“Yes. Though I’ve been worried that going through here often and letting in outside air could destabilize the quality of the air, so I installed the curtain. And I’ve recently acquired a second entryway.” As she talked, she studied the bodies of her parents. The worry shone in her eyes and her mouth was set in a severe line.
Confused, Louis asked, “A second entry? Into this cellar?”
Shaking out of her reverie, Marie-Pierre looked toward the wine racks. “No, into the rest of my research.”
Louis was down to whispering. “Research?” He hadn’t moved a muscle except to talk since the curtain was drawn. He was too worried his disgust would show or that he’d scare her off in some way. The “research” was apparently behind the wine racks. Perhaps I can knock her down and go exploring?
The woman was bigger than him and, though it hurt his pride to admit it, with all the rowing she still did, she was probably stronger than him despite being twenty-five years his senior. Besides, where was Catherine in all this? Had she been taken or was she already home from an innocent night adventure?
Marie-Pierre’s fingers tapped a slow rhythm on her thigh as she studied Louis. “This is where we will see how much like your father you are, Louis. Will you be able to see beyond your own nose and recognize the potential of what I’m doing?”
Louis kept eye-contact through sheer force of will. He was proud to hear that his voice was steady when he answered. “You’ll have to tell me about your project so we can find out. But, as you so easily pinpointed earlier, I haven’t always agreed with my father. In fact, I quite frequently disagreed.” He just omitted to tell his father as much. And, obviously, that didn’t mean he’d ever wished for his father’s death.
“All right, Louis. But if I do give you all the details of my research, I will expect you to help me in turn. When I’m ready to expose it to the public, I want you to back me up with that popular name of yours.”
“Of course.” As in, of course you want that. Louis had a very surreal feeling of watching a horror movie where he knew something awful was coming, but didn’t have the details yet. He was waiting for something to jump out and say, “Boo.”
Marie-Pierre was apparently happy with his participation. “What I want,” she said, still holding Louis’s gaze, “is for everyone to have this.” She waved in the direction of her parents’ bodies. “For those who are not happy with burying—or God forbid, cremating—their loved ones, they can have them mummified and visit whenever they feel like it.”
Louis took a deep breath and focused on calming down his speeding heart. The thought of having his father stuck for all eternity in his final pose so his family could ogle him whenever they wanted made him want to go kick something.
He stayed seated.
“I have discovered the old Cordeliers crypt,” Marie-Pierre declared softly.
Louis’s eyebrows shot up. He didn’t have to feign interest. “You did?”
Smug with her success, Marie-Pierre explained. “I started digging a tunnel going out from this cellar. I knew the general direction to close in on the Cordeliers church. It took me months, but I finally bumped into the crypt. It was filled with debris and the entrance was sealed shut, so it took me even longer to clean the place up, but when I was done, I had the perfect setting for my research.”
Louis’s mind boggled at the thought of doing all that alone. No wonder she was still in such good shape. “What did you do with all the dirt you dug out?” he asked.
“I took it out with my car little by little and emptied it into nature around Toulouse.” She waved a dismissive hand toward the stairs. “So long as you’re not in a rush to get it all out in one go, nobody notices.”
“So why are your parents still here and not in the crypt?” The hairs on Louis’s neck were standing at attention over the sharing of a room with two dead bodies. No matter how long he sat there or how much he concentrated on what Marie-Pierre was saying, he couldn’t block out that death was so close.
With a fond look at her parents finally giving Louis some respite, allowing him to look elsewhere than into her green eyes, she sighed. “I didn’t want to risk them. I couldn’t be certain the crypt would work as well as this cellar, so I had to do some experiments before moving them. As it turns out, I quite like having them here, at home, and I’m using the crypt for other things.”
“Experiments?” The image of Geraldine Hérault’s body flashed through Louis’s mind.
“If I want to propose this solution to others, I must first make sure I can deliver.”
That made sense. If Louis were to perform such experiments, he would search for dead animals and see how they fared in the crypt, but somehow, he didn’t think that was what Marie-Pierre was referring to. “And how is that going?”
“Very well,” she replied, lost in thought gazing at the wine bottles. “Just like for the Cordeliers in the old days. The body must first be buried in dirt, which has to come from close to the church. I think there was something about the quantity of limestone in the dirt that was important. Then it is placed in the crypt and stays perfectly preserved. In fact, it went so well that I’ve decided to do one better.”
Louis couldn’t bring himself to ask what bodies she had used for these experiments. He didn’t really need to, anyway; it had worked fine for Geraldine Hérault. Scratching his head to have an excuse to break eye-contact for a while, he bought her hook. “What’s one better?”
“I’m actually not inventing anything new,” Marie-Pierre said. “Only seeking inspiration in what the crypt was used for back in the seventeenth century. I think the crypt would make an excellent tourist attraction.”
Louis didn’t manage more than a whisper. “Right.”
Marie-Pierre must think his lack of breath was due to awe because she delightfully continued, sounding like his niece Chloé recounting a trip to the zoo. “I’m very close to creating a second room with the same properties as the crypt. Once it’s ready, that can be used for the purpose I just explained. The crypt is then available for more profitable visits.”
