Murder at Malenfer

by Iain McChesney

  The searchers worked in groups, spreading out in a thinly spaced line, calling out and ringing bells to signal to each other, scouring with their lanterns as they combed the byways and chased the shortcuts between the various farms. But of Pierre there was no sign. It was as if he’d simply vanished.

  At eleven in the evening Madame called the search off, to resume once more at daybreak. It was common sense; the volunteers were tired and wet, and there was the danger of missing him in the darkness. In the morning they would all be fresh, and yet the order felt like failure. Émile refused to accept it and Dermot’s support was resolute. Dismissive of the fatigue and the cold, the two of them and Arthur pressed on.

  * * *

  They found Pierre a few hours after midnight. Persistence has its own rewards, but theirs was a bitter victory. They were on a road they had been down already, but for some reason this time they turned off it. They followed a track back into the trees, a shortcut over a stream. They could tell before they reached him that there was no more need for urgency.

  “This isn’t good, Dermot.” Arthur slid from the horse, the first man down.

  Pierre lay on his chest in the middle of a clearing. He might have passed for a rock in the dark except that his hands and face, gleamy with rainwater, reflected the glare from their lantern. The body threw a vulgar shadow in a game of sickening charades. Like a broken reflection from a dropped mirror, it was twisted to unnatural shapes.

  “Émile, stay here,” Dermot told the twin in his stiff sergeant’s voice. “No,” he changed his mind quickly. “Go back. Ride for help! You know this place – tell the others. Find someone and then come back here, but stay away for now. Don’t, Émile! No!”

  The plea from Dermot was futile because Émile would take no instruction. He’d seen his brother down and hurt, still and unresponsive. He ignored Dermot’s well-intentioned words and crossed the open ground.

  “Pierre!” he choked out, dropping to his knees beside his motionless kin. “Pierre!” Émile howled again in impotent frustration.

  “Let him grieve, Dermot,” said Arthur, who stood over his sons. “Leave the boy be.”

  Émile touched his brother’s cold cheek before he turned him over. Moving him was a desecration that none of them anticipated.

  Dermot tried to avert his eyes. He lifted his scarf to his mouth and drew long breaths of air. Émile saw the mess beneath his brother and emptied out his stomach. He crawled away two feet to the side and vomited in horror.

  “Mother of God!” Arthur crossed himself. “What did this to my boy?”

  Poor Pierre, thought Dermot, daring to look, still breathing hard. Poor unfortunate bastard.

  Pierre it was. Pierre it had been.

  His once strong face was now pulled long, stretched and white and frozen. It bore a look of understanding at the horror that was happening.

  Arthur and Dermot, now the first shock was gone, could do nothing now but gape at him. Pierre the brother had been clearly shot; Pierre the son had been gutted.

  Émile wretched uncontrollably. His twin lay open like a fish. Dermot cast their lantern around the clearing; it looked like a butcher’s shop.

  “Can you come with me? Can you get up?” He steadied Émile’s shoulders then took his arm and lifted him up gently. “You’ll be all right, come back with me. There’s nothing you can do here.”

  Dermot led him carefully back to the horses, away from the dreadful sight. Émile was white, trembling in shock. Dermot wasn’t sure if Émile was taking in what he was saying.

  “Just sit here, you sit here. You’ll be all right.” He didn’t want him riding; he was in no shape to do anything. Dermot felt his own legs trembling and fought to steady himself.

  “I’m not going far,” he comforted Émile. “I saw a house not too far back there. I’m just going to get some help and then I’ll be right back, OK? Don’t you move!” Dermot remounted.

  “Keep an eye on him!” he shouted to Arthur, useless though that was, and then Dermot sped off for aid. Whatever had happened here had taken place hours ago, so he wasn’t afraid of immediate danger. True to his word, he was back soon. “Help will be along in a minute.”

  He consoled Émile, who sat speechless and shivering exactly where he’d left him. Arthur hadn’t left Pierre; Dermot found him mourning over the body.

  “Arthur. Are you all right? Arthur?”

