The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel

by Joël Dicker

  I don’t know why I have to be so nasty. I love him so much. He is so sweet and thoughtful. I don’t know why I behave so badly with him. Afterward I feel guilty and I hate myself, and then I treat him even more badly.

  But today is New Year’s Day, so I am making a resolution to change. Well, I make this resolution every year and never keep it. Dr. Ashcroft suggested I keep this journal. Maybe it’ll help me keep my resolutions. Nobody knows about Dr. Ashcroft. I would be so ashamed if anyone knew I was going to see a psychiatrist. People would say I was crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m suffering. I am suffering, but from what, I don’t know. Dr. Ashcroft says I have a tendency to destroy everything that’s good for me. He says I have a fear of death and that this is perhaps connected. All I know is that I’m suffering. And that I love my Robert. He is all I love. What would I be without him?

  Robert closed the journal, crying now. His wife had written what she had never been able to tell him. She loved him. She truly loved him. She loved only him. He thought that these were the most beautiful words he had ever read. He wiped his cheeks so his tears would not stain the pages, and kept reading. Poor Tamara, darling Tamara, suffering in silence. Why had she never told him about this Dr. Ashcroft? If she was suffering, he wanted to suffer with her; that was why he had married her. Sweeping the last shelf with the flashlight’s beam, he found Harry’s note and was brought back to reality with a bump. He remembered his mission; he remembered that his wife was sprawled out on her bed, in a drug-induced sleep, and that he had to get rid of this piece of paper. He suddenly felt bad about what he was doing. He was about to give up the idea when it occurred to him that getting rid of this letter might make his wife less obsessed with Harry Quebert and more concerned with him. He was the one who mattered; she loved him. This was what finally pushed him to take the note and to leave Clark’s in the silence of the night, having first made certain that he had left behind no trace of his trespass. He crossed the town on his bicycle, and, in a quiet back alley, he used his lighter to set fire to Harry Quebert’s words. He watched the piece of paper burn, turning brown and twisting up in a flame that flared up and slowly disappeared. Soon nothing remained of it. He went home, returned the key to its habitual place between his wife’s breasts, lay down next to Tamara, and embraced her for a long time.

  It took Tamara two days to realize that the note was no longer in the safe. She thought she was going crazy. She was certain she had put it there, and yet it was not there. Nobody could have gotten into the safe: she kept the key with her, and there hadn’t been a break-in. Had she mislaid it somewhere in the office? Had she unthinkingly stashed it away somewhere else? She spent hours searching the room, emptying and refilling folders, sorting through papers and filing them again, all in vain. That tiny piece of paper had mysteriously vanished.

  Robert Quinn told me that when Nola disappeared a few weeks later, his wife took it very badly.

  “She kept repeating that if she still had the note, the police would be able to investigate Harry. And Chief Pratt told her that without that piece of paper, he couldn’t do anything. She said to me over and over again: ‘It’s Quebert, it’s Quebert! I know it, you know it, we all know it. You saw that note as well as I did.’”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police what you knew?” I asked. “Why not say that Nola came to find you and that she told you about Harry? Wasn’t that worth investigating?”

  “I wanted to. I was torn. Could you turn off your recorder, Mr. Goldman?”

  “Of course.”

  I turned off the device and put it back in my bag.

  He went on. “When Nola disappeared, I blamed myself. I regretted burning the piece of paper that linked her to Harry. I thought that if they’d had that note, the police could have interrogated Harry, dug deeper into the whole thing. And that if he hadn’t done anything wrong, he wouldn’t have anything to fear. After all, if someone’s innocent, he has nothing to worry about, does he? So anyway, I felt bad. So I started writing anonymous letters, which I stuck to his door when I knew he was away.”

  “It was you who wrote those letters?”

  “It was me. I’d prepared several of them, using my secretary’s typewriter at the glove factory in Concord. ‘I know what you’ve done with that 15-year-old girl. And soon the whole town will know.’ I kept the letters in the glove compartment of my car. And each time I saw Harry in town, I drove to Goose Cove to leave a letter.”

  “But why?”

  “To ease my conscience. My wife never stopped talking about how Harry was guilty, and it seemed plausible to me. I thought that if I scared him, he would end up confessing. That went on for a few months. And then I stopped.”

  “What made you stop?”

  “The way he looked. After she disappeared, he looked so sad. He wasn’t the same man anymore. I decided it couldn’t have been him. So I finally gave up.”

  I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. As a long shot, I asked him: “Tell me, Mr. Quinn, it wasn’t by any chance you who set fire to Goose Cove, was it?”

  He smiled, almost amused by my question.

  “No. You’re a nice guy, Mr. Goldman. I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know who did that, but whoever he is, he’s sick.”

  We drained our beers.

  “So, in fact,” I said, “you didn’t get divorced in the end. Did things get better with your wife? After you found all those mementos in the safe, I mean, and her diary?”

  “Things got worse and worse, Mr. Goldman. She never stopped nagging and scolding me, and she never told me she loved me. Never. In the months and then the years that followed, I would often drug her with sleeping pills so I could go read her journals and cry over our mementos, hoping that one day things would be better. Maybe that’s what love is: hoping that one day things will be better.”

