“Come on, Arthur, your kids being here and all – even if I swallow everything else, that bit I just don’t get. Why didn’t you go see them earlier? What was there to stop you?”
Arthur laughed dryly, but it didn’t seem in fun. “I said it was nice for visitors, but not the same for family.”
“But why wait till now? Why not ’fess up and claim your children years ago?”
“It was the best for them,” he answered cryptically.
“Because your father told you not to? That isn’t right. You’re a bigger boy than that.”
“You don’t understand.” They approached a fork in the road. Arthur drew up. “My father… he was protecting them. As was I by staying silent.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“From what?” If he was going to make an arse of himself, Dermot wanted to know the facts. Besides, the Arthur he’d known back in the war wouldn’t have run out on anyone.
Arthur seemed to be weighing his options. He shifted his feet. “I didn’t plan on telling you this. I thought I’d spare you the fuss. But it’s not as if things are simple right now, so you can have it for all it’s worth.”
“You’re going to tell me why you left your children alone?”
“Not alone, my friend – looked after. They were never alone. And everything was for their own good.”
“Excuse me for saying so, but that sounds like an excuse unworthy of you.”
Arthur sighed, resigned: “Hear me out before you judge.” Then he took a few moments as if ordering his thoughts, as if not sure of where to begin. “Ours is an old, old family, Dermot, and we’ve lived in these parts for an age. Something happened a long time ago, and since then... well, since then we’ve had nothing but trouble.”
Trouble? “What kind of trouble?”
“The dying sort. The sort of trouble you wouldn’t wish on anyone you care about.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I knew you wouldn’t. Our family. The Malenfers. Well… we’re cursed.”
Dermot laughed; but Arthur looked, if anything, more troubled. “You can’t be serious?”
“I wish I weren’t.”
“Ah, come off it.”
“Our curse – the Malenfer Curse – it leads you to a bad end. That’s what I was protecting them from. That’s why my father hid them.”
“You’re pulling my leg, surely.”
“The man who talks to ghosts on trains now doubts the existence of curses?”
“Aw, don’t start that again.” Though it seemed a difficult point to shake. “I’m just saying...”
“You don’t have to believe it, Dermot, but it is exists all the same. Those who carry the Malenfer name end up in a very bad way. Hiding my boys might have saved them from it. That was the reasoning, anyway.”
“Plenty of people live under a curse, Arthur – my family too. Most just call it poverty, and get by the best they can.”
“I understand what you mean, and you are right, of course. I was dismissive myself at the beginning. My father, however, took it very seriously. When I found out I was going to be a father, I took the news to him. I thought he was going to be furious!”
“And was he?”
“No, he was deeply concerned. A boy may pretend otherwise, but he hears every word that his father tells him. If you lived at that house you would know. He saw it as an opportunity to escape our fate and made me swear that I would not tell. By hiding my children from their legacy, we hoped to keep them safe.”
“And you believe this still?”
“Listen, Dermot, what can I say? I died years ago and yet I find myself here. Excuse me if I’m willing to consider anything within the realm of the possible.”
“But then why change? Why change your plan now? Is it for the money? You want the money for them? But won’t you be exposing your children, risking them by giving them their title? Won’t you be bringing the curse down upon them?”
“This is what I can’t explain. Of course I hope not, but perhaps. Perhaps I am risking them, and God help me if that is so. But perhaps the curse knew of them all along, and I was only fooling myself. Perhaps the curse is a fantasy cooked up in our heads and I was a fool to listen to these tales. I can’t explain any of it to you – you aren’t family, so how can you hope to understand? But you must trust me. Trust me that it feels right. Trust me that I know what’s best. My boys must be looked after, Dermot. It’s something I must do.”
“It feels right?”
“It does. They are Malenfers, and they need to know, for the good or the bad it will bring.”
“It just sounds crazy.”
“I know. I don’t ask you to judge, my friend, I’m just trying to explain. And I want you to know that I am grateful to you, for the help that you’ve been.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“But you’re here aren’t you? And you’ve agreed to help, and so I know you will.”
Dermot felt no better.
Arthur started meddling with his pipe and then seemed to notice where they were. He beckoned Dermot up the path.
“Come up here to where the road forks, there’s something you should see.”
As Dermot approached the land fell away and afforded a view through the valley.
“Have a look over there. Isn’t it fine?”
“What is it? Is it ancient?”
“It’s our ‘Viaduct.’ The river is the Suize. It’s actually a railway bridge, but it looks a great deal older. Six hundred meters of tiered stone arches like a Roman-built waterway. Pretty, isn’t it?”
It spanned the meandering pedantry of a mature and swollen river. The Suize sluiced beneath the viaduct on its way to a distant sea.
“Let’s go.” Arthur turned away. “Let’s find out what they’re having for dinner. Chevecheix is just below us, but this other path runs by the Manor.”
“The village is down there?” asked Dermot.
Arthur nodded. The veiled shapes of low clustered buildings could be made out through the sheen of rain; insect light from tiny windows and the hint of solid stone.
“I’ll just be a second. You stay here, Arthur.” Dermot advanced alone.
