Mephista

by Maurice Limat

  The boy stepped forward, self-confident, and raised his voice to boost his courage.

  The man before him, handsomely dressed, watched him and smiled. In spite of the darkness, they could see his hazel eyes, a little mocking but not mean, and some silver hair around his temples. He was rather tall, in good shape, and pushing forty.

  Gisele bit her lip. She had seen him before. She recognized him. It was…

  Jean-Pierre was not very reassured. He knew that there were creeps around, lunatics who spied on lovers, and sometimes did more than just watch. More than one crime had been born out of such depravations, and, in spite of everything, in such a situation, nothing told Gisele’s lover that this man’s intrusion was innocent.

  However, there was nothing threatening in the intruder’s attitude. Moreover, Gisele and Jean-Pierre were both wondering how this guy had just showed up here. On a bike, like Jean-Pierre? Certainly not. His suit was not meant for bicycles, especially in the snow.

  “Listen,” the man said, “you won’t say anything. And for my part, I won’t say anything either.”

  “Say anything about what?” Jean-Pierre barked back.

  “Well,” the man smiled bigger than ever, “nothing to Old Flin, for a start.”

  Gisele started crying without really knowing why. Jean-Pierre wondered what this meant, and did not know how to react. This guy here was getting the better of him because he seemed to know a little too much.

  “OK,” the young man sighed, “let’s get it over with. What do you want from us?”

  “Good! It’s very cold, so the sooner we’re done, the better. Of course, I’d prefer to take you out somewhere for some grog, but I think the closest bar is in town, and you’d best not be seen together over there… Not to mention Papa Flin might end up wondering why is his daughter taking so long to close the cemetery, which she does almost every day at the same time.”

  Jean-Pierre was looking impatient. The man waved off what he was about to say.

  “Let’s drop it. I just want some information from you two, that’s all.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “Not a stupid idea, my boy. But not exactly true either. What do I want? To know exactly what you saw over the cemetery wall three days ago—or rather three nights ago.”

  Gisele shivered, but one couldn’t have told if it was from the cold or from fear. In any case, she was crying a little less now, more sniffling and listening carefully, waiting for what her boyfriend would say.

  “What we saw?” he grumbled. “Uh, basically… What was it, Gisele? Not much really.”

  He wanted to challenge the interrogator and send him packing. But he told himself, not without some caution, that this man already knew a lot, and it would be better to deal with him than challenge him.

  Gisele answered with only some kind of grunt.

  “Charming language, little lady,” the man said mockingly. “Except, I do want to know more… about the ghosts. What did they look like?”

  Jean-Pierre quit stalling.

  “They weren’t ghosts. First of all, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “That’s debatable, Jean-Pierre, but that’s not the question. What did you see? Lightning? Surely not; we agree on that point. No snowstorm in the area since the beginning of the season. Will-o-the-wisps? I’d be surprised, at least if you stood right here… because you were on this spot?”

  Jean-Pierre nodded.

  “Very well. It’s a nice spot… and warm, too, even with the cemetery on the other side. With this weather, not so much, but, hey, it seems to suit you two just fine. Yes, I know, Papa Flin, when the mood comes over him, can be very strict, and not much fun. Let’s skip that bit. You were saying that you saw some lights. It wasn’t lightning and couldn’t be will-o-the-wisps for the simple reason that they come from swamps, bogs, rarely from cemeteries, and they couldn’t be seen from this spot anyway. So, what was it?”

  Gisele could say nothing, and Jean-Pierre was feeling increasingly embarrassed. In spite of everything, he now felt reassured. This man did not seem threatening, and his polite, even kindly, tone dispelled his fears.

  “In truth, we don’t know,” he replied.

  “But it was… constant… like a beam?”

  “You mean, a beam like from a lighthouse or a headlight?”

  “Good question. More precisely, was it from a car headlights or blinkers.”

  “Sort of.”

  “They were blinking?”

  “No, it was more like flashes.”

