“Me, I fill it in different than this.”
As he made comments, Jean-Michel became frantic. His hands, blue from the freezing wind, clutched the shovel as it gouged out the earth, trying to find the coffin. He was thinking crazy thoughts. Although he was far from superstitious, not at all a believer, he wondered if some mad necromancer or some nefarious madman had not taken the remains of his wife.
The coffin looked intact, but Flin shook his head.
“They opened it. Look at this screw… Not tight…”
“But Flin... What you’re saying... It’s awful!’
“Monsieur Lefort, I don’t get it. I’ve buried people here for 30 years and never once…”
Jean-Michel cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“We have to see for ourselves.”
“See what?” Flin was alarmed.
“If she… if she’s still here.”
“Open it, you mean? I can’t do that!”
Procrastination and discussion ensued. Flin’s job was on the line and maybe criminal prosecution as well, if caught. It was crazy enough to do what he had agreed to do so far for Lefort’s peace of mind, and in memory of his dear wife, but now... Wouldn’t it be better to call the police?
But Jean-Michel Lefort was dead set on knowing the truth right now, and at any price wanted to avoid a scandal for the memory of his dear, departed wife. One extra reward and Flin finally took a screwdriver out of his pocket, grumbling that “it’s not legal” and “this will all end badly.” Jean-Michel did not care. Gritting his teeth, he watched the old man lift the cover that separated the living from the dead.
She was there, in her shroud, and he could now breathe freely. He had feared the most awful things, without knowing what they might be. He had to pluck up the courage to move aside the sheet and look at the still beautiful face of his Viviane.
In the meantime, Flin, suddenly aware of what he was risking, and of the madness they were engaged in, harassed him and begged him to finish up. They had to close the coffin, turn the screws, and put the soil back in place as quickly as possible, which they did as a few snowflakes started falling again. And they left the cemetery covered in its white blanket of silence.
But Jean-Michel could not sleep. He ran down to Paris, desperate to tell someone, but recoiling before the notion of talking to his family. So, his old friend Dr. Sorbier had listened to him attentively.
“My friend, I don’t like this kind of story. But I agree with you when you say that you don’t want the matter leaking out. Why not talk to a private detective?”
“Do you know one?”
“Yes, I do. And one that deals in matters other that the usual adultery trials and pre-marriage inquiries; he’s a specialist in the Occult.”
Jean-Michel was startled.
“The Occult? But I don’t care about that nonsense, and when she was still with us, my wife took no interest in it either. She never went to a fortune-teller. as far as I know.”
But Dr. Sorbier had his opinion. Jean-Michel finally took his advice and called Teddy Verano, who came to Senlis and listened to the long story of the ominous adventure.
“What do you think, Monsieur Verano? I’ve told you everything, and I don’t understand a thing. I don’t need to tell you that Dr. Sorbier trusts you completely.”
“I’m grateful to him. Let’s see… Above all, I’m thinking about what you said: although the coffin was opened, the body wasn’t touched.”
“That’s right.”
“But there was—as the grave digger was absolutely certain—a violation of the grave.”
“Certainly. The ground had been disturbed, the screw loosened…”
“And you’re sure that the… the body… was still...”
“...Intact? Indeed!”
Teddy Verano took another swallow of Cutty Sark while Jean-Michel added, almost mechanically:
“It was as if someone had wanted to open the coffin just to see her… to look at her again.” He clenched his fists and groaned, “Oh, if only I knew who the bastard was!”
The detective lit a cigarette.
“Intact inside her coffin, you’re sure? That’s the main point. And those traces Old Flin talked about?”
“Oh, absolutely impossible to identify. There were a lot of people walking around, of course… After the ceremony, only the grave digger was there, and until the next day, nobody was at the cemetery.”
“Except the guilty party,” Teddy Verano mumbled.
“Yes, but he… Flin saw there were footprints that weren’t his own. But it was snowing. It snows a lot nowadays, so…”
Teddy Verano waved it off. He realized that they wouldn’t find any interesting leads there. Suddenly, an idea crossed his mind.
“I’m sorry. but I have to ask you a very delicate question… one that might offend you.”
Jean-Michel replied clearly but in a slightly changed voice.
“Ask away. Anything you want. I want to know the truth and I’ll do everything I can to unmask this wretch who opened Viviane’s coffin.”
“Imagine, Monsieur Lefort, that someone—a man, very likely—felt… something for Madame Lefort. This someone could have come secretly, driven mad by grief, to see her face one last time without anyone else… without you knowing.”
He saw that Jean-Michel turned pale, clearly offended as he had feared. But Lefort controlled himself and did not want to break his word.
“You’re right to ask this… bold question. But I’m sure that nobody, you hear me, nobody in our circle, nobody to my knowledge, could have done this.” He shook his head and continued with deep sadness. “It’s true that she was very beautiful.”
He went to get a picture frame off the table where a bouquet of fresh roses was protecting it.
“Look.”
Teddy Verano admired it. Viviane was indeed very pretty. He felt his heart skip a beat thinking that it would outrage any man to think that such a beauty’s tomb could be violated.
