Cold Plague

by Daniel Kalla

  Sylvie nodded. “He was an engineer with a company in Limoges, but he did much of his work from home. You see, Philippe was born with hip problems. He had a lot of pain, much worse if he had to walk far.” Her thin neck bobbed once as she swallowed. “He was supposed to have an operation in the fall.”

  Noah nodded. “About Philippe’s diet—”

  “I didn’t know he was on a diet.”

  Noah smiled and shook his head. “No. I mean do you know if your brother ate much beef?”

  Sylvie blushed slightly. “I know he liked the steaks that Maman makes. And sometimes Philippe used to have the…” She turned to Elise for help. “Langue de vache marine.”

  Elise’s eyes widened. “Pickled cow’s tongue,” she translated.

  Noah understood Elise’s reaction. Like sweetbreads and the entrails of infected cows, the tongue typically carried the highest concentrations of prions in the case of BSE.

  Duncan frowned. “Does anyone else in your family eat tongue or any organ meat?”

  Sylvie waved her hands and shuddered. “I can barely eat the steak. I don’t think Maman or Georges would eat the cow’s tongue, either.”

  “Where is Georges?” Noah asked.

  Sylvie rolled her eyes affectionately. “Spin a globe and choose a spot,” she said.

  Elise shook her head. “You don’t know?”

  “He e-mailed me from Canada, somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, last week,” she said. “Georges is a geologist. With his research, he travels to very remote places. The North Pole, the South Pole, and everywhere in between. Sometimes we can’t reach him for weeks. He did not hear about Philippe until it was too late. There was a terrible storm, and he was snowed in. He could not come home in time…even for Philippe’s funeral.”

  “What kind of research?” Noah asked, curious.

  “Ice.”

  “Ice?”

  “He is a world expert on glaciers and other ice formations. He spends most of his time in the coldest places.”

  “I imagine they’re still warmer than Limousin,” Duncan cracked. “He’s not been sick, has he?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, frowning.

  “And you don’t know of anyone else around here who has?” Duncan asked.

  Sylvie shook her head.

  “What about Benoît Gagnon or Giselle Tremblay?” Noah recited the names of the other two victims.

  “Giselle Tremblay…” Sylvie turned back to the fire. “The name is familiar, but I am not sure why.”

  Noah cleared his throat. “Sylvie, they told us in Limoges that your family checked Philippe out of the hospital and brought him back to Lac Noir.”

  Sylvie nodded.

  “Why?”

  Sylvie’s face shrouded with sudden anguish. “You should have seen what happened to him in two weeks, Dr. Haldane.”

  “We saw a few video clips of him during his hospitalization.”

  “So you saw what he looked like, then!” She sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair. “He was dying. Horribly. And it was hard on Maman to go back and forth to Limoges every day. She wanted him closer. She wanted him home.” Her finger swept the grand living room. “Obviously, we could not care for him here. So we found a spot near us in the, um, how do you say…maison de santé.”

  “Nursing home,” Elise translated.

  Duncan flopped forward in his chair. “Where he died in the fire?”

  “It was so stupid.” Sylvie glanced at the fireplace and watched the flames dance safely within the confines of the mantel. “Another patient gave my brother a cigarette.” She swallowed again. “By that point, Philippe was so sick he could not even feed himself or hold a glass.”

  “Strange,” Elise said.

  “Senseless.” Sylvie shook her head sternly. “The woman was demented. She was not supposed to have cigarettes, either. We’ll never know how she got them. She died in the fire, too.”

  Noah thought again about the odd timing of the blaze, but Sylvie’s intense brown eyes drew his attention. “Dr. Haldane, am I at risk for…you know?” she asked in a faltering voice.

  He shook his head. “No family clusters of this disease have ever been reported. Even living in the same house with a victim does not put you at increased risk.” He mustered a reassuring grin for her. “And since you don’t seem to like cow’s tongue…”

  Her sad smile showed her relief.

