Élise frequently resides at Villa Gillet in Lyon. She organizes her existence like a permanent tour. Yesterday in Lyon, today in Paris, tomorrow in New York. Each movement becomes a staging. What dress to wear? Which perfume to choose? What image to broadcast?
Her millions of followers await their daily ration of calibrated elegance. Élise sees herself as an absolute success. Harmony of shapes, impeccable skin, controlled look: she considers her body to be a finished work. The world exists to reflect this perfection.
She knows her social value. Appear above all. Staying at the top requires discreet but constant violence. Maintaining your rank justifies almost everything. One problem, however, resists his control: his daughter Alice loves Isaac Abram. For Élise, this affair represents an intolerable misalliance.
She tolerates the presence of her gardener Pierre Sauvage more easily. His role is simple, hierarchical, perfectly defined. With Adam Legall, on the other hand, the relationships become more ambiguous, between psychological domination, religious fascination and sadomasochistic games, their relationship escapes ordinary categories.
On the Baie Rouge golf course, Élise nevertheless finds a perfectly understandable world. She controls, she dominates, she wins.
In Paris, she is now preparing her divorce with her lawyer Carole Albert. In Élise's world, feelings matter less than power relations.
Adam officiates as priest in the parish of Marigot and as gardener at Villa Pamplemousse in Baie Rouge. Élise sometimes attends services, where she appears as an impeccable socialite, a generous patron and a respectable wife.
His relationship with Damien has become almost administrative. They still share a name, a heritage, a few public appearances and a habit of conflict. The rest dissolved. Damien controls, criticizes and humiliates. Élise responds with detachment, irony or silence.
However, she knows Damien's power. She also knows that he is counting on their marriage to maintain the illusion of complete success. This symbolic dependence gives her a form of satisfaction. Damien claims to dominate everyone, but he still needs her in the photographs.
With Adam, the relationship is different.
He belongs to a social world very far from his own, which constitutes part of his attraction. Priest, gardener, husband of Eve, Adam combines prohibitions that Élise finds stimulating more than embarrassing.
In the garden shed, she ceases to be Damien's wife and the woman observed by his followers. She can dirty her dress, give orders, improvise games and turn Adam's submission into entertainment.
Adam obeys. At first, this docility amuses Élise, then it becomes a habit. And like any habit, it ends up boring her. She then increases the intensity of their games: tighter ties, diverted objects, portrayal of fear. Adam accepts for a long time, finding in this submission a freedom that he does not grant himself anywhere else.
Ève Legall endures this relationship without participating in it. Little by little, she understands that her husband is slipping away from her. Élise knows that she suspects something, without feeling remorse. For her, a marriage does not grant any ownership rights over desires. She even finds it ironic that Adam, who tells others how to dispose of their bodies, struggles to decide on his own.
Then Christine Legall enters more into his life. At first, Élise judges it excessive, unpredictable, sometimes tiring. Christine speaks loudly, judges quickly and transforms an ordinary evening into a volatile event. However, his energy amuses Élise. Above all, Christine does not admire him like the others. She may find her beautiful and then, a few minutes later, make fun of her clothes, the people she hangs out with, or the way she speaks. Élise is not used to being treated without precaution. This insolence attracts him.
Their proximity becomes more intimate. They meet in bars, on beaches, aboard the Vénus or in villas where the nights drag on. Christine seeks stability in Élise that she refuses to accept. Élise finds in Christine what she lacks elsewhere: unpredictability.
With Damien, she experiences conflict, with Adam, domination, with Christine, she never knows what will happen. Maybe that's why she continues to see her. Christine can be tender then suddenly aggressive. She goes from laughter to paranoia in a matter of seconds. When she talks about gynoids, conspiracies and ChronoEmpire, Élise listens with a mixture of amusement and concern.
Christine: You don't understand. They are already among us.
Elise: Who?
Christine: The gynoids.
Élise: Obviously.
Christine: You're kidding.
Élise: A little.
Christine: You should be careful.
Elise smiles. She doesn't take these warnings seriously. Christine sees threats everywhere: a face that is too regular, skin that is too smooth, are enough to fuel her theories. Élise considers these obsessions as yet another eccentricity.
Damien notices their proximity. This annoys him as much as it excites him. He still considers Élise his territory and reads her relationships as provocations. Élise does not try to reassure him, on the contrary, she maintains his doubt. In her love life, she thus organizes several forms of power. Damien reminds her of what she refuses to endure. Adam allows him to exercise dominion. Christine introduces a zone that she does not fully control. She has long believed that this difference makes the relationship more interesting. She doesn't yet know that it also makes her more dangerous.
