She had a bad feeling about Fleur. Angel would have called it a premonition, but Eulalie shied away from such terms. Still, it was strong enough for her to know she shouldn’t leave town without seeing her friend first.
She stocked her backpack with provisions for two days in the forest. She pulled on a pair of tight, stretchy leggings, her Carhatt boots and a tight, long-sleeve top that was made of the same technical material as the leggings. When she got to the edge of the forest, she would bundle her hair into a skullcap. Nobody moved through the forest faster than Eulalie Park, and her choice of clothes was part of that.
She arrived at Sweet as Flowers long before it opened. She knew Fleur would be inside, fortifying herself for the day with coffee. She tapped at the door until her friend came to open it.
Eulalie could see at once that something had happened overnight. Fleur looked relaxed and happy. She was almost unrecognizable as the furious woman from the day before.
“What’s up?” she asked. “You look like you swallowed a bucket of Namaste.”
Fleur gave her a peaceful smile.
“I feel so much better this morning. Chalk it up to a good night’s sleep and a little voice in my head reminding me that Marcel Faberge doesn’t have the power to destroy what I’ve created here. I am stronger than that, and I won’t let him win.”
Eulalie didn’t even try to hide her relief.
“Well, thank goodness for that. I’m heading to the village today and I didn’t want to have to worry about you while I was gone.”
“Go with a clear conscience, young Padawan. I’m fine. Just remember that you promised to take me into the forest with you one of these days.”
“The day the forest gets WIFI and somewhere to plug in your hairdryer is the day I’ll take you there.” Eulalie peered through the window to where Lafayette Drive was slowly waking up. “Where is Marcel Faberge today anyway?”
“I have no idea. He’s usually in by now. Maybe he’s too scared to face me, even from across the street.”
“Maybe.” Eulalie tapped one of the glass jars Fleur had set up on the counter next to the till. “How about a piece of fudge for the road?”
“Help yourself.”
Eulalie took a piece and waved goodbye to her friend. She was almost at the door when Chief of Police Donal Macgregor appeared on the other side of it.
“What now?” she muttered as she pulled the door open. “I don’t have time to chat, Chief. I’m in a hurry.”
“I know you are. You’re going into the deep forest to look into the case of the missing child. I want you to take me with you.”
Eulalie nearly laughed. “And why would I do that?”
“Because I’m not satisfied with the report my officers put on my desk this morning. I’m not convinced the child just wandered off. I want to look into it properly and the only way I can do that is by going to the village myself. There’s no way I’ll find it on my own, so I need you to guide me.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Chief. I am not a tourist guide, and I’m not about to start being one now.”
“But I could help.”
“No, you couldn’t. You’d be a fish out of water.”
“You could help me.”
“I could, but I won’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on.”
She sidestepped him and walked away.
Queen’s Town, the capital city of Prince William Island, was situated at the mouth of a river, on a curving bay. Behind it rose a series of steep cliffs that dropped away dramatically into a treacherous valley. It was heavily wooded and regarded as virtually impassable to humans. In the very heart of this impenetrable forest was the village where Eulalie had been born, and where she had lived until the age of twelve.
There was a funicular railway that climbed part of the way up the cliff, and a cable car that took you to the top. After that, you were on your own.
The cable car carried Eulalie and a handful of sight-seers up to a naturally flat part of the cliff where a platform had been built. A guide stepped out with them and issued the usual warnings about not leaning over the railing or wandering off on your own.
“The first human beings to arrive on Prince William Island came from East Africa about six hundred years ago,” he said. “They arrived in long-boats on the west side of the island. If they hadn’t reached Prince William Island first, they would probably have continued to Madagascar. We know very little about these original settlers. Their descendants live down there in what is known as the deep forest. There, they have chosen to live according to the old ways without running water or electricity. The hardly ever come into Queen’s Town.”
As he spoke, Eulalie edged closer to the railing. A couple of hundred feet below, you could see the tops of the trees that marked the beginning of the forest. The guide was pointing towards the Port of Prince William, and everyone was looking in that direction. This was her chance.
Eulalie vaulted lightly over the railing and dropped down into the void.
For a split-second, she felt the air rush past her cheeks and whistle in her ears. Then she braced herself and landed on a rocky ledge, ten feet below. Turning to face the cliff, she hooked her hands and feet into familiar toe-holds in the rock, and began to climb down.
She free-climbed for nearly half an hour before her feet brushed the tops of the trees of the forest below. Soon she was grabbing branches instead of rock, and slithering down onto the soft forest floor. The sun disappeared above, and the cool green embrace of the forest closed around her.
The deep forest of Prince William Island was a disorienting place. There were no paths, no trails, and no landmarks that the uneducated eye could detect. To Eulalie it was as familiar as her childhood backyard, which was what it was. She determined direction by looking at which side of the trees the moss was growing on and which way the weaver birds’ nests were facing.
The technical fabric of her clothes kept her cool and dry and prevented thorns and sharp branches from catching at her clothes.