“A madman,” Jean-Michel said. “Just a madman.”
“No doubt. But potentially, a dangerous madman.”
Jean-Michel suddenly jumped over to the detective.
“Why? Do you have any idea?”
“Not yet. What if we went to the cemetery?”
“You think that…?”
“Oh, you’ve already done, or tried to do, the important stuff. A few days from now, the coffin will be sealed up for good, I imagine, and this will all be over.”
“Not for me. Not as long as I don’t know the truth.”
“Of course, Monsieur Lefort. But I’d like to talk with Old Flin myself.”
Half an hour later, in the glum and snowy Picardy countryside, not far from the highway, Teddy Verano’s DS stopped near the cemetery where the unfortunate Viviane lay.
“That’s the place.”
Jean-Michel Lefort pointed at a rustic pavilion by a grove of trees, halfway from the town itself.
Flin was there. A short, young, chubby girl told them so. She ran behind the building right away. It was not hard to understand that she was feeding the chickens.
“That’s Giselle, Flin’s daughter.”
“She’s been crying. Her eyes are red and it was obvious she didn’t want to talk to us for long in her state.”
Jean-Michel shrugged his shoulders.
“She’s all the old man’s got, but he’s no tender heart. They say he gives her thrashings.”
Flin, a skinny but sturdy local man, gnarled and with a moustache, greeted Jean-Michel Lefort and looked awkwardly at his companion.
“Don’t be scared,” Teddy Verano said smoothly, “I’m not with the police. I’m just a friend of Monsieur Lefort. So, we’ve come to pay you a little visit and solicit your opinion....”
Flattered, Flin apologized. He talked about something else, about the girl who gave him so much trouble.
“That charming little girl?” Teddy Verano pretended to be surprised.
; Flin shrugged.
“She’s a tramp. She goes out at night. In this weather, I ask you…”
They brought him back to more pertinent matters. But they did not get much out of him. He stumbled over his words, saying that, after all, maybe he was wrong, maybe it was the wind that moved the dirt, and when it came to the loose screw, he said he could not remember this detail.
Obviously, he was scared.
The whole thing was going too far and he was sorry he had said anything, in spite of the generous tip given by Jean-Michel Lefort.
Teddy Verano realized that they were up against a wall of dishonesty and he found a way to say goodbye as soon as possible. On seeing that they were about to leave, the gravedigger became friendlier, but was still in a hurry to see them gone.
Outside, they found themselves in the half-light, in the wind, under a darkening sky where a few snowflakes still fluttered about.
“I don’t understand,” Jean-Michel said. “You wanted to see this guy, but we barely got anything interesting out of him.”
“He has nothing to tell us because he doesn’t want to talk anymore. Anyway, I don’t think he knows much. However…”
He looked around, imagining more than seeing the cemetery and the small woods on the opposite side of the town.
“You want to go over? I think it’s closed at this hour.”
“Flin’s in charge of it?”
“Yes. But sometimes he sends his daughter.”
They started off in the snow toward the DS when they heard Flin yelling:
“Step on it, you little floozy! You close it up?”
The girl must have stammered something like, “Not yet.”
Teddy Verano put his hand on Jean-Michel’s arm.
“I bet this is the right time.”
“Sure. Look who’s running over.”
Gisele was dashing through the snow, having put on her nice boots, which clashed with her cotton dress and apron. After tying a scarf around her head, she was going to close the cemetery gate like every evening.
“Let’s go,” Teddy Verano said.
They got into the car and, without saying another word, took off. Jean-Michel did not know what the detective was thinking, but Teddy Verano was already cooking up a plan.
Except he had a surprise.
They passed by Gisele, walking to the resting grounds, and she gave them a weird look as they went by. The silhouette of the girl had barely melted in the snowy night when the car drove around the cemetery and headed for the woods. But Teddy Verano, like Jean-Michel, had time to see the small Citroën 2CV parked along the cemetery wall.
Teddy Verano said nothing, did not even slow down. He kept going and entered the woods, which gave him complete cover. Then, he stopped, got out of the car and invited his passenger to follow him.
The other car was still there, lights off. Silently in the thick snow, that helped cover their advance, the two men made their way through the trees.
CHAPTER III
Gisele was still red from running, and her breath made small clouds around her mouth. She was having difficulty catching her breath.
Suddenly, an arm wrapped around her.
Gisele cried out in alarm, when a deep voice, trying to be as soft as possible, whispered in her ear:
“Dummy… It’s me, you know it’s me!”
Gisele pushed him back a little, in fun.
“You scared me.”
“Well. that’s new. If you’re scared of me…”
The young man laughed hoarsely, but the sweet, round face of Old Flin’s daughter did not brighten up.
“Do you always have to be so stupid?”
“Well, well,” he was starting to feel his spirits rise, “if you’re not happy, you just have to say so. I’ll go and then…”
He pretended to back off but she grabbed his arm.
“No, don’t go. Don’t leave me all alone.”
The boy was having fun and, with his thumb pointed to the cemetery wall behind him, where they had said they would meet as usual, observed:
“Is it them that give you the willies?”
