The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel

by Pryor, Mark

  “You think Lake’s persuaded him he’s innocent?”

  “Maybe. I doubt it, though.”

  Tom came back online. “Sorry about that. Now then, where were we?”

  “Senator Charles Lake,” Hugo said. “You were about to stop being an ass and tell us what the situation is there.”

  “The situation, yes. Well, that can be described quickly and easily. In two words, as a matter of fact.”

  Hugo felt a rock sinking in his chest. “What two words, Tom?”

  “Man overboard.”

  Hugo and Lieutenant Lerens exchanged glances.

  “Tell me you’re joking,” Hugo said.

  “Nope.”

  “He was right there with you, Tom, what the hell happened?”

  “Well, we were talking for a while. You know, me asking questions, him not really answering them.”

  “Jeez, Tom, tell me you didn’t . . .” Hugo didn’t believe Tom would harm the senator, but his methods had always been off the grid.

  “No, no. Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. I don’t kill US senators, Hugo, that would be insane. Not without written authorization, anyway, and who had time for that?”

  “So what happened?”

  “Hang on, I was going to ask how you knew he’d be on the boat.”

  “Lerens told me, but also something he said at that first formal dinner. He hated flying and had this romantic view of sea travel. Even dying at sea had romantic undertones for him. I’m sure he needed some time to think, to figure out what to do, and taking the Queen Mary fits his inclinations and his mindset perfectly.”

  “Shit, Hugo, you guessed he’d kill himself, didn’t you? That’s why you said it was a matter of life and death. His life and death.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Well, I didn’t throw him overboard.”

  “He jumped?”

  “Flying leap, actually.”

  “Are they looking for him?”

  “Yeah. I gave him a few minutes in the drink, had a poke around his cabin, then let the captain know. They dropped some boats to look but I can’t imagine they’ll find him.”

  “Why on earth did you wait?”

  “Dude, he wanted to go out with a splash. Sorry, didn’t mean . . . Anyway, he chose his exit and how frickin’ embarrassing for the guy if he makes this grand final gesture and we drag him out of the ocean soaking wet and gasping for air like a half-drowned kitten. Only for him to be slapped in the brig and taken back to France. And let me tell you, a French prison was absolutely the last thing that man wanted.”

  “I can see why,” Lerens said drily.

  “Precisely. And that’s why,” Tom went on, “if you’re about to ask, I didn’t try very hard to stop him. In his shoes I would have done the same. That and he’s a big dude, I didn’t want to be hanging onto his legs as he went over the balcony else I would have gone too. No thanks.”

  “So he admitted to killing Alexie Tourville?”

  “Oh yes, he most certainly did. Wouldn’t tell me why, though. Just sat there saying mean things about her.”

  “Did you record your conversation with him?”

  A slight pause. “Well, there’s the thing. I thought I had, using my phone. Turns out none of it recorded.”

  “That’s not good, Tom. Not good at all.”

  “It makes no fucking difference to anything, as it happens. He sat on the bed, cried, confessed, jumped off the balcony.”

  “OK, fine.” Hugo rubbed his forehead, trying to think through the fog of tiredness. “Did you call anyone else?”

  “No, sweetie, I always call you first. I expect the captain panicked and phoned everyone up his chain of command, so you might want to check the newspapers in a few minutes.”

  “Great. When we’re done, will you call the ambassador? We should tell him as soon as possible. There’s going to be a media shitstorm and he’ll appreciate a few minutes to pull on a coat and open his umbrella.”

  “Nice image. I sure will.”

  “Thanks. Hey, you said you’d searched the place. Before or after he jumped?”

  “Well, I didn’t have time before he showed up and he wasn’t wild about me poking through his stuff. He has this briefcase, he kept it locked and seemed very protective of it.”

  “You looked inside?”

