The Twenty-Year Death

by Ariel S. Winter

  Pelleter didn’t answer.

  Monsieur Rosenkrantz backed up. “Now I’m working.” He started to close the door.

  Pelleter turned slightly as if to go, and then turned back just as the door was almost shut, Rosenkrantz still visible through the window. “One more thing. If your wife no longer talks to her father, then why did she choose to live in the town closest to his prison?”

  Rosenkrantz jerked the door back open, and stood glaring at Pelleter as though he were going to start a fight. Instead he slammed the door without answering, and stormed off into the back of the house, disappearing in the low light.

  Pelleter found the stump of his cigar in his pocket and put it in his mouth. He chewed it first in the left corner of his mouth and then shifted it with his tongue to the right corner. It was too wet out to light a new cigar, so the stump would do for the walk back into town.

  He stepped down from out of the protection of the overhang, walked the length of the path, and out through the gate.

  The storm brought an early evening. As he walked through town, many windows were lit, but their lights didn’t extend far beyond the panes of glass. Benoît’s bakery was closed; it kept early hours. The café where he and Letreau had eaten breakfast was lit and filled with evening patrons stopping for a drink before heading home, or having an early dinner. At the edges of the streets, the rainwater was above the cobblestones as it gushed towards the sewer entrances.

  Pelleter could have returned to the station, but there was little to report and most likely even less to learn. It also would have made it harder to refuse Letreau’s offer of dinner. He didn’t want the conversation or the comfort. He turned instead to his hotel, the Verargent, at the northeast corner of the square.

  He left instructions at the desk that he would be down for his dinner in one hour and he asked to have a toddy sent up to the room.

  Upstairs, he peeled off his coat and hat, retrieved a fresh cigar and lit it and then picked up the phone.

  “Get me the police station...Yes.” He hung up.

  He sat at the edge of the bed, smoking. The phone rang. It was Letreau.

  “Yes...No, nothing...She wasn’t there...I didn’t expect as much...No, I’m going to stay in the hotel tonight. My apologies...We’ll meet in the café in the morning and go to the prison...Good. Goodnight...Call if you need to.”

  He hung up. The world outside was invisible from the bed, the window a black mirror, but the sound of the rain trickled in, interrupted occasionally by the sound of a motor.

  It bothered him that Mahossier had said somebody was killing prisoners and then the dead man in town turned out to be a prisoner.

  And the American writer had seemed awfully argumentative, but perhaps if your father-in-law was in prison it would be the cause of some anger. People reacted differently to the police anyway.

  A girl brought him his toddy, and he dressed for dinner while he drank. The warm drink, the smoke from his cigar, and the dry clothes made him feel a new man, and he realized that he was hungry. He pushed aside the questions of the day, and went down to dinner in an optimistic mood.

  The girl who had brought him his drink was behind the counter reading a magazine. The dining room, just off of the lobby, was a small ill-lit room with six round tables fit close together. There was only one other guest there, at a table in the far corner. Pelleter took one of the smaller tables near the window to benefit from the wall sconce. He could feel the outside cold seeping through the glass windowpanes.

  The hotel owner appeared through a door in the back. He clapped his hands together and spoke in a loud voice while still across the room. “Inspector! Your dinner’s coming right away. It’s finished right now. The girl will bring it. Some weather, no?”

  The other guest turned from his meal at this performance. He and Pelleter exchanged an embarrassed, apologetic look, and then the man returned to his meal.

  The owner was standing over Pelleter now.

  “You must tell me all about this business,” the owner said. “A man killed in the streets? In Verargent? No, no, no, no, no.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head.

  Pelleter’s good mood soured. It was inevitable in a small town that these things would be discussed, but it was not preferable. “We don’t know,” he said.

  “But Benoît found him in the street, the poor man!”

  The girl appeared with the meal, chicken in a wine sauce with sautéed asparagus on the side. She set the plate, which was still steaming, in front of Pelleter and stood behind the owner.

  “Ah, here it is. You will love it. A personal specialty. Bon appetit.” He turned to the girl, and shooed her away. “Leave the inspector alone. Go, go.” He turned back, and opened his mouth just as Pelleter put the first bite of chicken into his own. Then he must have realized that he too was pestering the inspector, because he said “Bon appetit” again and turned to leave, stopping at the other guest’s table before disappearing into the back.

  The food was good, but Pelleter ate mechanically, without tasting it. The owner’s inquiries had once again turned his mind back to the matter at hand. Who had gotten Meranger out of prison, and was he dead before or after?

  Halfway through his meal, a young woman appeared in the entryway to the dining room. She was very pretty in a delicate way. She wore an expensive dress, which accentuated her slight form, but it was clear that she was not comfortable in it and used her shawl to cover herself. She stood just inside the entrance looking into the dinning room, turning her wedding ring on her finger with her right hand.

  Pelleter waited to let her make up her own mind, and then he waved her in.

