“As I say, I’ve only been in Paris with Robert once, and I have no memory of a restaurant called Au Bon Coin, or walking along a street called Rue Mouffetard, some sort of market street, I gather, but I keep a journal when I’m traveling—the same book contains all my travel experiences—so after Robert’s funeral I dug it out and found the trip to Paris. With the help of this journal I could remember and reconstruct everything about that trip, including meeting the nice American girl who asked Robert if he knew the French word for ‘quiche.’ I had to stop him making fun of her. And there was no dinner at Au Bon Coin. No, sir. Dinner was accounted for every night, the name of the restaurant, even what we ate and if we liked it. And both times we stayed a long way away from that Métro station, at a hotel called Hôtel des Balcons on the Left Bank. There, see. Even now, I don’t have to look it up. I remember. Paris was like that.
“More coffee? No? So from being frightened, I now started to be worried. What was going on? I can tell you my mind touched on all kinds of possibilities. I mean you never really know anyone, do you? I mean, if other people knew what was going on inside our heads, we’d all be arrested, or at least very hard to live with, I ’ve often thought that. So—do you remember that Ingrid Bergman movie about a man who was trying to drive his wife mad so he could get her money? I don’t have any money, of course, but it did occur to me that maybe he wanted to be free of me and was starting some sort of campaign. I mean, once you realise you don’t know all about someone you’ve lived with for twenty years, there might be a lot of things you don’t know. All the rest of the stuff in his head, or his psyche, I guess.
“Luckily, I woke up very clear-headed one morning and realized that if I went on like this I would go mad. So I decided to find out. How? First, I thought, I would fly to Paris, and see if the actual restaurant would bring back memories.”
“You flew to Paris?”
“No, dear, I thought of it, but then I had an idea for a simpler and cheaper way. I found a detective agency in Paris that could make my enquiries for me. You know how distinctive Robert was in appearance. He shaved his head when he started to go bald, and that along with the new goatee and the gold earring he put in when he got his Ph.D. made his appearance at least memorable, if not as distinguished as he hoped, so I dug out a couple of recent pictures of him and e-mailed them to the agency with some instructions. I told them to find out if any of the waiters remembered seeing Robert lately, and who was with him. I suggested they could say he was wanted by the Toronto police, but they said that wouldn’t be necessary.
“It took them two days to reply, saying that all, my dear, all of the waiters as well as the cashier, who was the proprietor’s wife, remembered him, because of his appearance and his clumsy French. And they all remembered that his partner was an attractive woman of a certain age with pretty hair. That was a surprise, but I found a picture of who it might be and e-mailed it to the agency. Sure enough, I’d guessed right.
“Now there was just the mystery of the letter. How had he screwed up? Sit down for a minute, Daisy, I won’t be long.
“Robert may have seen himself as the suave adulterer—I think he did—but he was also an academic so he was a bit of a fusspot, especially, lately, around his computer. He had taken his laptop with him, of course, but I guessed that he had backed everything up, twice over, probably, so I set about looking through his files, you know, his backup discs, where he would have stored everything in case he lost his laptop. It took me a couple of days, but I found it eventually.
“I started searching with the name of the restaurant, Au Bon Coin, you remember? That was all I needed. I found the name mentioned in one letter, in the paragraph I just read to you, and then I had an idea. I found a phrase somewhere else in the letter that was very distinctive. Here it is: ‘I was reminded of a poem by Lamartine: “Le Lac.” ’ I searched for and found exactly the same phrase in two other letters to different people. So I started a real search and, to cut a long story short, I realized what he had been in the habit of, so to speak.”
Now Daisy spoke. “Sending the same letter to different people? Surely not. It must have been a glitch in his address book.”
“No, inserting the same travel-writing chunk in different letters. Harmless enough if he had more skill with his computer, and hadn’t been so obsessive about backing everything up. The thing is, along with the travel bit, he had screwed up and copied—highlighted, probably—more than he intended. Once you realized what he had done, you could see it all.”
Daisy said, “Is there a chance that all of his correspondents would have got the same message?”
“We’ll never know, will we? Let’s move on.”
“Did you kill him?”
“One step at a time. I didn’t mean to kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. It was an accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just wanted to land a symbolic blow before I kicked him out. It seemed appropriate. His field was the French Symbolistes, after all. So I waited until he put down his laptop—I wanted to hit him with that—that’s what I call symbolism—and I picked it up and swung it down on his head. The thing that killed him, though, according to the doctor, was hitting his head on the corner of the table as he went down. He was dead when the paramedics arrived. It was the hall table, not me. So it was accidental. That’s the verdict.”
“You meant to hit him, though.”
“Just symbolically.”
“What did you tell the police?”
