The house was quiet by the time the police arrived, but far from calm. Why Émile got the police while the men at the mill had not, Dermot wasn’t told. Perhaps it was that Émile wasn’t a stranger, or because he was family now. Perhaps Madame harbored doubts herself where before she had harbored none. Dermot didn’t know any of it, and there was no explanation forthcoming. “Money makes people do the strangest things...” He heard it more than once.
Dermot was not immune to the sentiment’s lure, yet he could not reconcile the Émile he knew, the man he had ridden with searching, searching through the night for his twin, with the man capable of this foul deed. The look on Émile’s face, the shock of recognition when they’d discovered Pierre together – it had been real, Dermot knew it. Yet in the hours before the gendarme arrived the doubt began to creep in. Dermot sat alone with Simonne talking of nothing else. He began to second-guess his instinct. He saw things in different ways.
How was it, he wondered, that they had been able to find Pierre at all, when all the others had turned back for the night? How at that moment, at that very lane, in the middle of that dreadful night, had they picked that very place to look just a little closer off the road? Dermot couldn’t even remember if he’d been the one riding forward or if he’d followed behind Émile. Was it luck at work or something more that had brought them to that spot?
And how came the money? Why was it there? The women were honest, weren’t they? There was no conspiracy here. Three of them confirmed the story, two maids and the long-serving Berthe, that the bag had been hidden behind the dresser and could have remained undiscovered. Fate itself seemed to have revealed the pouch with its treasure still intact, fate and the diligence of hard-working folk doing their duty with a dustpan.
How else could Émile have gotten ahold of the bag? Émile hadn’t even been fighting during the siege of the mill, so he couldn’t have lifted it then. It didn’t make sense. Unless he’d had it earlier. Dermot was wracked with doubt. It was clear that whatever had happened back then, Émile had some explaining to do.
What had Dermot seen on that terrible night? To this he kept returning. What had been written on Émile’s honest face? Was it dismay or contrition? Could Dermot have mistaken the shock on his face for a soured conscience? He no longer quite knew.
Simonne sat beside him on a small leather couch, her skirts hugged in tight about her. Each lent comfort to the other just by being there. It was not spoken, but understood.
“Do you think he’s going to be all right?” It was Simonne who asked.
Dermot wasn’t sure what to say. “You’ve known him a long time, Simonne, haven’t you?”
“I suppose.” She was thinking. “Most of my life.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right?”
She considered it a while. “No. I don’t,” she finally answered. “I think he’s been half-lost since Pierre went away, and now... to be accused of this. They’re saying he killed him, oh, how could they, Dermot? There must be another reason.”
Dermot took Simonne’s hand. Her palm was so small in his, her skin pale and smooth, her thin fingers fitting snugly in between his own.
“Then you’re on his side?”
“Of course!” She was unwavering.
Not shortly thereafter, the police finally arrived. The gendarme took statements from the staff while his superior talked to the family. Émile’s room was inspected, the money was examined, checked again, and recounted. It tallied with the rents. Émile was taken into custody, with the suggestion of charges to follow. They led the twin away in handcuffs and put him in the back of their car. Dermot overheard Madame’s instruction for Émile to have a lawyer. The police car drove away from the house. Émile did not look back.
And then it happened, though Dermot knew not from where it came. An idea that softly landed as he watched the police car recede. Perhaps it was the sight of Émile, stoic and rejected – the look of a man huddled in a trench ahead of a new offensive. The same look of disbelief that life had come to such a point. Dermot had been there: when you question your faith in an ordered universe and it is confirmed or it falls apart. Dermot decided at that very moment that Arthur’s son was innocent.
“Simonne,” – they had been inseparable – “what was it you said about Michel?”
“Michel?” In the preceding hours they had talked about a great many different things. “The flu, you mean?” Émile still wasn’t out of sight. “Dermot, what do you want to know?”
“You said something about him being better, I’m sure that’s what you said.”
“I don’t understand. Why does that matter now?”
“Please, tell me again. Tell me again about Michel.”
“Well, he was. Getting better, I mean. I did say that, because he was.” The police car moved out of sight. “I talked to his doctor myself.” She turned to look at him. “His temperature had broken, and we thought him on the mend. That’s why the others were so especially sad, because they’d just started to have hope. But I had seen the witch stalking us, and that could only mean one thing.”
“His temperature had broken. Michel was getting better?” Dermot became excited, “But don’t you see, that’s it!” He pulled her close. Eyebrows were raised from those on the steps but Dermot was oblivious.
“See what?” Simonne didn’t, but she was very aware of his arms about her.
“Come with me, somewhere quiet. I’ve got an idea I need to tell you.”
He led her through the entrance hall between its crisp landscape paintings, past the beat of the grandfather clock still muffled under draping. He held her hand past the pitchfork battles that raged on her skillful canvas, and through the door beyond the empty fireplace colder than the outdoors.
“What’s going on, Dermot? What is it?” They found seclusion in the cavernous hall beyond.
“I see it now,” he began, growing excited. “Listen. Hear me through and then tell me what you think.” She agreed. “We’re looking for someone who killed Pierre, aren’t we?” Simonne said yes. “And that’s why they think Émile is guilty…”
“He’s not!”
