Chapter 54
Tiphaine opened the door to find Nora standing on the front step in a wool jacket, her arms crossed and her eyes dark.
If she was surprised to see Tiphaine in pajamas, she didn’t show it—that was the least of her worries.
She nodded a brief greeting and came inside.
Tiphaine stepped back to let her pass and closed the door.
Inside the entryway, Nora turned to Tiphaine to ask her the one thing she was desperate to know.
“What are you planning to do with Gérard’s file?
” she said, unable to conceal her gnawing anxiety.
As far as Tiphaine was concerned, the case was closed, and she had no desire for it to be reopened.
It was a detail that had no part to play in the next steps of her revenge. But Nora’s concern amused her.
“What was it doing in your house?” she said with a sardonic smile.
“It’s not the original file,” Nora lied with aplomb. “It’s a copy. One of several, as far as I know. Gérard came by to give it to me before he saw you. Just in case.”
“Is that so!” Tiphaine laughed mockingly. She didn’t believe a word of it. “So did Gérard always keep multiple copies of his files?”
“Of course,” said Nora.
“But no one knows where Gérard is.”
“Maybe so. But his secretary is at the office. And she knows all about his cases.”
If the situation hadn’t been so critical, Tiphaine would have burst out laughing out of pity for Nora.
But even in the face of such na?veté she felt hollow, ravaged by the emptiness that had swallowed up the very last crumbs of forgotten emotion.
Her heart was beating abnormally slowly.
As if, with each beat, it was hesitating to generate the next.
As if it were going to come slowly to a stop. Emotional torpor. Sensory lethargy.
Tiphaine shook herself. There wasn’t much time, she’d already lost precious seconds, and the police would be there any minute.
“Shall we go into the kitchen?” she suggested, cutting short the pointless debate. Walking ahead of her neighbor, she made her way down the corridor. Nora followed, feeling uncomfortable: Tiphaine didn’t seem convinced by her story of multiple copies of the documents.
Tiphaine walked to the kitchen table, on which sat Nora’s knife, gleaming and sharp. She stopped and turned to her neighbor, who took a couple of seconds to notice the knife, then frowned when she recognized it as hers, and looked at Tiphaine, confused.
“That’s my knife.”
“I borrowed it from you the other day when I was babysitting Nassim. I’ve been meaning to give it back to you.”
She sounded slightly bored, as if she were reciting a text she’d learned by heart.
By heart but without soul. She felt like she no longer had a heart or a soul.
The two women stood on either side of the knife.
Tiphaine didn’t take her eyes off it. There was no menace in her eyes, just a faint dislike.
She seemed bloodless, as if she had been emptied, almost absent, already gone.
“Here you go, take it,” she said, pushing the knife toward Nora.
Nora felt the grip of fear tightening. She stepped back, drawing a grimace from Tiphaine, a baleful smile, a grin that was half absurd, half comical. As Nora watched her with growing distrust, Tiphaine stepped back to reassure her neighbor about her intentions.
“Take it, for heaven’s sake!” she said angrily. “We’re not going to spend the evening staring at a knife. I’m just giving it back to you.”
Nora tried to take control of the situation, to avoid making a mistake or a misstep.
A few moments before, she’d been terrified of seeing her knife in Tiphaine’s hand, and now that Tiphaine said she wanted to give it back to her, it seemed that picking it up was the last thing she ought to do.
What was Tiphaine planning? Why would she give her rival a weapon that could injure her?
Bright blue lights from out on the street blinked through the transom above the front door.
Nora wouldn’t have paid any attention if Tiphaine hadn’t shot a glance in their direction.
Her eyes suddenly lit up with a gleam of alarm.
She looked fiercely at Nora, then back to the knife.
Something unusual was going on. The situation was becoming absurd.
Tiphaine was trying to get Nora to pick up the knife, but it was this very persistence that kept her from doing so.
The lights in the street were growing brighter. The two women heard car doors slamming, voices coming closer. Tiphaine was growing nervous and agitated, as if her body had suddenly received an electric charge of unpleasant emotions.
Aggressive.
“Are you going to take it or not, yes or no?”
Suddenly Nora understood. Tiphaine was planning to get rid of her by claiming legitimate self-defense.
