The Dead of Winter

by Lisa Appignanesi

  After that comes a voice which identifies itself as Marie-Ange Corot. I haven’t seen Marie-Ange in years. She is Madeleine’s agent in Paris, the one who took over from Natalie. Madeleine and she became fast friends. On the answering machine, Marie-Ange is both hesitant and tearful.

  ‘Pierre, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who else to ring. I’ve just managed to locate your number. Mme Tremblay hasn’t been in. I only heard on Wednesday. It’s tragic. I need to speak to you. Please call.’

  I jot down Marie-Ange Corot’s number, then listen to Contini. He is abrupt, slightly angry.

  ‘Where have you got yourself to, Rousseau? You’re supposed to stay in touch.’

  The tone intimidates. It sounds as if my finger prints have turned up in inappropriate places. Or maybe he has some news.

  I search for his card, but before it comes to hand, I find I am dialling Madeleine’s number. I listen breathlessly to her voice, then hang up, wait a few moments, and dial again. That nagging feeling has returned. It clutches at the pit of my stomach. I glance at my watch. Mme Tremblay would have had to phone Michel Dubois at the crack of dawn for him to get his old jalopy through Montréal’s rush hour and carry her away.

  The telephone is engaged. The loop on the answering machine hasn’t found its way back yet. I wait and as I wait I see Mme Tremblay’s barely restrained misery when she left me yesterday evening. I see her pacing Madeleine’s apartment, touching things. I think of my own state these last days and her suffering whips through me, a familiar demon.

  I have to sit down. I try the number again. A line from the poem Mme Tremblay quoted to me resonates in my ear above Madeleine’s voice, something about anguish stooping to jealousy.

  I lunge up the stairs and retrieve yesterday’s jacket. Contini’s card is in the pocket. Hastily I dial his number. A woman’s voice tells me he isn’t in, but she’s expecting a call from him soon. I ask her if his partner, Ginette Lavigne, is available, but the answer is the same.

  The urgency of someone getting to Madeleine’s flat, at last impressed upon her, I leave the woman both my office and my home number. Then, without allowing myself to think, I dial emergency. Better to put them to trouble than to be sorry.

  Would it help if I were to race up to Montreal?

  My legs answer for me. I am already back in the car, bumping down the hill, accelerating away from the lingering smoke into the cloudless blue of an afternoon which refuses the shadows of my fear.

  On the hill leading down to Madeleine’s apartment building, I hear the wail of an ambulance. I veer into the drive and almost collide with a parked police car.

  ‘Heh!’ A uniformed officer leaps from its interior. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Have you been up to the eighth floor?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I reported it.’

  I make to go past him, but he stops me.

  ‘They’ve just taken the old lady away.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The ambulance.’ He takes a notebook from his pocket. ‘You Pierre Rousseau?’

  I nod.

  A professional air of condolence settles on his meaty face. I cannot find any words with which to put the question.

  ‘We found her slumped over the table, a row of pill bottles in front of her. The medics pumped her, took her to the Montréal General.’ He points up the road.

  I am already in the car and backing up when he shouts after me, ‘We had to break through the door. We don’t want any complaints.’

  The Montréal General is at once cavernous and busy. Voices echo and rebound, hushed, officious, plaintive. I am told to wait. The chemical reek of antiseptics attacks my nostrils, brings in its wake a dizzying vision of my mother on that last hospital visit I made to her. I am suddenly a helpless, hopeless ten-year-old, unmanly tears pricking at eyelids that don’t want to acknowledge their existence.

  Feet move along scuffed tiles. White shod, crepe- soled, booted, healed. I cannot bear to meet anyone’s eyes.

  A second time, I am told to wait. A toddler comes up to me and leans against my knees. She has a white wooly hat on, a fluffy pompom at its tip. Dark curls peep from its edges. She stares up at me with serious eyes, then from her mouth she takes a half chewed sweet and places it in my hand.

  ‘Catherine!’ A woman’s voice calls her away.

  The candy stays in my hand. It is sticky and white with stripes of faded pink. I should throw it away, but somehow I don’t want to. I look round surreptitiously and pop it into my mouth. The tang of peppermint explodes in its dryness. At the same time I hear my name called.