Chevecheix huddled by a stream above the banks of the much bigger river. A small inviting hostelry commanded this end of the village. A painted sign of the namesake bridge hung above its entrance: Café du Viaduc was written large, illuminated from the interior.
Café du Viaduc – just as Arthur had told him. It was real! And so was the ghost of Arthur with it – Dermot had no other explanation. He hadn’t read it in any book. He had never set foot in this place. No other soul could see Arthur; it was entirely in his head. Am I being called to account for leaving him? Is this a judgment of me? But in that moment he gave up his excuses and accepted the madness it meant. Arthur had returned, and Dermot knew that he must do his best to make amends; but Dermot knew not whether this meant his salvation or whether it damned him to hell.
He turned his back on the Café du Viaduc and made his way back up the hill. Soon, ahead, lay the fork in the road and he could just make Arthur out – a dark looming figure, massive and marked, consumed by the fading light. Arthur raised one long arm, beckoned him to follow, and Dermot fell in beside him.
The big house had been hidden by trees, but it now rose up around the courtyard. A curtain twitched on a second floor window and a pale face looked out for a moment. They had been spotted.
A bristling young man with a glaring face approached from a nearby barn. “This is private land. We have no work or alms.” He shoo’d them off.
“Pierre!” said Arthur. “It’s Pierre, Dermot. This is one of my boys.”
Once you accept the talking dead, there is not much left to faze you. “Are you Pierre, by chance?” he called out. The fellow pulled up, wary.
“I don’t know you,” he answered, suspicious of the stranger. “Who are you? What’s your business here at the farm?”
He was scruffy and bore a discontented look on his otherwise handsome face.
“My boy! You’ve grown into a man! Don’t you see me here before you?” Arthur appealed with outstretched arms. In their frame and bulk there was a resemblance between father and son, though Arthur’s jaw had slackened to jowly where Pierre’s remained firm and tight.
“So you knew Arthur, did you?” the young man said finally, as if the benefit of the doubt had ebbed in Dermot’s favor. He never once so much as glanced at Arthur, who was on top of him by now. Arthur was invisible to him; to his father’s pleas his ears were deaf. “I’m not Pierre, though, he’s my brother. I’m his twin, Émile.”
“Some father you are,” Dermot breathed aside.
“Émile!” choked Arthur, and was he crying? “My boy, it’s been far too long.”
Dermot extended his hand to shake. The young man seemed unsure of the offer but reciprocated after a beat.
“A pleasure to meet you, Émile.”
“I am Madame’s groom. It is a pleasure to meet you, monsieur, if you are who you say you are. You haven’t brought anything?” Émile’s eyebrows grew tight again.
“My trunk is being sent along from the station,” Dermot explained to him. “They said later this evening or perhaps tomorrow.”
“Well… this way then, I suppose.”
Arthur’s son escorted them across the cobbled yard. “Mindful of that puddle,” he called back, swerving before the bottom step of the short run to the door. “That crater swallows people whole.”
They did not ring – Dermot saw no bell – and their guide didn’t wait for admission. Émile gave a heavy push to the panel, and it opened with a long grinding creak. They stepped inside. Émile pulled the large slab shut; they felt the shudder through their soles. Arthur Malenfer had returned back home. For Dermot, there was no turning back.
12
Daughters
“Please wait here, Mr. Ward. Don’t wander.” Émile disappeared up a staircase.
“Trusting lot,” Dermot remarked, when he thought they were alone. Glad to be out of the drizzle, he stood staring around at the place. Arthur hadn’t exaggerated; it was a marvel to behold.
A grand house may achieve its distinction by honest means or foul. It might impose itself on you through a sweeping staircase or a vast height to its walls. It may hoodwink you and deceive your eye through a careful line in the wallpaper, or flatter falsely and pretend by a crafty use of lighting. A house can lay a claim to grandeur through its taste in art or furniture, and risk its reputation on the moods and temperament of fashion. But a visitor to the Malenfer Manor felt grandeur in a curious way, one difficult at first to apprehend yet immediately unsettling.
The house was grand because it shrank you. Inside its walls you were pressed and squeezed and made a little smaller. The place was somehow diminishing, and in so doing it became that much larger. Perhaps it was that the doors inside were a little too wide for their height? And this was true, for a cart could be driven through many of its halls. Perhaps it was the exaggerated masonry, much larger than engineering called for? The ground floor was stacked on such coarse pieces, their facing left mostly exposed; panel and plaster were reserved for the galleries that Dermot found later upstairs. Whatever it was, there was an expansive feel – you were a child in the room of your parents, and the spell was strongest lower down where the rooms seemed for bigger creatures; ogres and giants might dwell within and feel themselves quite comfortable. The furniture was of a size to match, and the entry hall no exception. Dermot was unaware of the spell, but he found the sensation comforting. The place exuded a density, a permanence of matter that he immediately took to. There was nothing airy about the old house; in every sense it was solid.
He noticed the deep fireplace with fuel stacked on its cold hearth. It was wide enough to roast an entire deer without nearly touching the edges. A penetrating draft whistled down in the absence of a welcoming flame.
