Disturbing the Dark

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Not for a minute.” I refilled his teacup. “Pierre, these are elite graduate students, from a premier university program. Raffi, the kid who found the iron shard, spent last summer working on a Gallo-Roman dig at Rouen. He must have expected something of that caliber here, or he would not have applied. The same for Solange and probably the others. Like Solange, my question is, why are they digging in marsh fill when they expected to be excavating a possible pre-Roman Celtic village?”

  “Are they paid for their work?”

  “I understand that their living expenses are covered and there is a small stipend. But what they were doing won’t advance their research in any way. It’s a waste of their time.”

  “I’ll talk to Freddy about the arrangements.”

  I heard the front door and Casey came into the kitchen.

  “Mom, the compound is swarming with cops,” she said, taking a mug out of the cupboard. “Oh, hi, Pierre. What’s up?”

  I told her, “Someone broke into the studio while we were having dinner at Freddy’s.”

  “Oh my God.” Though she escalated straight into a flight of teen dramatics, she still managed to fill her mug and sit down. “How awful. Did they trash it?”

  “They only managed to get a couple of laptops and two palm recorders.” I pushed the tin box of Grand-mère Marie’s shortbreads toward her. “I think we may have scared them away before they could do real damage.”

  She had her phone in her hand and her thumbs ready for action. “Did you see them? Mom, they didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “None of the above.” Pierre took the phone from her hand and laid it face down on the table. “We aren’t releasing any information. No instant messages. Facebook ignored. No comment, comprenez-vous?”

  “Oh.” I thought she seemed disappointed that she couldn’t post this bit of news, but she rallied enough to open the tin and eat a cookie.

  There was a knock at the back door. Casey started to rise, but Pierre waved her back down into her seat and went to answer. To my great surprise, Zach and Taylor were ushered in by a uniformed gendarme. They didn’t seem upset, but they did seem perplexed as they walked through the mudroom and into the kitchen.

  I gestured for them to come in and sit down. They did, but their police escort hesitated at the kitchen door. “Capitaine,” he said, “I located this pair at the brewpub in Pérrier, recognized them as the kids up on the ladder with cameras on Friday. Will they do?”

  “Nicely, Sol,” Pierre said. “Good work. Are Jacqueline and Denis set to go in their place?”

  “All set.”

  “Did Jacqueline give you a bag for me?”

  “I have it in the car, sir.” He came in far enough to put the gendarme’s version of an American policeman’s Sam Browne belt, with holstered sidearm, on the table. “Where do you want me to put your bag?”

  “Leave it on Antoine’s doorstep,” Pierre said. “I’ll be staying there tonight.”

  In the meantime, Casey was serving tea and shortbreads to Taylor and Zach. After Pierre locked the back door behind Sol, it was time for him to answer their questions.

  He apologized to my interns for any inconvenience. And he apologized for any embarrassment caused when the police took them away from their friends at the pub before anyone explained why. He told them, “We’re imbedding two of our officers in the student camp. They will be staying in your tents until we get things resolved. And you will be staying here as the guests of Madame Martin.”

  “Does Grand-mère know this?” I asked.

  “You’ll explain it to her in the morning,” he said.

  Taylor plucked at her shirt, the one she’d worn all day. “We don’t have, like, clothes or anything.”

  “We’ll get your things to you tomorrow sometime,” he said. “In the meantime, I am certain that Madame and Mademoiselle MacGowen will do what they can to make you comfortable.”

  “What happens to us tomorrow?” Zach asked.

  “Just go about your work as usual. At the end of the day, you’ll come here instead of going to the camp. Understand?”

  “And you’ll be at Antoine’s?” I asked him.

  “Tonight, I will.”

  He gathered Solange’s things and left by the front door. After he was gone, there was a quiet moment. Mentally, I was working out sleeping arrangements. I knew from the surveillance tapes at the student camp that Zach and Taylor were sharing a sleeping tent. But they didn’t know I knew this, and we were in my grandmother’s house and I didn’t know what she might have to say about young guests cohabiting in her house. I was still dithering when Casey stepped forward.

  “Taylor,” she said, “do you want to bunk with me? I can lend you some PJs.”

  “Thanks, that would be great.” Taylor yawned.

  My turn: “Zach we’ll put you in the room my cousin Bébé uses when he stays here. I think we can find something for you to sleep in. Before you two go to bed, we’ll toss your clothes into the washer for you to wear tomorrow. There are new toothbrushes in the top drawer of the hall bathroom upstairs. Help yourselves.”

  “Okay,” Zach said. “But what’s this all about?”

  “The studio was broken into tonight.”

  “Oh, my God, no.” Taylor looked as if she might topple over, she was so upset. Zach wrapped a supportive arm around her. “All our work? Who? What did they do?”

