“What is it?” Servières said.
Pelleter didn’t reply. He thought again about how he felt as though he were forgetting something or some things and how he was at a loss as to what to do next, as he had thought that morning, that he was only reacting. Maybe the trick was to get something else to react to. He turned to Servières.
“Take this down. Inspector Pelleter is very encouraged about his investigation into the prisoners murdered at Malniveau Prison. He has some promising leads and hopes to have the case tied up by the time this paper goes to press tomorrow.”
Servières was writing feverishly. When he finished he looked up at Pelleter, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “Is it true?”
“We’ll know tomorrow, I guess.” The chief inspector thought of the young, attractive woman standing in the entryway of the Verargent Hotel’s dining room like a lost little girl. She did not need to be dragged through the papers. “And leave out Madame Rosenkrantz’s disappearance.”
“But everyone already knows—”
“Leave it out,” Pelleter said, climbing the last step. “I gave you plenty.” He pulled open the door to the police station at the back of Town Hall.
The police station was as deserted as the rest of the town, only it was as noisy as ever.
“You bastards search night and day when its two little boys missing, but you don’t give a damn about a young woman!”
Monsieur Rosenkrantz was standing against the desk that separated the public space from the department offices. There were two police officers Pelleter did not recognize sitting at the desk furthest from Monsieur Rosenkrantz watching the angered man with silent determination. There was no one else in the office. Letreau had probably given everyone else leave for the rest of the day after last night’s search.
Rosenkrantz was shouting in English now, and Pelleter was able to pick out more than one of the words he had learned in the war from an American soldier in return for teaching him the equivalents in French.
Pelleter came up behind the tall American, and slipped a hand under his elbow.
Rosenkrantz jerked away in surprise, but Pelleter had a tight grip.
“What are the police doing?” Rosenkrantz said, switching back to French. “Nobody’s doing anything here. They searched night and day for those little boys. My wife’s been missing for a day and a half now. Because of these two little miscreants, I haven’t even been able to file a report.”
“Come on,” Pelleter said, nodding his head towards the chairs in the waiting area and tightening his grip on the American’s elbow. “I’ll see to you in a moment.”
“Are you going to help me look for my wife?”
“Why don’t we talk about it?”
Rosenkrantz regarded Pelleter for a moment. The two men were almost the same height, but Rosenkrantz managed to look down at Pelleter nevertheless. He pulled his arm away and Pelleter released it. “Okay. We’ll talk.”
The American straightened his overcoat, but did not sit down.
Pelleter went behind the desk and approached the two officers, whose expressions had not changed since Pelleter had come in, even now that the shouting had stopped. “Where’s Chief Letreau?” Pelleter said, glancing into the chief of police’s office.
“At the hospital with Madame Perreaux.”
“Inspector!” Rosenkrantz called from the waiting area.
Pelleter held up his hand, and said to the officer, “And everyone else?”
“Skeleton crew until tomorrow. Don’t want to pay us too much overtime.”
The other officer tapped his companion on the shoulder, and the first officer realized what he had said.
“I mean, sir...”
“I know what you mean,” Pelleter said. He turned.
“Any message, sir?” the second officer said.
“No.”
“Inspector!”
As Pelleter approached Monsieur Rosenkrantz, he said, “Let’s go.”
The American writer said, “Where?”
“To talk about it,” Pelleter said, taking out a cigar and busying himself with lighting it.
Rosenkrantz watched this performance, and then said curtly, “Okay. Fine.” He turned and led the way out of the police station, and Pelleter followed.
Outside, the chief inspector was glad to see that Servières had had the sense to disappear. He was probably on his way to the hospital to try to get some quotes. Or perhaps he needed to go type up the chief inspector’s comments immediately.
Rosenkrantz led them away from the square, into an area of town that appeared residential. He walked with long angry strides, his outrage far from gone, but for the moment invested in walking. At a small alley, no larger than one man across, he turned. The windows at ground level were all shuttered. Empty laundry lines crisscrossed between the buildings above their heads, each line just long enough for a single shirt or several socks.
Halfway down the alley there was a steep set of stairs, almost vertical. Rosenkrantz went down, holding the side of the building for support, guiding his head beneath the low passage and through a door.
Pelleter followed and found himself in a private pub, just a board across the width of the room held by evenly spaced posts acting as a bar. There were no tables. The place smelled of stale cigarette smoke and sour beer. Pelleter’s shoes stuck to the floor, each step giving way with a resisting crack as he stepped up to the bar.
They were the only people there. The ancient barman had been sleeping on his stool with his head leaned against the wall, but he stood, rubbing his eyes when Rosenkrantz knocked on the board. He set two pints on the bar without either patron ordering.
Rosenkrantz stared ahead as he drank, still standing. The ceiling was only inches from the tops of their heads.
The barkeep went back to sleep in his corner.
Down in this basement, it was already night.
Pelleter took a seat and left his beer untouched. He watched Rosenkrantz drink, smoking his cigar and waiting for the man to speak. He remembered what Servières had said about Rosenkrantz’s drinking bouts.
