by Joël Dicker
“I don’t remember the story in any detail—it’s been a long time—but I can assure you that in 1975, the summer that Harry Quebert arrived here, Nola had a relationship with a man in his forties.”
“In his forties? Do you remember his name?”
“There is no way I’d forget that. It was Elijah Stern, probably one of the richest men in New Hampshire.”
“Elijah Stern?”
“Yes. She told me she had to strip naked for him, to obey his wishes. She had to go to his house in Concord. Stern sent his chauffeur to come and get her. A strange guy—Luther Caleb was his name. He came to get her in Somerset and took her to Stern’s place. I know that because I saw it happen with my own eyes.”
22
Police Investigation
“Harry, how can you be sure you always have the strength to write books?”
“Some people have it, some don’t. You will have it, Marcus. I know you will.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because it’s in you. Like a disease. Because the writers’ disease isn’t an inability to write anymore, it’s being incapable of stopping.”
EXTRACT FROM THE HARRY QUEBERT AFFAIR
Friday, June 27, 2008, 7.30 a.m. I am waiting for Sergeant Perry Gahalowood. This case began only about ten days ago, but it feels as if it’s been going on for months. I think the little town of Somerset is hiding some strange secrets, that people are telling much less than they actually know. What I need to find out is why everybody is keeping silent. I found the same message again last night: Go home, Goldman. Someone is trying to scare me.
I wonder what Gahalowood will say when I tell him what I’ve discovered about Elijah Stern. I Googled him: He is the last heir to a financial empire and its principal manager. He was born in 1933 in Concord, where he still lives. He is now seventy-five years old.
I wrote that while I waited outside Gahalowood’s office. I was interrupted by the sergeant’s expressionless voice:
“What are you doing here, writer?”
“I’ve made some surprising discoveries, Sergeant.”
He opened the door to his office, placed his foam coffee cup on a side table, threw his jacket over a chair, and raised the blinds. And then, still busying himself in the office, he said to me, “You could have phoned. That’s what civilized people do—arrange a meeting and come here at a time that suits both parties. Do things right, you know?”
In a single breath, I blurted out: “Nola had a lover besides Harry. Harry received anonymous letters back then about his relationship with Nola, so somebody knew about it.”
He stared at me, wide-eyed.
“How the hell do you know all that?”
“I told you, I’m running my own investigation.”
He instantly looked grumpy again.
“You’re pissing me off, writer. You’re messing up my investigation.”
“Are you in a bad mood, Sergeant?”
“Yes. Because it’s 7 a.m. and you’re already waving your arms around in my office.”
I asked him if he had something I could write on. With a resigned expression, he led me to an adjacent room. Photographs of Side Creek and Somerset had been pinned to a corkboard on the wall. He indicated a whiteboard next to this and handed me a dry-erase marker.
“Go ahead,” he said with a sigh. “I’m listening.”
I wrote Nola’s name on the board and drew arrows connecting it to the other people involved. First was Elijah Stern, then Nancy Hattaway.
“Maybe Nola Kellergan was not quite the perfect little girl described by everyone,” I said. “We know she was in a relationship with Harry. We now know she had another relationship, during the same period, with a certain Elijah Stern.”
“The businessman?”
“The very same.”
“Who’s been feeding you this crap?”
“Nola’s best friend at the time, Nancy Hattaway.”
“How did you find her?”
“The 1975 Somerset High School yearbook.”
“Alright. And what are you trying to tell me, writer?”
“That Nola was not a happy kid. At the beginning of the summer, her affair with Harry started going bad. He rejected her and she became depressed. Her mother, meanwhile, was beating the living daylights out of her. Sergeant, the more I think about it, the more obvious it seems to me that her disappearance was the result of strange events that took place that summer, although nobody wants to admit that.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I think other people knew about Harry and Nola. Maybe Nancy Hattaway, although I’m not sure about that—she says she didn’t know about it and she seems sincere. In any case, someone was writing Harry anonymous letters—”
“About Nola?”
