Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  45. Odette.

  What does time matter?

  Memories are supposed to dissolve with it, aren’t they? But this one won’t. Not of this evil place. Part of the reason I’d made Jacques stay on at Les Tourels and use most of my inheritance money to update it for our new family. Yes, the land had kept in good heart and the lake an ever-striking feature - despite Elisabeth stocking it with those revolting carp whose gaping mouths resembled the mouth of this, my punishment.

  And should I survive this terror, it will be my turn to punish…

  *

  “Mathieu?” I called out for at least the twentieth time. The foul water now caressing my hoarse, old throat still trapped by that tight, steel collar. “Are you there? Can you hear your Mamie? Please answer me. Please…”

  And in the agony of waiting, another memory re-surfaced. How Christine’s second ‘pregnancy’ had been unusual in more ways than one. While her strange-looking bump had grown with each passing month, Laure seemed to be losing weight, corseted to within an inch of her young life until the inevitable. A home birth planned for induction five weeks early while her father was away on racing business in Germany but ascribed to Christine by a Dr. Hassan Aziz. A senior psychiatrist with helpful connections, he’d first known Laure from her stay in Lagarderie for self-harming during May 1977.

  Then in April the following year he had, for the price of a decent motorboat, provided a false record of her post-abortion depression, and for September 10th that year, Mathieu’s fake hospital-style wrist band and birth certificate, naming Alain Deschamps as père.

  Not the version I’d kept, however, safe in one of my precious cardigan’s pockets. The very same which Christine had worn on that terrible Christmas Eve. Her last day on earth. Would it still be there when I got back to my room? The only real proof I had.

  And what of Danny Lennox finding out he was a father?

  Elisabeth said he’d got himself so drunk he could barely stand. Took two days off to take stock. Trod carefully once back at Les Saules Pleureurs, keeping clear of both her and Laure, even Christine who cared so well for her new grandson. He’d confided in me his love for him. How fearful he was should his employer find out, and how one day, he and his boy would run their own stables together…

  Why hadn’t I told a soul any of this? Because selfishly, I’d wanted to live.

  *

  “Help!”

  But nothing replied except the drip-drip of more watery sludge from somewhere. The slither of eels or whatever else was sharing my Hell. Yes, I’d picked up muffled voices from somewhere outside, but even with that opening uncovered, my screams had been too feeble to attract attention.

  What had shocked me the most, was how my niece had discovered this underground system in the first place. And why she’d shown such cruelty towards me, who’d only wanted the best for her? Been the mainstay of her troubled life?

  *

  I knew only too well, the symptoms of a heart attack. I’d already had more hints including facial numbness, arms too, and pins and needles down on side of the body. Vision and speech blurring, slurring. The reason Elisabeth had so swiftly forced me into the worst kind of existence. Of dependency and small humiliations. As if losing Christine in that terrible way, hadn’t been enough for any loving mother to bear.

  But just then, my bed at the Home was the most desirable place in the whole world. My warm, velvet slippers. My big, round coffee cup hand-painted with images of sunflowers.

  Sunflowers…

  This darkness was at least endurable. Not so the stink whenever I tried to move. Worse than whenever our fosse septique was emptied, or when our Special Unit at St. Junien, codenamed ‘Sanglier’ had waited by ’The Junction’ before planting three explosive devices along the nearby railway line to Limoges. Luc Kassel - Robert’s father, had been one of the team. A hero in our eyes, who’d died last year and left no stone unturned in the hunt for Sophie, his granddaughter. Which is what I’d tried to do. Why, just before he’d died, I’d told him about this place.

  We’d only kept in touch by telephone since those dangerous days just to check on how the other was bearing up. He’d sent me white lilies when Christine had died, just before he too, had passed away. I’d sometimes wondered if he’d lived, we mightn’t have met up in person. Become companions, united in grief. But it wasn’t to be. However, after his funeral, I’d asked Robert if I might have some small memento - perhaps his beret or a small photograph to keep. He’d agreed, and before Valérie Rouget arrived, had let me browse Luc’s things, including a small, cloth-bound notebook dating from 1941. To keep our spirits up, he’d written down all his jokes. His handwriting exemplary. These jokes, often risqué, were always funny. But I’d felt his son should keep that particular memento to lighten his own darkest hours.

