Chapter Fifty
They transported the corpse immediately to one of the treatment rooms to calm down the wrought-up population of the asylum. The nurses had exposed her face. Her eyes were staring at the ceiling with a scattered expression. Her name was Madelaine Devaux. All her life, this small, hollow-cheeked woman had suffered from an obsessive neurosis that made her see things that weren’t there. During consultations, she had whispered that she lived in an underground cellar filled with oil-coloured water. In it swam a crocodile that stared at her with its golden eyes. She didn’t dare to speak with a normal voice – the crocodile would hear her, and then what?
Denis was aware that death induced primitive sentiments in mankind. Still, he hoped that she was free of the nightmare she’d been
