The Successor Read Online Free Page B

kind of joy, as if she was still inside her dream.
    She got up in a state of bewilderment and went to the door. Before turning the handle, she stood stockstill, to listen for voices.
    The landing was quiet, but muffled sounds of speech and feet rose from below. Her mother’s and brother’s bedroom doors were shut. She went over to the railing and looked down into the hall. The lights had been switched on in the dining room and the
grand salon
, the room where her dream had taken place.
    Her heart raced. Since her father’s suicide, irrespective of anyone’s wishes, it had been forbidden to enter that room, which had been formally sealed by order of the Ministry of the Interior.
    She turned her head slowly to look once more at the doors of the bedrooms where her mother and brother slept, and then, in a growing panic, she stared at the other door on the landing, the door to her father’s room. A razor-thin strip of light shone from beneath. Every part of her body — her lungs, her eyes, her hair — screamed in unison: Papa! It was the same strip of light she had watched until two in the morning during the fatal night. She told herself she must still be dreaming, as she had not collapsed instantly like someone struck by lightning. With measured step, fearing she might wake herself up and thus lose this second chance of seeing her father come back, she moved toward the door. Yes, she must be asleep, or else out of her mind, since she felt that she would see her father again in the very bedroom where she had seen him dead, with a hole in his bloodstained shirt.
    One more step, then another. Don’t give up now, she told herself. In any case, you’re done for.
    At that moment the door swung open. A stranger rushed out. He was holding something black that looked like an old kind of camera. He looked the young woman up and down, somewhat surprised, and then, without uttering a word, raced down the stairs two at a time.
    From the other side of the bedroom door that the stranger had left ajar came the sound of an exasperated man. Suzana managed to make out the word “autopsy.”
    What next? That would really be the last straw if, after all the horror, they were now going to conduct an autopsy on the spot using an obsolete instrument in the shape of a camera.
    Suzana put a hand to her forehead. It was probably just the continuation of her dream. Or did she mean hallucination?
    Voices rose in the bedroom once more. A snatch of speech caught her ear: “… failing to carry out an autopsy was a scandalous omission!”
    The door opened wide. His face crimson with anger, a man she thought she recognized as the new minister of the interior hurried out. Of his two escorts she recognized only one — the architect of the residence, the only one of them to have been in her recent dream.
    The minister stared at her with some surprise. He stopped in his tracks to say, “Good morning!” then added, “Did we wake you up?”
    The young woman hardly knew what to say.
    The architect greeted her with a gentle nod of his head.
    “We are making some inquiries,” the minister said before moving toward the staircase.
    The other two followed in his footsteps. As they went down the stairs, Suzana once again heard the words “autopsy” and “scandal.”
    The minister had sounded and looked very friendly.
    She felt as if she was regaining her senses. They had apparently come before dawn to proceed with their inquiries. The day after Father’s death they had given close family members permission to go on living in part of the residence but not to enter the closed rooms and areas designated by red sealing wax. From time to time they would come to carry out various checks. They had the keys.
    That’s what they had said, but they hadn’t come. This morning was the first time they had shown their faces. So if Suzana had felt entitled to ask a single question, it would have been: What took you so long?
    The young woman felt a wave of cold settle