Downfall

by Sally Spedding

  Apart from a small, distant light over the Auberge’s side entrance, there’s total darkness all around, while those huge, swaying trees from the Forêt des Hermites where there are supposed to be wolves, add to the raging night with their dead, cracking branches.

  Help!

  But I can’t even call out. Anyway, no-one would hear, not in this din, and when I try to roll over and use my hands and knees to stand, they give way. And then I notice my underpants and trousers are still around my knees. My arsehole stings so much when I touch it, I cry out in pain but who’s listening? And that’s when I know I’ll never force anyone to go there again. Because I confess, blackmail is what I used. No-one likes that kind of thing, least of all him, being local, with a wedding ring. Starting up a new business, he said. ‘Begged’ would be a better word…

  Somehow, I’ve got to reach our cabin. Explain to Papa about my savage attacker. Eat shit for as long as it takes to get out of this dump.

  ‘Come on, Lucius,’ I tell myself. ‘Second time lucky…’

  9.

  0.800 hrs.

  Several minutes later, came that same pink shape, blurred and shivering behind the glass panels, before the door opened a short way, held by a taut chain. Josette Lecroix’s blue eyes were dominated by enlarged black irises; dried stuff at the corners of her mouth. Delphine stepped back, her own mouth suddenly dry, her planned greeting nowhere.

  “I just stopped by to see if you were OK,” She managed to say, smelling that same cigarette and something else. “Everyone at the hotel’s been worried about you.”

  Those eyes narrowed. That mouth too. Not a good moment.

  “Fuck off. Leave me alone, you creep. I’ve had enough grief already from Miko, if you must know. You’d think he’d be fighting my corner. But no. Not him. Too busy brown-nosing Seligman who’s blaming me for leaving fucking Reception unattended in the first place.”

  Her door began to close, but Delphine wasn’t finished. She sensed this aggression was either a front, or as the result of what she might have been smoking. Whatever, Josette Lecroix was in trouble.

  “You wouldn’t have dashed off like that on Sunday for no good reason,” she said. “And I’m in the shit too, if you must know.”

  The chain slackened. A slippered foot stopped it from being blown back too far. “You? Little Miss Perfect?”

  “That’s a joke.”

  And yet she knew that her striving to please, to ensure she kept her – up till then – boring job, must have been obvious. Having to write those obsequious little cards to guests for a start. Adriana had refused, so why hadn’t she? And in that split second between shivers, Delphine realised that unless extreme paranoia had set in, her room must have been deliberately targeted. Why else take her card? No-one else had, which saved her having to write a new one each time.

  *

  “Better come in,” said Josette finally, breaking Delphine’s unappetising train of thought, focussing like Confrère had done, on her stained coat.

  “Is your sister here?” Delphine asked, so she wouldn’t have to explain about Julie.

  “Nadia? No, thank God. Both mad bitches are still in Le Mans looking for a new flat. I said I’d report them to the Mairie for the way they treat me.”

  The sudden venom in her tone made her visitor pause on the stair behind her, aware of Josette’s spotlessly clean heels popping out of her mules. How they seemed too small to support a full-grown body. But they did, for she made light of the next six flights. “So good riddance, I say. Means I can be on my own at last.”

  She turned to face Delphine, her cheeks flushed by the exercise. Her irises now a more normal size. “Sorry about no lift in the place. It’s always buggered. But here we are…”

  Delphine glanced back down the stairwell, just wide enough for a body to fall from top to bottom, she thought irrationally. “Did Michel call here yesterday?”

  “You mean Miko?” She’d stiffened, then perhaps realised he might already have said so. “He did. Yesterday morning.”

  “What time?”

  A hesitation while she frowned. “Too bloody early, that was for sure. It was still dark outside.”

  “Why here?”

  “He was concerned about me, so he said. Also scared about what you’d found in that bathroom.” She unlocked her door and pocketed its key. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “You’ve not said a word to your mother or Nadia?”