Half a pint gone, Rosenkrantz, still facing forward said, “Why would she have gone away?”
“You tell me.”
Rosenkrantz turned. There was real hurt in his face. He shook his head. “She wouldn’t have.” He downed the rest of his beer, and turned to wake the barkeep, but Pelleter said, “Have mine.”
Rosenkrantz took it, but he only held it. “I didn’t know her father was in Malniveau until you showed up at our door. I knew he was in prison, of course, but it had never occurred to me that he was in our prison.”
“She visited him there.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
Rosenkrantz drank then.
“I know I’m an old man to her,” Rosenkrantz said, setting the empty glass down. “That sometimes it must seem like I’m a father to her more than a husband. But I love her more than anything, more than my country, more than my writing.”
He knocked on the bar, and the barkeep startled, then shuffled to refill their glasses.
“I can understand that people might keep secrets from each other, that’s how I make my living, making up all of these little lies that people tell each other, but why keep this about her father? And why disappear without a word? She knows it would kill me.”
He drank the newly poured beer.
“So you were never in communication with Meranger?”
“Never. I hated the man without having met him.”
“And anyone else at the prison?”
Rosenkrantz motioned with his glass. “Here. In town. Maybe. But not to talk to. I don’t really know anyone here, except Clotilde. That’s why those bastards at the police department won’t help me.” His eyes opened wide. “That’s why you have to help me. You have to find her. And prove...”
“Prove what?”
“Whatever it is that they say about her in the papers is wrong.”
“The
papers just said the murdered man was her father.”
“That’s already too much.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Philippe Servières.”
Rosenkrantz finished his pint and began the second one without asking Pelleter if he wanted it. The writer was unsteady on his feet. He probably hadn’t eaten since Madame Rosenkrantz disappeared, and he was drinking very fast.
The barkeep saw the mood that the American writer was in, and decided that he would not get any more sleep.
Rosenkrantz began to ramble, to tell of how he had met Clotilde and left his first wife, an American who still received half of his earnings in the States, and their son.
Five pints...six. Pelleter was not yet finished with his cigar.
He talked of how they had chosen to move to Verargent despite Hollywood’s clamoring for him to come out there and work on a salary, and how he loved the solitude, the way that his whole world could be wrapped up in his writing and his wife.
The barkeep went to refill Rosenkrantz’s glass, but Pelleter shook his head, and the barkeep pulled back.
Rosenkrantz turned to the chief inspector, almost falling. “Do you think she’s all right? You don’t think that whoever went for her father would also go for her?”
“I think she’s fine,” Pelleter said. “Come sit down.”
“Is it true what they’re saying about these other murdered prisoners?”
“What are they saying?”
“That there were other murdered prisoners.”
“It’s true.”
Rosenkrantz went to lift his glass and noticed that it was empty. “More beer,” he bellowed. “What are you thinking!”
The old man refilled the writer’s glass, too timid to even cast an angry look at Pelleter.
The chief inspector said again, “Why don’t you sit down?”
Seven pints...eight. Rosenkrantz at last sat down and put his head on the bar at once. His voice muffled, he said, “I just don’t know what to do. They searched everywhere for those boys and no one found my wife. What do I do?”
The chief inspector called to the barkeep about a taxi.
“There’s no phone in the house,” the old man said.
Pelleter went out to get the taxi himself. The threatening clouds had broken up and were now thin white wisps against the darkening sky. Night was falling and with it, how many missed opportunities? How long before he could go back home to his own wife?
The taxi was in its usual place before the café, and when Pelleter explained what he needed, the driver knew the place at once. He had been called there many times.
It took all three men, even the old barkeep, to get Rosenkrantz up the steep stairs and down the alley. Once the American was in the back seat, Pelleter took his place beside the driver, and the barkeep went back to his pub.
Rosenkrantz had a tab. The barkeep would be paid in time.
When they reached the Rosenkrantz home, night had fallen. The other evening, huddled down as it had been against the storm, the house’s charm had still come across, but now empty in the night, it just appeared lifeless and forlorn.
Pelleter stepped out of the car and thought he saw a shadow move at the end of the drive, just a darker patch of dark. He stepped towards the street without closing his car door, fixing his eyes on the spot. It could have just been a shrub moving in the breeze, or was somebody out there...following him? He continued along the drive, ignoring the sounds of the cabman behind him. The shape moved again, and then joined a hedge.
“Hey,” the cabman shouted behind him. “A little help.”
Pelleter continued towards the shadow, still peering into the darkness. He saw no more movement. Had it been Madame Rosenkrantz? No, she would have let herself into the house.
“Inspector!”
Pelleter held still, listening for sounds. “Come out now,” he called. The bushes swayed in a faint breeze. Nothing. Was he overtired from the night before?
“Inspector!” the cabbie shouted again.
Pelleter turned back. If someone was following him, he would find out who and why soon enough.
The cabman was leaning into the back seat of the car, his silhouette lit by the dash as he struggled with Rosenkrantz’s inert form.
The chief inspector came up alongside the taxi driver, and leaned in beside him, the two men shoulder-to-shoulder as they hoisted the unconscious American writer up off the seat and into the cool of the night. The rank smell of alcohol caused Pelleter to wince even more than the dead weight of the large man.