  They asked other questions about Philippe and his possible exposure to BSE, but his sister had little else to offer. Noah rose from his seat and the others followed. “Thank you, Sylvie, you’ve been very helpful,” he said. “Again, I’m sorry about what your family has gone through.”

  Sylvie nodded gratefully. “Please let me know if I can help in any other way,” she said. “I wouldn’t want anyone else…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  She led them to the front door. As they were about to file out, Sylvie said, “What happened to Philippe…” She looked down at her feet. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Do you think there will be others?”

  “No question,” Duncan murmured.

  He said it with such certainty that Noah’s stomach sank.

  12

  Limoges, France. January 17

  More than twenty-four hours had passed without Pauline Lamaire materializing. She was now officially considered a missing person, but Detective Avril Avars took little solace from the change in her status. The case crept under her skin. For the first time since her husband’s funeral, Avril delayed her weekly trip to Antoine’s graveside to stay in Montmagnon and investigate further.

  Avril and her twenty-one-year-old son, Frédéric (home from university on winter break), had gone to Montmagnon only a month earlier to visit her widowed father. Returning now brought back unwanted memories of that tense trip. Avril still felt the twinges of guilt. She and her son shared the same stubborn streak, but they had never clashed as they had during that miserable journey.

  Frédéric was closer in coloring to Avril, but with his trim athletic physique and solid square face, he resembled his father so much that at times it hurt her to look at him. And like Antoine, the boy had always been mature beyond his years. From comments he made after returning home from Paris, Avril realized that Frédéric intended to propose to his high school sweetheart, Stéphane. Avril liked the quiet doe-eyed girl, but she was convinced her son was on the verge of making a mistake. Not only did Avril think that he was far too young to marry, she could not help but see Stéphane as a provincial Catholic housewife with no goal other than to raise a large family. She envisioned so much more for her only son. The fight erupted when she told him as much.

  “Maman, you make it sound as if I have to choose between Stéphane and my career,” Frédéric grumbled from the driver’s seat, as they drove through the outskirts of Limoges.

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, Freddie,” she said. “Why do you need to choose at all? You’re still so young.”

  Frédéric glanced sidelong at her. “How old were you when you married Papa?”

  “Times were different,” she snapped. “Besides, your father and I had a very clear vision of what we both wanted out of our lives and careers.”

  “So do Stéphane and I!”

  “Really? You want to raise eight kids in a farmhouse in Saint Junien, too?”

  “Eight is better than one!”

  “That’s not fair, Frédéric.” She swallowed. “We would’ve loved to have had more children, but you know I—” She did not finish, but Frédéric already knew the family story of his mother’s emergency hysterectomy performed to stop the life-threatening bleeding after his delivery.

  Frédéric nodded grudgingly. “Sorry, Maman, you’re not being fair to Stéphane. You’ve never given her enough credit for who she is.”

  “Maybe. You’re doing so well at school. All your professors say so. I envisioned you making a name for yourself with a major architecture firm in Paris.”

&n
bsp; “Not drafting blueprints for new barns in Saint Junien, right?”

  “Frédéric, there might be a woman out there who shares your passion for design. Someone with more…ambition…than Stéphane.”

  “A wife my mother can be more proud of?”

  “This is not about me, Freddie!” Avril felt her cheeks grow hot with indignation. “You wanted my opinion, so I am telling you.”

  Stopped at a traffic light, he turned to her with eyes afire. “No. What I wanted was your unconditional support.”

  “You’ll always have that. You know it, too.” She waved her hand impatiently. “I just want you to consider what is best for you now.”

  “Not what’s best for Stéphane, too?”

  “No,” Avril said. “At your age, what is best for you is best for her, too. If you make sacrifices for Stéphane’s sake now, you may both come to regret it when it is already too late.”

  “Sounds like you want me to make sacrifices for your grand vision of my life,” Frédéric muttered.

  “You’re not even trying to listen!” Avril snapped, and they fell into a cold silence that lasted for much of their stay in Montmagnon.

