She Who Was No More (Pushkin Vertigo)
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 1782270817
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Every Saturday evening, travelling salesman Ferdinand Ravinel returns to his wife, Mireille, who waits patiently for him at home. But Ferdinand has another lover, Lucienne, an ambitious doctor, and together the adulterers have devised a murderous plan.
Drugging Mireille, the pair drown her in a bathtub, but in the morning, before the "accidental" death can be discovered, the corpse is gone--so begins the unraveling of Ferdinand's plot, and his sanity...
This classic of French noir fiction was adapted for the screen by Henri-Georges Clouzot as Les Diaboliques (The Devils), starring Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot, the film which in turn inspired Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. A second movie version, Diabolique, followed in 1996, starring Sharon Stone.
the street was Bigaux, a railway clerk of fifty. A conscientious, dull little man who knew his place, and kept it. His work, his garden, his family, his game of belote of an evening—that was his world. Bigaux hiding a corpse! The idea was unthinkable. And his wife had a gastric ulcer. A flimsy creature you could knock down with a feather. On the other side, Poniatowski, who was in the accounts department of a furniture factory. Divorced. Hardly ever there. It was said that he wanted to sell the
least an hour late and that the express from Le Mans had been derailed near Versailles. ‘And the forecast says it’ll last for several days. In London it seems people are crawling about with flashlights.’ Ravinel was seized by a gnawing uneasiness. Why this fog? And why should it have come on this particular day? A day on which it was more than ever necessary to distinguish the living from the dead!… That was absurd, of course. He knew it. But how could he prevent the fog’s penetrating him and
driver swore volubly at some invisible pedestrian, then drove on again. Sometimes he wiped the interior of the windshield with the back of his hand, muttering all the time. Ravinel had no idea what part of Paris they were going through. Perhaps the taxi itself was all part of the trap. For Lucienne was quite right: a body doesn’t go about all alone. There must be someone else in the picture. Always from Lucienne’s point of view of course. The possibility of Mireille’s being able to appear and
have.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘You’ll know better next time.’ Disconcerted, Ravinel turned to the other man, who stood with his back to the radiator holding out his hands towards it and who gazed vacantly before him. He was fat with bags under his eyes and a waxen complexion. His double chin almost completely concealed his collar. ‘When did you return home?’ continued the man at the desk. ‘Saturday.’ ‘Is this the first time your wife’s gone off without telling you?’ ‘Yes… At least since I’ve known
been at the same time afraid of them and fascinated. They might even have had something to do with his taking up flies later on, but that of course was mere speculation. A stair creaked and Ravinel pricked up his ears. It was one single creak and nothing more—probably merely the oak in the staircase working. And all at once this brightly lit house seemed to become mournful. If Mireille were suddenly to appear there in the doorway he felt that he would hear the same sort of sound inside him.