  Only while exploring the smaller sections in Luc’s wardrobe, did I feel something odd beneath the rough, brown wool of a sock that had been carefully darned at the heel.

  I’d pulled it out and, in my surprise, almost dropped it. A metal brace, definitely not big enough for an adult mouth, whose double thread of wires still bore what could only have been traces of old food. Not only this, but a small note written in that same exemplary but more trembling hand. I remembered every word…

  Her 14th birthday

  From the afternoon that Sophie never returned to school, I have ceaselessly tried to discover what became of her. Our police have let us down, so I had no choice but to persevere. This is her brace that I found at Les Tourels in Elisabeth’s bathroom cabinet inside an empty pill carton. I had long suspected her of foul play, possibly together with the Gallas father and son, but how could I let Odette, her long-suffering mother know? We’d both experienced enough betrayals. I’d loved her from the day we’d met at our Unit’s first briefing in Soulebec. I put this love for her over that for Sophie and her parents. May God forgive me. L K

  *

  Help…

  So, this is what dying felt like? This was the end. Where was John Lyon? Philippe Aubouchon? Lieutenant Desoulis? Anyone? And why could I now hear nothing beyond this blind grave? What use praying now? I would never see my beloved little Mathieu again; feel his hot little hand in mine or be able to visit Christine lying as deep as myself, but with only bones left. Bones that had once grown inside me. My useless shell…

  “Mamie?”

  Impossible!

  Was that him? Or the taunting echo of some young ghost playing tricks? A sudden rush of rainwater further down the tunnel?

  “Oui?” I wheezed, with difficulty. “Who’s that?”

  “Me. Mathieu. I heard you calling. It’s so cold…”

  Merci Dieu et ses anges...

  “Where have you been?” I croaked.

  “In the dry bit. Where she told me to stay.”

  “Who?”

  “The Devil.”

  “Elisabeth?”

  “Oui.”

  This wasn’t making sense.

  “Go back there,” I pleaded. “Please, cherie. Help is coming soon.”

  “No. I want to see you.”

  I couldn’t utter his name - the baby born on an early autumn morning at Les Saules Pleureurs after a night of the most terrible storm in living memory, when three horses fled their loose boxes and drowned in a nearby canal. When his mother pushed him away from her body, screaming that we’d all made her have him… Me, Elisabeth and yes, Christine. That our religion had just ended her life. The girl we’d all betrayed.

  “Wait. I’m coming. I’m coming,” I urged him with barely any breath. “Stay calm… Keep afloat…”

  “Hurry!”

  “I am. And keep talking so I know how near to each other we are…”

  He did. And syllable by syllable, through the slippery slime of ages, beneath my feet and under my hands, I made progress. Past every dead thing. Skeletal parts of the long-departed butting my legs. Luminous bones jostling and cracking together in the stew of decay. I thought of Sophie Kassel
with the pretty, bobbed hair. The brace on her teeth. Her round, dark eyes like her father’s. And then, miraculously, my bare, cold fingers touched something warmer than anything so far, before my last breath gave out.

  Skin.

  Young, living skin…

  46. John.

  Tuesday 16th March. 6 p.m.

  No way I could investigate what might have happened to Robert Kassel or check that reeking tunnel again. I still had Elisabeth Jourdain in a head lock and her niece breaking off a lethal-looking pine tree branch for a makeshift weapon. Besides, for all I knew, the missing man could have simply fired a shot in the air and run off. But why accompany me here in the first place? Why so distraught at Elisabeth’s innuendo of an improper relationship?

  Is there really no smoke without a fire?

  Not as far as Ben Rogers’ suicide and yet more terrible events in the eastern Pyrenees were concerned…

  I also wondered with growing alarm, where on earth Philippe Aubuchon and his team had got to, because meanwhile, I was like a pig in the boiling, deadly middle.

