Thief of Souls

by Ann Benson

  He stood up and paced around, fretting quite openly, then sat back down again and took hold of my hand. “Madame, please.” He patted my fingers. “I am old. I cannot recall what happened so far in the past.”

  I removed my fingers from within his and patted the back of his hand. “I respectfully put forth, sir, that you are not too much older than I. And I must remind you that it was yourself who caused me to be held away from Milord, so I must depend on your recollections of the matter. Now, please, for the sake of my heart’s rest, try.”

  Guy Marcel had seen many men wounded and maimed in battles and wars; he had regarded Guy de Laval’s belly wound firsthand. He had managed to maintain uncanny steadiness in those instances. Now, when asked to recall mere words, he was unnerved. I did not think he was disturbed by any lack of ability to remember but rather by the nature of the memory itself.

  He rubbed his forehead as if it ached. “Very well,” he said wearily. “I shall try.”

  Something dark seemed to take hold of him as he began to speak. “The sentries heard shouts from a distance, so I sent more watchers into the tower right away. When Milord Gilles came into view we saw that he was running hard, in obvious distress. I ordered the gate opened immediately. He came through alone and fell into my arms. At first he was panting so hard that he could barely speak. When he regained his voice he said that the boar had come back again, and that he himself had turned and run. And that he thought Michel was directly behind him. But when he looked back, there was no one there.”

  I had heard all this before, on the day of this terrible event. I wanted more. “He said nothing beyond that? He must have been terribly upset.”

  “He said nothing to me. His grandfather took him away immediately, so the boy might be composed and then more thoroughly questioned, he said. I had no more words with Milord Gilles or Jean de Craon on the matter. Nor did anyone else after that, of whom I know.”

  The castellan looked down at his hands, which were placed flat on the wood planks of the table as if he would anchor himself to it. “He was panting, Madame. He said very little beyond recounting his discovery of your son’s absence. So I cannot say, exactly, what his state of mind was at that point. But Jean de Craon seemed to think that he was quite upset.”

  By the look on Marcel’s face I could see that he had other thoughts lurking in the depths of his soul. There was something he wanted to say but could not.

  “Monsieur, you may speak frankly to me. My allegiance no longer lies with Milord Gilles, but with God and his Eminence. Do not fear that I will betray you.”

  “Madame—” he said.

  “You shall not be held accountable, no matter what you tell me.”

  He gazed into some blank place in front of himself for a few silent moments and then turned again to face me.

  “Madame, forgive me, but I thought I saw Milord smile for the briefest moment.”

  “Smile? How do you mean smile?”

  “As if he were . . . happy, or satisfied in some way.”

  This was a detail I had never known; my grief and fear at that time were so all-encompassing.

  I heard the castellan say, “I remember two thoughts I had that day. Both gave me pause. The first was that it seemed odd Milord could turn about and see neither boy nor boar. One would think he would see one or the other. But nothing . . . it seemed so unlikely.”

  “And the second?”

  He cleared his throat nervously. “I remember also thinking throughout the whole ordeal that Milord seemed more . . . excited than upset. It fit with his smile, I daresay.”

  I took out my mouchoir and, unashamed, dabbed away the tears that filled the corners of my eyes. “Was any blood to be seen on Milord?”

  He paused to search his memory. In a few moments he said, “There was. On his mantle, in the midsection. But his clothing was disheveled; I assumed he had fallen and cut himself and then perhaps wiped his hands on his garments. There was some blood on his hands, but they were cut and bruised. He said he had hurt them running through the forest, when he pushed the branches aside. It seemed a reasonable explanation. He offered this information himself.”

  When I first saw his hands at close range several days later, the palms were all scabs. The midwife had applied ointments and salves to help the healing, but it was difficult for Milord to make a fist at first because of one particularly deep cut across the palm of his right hand. He would never open his fist so I might see the wounds more closely; he said that to do so was painful. In my grief, I could not find the will to press him further.

  I sat back for a moment and tried to remember what he had worn that day, a detail that was buried deep in my own memory. The image of a dark blue mantle and yellow tunic struggled to the surface. Both would have been given away to some lesser relation if the blood could not be entirely removed. None of the laundry maids had made comment. I wondered if either garment had ever reached their hands.

  “And none of the woodsmen who were about that day heard any untoward noises in their travels through the forest. All of them knew what had transpired in the woods, but none came forward.”

  I had not heard of any woodsmen about. My son had been a brave lad for his tender years, adventuresome and spirited—not a boy who would have let a boar overtake him without running, screaming, doing whatever he could to fend off the attack. He would not have died instantly; surely he would have screamed and shouted for help. Someone would have heard him.

  Had Milord heard his cries and abandoned him to his fate?

  “Monsieur, do boars often eat their prey?”

  The man would not meet my gaze.

  “Monsieur?”

  “No, Madame, they do not. They are angry beasts, but when they kill it is usually in defense of their own survival.”

  For the thousandth time, I asked myself the question that had plagued me since that awful day. When it had made its way through me, I let it escape my lips in a low moan. “Then why, oh, why, was Michel’s corpus never found?”

