The next day was clear as Pelleter and Letreau set out for Malniveau Prison. The fields were muddy and there were occasional twin stripes of tire tracks on the pavement from where trucks and automobiles had turned onto the main road from unpaved country roads.
Fournier met them himself at the front entrance. He wore a tailored gray suit that looked as though it had been pressed that morning. He had a clipboard in hand, and began to speak before Remy had managed to relock the front door.
“Meranger was present at roll call two nights ago, April 4... The guard who took roll call yesterday morning counted him as present...There was no exercise yesterday because of the rain, so the next roll call would have been last night, and you contacted me before then.”
“Where’s the guard who made the mistake?” Pelleter said.
“He’s already been reprimanded.”
“I still want to talk with him.”
“It will not happen again...I have long suggested to the warden that certain reformations must be made to our roll call procedures.” His manner was sharp and authoritative. He was not going to be pushed around in his own domain.
Pelleter and Letreau locked eyes. Fournier was impossible.
Letreau said, “We’re all in this mess together.”
Fournier opened the door to the administrative offices. “The Meranger file—”
“I’d like to see Meranger’s cell,” Pelleter said.
Fournier looked back at him, still holding the office door. “We have been through the cell,” he said flatly. “There’s nothing to see.”
Suddenly Inspector Pelleter stepped so close to Fournier that the two men’s coats were almost touching. “I am trying to do my job. Your job is to assist me in doing my job. So I don’t care if you’ve reprimanded your guard or if you’ve searched the cell or if you think you’ve got everything under control. I want you to help me when I say help me and otherwise I want you to stay out of my way.”
Fournier’s face remained impassive during this speech, but when it was clear that Pelleter was done, he looked away first. “Right. He was on cell block DD, which is on the second floor.”
Pelleter stepped back. Fournier pushed past him and led the way through a door at the end of the hall, only several doors down from the room in which Pelleter had met with Mahossier the day before. It opened onto a set of stone stairs. There was a cloying smell of mildew, and the temperature was noticeably cooler than it had been in the hall.
Fournier seemed to have recovered from his dressing down, and was using the opportunity to proudly show off the prison. “The doors lock behind us as we go, so that anyone caught without a key at any juncture would be trapped until somebody else came through...We’ve of course never had a successful escape here, and there hasn’t even been an attempt since the war.”
“Until now,” Pelleter said.
“Well, we’ll see.”
“What do you mean?”
“The man was dead, after all.”
They reached the second floor landing, and Fournier sorted through his keys. “You’ll notice the two doors. The one to the left here leads to the inside hallway between the cells, and the one further to the right,” he said stepping over to it, “leads to the outside gallery that overlooks the inner courtyard.” He fit his key into the outer door. “You’ll want to look at this...The prisoners weren’t able to go out yesterday because of the rain, so they were eager to go out today.”
He opened the door, and a breeze rushed in, blowing cold air. They stepped out onto the gallery, a narrow iron walkway only wide enough for one man. A guard stood ten paces away, carrying a shotgun.
The prisoners were in the courtyard below. Many held their arms across their chests against the cold. They were like the random crowd on a market day, jostling against one another, walking with little regard as to where they were going.
“The guards down there carry no firearms.” Fournier pointed out the other guards along the gallery. “The men up here have shotguns...The prisoners that are allowed outside get one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon.”
“Did Meranger have outdoor privileges?”
“Yes. He was a model prisoner. He’d been here a long time.”
Pelleter watched the prisoners milling about in the relative freedom of the yard.
Suddenly a cry came from the far corner. Everyone’s attention was drawn to the sound, and immediately the prisoners were shouting and rushing into the area.
The guards on the ground began to run as well, joining the general melee.
Fournier turned back to the door, shuffling through his keys. His movements hurried but precise. He went through the door, leaving Pelleter and Letreau locked out on the gallery with the armed guards.
As they watched, the guards on the ground got to the center of the crowd, and forced the prisoners back. A prisoner was lying on the ground, his hands clutching at something on his chest.
“They’ve knifed him,” Letreau said.
The man’s mouth was wide open in agony.
Fournier appeared below them. He cut across the yard, directly into the crowd, yelling at the prisoners as he went.
The guards on the gallery had their rifles in hand, and watched with care.
Two men appeared with a stretcher through one of the doors. The prisoners parted to let them through. The noise had diminished enough that the injured man’s cries could be made out as he rolled on the ground.
Fournier was at the center of the crowd, yelling at the prisoners. He grabbed one man and pushed him back.
The injured man was moved onto the stretcher, and rushed inside.
Fournier, still yelling at the prisoners, followed.
By the time the prison yard was emptied and one of the guards could readmit them into the building, Pelleter and Letreau were thoroughly chilled. The guard who escorted them to the infirmary talked continuously, still energized from the excitement of the stabbing.
“You sure saw something...It can be so dull out here, just standing for hours and hours at a time. You forget that these are dangerous criminals. You almost let your guard down...Then, pow! It’s a powder keg...You don’t know if you should shoot or not.”