  Mme Tremblay’s face is as white as the pillow she rests on, but with far more creases. Her eyes flutter open as I approach, their focus uncertain. She doesn’t speak. It is not clear that she recognizes me.

  The stickiness is still there in my hand, when I touch hers.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I murmur.

  ‘Pierre,’ her gaze rests on me. ‘Pierre, I wanted to talk to you.’ Her voice feels sore. ‘Your father so wants to come to the wedding. He’s too proud to say. Ask him, please. It doesn’t matter about your stepmother.’

  It takes me a moment to realise that like some time traveller in search of a happier epoch, her mind has landed her in the weeks just prior to Madeleine’s and my wedding.

  ‘Alright,’ I say. I don’t want to lurch her out of that better place.

  Her lips struggle with a smile, her lids droop and close.

  I wait and think how odd it is that she has said to me now what she never said before. My father, whose presence I rebelliously shunned in those years, never came to Madeleine’s and my wedding. I never invited him. The thought saddens me now. I am glad that Mme Tremblay has reinstated his presence.

  Her eyes are closed again, her breathing light and regular. She is asleep.

  The nurse who has shown me in pokes her head through the door and waves me out.

  ‘Let her rest,’ she says. ‘That’s what she needs. Quite a shock to the system, all this, when you’re her age. Lucky, she fell asleep before she took too much.’

  ‘Will she be okay?’

  ‘We’ll keep a close watch on her.’

  She looks at me curiously from dark, forthright eyes. ‘Do you know why she tried it?’

  I shrug, reluctant to offer any information.

  She prods at the watch pinned to her bosom and walks me towards the desk.

  ‘You’d better fill out these forms for us. You’re her next of kin?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I’ll have to do.’

  She watches me from the other side of the counter as I fill out what I can of the forms.

  ‘Jeez, it’s just come back to me. She’s the grandmother of that movie star who killed herself, right? Madeleine Blais?’

  I nod.

  ‘Okay, we’ll take good care of her.’ Her voice is suddenly hushed with respect. ‘Come back tomorrow. You’ve left your number just in case…’

  I point to the form and she beams a shy smile at me as if my presence were already one step in the direction of limelight.

  Night has fallen by the time I leave the hospital, that half darkness of hazy refracted light which is the night-time of the city. I speed away from it. If I hurry, I won’t be caught in the snarl of rush hour traffic. It is only four o’clock.

  It occurs to me as I drive, that perhaps my instincts have done Mme Tremblay no favours. But I cannot allow myself to think that. No. I will not.

  A narrative I have read somewhere springs into my mind - about a hospital in which after the first patient has hung himself from a hook, fifteen others follow suit. Only once the hook has been removed do the suicides cease. Suicide is contagious.

  It was Contini’s subtle yet bullying insistence that Madeleine committed suicide which led Mme Tremblay to swallow those pills. When she was intent on revenge, anger carried her along. Perhaps it is a good thing that the barn has burned down and re-focussed
our thoughts. I, too, felt the pull of suicide’s fatal charm.

  For the first time in hours, I think of the beautiful youth with the vacant eyes. Will. William. Bill. I remember the bad joke I made to Madeleine about all her killers being called Bill and I press my foot down on the gas. Is Gagnon right? Could Will be Madeleine’s murderer? Did she know him, already have him in mind when she spoke to me all those weeks back? Was he one of the reasons she wanted a bodyguard? I put a tape of Bach’s Toccatas into the deck and force myself to concentrate on the movement of Glenn Gould’s hands - as if the solution to Madeleine’s mystery could be traced in their counterpoint. I don’t know why I don’t feel more vindictive anger.

  The centre of Ste-Anne is more animated than usual. Maybe it is the effect of the Christmas lights. They swing across the road, define trees, curve and twine round rotund angels and plump Santas to people the dark. Couples saunter slowly round the church square. Through the frosted windows of Senegal’s, I can see a gaggle of old-timers crowded round the tables and at the counter stools, a couple of younger people, perhaps attracted by Martine Senegal’s presence.

  As I push open the door, I hear Mme Groulx’s voice raised above the rest. She holds forth with irrepressible authority.

