They came to an intersection and she turned left, saying meekly, ‘It is this way now, Inspector. Only a little more.’
St-Cyr flicked the beam of his torch over the sickly yellow plaster above the panelling. To think that lycees had grown so much. It was like a huge warren of traboules. It made him feel old and lost-passed by. Baffled at the change in an educational system none had thought would ever change.
The decided smell of formaldehyde in which the zoology professors kept their specimens signalled that they had all but reached their goal. Then the faint mingling of burnt sulphur, the sharpness of acid and above it all, the high note and faint trace of mustard gas that lingered from some experiment to warn all future generations of its horror.
Unaware that he was doing so, St-Cyr suddenly crossed himself at the memory of past battlefields and kissed his fingertips-realized at last that she was waiting for him. And when he shone the torch up, it revealed the stark black letters on a door-CHEMISTRY FOUR-and the lines in her face, the worry and the strain.
‘Please shine the light on the lock, Inspector. I cannot see which key to use.’
A hardness had entered the voice of one so timid.
There were rows of black-topped workbenches with tall stools upended on each. Cold Bunsen burners with retort stands, sinks, taps, beakers and racks of test-tubes, blackboards on three sides and no windows.
‘It is vented by fans in the roof,’ she said as if reading his thoughts. ‘The storeroom is over there past the professor’s desk. In the corner there is another door which is kept locked when he is not present.’
‘The keys, mademoiselle.’ He snapped his fingers to unsettle her. ‘Please wait here in the dark. I will take a look myself.’
So that she could not know if it were true? Was he so cruel? He would know exactly how much she would agonize over the delay. He would use her fear as a weapon to send its barbed shaft into her. He would rape her as no man had ever raped but it would not be of sex or of the body, ah no, not with him. Humiliated by not knowing, she would break down and confess everything as she had to Father Adrian, and this one, why he would realize this and would soon know it all. She could not allow him to do that to her. She mustn’t!
The tops of the desks were smooth but pitted where acids had touched them. The drawers below did not move easily and when, at last, one became unstuck, glassware rattled and she straightened up silently, seeing only in her mind’s eye the shadows cast as his torch beam passed furtively over the rows of bottles behind the windows of the cabinet doors.
Phosphorus, Inspector? she asked silently. It is grey-white and non-metallic though it looks like a metal. Very light, very soft and unctuous and in cubes that are about one-and-a-half centimetres square which cut like butter. Kept under water in brown glass jars, it looks like some strange sort of condiment, a pickled Turkish Delight perhaps because when you open the top, there is a whitish crust on each cube as on a Camembert, but when burned there is a garlic odour which is very strong, and a pungently choking white smoke-a great deal of this smoke-and a very, very hot flame into which the phosphorus suddenly bursts on exposure to air.
Still he had not come out of the storeroom. Still he had not called out to her with, Ah, it is not here, mademoiselle. Two rings of dust. Two jars taken. It was not much used apparently. It was kept well to the back of the cupboard on the top shelf. Yes, yes, Mademoiselle Charlebois, the phosphorus, it has been taken.
Trembling, she felt renewed tears. She did not know what to do, knew only that he had to be stopped. Stopped! Stopped!
The gas was on. A little miracle Father Adrian would have praised. It hissed too loudly but when the valve was opened wide, the sound lessened substantially.
One after another she opened all of the bench-top valves, then closed the outer door. Hunting-moving quickly now-she searched frantically for one of the igniters. They were at every bench. They were very simple things of wire, with a flint striker that was pushed across a platelet of sharply ribbed steel. One squeezed the igniter, bending the wire handle in on itself and springing the striker.
He did not come until she had it in her hand. He did not understand what was happening. ‘Mademoiselle …?’ he said, surprised-yes, yes! ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, what are you doing?’
The smell of gas was everywhere in the classroom. Feverishly she gripped the igniter and struggled frantically to kill them both. St-Cyr ran. He moved among the workbenches hearing the rush of gas as it poured from each nozzle. Again she tried to blow them up. Again!
Dizzy, sick at his stomach, he tried to shout at her to stop. The beam of the light danced away. He pulled it back-shone it at her. Willed it to blind her.
With a ragged sob, she flung the igniter at him and raced for the door. Was pulling at the collar of her coat. Air … She had to have air …
Must close the valves, he shouted at himself as he ran from bench to bench. No time, no time. No time!
He reached the last of them. Vomiting-dragging in a breath-St-Cyr pitched out into the corridor, flinging the light from himself, tearing at his collar just as she had done.
The light was out. Where … where had he thrown it? Ah merde! ‘Mademoiselle,’ he managed weakly. He had no voice. Air … he must still need air. ‘Mademoiselle Charlebois, you are under arrest for trying to kill a police officer.’
There wasn’t a sound. He knew she was standing in some doorway, lost in the darkness, her heart racing.
When she vomited, he knew she was just as ill as himself, but when he reached the place where she had been hiding, she was no longer there. ‘Mademoiselle, why did you set that tenement on fire? Eighteen dead, mademoiselle. Eighteen on Christmas Night!’
He would never find her where she was going. He must never find her, she said to herself.
‘Did Jean-Pierre steal the phosphorus for you?’ he shouted. There was so much rage in his voice, she trembled. He would beat her. He would drag her down and hit her …
The detective stopped. Still dizzy and throwing up, he tried to steady himself.
‘Mademoiselle, did he tell you how to kill Claudine? It was perfect, wasn’t it? Just a little balsam around the lip of the bowl to give the proper smell and not a trace afterwards of what you had done.’
Again St-Cyr listened for her, hearing only silence. Maudit! ‘But you were nervous,’ he called out. ‘As you opened the bottle of oxalic acid some of the granules spilled. You swept them up-of course you did. You even took them away or washed them down the drain but you forgot to tap the broom against the floor.’
She had sought refuge in a very large room, an auditorium, he thought. Immediately there were changes: a deeper darkness, a greater coldness, sounds echoing upwards. The smell of beeswax, chalk dust and sweat. A gymnasium.