  The ghost of Arthur stretched up slow and heaved a soulful sigh. “I brought this on him, Dermot. I did this to my child.”

  “No. No, Arthur. There’s no curse here. There’s just the hand of man.”

  “Don’t tell me what there is or isn’t!” Dermot backed off in the face of his fury. He had never seen Arthur’s anger, since his death or before, but Arthur was seething and spitting spite and was terrible to behold. “If I’d not brought you to here to the Manor, do you think this would have happened?”

  Dermot didn’t reply to the blasting wraith; both of them knew that answer.

  “We should see if there’s anything here. Something that can help us.” Dermot tried to be practical.

  “Dermot! When we find who did this. Do you hear me? When we find who did this, I want you to kill them.”

  “Arthur, it’s a crime. We’ll get the police...”

  “Listen to me!”

  The Irishman stopped in the midst of his speech and looked again at the specter, at his friend’s once whole, now marked face, his skin like colored ice.

  “You helped me once.” The ghost reached out, and in his eye a tear? “I beg now openly for your aid... I am helpless to avenge! What sins must I atone for that the heavens now punish me so? I search my heart to list them and I only come up short. This, this here” – he gestured at the body – “this was my child... my little boy! I only wished to help him... Oh, dear God, what have I done? Why did you let this happen?” He raged at the elements above.

  Dermot, his heart in his throat, could not deny his friend’s plea for a father’s justice. “I’ll help, Arthur, I’ll get who did it. We’ll get the bastard together.”

  He promised it and he meant it, though it might mean his very soul. The comrades stood resolved beneath a blackened rain, sharing the misery, the mud, and the pain.

  “Arthur, I’m going to have a look at Pierre and see what I can learn. You might want to go back over and check on your Émile.”

  “No,” Arthur refused. “I’ll stay and help you if I can. I can’t do anything for Émile.”

  Dermot gave Arthur a knowing nod. “As you wish.” Then he got down to business. He knelt beside the prone Pierre, and opened the dead boy’s jacket. “It’s a bad business, Lieutenant. Look at this.”

  The forests of Haute-Marne harbored creatures that would scavenge off a body, but the skin that Arthur pointed out was cut open cleanly and smooth – not torn by teeth or mauled by claw to broach the inner cavity.

  “And I think there’s another bullet wound in here too.” Dermot poked his finger in as far as he could get. It fitted tight and was hard to pull free. Following his line of thought, Dermot lifted Pierre’s arm up. He pulled back his shirt. A second grievous wound was revealed under the boy’s right armpit.

  “You’re right,” Arthur confirmed. “Shot at least twice, then cut open. Jesus Christ. They will suffer!”

  “Why cut him open?” Dermot remained incredulous.

  “Why shoot him?” the ghost asked back.

  “Look back here.”

  Dermot, holding the lantern low, retraced the scene as he saw it. A wounded boy, crawling away, his guts caught up on the thorny underbrush. Snags and twigs had hooked in him, and he’d unwound himself as he crawled away and bled out on the ground.

  Dermot, consumed by these thoughts, did not notice the new arrivals.

  “Dermot,” Arthur said, bringing his attention round. “We have company.”

  “Someone take care of Émile, please!” Dermot shouted. “The rest of you please stay back!” He didn’t see any of the
family here yet; he was glad at least for that.

  Dermot crawled in the mud of dark reddish earth and searched for other wounds or evidence. His arms were stained with blackish blood that marked him to his elbows. He went through Pierre’s coat and pockets, checked his fingers for missing rings, he went over the ground on his hands and his knees from the body back to the lane. Satisfied that he’d covered everything, he returned to the body again.

  Dermot pressed Pierre’s face, and gently closed his eyes. He lifted the screaming lifeless jaw until the boy looked silent. Dermot’s bloodied fingers had marked Pierre; the boy looked like an Indian brave. He closed the boy’s jacket out of respect, covering the offense from view. Dermot removed his own coat and draped it over Pierre, but the stains on the ground told their story.