  ‘Yes. It was him. Definitely him. I recognized him. The same one who came with her to Midnight Mass. Same hair, same jacket. You know what? I think he’s part of that gang of scum who hang out in that Jew’s summer house. Down by the river. I’ve seen them before. They come into town in their four-wheel drive, radio blaring, no respect for anyone. I see them from my window.’

  Mme Groulx’s second floor window on the corner of Rue Turgeon is the outpost of rumour in the town. From this strategic front line, news spreads more quickly than brush fire.

  ‘Ya, I know the ones you mean,’ old Senegal chips in, wipes his hands on his flecked apron. ‘They’ve been in here once or twice. No respect. Don’t even try and speak French. And their attitude! Heh, I bet they’re responsible for all the theiving that’s been going on here of late. You remember, at the Bon Marché, someone cleaned out the till one day when Mme Ricard was in the back room. Then…’

  ‘Yes! Of course,’ Mme Groulx’s creased cheeks flush enthusiastic pink. ‘I always suspected that Jew doctor.’ She lowers her voice to the level of conspiracy. ‘He carried out abortions in that house. The lights stayed on well into the night and all kinds of women came and went and….’

  She stops as she sees me.

  ‘Pierre! Have you heard? Gagnon’s tracked him down. Madeleine Blais’ murderer. Imagine. It was murder. Not suicide at all. Brutal, barbaric murder. Poor little Madeleine. Poor dear, girl. How she must have suffered! So talented, everything to live for. I only hope it was quick.’

  For a moment I have the impression I am hallucinating. A few days ago, Mme Groulx described Madeleine as a brazen hussy, unworthy of an ounce of her pity.

  ‘Join us for a coffee, Pierre.’ she points regally towards a chair and insists that I squeeze it in beside hers.

  ‘And a piece of apple pie.’ Senegal puts a plate in front of me before I can say anything.

  I swallow a wedge of apple, gluey with some cinnamony artificial syrup.

  ‘Terrible times,’ Mme Rossignol pipes in. ‘Poor, poor Claire Tremblay. Her granddaughter gone. Her daughter at odds with her. Her barn burned to the ground.’ She shakes her pink-white head in genuine grief. ‘I’m going to bring her one of my meat pies.’

  ‘Her husband must be writhing in that Norman grave of his,’ a gravelly voice proclaims from the corner. ‘None of this would have happened if he hadn’t gone off to be a hero. He was my friend, you know. Guy Tremblay. The best man round these parts.’

  I turn to stare at old Godbout. It is the longest speech I have heard him make in years. He must realise it too, for he wipes his toothless mouth now with the back of his hand, as if he needed to touch his sunken lips to ascertain their existence.

  ‘We’ve never had anything like it around here. Never. Not since that business out in the barracks during the war. But no fear, Gagnon won’t let the villain get away with it.’ Mme Groulx is adamant. ‘Poor, dear, beautiful Madeleine. Ste-Anne’s most famous daughter. Killed by a madman. What do you know about him, Pierre?’ Her eyes fix me with their eager guile.

  ‘Less than you, I imagine.’

  ‘It’s too horrible!’ A voice from behind the counter erupts with soft terror. I notice young Martine Senegal. She is fingering the scarf Madeleine gave her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Martine.’ Mme Groulx is as fierce as a Trojan woman. ‘He’ll be locked away in the pen until he roasts in hell. For myself, I only wish that could be tomorrow. And we’ll get his sidekicks, too. All of them.’

  ‘All of them,’ a voice I don’t recognize echoes from a counter stool.

  ‘Yes, hang the killer and good riddance to him. To them all.’ Senegal puts a protective arm round his granddaughter. ‘We have to avenge Madeleine.’

  It comes to me in a flash that Madeleine as the victim of a murder has re-entered the magic circle of community, a status she has long been excluded from. Her suicide only confirmed her as an outsider. As a murderee, she can be embraced. There is a new and more intolerable figure to cast in the role of outsider, one who can meld both the young and the old in the town together in justifiable hatred.

  I push my chair back from the table.

  ‘Going already, Pierre?’

  ‘I have to see Gagnon.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mme Groulx pats my hand. ‘Come back and tell us if there are any developments.’