  “It remains a confounding mystery, Madame.”

  The search party had gone out immediately, Etienne included. Every horse in the stable was given a rider; among those riders was our midwife Madame Catherine Karle, who would see to my son’s wounds should he be found injured.

  They were gone until the light finally dissipated. All returned in an apparent state of agitation. But Madame Karle, a woman enamored of the sound of her own voice, had been uncharacteristically wordless, even to me, and remained so for nearly a fortnight.

  When I commented on the oddity of this to the castellan, he said, “I do recall that she seemed rather sullen for a time.”

  When our troubling conversation could go no further, it died a natural death. We tried to mend our spirits with a fine repast of quail and escargot, with turnips and fresh crusty bread to complement the various meats. Hippocras flowed like water from the decanter he set on the table, and I think we may have drunk the dregs themselves in our zeal to see it empty. The old man was only too happy to speak of the adventures he had known in the years since I had last seen him, and our hearts eased to hear tales that did not concern the sudden inexplicable loss of a child.

  Our journey back to Nantes would be a long one; it was expected that we would stay the night at Champtocé, and we were graciously accommodated by our host within his own quarters. It was a good thing, I thought, and perhaps he had realized it as well: There were many ghosts for me in the main living quarters of the castle, and I did not really want to present myself to them for haunting nor to the occupants for scrutiny, both of which were sure to occur should I set foot within those halls. Our every wish was satisfied, and more, and I went to bed quite gratefully drunk, without saying my prayers.

  In answer to my prayerlessness, God visited monstrous dreams upon me throughout the night and then a thundering headache in the morning, which the cold water of the basin would not banish. Nor would the pressing of Frère Demien’s warm hands upon my aching brow d
o much good either, though he added an ornate and effusive blessing for good measure. With an understanding smile and some odd mutterings about the hair of the dog, our venerable host made me drink another cup of hippocras, which effected a near-miraculous cure. Even more miraculously, it did not make me drunk.

  “But now that you have restored me,” I said, “I have another favor to ask of you.”

  He did not seem pleased, but he was nonetheless polite. “Oui, Madame.”

  “When we go out to the orchards, I would like it as well if you would take us to the ravine where Milord said he last saw Michel.”

  The request did not seem to sit well with him, for he frowned slightly. “What is there to be gained, Madame?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But I am compelled to return there.”

  There was no decent reason to refuse, and so he acquiesced. We packed our few belongings and strapped them to our mounts, then headed out in the direction of the orchards, during which time Frère Demien spoke continuously on the subject of husbanding fruit trees. The desired handful of earth was scooped up and carefully examined by my young traveling companion, who smelled it, tasted it, crumbled it between his fingers, blended his own spittle into it, all in the name of discovering its secrets. His final comment, after all that, was simply, Hmm. It left me wondering, but I did not press him, for my thoughts were elsewhere.

  On leaving the orchard, we turned onto a westward path and rode for a short distance. Soon we reached the landmark grove of oaks and there turned onto a new path, which we followed for an even shorter distance, until the ground began to fall away sharply.

  Just a slight bit down the crest of the hill, perhaps the length of a man’s body, was the small white cross Etienne had pounded into the ground to mark the place where our sorrow had begun, although we could never say exactly where it was. He had taken me to see it not long after he’d put it in place, and I remember wondering if that cross would be my son’s entire legacy, rather than the legends and tales of valor we had hoped for.

  I stared at the symbol of his remembrance, so white and brilliant against all the green and brown that surrounded it. Though it had stood many years unprotected in this spot, its appearance was remarkably fresh.

  “Someone has been attending to it.”

  “Oui, Madame,” Marcel said quietly. “We come out once in a while with the whitewash.”

  I could barely speak my gratitude. In the reverent silence, the gurgling of the stream that ran at the base of the ravine seemed an unholy jollity.

  Finally I said, “Does this stream rise much in the spring?”

  “Quite a good bit.”

  “And in the fall—does it run dry?”

  “I have never known it to, Madame. We have had little rain this month, and this is the driest season normally, so it will not get much lower than what you see now.”

  I watched the clear ripples dance over the stones. It was more than adequate for washing away blood.

  On the road that skirted the meadow outside the castle, we said our good-byes to Guy Marcel; we would travel west toward Nantes, and he in the opposite direction to his home in the fortress. Frère Demien offered respectful wishes for Godspeed to our host, but I could summon up only tender melancholy—the castellan was one of my few remaining links to Champtocé, and God alone knew if we would remeet before one or the other of us went to the grave. There was in the old man’s eyes a bit of the same longing for the years to roll back, for a return to the old glory we had once known, a notion made no less alluring by its impossibility.

  We were perhaps a hundred paces apart in opposite directions when I heard the castellan call out, “Madame! Wait.”

  I halted my donkey and turned back to face him. The mighty fortress loomed large in the background, dwarfing him in its fading grandeur.

  “Oui, Monsieur?”

  He urged his horse a few steps forward so as not to shout at me. “The midwife, Madame Karle . . .” he began. Then he waited a moment before continuing, as if he were considering the advisability of what he was about to say. “She herself could not still be alive, but her son may yet walk this earth.”