  After weathering the visit with her father—who made matters worse by siding with Frédéric—Avril had not expected to see the town again until Easter at the earliest, but she wound up spending most of the cold January day in Montmagnon. She interviewed several of Pauline Lamaire’s acquaintances, many of whom Avril knew, or at least recognized from childhood. By the time she headed back to Limoges, she took with her an appreciation of how difficult Pauline’s life had become after contracting arthritis.

  What Avril did not find in Montmagnon was any trace of Pauline’s whereabouts. The search was complicated by the woman’s growing isolation. By all accounts, the arthritis had not only incapacitated Pauline, it also fundamentally changed her. The concert violinist—once known for her ever-present smile and carefree disposition—had become obsessed with finding a magical cure. Some of the interviewees even guiltily admitted to, or staunchly defended, their efforts to distance themselves from a woman who grew more eccentric by the month. A few suggested that her obsession had crossed the bounds of rationality. One former friend, a cellist, said, “It’s almost impossible to be around her now, Detective. She lives in a world consumed by conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, and mysticism.”

  Pauline’s eccentricity aside, none of the interviewees described her as confused or forgetful, though no one had seen her as recently as Dr. Tanier had. If she was as disoriented as the doctor believed and she did wander out of her house, then any of the lakes or woods surrounding Montmagnon could have swallowed her without a trace. But for Avril it always came back to the tidy state of her house. If Pauline had simply stumbled out into the wilderness, then who cleaned her house and brought in fresh-cut flowers? Not the cleaning woman who came every second Thursday; Avril had already checked.

  Hoping to shed light on this question, Avril had asked Pauline’s closest living relative to meet her at the Gendarmerie Limoges. Pauline had no siblings, and both her parents were long dead. Marie Lamaire was Pauline’s first cousin and, at thirty-seven, the same age. Though they had grown up in the same town, Avril had no recollection of the woman. And the sight of Marie standing nervously in the foyer (wearing a black frock and her hair tied tight in a bun that Avril would have expected to see on a woman twice her age) did not jar any memories. However, the detective decided that Marie, who worked at a secondhand bookstore in Limoges, typified the provincial spinster.

  She led her visitor down the colorless gray hallway and into her slightly dank office. Like the rest of the Gendarmerie building, the office was tinged with the faint smell of mold from a leak that none of the building custodians had been able to pinpoint and had long since given up trying.

  Once seated, Avril explained the purpose of the interview. While the detective spoke, Marie squirmed in her chair and rarely made eye contact. “Detective Avars, I have not seen much of Pauline in the last year or two,” she said.

  “When was the last time?”

  “About six weeks ago. I was passing by Montmagnon on my way home from Jourgnac. I had been meaning to drop off a book on Chinese herbal remedies that I had been carrying in my car, so I stopped over.”

  Avril reached for her pen. After being humiliated early in her career at a trial by a defense attorney, she had become a meticulous note taker. She jotted down Marie’s response on the notepad in front of her. “What was the house like?”

  Marie laughed anxiously. “You know Pauline, Detective. It was spotless as ever.”

  Avril nodded impassively, remembering Dr. Tanier’s description of the mess he had found on his earlier visit. “And how did Pauline seem?” she asked.

  “No different than usual.” Marie uttered a quiet sigh. “Always so concerned with her arthritis.” She crossed and promptly uncrossed her legs. “But she did say she was feeling a little better.”

  “How so?”

  “She mentioned she had started on a new treatment. Pauline was always starting a new therapy of some kind. She talked about little else.”

  Avril noted the lack of empathy in Marie’s tone. “Do you remember any details of this treatment?”

  “I think she said a friend had given it to her, but I might be confusing visits.”

  Avril recalled Dr. Tanier’s reference to new medications. “Did Pauline describe this therapy?”

  “I seem to remember that it was not a pill from a pharmacy or anything like that.” Marie shrugged helplessly. “If she told me more, I cannot remember.”

  “And the friend who gave it to her?”

  Marie held up her palms again.

  Suppressing an irritated sigh, Avril was about to wind up the interview when Marie spoke hesitantly. “I am not sure if it’s related, but we did talk about Georges. Possibly, he suggested the treatment.”

