The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

by Joël Dicker

  I will miss you, my darling. I will miss you so much.

  I am crying. Inside, I am burning.

  We will never see each other again. I will miss you so much. I hope you will be happy.

  You and me: that was a dream, I think. And now we must wake up.

  I will miss you all my life.

  Goodbye. I love you as I will never love anyone again.

  “It’s the same as the letter on the last page of The Origin of Evil,” Kellergan told us.

  I nodded. I recognized it. I was dumbfounded.

  “How long have you known that Harry and Nola were corresponding?” Gahalowood asked him.

  “I realized it only a few weeks ago. I saw The Origin of Evil in the supermarket. It had just gone back on sale. I bought a copy. I don’t know why. I needed to read that book, so I could try to understand. I quickly began to feel I’d already read some of those sentences before. Strange how memory works. I thought about it for a while, and then it suddenly came to me: These were the letters I had found hidden in Nola’s room. I had not even touched them in all these years, but somehow they had remained engraved in my memory. I took out the shoebox and reread them, and that was when I understood. That damn letter made my daughter crazy with grief, Sergeant. Luther Caleb might have killed Nola, but to my mind Quebert is just as guilty. Were it not for that fit, she might never have run away from home and bumped into Caleb.”

  “So that’s why you went to see Harry at his motel,” Gahalowood said.

  “Yes. For thirty-three years I had wondered who had written those letters. And all that time, the answer had been sitting in every bookstore in America. I went to the Sea Side Motel, and we had an argument. I was so angry that I came back here to get my shotgun, but when I got back to the motel he had disappeared. I think I would have killed him. He knew how fragile she was, and he pushed her to the edge.”

  “What?” I gasped. “What do you mean, he knew?”

  “He knew everything about Nola! Everything!” shouted David Kellergan.

  “You mean Harry knew about her psychotic episodes?”

  “Yes. I knew Nola sometimes went to his house with the typewriter. I didn’t know about the rest, obviously. I even thought it was good for her that she knew a writer. It was summer vacation, and this was keeping her busy. Until that damn writer came to pick a fight with me because he thought my wife was beating Nola.”

  “Harry came to see you that summer?”

  “Yes. In the middle of August. Just before she disappeared.”

  August 15, 1975

  It was midafternoon. From his office window the Reverend David Kellergan noticed a black Chevrolet pulling into the church parking lot. He watched as Harry Quebert got out of the car and walked quickly toward the main entrance of the church. He wondered what was behind his visit: Harry had never been to church since his arrival in Somerset. He heard knocking at the front door, then footsteps in the corridor, and then he saw Harry in the office doorway.

  “Hello, Harry,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Hello, Reverend. Am I disturbing you?”

  “Not in the least. Please, come in.”

  Harry entered, closing the door behind him.

  “Is everything alright?” the pastor asked. “You look unhappy.”

  “I came to talk to you about Nola …”

  “Oh yes, I’ve been meaning to thank you. I know she often goes to see you, and she always seems very happy when she comes back. I hope she hasn’t been bothering you. Thanks to you, she hasn’t been bored at all this summer.”

  Harry’s expression did not change.

  “She came this morning,” he said. “She was in tears. She told me all about your wife …”

  The minister went pale.

  “My wife? What did she say?”

  “That your wife beats her! That she shoves her head in a tub of ice-cold water!”

  “Harry, I—”

  “It’s over, Reverend. I know everything.”

  “It’s more complicated than that … I—”

  “More complicated? Are you going to try to convince me that there’s a good reason why she is beaten like that? I’m going to call the cops, Reverend. I’m going to tell them everything.”

  “No, Harry … you can’t—”

  “Oh yes, I can. What do you think? That I wouldn’t dare denounce you because you’re a man of the cloth? You’re nothing as far as I’m concerned! What kind of man lets his wife beat his daughter?”

  “Harry, please, listen to me. I think there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. We need to speak about this calmly.”

  *

  “I don’t know what Nola had told Harry,” Kellergan explained to us. “He was not the first person who had suspected that there was something strange going on. But until Harry got involved, I only had to deal with Nola’s friends, and it was easy to evade children’s questions. This was different. So I had to admit to him that Nola’s mother existed only in her head. I begged him not to talk to anyone about it, but then he started sticking his nose into what was not his business, telling me what to do with my own daughter. He wanted me to get her professional help! I told him to get lost … And then, two weeks later, she disappeared.”

  “And after that, you avoided Harry for the next thirty-three years,” I said. “Because you were the only people who knew Nola’s secret.”

  “She was my only child—don’t you see? I wanted people to have a good memory of her; I didn’t want them to think she was crazy. And anyway she wasn’t crazy! Just fragile. And if the police had known the truth about her fits, they would never have searched so hard for her. They would just have said she was crazy and that she’d run away from home.”

  Gahalowood turned to me. “What are we to make of this, writer?”

  “It means that Harry lied to us. He wasn’t waiting for her at the motel. He wanted to break up with her. He knew all along that he was going to break up with Nola. He never intended to elope with her. On August 30, 1975, she received a final letter from Harry, telling her he had left without her.”

