Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  *

  Time then to produce my own little secret. To redress the balance. A typewritten note on squared paper, folded tight. Worn around the edges, but no matter. It was the words that mattered…

  Remember the First Circle…you deserve nothing, and God will see to it you get nothing but ice and snow and the deaths of your children and everyone fooled into loving you…

  I passed it straight to the Judge, aware of John Lyon staring.

  “Who did this?” Asked Salibris. “You?”

  Cochon.

  “Non. My aunt, Elisabeth Jourdain. I found it in my dead Maman’s right hand. You see how much she wanted her to die? She hated her not only because my father had chosen her instead, but because Danny Lennox also loved her.” I took another deep breath. Steadied my voice. “I’m warning you all, this is just the start.”

  “Mademoiselle Deschamps, you shouldn’t have removed it.” His eyes never left me, but I wasn’t going to be cowed.

  “I had to have more proof.”

  Silence, in which he studied it closely.

  “Christine Deschamp’s Inquest is long-gone, and I doubt very much if this will alter the verdict. However, it will be examined.”

  38. Odette.

  Tuesday 15th March. 9.45 a.m.

  I wasn’t going to hang around at the Maison de Repos to be picked up for questioning about Father Leboeuf’s horrible death or become - like my unfeeling son-in-law - my eldest daughter’s target. Bad enough I’d been to see Philippe Aubouchon yesterday at midday to record my statement, where he’d also gently tried to break the news of Alain’s terrible wounding. But he needn’t have bothered. I knew what she was capable of. The middle-aged woman who, apart from one aberrration, had planned her future to perfection; and woe betide those who’d stood in her way. Me included.

  Finally, my old friend promised to organise a safe house for me by the end of the week, but this was proving more difficult than he’d imagined. Another reason for me to leave, for according to this morning’s local newspaper, Elisabeth had absconded from his custody in Poitiers yesterday evening. Less than thirty kilometers away…

  Yet as I began packing a few necessary items into an old, canvas holdall that wouldn’t attract attention, I also realised she was really a home bird. Especially in recent years when life still had too many rough edges. And since she’d forced me into this prison, she’d clung to mine. Les Tourels, even though Christine had secretly paid a lawyer more than she should to secure it for Laure and Mathieu after my death. However, unless convicted of murder, Elisabeth could lawfully contest this. Napoléon must have had no idea of one’s offspring possessing the proverbial serpent’s tooth…

  I also folded a black, silk scarf in half and then again. Worn for Christine’s funeral, it would be on my head again tomorrow on what would have been her forty-third birthday, when I’d be tending her grave. I’d missed last year because my medical records recorded ‘une crise’ and what Elisabeth had peddled about my failing health.

  There was also little Mathieu. I’d let him down over the helicopter episode - its secret diversion to Bellac and the four gendarmes and the pilot now disgraced and on the run. With him, maybe? No-one knew, and not knowing was the worst.

  Aimée Lecroix had vanished too. When Lieutenant Desoulis had arrived here after breakfast to interview her about her connection to Elisabeth, her locker was still locked and her coat and hat still hanging behind the staff cloakroom door. As though she’d soon be back. At least, that’s what Nelly Santorino told me having snooped outside the door on the way to her hairdressing appointment. I couldn’t have risked doing the same. I was in enough trouble as it was…

  “Did she mention Danny Lennox and his wife?” I’d asked her first thing.

  “Yes. That this wife had an important secret to keep and wanted someone not belonging to the Deschamps family in this area to know.”

  “Odd. What secret, I wonder?”

  A shrug.

  “Aimée was so rude,” Nelly had added. “The Lieutenant had to caution her and accused her of perverting the course of justice.”

  Whether my neighbour had over-embellished her story, I couldn’t tell. But he’d also apparently mentioned drugs and ordered my so-called ‘carer’ to accompany him to the local Gendarmerie to answer questions about the theft from the Store sometime a week ago. She’d been on an extra shift at the time. Probably needed the money. And had Elisabeth paid her?

