Free The Widow by Georges Simenon Page A

them a defiant look.
    â€œIf you think I don’t see through your little game! It isn’t the old man you’re after! He’d be a nuisance to you! You wouldn’t keep him a week without having him shut up in an asylum. And that’s the truth! You needn’t glower like that, Amélie. I know all about you! It’s not my fault you married a man who earns seven hundred francs a month and has to change jobs every year because he always thinks he knows better than the boss. As for you, my poor Françoise, you’re so stupid that, instead of speaking to you, one always wants to hold out a handful of hay. Well! What does your father say? Look at him! Try and get him to go with you!”
    He was in terror. A child being kidnapped in a park could not have looked back with more anguish than did the old man as he turned toward Tati.
    Yet Amélie was smiling at him for all she was worth, smiling and clucking as one does when trying to gain the confidence of an animal new to the house.
    â€œWrite to him that he’ll be well cared for, Désiré, and that he’ll have nothing to do but stroll all day long. And write too that there’s a murderer in the house and that one fine day he might get it.”
    Then, turning to Tati: “You see, I know what you’re up to. It’s no accident that this man’s here. One fine morning you’ll get Father—God knows how—to sign a paper. Then he’ll have to be disposed of before he can change his mind. Go on, admit it! Admit that from the first day you stepped in here, when we were still only kids, you decided you would take over. Our poor brother was properly fooled. You were already as perverted as could be. And I sometimes wonder if that isn’t what he died of. Have you finished writing, Désiré?”
    He handed her a little black notebook in which he had written a few lines.
    â€œWrite too that he’s in danger of his life here.”
    Old Couderc would have liked to go. He had emptied his glass, and Amélie sighed: “On top of it all she gives him brandy, knowing full well he could never stand it and that the doctor forbids.”
    â€œRead it, Couderc,” snapped Tati, who, seeming vastly amused, had planted herself in the middle of the kitchen, her hands on her hips. “You’ll be happy with them all right, in three rooms on the first floor of a miserable gray house. And who’ll there be to make love to you, eh?”
    â€œTati!” exclaimed Amélie, leaping to her feet.
    â€œAs if you didn’t know! As if you didn’t know it began while your brother was still alive! Look at him now, all of you. D’you think he wants to go off with you?”
    He had risen, and had let the notebook fall to the floor. He had gone to sit by the chimney, to be as far out of reach as he could.
    â€œYou’re taking advantage of him not being all there. But you haven’t won the game for all that, Tati, I warn you. In cases like this, there is always the right to have a family council named. I know what the lawyer told me. And when that happens …”
    She looked at the walls around her, made a sweeping gesture. “You’ll be thrown out of here with your murderer.”
    She was quivering, her lips trembling. The sun-drenched window caught her eye. It doubtless reminded her of something, for she cried, “Where’s Hector? Désiré! Quick—go and find Hector. He might have …”
    Tati was smiling, a broad, beaming smile, and her hand was fiddling with the cameo pinned to the black silk bodice of her dress, the cameo her mother-in-law wore in the portrait.
    â€œYou really won’t take anything to calm you down?” she asked, grasping the bottle of black-currant syrup.
    Then, suddenly, Amélie did a foolish thing. She grabbed the bottle, which shattered on the floor. Tati’s automatic response was to snatch off her hat, which fell