  *

  “Tie her to a bloody tree and burn her.” Laure instructed me in French, pulling down her smeared, torn waxed coat then flattening her wild hair. “That’s what they do with witches isn’t it? She-Devils… Those who never die…”

  She then tried to kiss me, catching me unawares, letting her dry, stale tongue force its way between my teeth.

  “I don’t do bribery,” I managed to say, pushing her away with my free left hand and wiping her spit off my lips. “In my book it’s up there with blackmail.”

  I waited for any reaction to that ‘b’ word. Trained for surprises, I wasn’t to be disappointed. Having released my grip on Elisabeth’s neck, I was almost knocked over in the rush from each woman to the other. The crush of two bodies. Two cries from those twisted mouths as four grappling hands got to work. One pair gloved and bleeding through their wool, the other bare, save for ten pointed nails ending in black varnish. Weapons in themselves in the driving snow, as Laure fought her aunt off with that branch.

  Now or never. Time for the truth…

  “So, what the Hell’s been going on?” I let rip. “What’s really behind all this chaos? The deaths and woundings? Better you both say now than let things get worse. I can get armed back-up in minutes and get you both taken away. That what you want? Is it?”

  A waste of breath, because these two women -a generation apart - were too busy attacking each other, locked in their own now very public Inferno. Elisabeth Jourdain trying to push her niece over but failing.

  “Go on!” She screamed at her. “Tell him why you made me snatch your horse? And your kid. Snuff them both out with a shot to the eye then the heart, then hide him inside Vervain’s empty carcass down in Mignonville? Go on. Say why I had to spend thousands hiring help. Making myself almost bankrupt…”

  Your kid? Empty carcass?

  Surely, I was in some seriously sick, parallel world, with Laure fighting back. Striking her aunt with that same branch and righting herself for another blow.

  “I never had a bloody kid!”

  “I dragged him out of you in Les Saules Pleureurs, and then the next April, what did you do? Tried choking him to death. Remember your second stay in Lagarderie after chucking yourself out of your bedroom window? Didn’t seem to help, though, did it? You’re as mad as ever, and if your old Mamie was around, she’d back me up.”

  For a split-second, Laure turned to me, bloodless as a phantom.

  “Truth is, I’ve solid proof this lying Devil killed my Maman.” She then faced her aunt again. Branch raised a second time.

  “That’s actionable,” said Elisabeth, unflinching. “Ive never seen any evidence. Where?”

  “Try me.”

  “You just wait. Meanwhile, what about this?” She indicated her bruise. “Your handiwork, remember? Gilles Dugard can testify to being there at the time.”

  Laure lowered her branch and her voice.

  “Ready? You and that old bitch wouldn’t let me have an abortion. So, I had to grow my ‘boulder’ inside me for nine shitty months, then keep it. Pretend I was its sister. To punish me. Why?”

  It.

  A pause, in which more clumps of snow fell to the ground.

  “Not just the three of us, hein?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Danny’s little fuck, wasn’t it? Danny who went with anything he could. Playing one off against the other. But you knew how we Jourdains had suckled on Christianity in our mothers’ milk. We had standards to keep. Strict morals to uphold.”

  “You? The biggest salope south of the Loire. Who’d always wanted my Papa for herself. Turned him off his wife, though God knows how, then makes him useless.”

  “At least I wasn’t twelve when I sucked it. Criminally under-age, and only right you and that chancer had to be yoked to a millstone for the rest of your days.”

  Laure gave her the strangest look. Almost as if she was a child again.

  “Did Maman also think I should be punished?”

  Her aunt’s weird laugh made the cold air seem even colder.

  “Bien sûr.”

  Her niece was unmoving. Silent, until…

  “But she’d feigned being pregnant to protect me.”

  “Really? More like to rub my nose in it that my womb had been discarded.”

  “Best thing that happened,” growled Laure as if to cover her sudden, obvious hurt, and before I could intervene, her handy branch connected with Elisabeth’s back and broke in two. Her aunt winced as her opponent drew breath. “Think what a mother you’d have made. Bad enough your secret games with Sophie Kassel. She told me herself. Pastoral care? Sick joke.”

