by Joël Dicker
To Robert she replied simply: “Let’s just say I left him a message he won’t forget.”
Sitting in the back of Clark’s, I listened, entranced, to Robert Quinn’s story.
“So it was your wife who wrote the message on the mirror?”
“Yup. She became obsessed with Harry Quebert. All she ever talked about was that note. She said she was going to use it to bring him down forever. She said that soon the newspapers would all announce: THE GREAT WRITER IS A BIG PERVERT. In the end she told Chief Pratt about it. About two weeks after the gala. She told him everything.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He hesitated for a second before replying. “I know because . . . it was Nola who told me.”
Tuesday, August 5, 1975
It was 6 p.m. when Robert got home from the glove factory. As always he parked his old Chrysler in the driveway, then, having turned off the engine, he adjusted his hat in the rearview mirror and made the look that the actor Robert Stack used to make when his character Eliot Ness was getting ready to beat the crap out of some mobsters. He often procrastinated like this before getting out of the car; for a long time now he had not looked forward to entering his own house. Sometimes he took a detour on the way home; sometimes he stopped to buy ice cream. When he had finally managed to drag himself out of the vehicle, he seemed to hear a voice calling him from behind the bushes. He turned, looked around, and then noticed Nola, hidden among the rhododendrons.
“Nola?” Robert said. “Hey, sweetie, how are you?”
“I have to talk to you, Mr. Quinn,” she whispered. “It’s very important.”
“Come in then,” he said, his voice still at a normal volume. “I’ll make you some nice cold lemonade.”
She shushed him, then said, “No, we need to find somewhere to talk. Could we get in your car and drive for a while? How about we go to the hot dog stand on the Montburry road. No one would bother us there.”
Although surprised by this, Robert did not refuse. They got into the car and drove toward Montburry, stopping after a few miles in front of the hot dog stand. Robert bought fries and a soda for Nola, a hot dog and a nonalcoholic beer for himself. They sat at one of the picnic tables on the grass.
“So what’s up, kiddo?” Robert asked. “What can be so serious that you can’t even come in the house to talk about it over a glass of lemonade?”
“I need your help, Mr. Quinn. I know this is going to seem strange to you, but . . . something happened at Clark’s today, and you’re the only person who can help me.”
Nola then described the scene she had witnessed two hours earlier. She had gone to see Mrs. Quinn at Clark’s to pick up her pay for the Saturdays she had worked before her suicide attempt. It was Mrs. Quinn herself who had told Nola she could come anytime she liked. The only people in the restaurant were a few customers eating in silence and Jenny, who was busy putting away dishes and who told Nola that her mother was in her office, without thinking to make it clear that she was not alone. The office was the place where Tamara Quinn did her accounts, put the day’s take into her safe, shouted into the telephone at suppliers who were late with their deliveries, or simply locked herself in with made-up excuses whenever she wanted some peace. It was a small room, the door to which was nearly always closed and was marked PRIVATE. To get to it you went down the service corridor that led from the back room to the employees’ bathroom.
As she reached the door and prepared to knock, Nola heard voices. There was someone in the room with Tamara. She could tell it was a man. She put her ear close to the door and heard a snippet of conversation.
“He’s a criminal,” Tamara said. “Maybe even a sexual predator. You have to do something.”
“Are you sure it was Harry Quebert who wrote this note?”
Nola recognized Chief Pratt’s voice.
“Absolutely certain,” Tamara replied. “Written in his own hand. He has designs on the young Kellergan girl, and he’s writing pornographic filth about her. You have to do something.”
“Okay. You did the right thing by contacting me about this. But you entered his house illegally, and you stole this piece of paper. I can’t do anything about it for the moment.”
“So you’re just going to wait until that maniac hurts the girl?”
“I said nothing of the sort. I’m going to keep an eye on Quebert. In the meantime, keep this note safe. I can’t take it. I could get in trouble for it.”
“I’ll keep it in this safe,” Tamara said. “No one else has access to it. It will be perfectly secure. But please, Chief, you have to do something. That Quebert’s a criminal and a piece of shit!”
