Disturbing the Dark

by Wendy Hornsby

  Taylor and Zach helped us load Solange’s things into the car. We said our good-byes before Jean-Paul and I went back into the tent. We stripped the bed, folded the linens, and rolled up the thin Ikea mattress. After a last check under and behind all of the furniture, we went out, locking the door behind us. Before we got into the car, I looked around until I saw Zach and Taylor sitting on the covered veranda, drinking beer and gazing off toward the rapidly approaching tide.

  “Do they have good film career prospects?” Jean-Paul asked as we drove out onto the village road.

  I held up my palms. “They’re serious about their work. Taylor has a natural eye for light and composition, so I can see her making a career in some aspect of filmography. Zach? He’s tenacious. I’d say the odds are about equal that one day he’ll either run a production company or be a career barista. Or, he’ll teach. Time will tell.”

  “As a warning, do you tell them about your own struggles to get your foot in the door?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t put my foot in the door. The door opened and I fell through. The struggles came afterward, trying to stay in the business and trying to make a sufficient living so I could take care of Casey. It has never been easy, and I have been very clear with them about that.”

  “And now that you’re at the end of a contract, you’re at a career crossroads,” he said. “Which road will you take?”

  “Jean-Paul,” I said, laughing, though facing the end of my network job wasn’t at all funny. In fact, it was damn scary. “I have been at this juncture many times before. Which road? Hell if I know. And it isn’t as easy as being at a crossroads. It’s more like I’m driving my life into one of your cockamamie traffic roundabouts. Five roads converge at odd angles, a jumble of arrows point who knows where, except some of them surely lead over the edge into the abyss. Which way to go?” I could only shrug.

  “How many of those arrows point in my direction?” he asked quietly, taking my hand and resting it on his leg.

  “Tonight?” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “All of them do. We’ll figure out the rest later, yes?”

  He brought my hand to his lips. “Yes.”

  I heard a car approaching from behind and expected it to pass. When it didn’t I turned around at the same moment that Jean-Paul looked into the rearview mirror. There was a little green Toyota hanging too close to our bumper. Jean-Paul tapped the brake pedal. I saw the red brake lights reflect off the Toyotas windshield. For another beat, the Toyota rode our bumper before the driver gave the wheel a sharp turn and sped past us, narrowly missing an oncoming car. Out of habit, because I do what I do, I had my phone in my hand and snapped a shot of the back of the Toyota as it careened into the lane in front of us. The driver tapped his brakes to flash us with his rear lights, and sped on.

  I looked at the image I’d captured.

  “Get the registration?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “Yes,” I said, showing him. “German.”

  13

  We parked Grand-mère’s car under the carport at the side of the house and headed for my little studio in back where we could safely lock up Solange’s things. On the way, we ran into Olivia outside the potting shed where she and her students had been storing their equipment. She was cleaning tools under a garden hose.

  “Glad you’re here,” I said, holding out the bucket of tools we found in Solange’s tent. “I believe these belong to your project.”

  Looking a bit fierce, she turned off the hose, took the bucket from me, and demanded, “Why did you take these?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “We found them among Solange’s things in her tent.”

  “She knew better than to keep them,” she scolded, maybe as a bluff to hide her feelings. Clearly, the death of her student had affected her deeply. Her hands shook as she looked through the bucket as if checking the contents against a list. Tears filled her eyes and her voice quavered when she said, “There is a mattock missing.”

  “A mattock?” I asked.

  “It’s a double-headed tool on a wooden handle about so long,” she said, holding her hands about three feet apart. “A pick on one side of the head, an adze on the other.”

  I looked at Jean-Paul. He shook his head. I said, “We saw nothing like that in her tent.”

  Jean-Paul held out the stack of library books. “Perhaps you know what should be done with these.”

  Olivia took the books from him, read the spines, saw the bound monograph she had written on the top. Hugging the stack against her chest, tears welling in her eyes, she said, “Thank you. I’ll take care of them.”

  I said, “I am sorry, Olivia. You and Solange seemed to be quite close.”

  She seemed surprised by that. “Not at all. Before she enrolled in my summer course, I only knew Solange by reputation, as the faculty generally know about all the students doing graduate work in their field. No, we were not close. I was warned that, though she was brilliant, I needed to keep a close eye on her, so maybe I spent more time with her than with the others.”

  “Why did she need watching?” I asked as a prompt to explain.

  “Ah.” She raised her palms as she thought for a moment about an answer. “I think that in America you would call her a maverick. Archeology, you know, is a destructive discipline. Many times, in the process of studying a civilization, we dismantle its fragile remains. If we are not exacting in our work, we can obliterate that which we set out to study, not only for ourselves but for those who come after us. Think of the carelessness of the Carter expeditions in Egypt and the destruction of the tombs of the pharaohs. My God, Carter’s team used mummies for fire wood.”

  “Was Solange careless?” I asked, shuddering at the image that flashed behind my eyes.