Arthur had moved into the room, running his hand over a table. Arthur seemed to share the Manor’s scale, its ratios and dimensions. The mortar to him might be cartilage, his bones taken from the same quarry. Dermot didn’t disturb his friend, but left him with his memories.
There were three paintings in the room. Two were of large rural scenes, and dominated the room. The first of these, the nearest to Dermot, placed the manor in ripe summer fields, only the profile of the house was at a different angle from the view he’d glimpsed on arrival. The second painting hung opposite the first and was its twin in perspective alone; it was a bright winter’s day of frost and breath and icicles from the roof – sharp crisp lines and bare fallow fields against a cloudless sky.
“My great-aunt did those.” Arthur saw him looking. “I think someone’s switched them around.” He looked unsure.
Neither picture bore any resemblance to the palette he’d just walked through. Outside was a sky the color of gun smoke and blasted twisted metal, and Malenfer Manor blended into its farm on a drab and washed-out canvas.
“That wasn’t here before.” Arthur pointed out the third picture.
The final painting, smaller than the others, was on the biggest piece of wall. It was the furthest from the doorway and Dermot guessed why it had been hung there. It asked you to walk towards it and resolve its tiny figures. One glance was enough to draw you in; it beckoned you to step forward. Dermot felt its lure physically and surrendered to its direction.
The figures were plants and animals and men, but each of them twisted reality. Children’s fancies tormented and warred, they violated the senses. Sticks and scythes, beak and claw, and unnatural little horns; swords and daggers prodded and tore and laid each other open. The artist had given life to the scene in a brew of primary colors. It stirred with a violence all of its own, though mere flecks on the canvas before them.
“I like it,” Dermot smiled, cocking his head back to Arthur. “Who painted that, then?”
“It must be new. I haven’t seen it before.”
“It is Mademoiselle Simonne’s garbage.” Émile gave his brusque opinion with a tone of the long suffering. He had appeared behind them suddenly without any sort of notice. “Madame’s granddaughter,” he clarified.
A clock chimed a quarter of six, a grandfather clock with leaded-glass doors through which Dermot could see the guts moving. Cogs and wheels and chains and weights with a pendulum like an axe head. It was draped in crêpe of funereal black that hung from its tall wide shoulders.
“You’ll have to wait for Madame,” said Émile. “I don’t know what room she’ll have you in.”
There was a rustle at the top of the stairs.
“He’ll be in the Blue Room, Émile. Go at once and fetch Berthe.” The voice was clear and sharp, one familiar with being obeyed.
“Of course, Madame,” Émile replied and hastily made off.
Madame Malenfer was regal in mourning; she wore her darkness well. She drifted down the wide staircase like smoke from a blocked-up chimney.
“Mother!” Arthur appealed, but she looked right through her son. Death in a family casts textured shadows, and Madame had woven them all.
“I understand you knew my son.”
“I did, Madame, I knew him well. We were very close, in fact.”
“Is that so? And yet you are not French, I don’t think.”
“You have an ear, Madame, you’re quite correct there.” He didn’t feel the need to explain himself any further. “Might I say, I regret my intrusion at this difficult time on your family – I understand you’re all just after losing Arthur’s brother. I am very sorry for your loss.” He bowed his head towards her.
Madame, who had been prickly at first, now seemed to thaw just slightly. Dermot didn’t know if it was a habit of hers or as a result of his attempt at manners.
“Well, that is so, we will miss Michel, just as we have missed Arthur.” She was composed. Her tears were spent, or had dried up, or had never been there to begin with. “Your telegram came as a surprise. I take it you plan on staying?”
“For a day or two, if possible.”
“Well, it’s very short notice.”
Madame liked her silences; Dermot guessed she used them to make other people uncomfortable.
“You mentioned news, Mr. Ward. I wonder what that might mean?”
“Not here, Dermot!” Arthur interrupted, “Not now! You need the birth certificates.”
“Eh...” He was trying to appear undistracted. “I do, yes Madame. News about Arthur. News just like I mentioned. But it’s something that might be better for waiting until there’s time for a private audience.”
Madame clearly did not like the sound of that. “I see,” she said, tellingly. He saw himself through her eyes. An unknown from out of nowhere who appears at the end of their gate. A friend from the war, likely sniffing for a handout, playing on old times’ sake. And Dermot did recognize himself in that picture too; she wasn’t so far off. He judged it not a time to blabber about favors for men from the grave.
She was a striking woman for her years. Petite. Diminutive. It seemed implausible that she could have borne a child, let alone one of Arthur’s dimensions. Chalk lines in her hair, more gray than white, and tiny wrinkles betrayed her aging, yet she was cold and hard – there was more warmth from a statue. Her size belied her presence. Dermot held his ground before her, but he knew who ruled that family. Émile had gone scurrying off, and Dermot could hardly blame him. Madame shared one physical resemblance with Arthur, and they were looking at him now. Her eyes were his, or his were hers – he found the match uncanny.
Murder at Malenfer Page 12