  More people were arriving; the word had gotten out. Dermot talked to the first of them but could not keep control for long. Emotions were taking over and he felt his own exhaustion.

  “I’m going to have Émile taken home,” he told Arthur. In the darkness and noise of the gathering crowd, Dermot didn’t worry who heard him. “I think I saw Berthe arrive.”

  Dermot enlisted the housekeeper’s assistance. She did her job with a quiet resolve and took care of the wretched Émile. He needed space, peace, and comfort, none of which he would ever find near that desecrated glade.

  How do you recover from the murder of a brother? Dermot asked the question. He watched Émile being led away through the gathering crowd. He knew the answer. Connor Ward would always be fourteen, just as on that last day that he’d seen him. How do you recover from the murder of a brother? That was easy. You don’t. There is only a hole you can never fill, and the anger that boils out of it.

  “I’ll help, Arthur, I’ll get who did this. We’ll get the bastard together.”

  Half-facts and speculation. Grist to the mill for gossips. Pierre Malenfer was brought back home, laid out like Michel before him.

  The factor’s bag that carried the rents had yet to be recovered, and the talk around the estate quickly turned to robbery and bandits, of army deserters living rough, or German spies, or anarchists. While such inventions spun on people’s lips, the hushed tones spoke of torture, of defilement, human sacrifice, and even demon worship. Half-truths were sanctified that day and elevated to gospel.

  The news of Pierre’s real father emerged and was relayed for miles around, and quickly enough his death was ascribed to the workings of the curse. Dermot felt hostile eyes on him as if he’d laid the hex.

  A gendarme was brought to the farm and pressed to keep good order, for the common people gathered there wished vengeance for the murder. Pierre was viewed as one of their own, and he carried all their sympathy. A crime so heinous needed a reply. Fear’s child was always hate.

  19

  The Mill

  Madame took charge.

  She loomed large on the staircase, aloof and imperious, as quiet fell over the crowd. They bore Pierre into the Manor wrapped in a bloody sheet. In that heavy hall grief was tinged with anger, respect melded to solidarity, and ferocity and anguish married.

  “My grandson is returned to me.”

  Madame, the Malenfers, the land, and its people – to Dermot, alone on the periphery, the bond was tangible below.

  “Gustave.” Madame summoned her footman. “Did I not hear stories of strangers around these parts?” When she spoke, they were tools for her bidding. All ears were tuned to her.

  “As you say, Madame, there has been recent talk of outsiders.”

  “Clochards, Madame!” “Vagrants and vagabonds!” Nameless voices from the assembly confirmed the footman’s report.

  “Up by the old mill they were, the one back of the village.”

  “Deserters more like!” another chimed in, “and hiding out, I’ll warrant!”

  The denouncement was met with popular agreement, and each testimony birthed another. The workers proved they were keen to the task, tenants bidding up their knowledge. Madame nodded her approval as if swayed by their wisdoms. Resolution seemed close at hand.

  “Send warning!” she ordered so that everyone could hear. “Send warning to all who dwell nearby that thieves and murderers roam our lands. All must look to the care of their own and the protection of their families. None of us are safe while such men roam loose. You see what they did to Pierre?” The chorus was in favor and a baying aggression ensued. Dermot wondered where it would spill, for it had the makings of a riot. Madame didn’t wait long to tell them. “I ask for your help! Let all able-bodied lend aid to our efforts, and we’ll run these beasts to ground!”

  “Yes!” the people shouted; the air was full of fealty to the cause. “Yes, we will, Madame!”

  “Have the arsenal unlocked,” she ordered. “Gustave, issue arms. Those amongst you who do not bear rifles must ensure you protect yourselves.” Gustave nodded his head, acknowledging her popular instruction. Dermot had managed to press in closer so he heard Madame while the shouting went on. “And Gustave, I wish to know of anyone that balks at volunteering.”

  “As you say,” Gustave confirmed. “It will be done, Madame.”