  “Georges?”

  “Georges Manet. Her former fiancé.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar to Avril. “Is he from Montmagnon?”

  Marie pursed her lips. “His family is from Lac Noir.”

  “You said former fiancé. What happened?”

  “Georges is a geologist. A real globe-trotter. And very handsome, too.” Her thin lips broke into a self-conscious smile as she blushed slightly. “Pauline used to travel with him on some of his trips, but after she became ill with the arthritis—”

  “He broke off the engagement,” Avril finished her sentence.

  Marie shook her head vehemently. “No, Pauline did!”

  “Oh?” Avril sat up straighter. “Why?”

  “Georges is such an outdoors person.” She reddened further, and Avril realized that Marie was infatuated with her cousin’s ex-fiancé. “Pauline knew she would not be able to do those kinds of things with Georges anymore, that she would even hold him back. I think that is why she broke it off.” She shook her head. “My cousin is nothing if not proud.”

  Avril jotted Georges Manet’s name and underlined it once with a sweep of ink. Was Marie involved in her cousin’s disappearance? Avril wondered. The woman was an unlikely kidnapper. “They continued to see each other after their breakup?” Avril asked.

  Marie nodded. “Georges is a wonderful man. He visits Pauline regularly. He brings her mementos from his trips. You know…exotic gifts.” She uttered a high-pitched laugh. “Eskimo art and carvings. He even once brought her home a piece of an iceberg.”

  Avril frowned. “Eskimos? Icebergs?”

  “Georges does his research in the far north. As I said, Pauline used to accompany him sometimes. Once, she even visited the North Pole,” Marie added with awe.

  Avril wondered if the woman in front of her had ever even left Limousin. “So you think Georges was the one who brought her this new treatment?”

  Her narrow shoulders rose and fell quickly. “I don’t recall if Pauline told me who brought it. I simply remember that we talked about…about Georges.”r />
  Avril rose from her chair and extended her to hand to Marie, who gripped it weakly with a wet palm. “Thank you,” Avril said. “You have been most helpful.”

  After Marie shrank out of the office, Avril pulled out a few sheets of lined paper and began to organize her thoughts. She wrote Pauline’s name in the center of the page and circled it. She drew a series of lines, like spokes, and started to connect boxes with names and notes.

  “Still solving crimes with little circles and triangles?” a gruff voice grunted from the door to her office.

  Avril looked up to see Detective Simon Valmont filling her doorway. Tall and overweight, Valmont had a shock of black hair. As usual, his white shirt and light blue tie bore remnants of his last meal, but at least he was cleaner shaven than the day before. An old-school detective with more than twenty years’ experience and a penchant for gambling on soccer and horse races, Valmont was a chauvinist and a racist; he made little effort to hide either from the North African woman with whom he was often partnered. Despite the many reasons he gave Avril for despising him, she had a soft spot for Valmont. A widower himself, his support helped her through some of her lowest points after Antoine’s fatal accident. And Valmont, who had no children of his own, was so close with Frédéric that her son referred to him as Uncle Simon.

  “Want me to find you some work, Valmont?” Avril asked.

  Valmont lumbered into her office. “No need. I’ll find my own.” He cleared his throat loudly as if trying to dislodge something that was stuck, but Avril knew it was just his vocal tic. “I hear the busboy at the café across the street hasn’t been seen in half an hour. He might be at lunch, but I think I’ll open a missing persons file on him just in case.”

  Avril fought off the smile. “You will be happy to know that Pauline Lamaire is now considered missing,” she said, having already run the situation by Valmont the previous day.

  “Happy? I am ecstatic.”

  Inspector Esmond Cabot suddenly walked into Avril’s office without invitation. Short and thin, with a neatly trimmed moustache and manicured nails, Cabot was as tidy as Valmont was messy. Though he was the same age as Avril and two years less experienced, since achieving the rank of inspector that he had so coveted, Cabot protected his position like a tiger guards his kill. “Ecstatic about what, Simon?”