They shuffled up to the house, the taxi driver muttering the whole time, “Come on, you bastard, come on, you bastard, come on...”
At the door, Pelleter began to look for the writer’s keys, but the driver tried the handle and found it open. Perhaps Rosenkrantz had been afraid that his wife would come home and not be able to get in. Perhaps, even with all of the excitement, it would not have occurred to the American to lock his door. After all, wasn’t that one of the reasons they had moved to Verargent?
The two sober men turned sideways to manage the doorway, and Pelleter darted his eyes back to the street to the spot where he had seen the shadow. Sure enough it seemed again as though someone was out there. But Pelleter couldn’t give chase until he’d set down the American, so he just staggered forward. What had the chief inspector discovered that was reason for being followed?
Inside, the door swung slowly closed behind them. They labored in the darkness of the small hallway, dragging the writer between them.
“This way,” the driver said at the first opening. Enough light came through the window to make out the shadow of an armchair. They deposited the drunken man, and Pelleter stretched, his hands at the small of his back, his heart racing from exertion.
“I should get paid extra for this,” the driver said. His brusque voice seemed too loud in the darkness.
Pelleter reached into his pocket and pulled out some francs, handing them over without making out the denominations.
“He should pay.”
Pelleter looked for a lamp. There was a gasoline sconce beside the door, which Pelleter lit with one of his matches, revealing a standard sitting room. “You go back. I’ll be fine.”
The driver shrugged. He had been driving the inspector all day, but he was not a curious man and it was getting near dinner. He left the room.
Pelleter stepped to the window. He knew it would make him visible to anyone who might be watching—the light behind him and the darkness outside—but that was fine. It might lure his tail into a false sense of security, that he could see but couldn’t be seen. However, the only movement outside was the cabman reversing his car down the drive. As his headlights swept the hedge and the street, they revealed no one. The man who had been out there was probably long gone.
Pelleter turned around. He regarded the slumped form of Monsieur Rosenkrantz. Clotilde was loved if nothing else. And that was something. That was a lot.
The chief inspector took another look around the room. It was hardly used, much of the furniture brand new and the rug on the floor unmarked by footprints. The only thing that gave the room a feeling of habitation were the two built-in bookcases to either side of the fireplace jammed with books in French, English, and Spanish, two-deep in places. The liquor cart in the corner was devoid of liquor, the glasses in need of a dusting.
Out in the hall, the day’s mail was still in a scattered pile on the floor. Pelleter picked it up, and flipped through. It was actually the last several days’ mail: bills, airmail from the States, a printed envelope from a well-known magazine in the city. He set it on a sidetable in the entryway.
Across the way was a dining room that he could make out well enough in the light from the sitting room. It was a small room, the table filling the whole space. He went through, pushing into the kitchen, which was so dark that he lit another match, looking for a lamp. He found one hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room over a butcher block table. Clotilde
kept her kitchen clean. The surfaces were all spotless, as was the floor. The drawers and cabinets were kept neatly, the silverware stacked, the pots and pans inside one another. There was a porcelain double sink with running water. It made sense that the American writer would be sure to provide his young bride with the luxuries that she would most appreciate.
There was a rear door to the kitchen that opened further along the main hallway. One door in the hall led to the back yard while another across the way revealed Rosenkrantz’s study. He’d left a lamp burning on his desk, and it cast a glow on the room, revealing the disarray of papers and books in stacks on every surface including the floor. There were framed photographs of Clotilde on the desk, along with several older photographs of an elderly couple that must have been the writer’s American parents.
Rosenkrantz and Clotilde did appear to be the content pair they seemed. They lived in isolated marital bliss. Clotilde had been troubled over her father’s death, confused really, when Pelleter saw her. But she hadn’t seemed frightened. There would have been no reason for her to run.
He forced his way to the small window between two of the bookcases, and looked between the blinds out into the back yard. There was nothing there to see. So his supposed tail, if there was one, was probably alone, which meant that he was effectively useless, two men required to follow someone successfully. There were too many players and it seemed that all of the important ones he couldn’t see. He blew out the lamp on Rosenkrantz’s desk before going back into the hall.
He went upstairs to be thorough, not expecting to find anything. The upstairs was a large single room with the staircase opening in the center of the floor, a railing around the other three sides of the opening. There was more light from the windows here than downstairs. The bed was unmade, and the armoire left opened, but these were the signs of an absent wife, not of a hurried departure. There was nothing to find here.
Pelleter went back downstairs without further investigation.
Rosenkrantz had not moved during Pelleter’s search. His chest rose and fell with labored breaths. With luck he would be out for the rest of the night.
Pelleter left, feeling the front door latch behind him. The evening was clear and pleasant, an evening meant for enjoyment. As he reached the street, he listened for footsteps behind him, but heard nothing. At the first closed storefront with a display window, the chief inspector stopped as though to look inside, and glanced behind him, but there was no one there. If he had been followed earlier, he wasn’t being followed now.
The Twenty-Year Death Page 10