The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel

by Joël Dicker

  When Luther left the Smiths’ house, he turned around to look at it several times. On the porch, illuminated by streetlights, he could see Eleanore waving good-bye. After that he walked along Lincoln Road, a poorly lit street that was usually deserted at that time of night. It was the shortest route home; he had a three-mile walk ahead of him. A car passed, the beam of its headlights illuminating the road ahead. Soon afterward a second vehicle passed by at high speed. Its occupants yelled through the open window to frighten him. Luther did not react, and the car stopped dead in the middle of the street, about fifty feet ahead of him. He kept walking—what else could he do? Should he have crossed to the other side of the road? When he went past the car, the driver called out to him: “Hey, you! You from around here?”

  “Yes,” Luther replied.

  They threw beer in his face.

  “Fucking redneck!” the driver yelled.

  The passengers shouted at him too. There were four of them in all, but in the darkness Luther couldn’t make out their faces. He guessed they were young—between twenty-five and thirty—and they were clearly drunk and aggressive. He kept walking, his heart pounding. He wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t want any trouble.

  “Hey, redneck!” the driver yelled again. “Where’re you going?”

  Luther sped up.

  “Hey, come back! Come back here, and we’ll show you how we deal with little shits like you.”

  Luther heard the car doors open and the driver shout: “Gentlemen, let the redneck hunt begin! A hundred dollars for whoever catches him.” Luther started running as fast as he could, praying that another car would pass. But there was no one to save him. One of his pursuers caught him and threw him to the ground, yelling to the others: “I’ve got him! I’ve got him! The hundred dollars is mine!” They all rushed up to Luther and began beating him. While he was stretched out on the ground, one of his attackers said, “Who wants to play some football? I suggest we practice field goals!” The others cheered and lined up, one by one, to kick his head with incredible force. When everyone had taken his turn, they left him for dead on the roadside. Forty minutes later he was found by a passing motorcyclist, who called for an ambulance.

  “After a few days in a coma, Luther woke up with his face completely smashed up,” Sylla explained. “He went through several operations to reconstruct his face, but the plastic surgeons never managed to give him back his former appearance. He was in the hospital for two months. When he came out he was condemned to live with a twisted face and a severe speech impediment. He didn’t go to Vietnam, of course, but he no longer did anything else either. He stayed in the house all day long, in a deep depression. He didn’t paint; he had no plans. After six months Eleanore broke off their engagement. She even left Portland. And who could blame her? She was eighteen years old, and she had no desire to sacrifice her life so she could look after Luther, who had become a miserable shadow of his former self.”

  “What about his attackers?” Gahalowood asked.

  “They were never found. Apparently they had done the same thing to others in the area. But Luther was in a more serious condition than their other victims: He almost died. It was all over the press, and the police were after them. So after that they must have given up on their hobby. I imagine they were afraid of being caught.”

  “And what happened to your brother afterward?”

  “Luther haunted the family home for two years. He was like a ghost. He didn’t do anything anymore. My father stayed in his warehouse as late as possible each day, and my mother spent all her days out of the house. Those two years were really hard. And then, one day in 1966, someone rang our doorbell.”

  1966

  He hesitated before unlocking the front door; he hated other people seeing him. But he was the only one home, and it might be important. He opened the door and found, standing in front of him, a very elegant-looking man in his thirties.

  “Hello,” the man said. “I’m sorry to disturb you like this, but my car has broken down. You don’t happen to know a mechanic, do you?”

  “Vat dependv,” Luther replied.

  “It’s nothing serious. Just a flat tire. But I can’t get my jack to work.”

  Luther agreed to take a look. The car was a luxury coupe, parked on the roadside three hundred feet from the house. A nail had pierced the front right tire. The jack was sticking because it needed grease, but Luther was able to get it working and to change the tire.

  “I’m impressed,” the man said. “I was lucky to find you. What’s your line of work? Are you a mechanic?”

  “No. I don’t do anyfing. I ufed to paint. But I had an acfident.”

  “So how do you make a living?”

  “I don’t make a living.”

  The man looked at Luther and offered his hand.

  “My name is Elijah Stern.”

  “Lufer Caleb.”

  “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Luther. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  The two men looked at each other for a moment. Finally Stern asked the question that had been nagging at him ever since Luther had opened the door of the house.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked.

  “Have you heard of ve Field Goalv Gang?”

  “No.”

  “Some guyv who ufed to attack people for ve pleavure. Vey kicked veir victimv in ve head av if it wav a football.”

  “Oh, my God, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

  Luther shrugged, fatalistic.

  “My advice is not to give up on life,” Stern said, smiling. “How would you like a job? I’m looking for someone to look after my cars and to be my chauffeur. I like you, Luther. If you’d be willing to work for me, the job is yours.”

  One week later, Luther moved to Concord.

  Sylla thought that Stern had been heaven-sent.

