Disturbing the Dark

by Wendy Hornsby

  Suddenly the only sound in the room were the sobs caught in Erika’s throat. Ma Mère looked at the stain at her feet. And then a little smile crossed her face.

  We heard a car cross the courtyard. Jean-Paul started toward the door with Erika. “The gendarmes are here.”

  My grandmother sat down on the arm of her friend’s chair and reached for her hand as the door closed behind Jean-Paul. She asked Ma Mère, “Ça va?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. But Élodie, weren’t we over there by the stairs when you slit von Streicher’s throat?”

  My grandmother laughed softly. “Yes, of course. But I thought the stain would be a nice sort of illustration, no?”

  “Excellent, yes,” Ma Mère said. “But as I recall, you and Henri added this floor years after the war. When you remodeled.”

  “Ah, yes. So we did.”

  “Then what caused that big dark spot?”

  “It happened just after the floor was laid,” Grand-mère said, flipping the rug back into place, hiding the stain. “The stone hadn’t been sealed yet. My Gérard—I think he was about ten years old—had that beautiful border collie bitch. Remember her? Henri said she was the best herding dog he had ever trained, so he bred her. Anyway, the dog got in here somehow and dropped her litter right there on the new floor. We never could get the stain out.”

  “But the rest of what you said happened?” I asked, reminded to keep a close eye on my grandmother.

  “Yes,” the abbess said. “Except that your grandmother left out the part where she took von Streicher’s gun off his belt and shot him in the chest after she slit his throat. Why did you leave that out, Élodie?”

  “If I’d told her about it, that wretched woman might have asked for the old Luger as a souvenir.” Grand-mère rose. She took out her mobile and checked the time. “We should get to the beach before Antoine calls again looking for us.”

  “After all this,” I said, “you want to go to the party?”

  “Bien sûr,” she said. “And you, Ma Mère?”

  “Yes, of course,” the abbess said, rising from her chair. “We have much to celebrate today. If Élodie had not done what she did, I can’t be sure this sweet baby would ever have been born. So, let us go and welcome him.”

  After Erika was driven away by the gendarmes, Jean-Paul and I did manage to change into shorts for the beach. As we drove out through the compound gate with the two war survivors nestled into the lush leather of the backseat, the abbess turned to my grand­mother.

  “Élodie, that Luger you took from von Streicher? Where is it now?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s in a safe place,” Grand-mère said. “Is it not, Maggie?”

  17

  Party-goers turned the usual weekend traffic on the narrow beach road into a gridlocked mess. With no alternate route available, we turned in and claimed our slot in the solid queue of cars, following the rear bumper of a tiny Fiat as we inched forward toward the water. Both sides of the road were lined with dense, thorny gorse that grew as tall as the houses tucked behind it, making the drive feel like being in a train passing through a long green tunnel. Here and there, driveways were cut into the brush and we could catch glimpses of beach cottages that ranged from mere shacks to mansionettes hidden in clearings, sheltered from the wind off the ocean. Most of the cottage driveways had signs warning people against pulling in and parking, though it was tempting to do just that.

  Jean-Paul never lost his amiable composure, though I could sense his frustration as we slogged along. Or maybe I assumed he shared my feelings. It was just after one o’clock, but we’d already had a very long day. If we could have turned back, and we could not, I would have suggested that we give up and go home. Grand-mère and the abbess did their best to keep up a conversation, but after a while they both dozed off.

  We had progressed no more than a hundred yards when Jean-Paul glanced into the rearview mirror and suddenly tensed. I turned to see what was there but saw only a line of cars stuck in the same slow-motion parade. I caught his eye and shrugged, questioning what he’d seen. A little backward nod let me know to look again. This time, a car slipped out of the queue, maybe to see what was ahead, and I knew what Jean-Paul had reacted to.

  “Toyota,” I said in a low voice. “Green. German plates.”

  Grand-mère perked up and turned to see what we were talking about, but by then the Toyota had slipped back into line behind the taller Volvo in front of it.

  Jean-Paul put a hand on my knee. “You still have that number on speed dial?”

  “I do, but let’s wait until we know what the guy’s up to. He hasn’t actually done anything, yet.” We were just edging past a narrow gap in the gorse. The opening wasn’t big enough to park in, not if the passengers wanted to open their doors and get out of the car. But I saw a possible use for the space. I watched the progress of the cars behind us until the headlights of the Volvo were near that gap.

  “I’d like a little chat with the guy,” I said, with my eyes on the side view mirror, I reached for my door handle and told Jean-Paul, “Stop the car, please. Now.”

  He did. And so did everyone behind us. Fortunately traffic was moving so slowly there was no sound of crashing metal behind us. Over the screech of brakes and blasting horns, Jean-Paul asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “Following my grandmother’s example, I’m going to end this bullshit.”

  I was out of the car, keeping my head low as I ran back along the queue. I reached the Volvo’s front bumper, went between stopped cars and came up to the green Toyota on the driver’s side. I yanked open the door and ordered, “Slide over, Dieter.”

  “What, what?” His eyes grew wide with alarm and confusion.