Gisele shuddered, but not from the cold. Being a good country girl, she was not too sensitive to the snowy weather.
“Jean-Pierre, please.” She suddenly hugged him close and whispered, “You know exactly what happened… the other night.”
As clumsy as Jean-Pierre was, after first thinking that a gush of spontaneous tenderness had thrown Gisele into his arms, he knew now that, in truth, she was still terrorized by their previous date, three days ago, at 11 p.m., in this same place.
“You should stop thinking about that, Gigi. Look, we have better things to do than reminisce about such silly things.”
It was clear that Jean-Pierre was ready to move on to “better things,” but the girl did not yield to his ardent whisper in her ear.
“Please, I don’t feel like it.”
Jean-Pierre, therefore, had to give up the idea—only for the moment, he hoped—of going farther.
“OK, what is it now?” he grumbled. “Your father again?”
She moved her head in a way that said yes and no.
“It’s not just my father.”
“What then? Are you tired of seeing me?”
“No, I never said that.”
Now Jean-Pierre was getting upset. He’d come all the way on his bicycle, and that was no easy feat. He had left it in the bushes to meet Gisele when Flin had sent her to close the cemetery. He had a motorcycle, but he did not use it to go to the rendezvous because it was too noisy and might alert the gravedigger.
It was for her that he’d ridden almost two miles in the snow at the risk of breaking his neck. She should have considered this. He complained a little about it before restarting his advances.
This time, Gisele put him swiftly in his place.
“Listen, we have to talk.”
“That’s what we’re here for, doll,” he said lovingly.
“Ah!” Gisele was fed up. “You boys only think about one thing… Don’t you remember the last night we came here?”
Jean-Pierre pretended to think—he knew perfectly well what Gisele meant—and guffawed, a little forced, like anyone who wants to be tough and show no fear.
“Oh, yeah, the ghosts!”
“Jean-Pierre, be quiet.”
“Say, it’s not midnight yet. It’s not their time.”
“The other night, it was 11 p.m.”
“Yes, sweetie, on the nose.”
“You’re an idiot. Those rays of light…”
“I told you it was lightning. Things like that happen.”
“There was no storm. And it’d been snowing for eight days.”
“Well, maybe it was will-o-the-wisps. They happen in cemeteries. I heard something about it. They even said that’s what makes people believe in ghosts.”
Gisele was not so easily defeated.
“When we saw those lights, you weren’t so sure.”
“Of course not. I was surprised. When you’re busy having fun like we were, and then you see lights over the cemetery wall...” He waved his hand as if to chase off a bad memory. Coming back to his idea he continued, “Still, when we see each other, don’t you have anything else you want to do?”
“Listen,” Gisele said, “something happened that night.”
“What? In the cemetery?”
“Yes.”
And she told him about Old Flin’s discovery, the desecrated grave, and the visits, first by the guy who must have been the dead woman’s husband, and then, half an hour ago, by the same guy with someone else.
Jean-Pierre frowned and admitted:
“I don’t like this at all.”
His passion had suddenly vanished. He was wondering if, in case there was some dirty business, he would risk getting involved while in the middle of a passionate “conversation” with the gravedigger’s daughter.
Not to mention that Old Flin was not particular understanding, es
pecially when he had had a little to drink, and he suddenly felt it was his duty to protect the virtue of his only daughter, something which he normally took no interest in.
“Well, what I mean is…” Gisele started.
“You mean, we shouldn’t see each other anymore?”
In spite of everything, he was already regretting her decision. Gisele, even being short and chubby, was attractive and, even with her father’s outbursts, she already had some experience in premarital fantasies.
“No, I didn’t say that. But we can’t see each other here.”
“So, where?”
They whispered about it, holding each other close.
Jean-Pierre, while talking, took the opportunity to become more intimate, but he could see that Gisele, such an expert in the game under other circumstances, was too preoccupied by both her father’s occasional threats and by this story about ghosts or ghost lights that her naïve little soul could not sort out.
They did not hear the approach of the man spying on them from around the wall, using the stone as an excellent sound conductor that had allowed him to follow almost the whole conversation. Moreover, Gisele was starting to feel the heat of the boy’s advances. She became all the more frightened when someone coughed nearby. She started to run away, and Jean-Pierre suddenly became a lot less manly; he was ready to do the same.
However, a man’s voice, a little sarcastic, could now be heard after the short coughing fit, indiscreetly interrupting the lovers’ intimacy.
“Excuse me, please. I might have disturbed you...”
Jean-Pierre was already feeling braver, knowing that it was not Old Flin who was barging in and making him feel inferior.
“Listen, you…”
“Don’t get angry, Jean-Pierre… nor you, my dear Gisele.”
“You know our names? That’s too much!”
“But of course. It was a very simple thing. Don’t try to figure it out. But above all, don’t worry, I mean you no harm.”
Jean-Pierre turned around and Gisele instinctively clung onto him, half-hidden behind him, which also warmed her up because it was getting chillier.
“Fine, but what do you want with us?” asked Jean-Pierre.
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