She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau Page A

Mireille: no mystery in her past…
    After La Flèche the country became more hilly. Sheets of mist lay in some of the hollows depositing fine droplets on the windshield. He had to take some of the hills in second. What filthy stuff it was, the mixture they sold nowadays as gas. No guts in it whatever, and it played hell with your engine.
    Half past ten…
    Not a soul stirring. They could have got out of the car and dug a grave by the side of the road—nobody would have stopped them… A dog in a ditch… No. He shouldn’t say a thing like that. It wasn’t fair to Mireille. She deserved better. With a sad tenderness he conjured up a picture of her. What a pity they hadn’t been of the same race. A little housewife so sure of herself, who loved frills and flounces, adored Technicolor films, and put cacti everywhere in tiny little pots. She thought herself superior to him, criticized his choice of ties and made fun of his baldness. She had never been able to make out why, on some days, he wandered gloomily about the house with a scowl on his face, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets.
    ‘What on earth’s the matter with you, my precious?… Do you want to go to the movies?… If you’re bored here, you’ve only to say so.’
    No he wasn’t bored. It was something much worse than that. He was sick to death —that was the only way to put it. Sick of life, sick of everything. What’s more, he always would be. He knew that now. It was something fundamental, irremediable. Now that Mireille was dead, was anything changed?
    Perhaps… Perhaps later on, when they had settled down to a new life at Antibes…
    A vast plain stretched out on each side of the road. It made it seem as though the car were not advancing at all. With her gloved hand, Lucienne cleaned a patch of the window and gazed out at the monotonous landscape. Right in front, on the horizon, were the lights of Le Mans.
    ‘Cold?’ he asked.
    ‘No.’
    On the sexual side, things hadn’t gone any better with Mireille than with Lucienne. Possibly it was his own fault. Lack of experience. Or it had been his luck to come upon nothing but frigid women. Mireille had done her best to pretend, but he had never been taken in. She had remained completely unmoved, even when she had clutched at him with an ardor that was meant to be ecstatic. As for Lucienne, she had never bothered to pretend. Love-making left her cold, icy cold, if it didn’t positively irritate her. That was the difference between them. Mireille took her duties seriously, and it was a wife’s duty to respond in the flesh. Strange that she shouldn’t succeed. She was so feminine, so human, that there ought to have been a streak of sensuality in her somewhere.
    For his part, he could no longer take anything seriously. Or rather, what he could have taken seriously had no name: it was without form and void. Lucienne knew. He could tell that by the way she looked at him sometimes. And Mireille…
    Ravinel pulled himself up. After all he had killed Mireille. Or hadn’t he? That was just the point—he couldn’t bring himself to believe he had committed a crime. Crime had always seemed to him something monstrous. And it still did! To be a real criminal you had to be a savage, bloodthirsty brute. And he wasn’t in the least. He’d have been quite incapable of sticking a knife into anybody or even pressing a trigger. At Enghien there was a loaded revolver in his desk. It was the managing director, Davril, who had advised him to get one. When one’s constantly on the road, particularly at night… But at the end of a month he had slipped it into a drawer, where it had made grease spots on his papers. For he’d have been nomore capable of using it than Mireille. Even less perhaps. As for shooting at her…
    No, his crime, if it was one, was negative, consisting of a whole chain of despicablenesses which he’d allowed himself to slide into through indifference. If a judge—a chap like