“But they think it. They do. Please don’t argue just yet. He has the motive, he could have done it – for the power and money it might bring.”
“What do you mean? How can you say that?”
“That’s what they’ll think. The Malenfer inheritance! Émile’s motive was to improve his share of any inheritance.”
“But he didn’t do it!”
“I know. But they don’t know that.”
“He couldn’t do it.”
“But he could. Don’t get mad. I’m not saying it. But please accept for a minute that they’ll think it. Don’t you see?” Dermot raced on, seeing Simonne upset. “We’re looking in the wrong place. We’re looking at the wrong murder! Émile didn’t kill Pierre because he didn’t kill Michel. When Michel died, Émile wasn’t a Malenfer, so he didn’t have a motive! Well...” Dermot stumbled, “technically he was a Malenfer, but he didn’t know it yet.” Dermot bubbled with energy – it fit so well. The jigsaw was coming together and the picture becoming clear.
“What are you saying, Dermot? You’re saying Michel was murdered too?”
She seemed stricken at the thought and yet excited by it also. Dermot’s enthusiasm was a mountain stream sweeping her along. She couldn’t see the destination but was caught up in the current.
“Consider the facts that you told me: His temperature had broken; he’s young and healthy. Why wouldn’t he recover?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “But let’s say he was killed, let’s just assume it. Let’s say someone did do that – murder Michel. Why would they do that? What benefit would that bring?” He asked as one that already knew the answer.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Oh, Simonne. I think you do.”
“You mean money, don’t you? You mean he’s the last heir? Michel was the last of the Malenfer men.” She was following his thoughts
now, encouraged by the nodding of his animated head. “You mean after he’s gone... I become an heiress!” Her mind rolled over and her alluring face turned sour. “You think I killed Michel?” Her voice changed pitch, making Dermot shudder.
“No no no!” he whispered, holding her arms in a hurry as she tried to take a swing. “Not you! Not you! No, of course not you! But if Michel was killed and you did inherit, who else stood to gain?” He let the thought sink in.
“You don’t think...”
“Yes, I do. But then everything goes crazy at the Malenfer house because someone else appears. Who? Me. I show up, Dermot Ward, arriving out of the blue. I show up and spring the news that the inheritance isn’t decided. It isn’t guaranteed to be yours at all; in fact, you might get nothing, Simonne. Now there are two male heirs, bastards yes, but acknowledged as Malenfers through the dying words of their war-dead father. And that will surely change everything.”
“My grandmother might have split it up?”
“She might have given you nothing at all. Who knows with Madame? The twins are men, remember Simonne, male Malenfer heirs of her first born. Who the hell knows what goes through Madame’s mind with her feudal ideas? She might have given them nothing as bastards or made one of them sole heir. The point is that no one knew, perhaps not even Madame. Think of that. Now say someone had already killed Michel to settle all the money on you; do you think they’d stop now? Would they be happy to let chance intervene after doing what they’d done?”
“But all of this is conjecture, Dermot. We only know Pierre was killed. No one has tried to hurt Émile...” But she stopped as if seeing the flaw in that thought and the deviousness of the alternative.
“They didn’t? But, my dearest, they hurt Émile more than anyone might bear. His brother’s rent bag shows up in Émile’s room and the blame falls squarely on him. Pierre’s murder hangs over his head and the judge might be taken in. And even if he gets off, conjecture would follow him. Would Madame make him sole heir now? You know her better than I do.
“How much more harm can you do to a fellow? You kill his brother and then you pin the blame on him? Émile who has lost his twin could die an innocent man. Murdered with the guillotine and his memory cast in shame. And the beauty of the whole scheme is that no one is looking anymore. The real culprit will kill them both and is left above suspicion.”
“And if that happens, I’m the sole heiress once more.” She finished his reasoning for him.
“Yes, you are, my pretty girl. You were always the belle of the ball.”
“You needn’t seem so happy about it, Dermot.”
“Unless things are settled on your mother.”
“My mother!”
“I doubt it. I’m not worried right now. I don’t think she’s in any immediate danger unless she looks to marry again.”
“Dermot, we’ve got to say something!” Simonne was shaking. The implications of what he was saying seemed to have sunk home.
“We will, we’ll sort things out. It all makes sense, don’t you see?”
“But where’s the proof? There’s no proof of any of this. The doctor signed a death certificate – he said Michel died of the Spanish Flu.”
“He didn’t know what he was looking for. And as for proof, I think I know how.”
Dermot stepped back, but her hands still gripped his jacket, and he was glad because he didn’t want her to let go. And then, because she was there, and because he had nothing else to hide, and because he knew, deep down in his core, that everything now, whatever else happened, would be all right, and because regardless of all else and any obstacles or objections that might arise – he knew he loved her, he did, and he would fight for her till his last dying breath. And fighting was something he did know.
He held her, his toughened arms slipping easily around her tiny waist, pulling her firmly towards him. Her urgent mouth reached to him willingly, her body molded against his. There was a passion in his kisses that Simonne reciprocated as his hands pushed the hair from her face. His eager lips lingered over hers. He kissed her down her neck. He wound his fingers through her hair and pulled her to his chest.
