The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery

by R. W. Wallace

“You know what I mean.” She didn’t let go of Louis’s gaze. He wouldn’t be able to move if he tried. “You hadn’t been home for almost a year. Did you talk to your father often when you were on the other side of the Atlantic?”

  Louis hadn’t talked much with his father. Mostly he chatted with his mother from time to time on Skype, but his father would only come into the room and say “hi” before going back to work. That had been just fine with Louis, who didn’t necessarily want to open up to his old man. It always felt like a good idea to talk later, at some time when there would be no touchy issues between them. Except now there was no more time. He couldn’t talk to the man’s casket in front of hundreds of people during the wake. And now his father was ashes in an urn in the cemetery’s Saint-Blancat plot. Talking to a dead body might not make much more sense than talking to ashes, but at least he could imagine his father listening if there were ears to listen with.

  Louis stared at Marie-Pierre.

  One corner of her mouth lifted in the beginnings of a smile and she said, “Don’t worry, Louis. I won’t force you to tell me what your unfinished business was. But the important part is that it is there. And usually is for anyone who loses someone close to them. Even when they see it coming, like in the case of cancer, some people are unable to get around to really communicating.”

  Would Louis have discussed his opinions on his father’s way of doing politics if he’d known he was going to die? Probably not. He most likely wouldn’t have had the guts to start and figured that once the old man was dead, it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Except it did. He wanted his father to know how he felt about taxes and prostitutes and urban development plans. He wanted to show his father he had his own opinions. But it was too late.

  “Wouldn’t you have liked the possibility of talking to your father now? To tell him how you feel?” Marie-Pierre sat at the edge of her seat, coffee long forgotten.

  Having his thoughts echoed back at him made Louis fall back on his heels as if he’d taken a hit to the chest.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  Twenty-Nine

  After an eternity of hard work, Catherine succeeded in freeing her right hand. It was held in place by a metal wire, but apparently more to keep it in a certain position than to imprison her. The mud and sarcophagus were more than enough in that regard.

  She still felt like her brain was shrouded in mist. She could make out some thoughts, but was unable to think further ahead than a few minutes. Which boiled down to: Get out of the sarcophagus before whoever put you there comes back. Her limbs were equally unresponsive, obeying orders only sporadically.

  Having one free hand helped. She grabbed hold of the stone rim of the sarcophagus and put all her force into pulling herself up. Her back and neck cooperated somewhat and, with sweat running down her chin and her back—or was that mud?—she pulled herself into a sitting position.

  The only light came from the small electrical lamp hanging on the central pillar of the oval room, but it was more than enough to make out the scene before her. A second sarcophagus stood on the other side of the stone pillar, filled to the rim with dry dirt. What else might be in there, buried in what would have been mud before it dried? In the half of the room farthest from the door, a scene was set up.

  At first she thought she was backstage at a theater. When her brain caught up with her eyes, only her tired muscles and the fact that she was using all her strength not to fall down again kept her from screaming out. Six male figures stood side by side along the wall dressed in pompous large dress and wearing wigs. Catherine had seen something similar before, but the exact memory eluded her muddy brain. What it resembled was unimportant, though. Whatever this had been based on, in the original, the figures weren’t dead people.

  They could have been mannequins from a clothes store, but they looked too real for that. These men had wrinkles, beauty marks, scars, and big hands. Their skin had a gray quality. Which could possibly have come from the same dirt Catherine was covered in. Geraldine Hérault’s body sported the same color in that picture taken before she turned into a skeleton.

  Across from the old-fashioned dead men was another scene. A group of normal-looking men and women were all placed to look up at…nothing. This image wasn’t complete; a figure was missing on a pedestal by the wall. Once in place, the group of people would all be looking at whoever got that position.

  Catherine shivered, both from the gruesome setting and the cold mud. She had to get out of there.

  Relatively confident she wasn’t about to fall back down, she moved her right hand to free the left one. With both hands on the rim of the sarcophagus, she pushed herself out of the mud with a great smack like a young boy tearing away from his great-aunt’s slobbery kiss. Legs shaking, she carefully set one foot out of the stone box, then the other. She took a deep breath, let go with her hands, and didn’t fall down.

  She was out of the death-box. Now what?

  Thirty

  “Come with me.” Marie-Pierre got up from the couch and led Louis by the arm to the hall. Using one of many keys from a set in her pocket, she unlocked and opened a sturdy oak door. A staircase led down to the cellar. She flipped a light switch by the door frame.

  Weren’t her parents down there? Why was the door locked and the light off?

  “I understand the pain you’re going through, Louis.” Marie-Pierre invited him to go down the stone steps. “And there are many others like us, whom I would like to help.”

  Louis was halfway down the stairs, but stopped and turned to face her. “Us?”

  Marie-Pierre shooed him onward. “There’s a nice couch down there. I’ll tell you my story so you understand why I’m doing what I do. Though I can see already that you’ll be on the same wavelength as me. Unlike your father.”