She progressed through the forest at a gentle jog that she could keep up for hours. When the undergrowth became too thick, she took to the trees. The canopy of the forest was a dizzying fifty-feet above the ground in places, but so tightly knitted together that she could scramble, climb, and crawl her way along.
She had been traveling for more than three hours when the wind changed direction and brought a strange sound to her ears – a kind of labored crashing as of a wounded animal. Eulalie stood and listened for a moment. Then she doubled back in a wide arc, intending to sneak up behind whatever it was that was following her.
Or rather, whoever.
And since only one person had expressed a desire to enter the forest lately, she had a pretty good idea of who it might be. The only surprising part was that he had made it this far.
“I knew it,” she muttered as she circled around and came up behind Chief Donal Macgregor hacking his way through the undergrowth with a large scythe. He looked exhausted.
Eulalie slipped up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped, but to his credit, didn’t make a sound.
“Can I help you, Chief Macgregor?”
“Ms. Park.” He was breathing heavily. “You startled me. But I am glad you detected my presence. I have been following you ever since we left the cable-car station. Please will you guide me to the village?”
Eulalie’s temper flared. “You deliberately waited until we were so deep in the forest that I couldn’t send you back. This is blackmail. You’re forcing me to take you to the village.”
“Yes, exactly.” He seemed pleased with her ready understanding. “Blackmail is not the correct term though, because I am not holding a disreputable secret over your head, but the rest is correct. I need to investigate the disappearance of the child. The Prince William Island Police Department already has a bad reputation when it comes to how it deals with village matters. As the new Chief of Police, it is my job to change that.”
“Just for the sake of appearances, of course. We wouldn’t want anything to hurt the reputation of the police department.”
“I must have expressed myself badly. It is not just the reputation that I want to change, but the practice of policing too. The police department should serve all its citizens equally.”
Eulalie gave him an exasperated look.
“Are you always this literal-minded?”
“Almost invariably. I’m on the autism spectrum, you see – I have high-functioning Asperger’s Syndrome.”
“Oh.” Eulalie felt wrong-footed. “Well, come along then. I want to get to the village before nightfall.”
A rare smile swept over the Chief of Police’s face, lighting him up from within.
“Thank you.”
Eulalie had to give him credit for perseverance. He kept going, even though the sweat was streaming off him. His clothes and shoes were completely wrong for the deep forest, but he didn’t complain once. He just taped over his blisters with sticking plaster and kept going.
He also didn’t talk her ear off, constantly wanting to know what this was or that was or why she was doing this or that. She deeply appreciated his silence.
It took her considerably longer to reach the village than it would have if she had been alone. She couldn’t take any shortcuts through the trees, for one thing. And he needed more water breaks than she did.
It was pitch dark by the time they reached the village. Eulalie glimpsed firelight through the trees and stopped walking.
“I’m going to park you here in a tree while I go and talk to the Council of Elders,” she said. “We’re close to the river, and I’d rather you took your chances with a snake than a hungry crocodile.” She showed him how to climb up into a Y-shaped cradle between two branches. “You stay put here while I try to explain your presence to the elders.”
“Do you think they will listen to you?”
“They should. One of them is my uncle, after all. And they’re the ones who asked for my help in finding the child. I just need to convince them that bringing you along was a helpful thing to do.”
She disappeared into the forest, leaving Chief Macgregor alone with his thoughts. He was not a fanciful man, and refused to interpret every sighing breeze and snapping twig as a predator coming to end his life. Still, it had been a great relief when she had finally become aware of his presence that morning. He had certainly been making enough noise to attract her attention. He felt much safer with her by his side than perched here in this tree with the blackness of the forest pressing down on him from all sides.
“Chief Macgregor!”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“You can come down now.”
He scrambled down to the forest floor. “What did the Council say?”
“They’re not thrilled about it, but they’ve agreed to let you into the village under my supervision. So, stick close to me. Don’t look any of the elders in the eye, but keep your eyes respectfully lowered at all time. Let me do the talking. I’ll translate for you whenever I can.”
Eulalie led him into the village where they were formally greeted and taken to the small house where Bibi lived with his parents, Phillippe and Rosa. It was a traditional reed and wattle house of the kind that Eulalie had been raised in. Phillippe and Rosa looked pale and sick with worry. They hailed Eulalie with enthusiasm, and seemed indifferent to the presence of Chief Macgregor.
As Eulalie took them through a description of the last day that Bibi had been seen, she watched them closely to measure their reactions. As horrible as it was to think about, when children went missing it was often a close family member who was responsible. She believed she knew Philippe and Rosa well enough to exclude that possibility, but her investigator’s brain had to explore every option.