  “Hugo, really? Are you serious? I mean to say, a representative of the people of our great nation tragically takes his own life in front of me, and you think I’m breaking the locks of his most personal and private possessions—”

  “Knock it off, Tom, what was in there?”

  “Hey, come on. What was in there will blow your socks off. In fact, if it’s what I think it is, it’ll make historians do strange things to each other before ending up on display in some museum in Paris.”

  “And that gives you the right to torture me a little?”

  “Yes, and here’s why. If you’d been here instead of me, you would have jumped on Lake and wrapped him up tight, stopped him from taking a leap from the ship. Then you would have catalogued and inventoried his belongings and waited for a search warrant or court order to open his briefcase. Which, by the way, would then have been in the custody of the French police or subject to an ever-lasting international dispute over jurisdiction. The briefcase would have sat in a large plastic bag, in a locked storage facility, and we’d spend the next two years wandering around guessing at why all this shit went down.”

  “Are you done?”

  “No. Now, instead of that nightmare taking place, I am able to decisively solve this bizarre crime and have the paperwork to back me up.”

  “Paperwork? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “OK, now I’m done. And yes, paperwork, because the only significant thing I found in his briefcase was a letter. A letter that was written in 1795.”

  Cher Monsieur,

  I hope this dispatch finds you in good health and, please, do forgive me for dispensing with further formalities but time presses in on me and I have come to think that perhaps more than one life depends on your receipt of, and trust in, my words. One life, for certain.

  I know that you left our shores perturbed by the bloodshed. More than perturbed, perhaps. You are not alone there, of course. But it has become increasingly clear to many here that we need the support and cooperation of your nation as we rebuild. You can be a model for us, and a source of very real sustenance and this is why many who now hold power here fear that you will cut all ties.

  This letter, and the small box that comes with it, are gestures of good faith, ones that I hope you will take as proof that the bloodshed is ended.

  You know of the young man to whom the hair belongs. He is a symbol for us because he has survived the killing and I hope that he is now a symbol to you, of our dedication to restore France to the civilized and respected nation you love. I cannot go into detail, for obvious reasons, but through friends we managed to take him safely from the temple and send him to the countryside to live with a loyal family. They even have a son of their own, he is the same age, so perhaps a friend.

  The sad news, though, is that he was not treated well in the temple and has been very ill. The young man looking after him has promised that he will travel to your shores with his family, and bring his new charge, as soon as he is well enough. For now, then, a chest containing his clothes, this letter, and a lock of his hair are all I can offer. And my promise. For these items come with a promise that he, a symbol of the old France you wanted to see changed, will live on and his life spared will be a symbol of the new France, one that has moved past violent times toward a new start, and a new partnership with your own young and great nation.

  This promise, mon cher Thomas, is made with my own blood.

  Your friend,

  Albert Pichon

  Lerens’s voice was barely a whisper. “The Dauphin. He’s talking about the son of Marie Antoinette.”

  Tom had photographed the letter and sent
it to their phones and they sat in Camille Lerens’s office reading and rereading it.

  “The letter, it was in the chest with the hair. That’s the missing piece we were looking for.” Hugo shook his head in wonder.

  “Merde. The Lost Prince,” Lerens said. “The Dauphin’s death has always been a mystery.”

  “Apparently a myth. He was locked away and official records said he died in the Temple prison in Paris in 1795, when he was ten. Tuberculosis, apparently, which was rampant back then, but a lot of people refused to believe the official version. They said he didn’t die at all, but was spirited away to safety and another child put in his place.” Hugo smiled. “Don’t look at me like that, I flicked through a book about her and King Louis just last week. Guess where?”

  “Don’t tell me it was while you were at Chateau Tourville.”

  “Good guess.” They acknowledged the significance with a shared look. “Anyway,” Hugo said, “I remember reading that a doctor assigned to treat him died under strange circumstances the week before the Dauphin’s alleged death, and the doctor’s widow said that he’d refused to take part in some irregular practice to do with the patient.”