“Yes. Look—I found this in his house.” I showed him one of the letters I had brought with me.
“In his house? But we searched it.”
“Never mind that. Don’t you see? This means someone knew about them all along.”
He read the message out loud: “‘I know what you’ve done with that 15-year-old girl. And soon the whole town will know.’ When did Quebert receive these letters?”
“Just after Nola’s disappearance.”
“Does he have any idea who might have written them?”
“None at all, unfortunately.”
I turned toward the corkboard. “Is this your investigation, Sergeant?”
“Absolutely. Let’s go back to the beginning, if you don’t mind. Nola Kellergan disappeared on the evening of August 30, 1975. The Somerset police report at the time states that it can’t be determined for sure whether she was kidnapped or whether she was running away and it all went wrong. There were no signs of a struggle, and no witnesses. Nevertheless, looking at the facts today, we are leaning heavily toward the kidnapping theory—in particular because she took no money or clothes with her.”
“I think she ran away,” I said.
“Alright—let’s go with that theory, then,” Gahalowood said. “She climbs out of the window and runs away. Where does she go?”
It was time to reveal what I knew.
“She was going to meet Harry,” I replied.
“You think?”
“I know. He told me. I haven’t mentioned it to you until now because I was afraid it would compromise him, but I think it’s time to put our cards on the table. On the evening she disappeared, Nola was supposed to meet Harry in a motel on Shore Road. They were going to elope.”
“Elope? Where?”
“That I don’t know. But I intend to find out. Anyway, on that fateful evening, Harry was waiting for Nola in a motel room. She’d sent him a letter saying she’d meet him there. He waited all night for her. She never came.”
“Which motel? And where is that letter?”
“The Sea Side Motel. Several miles north of Side Creek. I went there—it still exists. As for the letter … I burned it. To protect Harry.”
“You burned it? Are you fucking crazy? What got into you? Do you want to go to prison for destroying evidence?”
“I shouldn’t have done it. I regret it, Sergeant.”
Still cursing me, Gahalowood took out a map of the Somerset region and spread it out on a table. He showed me the center of town, pointed to Shore Road, which ran along the coast, then Goose Cove, then the Side Creek forest. Thinking out loud, he said, “If I were a girl running away and I didn’t want to be seen, I would go to the nearest beach and walk along it until I reached Shore Road. In other words, either toward Goose Cove or toward—”
“Side Creek,” I said. “There’s a footpath through the woods connecting the ocean to the motel.”
“Bingo!” Gahalowood shouted. “So it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to imagine that the girl ran away from home. Terrace Avenue is there and the nearest beach is … Grand Beach! So she went to the beach and walked along it until she reached the woods. But what could have happened to her there in that damn
forest?”
“Someone might have seen her on her way through the woods. A maniac, who tried to rape her, and then grabbed a heavy stick and murdered her.”
“Maybe, writer, but you’re leaving out a detail that poses some serious questions: the manuscript. And that handwritten note: Goodbye, darling Nola. That means whoever killed and buried Nola knew her, and that he had feelings for her. And if we assume that this person was not Harry, you’ll have to explain to me how she ended up in possession of his manuscript.”
“Nola had it with her. That’s certain. Even though she was running away, she didn’t want to take any baggage with her; that would run the risk of drawing unwanted attention, particularly if her parents saw her as she was leaving. And she didn’t need anything anyway: She imagined that Harry was rich, that he would buy them everything they needed for their new life. So what was the one thing she took with her? The sole object that could not be replaced: the manuscript of the book that Harry had just written and that she had taken with her to read, as she often did. She knew this manuscript was important to Harry. She put it in her bag and ran away from home.”
Gahalowood thought about my theory for a moment.
“So according to you,” he said, “the murderer buried the bag and the manuscript with her to get rid of evidence?”
“Exactly.”
“But that doesn’t explain why there was that note written on the manuscript.”
