The Mayor paused, weighing his response. He had imagined such a conversation many times in many forms, though he hadn’t known if or when or from whom it would come. It did not faze him now. “I am in politics, Mr. Ward, lying for me is a robe of office. You will have to be a little clearer if you have something you are trying to expound.” He said it with all innocence, a smile of wax upon his face. “I tell you what. I’ll give you the courtesy to speak to whatever fancy has entered your foreign head; and then I’ll laugh it off, and then we’ll go home out of the cold and back to our respective beds.”
“No, Crevel. I think we both know that that is not going to happen here.”
Dermot did not attempt to stem the loathing he poured on the man. Crevel backed slowly off.
“Forgive me, Ward, I’m a patient man, but I don’t quite understand the point you are trying to make. I think I’ll be leaving now.”
“You don’t understand?” Dermot was loud and aggressive and clear. “I think you know already, Crevel. I think you’re lying again. I think that mind of yours is whirling around and you know exactly what I mean. Does anyone else know? What has he told Madame or Simonne? How did he figure it out? These are the questions you are asking yourself, Crevel, it’s in your devious nature to do so.
“Can you buy a silence, you wonder, or is there another slippery way out? Anything but take responsibility, anything but accept the consequences for what you’ve already done. Parliaments and assemblies are full of people like you, Crevel, you’re not so special, you’re not alone. Belligerents strut, immune to the shells, and send good men towards the guns. But this time there’s no escaping it. Today you pay your bill.”
Ward saw steel behind Crevel’s eyes, but he did not give a damn. Fleetingly he wondered if Michel or Pierre had seen that look as well – their last before they died.
Crevel laughed dismissively, but knew immediately he’d made a mistake. The Mayor was familiar with having an audience to play to, a crowd to convince, but he found himself alone. In this, a gallery of one, his pretense sounded hollow and wasn’t believed by anyone. He knew it and he hated himself, and so he hated Dermot more.
This was no reconciliation, Crevel understood now. He thought to end it, fingering the service revolver he had in his pocket, but he wanted to hear out the Irishman; he needed to know more. What exactly did Dermot know? How far had it spread?
“Calm down, Ward.” He backed off again, Dermot closing the distance to match. “Tell me, what is it you think I have done? I’ll entertain that much.”
“You murdered Michel Malenfer, that was a start, and then you shot and gutted Pierre!”
Crevel was taken aback by the outright accusation and the gale with which it was delivered.
“It was influenza, you fool!” But Dermot was paying him no heed.
“You fostered suspicion on innocent men to their ruin at the mill; then you planted evidence against Émile and aim to see him executed!”
Crevel shifted his step back once again, stumbling on a rock beneath the archways. The raised voice echoed disturbingly on the stonework; the sound of the train across the water was clear and growing louder as it drew nearer. Crevel fumbled in his pocket and cocked the hammer on the .38 pistol. He’d heard almost enough.
“You needed two things.” Dermot looked like a bull before the Mayor, snorting and pawing the dirt. “The Malenfer inheritance had to fall to Simonne, and your son would have to marry her. That’s what everything was always about, that’s why you did everything that you did here.”
“You rant, Irishman, I suggest you calm yourself.” Crevel trained the hidden barrel on his adversary, ready to blow a hole in him.
“Rant?” Dermot seemed amused. “What else did you come here for, if not to hear someone speak and explain? I’ll tell you how it went. First, Arthur died in service – I think that’s when you hatched your wicked plan. It was only Michel who then stood in the way of Simonne inheriting everything, the entire Malenfer estate! Inheriting after her mother Sophie, the grieving faithful widow.
“But Simonne was still young back then. Too young to marry. And you couldn’t risk Michel dead before any engagement could be made. No, no, don’t shake your head! You know as well as I that people like the Malenfers wouldn’t likely accept a common suit from a family such as yours – not if she was the heiress, not if she was all they had left.” Crevel scowled at the insult but held his tongue. “Madame would not likely condescend to see her legacy weaseled away. You have no nobility, Monsieur Crevel, and not nearly enough money in hand to pretend it didn’t matter. Madame might see you for what you are – a grasper on the make!