  At the mention of his father, Louis snapped out of the trance-like state he’d been in. Marie-Pierre had focused on his feeling of loss and he’d momentarily forgotten why he’d come there in the first place. She hadn’t outright admitted to killing the man, but said they had differences and not a long time before the murder. Louis continued down the stairs taking the opportunity to regain control of his expression. He needed to remember that feeling of loss and appear interested in whatever it was Marie-Pierre wanted to show him.

  As promised, a couch awaited at the bottom of the stairs along the wall to Louis’s right. It faced a black curtain across the room. The low-roofed cellar had the same arched, red-bricked roof as La Cave au Cassoulet; a hard-packed dirt floor; and three rows of shelves, two of which were filled to the ceiling with wine bottles. The third was crowded with various objects, most of them apparently quite old. Louis spotted some clay pots, old coins, and a bronze pendant. On the top shelf, an old pistol and even older rifle stood guard. Everything was covered by a fine layer of dust.

  There was no sign of the parents.

  Noticing that Louis was staring at the collection of old items, Marie-Pierre said, “I’ve found that stuff down here over the years.” She sat down on the couch and patted the seat next to her. “Come sit, Louis. Let me tell you my story.”

  Louis sank into the couch.

  Marie-Pierre stared into the room as she started talking, but Louis bet she wasn’t looking at the wine bottles. “I lived here with my parents until I was eighteen when I went to study medicine in Paris. The first year was difficult. I never had to make it on my own before. Preparing food, cleaning the apartment, that sort of stuff. It was also difficult to be separated from my parents. We’d always had a close relationship. But after that first year, I started to get a taste for independence and called home less frequently. In fact, I would realize that when I went back to Paris for the second year, I never called home once. Before the summer holidays, I talked to my mother often, but only because she called me, not the other way around. So when I came back to Toulouse for vacation in November, I hadn’t spoken to my parents in almost two months. I didn’t even remember their birthdays, which were both within
two weeks of my departure.”

  Louis thought he knew where this was going, but couldn’t see the link with his own father’s disappearance. And why did the parents still figure on the list of inhabitants of this house?

  With a faraway look, Marie-Pierre continued her tale, but a touch of steel entered her voice. “I tried to call them the day before I arrived to get them to pick me up at the train station. Failing that, I tried again when I stepped off the train at Matabiau. Still no luck. But this isn’t that far away and I was in great shape from all the rowing, so I shouldered my backpack and walked home.”

  “As I opened the front door, I discovered a large pile of junk mail, newspapers, and letters. I didn’t study the pile at once, of course, but later found that the earliest letter had arrived a month and a half before. As you may imagine, I was getting worried. Even more so when I discovered our dog lying dead in the kitchen. He’d starved to death.”

  Louis sat perfectly still, watching Marie-Pierre as she told her story. He thought he could see a hint of the youthful innocence she lost that day, and he mourned it.

  “It didn’t take me long to find my parents,” she continued. “There was an old piece of furniture which used to be across the hall from the cellar entry. It lay overturned on the floor, blocking the cellar door.” Focusing for a moment on Louis, she added. “I’ve had the door changed since, so it opens the other way.”

  Louis nodded.

  “Anyway, I moved the cabinet and opened the door. And down here I found them where they had been for the last month while I studied, partied, visited… While I lived in ignorance. They must have gone down to choose a wine together—my mother always went down first, then called my father so he could help her make her choice—and the dog pushed over the bureau by the door, dooming everyone.”

  Louis braced himself for what came next, but she didn’t describe the smell or what it was like to discover the decaying corpses of her parents. He was somewhat grateful, though felt a little cheated. The young boy inside him had always been a sucker for a good horror story.

  “So now you know why I find it so important to make sure the elderly receive visits on a regular basis,” she said to Louis. “In 2003 when that heat wave hit, so many people found themselves in the same situation as my parents—dying without anyone noticing they were even missing. It made the news and got the politicians moving. Nobody should be faced with that level of solitude, even in death.”

  “I agree with you, of course,” Louis said. But had his father not agreed? There was still something missing from this story.

  Marie-Pierre studied him for several moments. Then her gaze betrayed that her thoughts had turned inward again and the story continued. “Like you, I had unfinished business with my parents. Who doesn’t? Especially at nineteen it’s not cool to tell your parents you love them, so you don’t. You’re annoyed when they tell you how to live your life and you’re annoyed when they don’t do your laundry anymore. I wasn’t ready to lose them.”

  She focused on Louis. “Do you remember what your father looked like, Louis? Do you remember all the wrinkles, the exact shape of his nose, the size of his hands?”

  Considering her questions, Louis frowned. Of course he remembered what his father looked like. There was an increasing amount of wrinkles over the last years, but he couldn’t be expected to know them all, surely? The nose was easy since Louis had the same one. But his hands… No, he couldn’t remember any details about them. And that made him sad. Would he forget everything else about him, too?

  Apparently reading the answer on his face, Marie-Pierre nodded. “I didn’t want that to happen with my parents. I wanted to remember everything about them. And what options do we have for our lost ones today? Burial or cremation? In one case, we can visit a tomb in the cemetery; in the other, it can be the tomb or possibly home.”

  Louis didn’t think you were allowed to bring the ashes home, but that was beside the point.

