Then, with her mind made up after this long debate with herself, she proceeded to think out the best way of putting her design into execution. And she returned to the idea of removing a rail. This would be the surest and most practical plan, and could be easily carried out; she had only to drive away the chairs with a hammer, and then raise the rail from the sleepers. She had the tools. Nobody would see her in this deserted district. A good spot to select would certainly be beyond the cutting, on the way to Barentin, at the curve which crossed a dale on an embankment thirty or thirty-five feet high. There the train would for sure run off the line, and the fall would be terrible.
But the calculation of time, which then occupied her, made her anxious. On the up-line, before the Havre express came by at 8.16, there was only a slow train at 7.55. This would therefore give her twenty minutes to do the work, which was sufficient. Only, between the regular trains, they often dispatched others that were unforeseen, loaded with goods, particularly at moments when quantities of cargo arrived. Then what a useless risk she would be incurring! How could she tell beforehand whether it would be the express that would come to smash there? For a long time she turned the probabilities over in her head. It was still night. The candle continued to burn, bathed in tallow, with a long, smutty wick which she had ceased to snuff.
Just as a goods train arrived from Rouen, Misard returned. His hands were covered with dirt, for he had been rummaging in the woodhouse, and he was out of breath, distracted at his vain efforts to lay hands on the treasure. He had become so feverish with impotent rage, that he renewed his search under the articles of furniture, up the chimney, everywhere. There was no end to the interminable train, with the regular fracas of its great wheels, which at each shock jolted the dead woman in her bed. Misard, stretching out his arm to take down a small picture, hanging against the wall, again met the open eyes following his motions, while the lips seemed to move with their laugh.
He became livid. He was shivering, and stuttered out in terrific anger:
"Yes, yes; search! search! Never mind, I shall find it, even if I have to turn over every stone in the house, and every clod of ground in the neighbourhood!"
The black train had passed by in the obscurity, with painful slowness, and the dead woman, who had become motionless again, continued looking at her husband so jeeringly, so certain of conquering, that he disappeared a second time, leaving the door open. Flore, wandering in her reflections, had risen and closed the door, so that this man might not return to disturb her mother; and she felt astonished to hear herself saying aloud:
"Ten minutes beforehand will do."
In fact, she would have time in ten minutes. If no train was signalled ten minutes before the express, she could set to work. The matter being now settled, certain, her anxiety ceased, and she was very calm.
Day broke at about five o'clock, a fresh dawn, of pure limpidity. In spite of the slightly sharp cold, she set the window wide open, and the delicious morning air entered the lugubrious room, full of smoke and an odour of the dead. The sun was still below the horizon, behind a hillock crowned by trees; but it appeared with a rosy tint, streaming over the slopes, pouring into the deep roads, amidst the lively gaiety of the earth at each new spring. She had not been mistaken on the previous evening: it would be fine on that particular morning, one of those days of youth and radiant health on which one delights in life. How lovely it would be to set out along the goat paths at her own free will, in this deserted country among the continuous hills cut up by narrow dales! And when she turned round, facing the room, she was surprised to see the candle looking almost as if gone out, and with naught but a pale tear forming a spot in the broad daylight. The dead woman seemed now to be gazing on the line where the trains continued crossing one another, without even noticing this wan glimmer of a taper beside the corpse.
It was not until daylight that Flore resumed duty, and she only quitted the room for the slow train from Paris at 6.12. Misard, at six o'clock, had also relieved his colleague, the night signalman. It was at the sound of his horn that she had come and placed herself before the gate, the flag in her hand. She followed the train an instant with her eyes.