The Witch Elm: A Novel

by Tana French

  “Did we tire him out?” Dec asked—he had been sitting up straight, alert, eyes going back and forth between me and Melissa, trying to figure out whether to worry. “Is that why he headed up early?”

  “He mostly goes to bed around this time,” Melissa said. “We keep an ear out, just in case.”

  “You didn’t do him any damage,” I said. “He was delighted you were here.”

  “We’ll come back again,” Sean said. “Soon.”

  I hadn’t realized, not really, not till I saw Hugo through their eyes: the painful shuffle, the stoop over his walking stick, the hollows under his cheekbones and the new sharpness of his nose. “Yeah,” I said. “That’d be good.”

  “Did the doctors say anything?” Dec asked. “Like, how long they think he’s got?”

  “A few months, probably. This summer they were saying four to six, so by the end of the year; but he responded really well to the radiotherapy, so maybe a little extra. No guarantees, though. Apparently they made a big deal of that. He could last till spring, or he could have a stroke tomorrow.”

  “Jesus,” Dec said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll come back,” Sean said again.

  “Come here,” Dec said to me, lower, leaning in and glancing at the ceiling as if Hugo might somehow hear him. “I didn’t want to say it before because Hugo was looking a bit iffy, but Dominic was a genuine mega-prick to Leon. It got bad, like. He used to tell people Leon had AIDS, so no one would go near him. And one time, yeah? Dom and a couple of others got Leon in the showers, they stuffed his jocks in his mouth to keep him quiet and tried to shove something up his arse—I heard it was a Coke bottle, and then they were going to make him drink it. I don’t know how far they actually got, but . . .” And at the look on my face: “Do you not remember any of that, no?”

  “No,” I said, which was true. This had nothing in common, not only with the Dominic I remembered but with the entire world I remembered; it sounded like something out of a totally different school from mine, or maybe out of some horror-tinged English boarding-school movie with a hard-hitting message about the dark heart of humanity. “Are you positive you got the real story? I mean, dude, that’s some seriously crazy shit. I never saw anything like that in school. Like, nothing within a million miles of that. And I love Leon, but he exaggerates like hell.”

  Dec was looking at me with a new expression on his face, or more like a lack of expression, so complete it was like a flat rejection. “School wasn’t paradise, man. It wasn’t just jolly japes and then everyone has a good laugh together. Sometimes it got hardcore.”

  “Come on. Not like that. I was there. My memory might be fucked, but it’s not that fucked.” I glanced involuntarily at Melissa—I didn’t usually swear around her—but she was pinching a piece of candle wax into shapes, eyes down, and didn’t look up.

  “I’m not saying it’s your memory. I’m not even saying you’re wrong. School was genuinely never like that, for you. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t like that for anyone else.”

  “I’m not totally oblivious. I’m not thick. If this shit had been going on all around me—”

  “Around you, not in your face. You’re not a shithead, you’re a good guy, so no one would’ve tried to get you in on it. And they wouldn’t’ve tried it on you, either; you’re not the type that gets picked on. But someone like Leon—”

  “Leon is a fucking drama queen. He’ll take some tiny little nothing and blow it up into the apocalypse. I’ve seen him do it my whole life. I’ve been grounded because he—”

  “I didn’t hear the Coke bottle thing from Leon,” Dec said. “I heard it from Eoghan McArdle. He was there, but he was scared to do anything in case they went after him as well, so he legged it. He said he went and got a teacher—maybe he did, I don’t know. Eoghan wasn’t a drama queen. At all. And he was really shaken up. That’s why he said it to me: he knew I was mates with you, so he thought I might’ve heard what had happened in the end.”

  I couldn’t say a word. Partly it was outrage, at Dominic and, ludicrously, at Dec—I had liked school a lot, had remembered it with real fondness and an inner grin at all the stuff we had got away with, and now apparently the school I had liked so much had never existed. But overriding that was a much sharper sizzle of excitement, because it was all starting, just barely, to make sense.