  I pushed his bony shoulder. “Slide over.”

  “Who?” He protested, asked questions, seemed stunned, but I just kept pushing him and ordering him to move until he scrambled over the console, negotiating the gearshift, until he more or less fell atop the jumble of old food wrappers and empty bottles, a laptop computer and several ragged-looking notebooks piled on the passenger seat. As he shoved all that crap onto the floor so he could sit in the seat, he asked, “Are you armed?”

  “Damn right I am.” By then I had waved to Jean-Paul as a signal to drive on and was in the Toyota’s driver’s seat, pulling the door closed. “I’m at the wheel of maybe a ton of Japanese steel and plastic. Want to see if it can be lethal?”

  He started to say “Who?” again, but something occurred to him and he asked, “How do you know my name?”

  “Got it through the D.G.S.E.” I put the car in gear and started forward as traffic began to move again.

  He grew awfully quiet and very pale. The man, thirtyish, hair cropped close, tattoos creeping up both arms and disappearing into his souvenir rock-concert T-shirt, looked scared enough to lose his lunch from either end. He hardly had enough spit in his mouth to speak. “Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure gave you my name? I’m not a terrorist. Why did they give you my name? How do they even know me?”

  “My turn to ask questions,” I said. The gap in the gorse came up on our left front fender. I nosed the little car into the space though there really wasn’t room for it. Dieter winced as branches scraped the paint on both sides. When I came to a stop, he tried to open his door, found that he couldn’t move it more than a few inches, and gave up the effort.

  “How will I get my car out of here?”

  “Same way we got in.”

  With some force, he pulled his door closed. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “I want you to quit stalking us.”

  “Stalking you?” he said, looking thoroughly nonplussed. “I’m not stalking you. I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Why is it, then, that when I look into my rearview mirror I keep seeing your bumper?” I pulled out my mobile and showed him the picture I had snapped of his car’s registration plates.

  After a moment a light seemed to go on behind his eyes
, and said, “You were in that car with Jean-Paul Bernard?”

  “You know Jean-Paul?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I know who he is, I don’t know him. I’m a journalist on assignment. I’m following a story lead.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “I can’t divulge that.”

  I glanced out the back window at the cars inching along the road past our back bumper. “It’ll take a while for this traffic to clear enough for me to back out of here. I can wait. Can you?”

  He sighed, crossed his arms over his narrow chest, and slouched down in his seat. “I’ve been working on a piece about the disrespect that members of the European community continue to show to Germany. All these economically sick nations demand bailout money from us, but what are we offered in return? Nothing. They keep waving the bloody flag of that long-ago war at us as if we’re to blame somehow for their bad money management now.”

  “And so you came here expecting to accomplish what?” I asked.

  “Raise awareness, that’s all.”

  “How does Jean-Paul Bernard fit in?”

  “I got a tip that the issue came up during an EU trade meeting at the end of last week. When it was mentioned that some German remains were discovered in this area, a German delegate heard one of the French guys at the table say that Germany ought to pay for the cleanup of its war trash, which was a totally disrespectful thing to say. I mean, they’re working on open trade agreements among all EU nations, and this asshole thinks it’s all right to call dead soldiers from our country trash? I was told that Bernard was sent here with a directive to make certain that the remains were handled with dignity.”

  “What have you found out?”

  He took a deep breath. “No one around here will give me any information about the disinterment or the reburial of the remains. Bernard seems to be spending a whole lot of time at the estate where the remains were discovered and at the local gendarme barracks. I have been trying to discover what action he has taken. Or is trying to take. It looks to me like he can’t get cooperation because so far nothing has been done.”

  “If you had been in church this morning,” I said, “instead of in jail pretending to be the town drunk, you would have heard the priest ask the congregation to pray for the strangers who died here, and to forgive the former enemy, as requested by Jean-Paul Bernard and the mayor.”

  He eyed me. “Seriously?”

  “Close enough.” Maybe the priest’s language was a bit vague about who was to be forgiven and exactly who died, but he had made a gesture.

  Dieter asked, “What do you know about what’s happening to the remains?”

  “That’s a question for your own Volksbund,” I said, and shifted the topic. “What do you know about Erika von Streicher Karl?”

  He shook his head. “Never heard of her.”

  “Or Horst von Streicher?”

  He thought for a minute before he asked, “Any relation to Otto von Streicher?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Who is he?”

  “Maybe you’ve heard him referred to as the Count of Rutland?”

  “You know the count?” I asked.

  “That old fraud? No, I’ve never met him, but I know about him,” he said. “A couple of years ago von Streicher took out an ad in our paper offering his title for sale. The editor was curious about it so he sent a reporter friend of mine to check him out. My friend wrote a great story about the old guy. It trended for a while.”

  “Someone did buy the title,” I said.

  “Someone? How many someones?” He guffawed. “Every time he needs rent money he puts his title up for sale. Except, he has no title. He’s some kind of clerk. His father was a schoolteacher, just an ordinary guy.”

  “What do you know about the father?”

  “Nothing. Died in the war I think.” He shook his head. “Who is this Erika? A relative?”

