“At regular intervals,” she says, “he looks up toward the windows.”
“Which windows?”
“This one and the ones of the two empty rooms on each side.”
“Then he saw you at this one?”
“No, he couldn’t have: I’m too far back and the room is too dark inside. The panes only reflect the sky.”
“How do you know? Did you go out?”
“No! Oh no!” She seems panic-stricken at the idea. Then, a few seconds later, she adds, more calmly: “I figured it out—I made a sketch.”
I say: “In any case, since he’s gone, he must have been watching something else, or just waiting there, hoping that the rain would stop so he could be on his way.”
“It didn’t rain all day,” she answers. And I can tell, from the sound of her voice, that in any case she doesn’t believe me.
Once again I think that Frank must be right: this girl represents a danger, because she tries to find out more than she can stand knowing. A decision will have to be made.
“Besides, he was already there yesterday,” Laura says.
I take a step in her direction. She immediately steps back, keeping her timid eyes fixed on mine. I take another step, then a third. Each time, Laura retreats the same distance. “I’m going to have to …” I began, looking for the right words …
At that very moment, over our heads, we could hear something: low but distinctly audible, like three taps someone makes on a door if he wants to go into one of the rooms. All these rooms are empty, and there is no one but ourselves in the building. It might have been a beam creaking, which had seemed abnormally distinct to us because we ourselves were making so little noise, measuring our steps across the tiles. But Laura, half-whispering, said: “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Someone knocking.”
“No,” I say, “that was me you heard.”
I had then reached the stairs, and rested one hand on the banister. To reassure her, I tapped three times with the tip of one fingernail on the wooden rail without moving my palm or the other fingers. Laura gave a start and looked at my hand. I repeated my gesture, under her eyes. Despite the verisimilitude of my imitation, she must not have been altogether convinced. She has glanced up at the ceiling, then back at my hand. I have begun walking slowly toward her, and at the same time she has continued moving back.
She had almost reached the door of her room in this manner, when once again we heard that same noise on the floor above, We both stopped and listened, trying to determine the place where it seemed to be coming from. Laura murmured in a very low voice that she was frightened.
I no longer had my hand on the railing, now, nor on anything at all. And it was difficult for me to invent something else of the same kind. “Well,” I say, “I’ll go up and see. But it’s probably only a mouse.”
I have turned around at once to return to the stairwell. Laura has hurried back into her room, trying to lock the door from inside with the key. In vain, of course, for the keyhole has been jammed ever since I put a nail into it, for just that purpose. As usual, Laura struggled a few moments, without managing to make the bolt work; then she gave up and walked over to the still open bed, where she has doubtless hidden herself, fully dressed. She has not even had to take off her shoes, since she is always barefoot, as I believe I have already indicated.
Instead of going up to the rooms above, I have immediately begun walking downstairs. The house, as I have said, consists of four identical stories, including the ground floor. There are five rooms on each floor, two of which look out on the street and two, in the rear, on the courtyard of a city school for girls; the last room, which faces the stairs, has no windows. At the level where we sleep, in other words the third floor, this blind room is a very large bathroom. We also use a few rooms of the ground floor: the one, for example, which I have called the library. All the rest of the house is uninhabited.
“Why?”
“The whole building includes, according to what I have just said, twenty rooms. Which is far too many for two people.”
“Why did you rent such a big house?”
“No, I’m not the tenant, only the watchman. The owners want to pull it down, so as to build something higher and more modern. If they were to rent apartments or rooms, that might create difficulties during the demolition.”
“You haven’t finished the story of the fire. What happened when the man coming down the fire escape reached the ground?”
“The firemen had put a little ladder between the lowest platform of the fire escape and the ground. The man with the gray face let himself tumble down, rather than actually climb the last rungs. The lieutenant fireman has asked him if there was still anyone in the building. The man has answered without a moment’s hesitation that there was no one left. An elderly woman, who was in tears and had barely—as I understood it—escaped the flames, has repeated for the third time that a ‘young lady,’ who lived over her own room, had disappeared. The man has declared that the floor in question was empty, adding that doubtless this blond girl had already left her room when the fire broke out, perhaps in her very room: if she had forgotten to unplug an electric iron, or left on a gas burner, or an alcohol lamp …”
“And then what did you do?”
“I managed to lose myself in the crowd.”
He finishes writing what interests him in the report I have just made. Then he looks up from his papers and asks, without my seeing the link with what has preceded: “Was the woman you call your sister in the house at that time?”
“Yes, of course, since she never goes out.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Yes, absolutely sure.”
Previously, and without any more reason, he had asked me how I accounted for the color of Laura’s eyes, her skin, and her hair. I had answered that there had probably been some kind of mix-up. This interview over, I walked toward the subway, in order to go back home.
Meanwhile, Laura is still huddled under her sheets and blankets, pulled up over her mouth. But her eyes are wide open, and she is listening hard, trying to figure out what is happening overhead. Yet there is nothing to hear, so heavy and ominous is the silence of the whole house. At the end of the hallway, the murderer, who has quietly climbed up the fire escape, is now carefully picking up the pieces of broken glass which he found broken when he reached the window; thanks to the hole left by the little triangle of windowpane which had already fallen out, the man can grasp one by one between two fingers the sharp points which constitute the star and remove them by pulling them out from their groove between the wood frame and the dry putty. When he has, without hurrying, completed this task, he need merely thrust his hand through the gaping rectangle, where he no longer risks severing the veins in his wrist, and turn the recently oiled lock without making any noise at all. Then the window frame pivots silently on its hinges. Leaving it ajar, ready for his escape once his triple crime has been committed, the man in black gloves walks silently across the brick tiles.
Already the door handle moves slightly. The girl, half-sitting up in her bed, stares wide-eyed at the brass knob facing her. She sees the gleaming spot which is the reflection of the tiny bedlamp in the polished metal turning with unbearable deliberation. As if she were already feeling the sheets crushed beneath her covered with blood, she utters a scream of terror.
There is light under the door, since I have just pressed the hall-light button on my way up. I tell myself that Laura’s screams will end by disturbing our neighbors. During the day, the schoolchildren hear them in their courtyard. I climb the stairs wearily, legs heavy, exhausted by a day of errands even more complicated than usual. I even need, tonight, the banister to lean on. At the second-floor landing, I carelessly drop my