  *

  Following this meeting with David Kellergan, Gahalowood and I returned to the state police headquarters in Concord to compare the letter with the final page of the manuscript that had been buried with Nola: They were identical.

  “He planned it all!” I shouted. “He knew he was going to leave her. He knew from the beginning.”

  Gahalowood nodded. “When she suggested they run away, he knew he wouldn’t go with her. He couldn’t imagine being stuck with a fifteen-year-old girl.”

  “But she read the manuscript,” I pointed out.

  “Of course, but she thought it was a novel. She didn’t realize Harry was writing the truth about their love affair, and that the ending was already written: Harry didn’t want her. Stephanie Larjinjiak told us they were corresponding and that Nola waited for the mailman to come each day. On Saturday morning, the day she disappeared, the day she imagined she was going to leave for a happier life with the man of her dreams, she waits by the mailbox for the last time. She wants to make sure there is not one final, forgotten letter that might compromise their elopement by revealing important information. Instead she finds that note from him, telling her it’s over.”

  Gahalowood examined the envelope that contained the final letter.

  “There’s an address on the envelope, but no stamp or postmark,” he said. “It must have been dropped directly into the mailbox.”

  “By Harry, you mean?”

  “Yes. He probably left it there at night, before going away. I would guess he did it at the last minute, on the Friday night. So that she wouldn’t come to the motel. So she would understand they wouldn’t be meeting. On Saturday, when she finds his note, she goes back into the house in a rage, she breaks down, she has a terrible fit, and begins punishing herself. Her father panics and locks himself in his garage again. When she comes to again, Nola makes the connection with the manuscri
pt. She wants an explanation. She takes the manuscript and starts walking to the motel. She hopes it isn’t true, she hopes Harry will be there. But on the way she runs into Luther. And it all goes wrong.”

  “But then why would Harry go back to Somerset the day after her disappearance?”

  “He finds out Nola has disappeared. He’d left her that letter: He panics. I’m sure he’s worried about her, and probably feels guilty, but more than anything I imagine he’s scared that other people will get their hands on that letter, or on the manuscript, and that he’ll get in trouble. He would rather be in Somerset so he can see how the situation develops, and perhaps also so he can recover any evidence he thinks might be compromising.”

  We had to find Harry. It was essential that I talk to him. Why had he told me that he was waiting for Nola when in reality he had written her a farewell letter? Gahalowood carried out a remote search for Harry, using credit card and telephone records. But his credit card had not been used, and his cell phone was evidently turned off. By examining the border patrol records, we discovered that he had crossed into Canada at Derby Line, Vermont.

  “So he’s gone to Canada,” Gahalowood said. “Why Canada?”

  “He thinks it’s writers’ heaven,” I said. “In the manuscript he left for me, The Seagulls of Somerset, he ends up there with Nola.”

  “Yes, but that’s a work of fiction. Not only is Nola dead, but it seems like he never even intended to elope with her. And yet he leaves you this manuscript, in which he and Nola end up in Canada. So where is the truth?”

  “I don’t understand anything!” I said. “Why the hell has he run away?”

  “Because he has something to hide. But we don’t know what, exactly.”

  *

  That evening I told Gahalowood I was catching a flight to New York the next day.

  “What the hell …? You’re going back to New York? Are you crazy, writer? We’ve almost nailed this!”

  I smiled. “I’m not abandoning you, Sergeant. But it’s time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time to vote. America has an appointment with history.”

  *

  At noon on November 5, 2008, while New York was still celebrating the election of the first black president in American history, I had a lunch meeting with Barnaski at the Pierre Hotel. The Democratic victory had put him in a good mood: “I love black people!” he told me. “I love them. If you get invited to the White House, take me with you. Anyway, what’s your important news?”

  I told him what I had discovered about Nola and the diagnosis of infantile psychosis, and his face lit up.

  “So those scenes where you describe Nola being abused by her mother—she was doing it herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s terrific!” he roared over the noise of restaurant. “Your book is the pioneer of a new genre! The reader is implicated in the insanity because the character of the mother exists without actually existing. You’re a genius, Goldman! A genius!”

  “No, I just got it wrong. I let Harry pull the wool over my eyes.”

  “Harry knew about this?”

  “Yes. And now he’s disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s nowhere to be found. Apparently he crossed the border into Canada. The only clues he left me are a cryptic message and an unpublished manuscript about Nola.”

  “Do you own the rights?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Do you own the rights to the unpublished manuscript? I’ll buy them from you!”

  “Goddamn it, Roy. You’re completely missing the point!”

  “I beg your pardon. I was only asking.”

  “There’s something we’re missing here. Something I haven’t understood yet. This whole story of infantile psychosis, Harry disappearing. There’s a piece of the puzzle missing, I know, but I can’t think what it could be.”