“I said he tripped on the rug and hit his head on the table. They were very sympathetic.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Obviously, so that you will know. I think you ought to know how your little dalliance in Au Bon Coin ended.”
“Isn’t that a bit of a risk? If I take this story to the police?”
“Not much risk of that, is there? I’ll keep the letters on file. There’s the other story there, isn’t there, the one you wouldn’t want to share with anybody?”
Daisy stood up. “Robert told me all about you. I see now what he meant.”
“Did he? He didn’t say a word to me about you, and that’s rather the point, isn’t it?”
Copyright © 2011 by Eric Wright
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Fiction
The Last Days of The Hols
by Robert Barnard
In September of 2010, a large-print edition of Robert Barnard’s much-praised novel A Stranger in the Family (Scribner, June 2010) was released by the Wheeler Large Print Book Series. Also new from the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner is his podcast for EQMM of his story “Rogues’ Gallery” (March 2003), which can be accessed from iTunes, from PodOmatic (http://eqmm.podomatic.com), or from our website (www.the mysteryplace.com/eqmm).
Miss Trim, the English teacher and form mistress of 6A, looked around at the eleven-year-olds staring stolidly back at her. “The essay topic for your Easter break,” she said, then paused solemnly. She had begun to sense a giggle going through her class every time she set the inevitable “How I spent my school holidays” as the vacation task. This time they were going to get a surprise: “is ‘How I spent the last day of my holidays.’ ”
She was disappointed, because she sensed an identical giggle going around the class. She frowned like a disappointed fish, her protuberant eyes glaring through the rimless spectacles until she noticed that Morgan Fairclough was already setting down the odd note on a piece of rough paper. She did not ask herself how Morgan could be making notes for an essay on the last day of his holidays when the holiday had not yet begun. She approved of Morgan: solid and hard-working, though these virtues were tinged with arrogance when he talked to his less gifted classmates. But his estimable qualities were so much better than brilliance or flair that she looked forward to reading his account.
Morgan began his account two days after the day in question. He knew it was going t
o be hard to get the facts and angle right. He was, after all, the son of a writer. And he had to use mostly fact. There were still so many around who knew the facts: Mum, Deirdre, Timothy, Samantha . . .
Morgan licked the point of his Uniball and began.
HOW I SPENT THE LAST DAY OF MY HOLIDAYS
Morgan Fairclough, aged 11.
Please excuse all spelling mistakes. My dad has not tought me to use a dictionery as he promised to do in the holidays.
While she was clearing away breakfast things my Mum said: “Are you planning to have one almighty row over lunch, or would you prefer this time to have a series of minor explosions going off throughout the day?”
My father stretched, smiling a narsty smile.
“I think the latter, all things considered. Or maybe it would be fun to have no row at all. Have them waiting nervously all the time for something that never comes.”
“Oh, very suttle,” said my mother. “Anyone would think they were not family but enemies.”
“Can’t they be both? I must say that’s how I regard them.”
All this I’d heard over and over in previous years. By now it sounded rehearsed, like a play. One of my dad’s plays. Rows were an everyday occurrence in our house, and the terms of the rows never really altered.
“You only regard them as enemies because they’re my family,” said my Mum.
“They can be your family and still be your enemies,” said Dad. “In fact I remember when you and I were courting, you and Deirdre were constantly at each other’s throats. Both of you were feisty girls, after all.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous,” said Mum. “Of course I love Deirdre, and did then.”
But I noticed Mum disappeared into the kitchen and began the washing up. Running away from a fight—that’s how I saw it.
“Anyway,” said my mother ten minutes later, coming back with her arms white from soapsuds, “after all these yearly rows they won’t come expecting a good time.”
“I don’t know why we don’t stop asking them,” said Dad. “They don’t ask us to Greenacre Manor. Probably afraid we’ll use the wrong knives and forks.”
Deirdre’s husband Timothy had sold his father’s car hire companies when he inherited them and bought into traditional bricks and mortar, playing the squire to the point of ridiculousness (these are my dad’s words—he can be very spiteful). Uncle Timothy is Head of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC. Dad says his religion is tweed-suiting, pipe-smoking and Brideshead Revisited.
“I think you’re right,” said Mum. “Just make a row big enough to justify it and I’ll put my oar in and suggest we call it a day. It will follow naturally if we do that.”
“Hmmm. Not a bad idea,” said Dad. But I could tell he was having second thoughts about his proposal. He always gave the impression of enjoying himself in these annual rows, and I must admit I thought they were quite fun.
“I like Uncle Timothy,” I said. “Some of the things he says make me laugh.”
“They make me laugh, too,” said Dad. “Like his pretending to be still in love with Deirdre after all this time.”
“So the row is still on the schedule,” said my mother. “Is after the walk the best time for staging it? Because that’s what it is: a little play, stored away for when, if ever, you write your own Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf.”
