Chương 3
“Does this hurt?” she asked, touching near the temple rather than on it.
“A little.”
“And your wrist?”
Anouk extended her left arm. There was mild redness near the base of her thumb, already fading.
Céline recorded what she observed. She did not call it proof. She did not call it nothing.
While the nurse worked, Elise watched the girl’s braid rise and fall with her breathing. The elastic at the end was blue, though school uniform rules required navy. Elise had noticed the wrong color at breakfast two days earlier and made a note to remind her. Now the note seemed absurd, but she knew that by morning some part of the school would return to caring about the difference between blue and navy.
Sergeant Rochat asked what Anouk had been doing in the administrative corridor.
The girl stared at the nurse’s medical bag.
“I heard the freezer bell.”
“The service alarm?”
She nodded. “I thought it was the fire alarm.”
“Why didn’t you wake your housemistress?”
Anouk looked ashamed. “I tried. She wasn’t in her room.”
Elise felt the statement land.
At 12:05, she had left the junior floor to check the source of the alarm after seeing no smoke indicator on the panel. She had told the senior night prefect, sixteen-year-old Leila Marchand, to listen for the younger girls. She had not woken every child or announced where she was going. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been reasonable.
Tonight, reason felt like an opening through which blame could enter.
“I was downstairs checking the alarm,” Elise said.
Sergeant Rochat did not reassure her. “Continue, Anouk.”
“I came down the back stairs. I saw Mr. Halden in the office.”
“What office?”
“The one with the green door.”
Elise knew it as the bursar’s records room. It was beyond the main administrative corridor and was not normally accessible to students.
“What was he doing?”
“He had papers on the table. My bottle fell.”
Anouk’s small blue water bottle was later found beside the doorway, its cap cracked, a dark patch drying on the runner carpet.
“He shouted,” she said. “I said sorry.”
“What did he say?”
Her eyes moved toward the closed lounge door.
“That I had ruined everything.”
“Did you touch the papers?”
“I tried to pick one up. He said not to.”
“What happened next?”
Anouk rubbed her thumb across the side of her index finger.
“He held my wrist.”
“Once?”
She nodded.
“Did he let go when you asked?”
A pause.
“I didn’t ask.”
“That is all right.”
“I just pulled.”
Her voice became smaller.
“And then?”
“He pulled me into the corridor. The folder scratched me. I went to the big room.”
“The reception hall?”
“Yes.”
“What happened there?”
Anouk looked at Elise again. “Madame Hartmann came.”
She did not describe the raised folder. When Sergeant Rochat asked whether Victor had touched her with it, Anouk shook her head.
“He didn’t hit me.”
The distinction mattered to her. Elise could see that. Perhaps Anouk feared that exaggerating one detail would make the others disappear.
Sergeant Rochat asked only two more questions, then stopped. She told Anouk she would not have to speak to Victor and that another adult would remain with her.
The child’s mother was listed as the primary guardian. Nadine Keller was on an overnight flight from Montreal to Geneva after a medical conference, and the airline would not land for another five hours. Her father, Matthias, lived in Zürich but had limited custodial authority under the parents’ agreement and had not responded to repeated calls.
Dr. Sabine Rüegg arrived before either parent could be reached.
The headmistress entered the visitors’ lounge wearing a camel coat over a black sweater and trousers. She had put on lipstick but not earrings. At fifty-six, she had the contained posture of a woman who had spent half her life receiving bad news without allowing it to alter the next appointment.
She crossed first to Anouk.
“Are you hurt?”
The girl glanced at Céline.
“There is a minor scrape and temporary redness,” the nurse said. “I have documented both. She does not require hospital care at present.”
Sabine knelt, though less naturally than the police sergeant had. “You are safe now.”
Anouk did not answer.
The headmistress stood and looked at Elise. “Where is Mr. Halden?”
“In the admissions room with the police.”
“And the footage?”
“Preserved in the incident archive.”
A brief stillness.
“Who authorized that?”
“I did, with Mateo’s secondary code.”
Sabine closed her eyes for less than a second. “You called the police before calling me.”
“Yes.”
“You are required to notify the senior administrator on duty.”
“When there is time.”
“There was enough time to access the surveillance system.”
“There was a child between him and a desk.”
Sergeant Rochat appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Rüegg, I will need to speak with you separately.”
Sabine’s expression remained composed, but Elise saw the slight rise of color above her collar.
“Of course.”
Before leaving, the headmistress looked again at Anouk. The concern in her face was real. So was the calculation behind it. Elise disliked herself for noticing both, and disliked Sabine more for making it possible.
At two in the morning, Victor left the school through a side entrance.
He was not arrested. Sergeant Rochat explained that the footage and statements had been secured, that the immediate threat had ended, and that further interviews would follow. Victor was instructed not to contact Anouk, her family, or staff witnesses regarding the incident.
His lawyer arrived before he departed.
Philippe Dutoit was a compact man in a navy overcoat who spoke softly and never seemed surprised. He did not enter the visitors’ lounge. Elise saw him through the glass wall of Sabine’s office, one hand resting on the back of a chair while Victor talked.
At one point, Victor struck the chair with his palm.
May you like
Dutoit waited until he stopped.
When Victor finally crossed the reception hall, Elise stood beside Anouk near the north staircase. The girl had refused to return to her dormitory without her.
