Disturbing the Dark

by Wendy Hornsby

  “I called,” Grand-mère said. “Though when did one more or less for dinner ever matter?”

  Antoine set the boots in a sunny patch next to the house. “Maybe this archeologist is a nervous cook.”

  “Poor child, volunteering to feed this bunch,” Grand-mère said with a little laugh. “Whether she can cook or not, Olivia is an interesting woman, is she not?”

  “She seems to be,” I said. “But what makes you say so?”

  “Driving back from mass this morning when the rest of you went on to the beach, she had questions about the house. How old is it, who built it, when was it remodeled? I gave her a little tour, because she seemed interested.”

  “That was generous of you,” I said

  She patted my hand. “Perhaps it was generous of her, my dear. I have come to hate being alone as much as I hate good-byes.”

  “You didn’t run into Erika von Streicher during your tour, did you?” Antoine asked with a smirk. “She was probably already inside.”

  “We didn’t go into bedrooms, dear. Olivia was interested in the structure of the house; its bones and its stones.”

  It was early evening and the sun was low in the sky. I was watching the play of shadows cast by the roses on the arbor against the side of the house when I stopped to take a good look at the stone blocks used to build the foundation. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t spoken with Raffi earlier. A couple of them looked as if they had recently been scrubbed.

  “Grand-mère, how old is the house?” I asked.

  “I doubt anyone can answer that with confidence. Parts of the house have been here for several centuries, at least.”

  “Which parts?”

  She chuckled. “Would you like the tour as well?”

  “I would.”

  She stepped away a few paces, looking up at the structure. “You can see where additions were made over time by differences in the colors of the stone. This kitchen end of the house is, I think, the most original. The kitchen, at least, has always been where it is now on the ground floor, though it has undergone many modifications over the generations. However, until my father-in-law, Giles, became master of the estate, the area where the salon is now traditionally was the cowshed.”

  “Where was the house?” I asked, looking around.

  She pointed up; Antoine laughed at my question. He said, “You know that, traditionally, tradesmen lived above their shops. Well, farmers lived above their livestock. The animals and cooking fires on the ground floor heated the rooms above. Having the livestock underfoot, as it were, also kept them safer from thieves and poachers.”

  “Warm, maybe, but very stinky,” I said.

  Grand-mère shrugged. “There was no plumbing, so bathing was a great inconvenience. I suspect the animals smelled no worse than the people who lived among them.”

  “French perfume,” Antoine added, “is a case of necessity driving invention.”

  I said, “One of the archeology students told me that some of the stones in the compound wall are very old, maybe Roman or pre-Roman. The blocks he was talking about look to me like the foundation stones at this end of the house. He thought that they might have come from whatever structure that old wall in the pasture used to be.”

  “I would not be surprised,” Grand-mère said. “Perhaps that is why Olivia was so interested in the foundation. She wanted very much to see under the house at this end, but I told her that was impossible.”

  Antoine’s brow furrowed. “But why, Grand-mère? She would be able to see the foundation more clearly below than she can up here. There’s nothing down below except a lot of old furniture. Unless you’re hiding more bodies you haven’t told us about.”

  “You and Freddy knew better than to play down there,” she said shaking a finger at him. “You were severely chastised when you were caught by your grandfather, were you not?”

  I caught Grand-mère’s eye. “It wasn’t the foundation you didn’t want to show her, was it? It was the unclaimed ends of von Streicher’s loot that’s stored in the basement, yes?”

  “Merde,” Antoine muttered, thinking that through. “Is that what all that stuff is?”

  “Bien sûr,” she said, of course, what else could it be?

  “But why not let her have a look?” he asked.

  Grand-mère laid her palm against his cheek. “My angel, ­Antoine. There has been altogether too much interest of late in that reprobate von Streicher and his hoard of stolen objects. This young archeologist seems to be genuine in her interest, but I don’t know her. Our basement is not a curiosity shop. Everything down there represents the genuine suffering of people. Why, my dearest dear, would I simply throw the doors open to a stranger?”

