by Evelyn James
“He was shot in the back of the head by a British revolver,” Peeters laid the facts out before Maes, trying to draw something more from him. “Who was holding that gun, I don’t know. But I do know that Ramon was holding Father Lound’s crucifix and rosary. He must have taken them off the priest’s body.”
“No, Ramon took nothing from Father Lound. Lound was not wearing anything like that when we buried him,” Maes insisted.
“Then he must have removed them before you arrived,” Peeters continued. “Perhaps he was going to sell them.”
Maes shook his head.
“You can’t be blind to all this,” Peeters persisted, his frustration growing. “Your friend Ramon was nothing more than a black-hearted traitor to his people. He was selling military information to the Germans. The reason he killed Father Lound was because the priest realised what he was doing. Ramon had to kill him to avoid being shot for treason.”
“No!” Maes’ head shot up, suddenly the meek man was gone, replaced by a furious man who was outraged at this talk about his friend. “Ramon was not a traitor!”
“He must have been,” Peeters said sternly. “Who else? Ramon had access to Albion Hope. We know that Father Lound was protecting the traitor, and he argued with Ramon that day and was killed. Ramon hid his body to cover his tracks and then attempted to disappear. Someone caught up with him and dealt him the justice the authorities could not.”
“NO!” Maes leapt from his chair and thumped both hands down hard on the desk, startling Clara and Peeters. “Ramon was never the traitor! I know this! I know this is true, because I know who really was betraying us back then! And I will tell you! I will break an oath I swore to my friend, because his name does not deserve to be tarnished by such lies. I’ll tell you who was the real traitor in town, and then you can go and arrest them, and leave poor Ramon alone!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Louis Maes sat back in his chair, some of his temper easing. He trembled a fraction at the violence of his emotions. Then he grew still and brought himself back under control.
“Ramon Devereaux was my closest friend in the world and everyone said that that blinded me to what he really was. They were wrong, they were all wrong. They were the ones who were blind,” Maes held himself upright. The quiet, nervous man was gone. In his place sat one who was about to staunchly defend his friend. “Everything Ramon did was to try to help his family. Yes, he made mistakes. The burglaries were foolish, he said as much afterwards. But he only targeted people who could afford the loss.
“At the time he felt as if there was nothing else for him to do. There was no real work in the town, at least none that he was educated for. He considered joining the army, but he was too young and it was not easy to do back then, with the Germans everywhere. He had to look after his family. His younger sisters could not work, and his mother was breaking her back doing field labour she was not used to. His sister Elena refused to help. That left everything down to him.
“It helped so much when Albion Hope arrived and the priests were prepared to employ people to do odd jobs. Ramon would do anything and he finally persuaded Elena to do something too. She would collect the priests’ rations every day from the local shops and deliver them to the house. Eventually, she also collected food for the workers too and delivered that. Ramon said he thought he was doing a good thing getting her work there, but in the end it was a bad thing. Elena got chatting to the soldiers. Many of them had not seen a girl in a while, being in the trenches or at barracks. They liked her company.”
Peeters was taking notes and he nodded along.
“That is how it all began then?”
“Yes,” Maes sighed. “At first Elena was just friendly with the soldiers and accepted any little gifts they gave her. The men could feel quite lonely and she would make them happy. I don’t know when she started to sell herself to them. I just know when Ramon discovered this and blew his top. That was the late summer of 1916. He was so angry I thought he would kill her. He called her names, threatened to tell their mother. Elena told him their mother already knew and appreciated the money. That broke Ramon a little. You may not believe me, but Ramon had a strong sense of duty and honour. He had faltered, sometimes, and his temper could get the better of him, but he never forgot those things.
“He could do nothing about Elena. His mother would hear nothing on the subject and when he tried to stop Elena taking deliveries to Albion Hope his mother interfered again, saying they needed the money the priests paid Elena to bring food. In desperation, he confided everything to Father Lound.
“Ramon had never really seen eye-to-eye with the priests, but he valued the money they gave him for his work. He was not religious, not in the sense of going to church. He did believe, in his own way, but he couldn’t explain it to me, I don’t think he knew how to. Father Lound said he would try to help and started to call on the Devereaux family and talk to Madame Devereaux and Elena. It never went well, Ramon told me as much, but Father Lound never gave up. Ramon respected him for that.
“Like all things, after a while everything settled into a routine. Ramon would accost his sister when he could, pull her away from the soldiers, but she would always go back. One time this big soldier beat him up. He thought Ramon was stealing his girl and Elena lied and said Ramon was a jealous ex-boyfriend. She watched on as Ramon was beaten. He said she grinned.”
Maes came to a halt in his story. He had said so much in such a short space of time and it was cathartic to let out all these secrets, yet also overwhelming. He had kept so much stored up inside and now it was spilling out so fast he could barely keep track of it himself.
“This is all very sad,” Clara leaned forward and spoke to him. “But it does not explain why Ramon was not a traitor. Seems to me he had every reason to be angry with the military and to want to spite them by selling their secrets.”