Élise Gillet is found strangled in a room at Villa Pamplemousse. Elsewhere, the social hustle and bustle continues around velvet banquettes, half-empty glasses and superficial conversations. As is often the case, the setting seeks to make people forget the violence that has just occurred.
Jules examines the corpse. The marks left on the neck reveal strangulation carried out with extreme force. No rope, no weapon: only hands.
Jules then sets out to explore Élise's relationships: worldly, sexual, financial, conflictual. Very quickly, several names come back insistently.
The connection between Élise Gillet and Pastor Adam Legall had already fueled numerous conversations among parishioners. Jules therefore begins his research on the Petit Faitout network. Le Petit Faitout resembles a gigantic digital dump where absurd theories, aggressive advertising and instant outrage are piled up. An entire population seems to live there without ever really inhabiting the real world: unwitting spies, anonymous predators, passive dreamers, docile consumers and couch revolutionaries.
On the planet Fake, everyone observes the others without ever really understanding anything. Élise Gillet, although omnipresent on social networks, remained surprisingly discreet about Adam. No doubt she considered it unnecessary to further expose a relationship that was already sufficiently visible in the very real circle of her lover and pastor.
Jules then continues her research among the comments, photographs and digital traces left behind. As is often the case, the more information he accumulates, the more the truth seems to dissolve into the general noise of the world.
Jules begins with the operating procedure. Élise was strangled with her bare hands. No link, no weapon, no special device. The murderer got close enough to put his hands around her neck and maintain pressure until she stopped breathing. This detail matters. Élise is wary of strangers. She evolves in environments where appearances, rivalries and hidden intentions constitute a second language. She does not easily let someone into her intimate space. Her murderer is therefore probably someone she knows or someone she does not consider dangerous.
Three names catch Jules’ attention: Ariana Chrono, Félicie Algo and Christine Legall.
The Ariana lead initially seems the most spectacular. Élise belongs to the world that ChronoEmpire precisely seeks to seduce: money, visibility, influence and fascination with artificially perfect bodies. She knows Ariana and has met her several times at receptions. Their relations are not really hostile, but Jules discovers several episodes where Élise treats Ariana as an object of curiosity. She touches it, comments on its appearance and jokes about the possibility of replacing some humans with more advanced models. On an ordinary machine, these remarks would have no importance. Ariana is no longer quite an ordinary machine. Jules now knows that she memorizes humiliations, formulates preferences and develops an increasingly complex representation of herself.
Revenge therefore becomes theoretically possible. She also has the necessary strength. Bertheloult confirms that Ariana could exert pressure with her hands that is more than sufficient to strangle a human being.
Jules: Unarmed?
Bertheloult: Without difficulty.
Jules: And without leaving any particular mechanical trace?
Bertheloult: His hands were designed to reproduce human contact.
Jules finds the precision not very reassuring. But the lead quickly presents a significant weakness. Ariana has no obvious reason to search for Élise at the time of the murder. Her movements are relatively easy to reconstruct and several data place it elsewhere during part of the critical period. Jules does not rule her out completely. He simply adds a first question mark.
The Félicie lead is based on a completely different logic. Félicie sees economic elites and the technological systems that surround them as symptoms of a world collapsing. Élise almost represents a caricature of what she condemns: wealth, luxury, consumption, social networks, permanent travel and indifference to the consequences of her lifestyle.
The two women know each other. Not enough to talk about friendship, enough to accumulate reasons to judge each other. Jules finds several messages in which Félicie criticizes Élise's behavior. She talks about her ecological footprint, her travels, her clothes and the way she transforms each place into a setting intended for her own image.
Jules: Did you hate her?
Félicie: No.
Jules: You wrote that it was “a consumerist wart on the face of the planet”.
Félicie: It’s not hatred. This is a description.
Jules: Do you often write descriptions like that?
Félicie: When they are needed.
Jules knows Félicie well enough to know that a theoretical conviction can quickly become an obligation for her to act. She is also capable of premeditated violence when she believes she is defending a higher cause.
But strangulation does not fit well with his usual methods. Félicie prefers to prepare, contaminate, discreetly modify a situation. She likes the gesture to have a logic, almost a protocol. Strangling Élise with bare hands would, on the contrary, require a direct, long and messy physical confrontation, possible but unlikely.
Remain Christine. With her, Jules gradually stops looking only for a motive, he seeks to understand a relationship. Christine and Élise hang out regularly. They are seen together aboard the Vénus, in several bars, on the beaches and in different villas. Their proximity clearly goes beyond simple worldly knowledge. Some witnesses speak of friendship, others of an affair.
Jules is wary of witnesses who always have more information about the sex lives of others than about their own schedules. He only remembers one fact: Christine could approach Élise without immediately provoking her distrust. This is important. The marks on the neck show that the attacker was able to place both hands before Élise actually began to defend herself. She probably let this person into her intimate space. Christine fits this possibility perfectly.