  She fell forward as though she had been released from someone’s grip, and rushed across the dining room to his table. “Chief Inspector, I am so sorry to disturb you.”

  The other guest turned again at the sound of her voice. In such a small town, there was never any privacy, always somebody close at hand. And yet no one had seen or heard a thing the night before when Meranger had been murdered.

  Pelleter indicated the chair across from him, and she pulled it out far enough that she could sit at the edge of the seat, not quite committing herself to staying.

  “I am Madame Rosenkrantz,” she said, and then looked down at her hands in her lap as though this were something shameful.

  “Yes,” Pelleter said. She was younger than he had expected—this girl was no more than nineteen. He could see why Rosenkrantz had married her. She was charming to look at.

  She looked up at him. “My husband said that you came to see me.”

  “And he let you come out to find me at this time of night in this weather?”

  “He was not happy. But in the end he does what I tell him to do.” She looked down again at this confession.

  Pelleter tried to imagine the American writer taking orders from a woman, and he saw that it might be possible. “I’m surprised he even told you I had come. He wasn’t happy to see me.”

  “That’s just because you caught him when he was working. He’s a different person when he writes. That’s why I often go out.”

  “Where?”

  “Just out,” she said, and left it at that, her gaze fixed on him, some of her shyness gone. “He said you came about my father.”

  “Yes.”

  She waited for him to say more, but when he didn’t, she said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked down again, and he could tell she was twirling her ring by the movement of her arms. He watched for any change in her expression, but there was nothing, no tears, no surprise. “Murdered?” she said, her voice soft but firm.

  “How did you know?” Pelleter said, eager.

  “This man the baker found, and then you arriving...” She looked up. “What else could it be?” And with that a nervous smile sought to hide any other feelings.

  “Your husband said that you hated your father. That you hadn’t spoken to him since he’d gone to prison
. He was very emphatic.”

  “Please, please eat,” she said, indicating his food. “I’ve interrupted your meal.”

  “Why did you hate your father?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You don’t seem very upset over his death.”

  “He was dead to me already. But I didn’t hate him. He was still my father.” She shrugged. “He killed my mother.”

  Pelleter was surprised. “That’s not in his record.”

  “Well he did.” She pursed her lips. “He didn’t kill her directly. He put her in danger, and she was killed. He owed money. He ran away.” She shrugged again. “That’s how these things work.”

  Pelleter looked at her again. He saw now that her initial shyness was a product of her current luck, the unexpected wealth of her husband, and her newfound domestic happiness. She was not a stranger to a rougher life. It had probably served her well to remain unnoticed in that life as well, and that would not have been easy as pretty as she was.

  “I should think your husband is now a father to you.”

  “Because of my age? No, not at all. We’re—”

  “Why would someone have wanted to kill your father?”

  “He was a bad man,” she said.

  “But you can think of no specific reason? There was no one in particular who would have wanted him dead?”

  She shook her head, flustered again by his insistence. “No...I don’t know...I had nothing to do with my father.”

  He pressed on. “But you went to see him.”

  She looked down once more. “Yes,” she said.

  “Your husband didn’t know that.”

  “No...I don’t think so.”

  “Why not tell him?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “If it needed to be kept a secret, why go see your father at all?”

  She looked at him, and her expression was strong. “Because he was my father,” she said.

  “When did you see him last?”

  “I don’t know. A month ago. Maybe more. I didn’t go regularly. Sometimes a whole year or more...”

  “Did he say anything? Was he afraid? Did he talk of being together again soon, of getting out of prison?”

  “No. Nothing. We didn’t talk long. Somebody had been killed that week in the prison, but that happens. It was nothing...I never stayed long...Once I was there, I could never figure out why.”

  Pelleter watched her. She looked at her hands fidgeting in her lap, then up at him defiantly, then back at her hands, in a cycle. He thought of the American writer, of his bluster. “Tell me,” he said suddenly.

  She looked at him in panic. “There’s nothing! That’s it!”

  He slammed his hands on the table in fists, rattling the china. “Tell me!”

  “There’s nothing! My father’s dead, I just wanted to be sure. That’s all!”

  They stared at each other, neither looking away, neither backing down.

  At last Pelleter said, “Well, he’s dead.” He picked up his silverware and resumed eating. The food was cold now. It made no difference.

  Madame Rosenkrantz gathered herself, taking a deep breath, and then got up. She stood over him for a moment, watching him eat. Then she said, “Are you going to do something about this?”

  He looked up at her, watching her carefully for a reaction. “Do you care?”

  There was no reaction. “Yes,” she said.

  He looked back at his plate. “I am.”

  She left, taking strong steps across the dining room, but pausing in the lobby, once again appearing like a lost young girl.

  The dining room was quiet. The rain had stopped.

  Upstairs, the other diner was just stepping out of the door to the room across the hall from Pelleter’s. He stopped short at the sight of the inspector, and then tried on an ingratiating smile, extending his hand as he stepped up to meet Pelleter halfway down the hall.