  “Over the years several people have claimed to be descended from him, but no one’s had any proof. Until now.”

  “Right,” said Hugo. “This Pichon, he was planning to smuggle the Dauphin to America as a show of good faith, a royal life spared. He mentions the Temple, he’s referring to the tower of the Temple, the prison where Louis Charles was held until his supposed death. And remember, Marie Bassin, she told me her mother had mentioned the name Louis in connection with the chest. It must have been some kind of family story, a legend that seemed too outrageous to be true. One that even the Bassin family didn’t take seriously.”

  “Hugo, this is . . . incroyable.”

  “It is. Truly history.”

  “Who is the letter being sent to? He says, mon cher Thomas, but who would that be?”

  Hugo smiled. “That’s what makes this so remarkable. It was sent to the man who was the US minister to France from 1785 to 1789, the year the French Revolution started. That man was Thomas Jefferson.”

  Lerens shook her head and let out a low whistle.

  “If I remember my history correctly,” Hugo continued, “Jefferson was pretty much in favor of the French Revolution. He was hoping for a democracy to spring up but he got sick of the executions, he felt like people were being massacred for no reason. Or not good enough reason. Anyway, he left with a very sour taste in his mouth. You can see that from Pichon’s words.”

  “Saving the Dauphin, sending him to America . . .”

  “A show of good faith, indeed.”

  “And the family he was supposed to go with?”

  “The Bassins. I think he was spirited away to that house, the same one we visited.”

  “Alors, wait a moment,” Lerens said, sitting forward. “Did you say they left that place, and sailed via Marseilles to America?”

  “With one child.”

  “The letter,” Lerens furrowed her brow. “It said . . . there should have been two sons on board.”

  “Yeah. And we know from all this craziness that the Dauphin made it there. I can only think that the Bassins’ real son died. When that happened, I don’t know, maybe they decided to change the plan and keep Louis Charles as their own. That would explain the sudden move away from their home, the name changes, and the fact that Louis Charles was never known to have come to America.”

  “Because he came as the Bassins’ son, not as the deposed King of France.”

  “Right.” Hugo’s mind was racing, imagining the death of the young Bassin boy. “You know, Camille, and I don’t know if you’d want to do this but . . .” He trailed off.

  “What, Hugo?”

  “If we’re right that the Bassins’ son died. Well, they couldn’t tell anyone. They had to keep it a secret, right?”

  “Of course. Otherwise the switch with Louis Charles couldn’t have worked.”

  “Which means that . . .” Hugo sighed. “I think it’s likely the little boy was probably buried by his parents somewhere on the Bassin property. And all this stayed a secret, Camille, which means his grave is still there.”

  They assembled on the lawn behind the Bassins’ rambling house, forced to wait until Sunday morning because that was the soonest Georges Bassin could be there. Hugo had worried that their purpose might upset the church-attending Georges, but the old man had shaken his head and said no.

  “It may be a little gruesome,” Georges said, “but it’s necessary. And it strikes me that given what we’re doing, well, it’s perhaps appropriate to do it on the Lord’s day.”

  He’d consulted his sister Marie as soon as Hugo had called him to explain the situation, and they’d agreed, and informed the investigators, that there was only one place on the property a grave could be. Most of the land had been leased for years to neighboring farmers, ploughed, planted, and harvested over and over for decades. The only untouched, unmolested spot on the Bassin’s land was a stand of trees on the nub of a hill, half a mile from the house and at the intersection of three ancient footpaths. A stand of trees taking up a few thousand square feet, no more than that, and as far as George and Marie knew, pretty much untouched since the day their family moved in.

  Hugo stood with Georges on the lawn, looking over the open field toward the copse. They stood beside a bed of rose bushes, bare now and clipped, made ready for winter by the gardeners who tended them.

  “I bet this garden is something in the spring and summer,” Hugo said.