“It happened two days ago,” Rosa explained in Guillaumoise. “I gave Bibi his breakfast early in the morning and he went out with the other boys to help the fishermen. He was excited to learn how to cast with a full-size fishing rod. He came home for lunch when the sun was at its highest and then went out again to help with skinning and gutting the day’s catch.” Her voice began to break. “The other boys came back earlier than expected. They came to my house to tell me that Bibi was missing. One moment he was there with them next to the river, and the next he was gone. I ran to call Phillippe immediately. He was at the other side of the village smelting metal with some of the other men at the smithy. We went to where Bibi had last been seen and searched everywhere. The whole village searched for the rest of the day and late into the night. The next morning, Phillippe and some of the men went into Queen’s Town to report the incident at the police station, but they refused to take us seriously.”
“Tell her I’m very sorry about that, and that the officers concerned are being disciplined,” Chief Macgregor murmured.
Eulalie turned to stare at him. “You understand Guillaumoise? But how?”
“I started learning it as soon as I heard that my application to work on Prince William Island had been accepted. It is important to speak all the major languages of the place you are serving. I already speak a small amount of French, and Hindi. I understand Guillaumoise a little, but I can’t speak it yet.”
“Two of the children who were with Bibi reported seeing a strange boat on the river,” said Rosa. “But it was just those two boys. None of the adults saw it, and none of the other children either. We have spent every daylight hour searching for him since. He is not the sort of child to wander off or to get lost. He is the one that people come to when they want to find something. He is a strong swimmer and understands the dangers of the river. He would not have gone too close to the edge.”
“Rosa, we need to talk to those two boys,” said Eulalie. “The two who claim to have seen a boat. Can you find them for us?”
Next to her, Chief Macgregor nodded vigorously.
Rosa went to fetch the boys who she said were brothers. She said they would probably be getting ready for bed now, but not necessarily asleep. When she came back, she was accompanied by the two boys, and also by their mother. Eulalie could see that they looked tired, but they were wide-eyed at the news that there was a stranger in the village.
Eulalie questioned them carefully. The elder of the two had seen the boat clearly, while the younger had caught no more than a glimpse of it. The older boy described something that sounded like a speedboat with a small cabin. He thought the hull was blue and the cabin white, but didn’t recall if there were any markings on it. It was moored at a bend in the river where it would have been out of sight of the village.
When Eulalie was sure she had got everything out of him that he was able to remember without embellishing or making things up, she thanked his mother and said she could take the boys back to bed.
Eulalie and Chief Macgregor went for a walk around the village to confer.
“Is it possible that he has seen a speedboat before?” asked Chief Macgregor. “Or a picture of a speedboat? Or had a speedboat described to him?”
“Unlikely. I asked his mother if he had ever been into Queen’s Town and she said he hadn’t. Picture books are rare here, except for the ones that are produced by the village artists. I suppose it’s possible that someone could have described a speedboat to him, but he was very precise with the details.”
“A blue hull and a white cabin. It sounded like a cigarette boat – one of those small, fast craft that are used for smuggling.”
“I noticed that too.” Eulalie wrapped her arms around herself although the night was not cold. “I don’t know what to think. An outside job is pretty much the worst-case scenario here.”
“You know the village well. Is there anyone who has a grudge against Bibi’s parents? Or any incidents of abuse or pedophilia in the village?”
She was silent for a moment. “Look, I won’t pretend such things never happen, because they do. And when they do, the elders don’t involve the Queen’s Town police. Justice is swift, rough, and final. I
’ll ask around, but as far as I know there are no unresolved conflicts at the moment. The Council keeps a tight lid on things.”
Chief Macgregor took his large and clumsy backpack off his back and began to unzip it.
“In that case, I’m calling in an island-wide amber alert for a missing child, presumed kidnapped. We’ll set up blockades on all the major roads, the airport, and the harbor. This should have been done forty-eight hours ago, but I’m doing it now.”
Eulalie looked at the contraption he was pulling out of his bag.
“You brought a satellite phone into the forest?”
“I was a boy scout. I believe in being prepared.”
As she tried to keep her feelings of unease at bay, he broadcast the amber alert.
Chapter 4
Eulalie and Chief Macgregor spent the night in the village. Eulalie slept in her uncle’s house while Chief Macgregor was put up in bachelor accommodation, where the young men of the village lived when they no longer wanted to stay with their parents. He was the oldest person there by about ten years.
They left after breakfast the next morning, both of them keen to get back to Queen’s Town. Chief Macgregor wanted to get his investigation underway and Eulalie wanted to get back to her business. It was becoming more and more urgent to hire a secretary who could keep the office open while she was out in the field. She hated to think of how much business she had lost in the last two days alone.
“You can leave this investigation with me now,” Chief Macgregor said when they stopped to eat around midday. “I can assure you I will throw the full weight of the department behind it. Unless I am completely misreading the situation, this crime didn’t originate in the village. It’s an outside job, and as such the police department is best placed to investigate it.”
As Eulalie chewed, she extended a hand and made a side-to-side rocking motion with it. Then she swallowed.
“I’m glad you’re taking this seriously, Chief, and so are the Council of Elders. They also said I should leave it up to you now, but the thing is, I know this kid. I’ve known him since he was born. I grew up with his parents. I might not have the same resources you do, but my knowledge of the village will be useful.”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 4