Chapter 10 - The Little Liar

“How’s my little Alice? Still softening up juries in favor of a man who chopped his wife into tiny pieces?”

A coughing fit interrupted Jean’s dulled, gravelly voice.

“How about you? What are you reading at the moment?”

“Tolstoy’s Resurrection, suits me perfectly, wouldn’t you say?”

Another bout of coughing.

“What brings you here?”

Jean was the only person in whom Alice wanted to confide about the case. She told him Lisa’s whole story. She didn’t know what she should do with the letter. Send it to the district attorney? Tell Théry? Both at the same time? Or ask to see the judge who would be presiding over the trial?

“Do you think it’s bona fide? She really did lie?”

“I think … well …” Alice gave a sigh, then said, “I don’t know anymore, Jean.”

“Do you know the district attorney?”

“Not well enough to speak to him in confidence.”

“Whether it’s him or someone else, either way, this will have them choking on their toast and marmalade. This kid of yours won’t know what’s hit her. And neither will you, Alice. How soon’s the trial?”

“Two weeks.”

Jean coughed again. A Bach cantata played in the background.

“Okay, don’t do a thing. Two weeks won’t change much for the defendant. And if you tip Théry off, knowing him as I do, he’ll make a whole big thing of it and tell everyone. If I were you, I’d keep that letter until the trial. Wait to see the guy. Watch how the kid reacts. She might still dump you in it. Don’t take that risk … And be sure to tell me all about it. Do you promise?”

Alice promised. She was in tears.

She would head back to her island on Friday morning. Too bad for the files building up on her desk. She wouldn’t be able to achieve anything anyway.

She wasn’t sleeping well and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. And almost as if it were planned, bad news just kept coming. One of her clients was firing her and had asked her to hand over the files to an attorney she loathed. “Yours sincerely. PS I can’t pay you at the moment. So sorry.”

Another was threatening to settle the score with “that fucking examining magistrate.” Chrystel was longing to tell her story—“Do you know any people in TV who could help me?” Gerard’s sister was keeping a meticulous note of Alice’s visits to him in prison. She had eyed Alice reproachfully when she’d come to the office to drop off some of her sugary biscuits.

“If it goes on like this, Gerard’ll hang himself,” she’d said, and then added with a defeated look in her eye, “Oh, I know we’re not important.”

And Louise wasn’t answering her messages! Alice tried calling her.

“What is up with you, Mom? So you’re calling your daughter in the middle of the day now? Watch out, you’re turning into your mother already!”

She was laughing, and Alice could hear happy voices around her. She was in a café with friends, it was “so great.”

“I just wanted to let you know I’m going to the island. I need some quiet. I have some files that are difficult to handle.”

“But you do remember you said Romain could have the house? He’s planning on spending a few days there with Adele. It’s her birthday.”

“Oh, of course. Never mind. I’ll get there before them, and I’ll head back early. And anyway, it would be nice to see them, it’ll take my mind off things.”

“Okay, Mom, but you better let him know. He must be picturing a nice break with his girlfriend, not his mom!”

And now Alice needed to see how Lisa was doing. She’d found her in pieces a few days after their last meeting. Lisa had spoken to her father.

“He scared me,” she’d said. “At first, he didn’t say anything. He was, like, paralyzed. Then he said it was all your fault, and he was going to call Laurentin. I hung up.”

Paradoxically, and to Lisa’s considerable surprise, her mother had reacted better.

“At first it was unbearable. She didn’t believe me. She said I’d lost my mind, I should see a doctor and this was proof that I wasn’t over it all. Then she imagined all sorts of stuff. That I was being threatened and Lange was blackmailing me. She wanted to tell the police. I was the one consoling her. I stayed with her all evening, and we even slept in the same bed. In the morning we managed to talk it over calmly. It was hard for her, but I think she understood. Mostly she’s worried about everything that will happen at the trial. I reassured her, I told her you were very good. When we said goodbye, she said something I found really touching—at my age it’s easier to get over a lie than a rape.”

Alice regretted not thinking of it herself. Let’s hope the mother was right, she thought.