  “Certainement. I hope you’ll come back and see for yourself. The scent is sublime, and that little circle of grass in the middle has been a picnic spot for the Bassin children forever.”

  “The rose garden’s been here a long time?”

  “Long before I was born. It’s always been the pride and joy of our family’s matriarchs, and now that Marie plans to move in, I’m sure she’ll keep it that way.”

  A grumble of engines caught their attention, and they looked toward the driveway where a truck was coming to a stop with a backhoe in its trailer bed. Tom, Marie Bassin, and Camille Lerens looked as a tall woman climbed down from the cab of the truck.

  Jennifer Winkler was the prefecture’s leading forensic anthropologist, someone who’d worked with both Lerens and Raul Garcia in the past. Rail thin, she stalked toward them in khaki pants and matching jacket, a blue police cap on her head. She’d spent two days in the copse before summoning the investigators to brief them. And by briefing them here, Hugo assumed she’d found something.

  “Bonjour,” she said, as her audience closed in around her. “I’m Jennifer Winkler, as most of you know. I need to tell you what I’ve been doing and what I’ve found. Just don’t get your hopes up too high just yet, d’accord?”

  Hugo and several of the others nodded, waiting for her to continue.

  “You asked me to find a grave two hundred years old. There are a number of techniques I use to try to locate a burial that old. The first is ground penetrating radar, or GPR, but the results are often inconclusive or full of false positives.” She looked at Hugo. “The FBI doesn’t even use this technique any more, that’s how unreliable it is. I did use it here, only because the search area is small and therefore we can tolerate a few false positives. Now, another method is simply to walk the area and see if there are any signs on the ground surface.”

  “For a burial that old?” Georges Bassin asked.

  “Seems strange, but yes. The soil will settle over time and there can be a slight depression visible to a trained eye.” She shrugged. “Actually, you can see it yourself if you walk through a cemetery, just look for the depressions that often show up in front of the headstones. Of course, it’s harder here because there’s a lot of debris on the ground, sticks, branches, leaf litter. But with a small search area you just need to clear the area to see the ground surface. Questions?”

  “Yes,�
� said Lerens with a smile. “Did you find something?”

  “I’m getting there,” Winkler said. “The last method is to use a backhoe. We refer to it as ‘the forensic backhoe.’ Forensic anthropology joke, there. Anyway, we use that to slowly remove the soil, like they do at an archeological dig. We usually start by removing maybe six inches to a foot from the search area. It sounds clumsy, but a skilled backhoe driver can remove an inch of soil at a time if need be. Once the upper layers of soils are gone, that’s when the fun begins. That’s when you can sometimes see the burial shaft.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Georges Bassin. “Isn’t there just more soil there?”

  “Yes, of course, but the soil within the burial will be a different color and have a slightly different texture than the undisturbed surrounding soil. That difference may be very subtle, especially after so much time, but it will be there. As long as the area hasn’t been disturbed since the coffin was buried, of course.”

  “What would be left of the coffin, or skeleton?” Hugo asked.

  “Out here, and after two hundred years, the wood coffin will probably be gone.”

  “And the bones?” Hugo pressed.

  “Whether or not bones survive depends on the soil type and water drainage in the area. If you have an area that frequently floods or an area where the water table fluctuates, the bone would disintegrate faster. If the climate is relatively dry and/or the soil has good drainage, the bones could still be in great condition, you would be able to pick them up and they won’t fall apart in your hands. In fact, I’ve excavated burials that dated back to before Classical Greece—so around 550–500 BCE—and some were in great shape, while others turned to dust in your hands.”

  “The copse is pretty elevated,” Georges Bassin said.

  “It is,” Winkler agreed. “So I think we might be in luck, assuming we can find the right spot.”

  “And the odds of that?” Lerens asked.

  “Ah, yes. I apologize, I didn’t mean to toy with your hopes,” Winkler smiled. “But I think I already did. Shall we go dig?”