Dermot inhaled her floral scent.
Simonne laid her head to his heart and felt the beat of him against her cheek.
24
Old Bones
By the old Chevecheix church was a graveyard, and in it the Malenfer tomb. Dermot paid the place a visit under the promiscuity of a full moon.
The cemetery was fenced by a low stone wall, its iron rails cut and taken, their metal gone to be smelted for guns, allowing the dead to assist the war effort. Dermot had no issue gaining admittance. Among the field of jutting stones the mausoleum stood out clearly – the other markers were short and worn, mere shards besides its presence.
The tomb looked Greek, yet if you squeezed past its Doric columns, at its heart it was something different. To lay a hand on its chiseled relief was to fondle its vulgar imagery. Angelic hosts and cherubim decorated it, the bric-a-brac of the faithful, but there were surprises found amidst its stonework that startled Dermot to witness: sprites and imps and daemon-kind, and other horned vulgarities, the fiends of hell all bent on war assembled on its surface.
“How did you find me, Dermot?”
“Your niece suggested I might check here. She’s a very perceptive girl.”
Arthur stood by the cemetery path. He seemed older when he stopped smiling, and now he looked wizened indeed. He knocked his boot against the tombstones, perhaps mocking them or from jealousy.
Dermot saw him as he had been, the Arthur before he had died. The profile of that leonine head so very familiar to him. His burn scars were hidden by the turn of his face; it might be that none of this had happened. For a moment he was again the Lieutenant he’d lived beside in the trenches.
“What the hell have you been doing down here?” Dermot asked the truant. “Do you know all that’s been going on at the manor since you buggered off?”
“I hadn’t meant to trouble you,” Arthur explained. “I had to get away. The girl at the mill… I tried to tell you. Well, I needed some distance to think.”
“Cheery place to come to.”
Shaded from the moon and behind the pillars, the door to the tomb was in shadow. “Nobody ever came here much, and I find it rather peaceful.”
Dermot hurt inside. He remembered the tunnel three years before. He remembered the last time he’d lost his friend and had returned to find him later.
“Are you a little sad?” Arthur read him. “You know, I’m told most people who can see ghosts are likely to go a bit cuckoo.”
“Maybe I was a little insane to start with.”
“Maybe you were, at that.” Arthur seemed philosophical. He was fishing for his pipe. “You’re not such a bad fellow, Dermot Ward, you’ve always been my friend. You helped me when I asked you to, and you’re not to blame for Pierre.” Dermot bowed his head. Arthur laid a hand upon his shoulder that Dermot couldn’t feel. “Nor for Émile either... yes, I did hear about developments. I even saw him go by in their car.” He had his Meerschaum pipe in hand now, knocking the bowl clean on the tomb. “And I’m glad you’ve made another friend. Good girl that you’ve got there.” Arthur put the pipe to his mouth.
“Arthur...” Dermot stumbled now to say it, but all the truth needed telling and the time was overdue. “There’s something I’ve wanted to explain to you for a while... Ever since you showed up in Paris, really. It’s been playing on my mind quite a bit...”
“It’s not about the tunnel, is it? And how I got out and all that?” Arthur struck a match first time.
“You know?”
Arthur inhaled strongly, drawing in the fragranced air to set the tobacco alight. He removed his glowing pipe to inspect his handiwork. “Like I said about my niece – damn fine girl you’ve got there. Be good to her. Grown up quite a bit lately too, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Well.” Dermot was a little lost for words. “I didn’t k
now her before. I guess I wanted to say I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“Don’t be a bloody idiot, Irlandais.” And for the first time in a long time, the serious ghost looked pleased. “If you hadn’t gone, we both know you’d be dead. Don’t be so damned sentimental about it, there were a lot worse off than us. And let me tell you, while we’re at it, that it’s me who should apologize to you. All my life it seems fate was trying to do me some harm. I’ve had the curse over me since I was born, and then comes the bloody war. If I hadn’t been down that tunnel with you, I doubt it would have caved in at all.” Dermot looked doubtful. “Very few people looked out for me, Dermot, but you, my friend, were one.”
“Well. I appreciate your words. But it doesn’t feel right, and I don’t know that it ever will.”
“Bollocks, Irlande! Don’t you bear a cross for me. And if you do, you should give it up and get on with the living. Listen, Dermot, you always did your best for me and you’ve always been my friend. I only wish I’d met you earlier, or at another time and place.” Here he looked wistful, as wistful as a ghost can look, and one who is smoking besides. “You think of all the terrible things men have done to each other, all that needless harm... The only thing that gives me hope in the world is seeing people look out for each other. Like you did for me. Like you always did for me. Don’t forget that. If you can do as much for my niece, then I know she’s in safe hands.”
Dermot was choked with sadness, shame, and grief. He missed his friend more than ever, and yet he seemed even further away. “Thank you,” was all he managed.
“Don’t be a daisy, Irlandais. Sergeants don’t shed tears.”
“It’s grown dark,” Dermot remarked, pulling himself together, and true enough, a solitary cloud had dammed the lunar grace.
Murder at Malenfer Page 24