The doorbell just rang.

I didn't want to answer. I answered anyway. There's no point in hiding.

It was a boy, eight or nine years old, selling chocolate bars to raise funds for his hockey team.

It all began two years ago. Someone rang the doorbell of our apartment. A uniformed policeman.

"Are you Mrs. Jean-Charles LaFrance?" he asked, pronouncing my husband’s name in English.

"I'm married to Jean-Charles," I replied.

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you."

All I could think, at that moment, was that they'd sent a unilingual anglophone to bring me this news. I waited for him to go on.

"I'm afraid there's been an accident."

"Is he hurt? Where is he?"

Jean-Charles had been in a car accident, pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Could I come to the General Hospital to identify the body? Would I like to contact someone to come with me? The car had burst into flames under the impact, the body was badly burnt.

The policeman seemed to think I'd be unable to bear the sight of Jean-Charles's body. The imbecile. I work as an emergency.room nurse; I've seen more mutilated corpses than he ever will.

Still, it wasn't easy. The fire had been violent and Jean-Charles was unrecognizable. I identified him, finally, from the charred remains of his wallet and the wedding ring on his finger.

The friends and family members who came to comfort me all said that I "took it well." In fact, I stayed empty on the inside until Jean-Charles's body had been cremated, according to his wishes. Afterwards I kept busy, accepting all the overtime hours the hospital offered me, and cleaning out the apartment and putting away his things. Not to destroy his memory, of course, but just so it wouldn't take up all the space.

Someone just rang the doorbell. Two women, well dressed, briefcase in hand: Jehovah's Witnesses. My look of relief must have seemed encouraging to them. I wish I could have seen their expression after I closed the door before they could say a word.

Unfortunately, the door of our apartment, my apartment, doesn't have a peephole. I haven't been able to talk the owner into letting me install one.

Two months after Jean-Charles's death, the doorbell rang. Another policeman, higher.ranked this time.

"Madame LaFrance? Je suis le capitaine Marchand, police d'Ottawa. Je m'excuse de venir vous troubler."

They'd just found a body, and believed it to be my husband's.

It couldn’t, I said. Jean-Charles was dead. I'd seen his body, I'd identified it.

But it seemed that hadn't been Jean-Charles after all. That body was unrecognizable, wasn't it? Could I come see this body, to help them clear things up?

The corpse was a few days old when it had been found, but preserved by the cold weather. It was his face, and on his left hand I saw his wedding ring.

But then, I asked Captain Marchand, who was that other man?

He shook his head.

"Nous continuons notre investigation."

Three days later, Jean-Charles's body went again through the crematorium, a new funeral urn replacing the one the policemen took away.

There were consequences to this second death, of course. Two weeks after that our insurance agent came to visit. This new development, he explained, required a revision of the case, the payment on Jean-Charles's life insurance might have been premature, given the new information, in particular, it was no longer quite so clear that the death had been accidental, so...

Perhaps he hoped the poor broken.hearted widow would hand over the insurance money. I told him that Jean-Charles was dead, that the case was closed, that they could contact my lawyer if they disagreed.

Before he fled, he nevertheless suggested that I not spend that money too quickly.

The next day I traded in my old Civic for a brand.new Acura.

Another ring at the door. One of those salesmen, just happen to be in the neighbourhood, exceptional offer, clean your carpets, unbeatable price.

I said we didn't have any carpets in the apartment.

"But," he said, looking at the carpeted floors of the hallway and living room, clearly visible from the entrance.

I insisted: "We don't have any carpets."

He didn't protest any further. He mustn't be used to hearing bigger lies than his own.

Two months after those second funerals, Captain Marchand came back to my door. I asked him if they'd found anything new about Jean-Charles's death. He hesitated.

They'd received a call from from the Québec provincial police. A skier had killed himself on the slopes at Mont.Tremblant. He was registered at the hotel as Jean-Charles LaFrance, and his description matched my husband's. They'd even compared his fingerprints with Jean-Charles's employment file at the government. It was him, no doubt about it.

But then, who was that other, those others? It couldn't be, it simply couldn't be!

I realized I was screaming when my neighbour opened her door to see what was going on. I tried to calm myself down. What, I asked again, was going on?

They didn't know, admitted Marchand. "Nous continuons nos investigations."

This time, they didn't ask me to identify the body, but I did have to present myself at the police station the next day for a serious interrogation. They wanted to know everything I knew about Jean-Charles. Did he have a twin brother? He was really an only child? Not adopted? Were we having any marital problems? Financial problems?

They did show me the possessions of the man who'd died at Mont.Tremblant. It was Jean-Charles's wallet, all right, and his wedding ring. The same ring I'd already identified twice.

This time, there was no question of cremation; they kept the body.

Someone's at the door. Who are all those people?

No, I didn't call for a plumber. What address do you have? No, this is aparment 3F, 3E is across the hall. Yes, I know, it's not clearly marked.

It wasn't Captain Marchand who showed up two months later, but the RCMP. Two officers, policemen to the core in spite of their civilian clothes. They invited me, with a thin veneer of politeness, to accompany them to Headquarters.

They'd found a new body, of course, Jean-Charles's body. This one had died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Papers identifying him as Jean-Charles LaFrance, unquestionable identification.

These cops had slightly clearer suspicions.

"Didn't your husband work at the Ministry of Health, in biological research?"

"Yes. He was a laboratory technician. He cleaned the equipment after the experiments were complete."

"What type of research, exactly?"

As if they didn't know that better than I did!

"As far as I can tell, they exposed mice to various industrial products, to see what kind of cancer they'd die from."

"And you, Mrs. Lafrance, you're a Registered Nurse?"

"Yes, I am."

I've never been able to grow a flower from a seed, so if they imagine I've been cloning Jean-Charles to obtain a multiple husband!

They had to let me go, finally. Only to come ring at my door every time Jean-Charles's body is found.

There must be, somewhere in Ottawa, a morgue filling up with identical bodies, with bodies constantly disturbed for new tests, new analyses.

With bodies all wearing that same damned wedding ring.

It's been two months since anyone came to tell me of my husband's death.

It shouldn't be long now.

Writing is often a labourious process for me. But this story wrote itself in a couple of hours, and needed only minor revision.