The Gravediggers' Bread by Frédéric Dard

Author:Frédéric Dard [Melanie Florence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782272922
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

8

When I came out of the church there was no one in sight. I had benefited, if I may put it like that, from extremely favourable circumstances. I sat at the wheel of the hearse and started the motor.

Now I was confronted with a fait accompli—oh how “accompli”! God was my witness that it wasn’t premeditated. I believe that in committing this murder in the church I had obeyed a sort of strange prompting. Everything had played a role in my action: the half-light, the heady perfume of the flowers, Castain’s aggressive attitude… I can still see him there, standing square on his spindly little legs, asking me what I was thinking about. Above all, the remark he’d made at Crémant’s house had in some mysterious way brought about the irrevocable.

Without trying to, I had just committed what was surely a perfect murder. But life went on, and Castain’s disappearance was not going to go unnoticed.

As I steered the small black hearse through the narrow streets of the town I was constructing a plan of action. I remembered that my boss had intended to catch the 1 1.35 train to Paris. That afternoon, in fact, he had an appointment with the specialist who was to start treatment for his ulcerating stomach.

I stopped the vehicle in front of the shop. I got out. I was resolved to say nothing to Germaine. For her, above all, I’d have to put on a good performance.

I went in and washed my hands in the kitchen. She was peeling vegetables for the midday meal.

“Horrible job,” I said. “I’m fed up with moving corpses about. Hasn’t Achille come back?”

“Isn’t he with you?”

“No, he left suddenly, saying that he’d just met a friend who was driving to Paris and he wanted to take the opportunity of going with him… I thought he’d come in to get changed?”

“He hasn’t been.”

“Ah.”

That was all for the day. We had our meal and finished up in the bedroom. I wasn’t really clear on where Germaine was, emotionally speaking. Was she still thinking about Maurice Thuillier? Was she suffering because of his dramatic death? Was she tormented by the past? All worrying questions I asked myself without daring to put them to her. In any case, on the physical side she really threw herself into it. Each of our embraces exceeded the one before. That girl had certainly never known a man who was able to satisfy her physically.

In the afternoon I was busy with the funeral for… Crémant. I finalized the details for the ceremony, which was to take place the following day. Then in the evening, as usual, I returned to the hotel.

I went to bed as soon as dinner was out of the way and tried to read a book, but I must have started the first sentence fifteen times over without being able to take in the meaning of the characters on the page.

Nevertheless, I left the light on and fell asleep very quickly. But in the middle of the night, the electricity disturbed me and dragged me out of sleep.

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