“Oh,” Louis said, relieved to discover there was some sanity left in the woman. “You want to open the crypt so people can see where the bodies were stocked back then?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied. “And the bodies.”
“Which bodies?”
“The ones we’ll place in the crypt. I’ve got some excellent scenarios ready. I’ve finished one and am in the process of putting the final touches to the second.”
“Scenarios?” What does she have in mind? Having people relive the incident of the student who visited the crypt alone at night and got so scared he had a heart attack? It was a funny thing to read about in an article, but Louis wasn’t certain it would be much fun to live through. And which bodies was she talking about?
Marie-Pierre looked at him as if he was being obtuse. She decided to enlighten him. “Certain selected bodies will be used to set up scenes from the history of Toulouse. It would prove the natural mummification properties of the crypt and teach about our history.”
“Okay.” Despite the coolness of the cellar, sweat trickled down Louis’s spine. He managed to suppress a shudder. “How do you select the bodies?”
Another dismissive hand. “There are always leftover bodies.”
Right. Bodies lying around in the streets just waiting to be used in a tourist attraction.
“Is that what happened to Geraldine Hérault? Was she a leftover body?”
Fury crossed Marie-Pierre’s features. “She served her time, but did not deserve to be part of the final scene. I found a better replacement.”
Louis should have thought to record this meeting with his phone. That was as good as admitting she’d killed the woman. “Did her time?” he asked. “What was her crime?”
“Neglect,” was the prompt answer. “She was my father’s boss when he died. Do you know what she did when he didn’t show up for work? She tried to call him once. Once! Then sh
e started the process of having him fired for not showing up at work and forgot all about him. It was her job to take care of her employees, but instead of checking up on him, she had him sacked. Nobody ever cared about what happened to my parents. They were forgotten by everyone.”
Louis needed to get out of there and call the police. But would she let him go now that she’d told him all these morbid details? And what about Catherine?
Praying he managed an offhanded tone, he asked, “So how much of what that annoying journalist wrote the other day was true?”
“Hah, don’t you worry about her,” Marie-Pierre said. “She won’t be a problem anymore.”
Louis wanted to throw up. Is Catherine already dead, then? Part of some horrible display intended to attract tourists?
Marie-Pierre didn’t notice his pallor. She was frowning in the direction of the wine racks and glanced at her watch. “Tell you what, Louis. Why don’t you wait here while I go check on something?” She patted his shoulder as she stood up. “Think about the possibilities of what I’m doing here. Both for attracting tourists to Toulouse and for helping people who have lost loved ones. I’m sure you’ll prove to have much more sense than your father.”
She took off toward the back of the cellar. A door clicked shut behind her.
Louis was left alone with her dead parents.
The monster had come out of the closet. Boo.
Thirty-Three
Maxime was staring at the tunnel leading out from the new door in his cellar when he heard the scream. Was it because he missed her and came here looking for her that he thought it sounded like Catherine? Could she be down there, in the dark?
What on Earth was this setup, anyway? Where there had once been a brick wall, there was now a thick, secure door with a tunnel leading out and well away from the limits of their property. Or rather the city of Toulouse’s property now. Where there had been open space because they could find no use for the damp room, a large heap of dirt now climbed almost to the roof. The excavations of the tunnel, presumably. Maxime eyed the dirt, then the tunnel. They had either already removed a lot of dirt somehow—together with the refuse of the renovations of the house upstairs perhaps—or most of that tunnel was already in place when they started digging.
The scream still reverberated in his skull. That could have been Catherine. Grabbing a flashlight hanging by the door, he moved through the dark toward the voice. Even if it wasn’t Catherine, someone was in trouble in there.
He walked as quickly as he dared relying on so little lighting to help him navigate through the narrow dirt tunnel.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Thirty-Four
Louis waited ten seconds to make sure Marie-Pierre didn’t come straight back before springing off the couch and bounding up the stairs. He wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. He tried pounding on it, but it was so thick that he was fairly certain it would hardly be heard inside the house, much less by passersby outside. He fished his phone out of his jeans; no coverage. Just in case, he typed in a text to Catherine’s friend saying the address was the right one and bring the police ASAP, then put the phone back in his pocket. If it found a connection, it would send the text. In the meantime, he was on his own.
Back in the cellar, Louis kept close to the wine racks to keep far away from the dead bodies. In the back corner of the room, he found another door. This one was closed but unlocked.
Marie-Pierre probably wouldn’t be happy about him exploring on his own, but he was not about to sit in a room with her dead parents, wondering how many people she killed during her little “experiment.” Using his phone for light, he made sure the door stayed open behind him and advanced into the dirt tunnel.