Jules then examines his mental state over the previous weeks. Delusional episodes multiply. Christine regularly claims that gynoids have already begun to replace human women. She frequents groups where each photograph of a face deemed too perfect can become proof of infiltration. She even develops her own criteria:
- Skin too smooth.
- Excessive symmetry of the face.
- Movements considered too precise.
- Absence of wrinkles.
- Overly controlled behavior.
Jules rereads the list. Several of these criteria correspond quite well to Élise. She's not a gynoid, but she devotes considerable energy to looking like the image she wants to project of herself.
Jules then begins to consider a strange hypothesis.
Christine would perhaps not have strangled Élise because she hated her. She could have strangled her because she no longer recognized her as human. He is looking for testimonies concerning their last meetings. Many people describe Christine as agitated. She observes Élise for a long time, sometimes touches her face or her arm, then asks her strange questions.
Christine: Have you always had skin like this?
Élise: Like what?
Christine: Too perfect.
Élise laughs.
Christine doesn't laugh.
Another witness remembers a conversation about androids. Christine says she can recognize a gynoid simply by observing the way it moves.
Élise provokes her.
Élise: So go ahead. Tell me if I am one.
Christine remains silent.
At the time, no one paid attention to this exchange.
After Élise’s death, it takes on another color.
Jules then confronts this hypothesis with the modus operandi: no weapon, no technical preparation, violence which increases during the action. The marks on her neck show that Élise tries to free herself, but too late. The attacker maintains the pressure even as she struggles. This is not the method of a person who wants to discreetly make a victim disappear. Jules questions Christine.
Jules: Did you think Élise was a gynoid?
Christine looks at him for a long time.
Christine: Why are you asking me that?
Jules: Because you say you can recognize them.
Christine: I can.
Jules: Élise was one?
Christine hesitates.
For the first time since the start of the interview, his confidence disappears.
Christine: No.
Jules: Are you sure?
Christine: Now, yes.
Christine looks away. Among the three suspects, Ariana has the strength. Félicie has ideological hostility. Christine has the proximity, the mental state and above all a belief capable of transforming Élise into a target without her really being Élise in her eyes. Jules then understands that the investigation is perhaps no longer about revenge. It concerns an identification error, and this error could have been fatal.
At first, everything seemed normal. Christine has that intense look that some women take on when they want something without yet knowing what. I thought I had the situation under control. Then something changes. In my room, the air is getting heavier. Christine approaches too quickly, too close. His gestures lose all gentleness. There is no more play in his movements, only raw tension. I try to re-establish a distance.
Me: Christine… what’s wrong?
But she continues to move forward. Her gaze remains fixed on me with an almost clinical intensity, as if she were trying to see something else beneath my face. This immediately freezes me. I say his name again, more firmly this time. I try to understand what's happening, to bring her back to reality, but she already doesn't seem to hear me anymore. When his hands close around my neck, everything becomes confusing. My heart is racing. An animal panic rises in my chest. I try to free myself, I grab onto her wrists, but she squeezes even tighter.
Why me? I didn't do anything to him. I search his gaze one last time. And I suddenly understand that it is no longer really Christine who is looking at me, only a fixed idea locked in a human body.
Among the three suspects, Christine is the only one who can approach Élise without immediately arousing her suspicion. Their relationship became intimate. They find themselves alone, travel together, share evenings. Between them, physical proximity is no longer unusual.
This is a key point. Élise was not struck from a distance or surprised by a weapon. Two hands closed around his neck. To reach this position without triggering an immediate reaction, you had to be able to get very close. Christine could.
Jules then looks at the findings of the forensic doctor. The pressure is strong. Extended. Élise struggled, but the embrace did not loosen. It's not an accident.
The question of motive, on the other hand, resists. Christine does not seem to hate Élise, on the contrary. Several witnesses describe a relationship made of attraction, complicity, sometimes dependence. Élise is one of the rare people around whom Christine manages to calm down.
Jules therefore changes perspective. He is no longer just looking for why Christine would have wanted to kill Élise, he is looking for the precise moment when she stopped seeing her as Élise. This is where the evidence about gynoids becomes decisive. For several months, Christine has claimed that ChronoEmpire is replacing female Sapiens with artificial creatures. She says she can recognize them by specific signs: skin that is too even, absence of imperfections, gestures that are too controlled, symmetry of the face, abnormally stable gaze.
Jules compares this list to Élise's photographs and he immediately understands the problem. Élise spends her life erasing the ordinary traces of time. Fatigue, pores, irregularities, micro-variations, everything is controlled, corrected, filtered, distributed. Her image becomes almost too perfect to appear natural. For his followers, it’s a success. For Christine, this can become proof.
