Vertigo Read Free Page B

into his mind, and he turned away to avoid Gévigne’s eye.
    ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to use the stairs again. The lift’s not working.’
    They went out on to the narrow landing. Gévigne leant over to say confidentially to his friend:
    ‘Go about it in your own way. I give you a free hand. As soon as you’ve anything to tell me, give me a ring at my office, or, better still, come to see me. Our Paris office is in the building next to the Figaro … All I ask is that Madeleine is kept absolutely in the dark. She mustn’t even suspect anything. If she thought she was being watched… I wouldn’t answer for the consequences.’
    ‘Trust me.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    Gévigne started down the stairs. Twice he turned to give a friendly wave of the hand. Flavières went back into his office and leant out of the window. He saw a huge black car pull out into the road and glide smoothly away… Madeleine… He likedthe name. It had a gentle, plaintive sound. But how could she have brought herself to marry this stocky, corpulent man? Of course she was carrying on with somebody else… Those attacks!… Dragging a red herring across her own tracks… Serve him right. Gévigne deserved to be made a fool of by his wife. Because of his smug affluence, his cigars, his contract for building small craft—because of everything. Flavières didn’t like people with too much self-assurance—and, outwardly at least, Gévigne had plenty—though it was a quality he would have given anything to possess himself.
    He shut the window irritably. Then he mooched about in the kitchen, trying to persuade himself he was hungry. He surveyed the tins in the cupboard; for he too had laid in a stock of provisions, stupid as he considered such a precaution to be, as by all appearances the war was going to be a short one. Far from tempting him, the sight of so much food made him feel slightly sick. Finally he took some biscuits and the remains of a bottle of wine. He was on the point of sitting down when he decided the kitchen was ugly, and he went, munching, back into the office. As he passed it, he switched on the wireless. He knew beforehand what the communiqué would say: Patrol activity, artillery duels here and there on the Rhine. All the same the announcer’s voice would be something living.
    He sat down. He drank some of the white wine… He hadn’t been a success in the police. He wasn’t cut out for any service… What was he cut out for?… He opened a drawer and took out a green folder. In the top righthand corner he wrote: Dossier Gévigne. Then he slipped a few blank sheets of paper into it, and sat staring in front of him with vacant eyes.

TWO
    ‘It must look pretty silly,’ said Flavières to himself.
    He certainly felt it as he sat, trying to look distinguished and unconcerned, fidgeting with the mother-of-pearl opera-glasses which he couldn’t bring himself to raise to his eyes to study Madeleine’s face. There were lots of uniforms round him, and the women with the officers had a look all of their own, proud, satisfied. And Flavières hated them. Now he came to think of it, he hated the army, lock, stock, and barrel, and the war, and this overdecorative theatre which breathed an atmosphere at once martial and frivolous.
    He had only to turn his head a little to see Gévigne, who sat with his clasped hands resting on the ledge of the box. Madeleine was sitting back in her chair. She seemed to be dark and slim. Flavières couldn’t see her features clearly, but he had the impression she was pretty, with something a bit fragile about her. That might have been due to her abundant hair which seemed too heavy for her face. How could a man like Gévigne have procured a wife of such elegance and grace? How could she have put up with his advances? The curtain went up on a play which Flavières found insipid. He shut his eyes and let his mind run back to the days when he and Gévigne had shared a room to save money. They had been as