The Beast Within - Emile Zola [109]
VI
A month went by. Calm had returned to the Roubauds’ apartment above the waiting rooms on the first floor of the station building. For the Roubauds, for their neighbours along the corridor and for everyone employed at the station, life had begun to return to its old monotonous pattern, measured by the clock and the repetitive sameness of the daily routine. It seemed that nothing violent or out of the ordinary had ever happened.
The scandal and rumours surrounding the Grandmorin affair were quietly being forgotten. The trial was to be postponed indefinitely, because the law seemed incapable of identifying the criminal. Cabuche had been detained for a further fortnight, at which point Monsieur Denizet, the examining magistrate, had dismissed the charge against him on grounds of insufficient evidence. The murder became a subject of romanticized fantasy - centred on a mysterious and elusive killer, a devotee of crime, in all places at the same time, blamed for every murder that was perpetrated, and who vanished in a puff of smoke the minute the police arrived on the scene. Occasional jokes about the mythical assassin continued to appear in the opposition newspapers, all of which were now devoting their energies to the forthcoming general elections. The general state of political tension and the harsh measures being taken by the local prefects provided them with a daily supply of other material to get their teeth into. They lost interest in the Grandmorin affair. It had ceased to be a matter of public concern. It was no longer even talked about.
What finally restored calm to the Roubauds’ household was the fact that the legal complications, which the implementation of President Grandmorin’s will had threatened to raise, had been successfully ironed out. At the insistence of Madame Bonnehon, the Lachesnayes had eventually agreed not to contest the will. It risked reawakening the scandal, and there was no guarantee that their objection would be upheld. Consequently, the Roubauds had received their legacy and for the last week had been the owners of La Croix-de-Maufras. The house and garden were valued at about forty thousand francs. They had immediately decided to sell it. It was a place associated with murder and debauchery and it haunted them like a nightmare. They would never have dared sleep there for fear of ghosts from the past. They had decided to sell it as it stood, with the furniture intact, without having it repaired and without even sweeping up the dust. Thinking that it would fetch very little at a public auction, there being few people likely to want a house in such an out-of-the-way spot, they had decided to wait until someone showed any interest and had simply fixed a large notice on the front of the house which could be read from the passing trains. The announcement in large letters ‘Abandoned House for Sale’ merely emphasized the desolate character of the place, with its shutters closed and the garden overrun by brambles. Roubaud wanted nothing to do with the house; he refused to go near it. So, as certain arrangements needed to be made, one afternoon, Séverine went there herself. She left the keys with the Misards, with instructions to show prospective buyers over the property, should there be any. Anyone wanting to do so could have moved in immediately; there was even linen in the cupboards.
The Roubauds’ worries were over. They lived each day in quiet expectation of the next. Sooner or later the house would be sold. They would invest the money, and their difficulties would be at an end. In fact, they forgot all about it, happy to remain in the three rooms they were living in - the dining room, which opened directly on to the corridor, the large bedroom to the right and the tiny, airless kitchen to the left. Even the station roof, sloping up in front of their