  “You need to calm down, Marcus. Believe me, getting anxious about this is not going to help. Go see Dr Freud and ask him for some pills to help you relax. For my part I’m going to contact the media. We’ll put together a press release about the kid’s illness; we’ll make out that we knew all about it from the beginning, and that the truth was your big surprise, a way of demonstrating that the truth is not always what it seems. All those who panned you will have egg on their faces, and people will say you’re a creative genius. And of course everyone will be talking about your book again, and sales will surge. Because, with a story like this, even those who had no intention of buying the book won’t be able to resist. They’ll be burning with curiosity to see how you represented the mother. Goldman, you’re a genius. Lunch is on me!”

  I frowned. “I’m not convinced, Roy. I’d like some time to dig more deeply into this.”

  “But you’re never convinced, Marcus! We don’t have time to ‘dig more deeply,’ as you put it. You’re a poet: You think the passing of time has meaning. But the passing of time is either money earned or money lost. And I’m a big supporter of the former. Nevertheless, as you are probably aware, we now have a handsome, black, and very popular new president, and by my reckoning we will be hearing all about him—and nothing but him—for at least the next week. So there’s no point in our trying to communicate with the media about anything else. The best we could hope for is a paragraph at the bottom of page seven. So I’ll give you a week to get this worked out. Unless, of course, some southerners in pointy hats pick off our new president, which would keep us from getting front-page coverage for about a month. Yup, at least a month if that happens. My God, what a disaster that would be: A month from now we’d be into Christmas, and no-one would pay any attention to our story! So anyway, a week from today we’ll feed the media the story of infantile psychosis. Newspaper supplements and all that jazz. If I had more time I’d rush out a book for parents. You know the kind I mean: Detecting Infantile Psychosis: How to Prevent Your Child from Becoming the Next Nola Kellergan and Setting Fire to You in Your Sleep. Now that would be a bestseller! But anyway, we don’t have time.”

  *

  So I had only one week before Barnaski would tell all. One week to try to understand what still eluded me. Four days passed, four fruitless days. I called Gahalowood constantly, but the investigation appeared to be at a standstill. Then on the night of the fifth day, November 10, something happened that would change the whole ballgame. It was just after midnight. During a routine patrol, Police Officer Dean Forsyth began chasing a car on the Montburry–Somerset road, having seen it run a red light at far above the speed limit. This might easily have led to nothing more than a ticket if the suspicious behavior of the driver—who seemed highly agitated and was sweating profusely—hadn’t caught the officer’s attention.

  “Where are you coming from, sir?” Officer Forsyth asked.

  “Montburry.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was … I was with friends.”

  “Their names, please?”

  Seeing the glimmer of panic in the driver’s eyes as he hesitated over his answer, Officer Forsyth shone his flashlight on the man’s face and noticed a scratch on his cheek.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “It was a low branch on a tree. I didn’t see it.”

  The officer was unconvinced.

  “Why were you driving so fast?”

  “I … I’m sorry. I was in a rush. You’re right, I shouldn’t have—”

  “Have you been drinking, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Would you mind stepping out of the vehicle?”

  A Breathalyzer test was negative, and everything seemed to be in order; the officer didn’t see any empty medicine bottles or similar junk that was usually strewn across the backseats of cars belonging to drug addicts. And yet he had a hunch. Something in this man’s behavior—the way he was too nervous and yet too calm at the same time—made him want to investigate further. And then he noticed, as the ma
n climbed back into the car, what had hitherto escaped his attention: his hands were dirty, his pants soaked, and his shoes covered in mud.

  “Please get out of your vehicle, sir,” Forsyth ordered.

  “What? But … why?” the driver stammered.

  “Do what I say, sir. Get out of your vehicle.”

  The man stalled. Irritated, Officer Forsyth decided to use force to get him out and to arrest him for disobeying a police officer. He took him to the station, where he personally took care of the regulation photographs and electronic fingerprinting. He was perplexed for a moment by the information that appeared on his computer screen. Then, even though it was 1.30 a.m., he picked up the telephone, deciding that the discovery he had made was sufficiently important to wake Sergeant Perry Gahalowood of the state police criminal division.

  Three hours later, at about 4.30 a.m., I, in turn, was awakened by a telephone call.

  “Writer? It’s Gahalowood. Where are you?”

  “Sergeant?” I replied, still half comatose. “I’m in bed, in New York. Where else would I be at 4.30 in the morning? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve caught our firebug,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “The arsonist who set fire to Harry’s house. He was arrested tonight.”

  “Oh. Who is it?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “I’m lying down.”

  “Good. Because you’re in for a shock.”

  2

  Endgame

  “Sometimes you’ll feel discouraged, Marcus. That’s normal. I told you that writing was like boxing, but it’s also like running. That’s why I keep sending you out to pound the pavement: If you have the moral courage to run a long way, in the rain, in the cold, if you have the strength to keep going until the end, to give it all you have and to reach your goal, then you’re capable of writing a book. Never let fear or fatigue stop you. On the contrary: You should use them to help you keep going.”

  I caught a flight to Manchester that morning, stunned by what I had just discovered. I landed at 1 p.m., and forty-five minutes later I was at police headquarters in Concord. Gahalowood came to meet me in reception.