  I remembered him well. “Guillaume,” I said.

  “Oui, the same.” He told us where the man lived, well near to our return route. “Perhaps you should seek him out.”

  chapter 22

  I needed a confidant on this case. Frazee and Escobar were buddies and coworkers, but I needed a friend. Errol Erkinnen was making himself extremely available, for which I was grateful, on more than one level.

  “I submitted a warrant application this morning to search Wilbur Durand’s house and studio. I need those tapes to go any further with this. I’m almost salivating over the thought of going through his stuff; he’s got to have a stocking drawer somewhere—”

  “A what?” Erkinnen said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s the place where girls keep their most-secret stuff. My ex had a top drawer in his desk like that.”

  “Ah. For me it’s the toolbox. But I get really cranky when anyone but me goes into it. What a job you have, looking through people’s most intimate things.”

  “You go through people’s brains.”

  “Point,” he acceded.

  “I swear, sometimes I think we’re all just as sick as the guys we’re trying to haul in.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Some of them are way beyond sick. But this is an acceleration—you must have learned something more about him.”

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  He listened with attention as I told him about my side trip to Southie, about Detective Pete Moskal, the Gallagher family, the strange lack of evidence in their son’s murder, and about what Kelly McGrath had revealed to me.

  “Jeez,” he said when I was through, “I don’t know if you could write a better script for a serial killer.”

  “Abductor.”

  He went somber. “You know there’s a real probability that all these kids are dead.”

  “No bodies, Doc, except the Jackson boy, and we all agree that at best he’s practice. The only one who’s even legally dead is the nephew of Jesse Garamond. And that’s only because the uncle was convicted of killing him, so the law assumes a body, somewhere. But it was never found.”

  “I wonder what he’s doing with them.”

  Doc voiced that question in a bemused tone; his clinical detachment was such that it almost made me angry. My voice sounded harsh even to myself when I said, “We’ll probably find out sometime in the near future. If we don’t get sidetracked. Keep talking about the script thing.”

  “Right. Sorry. What I mean is that it’s the classic profile. Lack of maternal bonding, weak or absent father, a male authority figure who intervenes in a negative, dominant fashion—in Durand’s case, two: both his uncle and his grandfather. Loss of an important support person—the housekeeper—at a critical age.”

  “The uncle is the one I’d like to strangle. He really worked him over. I mean, to be in a position of trust like that with a child and then use him for sex—”

  “Do we know for sure that he did?”

  “No, not absolutely. But based on what I found out in Boston, I think there’s good reason to believe that it happened. The uncle is dead, so I can’t confront him. Too bad. Well, maybe it’s not too bad—about the dead part, I mean—after what he did.”

  “Be careful here, Detective. Keep your emotions out of this. I’ve heard of cops getting involved sympathetically with the victims of crime, and that’s a tough enough situation. But it’s really a bad idea for you to get involved with a criminal in that way.”

  I didn’t respond immediately, because I needed to think for a moment—what was I really feeling toward Wilbur Durand? A strange blend of contradictions—I despised him and was fascinated by him, sometimes all in one thought.

  “You’re right,” I said, “and I know it. I hate this—here I am feeling bad for this guy for all the nasty things that happened to him when he
was little, and I’m almost positive in my heart that he’s a monster of the worst kind. How pathetic is that.”

  “It’s not pathetic at all. It’s only natural to feel sympathy for someone who’s been through as much as this guy has. If he hadn’t turned out to be a pedophile, if he’d ended up being a plumber or something, you’d be patting him on the back for turning his life around. For surviving at all. The irony is that if he’d turned out to be an ordinary man, at least on the surface, we would probably never know what he’d been through as a child.”

  “How could he go through all that and not blow up?”

  “People do. They develop the most incredible coping mechanisms.”

  “Then why didn’t Durand?”

  “Maybe he did. Maybe he isn’t as much of a fiend as he might have been. Look, I understand how you’re feeling. I always see these people and think to myself how lucky I am that my own life didn’t go that way. But these are killers. Cold-blooded, unfettered killers. The things that happened to them are tragic, but their acts are still inexcusable.”

  I knew that the moment a lawyer got up and started talking about all this, I would want to rip his or her throat out. A good jury would ignore that lawyer if there was sufficient evidence; in this case there wasn’t, at least not yet.

  “Sheila Carmichael will find a defense psychologist who’ll testify that someone should have seen it coming and done something and that he can’t be held responsible for his own behavior because no one helped him when it would have meant something,” said Doc.

  “Not if I shoot her first.”

  “Lany. This is new.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean it.”

  He did not look convinced.

  I said, “Why didn’t she see it? She’s his sister.”

  “She’ll say she was already out of the house.”

  “Well, she pretty much was—there’s a ten-year difference in their ages.”

  “And besides, it’s not like we haven’t heard it before,” he said. “You know, psychology still gets a bad rap for being an inexact science. Some people don’t even think it’s a science at all, just a lot of manipulative mumbo jumbo.”