  “Them? Don’t be daft. He made me swear on his crucifix that no-one must know. The hotel’s struggling as it is, but to be honest, I don’t care about that. Not any more.”

  Josette closed the door behind them, drew a bolt across and padded over to a smart little kitchenette and a trendily-furnished lounge. The opposite of what lay inside Bellevue and bearing no obvious trace of its other inhabitants. No evidence of weed or grass, either, Delphine noticed, so perhaps a bad dream had made her eyes look so odd. “Look,” added the other girl. “I’d better come clean. Me and Miko, we’re seeing each other, OK? Have been since October. He’s from a crap family, like me. His older brother’s inside.” She half-turned to Delphine. “Does that shock you? It did me when I found out.”

  “No.”

  Josette switched on a new-looking cafetière and set out two matching mugs which Delphine recognised as coming from the hotel. Bought or not she wouldn’t be enquiring.

  “Guess what he’s in for?” Josette filled one of the mugs and passed it over.

  “I can’t”

  “Fiddling with his girlfriend’s toddler. Can you believe it? He’s in Fresnes. Due out February 2005. As long as he doesn’t come here, I can handle it. Might explain why the flics are sniffing around Miko, mind.”

  François and Irène Rougier weren’t the only ones with secrets, and Delphine didn’t envy the hotel manager having to carry that particular one around with him. Especially in a job where in summer, kids were everywhere.

  The coffee was good. The first sip almost burned her lips. “Stick with him,” she said. “He may be sucking up to the top brass, but he needs you.”

  “I do know that,” Josette said, pulling out two of a set of four wire chairs from around a small table, and sitting down. “Why he’s just phoned, sounding really stressed. And get this, the flics think that dead baby is connected to something pretty big.”

  She opened her packet of Camels and offered one to Delphine who declined, still preoccupied by Josette’s last remark. “He’s also told me to stay off work till things calm down. How agency staff can cover for me, and I’d still get full pay for another month.” She lit up using a hotel lighter, a grinning monkey along its side. While she did so, and considerately skewed the smoke sideways away from her companion, Delphine realised this mightn’t be the full story. Why risk losing a regular income – twice as much as her own – when jobs were so scarce? Why was Miko so concerned about her? And for some reason, Nadia came to mind. Someone she’d never met, but, if her older sister was to be believed, was about to jump ship.

  “Just one thing,” she began, aware that it was now a quarter past eight. “Is Nadia at college anywhere?”

  Josette laughed then choked on her latest inhalation. “Good God no. Unless you call opening her legs wherever she can, part of her education.” She turned, red-faced, to Delphine. “Get the picture?”

  She did. Also, recognising that there’d be precious little further headway to be made if she stayed. Having given Josette a friendly hug and the borrowed Ericsson’s phone number, told her not to worry.

  “I’ll try. And please, if you see Miko, say hello to him for me.”

  “I will.”

  But not today. He’s seeing Lieutenant Lise Confrère at four…

  As Josette unbolted the door to her apartment, Delphine remembered her so-far unanswered question. The most important of all.

  “You’ve still not said what made you run out of the hotel like that at Sunday lunchtime.”

  The other girl stared at her.
“Do you really want to know why?”

  “Go on.”

  Just then, a neighbour appeared from the next door flat and, without acknowledging either of them, bumped her shopping trolley down each marble step as she went.

  “I was pissed off with the restaurant manager,” said Josette. “I can’t bring myself to even say his name, to be honest.”

  Delphine’s empty stomach seemed to cramp up. “You mean Martin Dobbs?”

  “That’s the one. Talk about wandering palms. As if there aren’t enough of the bloody things around the place already.”

  “Did you tell anyone? I mean…”

  “Don’t be dumb, Delphy. There’s enough going on there without sexual harassment.”

  *

  Unsteady on her feet, Delphine made her way down the core of that strangely quiet building and out into a wind that had become a gale, slamming at her slight frame and knocking her newly-opened driver’s door hard against her thigh.