  “Neither of those solutions were acceptable to me.” Marie-Pierre leaned back and grabbed a chord that hung down from the roof. It appeared to be linked to the curtain on the opposite wall.

  What is she hiding back there?

  Marie-Pierre pulled the chord and the curtain opened.

  The beginnings of a tunnel had been dug into the wall making a small niche. Inside, entwined in each other’s arms, sat two adults in their forties. He was the farthest in. She curled in his lap with both arms around his neck. Both had their eyes closed as if they were taking a nap.

  “They tried to dig their way out using broken wine bottles,” Marie-Pierre whispered. “My only consolation is that at least they had each other until the very end.”

  Louis consciously took a deep breath.

  She hadn’t omitted the description of the smell of the rotting bodies to spare him.

  They were still intact.

  Thirty-One

  The door leading out of the room where Catherine woke up was open, but the sturdy oak door she came to directly after was locked. In the opposite direction, she found tunnels. Pulling down the small light hanging on a hook on the central pillar, she decided to go exploring. It was better than nothing.

  The first twenty meters or so had ragged, uneven walls with stones and broken roof tiles sticking out everywhere and the wooden supporting beams had a do-it-yourself feel. Someone else clearly took over the digging for the rest of the maze; the walls were smooth earth and the support beams were seamlessly set together.

  Her mind’s fuzziness retreated little by little. On the upside, Catherine was able to move in a more coordinated manner and not stub her toe on every little stone in her path—and there were plenty of those. Downside: she felt every cut on her feet, every bruise on her legs, and the bump she acquired on her forehead when she’d run into a beam as the tunnel she fled down made an unexpected turn. A tunnel would go more or less straight, then run into a brick wall, turn ninety degrees, and tilt up, apparently to go around the ancient edifice. Since Catherine had only her dim light and a mere fraction of her normal faculties, she walked straight into those walls every time they appeared. When she touched a hand to her temple, it came away bloody. She must have hit that beam with more force than she thought.

  After two rights and one left turn, Catherine arrived at a rickety wooden door. The tunnel continued into darkness. Could this possibly be a way out? Considering the quality of the door by the crypt, she doubted there would be such an easy exit, but what else was she to do? Who knew how far these tunnels went?

  She pushed on the door. Hinges squealed making Catherine cringe in fear that her captor would hear. She waited a few seconds straining her ears, but heard nothing. She stepped through the door. The room she arrived in was even darker than the narrow tunnel. As her eyes adjusted and she directed the light across the room, Catherine could make out shapes on all sides, circular and tube-like. Catherine’s heart hammered in her chest. Her trek so far had been one great effort since she had to fight for her body to do as she wished. She had been breathing through her mouth for a while because her lungs weren’t cooperating very well. As her nose picked up on something, she sniffed to investigate. Old, decaying meat left to rot in the heat for a few weeks at the least. Catherine’s stomach already queasy from whatever had put her to sleep, rebelled. She bent in half and threw up on the floor.

  Once the heaving stopped, her eyes focused on an object now partly covered in her puke. She couldn’t be entirely sure in the dim light, but thought it was a rather pallid-looking hand. And whoever it belonged to hadn’t said anything about being puked on. Not to mention the smell. Knowing she wouldn’t like what she saw, Catherine moved her light out along the arm attached to the hand. Staring blue dead eyes came into view. The skin was starting to fall off and a patch of blond hair was already missing.

  Catherine stopped breathing. She tried to gather her thoughts to make sense of this and figure out what to do. Wanting to get away from the dead man, she straightened and turned towar
d the door. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark room now. Propped up next to the door with a chord around her torso to keep her in place was a body Catherine recognized.

  Alima.

  Catherine screamed, scrambling backward.

  Thirty-Two

  “I want to offer this peace to whoever wants it,” Marie-Pierre said to Louis.

  Louis couldn’t take his eyes off the dead people in front of him. “Peace?” They might look like they were sleeping, but staying on display for years on end couldn’t possibly qualify as peaceful.

  “It’s incredible the number of things you think of that you never had the chance to say to your loved ones while they lived. Now, whenever I think of something I want to discuss with either one of my parents, I can just come here. Don’t you find it much more personal than standing by a grave in a cemetery?”

  Louis stayed perfectly immobile and concentrated on breathing evenly. She was crazy. And, more importantly, this was the link to his father’s death. The body of Geraldine Hérault had been perfectly preserved for twenty-nine years, like Marie-Pierre’s parents. If he focused on finding out what happened to his father, perhaps he could ignore the puppet-theater from Hell in front of him.

  “How come they don’t rot?” he asked, finally managing to face Marie-Pierre on the couch next to him.

  A muscled ticked at the corner of her eye—probably at the bluntness of his question—but she answered. “It’s due to the quality of the air and the dirt.” She nodded at the niche.

  Louis nodded. “Like the crypt in the Cordeliers church?”

  “Exactly!” Smiling, Marie-Pierre was clearly happy to discover he was familiar with that story. “Of course you know about that. You were always so interested in Toulouse and its history when you were a boy.”

  “So the dirt here has the same properties?” How long was that poor couple down here before dying? Had the wine helped them hold on longer or had it made things worse?