  “Maggie is not a stranger,” he said, taking her hand, grinning impishly. “I can see from the look on her face that she is dying to get a peek down there. You can’t deny her.”

  I said nothing, but he was right. Grand-mère took a glance at me, and then told Antoine, “Go get the keys from the cupboard by the back door, and a couple of flashlights.”

  The basement door was very sturdy, made from what looked like old solid oak. Grand-mère said the door hadn’t been opened for years, but the key turned readily in the lock and the bolt retracted. The hinges squealed like crypt doors in a B-grade horror movie, but ­Antoine managed to pull the door open. A wave of cold, clammy air rose up from below.

  The lintel was so low we had to duck our heads to get past the doorway. Once we were inside, a vast, black space opened below us at the bottom of a steep stone stairway. The light from my flash barely disturbed the dark beyond the stairs.

  “Grand-mère,” I said. “This space is huge. What is it?”

  “This was the original fromagerie, chérie. There was a milking shed out in the yard, and here there were two levels, the fromagerie above and the cheese aging room below, where the temperature is always constant.”

  “Constant like a dungeon,” I said.

  “Exactly. When my father-in-law, Giles, moved the cows out of the house, he also moved the fromagerie. The construction when he added the new wing destabilized the old wooden floor between the levels, and eventually the floor collapsed. Now there is nothing but a cavern.”

  “I could use it for brandy storage,” Antoine said.

  She shook a finger at him. “Brandy is a fire hazard. Better that it stay out in the cider house.”

  “Let’s go see what’s below.” Antoine picked up a tool of some sort that was leaning against the wall just inside the door. He went down first, holding the tool by the head and using the handle to break through the veil of cobwebs that draped the stairs.

  When I reached the bottom step, I swept my flashlight from one side of the basement to the other to see what was there. Even though Grand-mère told us to expect only old furniture, I still held out hope for chests full of jewels. Or maybe shelves lined with antique clocks; she said that von Streicher was fond of clocks. What I saw was, ­indeed, old furniture. Ornately carved tables and chairs, massive bed frames, silk-upholstered settees and chaises, inlaid chests, a few huge paintings, some sculpted garden nymphs, and beautiful but very tall armoires. All of it was heavy, old-fashioned, over-sized and swathed with dust and spiderwebs.

  “We could open an antiques store,” Antoine quipped.

  “No, mon chèr,” Grand-mère said. “All of this was stolen from French homes by the Nazis. This is not ours to sell.”

  “It’s Miss Havisham’s dining room,” I said. “All we need is the wedding cake.”

  “Someone you know, dear?”

  “From Dickens. Great Expectations.”

  “Whoever she was,” Antoine said, swiping at a low-hanging web. I wondered, did French schools assign Dickens? Maybe A Tale of Two Cities? “If her dining room reminds you of this place, she needed a housekeeper. How did it get so dusty?”

  “How many years has it been since you last played down here?” Grand-mère asked him. “Thirty, perhaps?”

  �
��At least.”

  I lifted the top of a chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl and caught a faint scent of lavender. Inside there was a stack of linens trimmed with handmade lace. I said, “How beautiful.”

  Grand-mère looked around me to see. She reached in and pulled up a beribboned sachet. “These linens were probably part of a young woman’s trousseau. We can only wonder if she lived to spread them on her marriage bed. Or if her young man survived to join her. I hope that doesn’t explain why the chest wasn’t claimed.”

  “How very sad,” I said, putting an arm around her.

  She trained her light on random pieces. “Everything here has a story. The tragedy is, we don’t know whose stories they are.”

  “It’s another sort of graveyard,” I said.

  “Seriously, Grand-mère, what are you going to do with all this?” Antoine asked.

  Grand-mère patted his arm. “Leave it for my heirs to figure out.”