  “Hear me now, and hear me well. Know that I want justice! They spill our blood and think to gain? They’ll rue the day they came here!” The cheering rose in temper till it matched her own conviction. Dermot saw it – everyone had – there was no mercy for her quarry. Madame bore the eye of an executioner, and it spurred the gathered troop.

  Woe to the one whom fate sends begging for compassion from that face.

  * * *

  The armed host sallied forth from the Malenfer courtyard. Dermot watched them go. In truth he welcomed the reprieve. Ne’er-do-wells, squatters, tramps, deserters, outsiders of any hue – guilt would cover them as naturally as sleet upon the field. There was a clannish passion to the mob and Dermot knew he did not belong. But he watched them leave with reservation, for they looked like a hunting party.

  He would have bartered his boots for a few hours sleep. A day in the saddle and the search for Pierre had drained him more than he would have admitted. He looked longingly at the staircase. Rest must wait – the stakes were too high – and first he had to check on Émile. Dermot needed reassurance that the boy was safe, and Arthur mirrored his concern.

  “He’s as well as to be expected.” Berthe stood guard over Émile’s door and grumbled about giving admission. “Give him peace and rest; let the boy be. Don’t be disturbing him needlessly.”

  “He’s in safe hands,” Arthur conceded after Dermot was rebuffed and bullied. “She’s more of a family to him than I ever was. Oh, that I could make up for all my mistakes!”

  “What of these men at the mill?”

  “It has to be them, Dermot. You heard.”

  “If they’re still here, then I don’t think so, Arthur. Your grief’s clouding your better judgment.”

  “They could have done it. Dark hearts. Who knows?”

  “You saw a bit of the world, Arthur. You know what locals think everywhere – that outsiders are capable of anything. But be sensible, man. The factor’s bag went missing. If they had Pierre’s money and his blood on their hands, why not flee the minute it happened? You’d be crazy to stay any longer.”

  “Why not flee, you ask? Complacency is why! Or they’re stupid, or they’re greedy...” Arthur countered. “Did you never know men in the army like that? Of course you did, there were plenty. It could be them, Dermot. It could be.”

  “Then why not take Pierre’s horse too? Why let it get away and raise alarm, if they lay in wait and ambushed him? And no one yesterday during our search mentioned seeing a group of strange men.”

  “Maybe they did, though.”

  “And didn’t say so? No. It would have been the first thing they’d have said. No. If it was such men, then they’re long out of here. And if it wasn’t, then I fear for these ones now.”

  Dermot rattled off his objections, having trouble keeping up with them, they arrived so fa
st to his head. He thought back to the small road and the track from it to where they’d found Pierre. It told the tale of an ambushed man, robbed and sickeningly assaulted. A wounded man who tried to escape and bled out from his wounds. Would deserters be desperate and ignorant enough to do something like that and stay locally? He had a great respect for the stupidity of man, but the gutting felt more intimate. There was a sickness behind that sort of violence that Dermot could not reconcile to chance.

  “You overthink it, Dermot, it’s simple enough. The horse likely bolted, running before they could stop it. Or maybe not all of their group took part in the attack. Who knows? Maybe they had to stay the night because they don’t know their way in these parts. Perhaps they’d planned to leave at first light but we got the jump on them. Have you thought about that?”

  “Most unlikely.”

  “What does it matter, Dermot, anyway, so long as the culprits are found?”

  “What type of men are they?” Dermot asked. “Do you know they’re deserters for sure?” He hoisted his jacket.

  “A rough lot – you heard it.” Arthur seemed placated, perhaps thinking he had won the point. “They’ve definitely served. One of them was in the store last week and admitted as much when paying. That means they’re deserters, likely as not. Maybe they’re desperate, fearful of discovery, and they saw Pierre as authority.”

  “There’s no proof of anything.” Dermot dismissed it. “I’m worried, Arthur; you should know better. Madame has got the countryside stirred up. Is this really going to help Pierre?”

  “They could be the ones.” Arthur wasn’t apologetic.

  “Yes, I suppose they could. Are we going to get the chance to ask them?”

  “I want the truth, Dermot.”