“That’s a good point,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s proof that Nola’s murderer loved her. Could this be a crime of passion? A moment of madness that, once it was over, made the murderer want to write that note so that her grave was not anonymous? Someone who loved Nola and could not bear her relationship with Harry? Someone who knew she was running away and who, unable to dissuade her, preferred to kill her rather than lose her? That theory has legs, don’t you think?”
“It has legs, writer, but as you say, it’s only a theory. Now we have to verify it. As with all theories. Welcome to the difficult and meticulous world of being a cop.”
“What do you suggest, Sergeant?”
“We’ve done the handwriting analysis on Quebert, but we’ll have to wait a while before we get the results. But another point needs to be cleared up. Why bury Nola at Goose Cove? It’s next to Side Creek, so why bother moving a body just to bury it two miles away?”
“No body, no murder,” I suggested.
“That’s what I was thinking too. Maybe the killer felt surrounded by the police. He had to make do with burying it somewhere nearby.”
We contemplated the whiteboard on which I had finished writing my list of names:
Harry QUEBERT Tamara QUINN
Nancy HATTAWAY NOLA David and Louisa KELLERGAN
Elijah STERN Luther CALEB
“All these people have a probable link with Nola or with the case,” I said. “It could even be a list of potential suspects.”
“It’s a list that gives me a headache, I can tell you that,” Gahalowood said.
I ignored him and went on to review the names on the list.
“Nancy was only fifteen years old in 1975 and had no motive. I think we can eliminate her. Tamara Quinn is telling anybody who’ll listen that she knew all about Harry and Nola … perhaps she wrote the anonymous letters to Harry.”
“A woman?” Gahalowood interrupted. “I don’t know about that. It takes a huge amount of strength to smash someone’s skull like that. I think a man is far more likely. Particularly because Deborah Cooper clearly identified Nola’s pursuer as a man.”
“What about Nola’s parents? The mother beat her daughter—”
“Beating your daughter is nothing to be proud of, but it’s a long way from the savage attack that Nola suffered.”
“I read on the Internet that when children disappear, the culprit is often a member of the family.”
Gahalowood rolled his eyes.
“I read on the Internet that you’re a great writer. So clearly the Internet is just a pack of lies.”
“Let’s not forget Elijah Stern. I think we should interrogate him as soon as possible. Nancy Hattaway said that he sent his chauffeur, Luther Caleb, to bring Nola to his home in Concord.”
“Calm down, writer. Elijah Stern is an influential man from a very rich family. He is immensely powerful. The kind of man the D.A. is not going to want to cross swords with unless there is overwhelming evidence to back up the case. What do you have against him, apart from your witness, who was just a girl when this happened? Her testimony is pretty much worthless now. We need evidence, solid proof. I’ve been through the Somerset police reports. There is no mention of Harry, Stern, or this Luther Caleb.”
“But Nancy Hattaway seems like a reliable witness to me.”
“I’m not saying she’s not. I just don’t trust memories of something that happened more than thirty years ago. I’m going to try to find out more about that story, but I’ll need more evidence before I take Stern seriously as a suspect. I’m not going to risk my career by interrogating a guy who plays golf with the governor unless I have at least some evidence against him.”
“There’s also the fact that the Kellergans came to Somerset from Alabama for a specific reason that nobody seems to be altogether sure of. David Kellergan told me they came here for the fresh air, but Nancy Hattaway told me that Nola had mentioned an event that took place while the family was living in Jackson.”
“Hmm. You need to look into that, writer.”
*
I decided not to say anything to Harry about Elijah Stern until I had more solid evidence. On the other hand, I did tell Roth because it seemed to me that this evidence could prove crucial for Harry’s defense.
“Nola Kellergan was having an affair with Elijah Stern?” he gasped into the telephone.
“Yup. And my source is reliable.”
“Good work, Marcus. We’ll subpoena Stern, we’ll bury him in court, and we’ll turn the situation upside down. Imagine the jurors’ faces when Stern, having solemnly sworn on the Holy Bible, gives them all the juicy details of his bedtime adventures with the Kellergan girl.”
“Don’t say anything to Harry yet. I want to wait until I know more about Stern.”