  “Inspector Pelleter!”

  The man took Pelleter’s hand almost against his will and pumped it, blocking the inspector’s path.

  “I don’t mean any familiarity. I couldn’t help but hear some of the conversation downstairs. It’s very exciting to meet a celebrity.”

  Pelleter freed his hand and tried to step around the man. “A pleasure,” he said.

  “Could I ask you a few questions? I hate to be an imposition, but you read things in the papers and you’re never able to tell if they’ve gotten it quite right. Like our own local celebrity, Mahossier.”

  The man had placed himself in such a way that Pelleter could not pass him without force.

  “Is it true that he kept the children in cages?”

  Pelleter felt tired. Was there not enough sadness in the world that people had to revel in the worst of it?

  “I remember reading that you found a child in a cage, and that there were other small cages next to it...And that he had dug a pit in his basement where he would force the children to fight each other if they wanted to be fed...An image like that stays with you. I still have nightmares about it, and that’s just from reading the stories. Is it true?”

  “Excuse me,” Pelleter said, but he made no attempt to get by.

  “I just don’t understand how somebody could do that, how it works. He would kidnap the children, and then starve them...”

  The man paused, observing Pelleter with a keen eye, as though he were testing him, to see the effect of this story.

  “Meanwhile, he would have two of the already starving children fight each other to set an example. Am I getting this right?”

  All these years later and people were still talking about this monster. He should be forgotten, not famous.

  The man went on. “Yes. Then the children would fight to the death, and the winner was allowed to eat the other children’s carcasses, locked away until the next battle. Amazing.”

  “Why are you so interested?” Pelleter said, determined to give no signs one way or the other.

  “Oh, just curiosity, curiosity. I have an amateur interest in the mystery of crime, let’s say.”

  Pelleter felt his anger rising. “Excuse me,” he said again.

  “Oh, of course, it’s getting late. But just tell me, is that really true? Surely the newspapers must have exaggerated. No one would do that to children just for his own entertainment.”

  “I have nothing more to say on this. It was a long time ago.”

  “Then maybe you could tell me about our local murder. Have you any suspects there?”

  Pelleter took a step forward as though to walk through the man.

  The man held his ground so that he was too close, directly in Pelleter’s face. “I don’t believe that anyone could get away with what Mahossier did even if he would do it. You have to tell me that. It can’t be that that is how it was.”

  It was as though the man needed some reaction out of Pelleter, as though he were deliberately pushing him to see what kind of a man he was.

  “There were really bones with children’s teeth marks on them? That detail always seemed too extreme.”

  Pelleter grabbed the man’s shoulder then and pushed him out of the way. The man fell against the wall, and hopped to regain his balance as Pelleter stepped around him. “There’s nothing more to be said.”

  The man called at Pelleter’s back, “So it really is true, and you saw all of that. Why didn’t you kill him on sight?”

  Pelleter turned back and rushed the man, stopping inches away from his face. “Because that’s not how the law works.”

  “When there are murdered men in the streets of Verargent, maybe the law doesn’t work.”

  Pelleter glared at the man. He could have told the man of the years of scars on the surviving boy, the evidence of many battles fought and won. That the bite marks on the bones suggested that this last boy had killed no less than six other children in his short life, and that he was still in an institution in the city unable to talk, often in restraints. They had managed to keep that out of the pa
pers, for the boy’s sake.

  Instead he said, “Good night,” and turned away.

  Behind him the man said, “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just wanted to know.”

  Pelleter unlocked his door.

  “You—”

  But the man stopped himself before Pelleter had even closed the door.

  In the room, the inspector felt too wound up for such a small place. Mahossier was one case. He could have told the man of so many other cases over the years that the papers were too busy to notice. Was one horror really more terrible than another when somebody was dead?

  And somebody was dead again, and Mahossier was close at hand again. Even if Mahossier had nothing to do with this, it just made Pelleter uncomfortable.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It had just been a tactless man. As he had told Officer Martin that afternoon, people can do anything. Right now, only the questions were important:

  Who moved the body?

  Why hide that Meranger was a prisoner by changing his clothes?

  He shrugged off his jacket and stepped over to the bed. He tried to review his interview with Madame Rosenkrantz as he sank onto the mattress.

  Instead, the image of that lone boy in a cage in Mahossier’s basement crowded everything else out. His anger flared up again at the guest from across the hall, and he clenched his fists and ground his teeth.

  Of course the papers had left out the smell. Mahossier’s basement had smelled like a latrine outside a slaughterhouse. Pelleter had had to discard the suit he wore that day, because the smell had woven its way into the cloth.

  These were the memories that he had to fight against when he saw that clownish glee on Mahossier’s face in the interrogation room at Malniveau. There he had succeeded in being all business. And now some curious civilian threw him off his guard.

  He looked at the phone sitting in the pool of light from the bedside lamp. He checked his watch.

  It was too late. If he called Madame Pelleter now it would only make her worry.

  4.

  Another One