The Woman With the Bouquet (20 page)

“Don’t move, don’t lower the volume, I’m so tired by the trip I’ll fall asleep right away. Goodnight, Sylvie.”

“Goodnight, Maurice.”

As he crossed the hall, he grabbed the book from the bottom of the umbrella stand, slipped it under his shirt, hurried up to his room and raced through his washing and toothbrushing, closed the door, and settled in bed with
The Chamber of Dark Secrets.

“I just want to find out what this 16th century manuscript is,” he decided.

Twenty minutes later, he was no longer asking that question: any critical distance he had hoped to keep with regard to the text had only lasted a few pages; by the end of the first chapter, he started the next one without pausing for breath; as he read, his sarcasm melted like sugar in water.

To his great surprise, he learned that the heroine, FBI agent Eva Simplon, was a lesbian; he was so astonished that from that moment on he could no longer cast any doubt over the acts or ideas that the author ascribed to her. Moreover, because this beautiful woman’s sexuality marginalized her to some degree, Maurice recognized his own feeling of marginalization—his ugliness; very quickly he felt a strong connection with Eva Simplon.

When he heard Sylvie switch off the television and clump heavily up the stairs, he was reminded that he was supposed to be sleeping. Feeling deceitful, he hastily switched off the light on the bed table. But she mustn’t know that he was still up! Still less that he’d gone off with her book! And she mustn’t take it back . . .

The minutes he had to spend in darkness seemed long and fretful. The house was creaking with a thousand noises too complicated to identify. Had Sylvie remembered to lock all the doors and windows? Surely not! He knew how trusting she was, by nature. Did she not realize they were living in a strange house, built in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness? Who could guarantee that the region wasn’t infested with prowlers, burglars, and unscrupulous individuals ready to kill them for a credit card? Maybe there was even a maniac on the loose who broke into villas to cut the throats of their inhabitants? A serial killer. The butcher of the Ardèche Gorges. Or even a gang . . . Clearly everyone in the area knew this except for them, the newcomers, because no one had warned them, and that made them ideal targets! He shivered.

Here was the dilemma: should he get up to go and check that everything was locked, which would show Sylvie he was still up, or let miscreants get into the house, to hide in the closet or in the cellar? At that very moment, a lugubrious sound echoed in the night.

An owl?

Yes. Bound to be.

Or a man imitating an owl to alert his accomplices? The oldest trick in the world for miscreants. No?

No! Of course it was an owl.

He heard the cry again.

Maurice began to sweat; the small of his back was soaking. What could the repetition mean? Did it prove it was a real owl or was it an answer from an accomplice?

He sat up and quickly put on his slippers. Not a minute to lose. Never mind what Sylvie might think, he was more worried about a gang of psychopaths than his cousin.

As he rushed out into the corridor, he heard the splashing of the shower; that reassured him: she wouldn’t hear him going downstairs.

When he got down there, and saw the living room and dining room bathed in a spectral light, he found to his horror that she had left everything open. Not a single window shutter, nor the shutters to the French doors, had been closed; you only had to break a window to get in. As for the door, there it was with the key in the lock, not even turned. Foolish wretch! With people like her, was it any wonder that there were murders.

Hastily, he went out and, not even taking the time to breathe, so afraid was he of losing a second, he pushed closed the wooden panels, running from window to window, not daring to look at the gray countryside behind him, dreading with each instant that a hand would come down onto the back of his neck to knock him out.

Then he went back inside, turned the key, drove home the bolts, lowered the latches, and once again ran around inside to block all the shutters with their bar.

Once he’d finished his sprint, he sat down to catch his breath. As his heartbeat gradually slowed, since everything seemed calm around him, he understood that he had just suffered from a panic attack.

“What’s happening, my poor Maurice? You haven’t been terrified like this since childhood.”

He remembered having been a fearful little boy, but he thought that he had left that sort of fragility far behind him, in a vanished world, in a Maurice who had disappeared. Could it come back?

“It must be that book! I certainly have no reason to be proud of myself.”