Every door they came to required two sets of keys. There were locked guard boxes at all major intersections. The guard had to return his shotgun to the armory, a locked room in which the guns were locked in cages and overseen by the arms keeper.
“How often does something like this happen?”
“It could be months. When I first started here, there was a whole year before anything happened. I didn’t believe the older guys who said different. But this month! Wow! There must be some kind of gang war going on. Here we are.”
Pelleter stopped him outside of the infirmary. “How many?”
The guard rocked on his feet, he was so excited. “I don’t know, four, five. The guards don’t always find out about everything, you know?”
“Any dead?”
“Not that I know of.”
Pelleter nodded at that, as if all of the answers had been expected. He pushed his way into the infirmary.
It was a small white room with six beds, three on each side of the room. The knifed man was in the furthest bed on the right. His shirt had been cut off, and two guards and a nurse were holding him down as the doctor stitched the wound on his chest and stomach. The man did not seem to be struggling.
“He’s been given morphine,” Fournier said from just inside the door. He was taking notes on his clipboard. “He’ll live. It’s only a gash.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“He doesn’t know who did it. He was walking and then he was on the ground in pain. It could be any number of people who were in his vicinity, but he’s not even sure who was nearby.”
“Any enemies? Did he have a fight with someone?”
Fournier held his pencil against his clipboard with a snap. “No. Nothing. I asked him.”
“Would he tell you?”
Fo
urnier’s nostrils flared, and his movements were sharper than usual, the only indication that he was under a great deal of stress. “Listen, Inspector. If we’re all in this together, then you’re just going to have to trust me. He didn’t see anything. He doesn’t know who did it. That’s it.”
A moan came from the prisoner. The doctor could be heard placating him. They were almost finished.
“Now if you still need to see Meranger’s cell, let’s go and be fast about it. I have a lot of work to do. We’ve got to search all of the prisoners and all of the cells. Not that we’ll find anything, but it has to be done.”
Pelleter would have liked to question the prisoner himself, but he had seen the incident and it was quite possible that the man knew nothing. It could wait.
“Yes, let’s,” Pelleter said, and he stepped back as if to let Fournier pass. Then he stopped him. “And what does the warden say of all of these stabbings?”
“All of them?”
“The guard said that there have been at least four this month.”
Fournier’s brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing. “If you count Meranger then this is three that I know of, and for all we know Meranger was stabbed on the outside.”
Letreau started to speak, but Pelleter held up a hand to hold him off. “Surely, you will be calling the warden about this?” Pelleter said.
“The warden has left me in charge because I am fully capable of being in charge. He will be informed when he returns on Monday. No need to ruin his vacation.”
“Of course.”
Fournier nodded his head once for emphasis, then led out the door.
Letreau stepped in close to Pelleter. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been a stabbing.”
“I know there’s been a stabbing, but...”
“Then you know what I know.”
Fournier had gotten ahead of them, and he waited at the next door for the two of them to catch up. In the hallways, away from the courtyard, with no one in sight but the occasional guard, it was impossible to know that a man had almost been killed within these walls less than an hour before. The stones were gray and impassive.
Meranger’s jail cell was on the outer wall, with a narrow window that looked out onto the neighboring fields. The space was large enough for the iron cot and steel toilet with barely enough room left over to stand. Fournier stood impatiently in the hallway, reviewing the papers on his clipboard, and Letreau stood outside the cell door watching Pelleter survey the room.
Meranger’s few possessions had been dumped into a box on the bed from when Fournier had made his own investigation. There were three books—a bible and two mystery novels—a travel chess set, odd-shaped stones most likely found in the yard below, a dried flower, and a small bundle of letters tied with a string.
The letters were all in the same feminine hand, although it had grown more assured over the years. There were four letters in total. The most recent letter was from only two months prior:
Father,
It’s unfair of you to be so demanding. You don’t know what it costs me to make those visits or to even write these letters. Every time I tell myself that this will be the last, that I can not take it anymore. I remind myself of what you have done and all the reasons I have to hate you, and I make new resolutions. But I still fear you, and I still wish to please you, and all I end up doing is reprimanding myself.
You must believe though that my husband would be enraged if you were to contact me or even if he knew that I contacted you. He treats me like a dream, but he can still be a rash man.
I will not promise to visit you again or even to write, but you must know that you are in my thoughts. And I will be here in Verargent when you are on the outside. You shall see. As you said, your little girl is all grown up now already.
Clotilde-ma-Fleur
The other letters were much the same. A photograph had been inserted in one of them, of a couple standing with a young girl. The woman looked much like Madame Rosenkrantz, and Pelleter figured that it was Clotilde-ma-Fleur’s mother.
He refolded the letters along their much-folded creases, and put them back into the box. He bent down and checked beneath the bed, beneath the toilet, and ran his hands along the walls. Then he stepped out of the cell. “Right,” he said. “It was as you said.”