  I nodded. “Maybe.”

  • • •

  In my suite at the hotel, I redoubled my efforts on the book. I wrote about how Nola Kellergan, fifteen years old, had done everything she could to protect Harry. The sacrifices she had made so he could stay in that house and write. How she had gradually become both the muse and the keeper of his masterpiece. How she had managed to create a sort of bubble around him, allowing him to concentrate on his writing and to produce the greatest work of his life. And the more I wrote, the more I began to believe that Nola Kellergan might even have been that extraordinary woman of whom writers all over the world undoubtedly dream.

  One afternoon Denise called me from New York, where she was typing up my words with uncommon devotion and efficiency, and said: “Marcus, I think I’m crying.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because of that young girl, that Nola. I think I love her too.”

  I smiled and said, “I think everyone loved her, Denise. Everyone.”

  Then two days later—on August 3—I received a call from Gahalowood, who was beside himself with excitement.

  “Hey, writer!” he bellowed. “I got the lab results. Jesus, you won’t believe this. The writing on the manuscript really is Luther Caleb’s! Without any doubt at all. We’ve got our man, Marcus. We’ve got our man!”

  7

  AFTER NOLA

  “CHERISH LOVE, MARCUS. MAKE it your greatest coNquest, your sole ambition. After men, there will be other men. After books, there will be other books. After glory, there will be other glories. After money, there will be yet more money. But after love, Marcus, after love, there is nothing but the salt from tears.”

  LIFE AFTER NOLA WAS NO longer life. Everyone said that in the months that followed her disappearance, the town of Somerset sank slowly into depression, obsessed by the fear of a second abduction.

  It was fall, and the leaves had changed color. But the town’s children were no longer able to throw themselves with abandon into the huge piles of dead leaves swept to the sides of the streets; their parents watched them constant
ly, afraid. From now on they would wait with them before they caught the school bus and would be there again when the bus dropped them off in the afternoon. At 3:30 every afternoon, the sidewalks were lined with mothers, one in front of each house, forming a human fence along the empty avenues, impassive sentinels watching over the arrival of their progeny.

  Children were no longer allowed to travel alone. The golden age when the streets were filled with happy, shouting kids was over: There were no more street hockey games on driveways, no more jump-rope contests, no more giant hopscotch courts drawn in chalk on asphalt; on the main street there were no longer bicycles scattered all over the sidewalk in front of the Hendorf family’s general store, where you could buy a small bag of candy for a quarter. Soon the streets would take on the disturbing hush of a ghost town.

  The front doors of all the houses were locked, and at nightfall the town’s men, organized into citizen patrols, walked the streets to protect their neighborhoods and their families. Most of them carried baseball bats; a few had their shotguns. They said they would not hesitate to shoot if necessary.

  Trust had been shattered. Anyone passing through—truck driver and deliveryman alike—was treated with suspicion and watched constantly. But the worst thing of all was the mistrust that grew among Somerset’s residents. Neighbors, friends for twenty-five years, now spied on one another. And everyone wondered what everyone else had been doing early in the evening of August 30, 1975.

  Police cars constantly patrolled the town’s streets; if there were no police, people worried, but too many police made them frightened. And when a very recognizable black Ford, an unmarked state police car, parked in front of 245 Terrace Avenue, everyone wondered if it was Captain Rodik, come to deliver the bad news. The curtains in the Kellergan house were drawn for days, weeks, and then months. With David Kellergan no longer performing his duties, a substitute pastor was summoned from Manchester to take over the services at St. James’s.

  • • •

  Then came the late-October fog. The region was covered by thick, gray, damp clouds, and soon a cold rain fell day after day. At Goose Cove, Harry wasted away, alone. He had not been seen anywhere for two months. He spent his days locked away in his office, working at his typewriter, absorbed by the pile of handwritten pages that he was meticulously revising and typing up. He woke early and went through the motions, shaving and dressing every morning, even though he knew he would not leave his house or see anyone. He sat at his desk and got to work. He took a break only rarely, to brew more coffee; the rest of the time was spent typing, rereading, correcting, tearing up pages, and starting over.

  The only thing that disturbed his solitude was Jenny. Every day after her shift was over, she came to see him, worried by his slow decline. She usually arrived about 6 p.m.; by the time she had made it from her car to the porch, she was already soaked by the rain. She brought him a basket filled with provisions from Clark’s: chicken sandwiches, egg salad, macaroni and cheese that she kept warm in a metal dish, filled pastries that she had to hide from her customers to make sure there would be some left for Harry. She rang the doorbell.