Mumbling to himself, he went back to his room.

Just as he was about to unplug the light, he hesitated.

“A few more pages?”

If he didn’t switch off the lights, and Sylvie got up again, she would see the light under her cousin’s door and be surprised that he was awake, although he had claimed he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

He hunted in the wardrobe for a comforter, and put it at the foot of the door to block the space, then switched the light back on and settled down to read.

This Eva Simplon certainly didn’t disappoint him. She reasoned the way he did, criticized the way he did, even if she went on to suffer from her critical standards. Yes, just like him. He greatly appreciated the woman.

Two hundred pages farther along, his eyelids were struggling so hard to stay open that he decided to call it a day and go to sleep. As he was plumping his pillow to settle down, he recalled the numerous footnotes that referred to Eva Simplon’s previous exploits. What bliss! He’d be able to find his heroine in other books.

Basically, Sylvie was right. It wasn’t great literature, but it was fascinating. And in any case, he didn’t cherish great literature either. Tomorrow he’d have to find a way to go off on his own in order to continue his reading.

He was just drifting off when a thought made him sit up on his mattress.

“Sylvie . . . of course . . .”

Why hadn’t he noticed earlier?

“Of course . . . that’s why she loves Chris Black’s novels. When she confessed as much to me, she wasn’t talking about Chris Black, she was talking about Eva Simplon. There is no doubt about it: Sylvie is a lesbian!”

He saw his cousin’s life before him as if he were leafing through a photo album at great speed: her excessive infatuation with a father who would have rather had a boy, her doomed love affairs and failed relationships with men no one ever met—whereas at every birthday party for the last fifty years all her friends came, all of them girls . . . That afternoon, the three women she had run into so enthusiastically—a rather suspicious enthusiasm, no?—didn’t they all, with their short boyish hair, their masculine clothes, their graceless way of moving, look like Eva Simplon’s boss in the novel, Josépha Katz, the fleshy dyke who hung around lesbian nightclubs in Los Angeles and drove a Chevrolet while smoking a cigar? Obviously . . .

Maurice clucked. The discovery only disconcerted him because it came so late.

“She could have told me. She should have told me. I can understand things like that. We’ll talk about it tomorrow if . . .”

Those were his last thoughts before he drifted into unconsciousness.

Alas, the following day did not go as he planned. Sylvie, grateful to her cousin for inaugurating their stay by accepting her modest evening by the television, suggested a cultural excursion: with a guidebook in her hand, she had put together an itinerary that would enable them to visit prehistoric caves and Romanesque churches. Maurice didn’t have the nerve to protest, particularly as he couldn’t see himself confessing to what was his sole desire: to stay home and read Chris Black.

Between two chapels, while he was walking along the fortified walls of a medieval village, he decided to tackle the problem from another angle, by telling the truth.

“Tell me, Sylvie, if I were to tell you I was a homosexual, would you be shocked?”

“Oh, my God, Maurice, are you gay?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well then why are you asking me?”

“Just to let you know that I wouldn’t be shocked, if I were to learn you were a lesbian.”

Her face went bright red. She could not catch her breath.

“What are you saying, Maurice?”

“I just wanted to say, that when you truly love someone, you can accept everything.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“So, you can confide in me, Sylvie.”

From bright red, she went to dark violet. It took her a minute before she could carry on.

“Do you think I’m hiding something from you, Maurice?”

“Yes, I do.”

They walked on for another hundred yards or so then she stopped, turned to face him and said in a tearful voice, “You’re right. I am hiding something from you, but it’s still too early.”

“I’m here to listen.”

Maurice’s confident composure seemed to upset his cousin, and she could no longer keep back her tears.

“I . . . I . . . didn’t expect that from you . . . That’s . . . It’s wonderful . . .”

He smiled, the good prince.

At dinner, after a succulent
magret de canard,
he tried to broach the subject again.

“Tell me, your friends—Grace, Gina, and—”

“Grace, Audrey, and Sofia.”

