by Evelyn James
Madame Devereaux was being escorted to a back room.
“She let you in, then?” Clara asked.
“Without complaint. I think she has been expecting this for a long time. Elena was harder to catch hold of, she tried to run, but didn’t get far.”
“What of the children?”
“I left a constable at the house,” Peeters pulled a face. “If you can call it a house. One of the girls was too sick to be moved. Depending on what occurs tonight, I’ll have to make other arrangements for them.”
“Peeters, I want to be involved in the interview of Elena,” Captain Mercier had stepped forward, his tone was firm and barred no opposition.
Peeters nodded at him.
“I thought as much. Right, shall we get this over with?”
Elena Devereaux was a good actress, but her apparent weakness and distress were no more than a pretence. Dr Jacobs informed Peeters that her pulse and heart rate were perfectly normal and there were no physical symptoms of the upset she was feigning. There was no reason to be concerned for her wellbeing. Clara was relieved about that as she did not want to have to delay their interview of Elena. She needed to know the truth. Waiting any longer would be torment.
Peeters, Captain Mercier and Clara entered the chief inspector’s office and arranged themselves around Elena. Peeters faced her across his desk, while Clara and Mercier sat to one side. Peeters took out fresh paper and started making notes as he had done for Louis Maes.
Elena had her head dipped forward, almost to her chest, and was clutching her hands in her lap. She was sobbing softly, but Clara thought it sounded forced.
“Elena Devereaux, we know that you were selling secrets to the Germans during the war,” Peeters began bluntly. “We know you killed Father Lound, perhaps it was an accident, but the outcome was the same. Your brother, Ramon, covered the crime up for you. We also know that you were involved in his death. We have Ramon’s body and we have the body of Father Lound. We also have a witness who can testify that you were guilty of these crimes.”
That was stretching the truth. Louis Maes’ testimony would never get into court, but it might be enough to startle Elena into confessing.
“Before he died, your brother told someone all about your crimes. That person has now come forward. This gentleman on my right is with the British military and was tasked with tracking down the spy in our town. After we talk, you shall go with him and be taken before a military tribunal. I don’t know what the outcome of that will be, but I suggest a full confession would go in your favour.”
Elena took a crackling breath. Clara was hopeful that she was not clever enough to know that silence was her best option. They had little real evidence against her. If she said nothing, they would never convict her of any crime. If Elena realised that, then there was no chance.
Elena scratched at her arm. She was thin and looked sickly. Whatever disease was eating her alive, it was certainly taking its toll.
“Now is the time to talk Elena, and get this all off your chest,” Peeters continued. “It will make you feel better.”
Elena lifted her head slowly. Her eyes burned like fire and there was something chilling about her stare. She first looked at Peeters, then at Clara and Mercier. There was nothing in her gaze to suggest she was afraid of any of them.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Mademoiselle Devereaux,” Mercier sat forward in his chair, “you think silence will do you a favour? It will not. There is mounting evidence against you. When I investigated this crime back in 1917, I helped to set a trap, a trap you walked into. Father Lound, rather foolishly, protected you. However, he was a patriotic man. He left behind a diary, I have it here.”
Captain Mercier pulled a book out of his pocket. Elena had her attention fixed on him, her lips were parting slightly in her anxiety, revealing dull, brown teeth. There was, of course, no diary. Mercier was playing a game. Neither Clara nor Peeters were going to interfere.
“In this book, Father Lound wrote down what he had done for you. He wrote everything down in his diary. Until today, we did not have this book, because when your brother hid Father Lound’s body, he also hid a suitcase containing the priest’s belongings. We found that suitcase today and with it this diary,” Mercier fixed Elena with his eyes. “He details everything. He had been tracking you, and he recorded every suspicion and every piece of information he collected in this book. This is the most damning piece of evidence against you. The words of a dead man.”
Elena shot from her chair and tried to grab the diary, but Mercier quickly put it back in his pocket.
“Sit down, mademoiselle,” Peeters said sternly.
Elena hovered for a moment, her hand still outstretched, then she sank back into the chair.
“Let’s make a deal,” Mercier told her calmly. “You confess and we shall make sure that your name does not end up in the papers. For the sake of your son, Ramon, and for your mother and sisters.”
“But what about me?” Elena demanded.
Mercier had misread her. Elena did not care what became of her family, she never had.
“What do you want?” Mercier asked.
“Not to be shot,” Elena snapped. “I want to walk out of here, go back to a normal life without fearing you people will follow me.”
“That is impossible,” Mercier explained to her. “You have committed at least two serious crimes. Never mind, the confession would have helped you, but if you do not want to help yourself…”
“How would it help me?” Elena asked. “I will still be shot!”
She had a point.
“You would get to put your side of the story across,” Clara spoke up. She thought she had an idea of how to appeal to Elena’s vanity and self-obsession. “As it stands, the only part of this people will hear is the official side of things. No one will know the circumstances that placed you in such a position. The desperation, the difficulties. No one will get the chance to hear why you did this, why you had no choice.”