  Harry sprang from his chair. Nola! Darling Nola! He rushed to the door. There she was, standing before him, radiant and beautiful. They threw themselves at each other, and he took her in his arms. He swung her around him, around the world, and they kissed. Nola! Nola! Nola! They kissed again, and they danced. It was high summer; the sky was painted with the dazzling colors of sunset, and above them clouds of seagulls sang like nightingales. She smiled, she laughed, her face was the sun. There she was: He could hold her to him, touch her skin, caress her face, smell her scent, run his fingers through her hair. There she was, alive. They were both alive. “But where were you?” he asked, holding her hands. “I waited for you. I was so afraid! Everyone thought something bad must have happened to you. They say Mrs. Cooper saw you covered in blood near Side Creek. There were police everywhere. They searched the forest. I thought something terrible had happened, and I was going crazy not knowing.” She squeezed him tightly; she held him close to her and comforted him: “Don’t worry, darling Harry. Nothing bad happened to me. I’m here. Look, here I am! We are together, forever. Have you eaten? You must be hungry. Have you eaten?”

  “Have you eaten? Harry? Harry? Are you okay?” Jenny asked the pale, emaciated ghost who answered the door.

  The young woman’s voice brought him back to reality. It was dark and cold outside, the rain falling in torrents. Winter was almost here. The seagulls were long gone.

  “Jenny?” he asked, his eyes wild. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me. I brought you some food. You have to eat. You don’t look well at all.”

  He looked at her, wet and shivering. He let her in. She stayed for only a brief while: just the time it took to leave the basket in the kitchen and pick up the dishes she had left the day before. When she noticed that he had hardly touched the food she’d brought, she scolded him gently.

  “Harry, you have to eat!”

  “I forget sometimes,” he replied.

  “How can you forget to eat?

  “It’s because of the book I’m writing. I live inside the book and forget everything else.”

  “It must be a wonderful book,” she said.

  “A wonderful book.”

  She didn’t understand how a book could put someone in such a state. Each time she came, she hoped he would ask her to stay for dinner. She always brought enough for two people, and he never noticed. She stayed a few minutes, standing between the kitchen and the dining room, not knowing what to say. He always thought about asking her to stay for a while, but decided against it because he did not want to give her false hope. He knew he would never love anyone else. When the silence became embarrassing, he said, “Thank you,” and opened the door to let her out.

  She went home, disappointed and worried. Her father lit the fire in the living room and made her a hot chocolate with a marshmallow melting in it. They sat on the couch, facing the fireplace, and she told her father how depressed Harry seemed.

  “Why is he so sad?” she asked. “You’d think he was dying.”

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” Robert Quinn replied.

  • • •

  He was afraid to go out. On the rare occasions when he left Goose Cove, he came back to find those horrible letters waiting for him. Someone was spying on him. Someone wanted to hurt him. Someone was watching out for his absences and then jamming an envelope into the frame of the door. And inside the envelope, always those same words:

  I know what you’ve done with that 15-year-old girl. And soon the whole town will know.

  Who? Who could have a grudge against him? Who knew about him and Nola? Who now wanted to destroy him? It made him ill; each time he found a letter he felt feverish. He had headaches and felt anxious. Sometimes he vomited, and he suffered from insomnia. How could he prove his innocence? He started imagining worst-case scenarios: the horror of being locked in the high-security ward of a federal penitentiary until the end of his life, or of being strapped to a gurney and given a lethal injection. He gradually developed a fear of the police: the sight of a uniform or a police car was enough to put him in a nervous state. One day, coming out of the supermarket, he noticed a state police car in the parking lot, with an officer inside watching him. He forced himself to remain calm and increased his pace as he walked to his car, carrying his groceries. But then he heard someone calling. It was the policeman. He pretended not to hear. There was the sound of a door closing behind him: The policeman was getting out of his car. Harry heard the man’s footsteps, the sounds made by his handcuffs, gun, and billy club as they jingled on his belt. When he reached his car, he put the groceries in the trunk so he could get away more quickly. He was trembling, drenched in sweat, his vision blurred; he was in a total panic. For God’s sake, stay calm, he told himself. Get in your car and disappear. Do not go
back to Goose Cove. But he didn’t have time to do anything: He felt a powerful hand grip his shoulder.

  He had never been in a fight. He didn’t know how to fight. What should he do? Should he push the policeman away, to give himself time to get into his car and speed out of the parking lot? Should he punch him? Grab his gun and shoot him? He turned around, ready for anything. And the policeman handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “This fell out of your pocket, sir. I called you, but you didn’t hear. Are you all right, sir? You look very pale.”

  “I’m fine,” Harry replied. “I’m fine. I was . . . I was thinking about something and . . . Anyway, thank you. I . . . I should go.”

  The policeman gave him a friendly wave and returned to his car. Harry was shaking.

  Following this episode, Harry joined a boxing class; he practiced assiduously. Eventually he decided to see someone. Having done some research, he contacted Dr. Roger Ashcroft, in Concord, who was apparently one of the best psychiatrists in the region. They agreed to meet weekly, on Wednesday mornings, from 10:40 to 11:30. He didn’t talk about the letters, he talked about Nola. Without ever mentioning her. But for the first time he was able to talk to someone about Nola. That did him a world of good. Ashcroft, sitting in his upholstered chair, listened attentively, his fingers drumming softly on a desk blotter whenever he launched into an interpretation.

  “I think I see dead people,” Harry said.