Cupid's Arrow (28 page)

A year's gone by. I'm sitting alone in my hotel room in Avallon, writing the last few pages of this testimony. Because I suppose that's what it is, really, isn't it? A testimony. A sort of witness statement. Or maybe a reconstruction of a case, just as it happened, all of it, without hiding anything. A way to get to the truth, to make sense of it. If ever I do become a detective – and I hope someday I will – then maybe one day I'll re-read this, and I'll know this was where it really started, this urge to piece together the truth.

We're back in Avallon, briefly, because there's something special on today. Something at Bellerive, something important. It's going to be weird being back there. Going to be strange walking into that house again, which has changed because ...

Wait. I'm not up to that yet. Last week, I had to testify at Christine Foy's trial. Even with her confession, it still took time for her to finally be brought to trial. Lieutenant Balland says it's not really that slow, that in fact it's a record, getting such serious criminal charges to trial in just under a year, and she'd know, I suppose. But it still seems like a long time to me. A very long time, in which Christine Foy's face has come to me sometimes in horrible dreams, though much less now than at the beginning. She never got bail, of course, so she's been in prison all that time while she waited for her trial. Lieutenant Balland says that with the four murder charges and two attempted murder charges – of me and of Remy – that Christine has admitted to, she'll be in prison a whole lot longer. They can't bring in the suspected murder cases from Canada – justice doesn't work like that, unfortunately – but even without those brought into the picture, she's in deep trouble. She is likely to face what they call here 'life imprisonment in perpetuity', that is, life without parole or at least no parole for a very long time, at least 30 years. The trial would be over soon, she reckoned. Christine had condemned herself out of her own mouth. The jury would have an easy time of it. And the judge would have no choice but to impose the harshest penalty.

Christine had talked and talked and talked. They couldn't shut her up. Her defence lawyer must have had a hard time of it. She spoke coolly, clinically, without emotion. She talked of how Raymond had not liked her from the start. He'd had a bad feeling about her. And he was sure she was just after Oscar's money. Raymond had hired the PI to snoop into her past life. He'd discovered that records about her in Ireland went back to the age of sixteen, but there was nothing before then. It might have ended there because the PI could not find out any more but then by a very unfortunate coincidence, Raymond had come across the fateful souvenir, the piece of paper from the Hotel du Lys, which she kept tucked into the back of her address book. It must have fallen out of there without her noticing it. She didn't discover its loss at first. And then one day Raymond called her and told her he wanted to speak with her, alone.

Fool of a man, Christine said. He really thought that I was just going to stand there meekly and answer his questions about just why I hadn't told Oscar that I'd once lived in Canada! He didn't let on that he knew any more than that, but I knew I couldn't take the chance. I had come ready to do what I had to do. It was an easy enough matter to shut him up completely. He was much older than me. I was stronger than him and I had the advantage of surprise, because I don't think he expected me to attack him. Simple as that. It felt good. Right. Powerful.

Christine took his laptop, and all his disks and his records, making it look like some kind of burglary gone wrong. She searched his files. She checked his emails and discovered the existence of the PI. She made an appointment to see him, under another name. He wasn't expecting any problems. The thing was, they had no real reason to suspect yet
who
she was. But she'd had to act. She couldn't wait till things had really advanced. She'd tied him up and killed him. She was quite proud of the method she'd used on him – a syringe full of air introduced into a vein, which had caused an embolism. She'd read about this method once, in a book. It had worked like a charm, hadn't it? They'd thought at first it was a heart attack.

Once he was dead, she'd ransacked his files – the silly man still confided all his records to paper, not computer, she said – and taken away and burnt the one he'd started on her. By that time she had discovered the loss of the paper, and had expected to find it in the PI's office, because she'd searched Bellerive and found nothing. But it wasn't there. In fact there was no reference to it at all. So she concluded that Raymond could
not
have found it, that it had just fallen out of her address book by misadventure, somewhere. Anywhere. She had just lost it, that was all. He had found out about Canada some other way. And when time went on and on and the police didn't come to question her, she thought she must be right. She could stop worrying. Everything was all right. Nothing was linked to her.