  They were dancing around the truth.

  Finally, Jean-Pierre, with Gisele hanging on, who had also regained some confidence, explained that they were brief lights, kind of bluish sometimes, and greenish white at other times. He really thought a snowstorm was coming. It was Gisele who saw them first, and got scared. He had to comfort her and it ruined their rendezvous.

  They went over it again, and Gisele described what had happened so mysteriously in the cemetery. Then the stranger just wanted to know if they had seen someone, or heard an engine, or seen tracks or a parked car. Their answer led him to understand that they had, in fact, cleared out in record time and only saw each other again half an hour ago.

  Therefore, he said farewell, thanked them, and said they had nothing to fear, that neither Old Flin nor anybody else would know anything at all about this meeting. After a grand tip of his hat to Gisele, he left, disappearing around the corner of the wall.

  Jean-Pierre remained silent for a moment, and almost wanted to follow him. He was furious, feeling like he had just been played for a fool. Suddenly turned tough guy, he grumbled:

  “I’m going to show him, that bastard…”

  Gisele clutched his arm.

  “No, please, stay. You never know.”

  Deep down, Jean-Pierre was only half-convinced that he should have run after the stranger to make him pay.

  They whispered together for a little while, frightened by the encounter, then decided to choose another place to meet. It would not be easy. They left each other after a quick kiss, but their hearts were not in it.

  Gisele went back home, where she got a good thrashing for being late.

  “You were with that pig, Jean-Pierre, again, for sure! You tramp!” screamed old Flin.

  She listened to the string of curses as he swore that the boy would never marry her, but dump her after knocking her up.

  While Gisele was thus being “educated” in this special fashion, Jean-Pierre pedaled to the nearby town, cursing the snow that threatened to make him crash, cursing girls, fathers, and all the perverts who bust in on romantic trysts, cursing the ghost lights, and everything else.

  Passing by the woods, he heard an engine and caught sight of a car heading toward Senlis.

  CHAPTER IV

  Jean-Michel Lefort opened the curtain in the living room and trained his empty eyes outside, seeing nothing but the dark night and the inevitable snow falling.

  “That damned fair is finally over.”

  “A county fair?” Teddy Verano asked.

  “Yes.” Jean-Michel sighed. “During the… the tragedy… Viviane’s final days… and the funeral… all that infernal racket. It was awful.”

  He came back, glass in hand, to the detective. Teddy Verano was trying to put on a good front, but he saw his client was upset. The investigation was apparently getting nowhere.

  “Nothing. This weird lightning in the cemetery… what does that prove?”

  “Oh,” the detective responded, “it doesn’t seem to prove much yet, Monsieur Lefort, I agree, but…”

  Jean-Michel spun around and faced him.

  “But what?”

  “I told you. You have to be patient in these kinds of cases. It’s obvious that our visit to Old Flin and the conversation I had with his daughter and her lover don’t seem—I say seem—to have, as you say, ‘proven anything’.”

  Lefort bit his lip. He was thinking he had already gone too far.

  “
Sorry. I’m in such a state since… since I lost Viviane.”

  It was the day after their trip together. Teddy Verano, as agreed, had returned to his house in the evening. Being a man of the world Jean-Michel Lefort served some port and was already letting his irritation show too much.

  Teddy Verano could have said all kinds of things: especially, that poor Viviane was in no more danger, and that her grave, if it had been opened, seemed to be free of any real desecration, as her bold husband had himself seen.

  Calmly, he put down his glass of Cintra and took out a piece of paper from his wallet. He saw Jean-Michel suddenly perk up, guessing this was something interesting.

  “I have collaborators,” Teddy Verano said. “My wife Yvonne and my stepson, an ardent young man who wants to follow in my footsteps and is doing so little by little. You know that I often take on several cases at the same time. I’m doing just this now. I have to protect certain important people, so I can’t do everything myself. So, I asked Yvonne to go through my files and she has compiled a little press book by clipping out everything in the press that might bear any relation at all to your case...”

