The Hatter's Ghosts, page 2
Just the day before, the message had contained a sentence that sent a chill down the little tailor’s spine:
You are wrong, young man. I am not a coward. It is not out of cowardice that I only pick old women, but out of necessity. Should the same necessity arise tomorrow to attack a man, however big and strong, I shall do so.
Some letters were half a column long, representing hundreds of characters patiently cut out, which had led Jeantet to write:
Not only is the murderer patient and meticulous, but he leads the kind of life that allows him a great deal of leisure time.
Just as patiently, the nineteen-year-old reporter had conducted an experiment. He had established how long it took to compose a thirty-line letter using characters cut out of old newspapers. Kachoudas couldn’t remember the exact result, but it was an astonishing figure.
Should the same necessity arise tomorrow to attack a man …
One of them was puffing at his pipe and watching the card game, the other had a dirty cigarette end stuck to his lip and didn’t know where to look. Occasionally, Monsieur Labbé would glance at the clock. It was only five twenty-five when he ordered his second Picon, and five thirty when he stood up, which was enough to make Gabriel run to him with his coat and hat.
Did he really look Kachoudas up and down with a benign but ironic gaze? There was a blanket of smoke over the card players’ heads, and the stove sent out waves of warmth. It was as if Monsieur Labbé were waiting, as if he guessed exactly what the little tailor was thinking.
‘If I let him go out alone, he’s quite capable of waiting to ambush me in a dark corner on Rue du Minage …’
And what if Kachoudas went straight to the inspector, or even the reporter? What if he pointed a finger and declared, ‘It’s him’?
The piece of paper had disappeared. Kachoudas looked for it in vain. He remembered that the hatter had rolled it between his fingers until it was a grey capsule. But even if the two cut-out letters had still been on the floor, how could he have proved that he had got them from Monsieur Labbé’s trousers?
No, even that wouldn’t have been enough. Which was why Monsieur Labbé hadn’t reacted, hadn’t caught fright, had simply said:
‘Thank you, Kachoudas.’
And there was twenty thousand francs at stake, a fortune for a little tailor who was only ever given repairs or suits to turn, and whose elder daughter worked as a salesgirl at Prisunic.
In order to claim the twenty thousand francs, you couldn’t just make a wild accusation. That would only alarm the murderer.
Now Monsieur Labbé knew. And Monsieur Labbé, who had killed five old women since 13 November – in other words, in twenty days – could quite easily do away with him.
Did Kachoudas have time to think about all that? The hatter touched the tips of his friends’ fingers. They said to him:
‘Have a good evening, Léon.’
That was his name: Léon. He tapped the doctor on the shoulder because he was dealing the cards and had both hands occupied, and the doctor muttered:
‘I hope Mathilde feels better.’
Anyone would have sworn he was deliberately lingering, to give Kachoudas time to make up his mind. His expression was just as it had been earlier, when Valentin had seen him come down the spiral staircase. He had once been fat, perhaps very fat, and had since melted: that much was obvious from his flaccid figure and indistinct features. Even so, he probably still weighed twice what Kachoudas weighed.
‘See you tomorrow.’
The minute hand had just gone past the half-hour. As soon as the door closed again, Kachoudas grabbed his coat from the next chair. He almost left without paying, so afraid was he that Monsieur Labbé would have time to turn the corner of Rue du Minage before he himself was outside, at which point he could easily fall into a trap. But he couldn’t not go home.
Monsieur Labbé was walking at his regular pace, neither fast nor slow, and, for the first time, the little tailor noticed how exceptionally light he was, like most people who were fat or had once been fat, and how little noise he made as he walked.
He turned right into Rue du Minage. Kachoudas followed him at a distance of about twenty metres, carefully keeping to the middle of the road. He would still have time to cry out if need be. Two or three shops were still open – their lights could be seen through the rain – and almost all the apartments on the upper floors were lighted.
Monsieur Labbé was following the left-hand pavement, the one where the hat shop was, but instead of stopping there, he walked straight past it, then turned his head when he had gone a bit further, perhaps to make sure his neighbour was still following him. Not that it was necessary – Kachoudas’s footsteps echoed on the cobbles.
The little tailor could go home. The way was clear. His shop was still open, and he had time to pull the bolt firmly. Through the first-floor window, he could see the piece of chalk hanging above the table, near the bulb. The little girls were back from school. Esther, his eldest daughter, the one who worked at Prisunic, would be back soon after six. She would come running – she too was scared of the murderer, and none of her workmates lived in the neighbourhood.
He continued on his way. He turned left, like Monsieur Labbé, and for a moment they were in a more brightly lit street. It was reassuring to see people in the shops, a few rare cars passing, splashing through pools of water.
There were no more arcades, and Monsieur Labbé was getting the rain on his shoulders. The street was dark again now. One minute, the hatter disappeared, the next he reappeared in the circle of light thrown by a streetlamp. Kachoudas kept strictly to the middle of the road, holding his breath, paralysed with fear and yet incapable of turning back.
How many volunteer patrols were there in the town at this hour? Probably four or five, including young people who were amused by it all, carrying torches. It was the danger hour. Three of the old women had been murdered between half past five and seven o’clock.