She was trying to get her to pick up the knife so she could prove that.
It would appear Nora was threatening her.
It all made sense now. Here she was in Tiphaine’s kitchen, which was proof that she had instigated the meeting, not the other way around.
It was her knife, so it would seem as if she had brought it with her.
Here was Tiphaine in pajamas, a clear sign she wasn’t expecting a visitor.
She was the intruder, the danger, the threat.
Nora had walked straight into the lion’s den.
Done precisely what Tiphaine had wanted her to.
Except she hadn’t picked up the knife.
Nora took a step back, which seemed to trigger a swift change of mood in Tiphaine. Everything happened very fast after that. She barely had time to take it in.
The doorbell rang, shattering the silence, like a signal to escape.
Tiphaine glared at her for a split second.
There was a fleeting moment when everything began to spin out of control. The next moment, Tiphaine moved to the table, grabbed the knife by the handle, and ran toward Nora, the weapon pointing straight at her heart. Nora held her arms in front of her chest in an instinct for survival.
Voices called out from behind the front door. Instructions. Orders. Then loud, repeated knocks.
Nora anticipated the pain of the blade sinking savagely into her flesh. She held back a cry of panic, wanted to move, to get away, but found both her body and her mind paralyzed by terror. There stood Tiphaine, knife in hand, the blade a few centimeters away from her chest . . .
There were noises, policemen’s voices on the other side of the door, so close, but they couldn’t intervene to save her. There was the light turning, blue, bright, cold . . . a blinking light giving rhythm to the impulses of an obsessive delirium.
Nora saw herself lost, felt her body being emptied of its lifeblood, about to suffer, to die.
“Police, open up!”
And then . . .
And then nothing. No pain. No terrifying sensations except those provoked by a mind ravaged by fear. Nothing unpleasant, except Tiphaine’s cold fingers gripping her wrists, forcing her to open her hands . . . What was she doing? Why didn’t she just kill her?
Outside, cops were banging on the door, as if they were hammering her thoughts with stupid questions. Tiphaine was so close now that Nora could feel her breath on her cheeks.
“Open the door or we’re going to break it down!”
Now Nora could feel the touch of the knife.
But instead of the icy shock of the blade on her skin, it was the handle that she felt slipping into her hand, and Tiphaine forcing her to close her fingers around it.
She couldn’t react, paralyzed by the noises, the knocking, the flashing lights, her rival’s face, Tiphaine’s eyes staring into hers, holding her attention for as long as she could.
As though trying to divert her mind from her hand.
From the knife that was now pointing at Tiphaine’s heart.
The front door rattled and there was a loud crash, at the same moment that Nora, standing there with the knife in her hand, realized that Tiphaine was about to throw herself at her.
She felt a resistance, like an awkward obstacle between their two bodies, then her neighbor coming at her and throwing herself at her with all her weight.
Something hot and slightly sticky was spreading over her hands.
A second crash, more violent still, made the foundations of the house tremble.
Tiphaine was leaning against Nora and moaning. Her eyes were rolled back yet somehow she still held Nora’s terrified, uncomprehending gaze. She gave her a beatific smile, and as she parted her lips, blood trickled out.
The front door burst open with a resounding crash.
Nora turned to the source of the noise and saw two policemen rushing into the house; she looked back at Tiphaine, who was slowly slipping to the ground, held upright only by the knife, whose handle Nora was clutching in her hands, planted deep into her chest. It had gone right through her rib cage.
As life leached out of her in ragged gasps, Tiphaine clung to Nora’s gaze, drawing from her neighbor’s horror the strength to smile, despite the blood and the almost unbearable pain.
“At last,” she murmured with a smile twisted by a sort of appalling ecstasy.
“Put your hands in the air,” yelled a policeman, pointing his gun at Nora.
Horrified, she dropped the knife and obeyed.
Tiphaine collapsed to the ground at her feet.
The policemen ran to Nora, grabbed her, yanked her hands behind her back, handcuffed her, and then pulled her away from the body sprawled on the ground.
Just before she was led out of the kitchen, Nora threw one last glance at Tiphaine.
As she lay there, eyes open but unseeing, the mask of hatred slipped from her face and, at last, she looked at peace.