Claude Lebel passed out of the office and headed for the stairs. As he did so the clock of Notre Dame further down the island chimed midnight, and the world passed into the morning of August 12th.
11
COLONEL RAOUL SAINT-CLAIR DE VILLAUBAN ARRIVED HOME just before midnight. He had spent the previous three hours meticulously typing his report on the evening’s meeting in the Interior Ministry, which would be on the desk of the Secretary-General of the Elysée first thing in the morning.
He had taken particular pains over the report, tearing up two rough copies before he was satisfied, then carefully typing out the third into a fair copy by himself. It was irritating to have to engage in the menial task of typing, and he was not used to it, but it had the advantage of keeping the secret from any secretary, a fact that he had not hesitated to point out in the body of the report, and also of enabling him to have the document ready for production first thing in the morning, which he hoped would not go unnoticed. With luck the report would be on the President’s desk an hour after being read by the Secretary-General, and this also would do him no harm.
He had used extra care in selecting just the right phraseology to give a slight hint of the writer’s disapproval of putting a matter so important as the security of the head of state into the sole hands of a commissaire of police, a man more accustomed by training and experience to uncovering petty criminals of little brains or talent.
It would not have done to go too far, for Lebel might even find his man. But in the event that he did not, it was as well that there was someone sufficiently on his toes to have had doubts about the wisdom of the choice of Lebel at the time.
Moreover, he had certainly not taken to Lebel. A common little man had been his private judgement. ‘Possessed no doubt of a competent record’ had been his phrasing in the report.
Musing over the first two copies he had written in longhand, he had come to the conclusion that the most advantageous position for him to take would be not to oppose outright the appointment of this promoted constable at the outset, since the appointment had been agreed by the meeting as a whole, and if he opposed the selection he would be asked for specific reasons; but, on the other hand, to keep a close watch on the whole operation, on behalf of the presidential secretariat, and to be the first to point out, with due sobriety, the inefficiencies in the conduct of the investigation as and when they occurred.
His musings on how he could best keep track of what Lebel was up to were interrupted by a telephone call from Sanguinetti to inform him that the Minister had made a last-minute decision to preside over nightly meetings at ten each evening to hear a progress report from Lebel. The news had delighted Saint-Clair. It solved his problem for him. With a little background homework during the daytime, he would be able to put forceful and pertinent questions to the detective, and reveal to the others that at least in the presidential secretariat they were keeping wide awake to the gravity and urgency of the situation.
Privately he did not put the assassin’s chances very high, even if there were an assassin in the offing. The presidential security screen was the most efficient in the world, and part of his job in the secretariat was to devise the organisation of the President’s public appearances and the routes he would follow. He had few qualms that this intensive and highly planned security screen could be penetrated by some foreign gunman.
He let himself in by the front door of his flat and heard his newly installed mistress call him from the bedroom.
‘Is that you, darling?’
‘Yes, cherie. Of course it’s me. Have you been lonely?’
She came running through from the bedroom, dressed in a filmy black baby-doll nightie, trimmed at throat and hem with lace. The indirect light from the bedside lamp, shining through the open door of the bedroom, silhouetted the curves of her young woman’s body. As usual when he saw his mistress, Raoul Saint-Clair felt a thrill of satisfaction that she was his, and so deeply in love with him. His character, however, was to congratulate himself for the fact, rather than any fortunate providence that might have brought them together.
She threw her bare arms round his neck and gave him a long open-mouthed kiss. He responded as best he could while still clutching his briefcase and the evening paper.
‘Come,’ he said when they separated, ‘get into bed and I’ll join you.’ He gave her a slap on the bottom to speed her on her way. The girl skipped back into the bedroom, threw herself on the bed and spread out her limbs, hands crossed behind her neck, breasts upthrust.
Saint-Clair entered the room without his briefcase and glanced at her with satisfaction. She grinned back lasciviously.
During their fortnight together she had learned that only the most blatant suggestiveness coupled with an assumption of crude carnality could produce any lust from the juiceless loins of the career courtier. Privately Jacqueline hated him as much as on the first day they had met, but she had learned that what he lacked in virility he could be made to make up in loquacity, particularly about his importance in the scheme of things at the Elysée Palace.
‘Hurry,’ she whispered, ‘I want you.’
Saint-Clair smiled with genuine pleasure and took off his shoes, laying them side by side at the foot of the dumb waiter. The jacket followed, its pockets carefully emptied on to the dressing-table top. The trousers came next, to be meticulously folded and laid over the protruding arm of the dumb waiter. His long thin legs protruded from beneath the shirt-tails like whiskery white knitting needles.
‘What kept you so long?’ asked Jacqueline. ‘I’ve been waiting for ages.’
Saint-Clair shook his head sombrely.
‘Certainly nothing that you should bother your head with, my dear.’
‘Oh, you’re mean.’ She turned over abruptly on to her side in a mock-sulk facing away from him, knees bent. His fingers slipped on the tie-knot as he looked across the room at the chestnut hair tumbling over the shoulders and the full hips now uncovered by
the shortie nightdress. Another five minutes and he was ready for bed, buttoning the monogrammed silk pyjamas.
He stretched his length on the bed next to her and ran his hand down the dip of the waist and up to the summit of her hip, the fingers slipping down towards the sheet and round the swell of the warm buttock.
‘What’s the matter, then?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I thought you wanted to make love.’
‘You just don’t give me any explanation. I can’t ring you at the office. I’ve been lying here for hours worrying that something might have happened to you. You’ve never been this late before without ringing me.’