One still behind the other, they reached the quiet museum district, with its little two-storey houses. Behind some windows, you could see families gathered, children doing their homework, women already setting the table for dinner.
Suddenly, Monsieur Labbé disappeared into the dark, and after a few steps Kachoudas stopped dead, as if he was missing something essential: it was impossible for him to locate his neighbour, because of the lack of light in the street. Most likely, the hatter had come to a halt in some dark corner. But he might also be moving. Was he capable of moving without making a noise? There was nothing to indicate that he wasn’t coming up behind the little tailor, who stood there frozen, as if chilled to the bone.
Not far from him, he could hear a piano being played. A dim light filtered through the louvred shutters of a house. In a lighted room, a little girl or little boy was having a music lesson, endlessly replaying the same scales.
Not a soul entered the street from either end. Monsieur Labbé was still huddled somewhere, silent and invisible, while Kachoudas didn’t dare move closer to the houses.
The piano fell silent, and then there was total silence. Then the dull thud of the lid falling on the black and white keys. Light behind a door, muffled voices becoming sharper as the door opened twenty metres from the little tailor, and the raindrops turned to sparks.
‘Are you absolutely sure, Mademoiselle Mollard? It’d be so much safer to wait for my husband to get back from the office. He’ll be here in ten minutes.’
‘Come on, now, I’m just down the street! Please get back inside. You’ll catch cold. I’ll see you next Friday.’
It was a Friday today. Presumably the little boy or girl had his or her piano lesson every Friday from five to six.
‘I’ll leave my door open until you’re home.’
‘I won’t hear of it! You’ll make the whole house cold! I tell you I’m not scared.’
From her voice, Kachoudas pictured her as being short and thin, a little stooped, a little affected. He heard her descend the steps and set off along the street. The door, having remained open for a moment, finally closed. He almost cried out. He wanted to cry out. But it was already too late. He would have been physically incapable of it anyway.
It made no more noise than, for example, a pheasant flying up from a coppice. It was probably the rustle of clothes. Everyone in the town knew how it happened, and despite himself Kachoudas lifted his hand to his throat, imagining the cello string tightening around his neck, and made a genuine effort to break free of his inertia.
He was sure it was over, and he had to get away as quickly as possible, he had to run to the police station. There was one in Rue Saint-Yon, just beyond the market.
He thought he had spoken aloud when in fact his lips had moved noiselessly. He was walking. That was a victory. He couldn’t yet manage to run. In any case, it might be better not to run, not here, down empty streets where the other man could run too, catch up with him and do away with him as he had done away with the old maid.
A shop window. As if ironically, it was a gunsmith’s shop. True, the hatter never used guns. Kachoudas no longer felt as alone. He was able to catch his breath. He would have liked to turn around. Another twenty metres, ten metres, and he would see the red light of the police station.
He had waded through puddles and his feet were wet, his features hardened by the cold. He was again walking like a normal person. He passed Rue du Minage, his own street.
He was almost at his destination. He couldn’t hear any footsteps, but he knew all the same that someone was walking behind him, catching up with him. He still didn’t dare run or stop. A taller, broader figure than he was loomed up on his left and fell into step with him, and a strangely calm voice said:
‘You’d be making a big mistake, Kachoudas.’
He didn’t turn to look at his companion. He didn’t say anything in reply. He didn’t immediately change direction.
He was alone. He could see the red lantern, a policeman coming out of the station and getting on his bicycle.
He turned. Ignoring him now, Monsieur Labbé had done an about-turn and was walking, with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar raised, in the direction of Rue du Minage, their street.
2
Arriving in front of his shutters, which Valentin had closed, he stopped, unbuttoned his overcoat and took his bunch of keys from his trouser pocket. He had always done the same thing when he came home in the evening. Someone had stopped at the corner of Rue du Minage. It was Kachoudas, who was waiting for the hatter’s door to close before he himself returned home.
Monsieur Labbé looked up and saw the tailor’s wife casting an anxious glance through the window of the workshop on the first floor.
He turned the key in the lock, entered the warm darkness, closed the door behind him, switched on the light and put the bar up, then stood there, his face glued to a crack in the shutter.
The little tailor, still keeping cautiously to the middle of the road, at last came level with his own house. He was walking oddly, as if being jolted; for the first time, Monsieur Labbé noticed that he dragged one leg slightly. Kachoudas also looked up, but his wife had gone back to the kitchen. He went into his shop but had to come out again to put up the shutters – he didn’t have an assistant to do it for him. All his movements were nervous, jerky. He must have called up, turning towards the staircase – the same spiral staircase as in the hat shop:
‘It’s me!’
He quickly bolted the door. The ground-floor light went off, and a little later a light came on in the workshop, where the little tailor’s first concern was to come and look through the window.
Monsieur Labbé withdrew from his observation post, put back in the till the rest of the money he had taken from it before going out and headed for the back room. For a moment, he fingered an object he had taken from his pocket, an object resembling a toy put together by some street urchin, consisting of two pieces of wood joined by a kind of string.
