by Evelyn James
“Poor souls,” Clara said, feeling genuinely sorry for anyone who ended up in such a situation. “This is the sort of place you go to when you are old and wealthy.”
“How the other half live,” Annie whistled.
A man, who looked like a porter, approached Clara and asked if he could help them. Clara suddenly realised she had not learned the nurse’s name and could not state who exactly she was waiting for. She politely told him that they were being looked after and hoped the porter would not ask her for further details. He seemed satisfied and walked away. Perhaps he just assumed they were mad Englishwomen wanting a tour of the home. The Belgians seemed very accepting of the quirky ways of the English tourists in their town.
Clara and Annie had to wait for nearly half an hour before the nurse returned.
“My apologies for the delay. I had to make sure my charge was settled and then went to speak to Madame Smet,” she said as she approached them. “You are in luck. She wants to see you. She said no at first, until I mentioned Father Lound’s sister and the Devereauxs. Will you come this way?”
The nurse led them through the hall and into a large dining room, turning right they came to a large staircase with a lift running up through the centre where the stairs looped around. Annie eyed the metal cage of the lift with foreboding and gave an audible sigh of relief when the nurse headed for the stairs instead.
“Madame Smet is nearly one hundred,” the nurse explained as they followed her. “She is a widow and had no children, her nearest relative is a great niece in Bruges. Not many people call on her these days. She has outlived most of her friends. That being said, she participates in all our social activities and is very cheery. I really didn’t think she would agree to speak to you, but the names you mentioned sparked her interest.”
They reached the first floor and the nurse led them along a corridor. There was a door marked with M. Smet. The nurse paused, knocked and then showed them in.
“I’ll have to come back in about an hour, as it will be dinner time,” she informed Clara and Annie, before she went to attend to her other duties.
Madame Smet was sat in a wheelchair by a floor-to-ceiling window. She had probably always been a small woman, but she had shrunk considerably with age and almost appeared to have curled up into a tiny ball in her seat. She wore a shawl that did not quite cover her extremely thin arms. Her face was so wrinkled it was rather like a very badly creased sheet, and it was only when she smiled that Clara could tell where the deep furrows ended and her mouth began. She had bright brown eyes that sparkled with great intelligence and Clara sensed that here was a woman with a strong mind, a woman who had seen and knew things. She was starting to feel hopeful.
“Madame Smet, I am Clara Fitzgerald and this is my friend Annie. We have come from England to try to discover what happened to Father Lound back in 1917.”
“He disappeared,” the old woman said, her voice steady despite her age. “That is what happened.”
“I think you know as well as I do, that that is not the answer his sister is looking for. Why did he vanish? Where did he go? Is he still alive somewhere? These are the questions I must answer.”
Madame Smet listened keenly, her smile growing.
“The nurse says you are a private detective?”
“I am,” Clara said.
“I like to see a woman doing something so… manly,” Madame Smet’s smile broke into a grin. “How delightful. Do you have a lot of trouble from men over it?”
“On occasion,” Clara admitted. “I have to prove myself each case afresh, but I chose this road.”
“Good for you,” Madame Smet lifted a bony arm. “Please be seated.”
Clara and Annie sat on a blue sofa opposite Madame Smet. It was much like the one in the Coppens’ house, with spindly legs that troubled Annie a lot.
“Your friend is very quiet,” Madame Smet said.
“She doesn’t speak French,” Clara explained.
“Ah,” Madame Smet responded, then she switched languages. “Then I shall speak in English.”
Annie looked surprised, then remembered her manners.
“Thank you, madame. I wish I could speak French, but I never learned it.”
Madame Smet seemed amused.
“I can speak English, Italian and a little Spanish. You should learn a language, young lady. Learning keeps your mind alert. Never stop seeking out new things.”
“I’ll try,” Annie promised.
Madame Smet turned her attention back to Clara.
“I think you are intelligent enough to know that Father Lound must be dead,” she said bluntly.
“That seems most likely,” Clara replied. “Though I have to keep my mind open to the possibility he lives, just in case.”
“Naturally,” Madame Smet nodded. “But in reality, he has been dead a long time. Maybe since that day in October 1917. You know about the bones in the woods?”
“I do.”
“Has to be him,” Madame Smet gave a sigh. “You know, I find most men boring and pompous. I never used to. I was very fond of men as a young woman, but then I married and I realised that men really are overrated. My husband was good enough, I can’t fault him for that. He had no real spark, however. I like spark. Father Lound had a spark.”
“Really?” Clara was surprised to hear such a description of a priest.
“Oh yes,” Madame Smet was smiling again. “He shouldn’t have been a priest, he was far too radical in his thoughts. He would come over to my house quite often and we would have very enlightened conversations. He had a lot of views on the war, he didn’t like how things were going. He felt the ordinary men were being used as cannon fodder. It made him very angry.”
This was news to Clara and it made her start to wonder if Father Lound could have been a pacifist traitor after all. She was returning to that idea proposed by Father Dobson, that betrayal could be motivated by a sense of greater good rather than by financial or political considerations.