  “I did try feeling you out about it,” Dec said. “Delicately, you know what I mean? I thought Leon might’ve told you. But you didn’t seem like you had a clue. So I figured maybe Leon felt the same as me, didn’t want anyone knowing—let’s be honest, it’s not the kind of story you want to share, yeah? So I kept my mouth shut. I figured it should be Leon’s call.”

  “He should have told me,” I said. My heart was going high and fast in my throat. “I would’ve done something.”

  “Listen,” Dec said—leaning across the table to catch my eye, pointing his glass at me for emphasis. “I’m not accusing Leon of anything. OK? We all know he did nothing to Dominic. He’s a good guy, Leon. And let’s face it, even if he wanted to, it would’ve been like a Chihuahua trying to take out King Kong.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m just telling you because it’s probably a good idea for you to be aware of all that stuff. Yeah? If the detectives come back asking more questions.”

  “God, yeah. Thanks, man.” I knew my voice sounded weird, tight and breathless, but that was OK, there were logical reasons for that— “You didn’t say it to them, right?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  “Good. Like you said, Leon wouldn’t . . . So there’s no reason to go sending the cops down the wrong track.”

  Dec was nodding away. “Right.”

  Leon. Leon desperate not to let the house be sold: a new owner might have decided to cut down the trees, and surprise! Leon wanting to throw the skull away and forget all about it, Leon like a cat on hot bricks about the detectives. Leon, after all that huffing and puffing about having to get back to his job and his boyfriend, still here weeks later: no way to leave while this was still up in the air. Leon with excellent reasons to want Dominic dead. And Leon who would have remembered me taking photos on that camera at his birthday party, who might have had reasons to worry about what was on there—

  Sean and Dec and Melissa were all watching me, identical concerned expressions, and I realized what my face must look like. “I should’ve known,” I said.

  “How?” Sean said. “Dominic wouldn’t have pulled any of that crap when you were around. It’s not like you’re psychic. I didn’t know either.”

  Melissa slipped her hand into mine, on the table. “Or maybe Leon did talk to you,” she said softly, “and you did make Dominic leave him alone. You might not remember.”

  “Yeah,” I said, with a small huff of a laugh. I seriously doubted it. Leon making snide little jabs about how easy I had it. Leon, who would have seen the Dominic thing as a totally valid reason to hold a grudge against me, to nudge the cops in my direction—I had been the one who people actually listened to, I should have done something, should have stood up for him; to someone like Leon, it would make no difference that I hadn’t had a clue what was going on. “True enough. That’s some best-case scenario.” She squeezed my hand.

  “The memory’ll come back,” Sean said. “Give it time. You seem like you’re doing a lot better already.”

  “I am.”

  “He is,” Melissa said, when Sean glanced at her.

  “That thick head came in handy for once,” Dec said.

  “That night,” I said, and had to take a breath again. “The night it happened. That basically got knocked right out of my head, yeah? A lot of it’s come back, but there’s still big chunks missing. It’s been driving me mental.”

  “Same as the time I got concussion,” Sean said easily. “The Gonzaga match, remember? That prop they had, size
of a moose; I tackled him and knocked myself out? I played the whole rest of the match, and I don’t remember a single thing about it.”

  “You,” Dec told me, pointing a finger at me, “you spent that evening giving me shite about my hair. Because you’re a bollix. Your fella, right?”—to Melissa—“your fella, he notices me admiring this very beautiful woman at the next table. Which should’ve been fair enough, right? seeing as I was single at the time? But he starts accusing me, at the top of his lungs, of having hair plugs—”

  Bit by bit—all to Melissa, as if they were telling the story for her sake, to make her laugh—they reconstructed the evening for me (or at least most of it: they skipped delicately over the brunette giving me the eye, and the work trouble). As they talked, my memory twisted and flicked into life—fitfully, almost playfully, filling in a vivid sweep of images here and just a brushstroke there and then skimming away, leaving behind tantalizing patches of shadow and blankness. Sean pointing at Dec, “—where to go for our holiday, and Toby and I are all on for Thailand, but this contrary git here, right? he just has to be different, he keeps banging on about Fiji—” and a flash of me waving my phone at Dec, Look, look at this, this guy says the beaches in Fiji are covered with wild dogs, you want to get eaten? I laughed along with Melissa, but every flash went through me like a zap of electricity.

