The Twenty-Year Death

by Ariel S. Winter

  They must have decided that it was safest to have somebody accompany the chief inspector if he was going to force his way into the prison. Or perhaps Fournier had given the order that Pelleter was to be watched. In either case, the young man stepped ahead of Pelleter, and then led the way to the left towards the infirmary.

  “Any more incidents since yesterday?” Pelleter asked the nervous young man from one step behind him.

  The man did not turn. “Incidents, sir?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Monsieur Vittier.”

  “Okay, Vittier. Fights, stabbings, murders. Incidents.”

  “I’m sure I can’t say, sir.”

  “I’m sure you can’t.”

  They came to a steel partition with a door in it that divided the hall into equal intervals. Vittier fumbled with a ring of keys he produced from his pocket. So there had been another locked doorway before coming to the infirmary. Then Pelleter was glad for the chaperone.

  Vittier managed to get the door open, and this time Pelleter stepped through first. The air in this stretch of the hallway had a bottled-up mustiness to it, cut with the ammoniac smell coming from the infirmary.

  Pelleter strode along the hall, unconcerned as to whether Vittier was with him. The door to the infirmary stood open. Apparently it was assumed injured prisoners were in too much pain to try to escape.

  In the infirmary, there was none of the hurried excitement from the day before. A guard sat in a straight-backed chair just inside the doorway. The stabbing victim was the only prisoner taking up one of the four cots. He was small, pale, and gaunt, as though he had been in hospital for weeks instead of twenty-four hours.

  Pelleter crossed the room and set himself on the edge of the cot beside the prisoner. He saw that the prisoner was handcuffed to the bed.

  Vittier came up beside him, standing at the foot of the bed.

  Pelleter held out his papers, but the prisoner, whose eyes darted between Pelleter and Vittier, showed no inclination towards reading what was held before him.

  “I am Chief Inspector Pelleter with the Central Bureau. I’ve come from the city to look into things here. I was hoping you could tell me something of what happened yesterday.”

  The prisoner’s eyes again darted between Pelleter and Vittier. No other part of him moved. His face remained blank. He seemed unimpressed with Pelleter’s credentials.

  “Do you know who it was who stabbed you?”

  The man turned his head away from the chief inspector, wincing as he did.

  Pelleter shifted his weight on the cot. The metal rod of the frame cut into the back of his thighs.

  “Vittier!”

  The young man jerked towards Pelleter. He had been lost in contemplation of the prisoner’s wasted form. Now he looked as though he were awaiting a sentence of his own. Was it the prison itself that made everyone here somber, or did Fournier have his men—both his staff and his prisoners—on edge at all times?

  “Give us a moment,” Pelleter said, and he nodded his head in the direction of the door.

  The young clerk went to the entrance and stood beside the guard. They did not speak to one another.

  Pelleter leaned forward then, his elbows on his knees, and lowered his voice. “Can you tell me who stabbed you?”

  For a moment it seemed as though the prisoner was going to act as though he had not heard the repeated question. But at last, without turning his head, he said just above a whisper, “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know why you were stabbed?”

  The prisoner closed his eyes and shook his head. He had been thinking about it, and he didn’t know. Prison gave a man lots of time to think, but almost getting killed must make him think in new ways.

  “What about the other men that were killed? Are people saying anything about them?”

  There was another long pause, and Pelleter was worried that he would have to start from the beginning again. But at last the wounded man said, “No one’s saying anything.”

  “If you say something,” Pelleter said, leaning even further forward until he felt the cot begin to tip beneath him, “then maybe I can help.”

  Still there was no reaction.

  “No one will know it was you. I’m going to talk to other prisoners as well.”

  The man turned his head quickly towards Pelleter now, his eyes wide. “I don’t know anything. It was crowded in the yard. It could have been anyone who went for me. I had no beef. I don’t know nothing else.”

  “Okay,” Pelleter said.

  The whites of the man’s eyes showed around large pupils, his nostrils flared, the look of a man afraid and in pain and backed into a corner.

  “Okay.” The chief inspector stood. He watched the man carefully. “But this will probably be the last chance I have to talk to you without Assistant Warden Fournier.”

  There was no reaction. The man’s face remained the same, full of pain and indignation. Fournier’s name had changed nothing.

  The chief inspector considered the man for another moment, frustrated that he had not learned anything more from him. With each new incident, Pelleter seemed to know less, and even the victims were ignorant. Sometimes there was nothing that could be done on a case—it was just a matter of waiting—but Pelleter was unwilling to believe that was true here. Too many things were happening, and somebody knew why. It was just a matter of asking the right person the questions in the right way.

  Pelleter turned away from the man on the cot.

  “Vittier,” he called. “Take me to Mahossier.”

  Mahossier was already in the examination room, his hands and legs once again chained. To Pelleter’s surprise, Monsieur le Directeur Adjoint Fournier had still not made an appearance. Pelleter left Vittier with the guard outside the door, and took up a position behind Mahossier and just to the side.

  “Why did you stab the man in the yard?” Pelleter said.

