“It cooks you,” he said. “Just the thing for asthma.”
Certainly it “cooked you,” but exactly like a fever.
Indeed, the whole town was running a temperature; such anyhow was the impression Dr. Rieux could not shake off as he drove to the rue Faidherbe for the inquiry into Cottard’s attempted suicide.
That this impression was unreasonable he knew, and he attributed it to nervous exhaustion; he had certainly his full share of worries just at present. In fact, it was high time to put the brakes on and try to get his nerves into some sort of order.
On reaching his destination he found that the police inspector hadn’t turned up yet.
Grand, who met him on the landing, suggested they should wait in his place, leaving the door open.
The municipal clerk had two rooms, both very sparsely furnished.
The only objects to catch the eye were a bookshelf on which lay two or three dictionaries, and a small blackboard on which one could just read two half-obliterated words: “flowery avenues.”
Grand announced that Cottard had had a good night.
But he’d waked up this morning with pains in his head and feeling very low.
Grand, too, looked tired and overwrought; he kept pacing up and down the room, opening and closing a portfolio crammed with sheets of manuscript that lay on the table.
Meanwhile, however, he informed the doctor that he really knew very little about Cottard, but believed him to have private means in a small way.
Cottard was a queer bird.
For a long while their relations went no farther than wishing each other good-day when they met on the stairs.
“I’ve only had two conversations with him.
Some days ago I upset a box of colored chalks I was bringing home, on the landing.
They were red and blue chalks.
Just then Cottard came out of his room and he helped me pick them up.
He asked me what I wanted colored chalks for.”
Grand had then explained to him that he was trying to brush up his Latin.
He’d learned it at school, of course, but his memories had grown blurred.
“You see, doctor, I’ve been told that a knowledge of Latin gives one a better understanding of the real meanings of French words.”
So he wrote Latin words on his blackboard, then copied out again in blue chalk the part of each word that changed in conjugation or declension, and in red chalk the part of the word that never varied.
“I’m not sure if Cottard followed this very clearly, but he seemed interested and asked me for a red chalk.
That rather surprised me, but after all— Of course I couldn’t guess the use he’d put it to.”
Rieux asked what was the subject of their second conversation.
But just then the inspector came, accompanied by a clerk, and said he wished to begin by hearing Grand’s statement.
The doctor noticed that Grand, when referring to Cottard, always called him “the unfortunate man,” and at one moment used even the expression “his grim resolve.”
When discussing the possible motives for the attempted suicide, Grand showed an almost finical anxiety over his choice of words.
Finally he elected for the expression “a secret grief.”
The inspector asked if there had been anything in Cottard’s manner that suggested what he called his “intent to felo-de-se.”
“He knocked at my door yesterday,” Grand said, “and asked me for a match.
I gave him a box.
He said he was sorry to disturb me but that, as we were neighbors, he hoped I wouldn’t mind.
He assured me he’d bring back my box, but I told him to keep it.”
The inspector asked Grand if he’d noticed anything queer about Cottard.
“What struck me as queer was that he always seemed to want to start a conversation.
But he should have seen I was busy with my work.”
Grand turned to Rieux and added rather shyly:
“Some private work.”
The inspector now said that he must see the invalid and hear what he had to say. Rieux thought it would be wiser to prepare Cottard for the visit.
When he entered the bedroom he found Cottard, who was wearing a gray flannel nightshirt, sitting up in bed and gazing at the door with a scared expression on his face.
“It’s the police, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rieux said, “but don’t get flustered.
There are only some formalities to be gone through, and then you’ll be left in peace.”
Cottard replied that all this was quite needless, to his thinking, and anyhow he didn’t like the police.
Rieux showed some irritation.
“I don’t love them either.
It’s only a matter of answering a few questions as briefly and correctly as you can, and then you’ll be through with it.”
Cottard said nothing and Rieux began to move to the door.