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By Root 1346 0

after another but kept changing them every day, frightened, at the least sound, that someone would present himself at his door with a search-warrant. Never had his ingenuity been so thoroughly tested. Eventually he ran out of ideas; his anxiety had worn him out. One day he couldn’t be bothered to look any further and had simply left the money and the watch under the floorboard, where he had hidden them the day before. Now he wouldn’t disturb them for anything in the world; it was a place of death, of unspeakable horrors, a charnel house where ghosts lay in wait for him. He avoided walking on this particular strip of parquet; it gave him an unpleasant feeling and seemed to send a slight shock up his legs. In the afternoon, when Séverine sat in front of the window, she would draw her chair back so that it wasn’t placed directly above the corpse that lay hidden beneath the floor. They didn’t talk to each other about it and tried to convince themselves that they would get used to it. But, to their annoyance, they couldn’t stop thinking about it; they sensed it there, under their feet, every minute of the day, refusing to go away. The unease it caused them was all the more surprising because they weren’t at all bothered about the knife, the beautiful new knife which Séverine had bought her husband and which he had plunged into her lover’s throat. It had simply been washed and left in the bottom of a drawer; Madame Simon sometimes used it to cut the bread.

The Roubauds’ peaceful existence was further disturbed by another increasingly troublesome arrangement. At Roubaud’s insistence, Jacques had regularly been joining them for meals. Being in charge of the Paris express meant that Jacques returned to Le Havre three times a week: on Monday from ten thirty-five in the morning to six twenty in the evening, and on Thursday and Saturday from five past eleven at night to six forty the following morning. He had first invited him on the Monday following Séverine’s trip to Paris and he would not take no for an answer.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’re not going to refuse a bite to eat with us, are you? You’ve been very good to my wife, and I owe you a favour in return.’

So Jacques had accepted his invitation to have lunch with them twice a month. It appeared that Roubaud had become embarrassed by the long silences between him and his wife whenever they ate together and he was relieved to have a guest to join them. He soon found plenty to talk about again and chatted and joked.

‘Come as often as you like,’ he said. ‘It’s no trouble at all.’

One Thursday evening, just as Jacques had finished cleaning himself and was about to return to his lodgings to get some sleep, he met Roubaud wandering around the engine shed. Although it was quite late, Roubaud, not wanting to return home alone, had asked Jacques to accompany him as far as the station and had then invited him back to his apartment. Séverine was still up, reading a book. They had a drink together and played cards until past midnight.

From then on, the Monday lunches and the little get-togethers on Thursday and Saturday evenings became a regular occurrence. If Jacques failed to turn up, Roubaud himself would go and find him and tell him off for forgetting to come. He grew more and more depressed and was only ever really happy when he was with his new friend. This fellow, who had at first so frightened him and whom, even now, he had good cause to loathe, as the witness and living reminder of all the terrible things he sought to forget, had on the contrary become indispensable to him, perhaps for the very reason that he knew the truth and had not talked. It remained a secret that they shared, a bond between them, a pact. Often Roubaud would give Jacques a knowing look and shake his hand with a sudden warmth of feeling that expressed far more than simple friendship.

None the less, the presence of Jacques helped the Roubauds to take their mind off things. Séverine, too, was always pleased to see him, greeting him with a little cry of pleasure whenever he came through the door. She would drop