Fournier looked up from his clipboard. “Of course,” he said.
Letreau tried to catch Pelleter’s eye, but Pelleter put on an air of one who was wasting his time and was ready to leave.
Fournier started to lead them back the way they had come, but they hadn’t gone two steps when a voice said, “Hello, Pelleter.”
The three men stopped, and Pelleter looked at the door to the cell beside the one they had just been in. A smiling face was visible in the small window in the door.
“How is Madame Pelleter?”
It was Meranger’s neighbor: Mahossier.
In the police car in front of the prison, Letreau turned to Pelleter before starting the engine. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
Pelleter stared straight ahead at the prison walls. The sun had come up fully, and now, with the last traces of the rain burned away, even the prison appeared gayer in the light. “Was Meranger slashed or stabbed?” Pelleter said.
“Stabbed. More than once.”
Letreau waited, but the inspector remained silent.
“Pelleter, talk to me. I appreciate that you’ve chosen to help, but this is still my responsibility.”
“Start the car. We should get back to town. It’s time to eat.”
Letreau sighed and started the car. The pavement on the road had dried to a slate gray. Puddles of rainwater in the fields reflected the sun, little patches of light dotting the fields.
Pelleter pulled a cheap oilcloth-covered notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. “This is what we know...Tuesday, April 4, just after eight PM: A man is found dead in the gutter by Monsieur Benoît outside of his house. At first it is believed that he drowned in rainwater while drunk, but it is later discovered that he had been stabbed several times and then had his clothing changed to hide the wounds.”
“Or to hide that he was a prisoner. He would have been wearing his grays.”
Pelleter went on: “Wednesday morning the murderer Mahossier claims that the prisoners at Malniveau are being systematically murdered, and that he doesn’t feel safe.”
“Wait a second.”
“The dead man turns out to be Marcel Meranger, a prisoner at Malniveau Prison.”
“Wait one second. Is that what Mahossier told you? Then do you think that this Meranger murder is tied up in something larger?”
“I don’t think anything. This is just what we know. Wednesday night Meranger’s daughter Madame Rosenkrantz says that she knows nothing about her father’s murder. She claims at first to have nothing to do with him, then to have visited him on occasion. Her letters are found in Meranger’s cell.
“Thursday morning another prisoner is knifed at the prison... Nobody can agree on the number of prisoners stabbed or killed in the last month.” Pelleter closed his notebook and put it away. “And that’s it, which is nothing.” He said it with the bitterness of a man who has failed at a simple task.
“Somebody had to have gotten Meranger out of prison whether it was before or after he was killed. If we could figure that out, then we might know a lot more.”
Pelleter didn’t answer. Instead he reached into his pocket, retrieved his cigar, and smoked in a restless silence without enjoying it.
Suddenly, he said, “What do you think of Fournier?”
Letreau shifted in his seat. “You know what I think of Fournier. I could wring his neck. Although really until today, I didn’t know anything about him. He’s only been here a few months. He came from another prison, and the word was that he is extremely good at what he does...But I don’t know. The prison really is its own entity.”
“You said the men who work there live in town,” Pelleter s
aid.
“It’s as if there’s a wall of silence somewhere along this road. Sometimes things get said, and others...” He shrugged. “If only the warden were here. This Fournier seems intent on blocking us out at every step. That’s what I think.”
“And the warden?”
“He’s brutish and controlling. He started at the bottom, so administration might not be his forte, but he’s been there forever, and the prison gets run.”
Pelleter nodded, considering this.
“What are you thinking? That the staff has something to do with all of this? These are prison stabbings. They happen. This wouldn’t even be our problem if it wasn’t for this body in town.”
“I’m not thinking anything. I’m just trying to understand. What can you tell me about the American author? Do you think he would have killed his father-in-law?”
“Rosenkrantz? He keeps to himself mostly. That’s why he chose to move out here, as far as I understand. He was part of the American scene in the city for many years, getting his photograph taken at bars, drinking until sunrise. He produces a book every year or two, and they’re apparently big sellers back in the States. He can seem loud, but I always figured that’s because he’s American. Clotilde caused him to settle down. She means everything to him.”
“Enough to kill for.”
“I don’t know. Somehow I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“He’s all bark and no bite.”
“So we still know nothing.”
“We know that one man’s dead,” Letreau said. “There’s that.”
“There’s that,” Pelleter said like it was a curse.
The mud-drenched fields made the whole countryside appear dirty.
Letreau looked over at the inspector, but Pelleter was lost deep in thought again, a scowl on his face.
The town had come alive in the sunshine. There seemed to be an impossible number of people on the streets, hurrying from shop to shop, sitting out in the center of the square along the base of the war monument. The café where Pelleter took lunch had every seat filled, and the inspector had to sit on one of three stools at the counter.
Letreau had returned to the station in order to see about his other duties.
The Twenty-Year Death Page 5