  She looked up to see Josette, same cigarette in hand watching her. Once she was out of sight, she stopped in a layby, tempted at first, to call the wayward restaurant manager. But no. Supposing the smoker had just lied about him to cause more trouble? To make her jealous? He’d always seemed the epitome of propriety with everyone. Yet all the same, something was niggling her. Was his sole concern really to do his job well? To enhance the hotel’s reputation? She suddenly hated Josette for pricking her little dream. Her one glimmer of hope, and prayed, yes, prayed with all her heart it wasn’t true.

  Still smarting, she then called Lieutenant Confrère with an update, suggesting that both Michel Salerne and Nadia Lecroix might be worth a look. The cop who’d been on her way to a meeting seemed pre-occupied, but nevertheless pleased with the information so far, and again warned her unofficial recruit about confidentiality and to be on alert. Next, on her own phone, Delphine tried her boss’s number, only to be told by an automated voice that its voicemail and mailbox were full.

  Great.

  She was probably already on her way to see Adriana and like many travellers, not keen to check her mobile while on the move. She thought of those rooms she herself would normally be cleaning, experiencing a pang of guilt at not leaving her usual nice, clean beds and new soaps still in their cellophane wrappers. But the third floor was probably taped off, still crawling with forensic experts in white space suits. Hopefully closer to finding who had sneaked into room 56 and done that terrible thing.

  Buffeted by the strengthening wind, she returned to Labradelle’s main street and turned off its final roundabout where a sign helpfully proclaimed LE MOULIN D’ESPOIR 8KMS. But why, instead of hope, did a trickle of fear suddenly touch her skin?

  LUCIUS

  Saturday 1st December. 8 a.m.

  I’m on the cabin floor with Papa trying to wake me, but I’m still dreaming of that big, hot cock in my mouth, and the way that Monsieur le Mécaniaque had then pushed me over against the cabin wall and…

  “Get up, for God’s sake! We have to go,” Papa hisses, stale wine on his breath. “If we stay any longer, my career could be ruined, and your schooldays over. I’ve paid the bill and told the owner that you’ve mysteriously disappeared. That you probably crept out of the cabin to look at the river while I was taking a nap after dinner and may have been assaulted. How I’ve searched as best I can, and she mustn’t risk her life doing the same. How I’ll be contacting the police immediately, and how beside myself I am, because – and I’m loath to say this – since your mother died, you’ve been the one person I could rely on. Could trust.” His eyes narrow and darken. The blue vein in his neck pulses like a metronome. “But that’s gone. So, no time for breakfast. Just get your filthy arse out of here. Someone’s waiting for us. Move! Schnell!”

  His harsh voice flows over me, except for one word which I repeat.

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes,” then adds something which sounds like, “for good.”

  *

  What happens next passes in a blur of shame and humiliation, and not a little fear, because his hands clamped round the back of my collar, pushing me towards a car I don’t recognise. But whose driver I do….

  10.

  08.50 hrs.

  As Delphine drove along with the wild wind mercifully behind her, she should have felt some satisfaction at Confrère’s recent response, but instead, it was as if a growing burden of anxiety had settled on her shoulders. Apart from her boss being uncontactable and the prospect of Martin Dobbs being a rampant Lothario with anyone but her, if she had been deliberately targeted by the infanticide, then why? Until her father took an honesty pill, she might never know. Time indeed for some serious questions when she got home. But just then, in this unfamiliar place with its darkly thick copses springing from the white ground, and tiny turnings off leading to God knew where, home seemed a long way away.

  *

  Yes, there was another sign for the water mill, but no way was the narrow, snowy track suitable for anything other than a bike. She therefore parked the 2CV in a small, rubble-strewn space off the road, alongside the biggest trees she’d ever seen. Bare oaks and sycamores rocking madly in the cold blast. Her car wouldn’t stand a chance if just one branch came down on top of it, but she had to take the risk. Where else was any other kind of access?

  Although this part of the Sarthe was unfamiliar to her, she knew from her mother that during the Occupation it had suffered more than most. Several German families descended from the invaders, now worked the land or ran hotels and camp sites.

