About forty-five, he had bags under the eyes, warts on the left side of the rather fleshy nose that had been broken at least twice, I felt, and a small brown mole to the left of a chin, which had caused him trouble shaving that morning.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I took the fedora from him and waited for the overcoat, which was heavier in one pocket than in the other, an observation of mine he quickly noted, for he said, ‘Put it over a chair. That one will do well enough.’
Kicking off his rubbers, he ran a hand over his thinning hair before patting the pockets of a suit jacket that must have been with him for years, taking out his pipe and tobacco pouch. He smelled of wet, coarse wool, garlic, onions, and peppermint-flavoured anise bonbons, which, I assumed, he took for his ulcers-he had that look about him.
An upper front tooth, to the left, was capped with gold, the crowns of the others stained with nicotine and too much coffee.
No tribunal would ever doubt my word. He wasn’t as tall as myself, so when he looked at me, he had a way of slowly lifting his eyes as if they, too, were heavy and he perpetually tired.
Packing the tobacco down and lighting the pipe, he looked at me and said, ‘Ah, bon, madame. This friend of yours … Apparently, your neighbours …’
‘Georges and Tante Marie.’
Dupuis nodded. I turned to tell the children to go up to their rooms, but he stopped me. ‘Children are often overlooked in matters such as this. Please allow them to remain.’
I remember that he liked my kitchen, its spaciousness and warmth. He made a great thing of the view out over the vegetable gardens and into the orchard. He even asked for coffee, when I’d offered wine.
There were biscuits for the children, and I remember that Marie lifted an extra one for her dolls and that Dupuis noticed this as he did everything else. ‘You’ve seen the newspapers?’ he asked me.
In the wood box there were several ready for lighting the fire. One, however, was much thinner than the others, and I knew I shouldn’t have saved that scrap.
Unraveling it, he said, ‘All but two pages from yesterday’s Le Matin. Children, have a look at what remains of this torn photograph.’
‘It’s Monsieur Tommy,’ said my son.
‘Wanted for murder,’ whispered Marie, before asking if she might be excused.
‘She wants to play with her dolls,’ I blurted.
‘Yes, yes, of course. So, Jean-Guy, is Monsieur Carrington here in the house?’
There wasn’t a waver. ‘No, monsieur. Bad people hurt my mother, but it wasn’t him, and he isn’t here. We haven’t seen him since our visit to England.’
I was shocked. I hadn’t known my son could lie with such a straight face. Dupuis tussled the boy’s hair and laughed as he gestured with his pipe. ‘Of course. Now go and keep an eye on your sister so that your mother won’t be worried about her.’
He listened as Jean-Guy fled. Mapping out the very room, he retrieved his gun from that overcoat pocket and said, ‘Madame, where is he?’
Though I couldn’t have told you then, that weapon was a Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, one of the old 1873s with the 11-mm black-powder cartridges that would often misfire due to dampness after having been stored for so long. Since the French never throw anything out, the police, the military and Sûreté were accustomed to saying ‘two shots are always better than one.’
‘There’s no need for that revolver,’ I heard myself saying. ‘He’s not here.’
‘Then where?’
I shrugged. Even then I waited for the blow, but it did not come, only later in Paris, in the Prison du Cherche-Midi, where I hit the wall and felt blood rushing from my nose. ‘Look, how should I know where he is? He wouldn’t risk coming here, knowing he was wanted for murder. He’s not like that. He’d have been far too worried about us.’
‘And a repeat of your accident in the woods-is that what you’re implying? Ah, yes, an unpleasantness, madame. I was sorry to hear that such a thing had happened.’
‘Then you’ll do something about it?’
‘But, of course.’
Like Vuitton, there was only that unfeelingness in his gaze. I took the coffeepot from the stove and refilled his cup. ‘He’s not a murderer, Inspector. Those people tried to frame him so as to stop him from getting too close.’
‘Perhaps you’d tell me, then, exactly what he was involved in but first, madame, how is it that he even knew of your accident in the woods?’
‘I never said he did, Inspector. You assumed I had told him.’
I added milk to his coffee, then one, two, and three little spoons of sugar, he shaking his head at a fourth.
He took a biscuit and dunked it. I sat down and told him what little I could, but he had the habit of always wanting more and of fleshing out the details for himself so much so that in the end, I realized that he knew far more about it than myself.
‘So, madame, a word of caution. Don’t harbour this man a moment longer. Give him up, and I will personally see that no further harm comes to you.’
He still hadn’t put the gun away. Big, ugly, scarred, and looking as if accustomed to banging criminal heads, he left that six-shot revolver on the table close to his right hand so that I would be tempted to repeatedly glance at it.
‘He really isn’t here, Inspector.’ But was there something of Tommy’s behind me? I wondered.
Dupuis read my thoughts. ‘Those woollen socks,’ he said.
‘Which?’ I asked, not turning to look towards the stove where they had been hung last night. Instead, I reached for my cup, hoping my nerves wouldn’t betray me.
‘You’d better look,’ he said.
There were no socks or anything else of Tommy’s, but my response was still not good enough. ‘I can have this place searched,’ he said. ‘Your husband has already given the authorization.’
‘And has the district magistrate, Inspector?’ I snapped my fingers for the piece of paper he would have to produce. In those days, one could still demand such a thing. Later, of course, the police didn’t even bother with permission.
It didn’t ruffle him in the slightest. Instead, he cocked that revolver and said, ‘Such a reaction in one who was once so attractive, only suggests that you’re hiding him.’
‘Then search and find out for yourself. He left here three days ago.’
‘Ah, bon, and this newspaper, madame? Where was he heading, if he really has left? Provence, was it?’
Even then he knew of my mother’s having always spent her winters there. ‘Spain, I think.’
‘And not near Barbizon at her farm, eh? He could have walked there easily from here.’
‘He said he had clients in Barcelona who would help him.’
It was then that his associate rapped on one of the French windows. Dupuis got up and went to open it, they to talk of tracks in the snow that had fortunately all but been covered. ‘Those of a man, Inspector, leading here.’
‘And none leaving?’
‘Two sets to her car. The man’s and the woman’s. Hers return from where the car’s now parked.’
‘Then it’s as she says, and he’s gone from here.’
‘Shall we leave you and go to Avon to check out the trains?’
That ‘we’ meant there must be two subordinates, the other still tramping about or already upstairs and waiting.
But Dupuis answered, ‘No. It’s perhaps just as well to leave him on the run. Yes … yes, that would be best. A man in such a position can only look back and wonder if we’re following, and he might well be stopped at the frontier in any case.’
Even now, I have to wonder what Dupuis must have wanted from me, but I knew that he wasn’t going to push things. Maybe they would watch the house from a distance, maybe simply depend on Georges and Tante Marie to inform.
Tommy had got into that car of mine, and I had driven him out to the main road and back, he to walk on his hands into the house and me to then walk in those tracks and obliterate them.