Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [43]
It was the oarsmen who ate Camille’s dinner.
XII
In the dark corner of the public omnibus taking him back to Paris, Laurent put the final touches to his plan. He was almost certain of getting away with it. He was filled with a heavy, anxious feeling of joy, joy at having accomplished the crime. When they got to the Barrière de Clichy, he took a cab and told the driver to take him to Old Michaud’s house in the Rue de Seine. It was nine o’clock in the evening.
He found the retired police commissioner at dinner, together with Olivier and Suzanne. He had come here in order to cover himself, in the event of anyone suspecting him, and to avoid having to announce the frightful news to Mme Raquin alone. He found the idea of doing that oddly repugnant; he was expecting such despair that he was afraid he could not produce enough tears for his part; and then, the mother’s grief weighed on him, though when it came down to it, he was not much concerned.
When Michaud saw him come in wearing coarse clothes a few sizes too small, he looked questioningly at him. Laurent told him what had happened, in a breaking voice, as though breathless with grief and tiredness.
‘I came to you,’ he said, in the end, ‘because I didn’t know what to do about those two poor women who have suffered such a cruel blow. I didn’t dare to go to the mother by myself. I beg you, come with me.’
As he spoke, Olivier was staring hard at him, with a directness that he found very disconcerting. The murderer had plunged, head first, among these policemen, in a bold move that ought to save him. But he could not help shuddering as he felt their eyes fixed on him; where there was only amazement and pity, he saw suspicion. Suzanne, the most frail and palest of them, was on the point of swooning. Olivier, terrified by the idea of death, though his heart was in fact quite indifferent, made a pained grimace of surprise as he examined Laurent’s face, though without the slightest suspicion of the sinister truth. As for Old Michaud, he gave exclamations of horror, commiseration and amazement; he twisted around on his chair, clasped his hands and raised his eyes heavenwards.
‘Oh, my God!’ he said, in a strangled voice. ‘Oh, my God, what a dreadful thing! You go out and you die, like that, all at once. It’s frightful ... And that poor Madame Raquin, the mother, what are we to tell her? You were quite right to come and fetch us ... We’ll go with you.’
He got up, walked about the room, shuffling as he looked for his cane and his hat; then, as he hurried around, got Laurent to repeat the full story of the disaster, punctuating each remark with an exclamation.
All four of them went downstairs. At the entrance to the Passage du Pont-Neuf, Michaud stopped Laurent.
‘Don’t come in,’ he said. ‘Your presence would be a kind of brutal announcement — just what we want to avoid ... The poor mother would suspect something wrong and force the truth out of us sooner than we would like. Wait here for us.’
The murderer was relieved by this arrangement: he had been trembling at the idea of going inside the shop. Calm descended on him and he began to step on and off the pavement, walking easily backwards and forwards. At times, he forgot what was going on and looked in the shop windows, hummed to himself and turned round to stare after women as they went past. He stayed for a full half-hour like this in the street, his nerve returning more and more.
He had not eaten since the morning. He had a sudden feeling of hunger, went into a pastry shop and stuffed himself with cakes.
In the shop in the arcade, a heart-rending scene was taking place. Even though Old Michaud did his best, with friendly words, making every attempt to soften the blow, there came a moment when Mme Raquin realized that something dreadful had happened to her son, whereupon she demanded to know the truth, in a fury of despair, a violent fit of tears and cries that overcame her old friend’s resistance. When she did learn the truth, her grief was tragic. She heaved with sobs, great shudders threw her body backwards