This must have taken her years all on her own. The structural engineer in him approved of the way the supporting beams were set up. She must have studied the technique to some extent to make sure it all held up. To defy his reasoning, there was a cave-in after about fifty meters or so. Dirt and rocks covered everything up to the beams. The tunnel turned ninety degrees to the right, continuing into darkness. Perhaps it wasn’t so safe to be down there? But those beams were still intact. It looked like the debris originated farther up the tunnel and came to a stop here. Catherine mentioned a house collapsing during renovations. It wasn’t too far from Marie-Pierre’s house. Could that house have collapsed because of her tunnel? The one leading down on his right did appear a little less used and the support beams weren’t made of the same wood; this one was darker than what he’d seen so far.
Louis continued into the darkness with his phone illuminating only a few steps ahead. After a while, the tunnel turned left, then left again. He ended up in the original tunnel with the cave-in on his left. A door stood on Louis’s right. It was the first he’d seen since leaving the Cellar of Death. Careful not to make any noise, he opened it.
The Cordeliers crypt. It had to be. The room appeared to be oval, of about the right size—six meters by eight, if he remembered the details from that article correctly—and it had a central pillar. Flashing his phone to the floor, he saw something that wouldn’t have been there when the crypt was first in use: part of a huge Occitan cross painted on the floor in red and gold. It was centered on the pillar.
Louis entered the crypt. In the first half of the room, there was nothing but the cross. As he closed in on the central pillar, he could see its fronds stretching out to cover the ceiling and two shapes took form on each side of it. Stone sarcophagi.
Where did she find those? They looked like the real thing. As far as Louis knew there hadn’t been any in the crypt, though there weren’t that many descriptions of the place, so who knew what was left out of what he’d read.
The sarcophagus on his right was filled to the rim with dirt.
The one on the left was only filled a quarter of the way up and was mud rather than dirt. Walking closer, Louis made out some metal wire lying in there. There was a small indentation at the wider end of the stone coffin. Was that the imprint of a head? In fact, if he looked for it, he could easily make out the shape of an entire body all the way down to the feet.
How long would it take for mud to dry up down here? Days? Weeks? How long since whoever had been in that coffin escaped?
Louis directed his phone to light up the rest of the room. What he saw almost made him drop it into the mud.
Scenarios, indeed.
On one side, Marie-Pierre had recreated a painting of the Capitouls: the men who governed in Toulouse from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. They stood side by side, bursting with self-importance, wearing great white wigs and red and white capes covering everything from neck to feet. Louis tried to convince himself they were mannequins.
Facing the Capitouls scene was another setup. It reminded Louis of something, but he couldn’t quite place it. A group of people faced a pedestal currently unoccupied. Then he recognized one of the men in the group. His wife reported him missing from close to the Capitole about ten years ago. He left behind two young children. His body had never been found.
Thirty-Five
Maxime followed the screams as he ran through the tunnels. That was Catherine; he recognized her voice and upper class pronunciation of various English expletives. He would have found the inventiveness of some of them funny if he hadn’t detected the panic in her voice.
He discovered her behind the last of three doors he ran past. She lay naked in a pile of dead bodies holding both arms tight over her head and keeping her eyes squeezed shut.
“Catherine,” Maxime yelled to make sure she heard him over her own screams. He kneeled down in front of her. “Catherine, chérie, it’s me. Maxime.”
As he talked, she stopped screaming. Her breathing was labored and she said in a hoarse voice, “Max? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. Come here,” he said as he gently pulled on one of her arms. “Let me help you get up.” He pointedly didn’t look around the rest of the room. The smell was more than enoug
h to identify what a hellhole it was.
With shaking feet, Catherine leaned heavily on Maxime. “Get me out of here,” she said in a small voice.
Had those bodies put her in this state? It was the first time ever that she asked Maxime for help. He’d always wanted to be of use to her, to feel needed and wanted, but the woman was so stubbornly independent he hadn’t been allowed to do anything. In the end, the only thing she’d wanted from him was his signature on the divorce papers.
“We’ll leave,” he said, infusing all his love for her into his words. “Can I give you my shirt first, though? You must be freezing like that.”
Catherine looked down at herself and frowned. She had apparently forgotten her lack of dress, which was saying something of the state of mind for a prudish Englishwoman.
Maxime unbuttoned the top three buttons of his short-sleeved shirt and pulled it over his head. Then he shoved it down over Catherine’s dirty blond hair. She must have been rolling around in dirt, at the very least, given the quantity of mud in her hair. Her body seemed to be covered in it too. When the shirt was in place, he buttoned it up, leaving only the top one open. The shirt fell down to her knees, so at least she was decently covered if not exactly warm.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, chérie, but I’m so happy I’m finally allowed to help you with something. It’s all I ever wanted. To show you how much I love you.” He caressed her dirty cheek with the knuckles of his hand. “I’d give you my shoes, but I’m afraid they would be more of a hindrance to you than a help.”
Catherine glanced at his size 44 shoes and then at her size 37 feet—which Maxime now noted were covered in blood—and said, “That’s all right. Just get us out of here.” She kept her eyes on Maxime’s torso, clearly avoiding looking at the dead people surrounding them. The smell was gagging. Decaying bodies in humid air would get to anyone. Maxime had been breathing through his mouth since he got there.
The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery Page 20