brother going into the basement?”

“…”

“Laurie, has your dad been violent toward you?”

“No, not with me, with my other brother… I hafta hang up, my granny has come home…”

“Laurie, can you tell me where you’re calling us from?”

“From my granny’s house.”

“What town does your granny live in?”

“In Auxerre.”

“And you, what town do you live in?”

“I can’t tell you… I have to go…”

“Laurie… Hello?”

The death of Madame Préau had two notable effects on her son. He stopped biting his nails, and he started to lose his hair. Audrette’s grief manifested itself differently. Three weeks after her mother-in-law’s funeral, she became pregnant.

The couple was euphoric for a short while—a month and a half. Before the miscarriage. But the hope of an unborn baby had well and truly taken hold. Martin’s wife was determined. She fell pregnant in the next six weeks and gained weight quickly, as if she were fortifying the walls of a castle. This time, life stuck.

The press had shown surprising discretion with respect to Martin. When the evil grandmother left the stage, leaving the audience with a dry trial, the media hype dropped off completely, the journalists in a sulk. Martin mourned unthinkingly, working through the administrative details of his mother’s death, filling out forms, shaking unknown hands. At the reading of the will, which had been written before 1997, he wasn’t at all surprised to learn that his mother had bequeathed her house to Bastien. However, a clause stipulated that in case of the death of the heir, the property valued at seven hundred thousand euros would go to a charity dedicated to child protection, provided that the latter resell it to
a couple with children
. Martin inherited everything else. A hundred thousand euro in various savings accounts, and furniture, which he quickly divested himself of by contacting Emmaus. Martin only kept a few family heirlooms and the small inlaid table he had given his mother for her last birthday. To this was added thirty boxes filled with personal effects: memories of thousands of students in plastic bags, and various personal and other letters, photographs, collections of old postcards. Finally, Martin’s father had not been forgotten: he received the Gaveau “in memory of wonderful childhood memories shared around Erik Satie.” The instrument was the weight of ten dead donkeys. It would be difficult to slide it into a FedEx package to Montreal.

“The bitch!” was Audrette’s only comment on the misadventure of the disinherited son.

At his surgery, Dr. Préau’s patients did not fail to offer their condolences—with or without an ulterior motive. Some, those with a parent suffering from mental illness, shared his grief sincerely. The few hateful anonymous letters that he received in the weeks following the attack at the Desmoulins family home had dried up.

When he was coming home at night, lowering the car window to breathe in the fragrances spilling out of the gardens of suburban houses on the edge of town, aromas of roses, laburnum, and lilac, and wafts of skewers and merguez sausage, Dr. Préau allowed himself to have some hope. If he left the task of organizing the house in anticipation of its new residents to Audrette, unable to project himself into the future, he willingly indulged ironing—a static activity Audrette discouraged. Since the age of six, Martin had acquired a true mastery of this skill, thus easily earning his pocket money. He knew how to do the basics, set the table, vaccum and dust, and many other household chores shared willy-nilly with his mother. She had been preparing him constantly for his future role as a husband—or as the perfect bachelor. Once the clothes were folded and put away in the wardrobe, Martin ran aground on the sofa against his wife, one hand on her little round stomach, and slept for about twenty-two hours, sated with tenderness.

In a year or two, the trial would take place; he would be called to testify, as would Dr. Mamnoue, and he would try to rehabilitate the memory of his mother, in vain. Dead Elsa Préau was no longer of interest to anyone.

He had forgotten the beauty mark. Discreet, below the left cheek, and that gently parted mouth, as if a regret might escape from it, a sweet nothing, a silly comment. She was there, a few meters away from him, sitting in the waiting room, her coat on his knees, alone. Some ten years had passed. Martin remembered when and how he had made love to this woman. Forcefully, three times, almost bloody-mindedly. Why her and not the others? She wasn’t even the first of a series of sentimental dalliances. Curled up on a chair, she seemed smaller and severe.

Maybe it was the boots and turtleneck? And him? What was he like in his wide-wale velvet jacket and Timberlands?

“Valérie?”

A lock of hair fell into her face. She pushed it aside, staring at the man who stood in the hallway, bag in hand.

“Hello, Doctor.”

She smiled. It was half past two; Martin was returning from his lunch break. With a gesture, he invited her to follow him into his office. Rising, she unfolded the body he had enjoyed, and which still troubled him. Her figure had gained in years, curves, and abundance. He hurried to close the door behind her.

“Valérie Tremblay… The last I heard about you was at a police station.”

“I’m still working there.”

They exchanged a friendly kiss.

“How are you? What are you up to? Do have a seat.”

After a brief exchange about their lives, in which each pretended to have found a good balance, Valérie explained why she was there, which owed nothing to chance. The social worker hadn’t come to choose a new referring physician, either. And what she had to say would get Martin into an entirely different kind of trouble.