  Except—I realized with a slow sinking, as Sean and Dec worked their way through the evening—there was nothing there. I had been hoping for the vital fragment that would bring all the pieces together; instead I was getting a lads’ night out, unremarkable in every way except for the cheap filter of hindsight that gave everything a sinister foreshadowing loom. Worse: I’d been so focused on that hope that I’d forgotten to consider what it would do to me, hearing about that night. It felt like they were talking about someone else, someone I had been close to a long time ago; a favorite brother maybe, cocky and laughing and innocent enough to break your heart, at ease with all the world and his place in it, and now lost. The longing to have him back was like a physical force sucking my guts out, leaving me hollow.

  The thing that saved me was, weirdly, the fact that I had brought it on myself. The vortexing sensation was as strong and as hideous as ever, but for the first time, it hadn’t been slammed into me out of nowhere; I was using it, riding it, for my own reasons. The Leon revelation might not be enough but it was something, a start, and I had pried it out myself. I was running this evening, and it felt good. It had been a long time since I had felt capable of running anything more complex than the microwave.

  “So then we poured Dec into a taxi,” Sean said. “Before he could start telling us he loved us.”

  “In your dreams. I’ll do it at your wedding, how’s that? Just so all your new in-laws can see you welling up like a great big—”

  “Who says you’re invited?”

  “We’re your best men, you tool. You want me to do it by Skype?”

  “I do, yeah, that’d be great—”

  “Did you guys go to Thailand, in the end?” I asked. “Or Fiji?”

  “Nah,” Dec said. “This big sap”—a nod at Sean—“wanted to wait for you. I was all on for leaving your sorry arse behind, only—”

  “He said he didn’t have the dosh,” Sean told me. “Meaning he wanted to wait for you, only he didn’t have the balls to say it. We’ll go next year.”

  “If Audrey lets you out of the gaff,” Dec said.

  “She’ll be delighted to see the back of him by then,” I said. “Probably push him out the door.” I had had a fair bit to drink, what with the wine and the Armagnac. That and the candlelight wrapped the two of them in a deep golden glow, like heroes out of legend, timeless and steadfast. I wanted to reach out across the table and grip their arms, feel the warmth and solidity of them. “Cheers, guys,” I said instead, raising my glass. “Thanks. For everything.”

  “Ah, Jaysus,” Dec said in disgust. “Not you too.”

  * * *

  “It was good to see them,” Melissa said, when Sean and Dec had left and we were tidying up. It was late, candles burned down to stalagmite stubs, old crooner radio station playing low enough that we would hear Hugo if he called. An unsettled wind was moving around the garden. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Huh?” I had been loading the dishwasher, humming along to the music—I should have been fading from booze and fatigue, but instead I felt like I was speeding. Half my mind was working on how to get Leon over to the Ivy House, and what to say to him once I had him. If he was somehow behind all this, a part of me was almost impressed: I wouldn’t have thought he had the organizational drive to mastermind something that elaborate. The part I couldn’t work out was the timing on the break-in. If he had been after the camera, why not tell his scumbag pals to go in during the day, when I would be out at work and they could hunt for it in peace? Unless the nighttime part had been their own addition, easier to walk out with a big flat-screen in the middle of the night—or unless Leon had actually wanted me to run into them, wanted me shaken up, even beaten up: some bitchy poetic-justice thing, see how you like it— “Oh. Yeah. It was great.”

