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By Root 1234 0

driver had shuddered as he sensed death passing by. As the train left the tunnel he had tried to shout to the watchman, but it was only when it reached Barentin that he was able to report that someone had been run over. He was certain that it was a woman. Pieces of matted hair and flesh were still stuck to the broken glass of the headlamp. When the search party found the body, they were amazed at how white it was, as white as marble. It was lying across the up line, where it had been flung by the force of the impact. The head was a terrible mess, but the rest of the body was without a mark. It was half naked and remarkably beautiful — strong and unblemished. The men quietly covered the body. They had recognized her. She must have killed herself in desperation, to escape the awful responsibility she carried on her shoulders.

By midnight, Flore’s body lay beside her mother’s in the cottage. They had put a mattress on the floor and had lit a new candle between them. Phasie’s head was still turned sideways, and her mouth was still twisted in a horrible grin. Her big, staring eyes now seemed to be looking at her daughter. In the empty silence could be heard the sound of someone breathing heavily; it was Misard, back at his endless task, looking for the hidden money. Now that the service had been restored in both directions, the trains went by at their appointed times — unstoppable, all-powerful, unknowing machines, indifferent to the disasters and crimes that had just occurred. What did it matter that a few nameless people had come to an end beneath their wheels? The dead had been carried away, and the blood had been cleaned up. People were on the move again — towards a bright, new future!

XI

It was the large bedroom at La Croix-de-Maufras, hung with red damask, and with two tall windows looking out on to the railway line a few metres away. From the old four-poster bed facing them you could see the trains go by. For years nothing had been removed from the room; the furniture stood just where it always had done.

Séverine had had Jacques brought up to this room, injured and still unconscious. Henri Dauvergne had been taken to another, smaller bedroom downstairs. Séverine moved into a room close to Jacques’s, just across the landing. It took only an hour or two to settle in and make themselves reasonably comfortable; the house had been kept fully appointed, and there was even fresh linen in the cupboards. Having sent a telegram to Roubaud telling him not to expect her because she would probably be there several days looking after some of the injured, who had been brought to the house, Séverine tied an apron over her dress and set about her nurse’s duties.

By the following day the doctor was feeling more confident about Jacques and expected to have him back on his feet within a week. It was quite miraculous; he had only a few minor internal injuries. Even so, he insisted that he needed careful looking after and that he must be kept absolutely still. So when Jacques opened his eyes, Séverine, who had been sitting at his bedside like a child, begged him to be good and do exactly as she told him. He was still very weak and simply nodded. His mind, however, was perfectly clear, and he recognized the bedroom from Séverine’s description of it on the night she had confessed to him — the red room, in which, at the tender age of sixteen and a half, she had been subjected to Grandmorin’s unwholesome desires. He was lying in Grandmorin’s bed. Those were the windows through which, without even having to raise his head, Grandmorin had watched the trains rush past, shaking the house to its foundations. This house that he was now inside was the house he had so often noticed when he drove past it on his train. He could picture it clearly, standing at an angle to the line, silent and abandoned, its shutters closed, and since it had been put up for sale, looking even more forlorn and neglected, with a huge board outside it adding to the unkempt appearance of the garden, which was overgrown with brambles. He remembered the horrible feeling