Then she had seen Valerie Gomert, that evening. It had been a real shock. She'd recognised Valerie at once. She wasn't sure if Valerie had recognised her, though. Christine said that she was a lot younger back then, and didn't look the same – but she was sure she noticed something – an inflection in her voice, a way of moving, something which reminded her of Maurice. People used to tell her we looked a lot alike. Valerie looked shocked. So Christine wasn't willing to take the chance. She slipped out that night as soon as Oscar was asleep and made her way to the Gomerts' cottage. She had no idea if Valerie would still be there, or had already fled. If she had, she'd have made some other plan, Christine said. But as it was, she found Valerie alone, the dream book in front of her. Remy had already gone. Valerie turned and saw her. We looked at each other, said Christine. I saw her expression change. She whispered, 'Hotel du Lys' and her eyes fell back on the dream book, and I knew then, I knew that Raymond had found it, and had hidden it, and she had it now. I took a step towards her. And in that moment, she knew for sure. She knew Death had come for her at last.

I still gave her a chance, Christine said, indignantly. More of a chance than her rotten husband and brother had given my poor Maurice. I told her to run. I said she'd know what it was like to be hunted, now. But she was a poor thing. No spirit. No strength. She didn't run far before she'd tripped. And then, well, it was a mercy to kill her, really. She had nothing left in her. That woman was dead inside. That's why she drew that picture of
herself
as the Hanged Man, as Death. She wanted to die. That's why she hadn't even tried to escape. It was a mercy, what I did.

Christine thought then of throwing suspicion on to Remy, because of what had happened that afternoon, down at Bellerive, his mother coming between him and the girl. Fleur. There was the bow and arrow – she knew he was an archer, she'd heard the girl say so and she'd hear about his haunt at the Lady's House. She knew his fingerprints were likely to be on it, and she was wearing gloves. It had seemed a nice touch to deface the Tarot pictures, as if whoever had done it had been full of fury. She'd just kept one, that portrait of Valerie. And the dream book, of course, with the paper from Hotel du Lys in it. She liked to have souvenirs, she said.

Then there was Oscar. He'd gone to pieces after his uncle's death. Perhaps he'd found out something. Perhaps Raymond had said something. Perhaps he wasn't as stupid as she'd always thought, as lovesick, and he'd sensed something. He had doubts, anyway. Whatever it was, it was clear the night he prowled around Christine's house that he was becoming a real threat to her safety. She felt she had to deal with him. Not happily, because she liked him, in a way. Not loved him, you understand – she couldn't love anyone after Maurice. Her heart was still his. She'd liked Oscar well enough, and she'd certainly liked the lifestyle he'd given her. But he was weak and she'd never trust a weak man. She had to kill him. But humanely, without suffering. He deserved that, at least.

No, she was not sorry about any of that. About any of them. Not really. The only thing she was sorry about, a little, was the death of the dog Patou. The dog was an innocent. And she was sorry about us too. Not because of us, exactly. Not because she'd liked us – though in her psychopathic way, she had.
But because we had won.
Because we had made her lose control. We had made her lose her grip on events, challenged her image of herself as the genius who'd committed the perfect murders.

In the court, she had looked across at me when I was in the witness box. Her eyes had fixed on me. There was no expression in those eyes, but the memory of them makes me shiver. It was like looking into the pit of Hell. A cold, cold Hell. Vicious. Frightening. Arrogant. And lonely. For a tiny, tiny instant, I'd felt the ghastly, pitiful and horrible loneliness of her reach out and stab me, right in the heart.

No. I draw a big black line in my book right here, and finger Remy's eglantine brooch, which I wear pinned next to my heart. I don't want to write any more about her. I can't bear the thought of her. I don't want this book just to be an exorcism of her malevolent spirit, of the nightmare she had inflicted on us all. This book has to be more than that. It has to be an affirmation of life. Of love. Of kindness and gentleness and trust. Of remembrance of her victims, but also of new beginnings.