“He was friendly with the Devereaux family?” Clara asked.
“Yes. The boy, Ramon, had gone to Albion Hope to ask for work. Father Lound must have learned through him about the problems the family was experiencing. He came to the house first with some clothes for the younger girls, and then with food and other items. He started to get to know Beatrice. That woman was so burdened by life, my heart broke for her.”
“I have heard the family was impoverished,” Clara nodded.
“It was the shame of it all,” Madame Smet explained. “Her having to work for a living after being so wealthy. She was a proud woman and I think she felt the town was looking down on her, maybe even laughing at her. She had lovely hands, you know? The softest, finest hands, and they were ruined by the work she had to take on.
“Eh, but some will say that is how it is. That other women must work and ruin their hands, why not her? Just because she was born into money and married more of it. No one really understands that a woman like Beatrice has no understanding of work, she is not raised to it, she does not have the skills for it. She has been trained to live in luxury and that is all she knows. It makes it a burden to begin to work hard.
“And then there was the elder girl, Elena. A beautiful thing, but so very vain and spoiled. She was not going to work on the land, she would not ruin herself that way. I think she started innocently enough with the men. Accepting their gifts when she walked out with them. Then, I suppose, she realised she could earn more money by offering her body as well as her time.”
Madame Smet shrugged her shoulders, as if it was all very logical, a very expected way of things.
“I never liked Elena. She had a clever mind, but no inclination to use it. Do you know what a waste that is? I hate waste.”
“You knew the family well? You were friends?”
“We were,” Madame Smet agreed. “In happier times we would invite each other over for meals. Beatrice was not native to the town, her husband was. When she came here I must h
ave already seemed old to her, but we became friends. Our houses were next to each other and it was good to have someone to talk to after I lost my husband. I knew the children from the day they were born. I watched them grow up.”
“You must have heard the talk that Father Lound was romantically involved with Beatrice, then?”
Madame Smet gave a loud laugh.
“Oh yes, I heard that! People really do say stupid things!” The old woman chuckled to herself. “Beatrice was far too old for the priest, anyone with a drop of sense could see that. I know men can be attracted to older women, but usually they are still glamorous, or have some other attractions, such as wealth, to draw the men in. Beatrice had neither. Four children had wrecked her figure and she was never very pretty.
“Now, if people had suggested he was interested in Elena it might make more sense. She was pretty and not so far different in age to him. But there was nothing between them. In fact, Elena hated Father Lound because he kept trying to persuade her to stop running around with soldiers. He had sided with her mother on that and she despised him.”
Madame Smet’s eyes gave a dangerous twinkle. She knew something and was getting ready to impart it.
“Not that there was no truth to the rumours, mind. Just everyone was looking at the wrong women.”
This was news to Clara and she grew excited.
“There was a young woman in Father Lound’s life?”
“Lina Peeters, the younger sister of the town’s Chief Inspector,” Madame Smet stated. “Oh, those two were very close. The good father felt miserable about his feelings for Lina, he told me as much. It was against his vows, but his heart was pulling him. I told him all this celibacy stuff was nonsense anyway. God didn’t invent that, it was some repressed, sexless church official who wanted to make himself feel better. I told him to run away with her. He told me I really was a crazy old woman. I said, age makes you realise you can’t miss an opportunity.
“He never got the chance. Maybe he would have done, given enough time. I think he was veering that way. Events overtook him and something happened to him. I suppose that is why I think he is dead. I don’t think he would have left Lina, not like that. If he had decided to break away from her, he would have been honest about it. He held a lot of store in his honour and doing the right thing.”
Clara wasn’t sure how to respond. The revelation threw a whole new light on the situation. There were so many pieces to this puzzle now, and none seemed to quite fit. Father Lound’s life in Belgium was proving a lot more complicated than she had expected.
“Madame Smet, it is the belief of Father Lound’s parents, due to information they were sent by a colonel in the British army, that their son was a traitor to his country. His sister is certain this is untrue, but desperately needs me to prove it. The belief of the army colonel is that Father Lound was passing information he had learned from idly talking soldiers to the Germans.”
“No, never!” Madame Smet declared fiercely, her eyes blazing with outrage. “Where is this colonel? I will speak with him myself and tell him what I think!”
“A trap was set. Fake secret papers were left in a place where a spy could access them. These papers were taken and then found in Father Lound’s office. He would not say how they got there. Shortly after he disappeared, further suggesting his guilt.”
“What rot!” Madame Smet snorted. “Father Lound would never betray his country!”
“What if he thought it would help the men in the trenches? The men he felt were being let down by the army?”
“You don’t betray men to help them,” Madame Smet snapped. “Father Lound was intelligent, did I not make that plain? He understood that every action has multiple consequences, most of them unforeseeable. He would not be so rash as to pass on information, in case it hurt those very men who he worried about. What was in these fake secret papers?”
“The details of British gun emplacements.”
