Teddy Verano started walking again slowly toward his car with Michel Roz next to him.
“Who? But there’s an order to the world, and we know who created it. A godsend can also be a trap, especially for those who don’t recognize it. Be careful! It’s terrible and they’re not atheists—who could deny something one doesn’t believe in? Their crime is much more dreadful. Do you believe that the riches and fleeting pleasures of the world destined to horrible ends in such cases are really so desirable?”
He took another cigarette as he climbed in his car.
“And what a sucker’s deal! The Devil, if he exists, could, in fact, give everything on Earth. Everything. Except what he himself is refused: Love. Everything, except love. So, between you and me, to sell your soul to the Devil isn’t worth the trouble.”
THE SCARLET CLOWN
CHAPTER I
“Hang in there, pal”
The father heard this for the 50th time this day. A phrase he was sick of, because it was corny, a cliché. But he told himself, or rather would later tell himself (if he still had the strength to analyze things), that, in their place, he would have said the same thing.
He, too, when his friends and family were grieving, had left them like this after the wake, painful and tedious. One of those chores one cannot avoid. He did not even know who had come. There were so many people…
In small towns, where everybody knows each other, when the grim reaper came knocking, one found friends one never knew. Friends who, a few days later, would once again turn as cold, distant and uninterested as always. But everyone felt obliged to come, to say a few words, always the same, to make the usual gestures. And after they have sprinkled the body with a little holy water, and made the customary sermons, they left. You would see them again at the burial.
The father, overwrought, greeted them. It was too much for the mother. Their only comfort was Agnes. She was there, kind and quiet. Claire’s best friend. The same age as her. Agnes, with her big, blue eyes, her reddish hair, her adorable face with a few freckles. Agnes, the loyal friend, who cried her heart out over Claire, and did not say or do the same things as the others.
She was there. She was able to be there. They had given her the day off at the factory so she could be with the parents. They did not have much family, just some distant cousins who only came for the funeral procession.
Agnes, in her great sorrow at having lost Claire, wanted to stay with these poor folk. Now, it was over. Done. It was late. The wake was finished.
“Phew!” was all the poor man could say. “Are you having dinner with us, Agnes?”
The mother, scurrying around with red eyes in a pale face, was making soup. They were not hungry, but they had to eat, to keep going.
Softly, Agnes accepted their invitation.
“If you’d like,” she said. “I know that you’re both very tired. Do you want me to stay the night?”
“My child,” the mother said, “thank you, but I won’t be able to sleep.” She looked suddenly irritated and pointed at the window. “Listen to them… It’s starting again.”
The father shook his fist, threatening the place of simple joy and cheap pleasure.
“As if this was the time…”
He did not even realize the absurdity of the phrase. But Agnes slowly nodded her head.
Yes, she understood them. Was it not cruel that, although they had just lost their only daughter Claire, she was still there, forever motionless in the next room, by the coffin that they had brought in a short time, lying on her little girl’s bed among white flowers, with that open box next to her while the party music struck up again?
“Though, it is the time,” the father admitted.
They sat at the table with no appetite. But they still ate, their minds elsewhere, talking little and with little sense to it. Things like, “Your parents are lucky to have a daughter like you.”
And Agnes gave standard answers; she, too, annoyed by the hum of carousels, the shouting kids, swaggering boys, trying to be clever in front of the girls, dragging them around on their crazy scooters or on the dizzying rides.
Agnes used to love the fair. The last time it had come, she had gone with Claire. They had had a great time and there were some boys, not so bad, who had offered them ice cream cones. Now…
Time marched on. It was night. It was cold, but this did not seem to curb the public’s enthusiasm. They heard them crowding around and rolling together under the arc lamps in the constant noise of the generators that provided the electricity for the big shops, thanks to the inventive minds that are always trying to give the crowd new sensations.
Agnes, nibbling a piece of cheese, was thinking about the fair, about the stalls that sold nougat and cotton candy, about the wrestlers posing almost naked in the cold, about the even more deplorable displays of young girls at the striptease show or the freaks and the circus. Because there would inevitably be a circus. Agnes had seen it in the snow falling the night before, the first night after Claire’s death. She remembered the name, glowing in neon: Crucifer Circus.
She thought about all this, even though she was in no mood for a fair under such sad circumstances.
The father, just to say something, talked about the nasty man who had made him such an indecent proposition. He got worked up talking about it, righteously angry, until the mother asked him to calm down and be quiet.
“You’re going to make yourself sick, dear… and besides,” she pointed to the room and sobbed, “think about her in there.”
A heavy silence fell over the three of them for a while.
Agnes suggested again that they go to bed. The next day would be hard. Putting her in the coffin, the funeral, the burial… Not to mention the endless stream of people. The entire small town would be there. And it would start all over again. The consolations, the handshakes…
The father, more quietly, said:
“Guys like that should be hanged.”
Agnes, still placating, explained that there were people who thought the opposite, and who took pictures of the deceased on their death beds. But she quickly added that she agreed with Claire’s father, who had kicked out the strange man who had offered to take some photos of the poor girl on her deathbed. Wasn’t that really a bizarre idea?
