people, so close together and yet unknown to one another. Above their heads ran the long, triangular beam of pallid light from the projection room, a focus for tobacco smoke.
If anyone had asked him what the film was about…As if that mattered…He watched the images flickering on the screen without attempting to relate to them in any way. Then, conscious of a slight rustle nearby, he looked down.
This powerful man, who for nearly thirty years had, in a sense, been involved with the uttermost frenzy of human passion, with murder, that is, was a puritan. In the semidarkness, he could sense the movements of the woman next to him and her companion’s on the other side, though all he could see was the man’s pale hand. He gave a brief shocked cough. Earlier, when she had pulled her coat from under him, he had had the impression that she was very young. She was motionless. Her face was white, like the man’s hand, like the patch of thigh that he was uncovering, while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the screen.
Uncomfortably, the Chief Superintendent coughed again, twice.
The lovers ignored him. The girl could not have been much older than Nouchi.
Come to think of it, when Nouchi had seen Gérard going into the building in Bourg-la-Reine, at seven o’clock at night…But had she really seen him? She, too, had been with a man in the dark, pressed up against a wall, no doubt…
The soft sound of a kiss beside him…He could almost taste the moist, unfamiliar mouth…He slumped deeper inside the collar of his overcoat.
Not long ago, Nouchi had been impudently provocative…If he had been so inclined…Was it a common feature of adolescent girlhood, this inclination to throw themselves at the head of any older man, just because he was fairly well known or generally respected?
I bet he’s a lot older than she is! he mused, with reference to his neighbor’s companion.
He was not thinking, but leaving his mind open to any stray scrap of an idea that might come into it, without any attempt at order or coherence.
Had the little Hungarian girl been lying about Monsieur Charles? Surely not. Dandurand was just the sort of man to spy on a young girl through a crack in the door and to show her pornographic photographs. As for Nouchi, she would be all too ready to lead him on to the limit, knowing that, in the last resort, she could shout for help…
The thing that really worried him was her claim that she had seen Gérard Pardon going into the building at seven in the evening, at the very time when Madame “Saving-Your-Presence” was chatting with the Deséglises, out of sight of the stairs.
After she has made her statement officially…
So the word of a perverse kid would be enough to send a man to prison, and who could tell…?
He was troubled, ill at ease. It was not only the thought of Gérard slinking out of the door leading onto Boulevard Arago in the small hours…He was still watching the screen…He frowned. For the last few minutes, he had been conscious of something unnatural. Suddenly he realized what it was: the lips of the characters in the film were moving, but the spoken words did not correspond. In fact, the lips were forming English words, while the sound track was in French. In other words, the film was dubbed.
The couple next to him were behaving more and more outrageously, but the Chief Superintendent’s mind was elsewhere. What was it that had been baffling him for the past three days? That was the key question, though he had not realized it. Now he understood. There was a jarring note somewhere in this case. Somewhere, something did not ring true. What was it? As yet, he had no idea.
With eyes half shut, he could see the wedge-shaped building on the Route Nationale more clearly than if he had been standing outside it, looking in at the windows of the bicycle shop and the widow Piéchaud’s grocery store. In fact, as he had discovered the previous day, she was not a widow. Her husband had left her
If anyone had asked him what the film was about…As if that mattered…He watched the images flickering on the screen without attempting to relate to them in any way. Then, conscious of a slight rustle nearby, he looked down.
This powerful man, who for nearly thirty years had, in a sense, been involved with the uttermost frenzy of human passion, with murder, that is, was a puritan. In the semidarkness, he could sense the movements of the woman next to him and her companion’s on the other side, though all he could see was the man’s pale hand. He gave a brief shocked cough. Earlier, when she had pulled her coat from under him, he had had the impression that she was very young. She was motionless. Her face was white, like the man’s hand, like the patch of thigh that he was uncovering, while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the screen.
Uncomfortably, the Chief Superintendent coughed again, twice.
The lovers ignored him. The girl could not have been much older than Nouchi.
Come to think of it, when Nouchi had seen Gérard going into the building in Bourg-la-Reine, at seven o’clock at night…But had she really seen him? She, too, had been with a man in the dark, pressed up against a wall, no doubt…
The soft sound of a kiss beside him…He could almost taste the moist, unfamiliar mouth…He slumped deeper inside the collar of his overcoat.
Not long ago, Nouchi had been impudently provocative…If he had been so inclined…Was it a common feature of adolescent girlhood, this inclination to throw themselves at the head of any older man, just because he was fairly well known or generally respected?
I bet he’s a lot older than she is! he mused, with reference to his neighbor’s companion.
He was not thinking, but leaving his mind open to any stray scrap of an idea that might come into it, without any attempt at order or coherence.
Had the little Hungarian girl been lying about Monsieur Charles? Surely not. Dandurand was just the sort of man to spy on a young girl through a crack in the door and to show her pornographic photographs. As for Nouchi, she would be all too ready to lead him on to the limit, knowing that, in the last resort, she could shout for help…
The thing that really worried him was her claim that she had seen Gérard Pardon going into the building at seven in the evening, at the very time when Madame “Saving-Your-Presence” was chatting with the Deséglises, out of sight of the stairs.
After she has made her statement officially…
So the word of a perverse kid would be enough to send a man to prison, and who could tell…?
He was troubled, ill at ease. It was not only the thought of Gérard slinking out of the door leading onto Boulevard Arago in the small hours…He was still watching the screen…He frowned. For the last few minutes, he had been conscious of something unnatural. Suddenly he realized what it was: the lips of the characters in the film were moving, but the spoken words did not correspond. In fact, the lips were forming English words, while the sound track was in French. In other words, the film was dubbed.
The couple next to him were behaving more and more outrageously, but the Chief Superintendent’s mind was elsewhere. What was it that had been baffling him for the past three days? That was the key question, though he had not realized it. Now he understood. There was a jarring note somewhere in this case. Somewhere, something did not ring true. What was it? As yet, he had no idea.
With eyes half shut, he could see the wedge-shaped building on the Route Nationale more clearly than if he had been standing outside it, looking in at the windows of the bicycle shop and the widow Piéchaud’s grocery store. In fact, as he had discovered the previous day, she was not a widow. Her husband had left her
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