Pelleter ate with his back to the crowd. Occasionally he would hear the name Benoît, and he knew that the town was discussing the murder, but the tone was of idle gossip, with little regard for the reality of the crime.
The man beside him pushed his plate back, and stood up, and another man took the seat immediately.
“Inspector Pelleter?” the man said. He sat sideways on the seat and had a notebook and pencil in hand. “Philippe Servières, reporter with the Verargent Vérité. Could I ask you a few questions about the Meranger murder?”
“No,” Pelleter said without looking at the man.
“What about what you’re doing in town? You arrived before the body was discovered. Was there another matter you were investigating?”
Pelleter drank from his glass and then pushed back his plate.
“I know that you and Chief Letreau have made two trips to the prison already, and that the warden has left town. This sounds like something that’s bigger than just Verargent. Malniveau is a national prison after all. The people have a right to know.”
Pelleter stood up, turned to the reporter, and stopped short. It was the man from the hallway last night.
“You...”
The man flinched as though the inspector had made a move to hit him. “I had to try,” he said.
“Try what?” Pelleter growled.
“If you would talk about an old case, even out of anger, maybe you would talk about the new case too.”
The man was a small-town reporter, practically an amateur. He mistook Pelleter for an amateur too. “I know you’re doing your job, but you better let me do mine.”
Pelleter called the proprietor over and settled his bill.
The reporter stood too. “I’m going to write this story for a special evening edition either way. You might as well get your say in it.”
Pelleter gave him one last look, which silenced him, and then the inspector went out into the street.
He crossed the square. People went about their daily business. It was as Letreau had said: the town seemed unaware that twenty miles away there was another community where somebody had just been attacked that morning. The newspaperman hadn’t even mentioned the knifing.
He turned the corner at Town Hall to go to the police station, and as he did a figure jumped out from between two of the police cars parked at the curb and rushed Pelleter.
Pelleter turned to face his attacker, and was able to register the face just in time to not draw his weapon.
“I warned you, damn it!” Monsieur Rosenkrantz said, forcing Pelleter back against the wall without touching him. His face was red, and he leaned forward, crowding Pelleter, his chest and shoulders pushed out.
Pelleter watched the American writer for any signs that he would actually turn violent. He remembered that Letreau had said all bark and no bite.
“I told you to stay away from her. That she had nothing to say.”
“She came to me,” Pelleter said.
“I told you!” Rosenkrantz leaned even further forward, and then he pulled himself away, spinning in place and punching the air. “Damn it!” he said in English. Then he turned back to Pelleter, and said in French, “She didn’t come home last night. Clotilde is missing.”
5.
Five Wooden Boxes
Pelleter watched the American writer pace the sidewalk in front of him, full of nervous energy. The inspector stayed on his guard, but it soon became clear that Rosenkrantz’s violence, like at the house the day before, was entirely auditory. There was no danger.
“Come, let’s go inside,” Pelleter said.
Rosenkrantz shook his head. “I’ve been looking for you. They won’t let me make a report anyway, it’s too soon.”
“Has she ever run away before?”
Rosenkrantz jerked towards him. “She hasn’t run away.” Then his manner eased again. “When she got home yesterday from her shopping, I told her that you had come around...She insisted on going to see you. She was in a panic. She was convinced that her father must be dead.”
Pelleter nodded.
“I know now that he is, but then...Well, good, I hated the man for all that he put Clotilde through as a girl, for what he did to her mother. He deserved to die. I hope he suffered...But last night, I told Clotilde to not get involved...That it only ever upset her, and that she should stay home...It was raining still... But she went out anyway.”
“I saw her.”
“Was she upset?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Rosenkrantz shook his head. “That’s Clotilde. You can’t always know.”
“Does she have friends she would stay with? The hotel?”
“I checked. Both. No one has seen her.”
The two men looked at each other. Neither said what they were both thinking, that it would be easy for her to have gotten on the train and to be almost anywhere by now.
“Do you think that she hated her father?” Pelleter asked.
“If you’re suggesting that Clotilde might have killed the old man, you can forget it. She can’t kill a fly.”
“But if she thought she were in danger, or if she were angry...”
“No,” Rosenkrantz said, shaking his head and frowning. “You met her. She’s so small, and gentle, and quiet. Like I said, you hardly ever even know what she’s feeling, she just keeps to herself...” The American writer’s eyes got soft. “She’s practically a kid. She’s never run away before...”
Pelleter nodded. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Rosenkrantz’s eyes flashed and his fists closed, his rage returning. “Listen you...” But then he swallowed it back, taking a deep breath. “Thank you,” he said.
Pelleter turned to go into the police station, and Rosenkrantz grabbed him by the arm. Pelleter looked back, and this time the American writer just looked sad and scared. He let go of Pelleter’s sleeve, and Pelleter went into the station.
A country woman in the waiting area looked up at Pelleter with an imploring, forlorn expression that did not see him.
