The Twenty-Year Death (23 page)

“Inspector Pelleter!” It was one of the city boys. “You feel like answering some questions?”

The group had fallen silent and turned expectantly to the chief inspector, retrieving notebooks and pencils from coat pockets.

“It sure took you all long enough to get down here,” the chief inspector said, without breaking his stride.

“What do you expect with this Richard-Lenoir business?”

Pelleter stopped, and turned to the man who had spoken. “What are you talking about?

“You haven’t heard?”

“You really have been out in the middle of nowhere,” one of the reporters from the train said.

“Countess Richard-Lenoir murdered her three children, the count, and then shot herself on their yacht down in Nice. You can’t hardly expect a few rotting corpses to compete with that.”

“I was keeping all the papers informed of the situation here,” Servières said.

Some of the reporters seemed to smirk at that.

“Now with the warden in it...”

Pelleter looked at the group of them with disgust, and then turned to go.

“Inspector Pelleter...”

“What does Mahossier have to do with this?”

“Did the warden commit the murders?”

Pelleter turned around, and the group of reporters that had surged towards the door after him tripped over each other as they came to a stop. “If you want a story, go out and find the missing prison guard,” Pelleter said, and with that he left the hotel.

The weather was clear, but with some of the night’s chill still in the air. Verargent Square was busy with Monday morning activity, the doors to the shops open to the good weather, women out with their shopping baskets on their arms. A few of the men from the search party were smoking near the war monument, their rifles leaning against the base of the statue. Their eyes
stared straight ahead. Gone was the joking and laughing of the day before.

Pelleter cut through the traffic to the tobacconist’s, knowing he would not make it through the day without a supply of cigars.

The tobacconist said nothing about the previous night’s search. He sold Pelleter his cigars in silence—still machine-rolled, but a better brand—and Pelleter lit one before leaving the shop.

In the square by the monument the small group of ragged men with guns had grown. Some of the other pedestrians glanced at them as they went by. Had Letreau called for a resumption of the search this morning?

Pelleter returned to the thought that the Perreaux children had been lost in a field. If they hadn’t found Passemier yet and didn’t know where he was going to be, there were too many places for him to hide. They wouldn’t find him.

Pelleter smoked and watched the square, not yet ready to join the day.

He saw Rosenkrantz in the little café, standing at the counter with a coffee cup in his hand. The chief inspector was surprised that the American would be away from his wife after spending so many days concerned for her safety. He thought again how hard it was to know people as he watched the American gesture with his cup, the broad open movement of a satisfied man.

Letreau was crossing from the police station to where the small group of men was still growing.

Several more men walked towards the group, although it appeared as though it was out of curiosity rather than any interest in joining in the search. Pelleter recognized the nervous form of Benoît, the baker, who still wore his white apron, his hair grayed by flour. He must be coming to hear if there was any news.

The chief inspector’s nose flared. Passemier had followed him and he had let him get away! Such overconfidence!

He shook his head, blowing out smoke, and watched Letreau give new orders.

But why had the man followed him, Pelleter asked himself yet again. To what end? Not only would there have been no reason for Passemier to follow him, in fact it would only have been a risk.

Pelleter’s head snapped back to Rosenkrantz. There was a man standing in the café doorway now, one of the reporters, and the few people inside were turned to listen to him, soon ready to give any information he would want to hear.

Pelleter began to walk.

When the chief inspector had arrived at the Rosenkrantz home the night Rosenkrantz was drunk, he had come by taxi. If Passemier had been on foot, how could he have followed him?

Pelleter began to hurry.

He had assumed at the time that he’d been followed. But the prison guard must have already been waiting at the Rosenkrantz home.

The reporter was inside the café now, standing at the counter beside Rosenkrantz.

And at the hospital—

Madame Rosenkrantz had been with him when he spotted Passemier following, before the guard fled and then attacked.

Rosenkrantz was yelling at the reporter now, his gesticulations clear even from a distance and through the window.

If Passemier had been at the Rosenkrantz home one night and then at the hospital where Madame Rosenkrantz had been for the past several days the next...

Pelleter was running now, past the café, in the direction of the American writer’s house.

The warden and his two cohorts had gambled that the dead prisoners’ families wouldn’t make inquiries. But when Passemier found out that Meranger’s daughter lived right here in town, he must have wanted to make sure that no questions would be asked. Which meant Clotilde...

Someone in the square noticed him, and there were shouts behind him, but the chief inspector didn’t look back.

No, Pelleter told himself, even as he ran. He had to be wrong. But it made too much sense. He had thought that for the last few days the prison guard had been following him. But what if the fugitive had been after Clotilde, and the chief inspector had just happened to be there?

Pelleter’s cigar had gone out, clenched as it was, forgotten, in his hand.

No, he had not just been overconfident. He had been blind. Now he hoped he wasn’t too late. Because now Clotilde was home. And she had a car, which Passemier badly needed, and she was on the edge of town.

And as her husband was here at the café, arguing with the reporter—

She was all alone.

Clotilde-ma-Fleur was troubled by the sun. It had come up that morning already bright and clean. It was the kind of spring day in which everything existed in equal calm, the sun intense but not hot, the air cool but still. The house was suffused with light.

It was hard in the face of such perfection to not feel uplifted. Her husband had fallen to his knees before her when she came into the house two nights ago. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face against her stomach. It was only by a single intake of breath that she knew he was crying. He had then stood, picking her up in the same movement and carried her up the stairs to their bedroom. She had been afraid that he would hurt himself.