“There you go!” Madame Smet smiled, vindicated. “If he passed those on, the Germans would have targeted the guns and killed everyone near them. All those ordinary men Father Lound cared about. Anyway, he did not want the Germans to win this war, he believed that would be a disaster for all of us. He feared what would happen if this town was overrun. He was not trying to end the war sooner by helping the Germans. What stupidity!”
The old woman’s certainty was reassuring. Clara found herself smiling, it was a relief to hear someone else stating that Father Lound could not be a traitor.
“That is all well and good,” Annie spoke up at last. “But, if Father Lound was not a traitor, why did he leave so abruptly?”
“He may have been protecting someone,” Clara said.
“Or, something awful happened to him,” Madame Smet’s smile had gone, replaced by a bleak grimace. “I believe he was murdered. I don’t know why, or by whom, but I think that is what happened.”
Clara was starting to fear that was the case too. She was going to say something, when the nurse knocked on the door and declared it was dinner time. The interview was over, but at least Clara had gained some useful insights. What she really needed now was cold, hard proof that Father Lound was not a traitor. What worried her was that that proof might come in the form of bones.
Chapter Fifteen
Lunch had been pleasant. Tommy could not fault the service or the food. Colonel Brandt had been good company, opting to talk about things other than the case, which had been a welcome distraction. Despite all that, and for a reason Tommy could not explain, he felt utterly bleak and depressed. He looked about the streets, at the people getting on with their lives and something overwhelmed him, made him feel like he was trying to scream.
He was attempting to understand the despair overtaking him, trying to unravel the emotions churning within, but to no avail. He didn’t know why he felt this way, or why everything seemed to be fading into the background all around him, leaving only the darkness within, the sense of utter desolation. All through lunch he had struggled to follow Colonel Brandt’s conversation, instead becoming lost inside himself. He had not felt this way in over a year and he was scared by the suddenness of it all. He was scared he was losing himself again.
He felt a bit better when they started to walk back to the police station. Brandt was still talking and Tommy tried to concentrate on what he was saying. He was watching the people walking by, telling himself to forget the troubles of the past, to instead focus on the here and now. Slowly it seemed to work and by the time they reached the police station, the gloom over Tommy’s heart had lifted and he felt better.
Peeters was waiting for them in his office. He had two case files before him. The first was that concerning Father Lound’s disappearance, the second concerned the body in the woods.
“I’ve looked through them again,” Peeters said. “I don’t see anything new. But you are welcome to read them. There is an empty office next door you can use.”
Tommy and Brandt took a folder each and settled to work. Tommy had opted to look at the file on Lound’s disappearance first. The top sheet was the report that had been made by Father Howard. It was quite detailed. Howard said he had last seen Father Lound at four o’clock that afternoon. Lound was in the garden, overseeing a project to strengthen the back wall of the house, which was slowly collapsing due to the vibrations of the German shells. To try and stabilise the foundations, deep trenches had been dug under sections of the wall and backfilled with concrete and rubble. A number of local lads, including Ramon Devereaux, had been present and Lound was directing the operation. Howard had not spoken to him, Lound was too absorbed with his task. The project was hazardous and props and boards had been inserted beneath the walls to prevent them collapsing while the trench was dug.
Howard expected Lound to be busy with the work all afternoon and was surprised to walk past the same spot only a half hour later and discover everyone gone. Little did he know that he had seen Father Lound for the last time. He went looking for the absent
priest to find out why the work had been put on hold, considering the perilous nature of the situation. There was no sign of him.
Father Howard was annoyed, but not alarmed. Father Lound was also absent from dinner, which was curious, but not deeply troubling. It was when he failed to turn up for mass that Father Howard became concerned. Lound never missed mass, at least not without leaving a message to explain why. No one seemed to know where he was, or where he might have gone. Father Howard and Father Stevens felt his behaviour was odd enough to warrant looking for him. They checked the whole of Albion Hope and that was when they noticed that Father Lound’s suitcase was missing from his bedroom. Some clothes were gone from his wardrobe, along with his crucifix and rosary, but oddly his Bible remained in the drawer of his bedside cabinet. Father Howard made an essential point of this, believing Lound would go nowhere without it. The bible had been given to him by his sister when he was ordained as a priest, it not only bore an inscription from her, but numerous notes Lound had made for fast reference to certain texts he found inspiring or useful.
Truly worried by now, the two priests went outside to see if they could find their colleague. They located Ramon Devereaux and another boy, Louis Maes, backfilling the trench beneath the wall and asked them if they had seen Father Lound. Ramon said they had, just a little while before, and he had asked them to finish the work at the trench, but they had no idea where he had gone after that. Father Howard and Father Stevens walked the streets looking for their brother. Father Howard hinted that he thought Ramon had been lying. He suspected Ramon had been supposed to backfill the trench earlier in the afternoon and had abandoned his work for some reason. Ramon could be like that. He felt the lad had realised he would be in trouble for failing to complete the work and had gone back later to finish the job. He probably lied about seeing Father Lound to cover the fact he had neglected his work earlier.
