“I’d like to know the reason for your visit,” said Tiphaine angrily.
“Tiphaine, please,” said Sylvain.
“No one has seen or heard from Monsieur Depardieu since he left your house,” explained Laurel in a deadpan tone of voice. “You are, until proved otherwise, the last people to have had any contact with him.”
Sylvain felt the earth open up beneath his feet. He turned to his wife with an expression of shock and incredulity. Tiphaine stood there in stunned silence, looking at the police officers as if she were trying to see through a joke, or dismantle a hoax. But her oversincere expression only increased Sylvain’s alarm: she’d actually done it! That was why she hadn’t come up to bed last night. He’d thought she was sending him a message, telling him she was ending their relationship, both physical and emotional—if there was anything left to end. But there had been no message! The reason she hadn’t come to bed was simply that she’d been busy with something else. Sylvain had an inkling of what she might have done. He could barely contain his anger, and still less keep from letting it show. He was seething.
Laurel asked again, “What was the reason for his visit?”
Again, Tiphaine and Sylvain looked at each other, this time with a kind of artificial politeness, each clearly wanting to leave the other one to speak. Seeing that neither was going to answer, Hardy chose for them:
“Madame Geniot, can you tell us?”
Tiphaine looked thoughtfully at Hardy for a few seconds. Then she said, in a voice that managed to sound both outraged and dignified, “Gérard Depardieu came to beat the shit out of my husband because he’s been sleeping with his wife. His ex-wife, whatever. Our neighbor.”
Laurel and Hardy were speechless. Sylvain felt like he had just taken a deep breath into his lungs after having held his breath for several minutes. There was an embarrassed silence, which Laurel eventually broke with a change of subject, a kind of diversionary tactic to try to fix the situation. Instead he made it worse.
“Did he seem to be in any particular frame of mind?”
“Why, yes, he did!” said Tiphaine with an ironic laugh, as if he had put his finger on an important element of the mystery. “He was nervous. That would be one way of putting it.”
“I mean...apart from the situation with your husband,” said Laurel, only making things worse.
“That was all he wanted to talk about, officer. His entire being seemed to be focused on his loathing of my husband. I have to say I was tempted to give him a helping hand. But rest assured, he left our house in perfect health.”
Hardy interrupted her. “You have a son, I believe,” he said.
“We do.”
“Was he at home when Monsieur Depardieu came to the house?”
“He arrived home just as he was leaving.”
“Would it be all right if we asked him a few questions?”
“Ask him as many questions as you like. But I would ask you not to mention the reason for his visit. Our son knows nothing about the affair. I’ll ask him to come down.”
Without waiting for them to respond, she called up to Milo, who was in his room. The boy came down to the living room. He cast a doleful look at the police officers, then smirked as he took in their startling resemblance to Laurel and Hardy.
Hardy asked him three questions: had he ever seen the man in the photograph he showed him; had he seen him here the previous evening; and, if so, what time had the man left. Milo’s honest answers were fluent and natural. His testimony corroborated that of his parents. Moreover, the absence of emotion with which he evoked the facts added to the overall credibility of their collective version. Tiphaine stood there, arms crossed, with an almost victorious smile on her face, her eyes fixed on the two men.
As soon as Milo finished talking, she took them to task.
“I have a question for you, if I may. If we are indeed the last people to have been in contact with Gérard Depardieu, how come you know he was here?”
“Why don’t you ask your son?” Hardy replied.
Tiphaine and Sylvain both turned to Milo, who, finding himself the center of attention but with no idea why, instinctively adopted a defensive attitude.
“I didn’t do anything wrong! I just went over to Nora’s!”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see Inès. She told me Inès was at her father’s house, and I said he’d just been at ours.”
“Why did you want to see Inès?” Tiphaine asked, fully aware she wouldn’t get a straight answer.
“What does it have to do with you?”