The next morning, he grinned at her in the sunlit dining room throughout breakfast, and doted on her all through the day. The attention made it difficult for her to look at him. This morning, after enduring a full day of such attentions, she sent him out under the pretext that she needed to do a proper housecleaning after her negligence of the past few days, but in fact she wanted a chance to check herself.

She did clean. The kitchen first, washing the dishes from breakfast, and then the counter, the sink, the floor, working up a fine sweat and a warm feeling in her chest. Her mind was clear with the task, but then it would come—my father is
dead—and she would stop. Her sorrow was a wave of exhaustion. In the pauses between the peaks, she could raise herself before being knocked down again.

She was upstairs in their room now, changing the linens on the bed, humming in her task, no particular tune, just a wispy tone as she exhaled. She tightened the corner of the sheet at the head of the bed, pulling the excess material up in a right triangle before tucking it under the mattress and running her hand across the sheet to flatten it.

There was a noise downstairs, perhaps the door. She thought of calling to say that she was upstairs, but she was not quite ready to give up her solitude. She felt guilty about her inner calm, and felt unsure about herself if it were to break.

She walked around the bed, to tighten the sheet on the other side.

There was a loud crash downstairs as of a drawer being roughly closed and something tottering from a height. She stopped and stood up, looking at the stairs.

“Shem!” she called.

There was no reply.

She went to the window cut into the slanted ceiling, and looked out at the street. Their car was in the driveway—Shem hadn’t taken it—but no one else was there, no car parked at the curb.

She thought she heard another drawer being closed.

She went to the top of the stairs, reaching her hand out for the banister. She took a tentative step down. “Shem!”

There was a movement, someone walking. Why didn’t he answer?

She went down. When her head fell below the height of the upper floor, she stopped, her free hand going to her chest.

There was a strange suitcase standing just inside the door, which was ajar.

She tried to remember if she had left the door open, listening so carefully that she could hear her own breathing. She hadn’t. And that suitcase. The light from the door cast a severe shadow from the suitcase on the floor. She stepped down again.

“Shem, where are you!”

It was nothing, she told herself, an unexpected friend, even as she remembered that policeman’s face from two nights before. She started to hurry down the stairs, watching her feet so she didn’t trip.

“Lover!”

She stepped onto the first floor, and turned herself around the banister to head back towards her husband’s study. There were quick steps behind her then, and she began to turn, “You scared—”

Strong arms went around her shoulders, and a blade flashed in her peripheral vision. Her throat closed and her head went light.

“Hello, Madame Rosenkrantz.” The breath of the voice was hot on her ear. “Now, where do you keep the keys to your car?”

The car was still in the drive. That was the first thing Pelleter noticed. He wished he could have Lambert with him, or even Martin, but he was afraid there wasn’t time.

He stopped just short of the property, at the edge of the fence, breathing hard but still in control. The front door was open, but he couldn’t see anything inside. There were no sounds either. The natural thing would be to go right up to the front door as though he were just there for a visit and to see how it played out. But he didn’t like the idea of giving the man
any advantage if he was here, and now Pelleter was certain he was. How had he thought that Passemier would go for the circuitous route, bypassing the roadblocks by going through the fields? He should have known that a man like Passemier—a man who would attack a police officer—would opt for a hostage and try to force his way through. Now the most important thing was to get Madame Rosenkrantz out unhurt.

The chief inspector sped along the side of the fence, retrieving his revolver and holding it ahead of him. He couldn’t make anything out in the windows as he passed. He let himself through the back gate.

There was no one in the backyard.

The search party had seen the chief inspector running, so there should be men on the way. The trick was to assess the situation if possible, and to prevent Passemier from getting away if necessary.

He hurried to the back door, standing off to the side with his back to the wall of the house. There was a small semi-circular window made of three panes in the upper portion of the back door. The chief inspector allowed himself a quick look.

The hall was shadowed, all of the light coming from the open door at the other end. All the chief inspector could be certain of was that it was empty.

Pelleter reached across the door and tried the handle. It was unlocked. The hinges were mercifully silent.

He entered the house with his gun ahead of him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lower light. It was bright in the house, but not quite as bright as outside.

There was a suitcase at the end of the hall near the open door. Passemier’s, surely. Where would the Rosenkrantzes be
going? Monsieur Rosenkrantz had seemed in no hurry back in the square. The chief inspector listened for sounds, but the only sounds were the normal noises of an old country home talking to itself as it aged.

The door to the study on his right was closed. He reached down across his body with his left hand, still holding the revolver pointed towards the front door, and turned the doorknob. The study was as he had seen it two days before, messy and empty.

He left the door open, turned, and brought his head close to the kitchen door, listening.

There was nothing.

He pushed his way into the kitchen. It smelled of strong soap, which stung his nostrils and made his eyes water. This room was empty as well.

He stopped beside the center counter.

Had there been steps upstairs?

He looked up. The creak of a board.

He crossed the kitchen in two silent steps, but before he could push open the swinging door that led into the dining room, he heard the erratic drumming of feet stumbling down the steps. There was a soft cry and a man’s voice.

Pelleter brought up his gun and gripped it with both hands.

Somebody yelled, “Clotilde!”

The front door slammed.

Pelleter rushed into the dining room, his gun extended, and hurried past the table towards the front door, but stopped before he got there. The scene was framed in the dining room window as though it were a photograph.

Passemier had his back to the house with Clotilde part of the
way in front of him, the suitcase now in his free hand, and the other one wrapped around her neck. Rosenkrantz was there, saying something and inching forward, almost at the front door of the automobile. From the slowness of the action, Pelleter knew that Passemier must have some kind of weapon in his hand.

Passemier began to move away from the house and toward the car, shoving Clotilde before him.