  I was playing my light along the intricately carved whorls of a headboard that was at least ten feet tall. It was beautiful, but ornate to the point of decadence. Many of the pieces in the basement were. And all of them were hand-selected by von Streicher, a humble schoolmaster. I wondered if he thought he could take any of his acquisitions home with him. Could he have had a bedroom large enough to accommodate such a piece? Not many people would. Not then, not now.

  “Seen enough?” Grand-mère asked.

  I turned to her. “Will you let me film down here?”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “Because what’s here belongs to your story.”

  She looked to Antoine, who I assumed would one day be in charge of clearing everything out.

  “Why not?” he said. “Maybe someone will recognize some of this stuff and come and claim it.”

  She raised her hands in a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture. “When will you come with your cameras? I’ll have it all dusted for you.”

  “No, no. I want the dust. And the spiderwebs.” Something scurried across a far corner. “But if you have some mousetraps, I’ll use them.”

  “I am going to sneeze,” she said and headed toward the stairs. “Antoine, please give the keys to your cousin.”

  He had his flashlight in one hand and the tool he’d picked up in the other. He handed me the tool so he could reach into his pocket for the keys. That’s when I got my first look at its business end.

  “What is this thing?” I asked, shining my light on it.

  He shrugged, as if everyone would know what it was. “It’s a mattock.”

  19

  “Pierre,” I said when he picked up my call. “This is Madame Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Ah. Maggie MacGowen,” he said with a tired little laugh. “How does the detecting progress chez Martin?”

  “A little too well, I’m afraid. There’s something I think you should take a look at.”

  “Something?”

  “A mattock.”

  “A very common tool,” he said.

  “So it seems. But this one is marked as property of l’ècole du Louvre, just like the tools we found in Solange Betz’s tent. It turned up locked in my grandmother’s basement.”

  There was a long silence broken only when he muttered putain de merde. Finally, he asked, “Did you handle it?”

  I told him about Antoine using the mattock handle to break through cobwebs. He had given it to me, and that was when I saw the markings. This information did not make Pierre any happier. He said he would come and take a look, but in the meantime, would I please not use it to chop weeds or to crush ice for cocktails. I tried not to laugh at his sarcasm, but I did. And then I asked for a favor.

  “When you come to look at the mattock, Pierre, can we please be discreet about why you’re here? I don’t want to alarm my grandmother or to alert certain people about what’s in the basement.” Then I told him about Harry and Vincent and my concern about overly eager souvenir hunters. Yes, I was going to film the furniture, but I was not going to disclose its location.

  He understood my concern. If this mattock turned out to be the murder weapon, knowing that it was hidden in Grand-mère’s basement where possessions that had been stolen by the Nazis were kept would upset his grandmother, as well. After all, she was a party to the original operation also. I told him that we would probably be at Freddy’s when he arrived, and that I would have the keys to the basement with me. When he came, he would at least need to come by and say hello, such were the customs of the region. As a cousin of a cousin’s cousin by marriage, he was, after all, nearly family. And when he came to the door, I would slip him the keys.

  “I’ll think of an excuse to be there,” he said, adding that he would arrive within the hour.

  Freddy greeted Grand-mère, Antoine, and me at the door with les bises and glasses of Spanish rioja, a very dry wine full of pepper. Leading us toward chairs, he said, “Maggie, I heard you got the historic house tour. Antoine and I never found anything down there that we thought needed to be kept under lock and key, but we were always hopeful.”

  “Still the same old stuff,” Antoine said, dropping into a leather wingback chair. “Just dustier.”

  Grand-mère glanced nervously toward the open kitchen door, checking to see where Olivia was. After all, she had denied Olivia access to the basement immediately before taking me down. Olivia came out to greet us, stopping first to place little bowls of olives on side tables beside the chairs. I thought she was too nervous about the meal she was preparing to have anything else on her mind. She said her hellos, declined my offer of help, and retreated back into the kitchen.

  Freddy wanted to show us some of the marketing ideas for his building project that our Uncle Gérard was working on, so we followed him into the small study off the main salon that he was using as his office. While he was working on the project, Freddy was staying in the house that Isabelle built for the two of them, long after I had been taken to America.