“If that’s what I’m aiming for, the rows would have to be with you, Lois.”
“Well, God knows, you’ve had enough experience of them. Oh shit—that’s them now.”
My father cast an eye at the window, the Rolls outside, and the path that led from the front gate.
“Oh, God Almighty!”
For a household containing not one Beleiver we were very free with God’s name. When I wrenched my eyes away from Auntie Deirdre, who looked as if she was carrying a shopping basket in front of her under her dress, I caught a look on Dad’s face that was a mixture of relish and foreknowledge. He’d known in advance!
Exclamations took up the first two minutes of the visit.
“Well, this is a surprise!”
“Exactly what it was to us, too.”
“How far are you gone, Deirdre?”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Samantha, are you looking forward to having a brother or sister?”
This welcome on the front doormat was quite convincing. It was led by my Dad, who, being a playwrite of sorts, knew what people tended to say on all kinds of occasions. Mum hugged her sister, perhaps to hide the horrid display of jealousy on her face. Whatever Deirdre had, Mum had to be jealous of, even if she would have died rather than be pregnant again.
“No, we weren’t ‘trying,’ as they say,” said Deirdre, her voice high and a bit strident, “and yes we are delighted, the feetus is five months old, we’re doing all the right things that doctors and nurses recommend. All right? Sensation over?”
And she steamed ahead into the sitting room as if her shopping basket gave her all the rights of the lady of the house. There was a sparkle in her eye that suggested that she, like me, had something up her sleeve.
“Tim? What will you have?” gushed my father. “And Deirdre, what can you have?”
“I’ll risk a gin and tonic,” said Uncle Timothy. “We go on the principle of ‘one off, all off’ in our household, but I’m on leave at the moment. Deirdre will have pineapple juice, won’t you, darling?”
“Yes, darling, and so will you. The fact that we are away from our own household doesn’t let you off the ‘no alcohol’ regimen.”
Timothy sighed.
“I would swear if the children weren’t here. All my abstention valued as nothing if I have one little lapse.”
“Go away, children,” said Dad, waving an artistic hand towards the garden. “Your uncle doesn’t like being found out, Morgan.”
When we got outside in the hallway I put my finger to my lips and we listened for a minute or two to the conversation.
“So, then, you’re happy are you?” my father asked. “Not just putting a brave face on a nasty accident?”
“We’re over the moon! We talk baby talk all the time, and discuss colours for the nursery. We’re even more delighted than Samantha.”
“Maybe she’s too old to be totally pleased. At three—yes. At thirteen—no. They feel they’ll degenerate into the resident babysitter.”
“I didn’t realize you knew so much about growing families, Bernard.”
“I have a creative writer’s understanding of how people think and feel, Timothy.”
Same old dialogue. Dad, as a scriptwriter, ought to have been able to think up something better, or at least different. Samantha and I shook our heads and moved over towards the kitchen door, where Aunt Deirdre and Lois my Mum were well away.
“I’m not going to pretend it didn’t come as a shock,” said Auntie D. “We didn’t take out all our old Noddy books and Paddington Bears and look forward to reading them at bedtimes over and over again. But when all is said, Catholics are right about abortion. It is murder, and just thinking about it we felt like murderers. I’ve settled down to all the rules and the deprivations . . . This martini is heaven, though.”
“You’re a bit mean not letting Tim off his oath of abstention, I feel.”
“Timothy has nothing to complain of. Do you think he hasn’t got a cash of booze somewhere in the house, if only I could find it? . . . But really, sis, you ought to try a late pregnancy.”
“I can’t think of a single reason why I should.”
“You wouldn’t believe how different pregnancy is in the twenty-first century. And almost always for the better. We had Morgan and Samantha at pretty much the same time, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did. Almost as if there was some kind of competition.”
Deirdre waved away the suggestion with a well-manicured hand.
“Oh, we were silly about some things then. But pregnancy is not what it was—it’s easier, more straightforward. I tell you: you sh
ould try it.”
“Not on your life,” said Mum.
“Don’t you dare!” I shouted.
“Morgan—vamoose,” called Mum. “This is girls’ talk.”
We didn’t vamoose, and they started up again immediately. I waited until I was sick of the anatomical details (many of which I knew already) and I made off towards the garden. I was rather surprised (because I count her even lower than the earthworm) when Samantha followed me. She started in on why she had come out—she felt in a position to give advice.
“Don’t let my mum persuade yours to have another baby,” she said.
“She won’t,” I said dismissively. “I was more than enough for her.”
“I was quite pleased at first. Not delighted, but quite pleased. Then I thought that this is the age when I should be getting more freedom. What shall I get in fact?”
“Twenty-four-hour slavery.”
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