  He held out a small notebook. Jean-Michel instinctively held out his hand, but Teddy Verano pretended not to see the gesture.

  “My wife and her son were looking for, amongst other things, anything unusual that has happened lately, in and around Senlis. At first glance, any minor news items we might find might only seem vaguely connected to your case. But sometimes…”

  He lifted the paper in his hand and continued.

  “Ten days ago, or rather ten nights ago, in Péronne, which is not too far from here, a young girl was watching over her deceased friend. Yes, a childhood friend had passed away prematurely. In the morning, the parents of the deceased found the poor girl passed out by the bed. At first, they thought it was from emotion or fatigue. Not at all. When she came to, with a little help, she showed signs of the most violent terror. Trembling and disoriented, she told them that a man had come in the night and used chloroform or something like that on her.”

  “And then? Did he steal something or what? Desecrate the dead?”

  “Nothing like that. Everything was normal except for the open window.”

  Jean-Michel got excited.

  “A man… in the night… around a dead girl… Yes, you’re right. There could be a connection.”

  Teddy Verano held back a smile. He saw that, this time, his client was not going to complain about the investigation stagnating. But Viviane’s husband reflected:

  “Are there any other details?”

  “Not much. The police investigated. Pretty routine, I have to admit. And except for the local press, they’re not talking much about it.”

  “Did they say if they found anything? I don’t know, maybe what he used to put the girl to sleep?”

  “No. The papers lack details. But it’s obvious that they’re not taking this too seriously. They think it was a fit of nerves.”

  “The open window?”

  “No traces of anyone climbing in. Besides, the room was on the ground floor and easy to access. And what does a window prove? She could have opened it herself.”

  Teddy Verano paused before whispering softly, waiting for Jean-Michel’s reaction, prolonging the effect because it amused him a little to see someone questioning his abilities.

  “The young girl in question had a nervous breakdown after a local paper, the only one to our knowledge, continued to investigate this apparently innocent story. They didn’t get much… except she kept repeating, ‘the flashes… the flashes’.”

  “What?”

  Lefort had jumped and his face suddenly turned pale, showing the high degree of his emotion.

  “Flashes! Flashes… Then you’ve found the clue we were looking for!”

  “Oh,” the detective spoke calmly, “it’s not magic. Everybody reading the paper, particularly the ones from the Oise and the Somme, could have come to the same conclusion you did… if, of course, they knew what the Flin girl and her boyfriend saw.”

  Jean-Michel was pacing the floor, suddenly losing his self-control, which was not surprising for a man who had not slept in a few days.

  “Flashes… The Flin girl saw flashes, and in a death room, flashes too. And this happened the night after my wife’s burial. Now, they opened my wife’s coffin, I’m sure of it, and these two witnesses saw the same phenomenon: flashes.”

  He came back to Teddy Verano.

  “Excuse me. It’s true I’m…”

  “Yes, yes,” the detective cut him off. “You’re putting your trust in me, and I know it. Only, you wanted us to go a little faster. Well, here’s a result.”

  “Flashes? What could it mean?”

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Photos? Films? But why?”

  “That’s the mystery I’d really like to clear up. We’re living through something like a pulp novel, Monsieur Lefort. Except that, in this case, I think this stranger taking pictures of a dead girl on her death bed and—I’m sorry—of another in her coffin is not an ordinary criminal. It seems to me that I smell sulfur behind all this.”

  Jean-Michel looked at him, but once again Teddy Verano spoke before he could.

  “You’re thinking that, because of my specialty, my research into the Occult, I’m wandering off. Possibly, but what professional photographer or rather, as I’d like to believe, what kind of amateur, and for what particular purpose, could take these kinds of morbid pictures?”

  Lefort raised his hands in ignorance.

  Teddy Verano stood up.

  “I propose we go to Péronne?”

  “Péronne? Yes, of course! On the motorway, it’ll take less than 30 minutes. You want to question that girl?”