The parents said goodnight. They tried to resist, but were too exhausted. After one last short visit to the awful room, they went into their bedroom. Like every time they went to see dead Claire, they started crying again, and Agnes was worn out comforting them. But she did not let it show.
It had been agreed that she would call them at midnight. They would take the next shift and Agnes would go back to her house, her parents’ house. But she knew that she would not have the courage to wake them up. Personally, she had made up her mind. She should spend the night near her departed friend and let the poor, grieving parents rest.
The mother had brought her a thick bathrobe, a man’s bathrobe that belonged to her husband. It was huge, made of Pyrenees wool, and she could wrap herself up in it and hide from the cold. With her feet in foot-warmers, her hands inside the sleeves like a nun, Agnes curled up as comfortable as possible in a big armchair. As far as possible from the window. They had closed it to keep out the music from the fair and the noise being vomited out by the microphones from barkers trying to shout over one another.
There was nothing in the room but a small, flickering flame from a traditional votive candle. Agnes was dreaming as she watched the flame that was meant to keep away evil spirits. She got drowsy. The cold was doing its work. The young girl knew that the night would be long and hard, but didn’t she have to watch over Claire and do something for her poor parents?
For them especially. We never do enough for the living. As for the dead…
Claire was there. Dead. Her pretty face had already taken on that serenity of those less tortured in the flesh, whose soul had been set free, flown far from the trials and tribulations that awaited human beings every morning.
Claire,
with her blond hair that her mother had arranged to rest in waves around her shoulders; Claire, her hands folded on her white, summer dress; Claire, with the pearl rosary from her first communion. And flowers. All these flowers that cost a lot at this time of the year around Christmas. The florists in town had been in demand.
Agnes heard vaguely, very vaguely, the parents snoring in their room. They had boasted in all sincerity that they would not be able to sleep a wink. Agnes knew that it would not happen, and here she had the proof. Now she was alone to watch over Claire.
Alone with the little flame. Fire. Life. A life that at the gates of death meant that everything surely did not end with this departure.
Agnes was feeling drowsy, but fought to stay awake. It would not be good. You had to watch over the dead, at least that was the tradition. And she was not doing this out of politeness, but for the great affection she had always felt for Claire, her childhood friend, whose side she had never left. And then the sickness had come, the sudden, deadly leukemia...
Claire, with her legendary beauty, with her golden hair, as they said, had only lived a few months after that. Soon, it was all over…
It must have been snowing outside. The fair was screaming. Fortunately, the big double curtains were drawn to keep out the glaring, colored lights that were an outrage to the pious glow of this chapel.
Agnes bit her lip. I don’t want to fall asleep, she thought.
She reminisced about the photographer who had surprisingly tried to offer his services in such circumstances. Agnes wondered what had made the man do it. He was not from the town, for sure. A traveling photographer, probably, maybe with the fair? But these kinds of pictures did not seem to fit with those kinds of photographers. Ideas spun around in little Agnes’ head, Agnes who did not have a keen sense of reality.
Between half-closed eyelids, she saw only the small flame dancing on the candle, which she would have to replace in an hour. There were nine others, set aside for this. Agnes knew where they were. What time was it? She had no idea.
Claire’s parents were sleeping, overwhelmed with fatigue and sorrow.
It was cold, ever so cold now in the mortuary room. Agnes shivered inside her bathrobe. A shiver that shook her out of her drowsiness. She blinked. Oh, how the flame was really dancing now! Why? As if a draft was blowing through the room...
All of a sudden, Agnes became scared. She had no idea why. Scared because she thought of the stories she heard a long time ago, when they talked about the souls who came from beyond to accompany the departed who had just passed the great threshold.
The flame was dancing more and more. This was not a hallucination. And then there was the freezing cold...
Agnes looked at the window, the window she couldn’t see with the big curtains drawn in front of it. Behind it was the square, the fair, the dark alcove behind the huge lottery stall that hid Claire’s parents house. Agnes wondered if a gust of wind might have opened the window, which would explain the chilly air and the trembling candle flame.
She wanted to get up and go over there to check. Oh how tired she felt… and without knowing why, she couldn’t do it.
In front of her was the big, white bed, and Claire’s lily-white body, motionless, lying down forever.
Agnes was panic-stricken, but still did not move. Why did she want to spend the night of the wake here alone? Wasn’t it too much for the nerves of a young girl?
She told herself, Walk, go to the curtain, open it and close the window, if that really is the problem. Such a simple action, but Agnes couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Time passed. A minute. Hours. She had no idea.
She was hypnotized by the small point of fire, like a will-o-the-wisp, which was strange in a room full of silence and death. Frozen—from the cold or from fear?—Agnes tried to fight, to get up, to react.
Call out to Claire’s parents? But they were sleeping. So deeply that they would not hear her. Besides, she couldn’t call out. Scream? There was a huge lump in her throat.
Silence in the room, noise outside. She suddenly realized that no, there was not total silence. She heard, a lot more clearly, a lot more loudly, the growl of the microphones, the cacophonous tunes of the various stalls, the cries of joy from the boys, and of false fright from the girls, on the rails or in the horror train.