“Did you ruminate long over how or when to move Michel out of the way? I wonder, Crevel, did it linger in your mind for those two whole years after Arthur died in the war?” Dermot could see the mask begin to crack on Crevel’s mannequin face, his eyebrows drawing together, his lips pressed tight and hard. “Do you want to hear what I’ve got to say, Mr. Mayor? Then listen closely and carefully.
“You played your cards well to win the engagement. Fate and circumstance seemed to be on your side. I imagine you took that as a sign from Providence that your scheme would work out fine. Robert has an aesthetic charm about him, and a perfume of sophistication. And he survived the war! Simonne, now of age, is ripe for marriage, and Madame approves as well. It’s all coming together so nicely, and then Michel falls ill from the flu.”
Dermot paced back and forth, consumed by the picture brought to life by his own narration.
“I see it now! You’re standing there. I bet you’re thinking that God is going to take care of everything. The hubris! The gall! To think with all the slaughter in France that He is looking out for you.” Dermot laughed at him, irking Crevel, who suffered visibly at the Irishman’s withering words. It is said of pride that a grain of truth is the seed that rubs it raw. “You did, didn’t you?” Dermot continued. “You thought destiny had laid it out for you on a plate!
“Didn’t turn out that way, though, and Michel broke the fever and started to get better. That couldn’t happen, could it?” Crevel said nothing. The stones of the bridge now hummed softly with the approach of the locomotive. “But somehow the opportunity arose to be sure of Michel, and you took it! A pillow to his face? Medicine for him to drink? You played your hand and got away with it, and it looked as if you’d win.
“Only then did things start to go wrong for you; the Fates, it seemed, had turned. It was I, Crevel, I who arrived unbidden with the news of Arthur’s twins. I who unwittingly marked them for your attention and ultimately their death.” Dermot, who had been baiting and teasing Crevel, now found his firebox had been lit. “I arrived at the house and brought you Arthur Malenfer’s confession. It was I who produced their birth certificates, I who had no caution. Careless and cavalier, I was, and I must carry that guilt with me always... It was I, Crevel, but how was I to know? How was I to know there was a snake in the nest already?
“Now what could you do? Would Madame divide the inheritance, or give it all to a bastard child? You didn’t know, how could you? But it was a risk that couldn’t be borne! You’d already murdered one man to stem chance, so what were a couple more? I think by that point you were not really a believer in Fate anymore. You were happier making your own choices, is that not so, Mr. Mayor?
“Did you meet the deserters beforehand, who were living at the mill? Did you tell them of Pierre, who would be traveling collecting rents? You know what I think, Crevel? I don’t think you have the spine to do honest killing yourself; it takes a kind of mettle to fix a bayonet on a rifle, to stand up on the firing platform and wait to hear your orders. I don’t think you have it in you to drive a blade straight through a ribcage, to watch a man cry bloody pleas as he falls upon his kneecaps. I don’t think you have that in you because I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds tested, and after a while you learn about men and you can tell just what they’re made of.”
“Shut up, Irishman! You’re a fool an
d you’re done!” Crevel pulled out the gun. He trained the barrel square on Dermot, who froze before him, hands raised, palms forward in submission. “I shot the man! How hard is it to figure that out? I’m not going to confide in a pack of mongrel soldiers! Who do you think I am? It was easy enough to pin the blame; people around here are always suspicious of strangers from outside.” The Mayor had had enough. Proof or not, Dermot was talking too much, saying things other people could never be allowed to hear. Ever.
“And I suppose you needed his satchel too, to be sure of getting Émile?” Crevel, a sneer of triumph on his face, didn’t bother to reply. “But why did you gut the boy? Why knife him? Why defile... ?”
“They are sheep! That’s why, Mr. Ward. People are sheep, easily distracted and led. Shoot a man and it’s murder; gut a Malenfer and it’s their stupid curse! Who will look deeper or think harder about anything when the supernatural is at work? Enough of this now. Keep your distance; we’re going for a little walk.”