  Mahossier made no attempt to turn around. “Why, Inspector! I’m surprised at you. Surely you know that I didn’t have yard privileges yesterday. Some days I do, some days I don’t. Monsieur Fournier sees to that. It’s for my own protection, you see. Some of the boys here don’t like me very much. I couldn’t say why.”

  Pelleter could hear the hilarity in Mahossier’s voice. The criminal did not seem put out to have Pelleter behind him. Pelleter was in no mood to be toyed with. He tried to keep his voice calm. “What do you do those days for meals? Are you allowed in the mess?”

  “One of the good boys brings it to me in my cell, but assistant warden’s careful for it to be a different one as often as possible. What’s the matter? He didn’t tell you any of this? Is he not being helpful?”

  Pelleter would not be drawn in.

  Mahossier put on a tone of absolute concern. “Have they found those two little boys yet? I’ve been so worried about them.”

  “And how do you know about the missing children?”

  “How is Madame Pelleter by the way? Well, I trust. But why wouldn’t she be?”

  Pelleter grabbed Mahossier by the shoulders then, and threw him to the side, causing the prisoner to fall heavily to the floor, his head knocking the stone with a dull thump, followed a second after by the clatter of the chair falling to the ground. With his hands chained to his legs, Mahossier was forced to remain in a fetal position in the shadow of the table, a small old man, unable to even raise himself.

  Pelleter kicked the chair, which had settled partially on Mahossier, into the corner.

  The old man was shaking, laughing soundlessly.

  Pelleter circled the table to prevent himself from kicking the downed man. He thought of Servières asking him that first night how he could be in the same room with this monster and not kill him. The thought cooled his anger. The play had been made, and it was not a bad one. He would see what effect it had.

  He came around so that he was standing in front of Mahossier’s face. The murderer, still laughing, was straining to see the floor beneat
h his head.

  “Very good,” he said. “I think I’m bleeding.” He licked the cold stone, and his grin spread even wider. “I am bleeding! Very good.” And he laughed some more.

  Pelleter squatted before Mahossier and said the one thing he thought might force a straight answer out of the man. “I will leave on tonight’s train. I don’t have to be a part of any of this.”

  “I suppose you could,” Mahossier said from his place on the floor. “Whether you have to be a part of it...that depends on what the press thinks and what the Central Bureau thinks about what the press thinks when Le Maire and Letreau and Le Directeur decide that it would be nice if it was the fault of that detective from the city that several dead bodies turned up and several people went missing. It’s true you have no obligation to me.”

  Mahossier thought he had Pelleter in his control and the chief inspector bristled at the notion.

  “But you know these small towns...It never seems to be the people in charge, just people drifting through.”

  “Now you’re a political activist? Or is it a social reformer?”

  “I prefer concerned citizen.” The shadows on his cheek deepened as a grin spread. “I love the word concerned. It’s so... useful.”

  Pelleter stood to relieve the ache that had begun to burn in his thighs from squatting. He pulled out the still-standing chair, the one that he had sat in two days prior, and sat down. From there he could not see Mahossier, but instead, looked across the table at the sweating stone wall across from him. The rough-hewn faces of the stones were a miniature topography in which an ant could be lost forever. From his point of view, able to take in the whole wall’s surface, Pelleter did not think it made any more sense to him than it would to the ant.

  Mahossier filled the silence. His one weakness when he felt as though he had a worthy conversationalist. “I don’t know anything about those missing boys. They have nothing to do with this.”

  “Then if you know about everything else, wouldn’t it be easier to tell me?”

  “I don’t know about everything else.”

  “Then what do you know about?”

  “Dead prisoners.”

  “I know about them too.”

  “See, you’re not a total loss, Chief Inspector. And I was trying to come to terms with the disappointment.”

  It was easier to talk to the man without being able to see him, his voice floating up from below.

  “Who moved the bodies?” Mahossier said.

  That was the question. But he responded, “Who killed the men?”

  “Perhaps...” Delight returned to Mahossier’s voice again, as though ice cream had been suggested and the question was now which flavor. “Perhaps you answer my question and I’ll answer yours!”

  “You’re not worried about being a snitch?”

  Mahossier’s delight turned to anger. “Listen, detective! I am already reviled. I told you that to start. But being reviled isn’t always a bad thing.”

  Pelleter wondered how that could be. Still, Mahossier had highlighted once again the question that seemed most pressing. How had those prisoners’ bodies gotten out of Malniveau? Who had moved them?

  Pelleter contemplated the wall. After a few moments, Mahossier began to hum, and the tune eventually penetrated the chief inspector’s thoughts. It was a children’s tune. If Pelleter remembered correctly it was about going to grandmother’s house.

  Pelleter stood, his chair scraping the floor, cutting off Mahossier’s song.

  He had learned nothing here. The initial summons, the oblique aspersions regarding the assistant warden...it all seemed to be for Mahossier’s own amusement, and Pelleter was jumping through his hoops like an amateur.

  The chief inspector went to the door. He raised his hand to knock, but held it there, suspended in the air. A noise came from the other side of the table, a shuffle, and the clank of chain on stone, but Pelleter could not see what Mahossier was doing.

  “Mahossier,” Pelleter barked.