  “Thanks to Elijah Stern, Luther became someone again,” she told us. “He had a job, he was earning money. It put some meaning back into his life. And best of all, he started painting again. He and Stern got along very well; Luther was not only his chauffeur, but also his right-hand man. Almost a friend, in fact. Stern had just taken over his father’s business; he was living alone in a house that was much too big for him. I think he was glad to have Luther’s company. They were very close. Luther stayed in his service for the next nine years. Until he died.”

  “Mrs. Mitchell,” said Gahalowood, “how was your relationship with your brother?”

  She smiled. “He was such a special person. He was so gentle! He loved flowers, he loved art. He should never have ended up a limousine driver. Not that I have anything against chauffeurs, but Luther was very special. He often came to have lunch with us on Sundays. He would arrive in the morning, spend the day with us, and go back to Concord in the evening. I loved those Sundays, particularly when he started painting again. His old room was transformed into a studio. He had great talent. As soon as he started drawing, this incredible beauty seemed to radiate from him. I used to sit in a chair behind him and watch him work. I watched him draw lines that initially seemed chaotic but that gradually formed scenes of staggering realism. At first it would look like he was just scribbling, and then suddenly an image would appear among all those lines until finally every line became part of a whole. It was incredible, watching that happen. I told him he had to keep drawing, that he should think again about going to art school, that he should exhibit his paintings. But he didn’t want to do that anymore. Because of his face, because of the way he spoke. Because of everything. Before the attack he used to say he painted because it was inside him. When he finally started painting again, after the attack, he said he did it to feel less lonely.”

  “Can we see some of his paintings?” Gahalowood said.

  “Yes, of course. My father put together a sort of collection, made up of all the paintings left in Portland and those t
aken after Luther’s death from his room on Stern’s property. He said that one day we could give them to a museum. But all he did in the end was keep them in crates. I have them all now that my parents are dead.”

  Sylla led us to the basement, where one room was filled with large wooden crates. There were several large paintings as well as sketches and drawings piled up between the frames. The sheer number of pictures was impressive.

  “Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said. “There’s no order to the pictures, but they all make me remember Luther, so I haven’t dared throw anything away.”

  Rummaging through the pictures, Gahalowood uncovered a painting of a young blond girl.

  “That’s Eleanore,” Sylla said. “Those paintings are from before the attack. He loved to paint her. He said he could paint her all his life.”

  Eleanore was a pretty young blonde with one intriguing detail: she looked strikingly similar to Nola. There were many other portraits of different women, all of them blond, and the dates indicated they were all painted after the attack.

  “Who are all these other women?” Gahalowood asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sylla said. “They probably just came from Luther’s imagination.”

  It was then that we came upon a series of charcoal sketches. In one of them I thought I recognized the inside of Clark’s, with a beautiful but sad young woman standing at the counter. The resemblance to Jenny was stunning, but I thought it was a coincidence. Until, turning over the sketch, I found an inscription: Jenny Quinn, 1974.

  “Why was your brother obsessed with painting all these blond women?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sylla said. “Honestly.”

  Gahalowood gave her a gentle, serious look, and said, “Mrs. Mitchell, it’s time you told us why, on the evening of August 31, 1975, your father said he thought Luther had done ‘something terrible.’”

  She nodded.

  August 31, 1975

  At nine that morning, as Jay Caleb hung up the telephone, he realized that something was terribly wrong. Elijah Stern had just told him that Luther was on vacation for an indeterminate length of time.

  “What did he tell you exactly?” he’d asked Stern.

  “He said he would probably have to stop working for me. That was two days ago.”

  “Stop working for you? But why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you would know.”

  Jay now picked up the phone again so he could call the police. But he never dialed the number, feeling a strange foreboding.

  Nadia, his wife, burst into the office. “What did Stern say?” she said.

  “That Luther resigned on Friday.”

  “Resigned? Why on earth would he do that?”

  Jay sighed. He was exhausted after his largely sleepless night.

  “I have no idea,” he replied. “I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t understand anything . . . I need to go look for him.”

  “Where, though?”

  He shrugged. He didn’t have the faintest idea.

  “Stay here,” he told Nadia, “in case he shows up. I’ll call you as often as I can to check in.”

  He grabbed the keys to his pickup truck and set off, without even knowing where to begin. He finally decided to go to Concord. He hardly knew the town, and crisscrossed it blindly; he felt lost. Several times he drove past a police station. He would have liked to stop there and ask for help, but each time he considered this, something held him back. In the end he went to see Elijah Stern. But Stern was away, and it was one of the housekeeping staff who led Jay to his son’s room. Jay had been hoping that Luther had left a message, but he found nothing. The room looked normal in every way: There was no clue to why he’d suddenly taken off.

  “Did Luther say anything to you?” Jay asked the maid.

  “No. I haven’t been here for the last few days, but I’ve heard that Luther isn’t coming back for a while.”

  “What does that mean? Has he resigned or just taken some vacation time?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, sir.”