“So you gutted Pierre!” Dermot spoke louder, moving around hands up, but still facing Crevel. “Pierre, who made the most of the life he’d been given, growing up without a father. Pierre, who might have enjoyed a little more. He threatened the coin in your pocket! You slaughtered him for avarice. You desecrated the boy!”
“Shut up. That’s enough. Get going.” He motioned with his gun.
“I’ve wondered about Sophie, though. What if she married again?”
“Who said I didn’t ask her?” He regretted his admission.
“Aha! That’s it, then! But she preferred a life of her mother’s tongue than to sit and listen to yours. I had wondered... I suppose if another suitor showed up, she’d meet with a timely accident?”
“Keep walking.”
Dermot moved slowly as directed, seemingly unfazed by the weapon. “You don’t surprise me, Crevel,” he continued after a moment. “I’ve lived beside evil for years. When we were in the trenches – not you, of course, you were too busy off doing important things – but when we were in the trenches we died in heaps beneath the guns. The pride of nations is an ordinary evil; king and country before man. It’s so common we don’t even give it its true name. I recognize evil, Crevel, and I see it alive in you. Do you know how Émile now suffers?”
“Shut up, Ward! He’s getting what he needed, just like I’ll take care of you!”
“Two more lives just to line your pocket?” Dermot waved his arms, excited. He had been poised in his trench waiting until now, goading his enemy to play. “But Simonne isn’t going to marry your son. That’s not happening, Crevel. Don’t you see? You get nothing now!”
Crevel looked as if he could happily slit Dermot’s throat.
“Changes things up, don’t you think?” Ward grinned at him cheerily. “Mademoiselle doesn’t want to marry into a family that’s bent on finishing off her own – let’s call it a case of bridal nerves,” he taunted the mayor.
“She will marry him! She has to!”
“Not if she’s marrying me.”
Crevel raised his arm, his finger squeezing the trigger that would obliterate the man; the meddlesome Irishman that had descended upon him, ruining his plans. Michel had gone quietly, trusting, uncomprehending until the very last. Pierre had guessed at trouble but too late; when Crevel had stepped out and blocked his path there had been nowhere for the twin to run. Émile he hadn’t had to watch; he’d been malleable and weak. But not this man, not the cretin Ward! He might already have ruined everything – but he would pay for stepping in.
A soldier doesn’t often get to see the gun that kills him; he hugs the trench in front of him and waits to hear the signal. Forty meters above their heads the Paris night train hurtled. The earth it shook like cannon fire and its boilers blew the whistle. Dermot heard the call to charge and like a soldier he answered. The sergeant released and fell on Crevel like a hammer strikes an anvil.
“I... will... never... give in...!” The Mayor stuttered the words through foaming lips, both of his hands upon his gun. Dermot held it away from him with one hard and wiry arm.
Ward was cold and controlled, his voice level and low. “It ends, Crevel,” he whispered gently to the struggling man, a tender terrible voice to hear. “It ends now.”
“It’s your word against mine, Mr. Ward. You haven’t learned a bloody thing.”
Ten years of tunnels, war mines and digging; ten years that had carved Dermot Ward. Crevel clawed against him, his foe less giving than the rock face from which he seemed hewn. Dermot reached behind him and took out his old bayonet. It was a stiletto blade of tempered steel that he’d strapped behind his back.
What had he promised Arthur as he cradled his dead son? How do you judge a man but that he keeps his word to a friend? I’ll help, Arthur, I’ll get who did this. We’ll get the bastard together.
“This is for Pierre!” he said, and thrust forward into Crevel, who screeched as it pierced his belly. “For Michel!” Dermot thrust again, deeper this time, a fresh wound poked through his guts that came out the other side.
Crevel’s shocked eyes looked up into his face, disbelieving. The gun fell at their side.
“For Émile and those innocent men!” Dermot bellowed and plunged into him a third time. Crevel’s blood streamed out over his arm.
The Mayor’s breath was now one long wheeze that rolled out of him like a snore. Crevel clung to Dermot’s shoulders, fighting to hold himself up. His legs had gone beneath him as if he could not feel his feet.
Dermot shook with a frenzied passion. He pulled the bayonet from Crevel’s abdomen and pushed the dying man down. Crevel bowed like a penitent before the cross, kneeling in the snow.