This was a police station face. It was the same everywhere.
The inspector went behind the counter and into Letreau’s office.
“Rosenkrantz was just here,” Letreau said, running his hand through his hair, which only caused him to look more harried.
“I saw him outside.”
“Now the girl’s missing.”
Pelleter took a seat.
“I don’t like this. Things are happening too fast. There was apparently a reporter around here earlier. One of our local men. The Vérité is usually a weekly paper, but they’re putting out a special edition about this business. I think my boys know not to talk, but who knows...Do you think we should worry about it?”
“The newspapers don’t mean anything.”
“The missing girl.”
“You can worry if you think it’ll make a difference.”
“I guess it never does.”
“Where’s your man from the front desk?”
“Martin? I sent him to Malniveau. Your questions about how much we knew about the prison got me thinking. We need to have somebody on site if this whole thing started there...I told him to demand to see the files, any files, to dig up what he could.”
Pelleter nodded his approval, some of his own concern fading from his face. “Good. Very good.”
“He left this for you,” Letreau said, handing across a paper. “It’s not much help, unfortunately.”
It was the paper that listed Meranger’s known associates. Martin had systematically gone through the entire list, and marked it “up to show the present location of all of the people on the list. He had even included a key at the bottom: a cross-out meant the person was dead, a circle meant prison, otherwise he had penciled in their address. Nobody was near Verargent. None of the prisoners were at Malniveau.
“Good,” Pelleter said, reading over it. “This is good work.”
“It leaves us just where we we
re before. Knowing nothing.”
“Maybe.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
There was a knock on the opened door and an officer stood at attention just inside the office.
“What is it?” Letreau said, his frustration spilling over onto the man.
“Sir. Marion is still waiting for you...”
“Oh, I know Marion is waiting for me. Doesn’t she know I’m busy here!” He stood, banging his thighs on the underside of his desk. “God damn it!”
He leaned his hands against his thighs, turning his head to the side, a sour expression on his face, biting back the pain.
Pelleter watched his friend. This murder was too much for him.
“And...” the officer started.
“What!”
The young man lowered his voice almost by half, cowed. “We just received a call from a farmer outside of town. It seems that he has found a box in his field.”
“So,” Letreau said sharply, standing to his full height with a deep intake of breath.
“Well, he said that it seems to him like it may be a coffin. He wants us to come have a look.”
Letreau turned to Pelleter, shaking his head. “See, it just keeps getting worse.” He turned back to the officer. “Well, go ahead.”
“Right, sir,” the officer said.
Letreau continued, “I’ve got to see what Marion wants. She’s been waiting all morning.”
“Wait.” Pelleter stood up, stopping the officer as he turned in the doorway. “Where is this box?”
“On the eastern highway, about ten miles out of town.”
Pelleter looked at Letreau. “And about ten miles from the prison.” He turned back to the officer. “I think I’ll go with you.”
By the time Pelleter and the officers arrived at the farm, the farmer and his son had uncovered the whole length of the so-called coffin.
The excavation site was no more than ten feet from the road, halfway between the town and the prison. The officers parked just off of the pavement behind a rusty truck and another automobile already there.
A group of four men and a boy stood around the open grave watching the inspector and the officers approach. The pile of dark brown dirt beside them was like a sixth waiting figure. The mid-afternoon sun had burned away the morning cool, and it was hot in the unshaded field.
“It’s a coffin, all right,” one of the officers said when they reached the spot. The box was unfinished pine, imperfectly crafted.
“The rain did the first part of the digging for us,” the farmer said. He was a mustachioed man of about forty. “My son saw the wood sticking up while he was plowing, and then he came back and got me.”
“So you don’t know anything about this?” Pelleter said.
“The family plot’s back up near the house...This is good soil here. Why would I bury a body where I wanted to plant?”
“And so shallow,” one of the other men said.
Pelleter looked at him.
“I’m a neighbor. I was just passing by with my truck. I’ll help take it back into town if you need.”
Pelleter didn’t respond. Instead he looked at the two officers and said, “Open it up.”
They looked at him without comprehension, their expressions lost. They had let Pelleter take charge, and did not expect to be called upon.
“Open it,” Pelleter said again, throwing up his hands. “We need to know if there’s even a body inside, and what it’s wearing.”
“What it’s wearing?” somebody said.
The officers stepped forward, but it was the farmer and his neighbor who each picked up a shovel, and fitted the ends of the blades into the space between the lid of the coffin and its body.
Pelleter stepped away, pacing the ground to the side of the coffin, looking at the dirt as he went.
The sound of wood creaking cut the air, somebody said, “Easy,” and then there was a snap.
A car passed on the road heading towards town, slowing as it approached the site where the men’s vehicles were parked, and then resuming speed.
“Oh, my god.”
Pelleter turned back, and the men parted so he could see.