  As I added a spare pair of slacks to my holdall and zipped it up, I shivered to think she might have recruited a spy in this very Home. Why? Because Aimée was already employed here when I’d first arrived.

  La Vièrge Marie, help me…

  Nelly had used that same unsettling smile whenever she had the upper hand. A woman of limited education, limited funds, but a plentiful supply of ‘schadenfreud.’

  “Anything else?” I’d eagerly asked.

  “No. Only that Lieutenant Desoulis is coming to see you tomorrow.”

  *

  At least my phone line had been reconnected and my head told me to pre-empt Desoulis’s visit by contacting Philippe Aubouchon. He’d be sure to understand my dilemma about that dead priest. But would he? No, for the help and advice I so badly needed, John Lyon was probably my best bet.

  Yet another delusion. His phone rang but an automated voice said that calls were no longer being answered, and no messages could be left. Odd, I thought, feeling doubly let down. Odd too, there’d been no mention of him in the Press. I glimpsed my brown coat hanging behind my door. Just then, although stained and torn from my last sortie, it seemed to be my only friend.

  If I was quick, I could leave these premises before Maxine, my replacememnt ‘carer’ appeared with coffee and biscuits. More food I couldn’t eat. I was due to be weighed that afternoon, but with luck, there’d only be my ghost…

  *

  I’d not ridden a bicycle for at least twenty years when I’d collect bread and other necessities from the van that would wait for an hour in Aucentrelle’s main square.This glossy, red metallic machine - mercifully for women - had thick, newish-looking tyres, so they carried me through the ugly, slippery slush until I reached the minor road where previous vehicles had mostly cleared the Tarmac.

  During my whole life I’d never stolen a thing, and these days, rarely thanked God, but no longer. As a grateful sinner, I cycled on under that still-dark sky, while studiously avoiding eye contact with any fellow travellers. My canvas holdall snug in the basket between the handlebars while a motorcyclist and his pillion passenger, sprayed me with grey, icy water. Next, a florist’s van, then sleek saloons belonging most likely to salesmen skimming too close against me on this, a useful rat-run between busier roads.

  I dared not be recognised returning to my home. Not even by a near neighbour passing by on his tractor with a trailer of slurry from his fields. No, I had one mission only. To find my darling grandson, Mathieu.

  At last.

  But, to my surprise, Les Tourels’ brown, barred gate lay open and several sets of footprints - still discernible - led to the front door. I could also detect others, although smaller and less distinct. It seemed that in parts, someone had tried obliterating them. But why? Could they belong to him?

  *

  I studied the house itself. All shutters lay closed and no trace of wood smoke came from the kitchen’s chimney, but where was my car? Its space in the open barn stood glaringly empty, with only the faintest of tyre tracks curving towards the gate, and no footprints facing the other way. But deep in my anxious heart, I knew the answer. A good reason to hurry. To be out of sight.

  Having left the bicycle hidden deep in that same barn’s darkest corner, with numb, bare fingers I searched my coat pockets for the back door key that Elisabeth had so generously - upon my lawyer’s instructions - allowed me to keep.

  My breath dragged from my old lungs leaving small, white puffs in the cold as I realised it wasn’t on me at all. But where? Dropped out, maybe, w
hile cycling? No. impossible. The pocket I’d chosen was too deep. And then, with rising fear, realised that unless someone else at the Home was working against me, Aimée might have taken it to pass on. But to whom? In my agitated state, one name came to mind. Elisabeth. Or, imagining being caught and relieved of all her possessions, that ‘carer’ may have hidden it. Unless someone from the Police HQ had helped themselves.

  All the while, I trawled my wartime skills - how to open a locked window, climb a drainpipe, ape a Yale key… Yes, that would be easiest. I had several hair pins to control my unruly curls, also a brooch pin secured against my jumper. But did I really want to go inside that cold, empty house alone? To wonder who might be waiting? Who’d perhaps seen me arrive?

  I hesitated, weighing up the uninviting possibilities. I was no longer even late middle-aged. But I had to find Mathieu and Laure.

  Rarely had I felt so alone, like the last remaining old leaf on a wintry tree. So terrified. Yet this was still my house. Cradle of too few dreams and too many sorrows.