  “It’s a wonder they can sleep at night,” she’d opined more than once, unable to forgive and forget. But how could she, given her tragic background? And after Le Pen’s success in last year’s Presidential elections, Irène Rougier had stayed on the right. “The only politician putting France first,” she’d said, when challenged.

  It then occurred to Delphine as she checked her hair in the miniscule driver’s mirror, that perhaps this ongoing grief begun on 10th June 1944, might lie at the heart of things. Why perhaps she was herself, an only child. An accident, like most people, if only they knew. Why her Papa, once so full of handsome vigour, had sunk into his wife’s shade, with his final Christmas looming.

  She’d almost given up hope of finding the mill, when she suddenly passed a large, dark green post box upon which its name had been almost scuffed away by previously parked vehicles. Anyone with a screwdriver or replica key could open its flap. Her father had only yesterday moved the nameless Bellevue box to the farmhouse wall itself, and now she realised why. Those threats they’d received had to be private. But not for long…

  As she followed an unmelted pathway which in turn led downwards onto steps, Delphine was relieved she’d not had to ask anyone the way. She knew from all the ‘policiers’ on TV, that the best cop or flatfoot was unobtrusive. Merging with their surroundings, which was why in these situations, her yellow coat was a disaster. Perhaps she should smother it in mud and dead leaves. Even remove it altogether, but not in that icy blast

  Too many steps, each still frozen and ending in a treacherously slippery wooden edge.

  Do not fall, she told herself, gripping on to the metal hand rail until the mill itself came into view and a sudden loss of nerve made her pause.

  She thought of Josette, probably still in her dressing gown and on her fifth cigarette. Of her boss perhaps stopped for coffee somewhere. Of Lise Confrère and Captain Valon, cosy and warm in their office, certainly not in the back of beyond, risking being shot by some wacko.

  Yes, she could have done with a neat, little weapon herself. A Glock automatic or Beretta like they’d worn, strapped to their thighs. Perhaps she should join a shooting club, so that when she did finally apply to join the police, her CV would have had a boost.

  She moved on, thinking how tucked away and secretive this place was. How forbidding. And where on earth was Basma Arouar? Why hadn’t the normally fussy woman – her new ally – not been in touch as planned?


  “Yes?” Barked out a man’s voice from somewhere beyond the end of the steps. “Who’s there?”

  Delphine could have given her name but didn’t. “Only me,” she said instead, and that would have to do for the time being. She reached the end of the steps and stopped in a wide, gravelled area with yesterday’s snow still between its pebbles, to see who that defensive voice belonged to. But there was just the gaunt, grey-stoned building itself. Beyond it, an expanse of black water curling away between the same flat land that had so far – and literally – shaped her life. Hedgeless fields of varying shades of brown, harvested to within an inch of their lives.

  “A conqueror’s dream,” her mother had sighed, which was true. And here was her daughter, invading at her peril.

  So far, no cars, nor anything with wheels, which was also disconcerting. As was the single lifebelt secured to a mooring post by the water’s edge. A river rather than a canal in full flow, but its name escaped her.

  Suddenly, she heard footsteps coming from her right, preceding a figure dressed as if for the Arctic, in a trappers’ coat with a fur-lined hood concealing most of his olive-skinned face. Delphine knew that Adriana’s mother had run off years ago, that the father often worked away, and she had a twin brother, but who was this?

  She stood her ground even though the south-westerly gale was attacking her very core. “I’m Delphine Rougier,” she held out a damp-gloved hand. “I work with Adriana Facchietti at the Hôtel les…”

  “I know where she works,” he snapped, ignoring her outstretched hand. “For a slave’s wage, that’s what.”

  His small, brown eyes fixed on her coat. In particular, its now permanent bloodstains. “I told her not to bother going in any more. It’s insulting, degrading, and barely covers the cost of her petrol.” His accent bore no trace of Italian. He’d probably never been there.