  “Yes. I don’t think it would be a waste of time?”

  “You’re right. I agree!”

  They left and, once again, Teddy Verano took Lefort in his DS. He always preferred to drive himself. He knew the region well enough and their trip would be brief.

  On the way, he kept an eye on the posters still up on the side of the road, advertising the fair that had lifted anchor 24 hours ago. He glanced at the names, one of a fortune-teller, which brought back a flood of memories, and of a circus too…

  They were in Péronne soon, getting information at the police station. Teddy Verano introduced himself and gave out his business card. It was not very hard for him to get the address for the Percheron house, the parents of poor Agnes.

  The policeman had been the one who had answered the call. His advice was clear:

  “It’s nothing to make a fuss about. At least, at first, because now…”

  “Now? Young Agnes isn’t doing well?”

  “She isn’t getting over it, Monsieur. I mean, who would think of leaving a girl alone all night with a corpse! She got scared, the poor girl. Since then, she’s been living a nightmare. They’re taking care of her, but I doubt you will be able to see her. It seems she’s lost a few marbles, and all she talks about is flashes of lightning or something. Like, she could have seen lightning flashes on a night like that!”

  “Come on! In the middle of the night, in Péronne, there couldn’t have been a lot of people outside.”

  “That day, or rather that night? Well, as a matter of fact, there was a bunch of people around. You see, there was the fair...”

  “Right,” is all Teddy Verano said, while Jean-Michel Lefort, making the connection, furrowed his brow.

  Outside, they saw the posters, still hanging and not yet ripped off by the wind and melting snow, or covered over by other posters and municipal decrees. They found the same names again, the fortune-teller and the Crucifer Circus…

  At the Percheron house, they plainly refused to let them enter.

  “More journalists!”

  “Not at all, Monsieur…”

  “Are you doctors?” Claire’s father yelled. “Only doctors see my daughter, get it?!”

  They did not press h
im. Pretending to be from the police would not do much good either. They were stuck.

  Before leaving for Senlis, where Teddy Verano would continue on to Paris, they went to drink a whiskey in the local bar. They talked with the charming lady who owned the place, who apparently knew all about Agnes’ adventure. She knew the girl well personally, and thought their nerves were shot from the night of the wake.

  “And then,” she added, “the people from the papers came on a bit too strong.”

  “Oh,” Teddy Verano remarked, “you mean, outside the local press?”

  “Yes, but it was more than enough. There was a good deal of publicity the first day, but since the police said that it was all in her mind, the big papers let it drop. But there’s this little guy going around, doing some local reporting and he wanted to keep it going, to give the story a boost, to make it into a scoop. So he tried to get into the Percheron’s. He convinced the mother, but the father arrived and threw him out. Just then, the idiot tried to snap a picture of poor Agnes. What a drama!”

  “Why? For a photo?”

  “Of course. Agnes—I have to tell you she’s been in bed ever since that awful night—started screaming. That’s when Monsieur Percheron threw that young reporter out.”

  “Poor kid! She must have been scared.”

  “Yes. She’s still talking about the flashes that scared her. You think the other guy, with his flash, would have known better…”

  Teddy Verano knew how to hide his satisfaction, just like his disappointments, behind a friendly smile that said nothing. Jean-Michel looked annoyed and gulped down his Cutty Sark.

  Teddy Verano chatted a while longer with the likeable barmaid who, thinking maybe he had other intentions, encouraged him. They talked about the fair. Yes, the house where Claire had died was located next to the fairground. The detective finished his drink, paid and left, dragging Lefort out and getting from the owner a “see you very soon” look full of innuendoes.

  Jean-Michel wanted to talk, but Teddy Verano stopped him.

  “I told you that we’re hot. In a manner of speaking, because in this weather… Let’s return to the house of the dead girl.”

  Even at night, they spotted it easily again. They searched for traces of the stalls from the fair, but the snow had already covered all the tracks.