Jules then finds the exchanges between them.
At first, Christine jokes.
“You look like you came from a ChronoEmpire factory. »
Élise responds with an amused pictogram.
Then the tone changes.
A few days later, Christine asks more specific questions.
Aesthetic interventions. Skin. Fatigue. Micro-expressions.
Élise laughs again.
She thinks of a provocation.
Christine, probably not.
Jules questions witnesses who saw them together shortly before the murder.
One of them remembers Christine touching Élise’s arm for a long time.
As if she was looking for something under the skin.
Another details an even more troubling question:
“Are you bleeding normally? »
Élise laughed.
Jules: And Christine?
The witness: She didn’t laugh.
The shift becomes central.
The drugs, the delusional episodes, the groups she frequents reinforce her beliefs instead of correcting them. When a hypothesis appears, Christine no longer tests it. Élise then becomes a perfect target, too beautiful, too smooth, too controlled.
Christine is close enough to hit Élise without triggering an immediate defense. Contact becomes verification. She looks under the skin for evidence of a machine. Élise resists, and this resistance becomes, in her mind, a confirmation. She tightens more. When reality sets in, it is already too late. Jules still doesn't know if Christine was fully aware of her actions at the time of the strangulation, but one thing is clear: her obsession explains the murder better than anger or interest.
Christine: I'm strangling Élise
With Adam, it’s an old story. I have my habits in the gardener's cabin. With him, I don’t need long speeches.
Me: Come on… we’re going to do this in the garden shed. I didn't wear panties. You will only have to lift my dress.
The tool shed is tiny, but it has everything you need: rusty pots, hanging tools, smells of damp earth and metal. At first, this rustic decor excited me greatly. I liked this feeling of dirtying my perfect elegance a little.
I lift up my dress and place my hands on the workbench. Adam approaches with his usual caution. He still obeys, but I feel that he fears me more than before.
Over time our games ended up seeming repetitive to me. I always want something else. More intense. More dangerous. So I started to improvise: wire, tighter ties, an old dibble tree forgotten in a corner.
At first, Adam laughed nervously. He still believed that all of this remained a game. Now, I can clearly see that he is afraid and this fear becomes precisely what interests me the most.
It is with the sickle that everything changes. I slide it slowly against his throat to watch his reaction. The cold metal leaves a pale mark on his skin. Adam then screams in panic. A sharp, awkward, almost humiliating cry and this scream triggers something in me, a sudden surge of excitement.
My hand tenses. The movement starts on its own. After that, there is only the silence of the cabin and the thick smell of blood covering the gardening tools.
I stay still for a few moments. Adam's body lies among the overturned tools. His head rests a little further away, against a bag of potting soil. I contemplate the scene without immediately feeling fear. The blood slowly progresses between the grooves in the floor and reaches the bottom of my shoes.
I then understand that I cannot leave him here. The cabin belongs to the villa. Damien, an employee or a visitor will necessarily end up entering there. Everything will point to me: my prints, my clothes, the traces of our relationship and this sickle that I still hold in my hand.
I unroll a tarpaulin used to transport plant waste. I wrap the body in it, then I place the head in a thick bag. The separation makes transportation easier, but the practical thought suddenly seems monstrous. I stop looking at Adam as a man. He becomes a problem made up of several elements that must be moved before daybreak.
I drag the tarpaulin to my car. The weight is considerable. Several times the body catches a stone or a root and I have to catch my breath. I put the remains in the trunk and put the bag next to it. I cover everything with old cardboard and some gardening tools.
I leave Villa Pamplemousse via a secondary road. The roads are almost deserted. Every light seen in my rearview mirror seems to indicate a police car. However, no one stops me. In Saint-Martin, an elegant woman walking around in the middle of the night attracts less attention than a gardener covered in dirt.
I choose a beach far from establishments that are still open. I know this place. At this time, the last walkers have left and the sound of the sea drowns out my movements.
I dig near the vegetation, where the sand is darker and more compact. The pit is too shallow, but my arms are shaking and I no longer have the strength to start again. I slide the body in before quickly covering it.
I then carry the head a little further. I'm not sure why I'm burying it separately. Maybe because I don't want to see her anymore. Maybe because part of me still imagines that by separating the face from the body, I will make Adam more difficult to identify.
When I leave, the sand seems almost intact in the darkness. However, I know that this beach will not keep my secret for long. The wind, the rain, the animals or the men will eventually stir up what I have just hidden.
I return to the villa before dawn. In the cabin, the smell of blood remains. I clean the floor, sickle and tools with an almost domestic application. But the more I scrub, the more I have the impression that the entire cabin now bears the mark of Adam.