There was a body in the coffin. It must have been there for several weeks, because the face had softened, distorting the features into a ghost mask, and the body appeared caved in. A large patch of blood stained the man’s shirt over his stomach. But the important thing was what the body was wearing: Malniveau Prison grays.
A sweet moldy smell caused more than one man to gag.
Pelleter squatted beside the grave, and pulled the man’s shirt taut to reveal the number above the breast. He pulled out his oilcloth notebook and jotted the number down, then he stood and waved a hand towards the body. “Close it back up and get it out of there. This gentleman will take it back to town.” And he nodded at the man who had offered his truck.
The officers, embarrassed now over their delay in moving to open the coffin, stepped forward, taking the lid from the farmer. “We’ve got that. Let the police handle this.”
Pelleter began to walk along to the side again, watching the ground. It was clear that he was looking for something by the careful way he stepped, examining each inch of dirt before moving forward.
He called to the boy, who came over at a jog.
“What did you see when you found the box?” he said.
“Just a bit of white, sir. It was the corner sticking up from the ground.”
“Look again now. See if you can find anything. You do that side.”
The boy ran off to the other side of the grave, and then he also began to pace the ground step by step. The farmer and his neighbors saw what was happening, and they too began to spread out, looking down.
The officers were awkwardly extracting the coffin from its shallow grave.
“Here! Here!”
Everyone looked up. It was one of the men who must have come from the car. He was only a few feet to the west of the grave and several paces closer to the road, looking at Pelleter, waving him over. He knelt.
The whole crowd approached, and the man indicated what he had seen. There was an impossibly straight line in the dirt as though the ground had sunk into a crack. The man was digging with his hand, and he quickly revealed what appeared to be the edge of another coffin.
The group went into action without Pelleter saying anything. The two shovels were brought over, and the farmer and the man who had made the discovery began to dig. Meanwhile, the truck owner helped the officers load the coffin into the bed of his truck, while Pelleter had the boy and the fourth man continue to scan the ground.
The seven-man team fell into a rhythm as will any group of men who have a large physical task before them, and they worked silently and efficiently, as the sun traversed the sky overhead. Pelleter took his turn with the shovel when it came, but he soon appeared overtaxed, and the men relieved him of the task. He smoked a full cigar, and walked far afield, determined to not leave any of the coffins undiscovered. One was revealed almost twenty feet away.
Cars and trucks passed in both directions on the road, but no one else stopped.
When the fifth box was found, the owner of the truck said, “I hope this is the last of them. My truck can take only one more.”
Pelleter had the officers begin to fill in the holes that had been made, while he and the boy went around thrusting the shovel in at random points on the off chance that they would strike wood.
The sun was nearing the horizon, and the weather had once again turned cool. The two men who had come in the car said their goodbyes and left. The officers loaded the last coffin on top of the others in the truck bed.
Pelleter had five numbers written one under the other in his notebook, but one of them he didn’t need. He recognized Glamieux at once. As Mahossier had said, his throat had been cut.
“Come on, that’s enough,” he called.
The boy turned a few feet ahead of him, his spade sticking upright
from the earth. The men near where the holes were being filled in looked up as well.
“Fill in the holes, and we’re going home. There’s no point in working in the dark.”
The farmer came up to him nervously. “But what if there are more down there, and we go over them with the plow? You see? I wouldn’t want to desecrate the dead.”
“You won’t.”
“But if we uncover one...”
“You let the police know, just like last time. But I think we got them all. We’ll know soon enough anyway.”
“How?”
“Because we’ll be able to ask somebody who knows.”
Pelleter walked off before the farmer could ask anything else.
The man with the truck was already on his way back to town.
The graves had been mostly filled in, at least enough to satisfy the farmer whose son would be plowing over them the next day anyway.
“You let us know,” Pelleter said again, as he got into the police car. The officer who was driving started the automobile and turned on the lights, which lit the few feet of road just ahead of the car.
Verargent’s town square was almost unrecognizable. It was as though it had been an empty stage waiting for its players. A subdued crowd of serious men had gathered around the base of the war monument, spilling into the roadway and blocking traffic. Flickering lights from kerosene lamps and open torches dotted the crowd, casting moving shadows that made the mass of people seem like one large anonymous organism. This was Verargent. With its population spread out over the houses and outlying farms the town could feel abandoned. But brought together, the group was large enough to raise alarm.
The officer driving Pelleter inched the car forward through the throng, forced to let out the clutch again and again. He repeatedly sounded the horn to no effect. The men in the square were unconcerned with allowing the police car through.
The truck carrying the coffins was only just ahead even though it had left the farm a good deal before Pelleter and the young gendarme.
“What is this?” the officer said.
Pelleter caught sight of Letreau huddled with Martin and the mustachioed officer beside the war monument. Letreau had his hands in his overcoat pockets and his shoulders hunched against the brisk April evening.
The Twenty-Year Death Page 6