So Remy came back to Paris with us, after Valerie's funeral, and her burial in the cemetery at Avallon, next to her dear friend Raymond Dulac. (Poor Oscar is buried there too.) We had stayed longer in Paris than we'd thought. But when we went back to Australia, Remy didn't come with us. He went to Canada instead. It was his idea, not anyone else's. He said he wanted to know more about his mother's family. His father. His uncle. Where they'd come from. He wanted to get to know who he was. He knew by now that 'Gomert' wasn't his real surname. It was Louvel. The Louvels are a big family, well-known in Montreal. Several of them are in the police force. He'd have lots of relations to call on.

And guess who went with him? No. Not me. But my father. Tom. Tom Mallory. I still can't call him Dad, not yet. But one day, maybe I will. Maybe. Or maybe he'll always be Tom. But that's okay. Maybe you can't wind back the clock and have a dad like other kids, the kind of dad you really need when you're a kid. But maybe, when you're almost an adult – and I'll be eighteen in, like, about four months' time – then maybe you can do with a Tom. You can make a different kind of relationship.

Anyway, Remy took off to Canada with Tom. You might think I was angry. Upset. But I wasn't. We'd talked. I understood. I really knew he had to do this. I can't say I wasn't scared, that he'd, like, well go there and forget about me or think that what had happened was all too weird and unreal or that maybe we were too young. I knew Tom wouldn't try to convince him of that. I knew that, you see, because he'd told me that was where he'd made his big mistake. He'd met Mum when he was young and immature, and he'd known it was right, this was it, but then he'd taken fright and told lies and run away. He said he'd never stopped regretting it. He'd written to her a couple of times over the years (which was how she knew he was back in Montreal) but she'd never answered. He had not dared to insist. He thought she must hate him. And Mum said he was right, she had. She'd hated him for ages and gloated over the fact that he didn't know about my existence and then one day she'd woken up and she knew she didn't hate him anymore. She had looked up his number in the Montreal directory. She had kept it in her phone list for years. But she'd never had the courage to call it. Until that fateful night.

For about five minutes, I thought it'd be kind of cool if Tom and Mum got back together again. I suppose everyone whose parents are separated think that. But the fantasy didn't last long. It's too late, now, for them. Much too late. They can be friends, of a sort, but not anything else. They've moved on. And besides, there's Nicolas. And Wayne, too. Neither of them's given up. They both write, email, ring up Mum. They even came to visit us in Australia. Funnily enough, they've become great mates. I don't know which of these two guys Mum will end up preferring. It's like anyone's guess. Maybe she won't want either of them. Maybe she'll meet someone else, quite different, one of these days. Maybe it'll be a new beginning for her, too.

One Saturday afternoon, about five months ago, I was minding the bookshop while Mum had slipped out for coffee, when I heard the door chimes go. And there was Remy, standing in the doorway, smiling. He was as gorgeous as ever, but with something different about him. I could see that at once. At first I couldn't put my finger on what it was. But it didn't matter. Because I very, very soon realised that whatever it was, Remy had certainly not changed his mind about me.

He lives close by now – in fact, in the 'granny flat' in Dr Troy's back garden! (Our old friend is delighted his new tenant shares quite a few of his interests!) He's enrolled in an arts degree – specialising in art and in medieval history (he finally decided, after meeting his Canadian relatives and talking to them, that the police force wasn't really for him). He also works part-time at the bookshop. Mum's got that Raymond Dulac room she was talking about back in Bellerive up and running – it's a beautiful sunny room just off the main part of the bookshop, full of Raymond's books, and pictures. It gets quite a lot of visitors – and will get even more, once the star-studded blockbuster film based on Raymond's novel,
The Lady of the Lake,
is released next year. (Yes, Laurie was a real movie producer.)

Remy and I spend heaps of time together, but he's made friends at uni, too, as well as getting on really well with my mates from school. Funny thing is, I've become closer friends with them, too. I've changed. And I know now what's different about him. He's more confident, somehow. He's easier in company. He's emerged from the forest and into the ordinary world but he's not ordinary. He never will be. And not just to me, either. People say he's amazing. That he's like no-one they've ever met.