“Don’t worry. You’ll see how we deal with guys like that around here.”
Nola heard footsteps and instantly fled the restaurant.
• • •
Poor little girl, Robert thought, upon hearing Nola’s account. It must have come as a shock to learn that Harry had these fantasies about her. She had needed to confide in someone, so she came to find him; he had to prove himself worthy of her trust and explain things to her, tell her that men were strange creatures, Harry Quebert in particular, and that she must keep her distance from him and call the police if she ever felt afraid he was going to hurt her. But what if he had already hurt her? Did she need to tell him that she had been abused? Was he up to dealing with such a revelation—he who, according to his wife, did not even know how to set the dinner table properly? Chewing his hot dog, he tried to come up with some comforting words, but just as he was preparing to speak, Nola told him:
“Mr. Quinn, you have to help me get hold of that piece of paper.”
He almost choked.
“You can imagine how I felt,” Robert Quinn said to me in Clark’s. “I could hardly believe my ears. She wanted me to get that damn note for her. Would you like another beer?”
“That would be great, thanks. By the way, would you mind if I recorded this?”
“You want to record me? Go ahead. That’s no more strange than the idea that anyone would have any interest in what I have to say.”
He hailed the waiter and ordered two more beers. I took the recorder out of my pocket and pressed Record.
“So you were sitting outside the hot dog stand and she asked you for help,” I prompted him.
“Yes. Apparently my wife was willing to do anything to destroy Harry Quebert. And Nola was willing to do anything to protect him. That conversation came as such a shock to me. That was how I learned there really was something between Nola and Harry. I remember the sparkle in her eyes when she told me. I said, ‘What do you mean, get hold of that piece of paper?’ ‘I love him,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want him to get in trouble. He only wrote that note because I attempted suicide. It’s all my fault—I should never have tried to kill myself. I love him. He’s everything I have, everything I could ever dream of having.’ And we had this conversation about love. ‘So you mean that you and Harry Quebert, you . . .’ ‘We love each other!’ ‘Love? What are you talking about? You can’t love him!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because he’s too old for you.’ ‘Age doesn’t matter.’ ‘Of course it matters!’ ‘Well, it shouldn’t.’ ‘Look, this is just how it is: A young girl of your age should have nothing to do with a guy of his age.’ ‘I love him!’ ‘Stop saying that. Eat your fries.’ ‘But Mr. Quinn, if I lose him, I lose everything!’ It was incredible: That girl was madly in love with Harry. What she felt for him was something I had never felt myself, or I couldn’t remember ever having felt, for my own wife. And it was at that moment that I realized, thanks to a fifteen-year-old girl, that I had probably never been in love. That lots of people have never been in love. That they make do with good intentions; that they hide away in the comfort of a crummy existence and shy away from that amazing feeling that is probably the only thing that justifies being alive. A cousin of mine, who lives in Boston, works in fina
nce. He earns a fortune, he’s married, three kids, beautiful wife, beautiful car. The perfect life, right? One day he goes home and tells his wife he’s leaving—he’s fallen in love with a Harvard student he met at a conference, a girl young enough to be his daughter. Everyone said he’d lost his mind, that he was having a midlife crisis, but I think he simply found love. People think they love each other, so they get married. And then one day they discover real love, without meaning to or even realizing it. It hits them right between the eyes. It’s like hydrogen coming into contact with air: There’s a huge explosion, and everything gets destroyed. Thirty years of frustrated marriage blown to pieces in a single second, as if a gigantic septic tank, brought to boiling point, explodes, splattering filth all around it. The midlife crisis, the seven-year itch—call it what you want. For me, those are just people who grasp the scale of true love too late, and their life is overturned as a result.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“For Nola? I refused. I told her I didn’t want to get mixed up in this thing, and that I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. I told her the letter was in the safe, and that the only key that opened it hung on a chain around my wife’s neck, day and night. There was nothing to be done. She begged me; she said that if the police got their hands on that note, Harry would get into serious trouble, that his career would be wrecked, that he would maybe even go to prison, when he hadn’t done anything wrong. I remember the fire in her eyes, the way she spoke, her body language . . . the passion she felt for him was so intense. I remember she said to me: ‘They’re going to ruin everything, Mr. Quinn! The people of this town are completely crazy! It reminds me of that play we read in school by Arthur Miller, The Crucible. Have you read it?’ Her eyes became wet with tiny tears, about to overflow and stream down her cheeks. I had read that play. I remember the fuss when it opened on Broadway, right in the middle of the Rosenberg affair. It gave me shivers at the time because the Rosenbergs had young kids too, and I remember wondering what would happen to Jenny if I were executed. I felt so relieved that I wasn’t a Communist.”