  *

  The cameo brooch depicted a young woman whose upswept hair resembled mine in my youth. It had been my 60th birthday gift from my husband. Every day since then, I’d worn it proudly even if it didn’t always match the garment beneath. And, waking up each morning, I’d been relieved to see it still in place, because many of the workers there, especially cleaners and laundry women from either Algeria or the east, had dependants who needed every miserable franc they could get.

  Not so, Aimée, who’d originally seemed appalled at Elisabeth’s behaviour towards me. Who’d charmed me into submission. As for Laure, she preferred this more solid memento to the delicate gold crucifix which Elisabeth had given for her Confirmation and liked tracing her nail-bitten fingertips over its subtle contours. She also said - quite touchingly I’d thought at the time - it would remind her of me when I’d died.

  The tip of the brooch’s shiny, silver pin triggered the smallest click from inside the door’s lock. The sound of it made me jump.

  Be careful.

  Mercifully, as a result of solid training, my eyes, like those of a humble house fly, had kept their peripheral vision. So far, I could detect no movement amongst those mature firs ranged along the rear boundary behind me, nor around the rusted farm machinery that I’d not the heart to get rid of.

  Silence, save for the melt off the branches and the roof, before plopping on to the stone terrace where, in happier times, wine had flowed, and my girls had played together as if they always would…

  Another click..

  I returned the brooch to my heaving chest, before giving the back door a gentle push, holding my breath as I did so, aware of the empty darkness in front. It enveloped me almost as another living entity, as I moved forwards. Both my hands felt the rear lobby’s familiar textures. Wallpaper that Elisabeth had sworn she’d get rid of. The waist-high panelled strip to counter dampness which often leached in during a wet winter.

  I found the box of trip switches and blindly switched on the ground floor lights.

  Hélas!

  While trying again with my pulse banging in my cold, old neck, I smelt something I’d never forgotten, reeling me back to those days when Elisabeth had left learning for killing…

  “Arrêtez!” Came a man’s voice I half-recognised. He couldn’t have been more than a metre away. “Or you’ll be in trouble. I mean, big trouble.”

  I freed my brooch. Kept its long, sharp pin pointing in his direction.

  “Who on earth are you?”

  “Never mind me. You must be Odette Jourdain, mother of la biche suprème.”

  “Elisabeth?”

  “Who else?”

  Eduard Gallas.

  Someone I’d only met once when I’d delivered her to work one day, and he’d been waiting. Taken her arm rather too eagerly, I’d thought.

  “How did you get into my house?”

  “Your main chimney was very generous and clean, Madame. So, thank you for that. And for the water already turned on. We needed somewhere to wash…”

  “We?” I challenged, trying to keep my voice steady. “Who else is there?”

  “Sion Evans,” said a deeper voice, in that same accent as that Welsh detective I’d spoken to. The same surname as well. “Not my idea to break in,” he added.” Honest to God…”

  “Shut up,” said the slaughterman, switching to patchy English. “I do talking.”

  I peered into the gloom where both men - one bigger, more thick-set than the other - wearing filthy boots, blocked my way down the passage. During the war, I’d kept a small pistol hidden in my chignon. Here, save for the brooch pin, I was defenceless. “Get out!” I shrieked. “Now!”

  “You want to know why we here?”

  Gallas now in front of me, was pulling what could have been a gun from his coat. I was about to kick it out of his grasp when I realised it was a torch.

  “Electric’s kaput here,” he said, letting his pale, yellow beam rove around for a moment before highlighting me. “God knows why I had to come back. But after seeing what I’d seen…”

  “Where?” With my precious pin still at the ready. Aware of his unnaturally red neck as if he’d been in a brawl. “Explain yourself and be quick. This is my house, remember? You’re trespassing. I’ll call the gendarmerie…”

  “Two minutes, Madame. I’m no criminal. Yes, I run an abattoir, but without it, people in this area would have hunger.”

  I wasn’t going to challenge him about what else he’d got up to. In our St.Junien unit, the less that was said, the better.