  The movement stopped.

  “If those boys don’t turn up soon, and alive, you may find that you have yard privileges every day again.”

  There was no response from the floor.

  “Or perhaps the next time I send guards in here to pick you up off the floor, I’ll only have to follow your body to find out how they get dead prisoners out of Malniveau.”

  With that, Pelleter allowed his fist to drop against the metal door, a hollow echoing clang, signaling that he was ready to go.

  8.

  Lost and Found

  The temperature had climbed so that the brow of Pelleter’s hat was clammy and a faint sheen of sweat coated his body beneath his overcoat as he stepped out of the taxi in front of the café. It was the humidity that was particularly oppressive. Most of the sky was clear, but to the east there was a dirty-sheep-colored expanse of clouds that may or may not have threatened rain.

  Verargent Square was quiet, the town about its post-lunch business. Only the old men who lined the base of the monument were to be seen, and they were as still as the statue above them.

  The café was equally silent. Pelleter ordered some beer and a ham and cheese sandwich for carry away. He wanted to get back to the police station to find out any news about the missing children. He also needed to send Martin back to the prison files and to call Lambert at the Central Bureau.

  The waitress appeared from the back and the proprietor bullied her to fetch the inspector’s meal.

  Pelleter pulled out his watch. One o’clock, three days after the first body was found. This was the difficult time in a complicated investigation that so few people understood...the waiting.

  The proprietor turned to Pelleter with an ingratiating smile.

  “So they found those boys.” The proprietor shook his head. “They’re too old to have gotten lost in a field,” he said, and he snorted. “When I was their age, I had to walk miles just to milk the cows.”

  Pelleter did not reply, but there was a subtle relaxation of his shoulders. It was the first he had heard that the boys had been found, but he was not surprised. It accounted for the town’s quiet. He reached for a cigar, then remembered he was about to have lunch, and dropped his hand.

  “To cause so much trouble,” the proprietor continued, “I hope they get a sound thrashing.”

  The waitress returned with Pelleter’s sandwich, wrapped, he noticed with some satisfaction, in yesterday’s Vérité.

  “But how are they? Is everything okay? And this other thing with the dead prisoners and the missing girl?”

  Pelleter ignored the proprietor’s questions, making a point to say thank you to the waitress as he took his lunch.

  Outside he took a long refreshing swallow of beer. The sandwich was good. Benoît, even in his crisis, made good bread, crisp and firm. He ate as he crossed the square, the sweat beginning again to pour down his back. It was good that the boys were safe, but he felt lost in this other thing. He could not help but feel as though he kept forgetting to do the simplest things that would lead him to the answer. There were too many distractions. He contemplated for a moment how a small town could seem to have more distractions than the city.

  He saw the man standing in the shadow of the police station steps before he recognized him. “A happy ending, Monsieur Pelleter!”

  “Servières.”

  “We’re doing another special edition tonight. The headline...” He traced his open hand across the air. “FOUND.”

  Pelleter continued to eat. “You really are becoming a daily.”

  “This may be my chance for a larger market.”

  “Then who would write the Vérité?”

  “Inspector! It’s good to see you in high spirits as well. I’m not the only reporter at the Vérité.”

  Pelleter finished his sandwich and made a point of balling up its wrapping, but Servières did not notice.

  “What happened?”

  Servières took out his notebook. Pelleter could not fight
the feeling again that Servières was very much like him, and he felt a burst of warmth for the young reporter.

  “Tuesday, April 4th at approximately five in the evening, Georges and Albert Perreaux left Monsieur Marque’s sweet shop, and headed west on the Rue Principale on their way home to the Perreaux Farm.

  “Georges decided it would be faster to cut across a field, but the boys quickly became lost, circling in the high grass in an ever-increasing panic.”

  “That’s how you’re going to write it?”

  “I haven’t settled on it yet. Dark fell, the rain started, and the boys were pinned down, lost in the field. In the morning, Albert was ill and unable to move. Georges was frightened to leave his brother.

  “Madame Perreaux assumed that the boys had stayed with an aunt in town because of the weather and so she did not inform the police until Thursday, April 6th. Chief of Police Letreau organized an all-night search that continued into the morning until the boys were located in the field west of town, now both with fevers.

  “They were removed to the hospital, and there will be more here with quotes from the police and the men who found them and maybe the boys themselves if I get lucky.”

  “Then why are you waiting out here?”

  “Monsieur Rosenkrantz is inside, and I thought it best to stay out of his way, since it seems he’s unhappy I mentioned his wife in yesterday’s paper.”

  Pelleter smiled at that. He turned up the steps.

  “Inspector, wait!”

  Pelleter stopped, now looking down at Servières.

  “Do you have anything new to report in the Meranger murder?”

  Pelleter’s smile softened.

  “Or would you care to comment on the five prisoners’ bodies that were found yesterday? Or Madame Rosenkrantz’s disappearance?”

  Pelleter’s expression had turned dark, and he growled, “I thought you were running good news tonight, Servières.”

  “Good news is news that sells papers.”

  “Stick to the boys,” Pelleter said and began to turn away. He stopped again.