Elena’s eyes flicked to Clara. She seemed to be listening.
“Your son will grow up only knowing that his mother was a traitor to her country. He shall never learn that there was far more to you, that you had to do these things. If you want to have people understand, if you want people to appreciate the situation you were in, then you have to speak out now.”
“They would have done the same,” Elena murmured. “In the circumstances. No one understands that.”
“I would like to understand,” Clara said, and the response was honest. “I want to know what happened here and why.”
Elena gave a little sniff, some of her arrogance was returning.
“This is all the fault of the Germans, anyway. I was only taking back the money they stole from my family.”
“They did you a great disservice,” Clara agreed with her. “And look at the position they left you in.”
“Precisely,” Elena was buckling. “I have lived in that pit of a town all these years because of them, and because of my stupid brother Ramon. And I have never told anyone.”
“That must have been hard,” Clara was sympathetic. “To say nothing, to want to explain what you went through, to let other people know how hard it was for you. That you were the victim. But knowing that there was no one to listen.”
“This… this is true,” Elena faltered. “I am so exhausted by it all, by my life. I have lived beneath this shadow so long.”
“Well, you have an opportunity now to speak and have your side of things recorded officially. You shouldn’t miss such a chance. This is the only way your words will be saved for history. Miss this moment, and no one will ever hear Elena Devereaux’s voice.”
Elena rocked in her chair, she gave a little tremble and her fingers crept to her bare arm and scratched painfully at the skin. She looked like she was used to taking substances to dull her misery, and she needed something right then. Captain Mercier spotted this.
“Dr Jacobs has things he c
an give you,” he said, Elena cast a sharp glance in his direction, which was all the confirmation he needed of her problem. “If you talk to us.”
Elena gave a heartfelt groan, rather like a child who has been told they must eat their greens before they can have dessert. Her groan turned to a soft wail and then she resigned herself. For a while she went back to rocking in her chair, her head down, her fingers clutched together. Then she took a breath and looked up.
“If I am to make a confession, I want it done right. I want everything written down, everything. Exactly as I say it. No mistakes,” her voice was suddenly firm again, she did not sound like someone desperate for a high.
Clara was impressed by her strength of character. It was probably the reason she had lasted this long. Her life was one that would have destroyed most people rapidly; they would have descended into drugs, drink and despair. There was nothing but an endless slog through existence for Elena Devereaux, and she must have known that. But she hadn’t given up, not completely at least.
“I shall record everything,” Peeters promised. “And then you can read it through and make any alterations before it is signed as your official confession. That is your right.”
Elena lifted her head up proudly and suddenly looked like the haughty young woman she might have been had circumstances been different.
“Then I am ready to begin,” she said. “I shall tell you everything. And then you will know, it was not really my fault. None of it!”
Chapter Thirty-One
Elena’s story was much as Clara had already surmised. The young girl raised in luxury and used to having everything done for her did not cope well with the sudden change in her family’s circumstances. She was too proud to work. How could she lower herself to that? She had always been better than those who worked for a living.
Her mother had declared there was no money. She tried to sell things from the house, but there was no one to buy them. Not in the town, at least, where everyone was too worried about the war to want to buy antique vases or furniture. They could not advertise further afield for buyers, they did not have the means. It was the war, of course, it made things so hard. After a while her mother gave up and resolved herself to taking on some work. Elena had been appalled. Especially when her mother declared she would go to work in the fields; she had no talent for sewing or cooking and her cleaning skills were non-existent. But field labour was largely about stamina rather than skill, and at harvest time you could take home the gleanings for your family.
Madame Devereaux had implied that Elena ought to join her. Elena had stormed out of the house in horror. What a vile thing to even suggest! There had to be some other means of restoring the family’s fortunes. Elena knew that if she did not bring money into the house, eventually her mother would insist on her working the fields.
It was then she found the soldiers. At first it was just a distraction to flirt with them, then one young man asked her to walk out with him. She did and it was fun. They did little more than stroll about the town talking and cuddling, but when he left to go back to the Front he gave her a gift to remember him by – a silver cigarette case. Unlike the big things in the Devereaux house that had been hard to sell, the cigarette case was readily bought by one of the shopkeepers in town.
When she brought the money home, Elena’s mother was delighted. She avoided asking any questions but suggested that if Elena could keep bringing in money like that, there would be no more talk of field work.
For a while Elena carried on in this way. She would befriend a soldier, act like his girlfriend and make sure he gave her something valuable when he departed the town. Sometimes she would have to be quite blunt with her demands, but no one ever demurred, and they never got more than a kiss in return. Elena had decided on that early on. Until, that is, she met an older man named John. John walked out with her for a while, she played her usual games, but unlike the younger men she had strung along, John was not so soft or gullible. Whenever there was talk of gifts he would laugh or just grin. Then, one day, he laid his cards on the table. He wanted to go to bed with her and he was prepared to pay her for it. He laid out the terms like it was a business agreement and showed her the money he would pay her. Elena was hesitant until she saw the cash.