  Isabelle’s was the smallest of the three houses built inside the compound walls. Grand-mère’s rectangular pile of stone, the largest house, was at the far end of the enclosed quadrangle, and the other two faced each other between hers and the gate that led out to the village road. Where the original cider house had been until my great-grandfather burned it to the ground, my Uncle Gérard built a pretentious faux château, planning for the structure to be used one day as the sales office for a grandiose housing project that never got off the ground, fortunately. Antoine, though chagrined by the ­façade’s lavish presentation, currently lived there with his family and Grand-mère Marie.

  Isabelle built the third house. After her divorce from Freddy’s father, she took down an old carriage house to build her modern, ecologically green pastiche on the design of the original old family home: time and weather had rounded the edges and roughened the surface of the stones in Grand-mère’s house; Isabelle’s stones were cut to have sharp edges and smooth faces. She used steel where the old house had wood. Her house was the most functional and comfortable of the three, cooled in summer by temperature-activated attic fans and vents, and warmed in winter by radiant heat installed under the floor.

  As a child, Freddy had lived in that house with his mother, our mother, so he felt perfectly at home. But I was always a bit uneasy there. Though she was my mother, I had no memories of Isabelle from the brief time I was with her. And from what I had learned about her since her death, I knew that I was better off not remembering. The irony was, because of the arcane French inheritance laws, legally the house was as much mine as it was Freddy’s.

  I wasn’t concentrating on the conversation about Freddy’s sales campaign. I’m sure that because a hefty portion of my share of ­Isabelle’s estate was at stake, I should have been paying close attention, but I was too distracted knowing that we were in the room where Isabelle had spent much of her time. If it were up to me, the furnishings, obviously expensive, certainly carefully chosen and well used, would be consigned to the basement with the rest of
the ghostly relics.

  When I heard the distinctive crunch of a car driving across the graveled compound, I volunteered to go see who it was. I was fairly certain it was Pierre Dauvin, but whoever it was I was grateful for an excuse to leave the room. As soon as the others heard Pierre’s voice at the door, they followed, so there was no opportunity to pass him the basement keys without being seen and then needing to explain.

  Pierre had come in his own car, and he still wore the same shorts he had on during the baptism party instead of his two-tone blue uniform. To all appearances, this was a friendly visit, not an official one. And he had come up with a good excuse for dropping by: he was returning the platters Grand-mère had lent to his sister for the party that afternoon. He apologized for interrupting so close to dinner time. He would, he said, go put the platters away in Grand-mère’s kitchen and be on his way.

  Quick visits were unheard of. Freddy insisted that Pierre come in for a drink. It would hardly be polite for him to say no. But first, the platters, Pierre insisted; wouldn’t want to have one too many drinks and drop them. Like the eager student in the front row, once again I volun­teered, this time to help Pierre because I knew in which cupboard the platters were kept.

  The platters were quickly stowed in their places so that we could get to the real business that brought him. On the way through the mudroom, I picked up a couple of flashlights and handed Pierre the ring of household keys.

  He walked straight to the cupboard by the back door where the keys usually hung from a nail and opened it. The nail was empty. “This is the main set, then?”

  I held up my hands. He seemed to know more about them than I did.

  “Anyone had access,” he said. “If they knew where to look.”

  “Apparently, it was no secret.”

  Holding the back door for me, he said, “Allons-y.”

  He led the way to the basement access. Without fanfare, he pulled on latex gloves, turned the bolt, and pulled the door open, cringing at the squeaky complaint made by the hinges. We did not go through the doorway. With my light, I showed him the mattock resting against the wall next to the door frame where I left it. First he took pictures from several angles. He asked where the tool was when Antoine picked it up, so I pointed out the disturbance in the dust on the floor just a foot further along the wall. Using his flashlight, he studied the floor and the wall, and took more pictures before he pulled a folded plastic bag out of a back pocket, opened it, and collected the mattock. Last, he sealed the bag with red evidence tape and signed his name diagonally across it.