The Beast Within - Emile Zola [147]
Jacques had buried his mouth in her thick, sweet-scented hair. He kept kissing it with long, distracted kisses.
‘But if you weren’t in the same compartment, how did you manage to kill him?’ he asked.
‘Wait!’ she said. ‘I’m coming to that. My husband had worked out a plan, and it succeeded. But it was more by luck than judgement. There was a ten-minute stop at Rouen. We got out on to the platform and he made me walk down to the President’s coupé, as if we were stretching our legs. When we reached it we saw Grandmorin standing at the carriage window. My husband pretended to be surprised, as if he had no idea he was on the train. There were crowds of people on the platform, all pushing and shoving to try and get into the second-class carriages; there was some big event in Le Havre the day after. As they started shutting the doors, the President asked us to join him in his carriage. I didn’t know what to say; I muttered something about our suitcase. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said he was sure no one would steal it and that we could go back to our own compartment when we got to Barentin; that was where he was getting off. For a moment my husband seemed worried and thought of running back to fetch it. But just then the guard blew his whistle. Roubaud decided to leave the suitcase, pushed me into the coupé, climbed in behind me and closed the door and the window. How it was that nobody saw us I still can’t understand. There were people dashing about everywhere; the railway staff could hardly cope. Anyway, there wasn’t a single witness prepared to say they saw anything. The train slowly started to leave the station.’
For a moment or two Séverine remained silent, reliving the scene in her mind. She was by now so relaxed in his arms that she was unaware of an involuntary twitch in her left leg which at intervals caused it to rub against one of his knees.
‘Ah, that first moment in the coupé when I realized the train had started to move! My mind was in a whirl. All I could think of was the suitcase. How were we going to get it back? If we left it where it was it would give us away. We were going to commit a murder. The whole thing seemed crazy, impossible, like something a child might dream of in a nightmare. We must be mad to go ahead with it. We would be arrested in the morning and convicted. I tried to reassure myself that my husband wouldn’t go through with it; that it wouldn’t happen, that it couldn’t happen. But no! I could tell from the way he was talking to the President that his mind was made up, that nothing would deter him. Yet he seemed perfectly calm, chatting away happily as he always did. It must have been the steady, clear look in his eyes every time he turned towards me that told me he was absolutely determined to do it. He was going to kill him, another kilometre further on, two perhaps, wherever it was he had decided it would happen. Where it would be I didn’t know. But it was going to happen. You could tell from the way he kept calmly looking at Grandmorin, the man who in a few minutes’ time would no longer be alive. I said nothing. I was all churned up inside; I tried to hide it from them by forcing myself to smile every time they looked at me. Why did it never occur to me to try and stop it happening? It was only later, when I tried to understand what I’d done, that I realized I should have shouted to someone through the window or pulled the communication cord.6 But at the time it was as if I was paralysed; I felt totally incapable. I dare say I thought my husband was in the right, and if I am to be honest, darling, I must tell you that despite everything he’d done to me I was completely on his side against Grandmorin because, well, they’d both had me, hadn’t they, but Roubaud was young ... when Grandmorin put his hands all over you, it was