The Beast Within - Emile Zola [92]
‘Is that all right?’ Séverine repeated, smiling and looking at him sweetly, attempting to overcome the surprise and the faint sense of disgust she felt at seeing him so filthy that she hardly recognized him. ‘I’m counting on you.’
She placed her gloved hand on one of the iron handrails and attempted to lift herself on to the footplate. Pecqueux obligingly warned her to be careful.
‘I wouldn’t come up here,’ he said, ‘you’ll get yourself dirty.’
Jacques had to give her an answer, but he sounded far from enthusiastic.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll see you in the Rue Cardinet ... provided I don’t get washed away in this bloody rain! Damned weather!’
She felt really quite sorry for him, seeing him in such a pitiful state.
‘You poor thing!’ she said, speaking to him as if he had been braving the elements just for her. ‘There was I all warm and dry! I was thinking of you all the time. What a terrible storm! I can’t tell you how frightened I was! I was so glad to think it was you bringing me here this morning and taking me back tonight on the express.’
These little confidences, well-meaning as they were, only served to make Jacques all the more uneasy. It came as a relief when a voice shouted: ‘Right away! You can back her out!’ He promptly gave a tug on the whistle, and Pecqueux motioned to Séverine to stand aside.
‘I’ll see you at three o’clock,’ she called.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘three o’clock.’
As the locomotive reversed out of the station, Séverine left the platform, which was by now empty. She walked out on to the Rue d’Amsterdam and was about to open her umbrella when, to her relief, she saw that it had stopped raining. She walked down the street to the Place du Havre, stopped for a moment to deliberate on what she should do next and decided that it would be best to have some lunch. It was twenty-five past eleven. She went into a little restaurant at the corner of the Rue Saint-Lazare and ordered fried eggs and a chop. She ate slowly, ruminating on all that had happened over the last few weeks. She looked pale and drawn. There was no sign of her usual charming smile.
The day before, two days after the interview with the examining magistrate in Rouen, Roubaud, deeming further delay dangerous, had decided to send his wife to Paris to speak with Monsieur Camy-Lamotte, not at the ministry but at his private address in the Rue du Rocher, a large town house situated next door to that of Grandmorin. Séverine knew that he would be in at one o’clock,1 so there was no rush. She sat preparing what she was going to say and trying to imagine how he might respond, in order to give herself more confidence. The day before, a further cause of anxiety had arisen which had made her journey to Paris even more urgent; they had heard through gossip at the station that Madame Lebleu and Philomène were telling everyone that the Company intended to dismiss Roubaud because it considered him a liability. Worse still, Monsieur Dabadie, when asked if it was true, had not denied it, which lent added weight to the rumour. It had become urgent that Séverine come to Paris as soon as possible to put their case and enlist the support of the Secretary-General, as they had done previously with the President. This was the ostensible reason for her trip, but behind it there lay something more compelling - a burning, insatiable desire to know if they had been found out, a desire so overpowering that it will drive a criminal to give himself up rather than continue in uncertainty. Ever since Jacques had told them that the prosecution now seemed to think that two people were involved in the murder, the Roubauds suspected that their crime had been discovered, and the uncertainty was driving them to distraction. They were wearing themselves out imagining one thing after another - perhaps they had found the letter, perhaps they had managed to work out their movements on the day of the crime. At any minute, they thought, someone would come with a search warrant or a warrant for their arrest. The strain was becoming unbearable;