  The police building is a solid square of brick just round the corner from my office. Its doors are thick oak and as they open, a buzzer sounds somewhere in the interior. Young Miron is sitting at a desk behind the counter.

  ‘I thought you were off-duty, Miron.’

  ‘The Chief called me back.’ He averts his eyes, presses a button and waves me through to Gagnon’s office.

  Gagnon is on the phone. A scowl hovers over his face without quite settling. He scribbles a note on the pad in front of him. It is the only visible paper on his uncannily tidy desk.

  ‘We’ll see you about ten tomorrow then,’ he says and puts the receiver down with a bang. ‘That was Contini. You heard. He’ll be here tomorrow. Where d’you go off to? I still haven’t been able to get Mme Tremblay here. Not that it matters. Mme Groulx made the identification.’ His thumb moves unwittingly over his badge, polishing it.

  ‘She told me. I just bumped into her.’

  ‘Hmmm. Made a meal of it, did she? Nevermind.’ With a sly grin, he points to a corner of the room. Next to a filing cabinet, I see a transparent plastic sac. Inside it, sits a large can.

  ‘Kerosene,’ Gagnon says triumphantly. ‘Michel Dubois turned up the can near the barn.’

  I tell him about Mme Tremblay, tell him too that, for her sake, the information had best be kept quiet. His gaunt features furrow into grimness. ‘Can’t really blame her for trying, can you?. I hope you didn’t add to her misery and tell her about the fire.’

  I shake my head. ‘And how is your suspect keeping? Has he made a full confession?’

  Gagnon lets out a growl. ‘Not a squeak. Miron’s had a go to. The bastard just lies there. And there’s no ID on him. No credit cards. Only a wad of bills.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  He hesitates. For some reason he is no longer as keen on my presence as he was earlier. Maybe Contini has given him orders.

  ‘I might be able to get him to talk.’

  Gagnon shrugs. ‘Okay. What the hell…’

  Through the peephole in the bolted door of the cell, I see the youth, but he is not stretched out on the narrow strip of a bed. He is pacing. The distorting glass makes his head inordinately large, a dark, wavering blob on a shaky stick of a body.

  Gagnon pulls open the door and the reek of vomit attacks our nostrils. I can see its source in a flecked yellowy-green heap in a corner of the room.
/>   ‘Maudit cochon!’ Gagnon swears and with a savage thrust pushes the youth onto the bed.

  He stares up at us with his vast red-rimmed eyes. The hand he lifts to push his hair back from his face starts and trembles.

  ‘I gotta get out of here,’ he mumbles. ‘Gotta get out.’ His fingers twitch convulsively.

  ‘Bring him some water. Lots of it,’ I say to Gagnon. ‘And rouse Dr Bertrand. Or better still, Bergeron. He’s only five minutes away.’

  He doesn’t move.

  ‘Go on. Or you’ll have a hospitalized suspect on your hands and a family complaining of police brutality.’

  ‘Brutality! After what he’s done! All he needs is a fix and Miron’s promised him one - when he confesses.’ He winks at me.

  I refuse the assumed complicity. ‘Go on, Gagnon. This won’t look good.’

  He gives me a hard, assessing look, then hollers for Miron down the corridor.

  ‘Where’s your family, Will?’ I ask softly. ‘Can you give me a phone number?’

  The youth stares at me from his vacant distance and rubs his arm. ‘I gotta get out of here,’ he repeats.

  ‘Tell me where you live.’

  His expression focusses into sudden canniness. ‘Oh no. No way. You’re not gonna get me that way.’ A shudder takes him over. Wretching follows in its train.

  I try again as I hear footsteps approaching. ‘You’re in big trouble, Will. Big trouble. Just tell me where you’ve been staying?’

  ‘Staying,’ he echoes. ‘Staying.’ His eyes are out of kilter again, scurrying round the room in jerky motions. ‘The river… water. I need water,’ he mumbles just as Miron appears with a pitcher and a paper cup.

  Will drinks in great noisy gulps, the water trickling down from the corners of his mouth, and sticks out his cup for more.

  Miron pours without once taking his eyes off him, as if the youth were some wild animal who might claw and bolt.

  ‘Fire’s made him thirsty,’ he mutters.