  “It was you, not me. Demonstrating what you’d seen going on at home. Poor kid. No wonder she was primed up for…”

  “Liar.”

  “Blame her besotted Papa. Like I’ve just told him, I kept proof of what was going on. As Mamie still says, I’m the careful one.”

  Laure’s half branch quivered, just like her lips. She was still capable of anything. Further away from me than ever. Just like Alison. Everyone…

  However, I stepped in, wrenching it free, flinging it as far as I could, then kicking the other half into undergrowth.

  “What’s this proof to back up your seeing Elisabeth kill your mother?” I reminded her, wondering yet again where the Hell the promised police reinforcements were. Wondering too, when I could get into that tunnel. How precious seconds were slipping away. “Remember, the Judge this morning didn’t consider that Dante quote you handed over, to be proof enough of your aunt’s intent to murder.”

  “Sod that. I made a tape and took photos.”

  What?

  Her enemy looked stricken, while I tried keeping my voice even, despite feeling sick.

  “That seems a truly bizarre thing to do, given what was happening,” I said.

  Laure smiled, like she’d smiled when Vervaain went down.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Why wasn’t this material presented before your mother’s Inquest?”

  That strange smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I’d have been next to die. I know it. Oh God, John.” she turned to me. Sudden fear in those oddly-marked eyes. “I’m still so bloody scared.”

  “Typical,” sniffed Elisabeth. “Turn on the taps when it suits you. Pathetic.”“Where is this so-called evidence, Laure?” I insisted again, pushing Alison’s opinion of her away. Aware of Elisabeth watching. “Because I’m sniffing serious blackmail here. Something I hate most. An offence which carries a stiff penalty for whoever’s responsible.”

  She bridled. That instant fear gone.

  “Ask Dr Aziz at Lagarderie. I couldn’t trust anyone else with it, but I was there hiding in La Cathédrale while this freak suffocated Maman, got out the ladder then strung her up with a lungeing rope…”

  “Why not try to save her?”

  “Me? With
that crazy in full swing, and no-one else arounf?”

  “Where is this Lagarderie place? And please don’t say the Rue des Maçons.”

  She threw me a look. She knew.

  “Gençay. Rue Madeleine.”

  Normally, I’d have phoned to check it, but suddenly, Elisabeth slipped a hand between her own coat lapels, behind her sweater, and pulled out a folded square of cream-coloured paper. The kind my old-fashioned solicitor always used.

  “Keep it,” was all she said to me before suddenly stripping off, throwing all her clothes up into the snowy trees. Coat, trousers, jumper, then underwear, black and flimsy like two lace-trimmed bats, before she ran into the darker plantation of pines, chanting verses I’d vaguely heard before. While her still-youthful legs carried her onwards, I realised I was unarmed, alone with two crazies who each wanted the other dead.

  Where on earth was Philippe Aubouchon? Where was anybody to help?

  *

  Laure began to follow her, but I caught up and pushed her against the nearest tree. A poplar. Solid, strong, and while fending off her protests and back kicks, I pulled my leather belt from my trousers and, finding the tightest notch I could, secured both her upper arms to that tree’s damp, rough trunk.

  “Stay put, if you’ve any sense,” I warned. “Or there’ll be trouble.”

  No time to inspect what her aunt had given me. Instead, despite a rising panic, I followed her deeper into the spiky gloom until she stumbled and fell. I took my chance, practising my own special arm lock, pausing to stare not her large, brown nipples or a navel that seemed to protrude more than most I’d seen at crime scenes an in morgues, but lower down between her thighs. A strange tattoo covering her unnaturally smooth pubis.

  “What’s that?” I ventured.

  “The Delectable Mountain, don’t you know? The Empyrean rose of Paradise.” She struggled against my grip. Iron in her muscles it seemed. Steel in her tongue. The woman who’d apparently had to obey Laure’s grotesque orders. “It’s where I’m going, and you won’t stop me.” Her bruise, like some rock’s deep, degraded schist, moved as she spoke, while as if in some strange dance, we slipped and slid back to where her angry niece was struggling to free herself, shaking convulsively as she did so.