“You have not been listening,” Maes looked bleak. “Ramon was smart. So much smarter than me. He understood that one mean soldier is not representative of the whole army. And he did not blame the military for his sister’s actions.
“Well… maybe a little. But he was more angry at her, and he would never have betrayed his country. Ramon loved Belgium. He wanted to fight for his homeland. His mother, on hearing his ideas of becoming a soldier, made him swear he would not go off to fight. She needed him more, she said, and that left Ramon very torn. He would have loved to have picked up a gun and shot at Germans. When rumours began to circulate about town of these strangers near the shrine of St. Helena, and everyone was saying they were Germans, Ramon said if he got the chance, he would shoot them. He even managed to get hold of a gun. A British revolver…”
Maes looked at Peeters sadly.
“I suspect the same gun you found in the woods near his body.”
Peeters had paused over his paperwork. He was poised with his pen just above the paper. The gun had belonged to Ramon, which surely meant his killer had seized it off him.
“Could you identify this gun if we showed it to you?” Peeters asked.
Maes shook his head.
“I never saw it.”
“You still have not told us who the traitor was, if it was not Ramon,” Clara pointed out.
“I was trying to explain to you what Ramon was like,” Maes looked hurt. “I wanted you to appreciate that he could never do such a thing. People judged him a lot. He did have a temper and he could be rash, but that did not make him a traitor.
“You know, when the rumours started to spread that there was a traitor in town, Ramon heard them as well as anyone, and he also heard that he was considered the traitor. That upset him more than anything, it upset him more than the thought that people considered him a rogue.”
Maes shuffled in his seat, the storytelling was making him agitated.
“Ramon said he would find out who the real traitor was and kill him. I know that is murder, but I am being honest with you. Ramon thought it would be a civic duty to find and kill this
traitor.”
“Hence the revolver,” Peeters made another note on his paper. “And, I suppose you are going to tell me Ramon did discover who the traitor was? Is that why he killed Father Lound, he thought he was the traitor?”
“He didn’t kill Father Lound,” Maes looked astonished. “Why would he? Father Lound was not a traitor.”
“The secret papers stolen from an officer’s pocket at Albion Hope were found in Father Lound’s office,” Peeters pointed out. “Ramon could have easily heard about that and made his decision to get rid of the traitor.”
“Father Lound was not the traitor,” Maes insisted. “I don’t know about any papers.”
Clara was listening intently.
“Ramon did not kill Father Lound,” Maes was persistent, he was looking cross now. “I don’t know why anyone would suggest Father Lound was a traitor, he was a good man. He spent a lot of time with Ramon’s family, and I know it was not for pleasure. Ramon knew who the real traitor was, he told me and made me swear to keep the whole thing a secret.”
“Because revealing the traitor would cause harm to Ramon’s family?” Clara suddenly understood. “The traitor was close to the Devereauxs. No. The traitor was one of the Devereauxs.”
Clara paused as the realisation struck her. It had been staring her in the face, utterly obvious.
“Elena Devereaux,” Clara declared. “She was the traitor! She was in a position to listen to military talk, she hung around with the soldiers, went to bed with many of them. She overheard their conversations, or they simply told her stuff not thinking it mattered telling a prostitute about the situation at the Front. Men under stress, who are suddenly in a position where they can relax, will talk if they have someone who will listen and who appears innocuous.”
Clara gasped.
“How obvious this has all been!”
Maes was nodding.
“Yes, you have it. Elena had found a way to make even more money. Ramon had known for a while, but he had no idea how to deal with the matter. He could not shoot his sister, as he had planned when he first realised there was a traitor. He also could not hand her over to the British. It would have killed his mother,” Maes looked bleak. “All he could do was try to track down the Germans she was working for and shoot them.”
“That day, when the papers went missing…” Clara was working things out in her head. “Father Lound was protecting someone, he was protecting Elena. Maybe he saw her take the papers, somehow he learned of what she was doing and so he took the blame on himself. Perhaps he was planning to talk with her family, have her leave town. Did he imagine he could persuade her to stop?”
“He should have just handed her over to the British. Ramon should have done it too. The girl was clearly not going to stop and was a cold-blooded viper,” Peeters interrupted, his tone surprisingly cruel. “Men might have died because of her. This town could have been overrun because of her.”
“Blood is thicker than water,” Clara said to him gently. “We do things for family we would not do for anyone else.”
“If Elena was arrested and shot, Madame Devereaux would have given up,” Maes said quietly. “Ramon’s mother was clinging onto life by her fingertips, he was afraid what might happen to her, he was afraid what might become of his younger sisters. Ramon was scared he could not look after them himself and they would be taken away. He was trying to hold his family together. It was awful to watch the strain upon him.”
“Elena killed Father Lound,” Clara said sharply. “That was why Ramon was so secretive and hid the body. She came to the door, looked out on a body and did not react. You said that, Louis.”
Maes looked startled. It was obvious he had never thought that Elena might be the murderer of Father Lound. He was not a person who made such connections. Things had to be very clear and plain for Maes to see them.
“That would make sense,” he said slowly. “Ramon said she was so cold, and I thought he just meant she did not act like most women would around a body.”