  It was strange, all this confusion surrounding Luther. Jay was now convinced that something serious must have happened to make his son disappear like this. He left Stern’s estate and went back to town. He stopped at a restaurant for a sandwich and to call his wife. Nadia told him that there was no news. He skimmed the newspaper while he ate. The biggest story was the incident with the young girl in Somerset.

  “What’s this about a disappearance?” he asked the restaurant manager.

  “Bad news . . . It happened in a little town about an hour from here. Some poor woman was murdered, and a fifteen-year-old girl was kidnapped. Police all over the state are searching for her.”

  “How do I get to Somerset from here?”

  “Take Route 4 east. When you get to the ocean, follow Shore Road south, and you’ll be there.”

  Jay Caleb headed to Somerset. On Shore Road he was stopped twice by police roadblocks. Then, reaching the Side Creek forest, he was able to see the scale of the search: dozens of emergency vehicles, policemen everywhere, dogs barking, people shouting. He drove into the center of town, and just after the marina he stopped in front of a diner on the main street. The place was packed. He went in and sat at the counter. A beautiful young blond woman served him coffee. For a fraction of a second he thought he knew her. But how was that possible? This was the first time in his life he’d ever been there. He looked at her, she smiled, and then he noticed her name badge: JENNY. And suddenly he understood: the woman in Luther’s charcoal sketch that he loved so much . . . it was her! He remembered the inscription on the back of the sketch: Jenny Quinn, 1974.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Jenny asked. “You look a little lost.”

  “I . . . It’s terrible, what happened here.”

  “Tell me about it! They still don’t know what’s happened to the girl. And she’s so young! Only fifteen. I know her pretty well—she works here on Saturdays. Her name is Nola Kellergan.”

  “What . . . what did you say?” Jay stammered, hoping he had misheard.

  “Nola. Nola Kellergan.”

  Hearing that name for the second time, he felt shaky. He thought he was going to puke. He had to get away from here. Far away. He left a bill on the counter and fled.

  • • •

  As soon as he entered the house, Nadia could see that her husband was upset. She moved toward him, and he practically collapsed into her arms.

  “My God, Jay, what is it?”

  “Remember when Luther and I went fishing a few weeks ago?”

  “Yes. You caught those black bass that turned out to be inedible. Why?”

  It was August 10. Luther had arrived in Portland the evening before, and they had agreed to go fishing early the next morning at a small lake. It was a beautiful day, the fish were biting, and they had chosen a particularly quiet area with no one around to disturb them. The two men had drunk beer and talked about their lives.

  “Vere’v fomefing I have to tell you, Dad,” Luther had said. “I’ve met an amaving woman.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean it. She’ve not like anyone elfe I’ve ever known. I’m in love wiv her, and she lovef me too. She told me fo. I’ll introdufe you to her one day. I’m fertain you’ll really like her.”

  Jay had smiled.

  “Does this young lady have a name?”

  “Nola, Dad. Her name iv Nola Kellergan.”

  Recalling that day now, Jay Caleb explained to his wife: “Nola Kellergan is the name of the girl from Somerset who disappeared. I’m afraid Luther has done something terrible.”

  Sylla came home just at that moment. She heard what her father said. “What does that mean?” she demanded. “What has Luther done?” Her father explained the situation to her, then ordered her not to tell anyone.
No one must make the connection between Luther and Nola. Jay spent the whole next week searching for his son: He roamed all over Maine, then up and down the coast from Canada to Massachusetts. He checked out the kind of places—lakes and cabins—that his son loved. He thought perhaps he had panicked and gone into hiding in one of those out of the way spots, hunted like an animal by police from all over the country. But he found no trace of him. Every night he waited for him, listening for the faintest sound. When the police called to announce Luther’s death, Jay seemed almost relieved. He insisted that his wife and daughter never speak of this again, so that the memory of his son would remain unsullied.

  When Sylla had finished her account, Gahalowood asked: “Are you telling us you think your brother had something to do with Nola’s abduction?”

  “Let’s just say he behaved strangely with women. He loved to paint them. Especially blondes. I know he sometimes drew them without their knowledge, hiding while he observed them. I never understood why he did that. So yes, I think something might have happened between my brother and that girl. My father thought Luther must have lost control of himself, that she rejected him and he killed her. When the police called to tell us he was dead, my father wept for a long time. But through his tears I heard him say: ‘It’s better this way. If I’d found him, I think I might have killed him, so he wouldn’t end up on death row.’”

  Gahalowood glanced around again at Luther’s belongings and noticed a notebook. He opened it.

  “Is this your brother’s handwriting?”

  “Yes. Those are instructions for pruning roses. He took care of the roses at Stern’s place. I don’t know why I kept this notebook.”

  “Can I take it?” Gahalowood asked.

  “Yes, of course. But I doubt it will help much with your investigation. I’ve looked through it: It’s all about gardening.”

  Gahalowood nodded. “I’m going to have to get a handwriting analysis done,” he said.