Fatale - Jean-Patrick Manchette [18]
“It’s a fine pastime, astronomy,” said the baron, as he adjusted a telescope mounted at an almost vertical angle and pointing at an opening in the roof, a kind of skylight. “It’s a fine pastime that harms no one and corresponds to my social rank and tastes. I love to observe.” He looked at Aimée, who did not respond. He turned away and abruptly slapped the telescope down into a horizontal position. “Not just the stars, though—fine gentlemen too!” he cried. “Bléville is also worth observing. Not with this instrument, of course. But through cracks in the walls, through the chinks in people themselves, through keyholes.” The baron turned away from the stained-glass window. “I have been watching this town for dozens of years,” he explained. “I know everything there is to know about it.” His expression was now frozen, empty. Muscles pulled his lips taut against his teeth. “So just fight bravely on, most gracious masters of capital!...you shall be allowed to rule for a short time. You shall be allowed to dictate your laws, to bask in the rays of the majesty you have created, to spread your banquets in the halls of kings, and to take the beautiful princess to wife—but do not forget that ‘Before the door stands the headsman!’”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Aimée.
A little later, a little calmer now, as the pair went back down into the hall (on a wall of which hung a Weatherby Regency under-and-over double-barrel shotgun), Baron Jules further informed Aimée that, although the movements of men are not analogous to the movements of the stars, it sometimes seemed to him that they were, this on account of the posture that he had adopted, or rather that he had been obliged to adopt. These strange remarks made Aimée a little nervous, and she wanted to get away from this place. It was not long before the baron drove her back to Bléville. Yet when he left in his banged-up old 4CV, Aimée was sorry.
10
ONE OR two minutes after alighting from Baron Jules’s 4CV in front of the Seagull Apartments, Aimée was opening the door of her studio when she heard a kind of strangled groan which made her shudder. Standing before her half-open door, she quickly turned her head. Some way down the corridor, another door was ajar. In the opening a little old lady could be seen. Aimée shook her head in irritation. Twice or three times a week she had noticed the old lady spying on her as she passed. She was an especially repulsive old woman by Aimée’s lights, with her pendulous cheeks caked with white face powder and her purplish lipstick. This time, though, she seemed to be trying to address the young woman. Clutching the doorframe with one hand, she cleared her throat in a disgusting way. Aimée opened the door to her studio wide, went in, and slammed it behind her.
She put her bag down on a chair and went over to hang her woolen jacket in the armoire. Rustling sounds came from down the corridor, and then from right outside her apartment; a scratching noise seemed to emanate from the crack beneath the door, followed by snorts, a belch, and a cough. Aimée went back to the door and opened it in exasperation.
“What the hell do you want?” she demanded.
Only then did she see the old woman, silent now, lying on her stomach just outside her door, her face in a pool of vomit. Aimée grimaced in disgust. After a moment of hesitation, she went down on one knee and felt for the little old lady’s pulse. She found none. With the tip of a fingernail she pulled back one of the woman’s eyelids in search of some retinal reflex. Then she stood up, and, leaving the door open, went and picked up the telephone receiver and made an emergency call. Six or seven minutes later a police car and an ambulance pulled up in front of the building. Shortly thereafter, Police Commissioner Fellouque’s personal car also drew up. A bald-headed doctor of about fifty, whom Aimée did not know, examined the old woman. She was dead. They took her away on a stretcher.
“She must have dragged herself along to your room to ask for help,” said Commissioner