“Why did Nola come to you about this?”
“Probably because she imagined I had access to the safe. But that wasn’t the case. As I said, my wife was the only person with a key. She kept it on a chain around her neck, dangling between her breasts. And I had not had access to her breasts for a long time.”
I ignored this. “So what happened?”
“Nola flattered me. She said: ‘You’re so clever. You’ll find a way.’ So I ended up agreeing. I told her I would try.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why? Because of love. As I said, she was only fifteen, but she told me about things that I had never known and that I probably will never know. Even if, truth be told, her affair with Harry made me want to throw up. I did it for her, not for him. And I asked her how she intended to deal with Chief Pratt. Because, proof or no proof, Chief Pratt now knew everything. She looked me in the eyes and said: ‘I’m going to stop him from getting involved. I’m going to make him a criminal.’ At the time I didn’t understand what she meant. And then when Pratt was arrested this summer, I realized what she meant.”
Wednesday, August 6, 1975
Without discussing it, both Nola and Robert took action the day after their conversation. Around 5 p.m., in a Concord pharmacy, Robert Quinn bought sleeping pills. At the same moment, in the police station, Nola was on her knees in Chief Pratt’s office, attempting to protect Harry by turning Pratt into a criminal, setting off what would become for him a thirty-three-year downward spiral.
That night Tamara slept like a log. After dinner she was so tired that she went to bed without even removing her makeup. She collapsed in a heap on the bed and fell into a deep sleep. It happened so quickly that Robert briefly feared he might have put too strong a dose in her glass of water and accidentally killed her, but he was immediately reassured by the magnificent snores that escaped his wife’s open mouth every seven seconds. He waited until after midnight before acting: He had to be sure that Jenny was asleep, and that no one would see him in town. When the time came, he gave his wife a good shake to make sure she was definitely asleep. He was very happy when she didn’t stir. For the first time he felt powerful: The dragon, sprawled on her mattress, no longer frightened anyone. He unhooked the chain from around her neck and triumphantly took the key. Since he was down there anyway, he squeezed and fondled her breasts, but he noticed with regret that this had no effect on him whatsoever.
He left the house without making a noise, then borrowed his daughter’s bicycle so as not to risk someone hearing his car. Pedaling through the night, the keys to Clark’s and to the safe in his pocket, he felt a rising excitement at the prospect of breaking the rules. He no longer knew whether he was doing this to help Nola or to annoy his wife. And he felt so free on this bicycle, riding fast across town, that he decided to divorce Tamara. Jenny was now an adult; there was no longer any reason for him to stay with his wife. He’d had enough of that damn harpy; he wanted a new life. He deliberately took a few wrong turns in order to prolong this heady feeling. When he got to the main street, he walked his bike so he would have time to look around. The town was sleeping peacefully. There was no light and no noise. He leaned his bike against a wall, opened the door to Clark’s, and crept inside, the restaurant illuminated only by streetlights whose glare filtered through the windows. He reached the office—the office he had never been allowed to enter without the permission of his wife. Well, now he was the master. He violated its borders, he invaded its space; it became conquered territory. He turned on the flashlight he had brought and began by exploring the files on the shelves. He had been dreaming of searching through this place for years. What could his wife be hiding here? He grabbed various folders and skimmed their contents, surprising himself when he realized he was looking for love letters. He thought his wife was probably cheating on him. How could she make do with only him? But all he found were purchase orders and balance sheets. So he moved on to the safe. It was made of steel and must have been at least three feet tall, mounted on a wooden pallet. He slid the key into the lock, turned it, and shivered as he heard the mechanism click into place. He pulled open the heavy door and pointed the flashlight beam inside. The safe consisted of four shelves. This was the first time he had seen it open; he was trembling with excitement.
