Madame Berthe

Madame Berthe, the concierge of the building where The Jackal takes refuge, is the unsuspecting human point of entry into his final approach to the ceremony. On a day already unsettled by police searches, she returns to her familiar place by the doorway with her knitting. Her ordinary routine and ready sympathy make her a sharp contrast to the calculated disguise that arrives at her door: a seemingly injured veteran who asks for water, then attacks her when she turns away.

The concierge and her ordinary routine

The narrative presents Madame Berthe through the practical details of her work and the rhythms of the building. After police have searched all the rooms, she settles back into her usual place in the doorway to knit. Her concern is not with the ceremony due to take place across the square, a hundred yards away, but with the day’s disruption and the tenants who might have objected to police entering their rooms. Most are away for the August holidays; only three remain. The ceremony, scheduled for two hours later, holds no interest for her.

That indifference establishes the limited, domestic scale from which she encounters the political crisis. Police activity has reached her building, but she experiences it as an intrusion into the tenants’ rooms and a disturbance to an otherwise familiar day. The contrast matters: while the ceremony draws public attention and security, Madame Berthe is occupied with knitting, the doorway, and the consequences of searches for the people who live upstairs.

The apparent veteran

The Jackal approaches as an old man in a greatcoat, leaning heavily on a crutch, with a single leg visible beneath the coat and medals swinging below the left lapel. His face appears haggard and sweaty. For Madame Berthe, the costume calls up a personal memory: the greatcoat resembles one her long-dead husband used to wear. She bundles her knitting into her apron pocket and responds with concern, telling the stranger that the ceremony is not for two hours and inviting him inside because he has arrived early and is walking in the heat.

Her welcome is specific and unguarded. Rather than question his presence or keep him at the threshold, she directs him toward the parlour and goes to fetch water. The kindness is prompted by the appearance of discomfort and by the visual echo of her husband’s coat; the disguise makes a stranger legible to her as a person in need. The episode therefore turns the details that secure The Jackal’s cover into the means of gaining access to the building.

The assault and confinement

In the kitchen, the running tap and filling glass occupy Madame Berthe’s attention. She does not hear the outer lobby door close, and she barely feels The Jackal’s left hand slide around her jaw from behind. His blow, delivered with bunched knuckles beneath the mastoid bone just behind her right ear, takes her by surprise. The image of the tap and glass gives way to fragments of red and black as she falls, inert and soundless, to the floor.

The Jackal then removes the disguise’s physical constraint. He opens his coat and unbuckles the harness holding his right leg up beneath his buttocks. Straightening the leg and flexing his cramped knee causes visible pain; he waits several minutes for blood to return to his calf and ankle before putting weight on it. The detail reveals that the limp is not merely an impression created by the crutch: it is a bodily performance maintained at a cost, and Madame Berthe’s apparent encounter with an enfeebled man has concealed someone capable of sudden violence.

Five minutes later, The Jackal has tied Madame Berthe hand and foot with the clothesline from beneath the sink and covered her mouth with a large square of sticking plaster. He places her in the scullery and shuts the door. Her body, first encountered in a public-facing doorway, is now hidden within the service spaces of the building. The sequence gives the disguise a domestic aftermath: a request for water leads from the parlour to the kitchen, then to the confinement of the concierge who offered help.

Discovery and narrative significance

After searching the parlour, The Jackal finds the flat keys in a table drawer. He takes up the same crutch he had used through the airports of Brussels and Milan twelve days earlier, checks that the hall is empty, locks the parlour door behind him, and goes upstairs. Madame Berthe’s keys and the building’s quiet corridors allow him to continue into a tenant’s flat. Her role in the plot is thus not simply that of a victim of disguise; the attack removes an obstacle, while the access and opportunity created by her hospitality help The Jackal move through the building.

Pierre Valremy later reaches the scullery with a police commissaire. Looking over the smaller man’s shoulder, he sees the concierge tied on the floor and still unconscious. The discovery confirms the cost of the encounter and brings the concealed violence into view for the pursuing police. Madame Berthe has no further action in the supplied scene, and her later condition is not established. Her brief part nevertheless concentrates the danger of The Jackal’s approach: the ceremonial day and its extraordinary threat enter an ordinary building through a request as commonplace as a glass of water.