  “She could be rash. You saw, I believe, how quickly she was ready to abandon the study that was the raison d’être of the summer course and shift to something altogether uncharted when the German remains were discovered,” she said. “I asked the gendarmes to take care during the disinterment because the archeology of modern warfare is, indeed, uncharted territory and I did not want the evidence to be destroyed should such a study mature. But our purpose this summer is to try to establish whether the Viducasses, a tribe of the Celts, had established settlements on this coast. If we found Roman or Viking remains, they could be evidence that there were earlier settlements that had been conquered and built over. I was in no way willing to set the prescribed work aside and head off in a new direction just because the appearance of a skull—a modern skull—seemed sexier at the moment.”

  “But Solange was ready to go in that direction?” I asked.

  She raised the bucket of tools. “It would appear that she was, yes?”

  Jean-Paul had been listening quietly, as he tended to do. He asked, “By what criteria did you select the students for field work this summer?”

  “Applicants submitted an essay, samples of their research papers, and recommendations from the faculty.”

  “Her work satisfied you?”

  “Oh, yes. Her written work was outstanding, as were her recommendations, though I was given several private cautions to keep tight reins on her,” Olivia said. “I found her essay to be quite poignant. She wrote that she had great interest in the ancient people and civilizations of this region because she has deep family roots in the area. Though her family has migrated away, she still feels a cultural ­connection.”

  “Did she explain what those roots were?” I asked.

  Olivia shook her head. “Nothing specific.”

  Jean-Paul asked, “Have you contacted her family?”

  “Yes, through our consulate in Ecuador. The family sent instructions for the disposition of the remains, as I know you heard, but apparently they are unable, or unwilling, to travel here.”

  “Very sad,” I said. “Very sad, indeed.”

  “I am desolated,” she said.

  We again offered our condolences, and turned to leave.

  “Maggie,” she said.
When I turned back she gestured toward the house. “How old is your grandmother’s house?

  “You would have to ask her,” I said. “I know that the original structure has been remodeled and rehabilitated and added on to several times. If you walk through you can see where changes have been made, random odd steps up or down and places where the ceiling isn’t always the same height. Why? Are you interested in old houses?”

  She smiled. “I’m an archeologist. Everything old interests me.”

  “Grand-mère can tell you more.”

  “Of course.” She nodded and went back to her tool washing.

  When we were out of earshot, I turned to Jean-Paul. “You didn’t give her Solange’s notebook.”

  “Nor did you,” he said. “I’m sure you want a moment to look it over first.”

  I asked him, “Do you know what a mattock looks like?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Yes.”

  With my thumbs and index fingers I made a triangle roughly the size and shape of the hole I had seen in Solange’s head. “Could a mattock make a wound shaped like this?”

  “It could. You have an idea I think.”

  “I hate to say this, but we need to talk to Pierre Dauvin.”

  “Now?”

  “Later. Tomorrow, maybe,” I said. “We’ll see him at church, at the baptism of his nephew.”

  I unlocked the studio and showed Jean-Paul inside. Against the back wall were metal lockers with sturdy locks where we secured ­equipment when it wasn’t in use. By shuffling things around a bit we made space for Solange’s duffel and suitcase and locked them in, keeping the notebook to take inside to look through later. After I gave Jean-Paul the nickel tour, though the space was so small a nickel would be over-payment, I booted one of the computers on the counter along the side and opened the raw footage from the interview with my grandmother about the night the women slit the Germans’ throats.

  Jean-Paul watched the interview without speaking, concentrating, as he does, on every word and gesture. After Grand-mère waved for the cameras to cut and the screen went black, Jean-Paul said, “Remind me never to turn my back on your grandmother.”

  “Just don’t cross her,” I said. “Or her friends.”

  “They were lucky there were no Nazi reprisals.”

  “I think the women timed the attack well.” I closed the program and reached for the power button, but he touched my hand to stop me.

  “These computers are connected to the Internet?” he asked.

  “Isabelle turned the entire estate into a Wi-Fi hotspot,” I said, jotting down the access code for him. “Wherever we go within the property, we can connect to the Internet.”

  “So, while we’re here with these computers,” he said, “we might have a look at the tapes from the security cameras, yes?”

  I went to the Cloud site Zach had given us, downloaded the footage onto an external memory drive plugged into the computer, and then when it was finished, exited the site.

  Zach was correct about the quality. The cameras only captured images at four-second intervals, so everything had a jerky, stop-­action look. Because the cameras were shooting down from atop poles, everyone was foreshortened. During daylight, we could see the faces of people who approached the camera position until they were a few yards from the light poles. But once they were near the poles, because of the camera angle, all we could see was the tops of their heads. If you knew the people well enough, you would be able to figure out from the clothing, relative size, coloring, posture, or gender who you might be seeing. Otherwise, not. And after dark, images tended to be white blobs unless they were hit with a light source, from an open window, maybe. If we needed to know who came and who went after dark, we would need help from the denizens of the camp.

  On Thursday afternoon when the security system was first ­installed, everyone, it seemed, walked up to the cameras and mugged for them, self-conscious maybe about their comings and goings ­being recorded. It didn’t take long, however, before they went about their business without thinking about the watchful eyes atop the light posts.