The curtain had moved. She was sure of it. There was no doubt about it.
An instant of panic. Excruciating.
And then Agnes, being an intelligent girl, thought: I’m being stupid… the curtains… it’s the window. The wind opened it… I hear the rides, the fair, the people… I’m going to close it.
Finally she was about to get up, but stopped.
A man had entered. He stood tall before her. In a manner of speaking, because he was pretty short. He told her, insistently, to stay quiet, by putting his finger to his lips. He got in through the window. He was there behind the curtain. He was carrying something, a kind of small black box that Agnes couldn’t see clearly through her great fear.
He approached her. It was as if he was gliding. The girl, her eyes wide, her muscles tense, was about to get up and scream, it was obvious. More quickly, however, he was on her, pushed her back into the chair, and put his hand over her mouth. In his hand was a kind of soft cottony ball. That smell… a nauseating smell…
“Don’t move,” he whispered, “I won’t hurt you.”
The smell… tasteless and stomach-turning… Agnes felt paralyzed. Was it a sedative he was putting in her nose? Or only the fear, the awful sensation washing over her?
She stayed vaguely conscious but knew that she would not move, could not move. She felt as if she were going to die, like Claire who was already dead.
“I didn’t come to steal anything. Or to hurt anyone, I swear. Don’t be scared.”
His words were contradictions in this absurd situation. They came through a fog. The fog was also before her eyes. But she still saw the flame dancing on the candle. And Claire. Claire lying here. Claire all white and beautiful, so beautiful!
A flash in the room. Another flash.
The man walked around the bed, holding up his box. He leaned over, moved his head, bent his knees, kept moving his box around.
Agnes, in the depths of her living nightmare, did not understand and told herself that there must be a simple explanation.
A flash. Another. Another. More and more.
The man left.
Agnes was again alone in the death room. Alone with Claire. Claire who was death itself.
It was cold. Agnes was numb with fear because the icy draft was still coming from the open window. Numb from the sedative also, light but effective, that had succeeded in neutralizing her.
The candle was dying since it had not been replaced. A mass of melted wax with the blackened wick in its death throes.
Outside, still a thousand voices were sounding their pleasure at the fair.
The man flew into the night, in the shadows of the house of death, toward the shack that casts a long puddle of black.
He disappeared after having taken 20 pictures of Claire’s face.
Agnes could no longer hold on and passed out.
CHAPTER II
“You understand, Monsieur Verano. The situation is… so delicate that I had to resort to the grave digger without alerting the police. And I have to say that I was really embarrassed… as much as I was scared, maybe, if I wasn’t lucky enough to know Dr. Sorbier...”
Teddy Verano smiled and nodded.
“I knew that you’d dealt with a similar case one or two years ago under pretty dramatic circumstances,” Jean-Michel Lefort continued.
“That’s right,” the ghost detective said. “And that all started, in fact, in the same way. Or pretty much, since in the case of Cyrille Denizet’s fiancée, the body had disappeared. When we opened the coffin, it was empty.”
Jean-Michel shivered. He stood up, just to do something, and took the bottle of whiskey.
�
��Another drop?” he asked.
Teddy Verano held out his glass, not at all shy about it. He had nothing against Cutty Sark, and said so, lighting up a cigarette, which put him in the right frame of mind for his investigation. He took small sips, watching Jean-Michel, who had gone to the window and was watching the snow fall over Senlis.
He had sped over here on the highway.
“It seems to me that all we can really say is at this time is that it’s a case of grave robbery.”
“But of course,” said Jean-Michel, turning around. “My poor love wanted only one thing before she departed: to be buried a dozen miles from here in that little rural cemetery. In fact, in the town where she grew up, where we know a lot of people. That’s why, the day after the funeral, Old Flin, the road worker and grave digger, a jack-of-all-trades in the area, came to talk to me.”
Teddy Verano thought about this with a sip of whiskey on his tongue.
Viviane Lefort had been brought three days ago to her final resting place, the victim of a heart attack. She had died at 30, her whole life spent with a fragile heart, and left behind a grieving husband. The day after the funeral, Old Flin had been embarrassed to tell Jean-Michel, who had gone back to the cemetery, that the dirt looked like it had been turned up during the night, right where the fresh grave had been laid. Jean-Michel did not want to believe it, but Flin showed him the traces, hard as they were to see in the muddy snow.
“I know my job… I know how to make the little mounds. Someone dug it, Monsieur Lefort. They did it during the night.”
Jean-Michel tried to doubt it, at first. Then, he asked the man to check it out, in utter secrecy, after slipping him some money, and it was agreed that, during the sad, ugly day, under the gray sky threatening to snow again, they would dig the grave again, just to make sure.
No one came. It was the middle of the week and the townsfolk rarely showed up before the weekend. The two of them, therefore, shoveled out the pile of clayey soil covering the coffin in which Vivian Lefort rested. The deeper they dug, the more Flin was convinced that the ground had been disturbed.
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