“Have you known them for a long time?”

“No. Not very long. A few months.”

“Really? And yet yesterday you seemed very close.”

“Sometimes there are things that bring people together.”

“Where did you meet them?”

“It’s . . . it’s awkward . . . I’d rather not . . .”

“It’s too early?”

“It’s too early.”

“When you’re ready.”

A lesbian night club, like the one in the novel, it had to be! Something like L’Ambigu or The Kitty that Coughs, the sort of nightclub where Josépha Katz would go to pick up women . . . Sylvie didn’t dare confess. Maurice concluded that he had behaved perfectly with his cousin, and that henceforth he deserved to go and lose himself in the book he had pilfered from her.

According to the same script as the night before, he switched on the television, pretended to be interested in an inane series, then lowered his jaw as if sleep were attacking him, and finally went to take refuge upstairs.

As soon as he was in his bedroom, he took just enough time to brush his teeth and hide the base of the door, then he rushed to pick up the book.

From her very first sentence Eva Simplon was brilliant, and gave Maurice the impression that she had been moping all day long waiting for him to return. In a few seconds, he was back in Darkwell, Aunt Agatha’s mysterious demesne, dangerously isolated deep in the mountains. He trembled at the thought of the chanting that emerged every night from its walls.

This time, he was so absorbed by the novel that he did not hear Sylvie switch off the television and go to bed. It was only at midnight that a sinister hooting tore him from his pages, and he lifted his head.

The owl!

Or the man who was imitating the owl!

He clenched his teeth.

He waited for a few minutes.

Again, the cry.

This time, however, there’d be no dithering: this was no animal cry, this was a human cry.

A shiver went down his neck: the door!

Sylvie had probably not locked the doors and windows tonight, any more than yesterday. Particularly as in the morning, he had gotten up before her, and had opened the shutters to avoid any questions.

Above all, he must not yield to panic. Keep his cool. Show more self-control than he had yesterday.

He switched off his light, removed the comforter from the bottom of the door, and went down the stairs trying not to let the wooden steps creak.

Breathe deeply. One. Two. One. Two.

When he got down to the landing, what he saw paralyzed him with fright.

Too late!

A man was treading slowly through the living room in the slanting rays of the moon. On the walls, his gigantic shadow was even more impressive, defining a sharp chin, a heavy jaw, and curiously pointed ears. Silent, meticulous, he was lifting every cushion, every Afghan, blindly groping on shelves.

Maurice held his breath. The intruder’s calm terrified him as much as his presence. In flashes, the mercury light illuminated his bald head, as smooth as a bonze’s. The colossus did not bump into any of the furniture or the sofas, as if he already knew the house, and he went on feeling his way around the premises, exploring the same spots two or three times. What was he looking for?

The burglar’s professional poise was contagious. Maurice hovered in the shadow and did not shake, nor did he panic. In any case, what could he do? Switch on the light to frighten him? It was not a light bulb that would get rid of him . . . call Sylvie? Nor a woman . . . Rush up to him, knock him over, and tie him up? This athletic looking man would have the upper hand. And besides, maybe he had a weapon. A pistol, or a knife . . .

Maurice swallowed so noisily that he was afraid he might suddenly betray his presence.

The intruder did not react.

Maurice hoped he was exaggerating the volume of the sounds his body was making; just now, for example, this crazy rumbling in his stomach . . .

The intruder let out a sigh. He couldn’t find what he had come for.

Was he going to go upstairs? Maurice had the feeling that if he did, his own heart would stop.

The stranger hesitated, his powerful face raised to the ceiling, then, as if giving up, he went out the door.

His steps resonated at the front of the house.

After he’d gone a few yards, the crunching sound stopped.

Was he waiting? Was he going to come back?

How should Maurice react?

Should he throw himself against the door, and turn the key twice? The colossus would notice, come back, and burst through the French windows.

It would be best to wait and see if he went away.

And make doubly sure.

Maurice went cautiously back up the stairs and into his room, closed the door, and went over to the window.