  “Get to the point,” yet I dreaded what might come next. Aware of his every small movement. Every rasp of breath. The big, shadowy man behind him.

  “He saw your daughter with this boy,” spoke this bigger, more swarthy stranger whose face gradually came into view. Fleshy, unshaven, with the oddest eyes I’d ever seen. Like two small, dark bullets.

  “Boy?”

  “Young, he was. No more than nine, I’d say. Wearing a mac too big for him. Brown hair which seemed wet.”

  Mathieu?

  “When?”

  Gallas obliged. His voice giving out at the end of each sentence as if he was exhausted. “Say twenty minutes ago. Me and Evans here were lying down near the carp lake…”

  “You mean, hiding?”

  A nod.

  “I wanted to trap Elisabeth. Make her admit what she done to him and show some…”

  “What?” I was impatient. My hand holding the brooch pin so defensively, was growing stiff.

  “Compassion. Regret. Whatever. Making misery for her family, including her Papa. Yes, she paid me. And him.” He gestured towards the Welsh thug. “All part of her scheme. We’ve been mad cogs in her mad wheel. Christ, I must have been crazy. Perhaps it was her having this removed, you know, when she was twenty-one.” He gestured to an area to the left above his groin. “And her sister with two kids. You’re her mother, but I bet even you don’t understand why.”

  Then wasn’t the time to dedge up the rotting carapace of our family life. The betrayals, debauchery and my favourite daughter ending it all.

  “Where were she and this boy going?” I said instead.

  Both men exchanged a glance as if working out who’d speak next. So far, I didn’t trust either of them. Both had been willing collaborators.

  “Into them firs,” said the Welshman, indicating somewhere behind him. “Then we lost sight of them.”

  “Did he seem willing to be with her?”

  “Hard to tell. They were walking close together. But earlier we’d heard yells and screams. Could have been something else, mind. The countryside’s a cruel place.”

  I couldn’t disagree. Especially wih my elder daughter in it.

  “What happened then?” My brooch pin wavering before I returned the cameo to my chest. These men who’d stepped in too deep, were frightened. Watching their backs. Needing only in extremis, a shrinking oldie like me.

  “Not
sure, but after ten minutes later she appeared on her own.” He shivered. Blew on his bare hands and rubbed them together “We couldn’t see much, but did try to run after her…”

  “And then?”

  “She got into this small, silver car…”

  “Mine.” I said, in barely a whisper.

  “It was by the barn.”

  “Thief.”

  At that, Gallas passed the torch to the Welshman, before slumping against the lobby wall. “I appreciate she’s your own flesh and blood,” he sighed, “but if I’m picked up by the flics, she could cost me my business. I never take stolen animals. Least of all a pur-sang horse. I should have said no to her straight away. Go fuck someone else.”

  The suddenness of that crude word almost distracted me.

  “No to what?” I said.

  They looked at each other. He’d said too much.

  “Ask her.”

  “I don’t drive stolen goods neither,” said the other man quickly. “Mart animals it is, to sell on. And to cap it all,” his voice then faltered. “I’ve just lost my partner. Knocked down and killed she was, on the N147 last night. Whatever hit her didn’t stop. Some road that is. Full of frigging lunatics.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wanting to be outside and looking for my nephew. “How terrible.”

  His thank you was a glance. Nothing more.

  “It was after your granddaughter nicked my transporter. We were both panicking. Anybody would have. Specially after what my Beti had said about her.”

  “Which was?”

  “Only met her for a few minutes, back in Wales last Friday. But that was enough.”

  “For what?”

  “Said she had no soul. Could tell by her eyes she was empty.”

  That’s a very harsh thing to say,” I said, suppressing a shiver. “Especially after a few minutes.”

  “My Beti had a sixth sense ever since she was a kid. Knew this trip would turn bad. She was like that, see. Being Welsh, it is. Some of us have the gift…”

  His words looped around and around in my dizzy head. The torch beam wavered and died. I was alone with two men who in an instant, could fell me with one blow and cut me up into pieces for the carp…