He was still wearing his wet coat, and when he leaned forwards, drops of water fell from his hat. He did not take it off until he was at the foot of the stairs, where there was a coat stand. He could see a line of light under the kitchen door.
The table was laid for one, with a white tablecloth and a bottle of wine recorked with a silver stopper.
‘Good evening, Louise. Has madame called down?’
‘No, monsieur.’
She looked at his feet as he sat down by the stove, then fetched a pair of slippers and knelt on the floor. He had never asked her to do that. She must have been brought up, on the farm, to take the shoes off the men, her father and her brothers, when they got home from the fields.
It was as hot as in the shop, and the air had the same heavy stillness, in which objects seemed rooted, their appearance fixed and eternal.
From beyond the window, which looked out on the courtyard, the rain could still be heard. In here, there was an ancient clock in a walnut casing, with a brass disc that swung from side to side – more slowly, you would have sworn, than anywhere else. It didn’t show the same time as the clock in the shop, or Monsieur Labbé’s watch, or the alarm clock on the first floor.
‘Did anyone come?’
‘No, monsieur.’
She put his fine kid-leather slippers on his feet. The room was more of a dining room than a kitchen, since the oven and the sink were next door, in a narrow cubby hole. The table was round, the chairs upholstered in studded leather. There were a lot of brasses and, on a rustic dresser, old crockery bought at auction.
‘I’m going up to see if madame needs anything.’
‘Can I serve the soup?’
He disappeared up the spiral staircase, and she heard the door open on the first floor, followed by footsteps, murmuring and the noise of a wheelchair being pushed across the room, as it was every evening. When he came back downstairs, he said as he sat down at the table:
‘She isn’t very hungry. What is there to eat?’
He had put his book down in front of him and taken his tortoiseshell glasses from their case. The stove warmed his back. He ate slowly. Louise served him and, between courses, waited motionless in her cubby hole, staring into space.
She wasn’t even twenty. She was on the fat side, and very stupid, with bulging, expressionless eyes.
The box room that served as a kitchen wasn’t big enough for a table. Occasionally she would eat standing up, at other times she would wait for the hatter to finish and leave the room then come and sit in his place.
He didn’t like her. Hiring her had not been a good decision, but there would be plenty of time to sort that out later.
At a quarter to eight, he wiped his mouth, rolled up his serviette and slipped it into the silver ring, put the stopper back in his bottle – he had only drunk one glass – and stood up with a sigh.
‘It’s ready,’ she said.
He took the tray, on which another meal had been laid, and once again set off up the stairs. How many times a day did he climb those stairs?
The hard part was holding the tray with one hand without spilling anything, getting the key from his pocket and turning it in the lock – the door was always locked, even when he was at home. He switched on the light, and Kachoudas, opposite, saw the blind light up. He put down the tray in the usual place and closed the door behind him.
It was all very complicated and had taken time to organize. The hatter’s comings and goings were carried out in a specific order, one which had enormous importance.
First of all, he had to talk. He didn’t always bother to say actual words – all that could be heard below was a vague murmur anyway. Today, for example, he repeated with a certain satisfaction:
‘You’d be making a big mistake, Kachoudas!’
There was nothing particularly good to eat this evening, but he nevertheless chose the tenderest piece of the veal cutlet. There were days when he ate the whole of the second dinner.
He went over to the window. He had time. He moved the blind aside a little and discovered that the little tailor had resumed his place on his table after finishing his dinner, while the little girls played on the floor in the room. The eldest girl was probably helping her mother with the washing-up.
He said aloud, walking back to the tray:
‘Did you have enough to eat? Wonderful.’
And he went and emptied the plates – except for the bone from the cutlet – in the toilet bowl but didn’t flush. He had done so at first, but it had been a mistake. There had been a whole lot of mistakes, careless things he had gradually corrected.
He went back downstairs with the empty plates. Louise was sitting in his seat, finishing her dinner. To avoid too much washing-up, she ate from her employer’s plate and drank from his glass. She too read as she ate, in her case cheap popular novels.
‘Aren’t you going out, Louise?’
‘I don’t fancy getting myself strangled.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight, monsieur.’
It was almost over. A few more rituals to perform: make sure the shop door was locked, switch the light off, climb the stairs once again, take his key from his pocket, open, close.
In a little while, Louise would go upstairs to her bedroom at the back, and he would hear her heavy footsteps for a good quarter of an hour before the bedsprings creaked under her weight.
‘She’s a lump!’
He was entitled to talk out loud. It was almost a necessity, from time to time. Now he could pull the chain in the toilet, take off his collar, tie and jacket and put on his brown dressing gown. Not that he had completely finished: he still had to put three or four logs on the fire.
It was Louise who brought them up in the morning and piled them on the first-floor landing.
All the houses in the street were the same age, dating from the time of Louis XIII. From the outside, they had stayed the same, with their arcades and their sloping roofs, but over the centuries, each of them had been subject to different changes inside. Above Monsieur Labbé’s head, for example, there was a second floor, although he couldn’t get to it without going via the street. Next to the shop was a door that opened into a narrow alley leading to the courtyard. It was from there that a staircase led up to the second floor, without communicating with the first.