I went to the prison that same afternoon, where Harry corroborated what Nancy Hattaway had said about Nola’s situation at home.
“Those beatings … it was horrible.”
“She also told me that at the beginning of summer, Nola seemed unhappy.”
Harry nodded miserably.
“I made Nola very unhappy when I pulled away from her, and the results were disastrous. After I’d gone to Concord with Jenny on the Fourth, I was completely overwhelmed by my feelings for Nola. I desperately needed to distance myself from her. So the next day, Saturday, I decided not to go to Clark’s.”
As I recorded Harry’s voice telling me about the nightmarish weekend of July 5–6, 1975, I began to see how accurately The Origin of Evil had traced his affair with Nola, mixing the story with actual extracts from their correspondence. So, in fact, Harry had never hidden their relationship; from the beginning, he had confessed his impossible love affair to the entire world. In the end I had to interrupt him to say, “But Harry, all of this is in your book!”
“All of it, Marcus, all of it. But nobody ever tried to understand. So many people have analyzed that novel, talking about allegories, symbols, and literary devices that I have never even mastered, when, in reality, all I did was write a book about Nola and me.”
Saturday, July 5, 1975
It was 4.30 a.m. The streets of the town were deserted, and the rhythm of his footsteps was all that could be heard. Since he had made the decision not to see her anymore, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He would wake up involuntarily before dawn and wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. So he would put on his shorts and go running on the beach, chasing seagulls and imitating the way they flew. He would run until he reached Somerset. It was six miles from Goose Cove; he practically sprinted
that distance. Normally, having run all the way across town, he would take the Massachusetts road, as if he were leaving town altogether, then stop at Grand Beach, where he would watch the sun rise. But that morning, when he got as far as Terrace Avenue, he stopped to catch his breath and walked for a while between the rows of houses, soaked with sweat, his pulse beating in his temples.
He walked past the Quinns’ house. The previous evening, which he’d spent with Jenny, had unquestionably been the most boring of his life. Jenny was a great girl, but she didn’t make him laugh and she didn’t inspire him. The only one who did was Nola. He walked on down the road until he arrived at the forbidden house: the Kellergans’, where, the previous evening, he had left Nola in tears. He’d had to force himself to act coldly so that she would understand. But she hadn’t understood anything. She’d said, “Why are you doing this to me, Harry? Why are you being so mean?” He’d thought about her throughout the evening. During the meal in Concord, he had even left the table for a moment to make a call from a telephone booth. He had asked the operator to put him through to Mr Kellergan in Somerset, and then as soon as it had begun ringing, he’d hung up. When he returned to the table, Jenny had asked him if he felt unwell.
Now, standing motionless on the sidewalk, he stared at the windows. He tried to imagine which room she was sleeping in. He stayed like that for a long time. Suddenly, he thought he heard a noise; in his desperation to get away, he ran into some metal trash cans, which clattered and crashed as they tipped over. A light went on in the house, and Harry sprinted away.
Back at Goose Cove he sat in his office to write. It was the beginning of July, and he had still not begun his great novel. What would happen if he couldn’t manage to write? He would return to his miserable life. He would never be a writer. He would never be anything. For the first time, he considered suicide. Around seven in the morning, he fell asleep at his desk, his head resting on ripped-up pages covered with cross-outs.
*
At twelve-thirty, in the employees’ bathroom at Clark’s, Nola splashed water onto her face, hoping to remove the red marks around her eyes. She had been crying all morning. It was Saturday and Harry hadn’t come to the restaurant. He didn’t want to see her anymore. Saturdays at Clark’s had been when they met; this was the first time he’d failed to show up. She’d been full of hope when she woke that morning: She imagined he would come to tell her how sorry he was for being beastly to her, and she, of course, would forgive him. The idea of seeing him again had put her in a wonderful mood; when she was getting ready, she’d even put some rouge on her cheeks. But her mother had reprimanded her severely at the breakfast table: “Nola, what are you hiding from me? I want to know.”