Chapter VISeptember sailed in with its beauty, its waning brightness. The boats start disappearing from the lake, their sails packed away, while the white ships shuttling back and forth from town are now glimpsed only once in a while. A poster by the dock announces that the summer timetable had been suspended and the 8.27 evening shuttle would no longer be running. Every day, another small hotel pulls down its shutters: everyone is leaving. Will that window, glinting in the sunshine, its white curtains fluttering in the breeze, still be open tomorrow? And the one next to it? Or the one above it? Each one closes, in turn; another light snuffed out.
A few days ago, Renée Rey started coming down from her room and going for a stroll after lunch, around two o’clock, on her own or on Monsieur R