  Late in the afternoon, the students began filtering in from their assigned work, looking as if they’d had long days. Most of them went first to their tents, gathered clean clothes and toiletries, and headed toward the locker rooms for showers. Later they reappeared, freshly washed and combed. Things were dropped off again at tents, and then, alone or in little groups, they wandered off toward the community center where they would prepare dinner and perhaps relax for the evening. There was a constant coming and going until about eleven o’clock, when most seemed to settle in for the night. I made a mental note to forget that Taylor and Zach went into the same tent, and stayed there.

  At about half-past midnight, a small blond woman wearing shorts entered the frame at the community center end of Rue de Carotte, and entered Solange’s tent with a key. Shortly afterward, a figure, just a bright splotch on the monitor, walked into the far end of the same alley, stopped, seemed to listen or watch for a moment, and then walked back out of camera range. There weren’t enough visual clues for us to learn anything about who that second person was, except that he or she had been there.

  At one a.m., Taylor came out of Zach’s tent and walked toward the locker rooms. She returned about five minutes later, apparently having made a last bathroom visit of the night. We scrolled ahead, watching for images of people. At two a.m., the door to Solange’s tent opened again. The small blond woman, now wearing jeans, came out and looked around. At one point, she lifted her face, confirming to us that she was Solange. She walked toward the community center, and out of frame.

  I froze her image just when she looked up. “Meet Solange, the young woman who died.”

  “She’s carrying something,” he said. “Could it be a mattock?”

  I leaned in for a closer look, then enlarged the image. Whatever she was carrying was about three feet long. A digging tool? A murder weapon?

  Jean-Paul sat back and touched my arm. “What time on Friday morning did you find her?”

  I pointed to the time stamp in the bottom corner. “About eight hours after this shot. When I found her, she had already been dead for a while.”

  He asked me to scroll back to the blur that had appeared at the far end of the alley shortly after midnight. “Can you enhance this?”

  I pulled the image up as far as I could, but it quickly dissolved into a disorganized mess of pixels. I told him, “We don’t have ­enhancement software here.”

  “May I send this to a friend?” he asked.

  “Of course you may.” He already had his mobile phone out. I watched him type in the Cloud account access code and a request to enhance the blur that showed up at hour 00:38. And a note to say hello to Lise and the boys.

  There was a knock at the studio door. I opened it and found Freddy standing there.

  “Grand-mère has announced dinner,” he said with a little bow. “Your presence is requested.”

  “We’re coming.” I shut down the program and removed the flash drive, which I locked up in a cupboard. Freddy waited for us, making small talk.

  “That couple that Antoine was talking to,” he said. “Paulette and Henry Matson. He introduced them to me. They’re really very interesting.”

  “Did they tell you about the count and countess of Rutland?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Henry is a developer. He’s worked on some very large projects. Very knowledgeable. Paulette was quite engaged in the idea that we’re building around the agricultural functions of the estate as a way to maintain them.”

  “She wants to make cheese,” I said.

  “Let’s be careful that she doesn’t steal our Jacques away from us. A good fromager is difficult to find.”

  Jean-Paul asked, “Does Jacques have a vested interest in your fromagerie?”

  “In a way,” Freddy said. “But it’s a very complicated relationship.”

  I did my best to explain. For several centuries, the
Martin ­estate supported a cluster of tenant families, including the Bretons, the forebears of Jacques the current cheesemaker, as his father and grandfather had been. During World War I, faced with a labor shortage, my great-grandfather, Giles Martin, brought in the first tractors and other motorized farm equipment. One by one, the tenant families moved away, replaced by more efficient machinery. By the end of the Second World War, only one tenant family remained, the Bretons. Because they were cheesemakers and not farmers, they could not be replaced by machinery.

  The Bretons still lived in a pretty cottage that belonged to the estate, over on the far side of the carrot field. But the Bretons could no longer be called tenants. In acknowledgment of Jacques’s innovations in cheese making and his work modernizing the fromagerie as well as developing the dairy herd, Antoine had set up a profit-sharing plan with him for as long as he remained chez Martin.

  Complicating the relationship, Jacques married the girl next door, Julie Foullard. When he did, she also became family. The Foullard estate, currently under the guardianship of Julie’s grandmother, Grand-mère Marie Foullard, was a substantial land-holding that wrapped around one end of the Martin estate. Marie’s daughter, ­Louise Foullard, married my uncle, Gérard Martin, making my cousin Antoine a first cousin of Julie, and Jacques a cousin by marriage, a distinction no one paid much mind to.

  After the deaths of her husband and both of her adult children, Marie had handed over management of the Foullard property to ­Antoine and Jacques, jointly. They grew alfalfa and pastured cows on the land, and sold the milk they produced to the Martin fromagerie.

  “Should I draw a chart?” I asked Jean-Paul.

  He laughed. “Sounds to me like a perfectly straightforward ­arrangement, very typical for the French. Later, when we have time, I’ll try to chart my own family for you. Trust me, it will be as complex as yours.”

  “All I want to know is, who gets the beach house at Villerville?”

  “Altogether, six cousins in my mother’s line,” he said. “Merde, won’t that be fun to straighten out?”