A Trap for Cinderella by Sébastien Japrisot

Author:Sébastien Japrisot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallic Books
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

I MURDERED

My white-gloved hand covered her mouth. She drew it away gently and rose, a long silhouette on the rectangle of light from the next room. One night we had already been like this in the half-light, she and I. She had held me by the shoulders. She had suggested that I murder a princess with long hair.

‘How do you know all this? There are some things you can’t know: the night she slept at my hotel, the night I hung around under her windows. And then the time I met that boy, Gabriel …’

‘You told me about it yourself!’ said Jeanne. ‘We spent two weeks together in June.’

‘Didn’t you see Micky again after the fight at the Résidence?’

‘No. I didn’t care. I wasn’t at all anxious to take her back to Italy. The next morning I saw François Chance to settle the matter of the decorating, and caught my plane. When I got back to Florence, I had my problems. Raffermi was beside herself with rage. I wouldn’t swear that Micky hadn’t telephoned her after she saw me. You always maintained she hadn’t. In any case, it didn’t do any good. Raffermi stayed angry to the end.’

‘When did she die?’

‘A week later.’

‘And you said nothing more to me before you left?’

‘No. I had nothing more to say. You knew very well what I meant. Long before you met me, you thought of nothing else.’

All of a sudden there was light in the room; she had turned on a lamp. I covered my eyes with my gloved hand.

‘Turn it out, please!’

‘Do you mind if I worry about you? Do you know what time it is? You’re dead tired. I’ve brought you some gloves. Take off the ones you have on.’

While she was bending over my hands, tall, blonde, considerate, all that she had told me seemed again like a bad dream. She was generous and good, and I was incapable of planning Micky’s death – none of it was true.

Soon it was dawn. She took me in her arms and carried me up to the first floor. In the hall, as she came near Do’s old room, I could only shake my head against her cheek. She understood and laid me down on her own bed, in the room she had stayed in while I was at the clinic. A moment later, after she had taken off my bathrobe and given me something to drink, she bent over me as I shivered under the covers, tucked me in, and contemplated my face silently with tired eyes.

Downstairs, at some forgotten point in her story, I had told her that I wanted to die. Now, feeling overcome by drowsiness, I was seized by an absurd fear.

‘What did you give me to drink?’

‘Water, with two sleeping tablets.’

She must have read my mind, as usual, for she put her hand over my eyes. I heard her saying, ‘You’re mad, mad, mad, mad,’ and her voice rapidly became fainter; I could no longer feel her

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