  “Probably Otto’s sister,” I said. “Listen to me, Dieter. If you knew what old man von Streicher did here during the war, you would ­understand why the locals didn’t call out a marching band when German military remains were found.”

  “What did he do?” He shuffled through the junk on the floor, pulled out a ratty-looking notebook and a pen, and looked at me expectantly.

  I had gotten everything out of Dieter Schwarz that I needed to know, and had told him all that I intended to. Traffic on the road behind us was thinning out. I kept my eye on the road in the rearview mirror, looking for a gap between cars that would be big enough for me to back the Toyota into. I saw my hole, turned the ignition key and shifted into reverse.

  “Whatever he did, Dieter, I strongly advise you against making inquiries around here.”

  “Why not?” he said, wincing again as the gorse etched our exit path into the car’s green paint.

  “It could get you seriously hurt.”

  I left the car hugging the side of the narrow road, facing away from the beach, and got out to walk the rest of the way. It was a bright, warm day and I enjoyed the walk.

  The baptism party was in full swing when I finally arrived. The marquee Grand-mère had arranged to have erected on the sand in front of the Martin family pavilion in case of rain made a nice shaded area big enough to accommodate all of the decorated party tables. Food was being served buffet-style inside the pavilion where it was cooler, and where flies could be better controlled. A steady stream of people moved back and forth between the pavilion, the marquee, and the beach.

  I had been told that the Martin family had kept a cottage on that piece of beach at Anneville-sur-Mer for many, many years. The original structure was a primitive affair with no indoor plumbing or electricity. At some point, Isabelle, my birth mother, had taken down the old cottage and replaced it with the pavilion, which was a very modern party house rather than a vacation cottage. The only sleeping area was a small loft over one end of the single ground-floor great room that combined a large kitchen, a dining area with a table that could accommodate a crowd at one end, and a seating area arranged around a Swedish fireplace at the other. The pavilion’s front wall was made of wood-framed glass panels that could be folded back to open the entire room to the covered veranda in front and the pale sand beyond. Or, in cool weather, opened one panel at a time. Along the side wall there were outdoor showers for rinsing off sand, and inside there were modern bathrooms.

  Though the place belonged to the family, over time and after many large parties like this one, people in the area seemed to regard it as a community facility. Indeed, Gaston was lobbying my grandmother to have the potential heirs sign the place over to the regional park system. I wasn’t sure I would sign that document, if it was ever drafted, because should the day come when I spent long periods of time in Normandy, I would prefer to stay at the pavilion, alone, rather than surrounded by the family hubbub at the estate.

  Antoine walked up to meet me as I came along the path from the pavilion’s jammed parking area.

  “I was worried,” he said, taking my arm. “I asked Jean-Paul if we should send out a search party, but he said he had spoken on the phone with you and that you were on your way. If I’d known you were walking I would have sent a car. Except that’s impossible.”

  He seemed rattled and I doubted it was because I was late arriving. I patted the hand he rested on my arm, and asked, “How’s the party?”

  “Big. Noisy.” He looked around. “As usual.”

  “Are the students in charge of cleanup later?”

  He nodded. “They are.”

  “The road is clearing up,” I said. “If you could get a car out, this would be a good time to escape.”

  “No, I’ll stick around. I might go up to the loft and lie down, though.”

  As we walked toward the crowd, I told him about Dieter Schwarz. And I told him about finding Erika inside the house because I thought he should know. And so should Freddy. The way the family came and went into and out of each other’s houses, keeping doors locked was probl
ematic. Until whatever was going on settled down, though, I thought we needed to be more careful. I suggested putting up security cameras similar to the ones the students had installed at the camp. Antoine was taken aback: He did not know that the students felt it necessary to take precautions, and wished that they had spoken with him about their concerns.

  “Antoine,” I said, leaning close to him, “you don’t have to be everyone’s dad all the time.”

  He smiled, let out a big sigh. “I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I need to take care of somebody until they get back.”

  “Take care of yourself, my dear,” I said. “Let the rest of us pretend we’re grownups now and then.”

  All the time we were talking, I was looking around. There were a couple of soccer games on the beach, some sunbathers and swimmers, a mass of people dining or relaxing under the marquee, a clutch of village women hovering over the buffet tables inside the pavilion. Casey and David and several other young people were playing volleyball, using a fisherman’s skein for a net. Grand-mère and the abbess had settled in with Pierre’s grandmother and Gaston, watching over the honored guest who was asleep in a cradle covered by a bug net. Everyone was accounted for. Except I couldn’t find Jean-Paul.

  “Are you looking for him?” Antoine brought his head down closer and pointed to a stand of scrawny trees down the beach. Jean-Paul stood in the spotty shade, apparently arguing with someone on the telephone.

  “You might as well get something to eat,” Antoine said. “That conversation has been going on for a while.”

  Jean-Paul looked up just then, spotted me, waved, and turned back to his call.

  “Must be important,” Antoine said as we walked inside, where we separated. He went up the ladder to the sleeping loft. I helped myself to the feast spread out on the long oak table and took my plate outside to find a place to sit.