  “Sean’s so excited about the wedding, isn’t he? He was trying to act all blasé about it, but it’s lovely. And Dec’s in better form than I thought he’d be, after Jenna.” Melissa had tried very hard to be friends with Jenna, but even she had her limits.

  “He’s way better off. He knows that, deep down.”

  Melissa swept crumbs off the tablecloth into her hand. “And you had a good time?”

  That was twice she’d asked. “Oh yeah,” I said cheerfully. And when I caught her quick glance: “What, did it not seem like I was?”

  “Oh, yes! Almost all the time. Just . . . all that about Dominic. And Leon.”

  “Well,” I said, with a grimace: pained but not upset, everything in perspective. “Yeah. That was nasty stuff. But it was a long time ago. And I guess you guys were right: I did everything I could. I’m not going to beat myself up over it.”

  “Good.” A fleeting smile, but there was still a tiny worried crease between her eyebrows. After a moment she said, picking a blob of candle wax off the tablecloth: “You were asking Sean and Dec a lot of questions.”

  I was lining up glasses in the dishwasher, fast neat rhythm, even my hand grip felt stronger. “Was I? I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured they’d remember Dominic a lot better than I do. Apparently I was right, too.”

  “Yes, but why does it matter? Why do you want to know about him?”

  “I’d like some clue what’s going on,” I said, reasonably enough, I thought. “Seeing as we’ve somehow ended up in the middle of it.”

  Melissa’s eyes came up to meet mine, fast. “You think they know something about what happened? Sean and Dec?”

  “Well, not like that.” I laughed; she didn’t. “But yeah, they might know something that they don’t realize means anything. Probably not, but hey, it’s worth asking, right?”

  “The detectives are doing that.”

  “Sure. But they might not tell us what they find out, or they might not find out fast enough. Hugo wants to know; he says he feels like he’s got a right. You can see his point.”

  She brushed her handful of crumbs into the bin, not looking at me. “I guess.”

  “And there’s stuff I might be able to find out that the detectives can’t.”

  A moment’s silence. Then: “So you’re going to keep asking. Trying to find out what happened.”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  Melissa swept the cloth off the table in one swift neat motion and turned to face me. She said flatly, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “What?” I hadn’t seen this coming. If anything I would have expected her to be all encouragement and support, anything that Hugo wanted, anything that got me amped up and
interested— “Why not?”

  “Dominic might have been murdered. It’s not a game. The detectives are professionals; it’s their job. Leave it to them.”

  “Baby, it’s not Agatha Christie. I’m not going to get stabbed in the library with a letter opener for getting too close to the truth.”

  She didn’t smile. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  “Then what?”

  “You don’t know what you might find out.”

  “Well, that’s kind of the point.” And when she still didn’t smile back: “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. But how could it be anything that would make you happy? Toby”—her hands tightening on the tablecloth—“you’ve been getting so much better. I know how hard it’s been, but you have, and it’s wonderful. And now this . . . this seems like something that isn’t going to take you good places. Even tonight, that upset you, I could tell . . . The next while isn’t going to be easy, with Hugo”—and over me, as I started to speak—“and that’s all right—no, it’s not all right, but it just happened, we can deal with it. Whatever that takes. But deliberately getting yourself into something that you know is going to hurt you, doing it to yourself—that’s not the same thing, Toby. It’s not all right. I really wish you’d just leave it.”

  I looked at her, standing there all fragile and earnest in the middle of my uncle’s rickety kitchen clutching his worn old tablecloth, tiny reflected candle-flames wavering in the dark French doors behind her. All I could see in my mind was me bringing her the answer to all of this, impaled on my spear and carried high, to be laid at her feet in triumph. The image went through my blood like a tracer shot, like another great big beautiful swig of that Armagnac. All these months of her patience, her loyalty, her stunning and full-hearted and completely unwarranted generosity: this was the only way in the world that I could—not repay it, nothing would do that, but justify it.