Clara smiled.
“I don’t react like most women around a body,” she said. “That is not what he was referring to, I see that now. Which also may mean…”
Clara turned to Peeters, waiting to see if he had reached the same conclusion. He put down his pen very deliberately and took a deep breath.
“That evening in 1917, Ramon went to the woods angry. Maybe he was looking for the German agents, he had the revolver with him,” Peeters laid out his thoughts carefully, not wanting to look a fool by making another erroneous guess at how things happened. “Maybe he knew his sister had headed that way too. Could he have been intending to stop her? Whatever the case, he reached the woods and they argued. She got the revolver from him and shot him. Did he just kneel down and let her kill him? No, of course not. So, somehow he was incapacitated. And then she buried him?”
“I think we have to assume that the German agents were involved,” Clara said. “That grave could not have been dug by one person alone, and not by a pregnant woman. I would think that Ramon came upon his sister meeting with the Germans, probably telling them about the incident at Albion Hope. I doubt Ramon reacted to the scene with caution. He probably tried to shoot them, but was overcome, the revolver stolen and he was shot.”
Clara paused, the realisation of who had really been behind the betrayal and murder of two men that day in 1917 was hitting home.
“That was why the family had to leave in such a hurry. Elena had two deaths on her hands. Was she so cold she felt nothing at the execution of her brother?”
“Does that mean Madame Devereaux knows the truth?” Peeters mused.
“She probably knows some version of the truth. Elena could have told her that Ramon was the traitor and that they should all leave the town before the backlash of what he had done reached them. But that would not explain why Madame Devereaux pretended her son was still alive when she spoke to Dr Jacobs,” Clara considered all this. “Elena certainly spun a good enough story that her mother rushed all her family into hiding, and they have been hiding ever since.”
“Time we brought them out of hiding,” Peeters said firmly. “I shall arrest Elena Devereaux as a suspect in the murder of Father Lound and her brother. Then maybe we can have the truth of this matter at last.”
Maes gave a polite cough.
“Can I go now,” he said meekly.
“You helped cover-up a crime,” Peeters groaned at him in exasperation.
Maes frowned.
“Did I?” He said, innocently.
Chapter Thirty
Chief Inspector Peeters set off for Lugrule with a number of policemen. There was no police force in Lugrule itself, and Peeters was confident he was not going to be stepping on anyone’s toes. Nonetheless, he aimed to be discreet in his dealings. Clara was to wait for his return at the police station.
Father Lound’s full remains had been pulled from the rubble beneath the former Albion Hope. Dr Jacobs had had every bone carefully placed in a sturdy box and then brought to the police station, where he could lay it out in one of the rooms and examine it properly. He was satisfied that his earlier assessment had been correct and that Father Lound had died when someone struck him over the head with a heavy object. The blow had sent a shard of bone into his brain and killed him quickly.
Colonel Brandt, Tommy and Annie joined Clara at the police station to learn what she had discovered. She told them what Maes had said and what Ramon had suspected. Until they could talk to Elena, however, they would not know the whole of the story.
“What a miserable thing,” Colonel Brandt seemed quite depressed by the whole affair. “A woman the traitor!”
“Women are no more honourable than men, on occasion,” Clara replied to him. “She was driven by the desire for money. Such a mercenary person deserves no pity, she did not deserve the protection Ramon and Father Lound afforded her. They may have said they were trying to spare her mother grief but, in the end, they did no one any favours. Madame Devere
aux still suffered grief and ended up living a wretched life because of all this.”
“Makes the blood run cold,” Annie shuddered to emphasise her words. “What a horrid woman. Will she be shot?”
“I don’t know. Chief Inspector Peeters thought that might be the case, but he was not clear on the law concerning treachery. The rule might be different now the country is at peace. People tend to feel more merciful about things in that circumstance.”
Clara fell silent as Captain Mercier entered the building. He had been informed of the situation by Peeters and intended to be present when Elena was interviewed. Not catching the traitor had stung him all these years. He had not liked to think that Father Lound had got away, even when the bones were discovered in the woods and he thought they were the priest’s, he felt he had lost. Someone else had reached the traitor before him. And then he had learned that Father Lound was not the traitor and he had felt even worse.
At last it looked like he was going to have the opportunity to resolve this whole sordid affair, and a living person could be properly tried for their crimes. He was feeling a lot better about everything. He acknowledged Clara and the others, but did not speak to them. Instead they all resolved to wait for Peeters silently. There seemed nothing left to talk about.
It was well into the night when Peeters returned. He had taken a police carriage and as it rolled back up to the door, Clara and the others looked up eagerly to see who would emerge. Could Madame Devereaux have refused the police to enter her home, as she had done with Clara?
It seemed the woman had not. As the carriage doors opened, Madame Devereaux and her daughter Elena stepped out. Madame Devereaux looked calm and composed, resigned to her fate. In contrast, her daughter wailed and swayed, almost collapsing. She was held up by two policemen who brought her into the station and straight through to Peeters’ office.
“I’m going to have Dr Jacobs look her over first,” Peeters told Clara as he stepped in behind.