On the first shelf he found bank documents, the latest invoices, payment receipts, and employee pay slips.
On the second shelf he found a tin box containing Clark’s change fund and another containing the small amount of cash necessary to pay suppliers.
On the third shelf he found a piece of wood that looked like a bear. He smiled. It was the first present he had given to Tamara, from the first time they had really gone out together. He had carefully prepared for that moment for weeks beforehand, putting in extra hours at the gas station where he worked to pay for his studies so he could take his Tammy to one of the best restaurants in the area, Chez Jean-Claude, a French place where supposedly the lobster was to die for. He had studied the menu and worked out exactly how much it would cost him if she ordered the most expensive dishes; he had saved up until he had that much money, and then he had invited her. That night, when he picked her up from her parents’ house and told her where they were going, she had begged him not to break the bank for her. “Oh, Robert, you’re so sweet. But it’s too much—it really is,” she had said. And to persuade him to give up his plan, she had suggested they go to a little Italian restaurant in Concord that she had long been tempted by. They had eaten spaghetti, they had drunk Chianti and the house grappa, and, slightly intoxicated, they had gone to a nearby carnival. On the way home they had stopped by the ocean and waited for sunrise. Walking along the beach, he had found a piece of wood that resembled a bear and had given it to her when she held him tight in the first rays of dawn. She had said she would always keep it, and she had kissed him f
or the first time.
Continuing his exploration of the safe, Robert was touched to find, next to the piece of wood, a number of photographs of himself taken throughout the years. On the back of each Tamara had scribbled a few annotations, even for the most recent ones. The latest was from April, when they had gone to a horse race. It was of Robert, binoculars to his eyes, narrating the action. On the back Tamara had written: My Robert, still in love with life. I will love him until my dying breath.
In addition to the photographs, there were mementos of their life together: their wedding invitation, Jenny’s birth announcement, vacation snapshots, little things he had thought had been thrown away years ago: cheap gifts, a plastic brooch, a souvenir ballpoint pen, and those snake-shaped paperweights he had bought on a vacation in Canada and that had earned him nothing but an acerbic telling off: “For God’s sake, Bobbo, what were you thinking, buying such crap? What am I supposed to do with them?” And yet here they were, kept like sacred objects in this safe. Robert began to think that what his wife kept hidden here was her heart. And he wondered why.
On the fourth shelf he found a thick, leather-bound notebook, which he opened: Tamara’s journal. His wife kept a journal. He had never known. He opened it at random and read by flashlight:
January 1, 1975
Celebrated New Year’s Eve at the Richardsons’.
Rating, 1 to 10: 5. Food wasn’t great, and the Richardsons are boring people. I had never noticed that before. I think New Year’s Eve is a good test to find out which of your friends are boring. Bobbo quickly saw that I was bored, and he tried to entertain me. He clowned around, telling jokes and pretending to make the crab on his plate talk. How the Richardsons laughed! Paul Richardson even got up from the table to note down one of Bobbo’s jokes. He said he wanted to make sure he remembered it. As for me, all I managed to do was argue with Bobbo. In the car on the way home, I said terrible things. I said: “Nobody thinks your jokes are funny. They’re in bad taste. You’re pathetic. Who asked you to play the fool? You’re an engineer in a big factory, aren’t you? So talk about your job, show them you’re someone serious and important. You’re not in the circus, for God’s sake!” He replied that Paul had laughed at his jokes, and I told him to shut up. I said I didn’t want to hear him speak anymore.