After that day she realised there was a quicker and easier way of earning money than pretending to be a man’s girlfriend for a few days and prising a valuable keepsake from him. She could earn more in a few hours if she was prepared to ignore the principles she had been raised with.
Elena was not remorseful. The money was good and certainly in the early days she was the only girl offering such services in town. Business boomed. Eventually other women drifted there and would try to undercut her prices, but Elena was always popular because she dressed like a lady, spoke well, had a good education and exquisite manners. She was a cut above the rest and the men liked spending time with such a sophisticated prostitute.
The only real nuisance was Ramon. He disliked her whoring, but as her mother was tacitly approving of the situation, there was nothing much he could do.
The treachery business was Ramon’s fault too. He had annoyed Elena when he attacked one of her man friends. Ramon had taken a pounding, but it was not enough to satisfy Elena’s thirst for revenge. She wanted to spite him further. It was then she heard the whispers about German agents in the area and Ramon’s determination to find them and shoot them. She decided to find them first. There was no real plan in her mind as to what she would do when she came upon them, though she did debate sleeping with them and taking their money. It would be amusing to be sleeping with the enemy.
It was never about the war, or about Belgium or about her town. It was always about Ramon. That was why it was never really treason, not in the proper sense of the word. Honestly.
Strangely, it was quite easy to find the German agents and Elena soon discovered they would pay her for information from the soldiers she slept with. Now she could earn twice as much by her night-time activities and every time she brought the money home, she would be spiting Ramon.
Elena freely admitted that she was using Albion Hope as her main base of operations; not just for information gathering, but also for touting for business. Father Lound discovered this and tried to get her to stop. He could not ban her from making deliveries to the house, as that was the only means she had of making legitimate money, but he tried to persuade her to give up her extra activities. He annoyed Elena as much as her brother. She would see them talking together and knew they were talking about her. It was unbearable!
And then the day came when she noticed some odd papers in the pocket of a man’s tunic and she stole them. Unluckily, or so she had imagined at the time, Father Lound spotted her. He made her give the papers to him. They argued, but she obeyed and stormed home. It was only much later that she learned the papers were part of a trap and she had been very fortunate not to stumble into it.
However, she didn’t know any of that when she heard Father Lound and Ramon arguing in the garden of her home. It was the same argument they always had, over Ramon’s behaviour towards the other lads and his temper. Ramon had finally stomped indoors and disappeared upstairs. He never noticed that his sister was present. She was supposed to be delivering bread at that time in the afternoon, but she had been feeling unwell due to her pregnancy and had stayed home.
Elena was in a foul mood because her swelling belly was putting off new customers. She was not earning money, aside from her deliveries. She had been convinced that the Germans would pay her handsomely for the papers she had tried to steal from Albion Hope, and she had been angry all afternoon because Father Lound had taken them away. Suddenly she wanted to tell him exactly what she thought of him. She walked outside and found him still in the garden. She yelled at him, told him he was making her life a misery, preventing her from supporting her family. When he tried to tell her once again that what she was doing was wrong, she lost her temper. Elena did not even remember picking up the stone,
but she could vividly recall slamming it down on Father Lound’s head.
He had crumpled to the grass. Elena stood for a while just looking at him, wondering if he was dead or not. She nudged him with her foot once or twice. He didn’t respond. Maybe he was dead or maybe he wasn’t, whatever the case, Elena didn’t want anything more to do with the matter. Someone else could sort it out. Someone else had always sorted out Elena’s messes in the past. Just before she left him, she stripped Father Lound of his crucifix and rosary. She was pretty certain she could sell them on the thriving black market, and he owed her for those papers.
She had been right, of course, someone else did sort out her mess. Ramon found the priest’s body. Maybe he guessed what had happened. Certainly he disposed of the corpse and that satisfied Elena.
Later that night she went to seek out the Germans and tell them about the papers she had seen. She hoped they might pay her for that. The Germans usually loitered near St. Helena’s shrine and Elena went there. She had not expected Ramon to follow her.
What happened next was close to what Clara had surmised. Elena was talking with the Germans when Ramon came upon them. He lost his temper and waved the gun about but, when it came to it, he could not shoot them. The Germans grabbed him, took the gun away and then they had to make a decision. The Germans could not let Ramon go, he had seen too much. Elena was worried that her brother would turn her in to the British. At last they were all agreed that Ramon had to be disposed of.
Elena had felt elated and scared by the decision. Ramon was sobbing as the Germans forced him to his knees. It was a test of Elena’s loyalty to get her to fire the gun. She still had the rosary and crucifix on her, and when Ramon kept crying she felt a little bad. She put the crucifix around his neck and shoved the rosary in his hand as a sort of comforter. It made her feel a bit better. It certainly gave her the strength to shoot Ramon. It was only as his body hit the ground that the realisation of what she had done struck her. Suddenly she was not so cocky and confident. She started to scream and one of the Germans slapped her. He went to grab the gun, threatening to shoot her too. Elena managed to break open the chamber and dump the bullets, before dropping the gun and running off.