“And for what you would have done to Simonne!”
Dermot seized the villain by the hair and drove the dagger down. The blade tore into Crevel’s collar only inches below his neck. Dermot buried it to its hilt. The bloody dagger was wedged in tight – it sprung free with a frothy jolt.
The last of Crevel spouted up and sprayed from that terrible wound. His body teetered a moment and then slumped slowly to one side, Crevel’s head dropped down to his chest with his legs drawn up beneath him. His muscles gave a final spasm and sent his arms to tremble, as the pulsing blood slowed to a trickle and finally subsided. It leaked into a puddle dark against the clean crisp snow. It grew until it reached its limit and then it grew no more.
Dermot stood stock still, afloat for a moment in a serene calm. He had come through the battle, and come through unharmed. He had seen the gun that would have killed him and had come away victorious. He was distantly aware of noises – of mutterings and scrambling behind him, of the clatter of a train’s wheels receding in the distance, of a cockerel crowing ahead of a dawn on a fresh new winter morning. A virgin land whose scars were covered, whose blemishes were hidden.
He saw figures help each other climb up the bank from beside the river. They emerged as trolls from beneath the bridge where they had spent the time well hidden. Dermot paid none of them heed as they gathered around him – Madame and Gustave and two other men: a beanpole and a barrel.
“You heard everything, then?” Dermot said matter-of-factly, his eyes still on Crevel.
“Unpleasant as it was.” Madame spoke for them all. Dermot and Simonne had woken her in the middle of the night, and spent a rancorous half hour convincing her of their plan.
Madame dusted the earth from her skirts and straightened herself up. “It seems I’ve misjudged you, Mr. Ward. My family owes you a debt.”
She looked past Ward, regarding the body of the slaughtered Crevel with the look of a scavenger crow. “Gustave!” she summoned.
“Yes, Madame?”
“Have your men remove this carrion. Dispose of it somewhere.”
“As you wish, Madame.” The bent scarred form of the Malenfer footman turned towards the two men.
“And there is likely to be a car somewhere up near the road. Have it driven off to a distant town and abandon it there.”
“Of course, Madame. As you say.”
“Mr. Ward?”
Dermot looked at her, the gravity of her voice was stronger than the pull of the dead Crevel. “Madame?”
“You have a Malenfer sense of justice in you.” From the matriarch, it sounded like a compliment. “He got exactly what he deserved.”
“I only did what needed doing. It was the only way she’d be safe.”
Madame held his stare for a moment before she turned away. Was there a darkness, he wondered, that they shared? The guilt of past failures? Fear for those for whom you care? Or would he never understand her?
“Gustave!”
“Madame?” the twisted man had been putting the men to labor.
“Take me home, please, Gustave. And when we get there, inform Berthe that Mr. Ward will need his room for some while longer. I imagine for quite some time. And have her draw him a nice hot bath; it looks as though he needs one.”
“Of course, Madame.”
“Well? What are you waiting for? Hurry up, man!”
26
Laid to Rest
The summer of 1919 was a warm one. “Unbearable,” they said in Paris. How soon our sufferings change.
The Peace Conference had finished not two months previously and everyone everywhere was upset. The American Congress couldn’t ratify Wilson’s peace and Chancellor Scheidemann had resigned. The press bashed Clemenceau for letting the Germans off easily, while the Brits thought they’d burned them to the ground. Ward saw all this as a good sign – perhaps after the months of wrangling they had gotten the best deal possible for the time. Germany was left intact, that was true, but the shelling was history for now. Across Europe the guns had stopped and long might it continue. Paris luxuriated in the torments of the sun, and the world around her moved on.
Malenfer Manor was a different animal in the glow of a summer’s day. Where before the landscape had been charcoal drawn, Minerva had opened her paintbox. The funeral of Madame Malenfer proved to be a grand affair – she had succumbed to consumption in the springtime of that year. Crowds from the surrounding countryside flocked to see her off, united in curiosity but at odds over where she was headed. There were those who grieved from sentiment and those who attended to make certain, but consensus was reached on one thing: with her death an age was passing.
Murder at Malenfer Page 26