  “Everything is okay, kids,” I said, giving her arm a little squeeze. “All they took were a couple of laptops that were in a locker and two palm recorders. They dropped a third recorder on their way out.”

  “Hold on a sec.” Zach reached into the messenger bag he usually carried and took out two palm recorders. “We only have four of these.”

  This was happy news. “I should have known you two wouldn’t go out unequipped. Good. Damn great, actually.”

  I texted Pierre and told him to take the two missing palm recorders off his list.

  Taylor was not ready to be reassured. “They didn’t take our photo cards, or flash drives, or—”

  “No,” I told her. “I think they were looking for something very specific, something other than video equipment. They wasted a lot of time breaking into one of the lockers. When they left, they left in a hurry, and I think they took the laptops they found in the locker just because they were there. They probably scooped the palm recorder off the shelf on the way out and dropped it making a getaway.”

  “You keep saying ‘they,’ ” Casey said. “But if there were more than one of them, wouldn’t they have taken more stuff?”

  “Good point,” I said.

  Zach put the cameras back into his bag. “Unless the other guy was the lookout.”

  “Let’s leave that to Pierre’s people.” I got up from the table feeling stiff and thoroughly exhausted. “Zach, Taylor, I don’t know if this is good news or not, but we won’t be able to get into the studio for equipment or editing until the police are finished with it.”

  Good news, apparently, from the looks they exchanged with each other.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “They’re burying the German remains tomorrow morning at La Cambe, the German military cemetery near Bayeux,” Zach said. “We want to film it.”

  “Fantastic idea,” I said. “Think you can make do with the palm recorders?”

  “No problem,” Taylor said. “But we don’t have wheels.”

  “We’ll figure that out in the morning,” I said. “Right now, I’m going to bed.”

  My phone vibrated. I picked it up, saw the number on the screen and groaned. But I answered.

  “Oi,” Vincent said. “You called the coppers.”

  “Damn right I did. You broke into my house.”

  “Not me, luv,” he said. “What’d they get?”

  “Not much.”

  “Good. So before anyone else has a go at it, why don’t you and me sort out terms, if you know what I mean.”

  “Actually, Vincent, I don’t know what you m
ean. What the hell are you guys looking for?”

  “You know,” he said. “So quit fucking around saying you don’t.”

  20

  The first question the hearing judge asked me Monday morning was to state my full name, for the record.

  “My entire name?” I asked.

  He said yes without looking up from the papers on the table in front of him. He was about my age, forty-something. Renée told me that he presided over hearings of this sort in a different village every day of the week, and that he was not a local. It was only Monday morning, but already he looked as if he’d had a long day. There was no courthouse in the village, so the proceedings were being held in a large conference room in the mairie. And because the setting was casual, there were no robes or white scarves. The judge, Renée Ferraro the prosecutor, and the defense attorneys representing the suspects waiting in the next room to hear the charges against them, all wore ordinary business suits.

  Guido’s case was the first up. He sat with his avocat, his French lawyer, at the next table over from me.

  The judge finally looked up and seemed to join the proceedings. “Madame?”

  I took a breath and began. “My full legal name is Marguerite Eugènie Louise-Marie Duchamps MacGowen Flint.”

  He smiled, leaned over to the court reporter sitting next to him and asked him, “Did you get that?”

  “Oui,” the reporter answered with a sardonic little smile of his own.

  “And how shall we address you, madame?” the judge asked.

  “I usually answer to Maggie MacGowen.”

  Again he referred to the paper atop the stack on the table in front of him. “Maggie MacGowen, are you acquainted with Monsieur Guido Patrini, seated at the table to your right?”

  “I am.”

  “For what duration?”

  “About twenty years.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “We work together.”

  “Madame MacGowen, do you attest before this court that Guido Patrini is a man of good character?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Monsieur Patrini,” he looked at Guido over the top of his glasses. “As there is no charge filed against you, you are herewith released from the custody of this court.”

  The judge tapped the table with the end of his pen in lieu of a gavel, and announced the next case.

  Guido and his lawyer, Étienne Moss, rose from their seats and I rose to follow them. At the rear of the room, Guido kissed my cheek and thanked me for supporting him.

  “I know you have to stay for the next case,” he said. “But I’m getting the hell out of here before the judge changes his mind.”

  Guido walked out, but Moss, the local avocat referred by a friend of Jean-Paul, stayed. He ushered me to a seat in the spectator section among weeping mothers and wives who were waiting for their loved ones to be arraigned before the judge. Moss took a seat next to me, sticking close. I knew Jean-Paul had a hand in that, and I was grateful.

  Erika was led in from the next room looking like someone dragged in from a homeless camp. Her long gray hair hung in greasy hanks and she still wore the same dress she had on when I found her in my bedroom Sunday morning. There was no facility for holding women overnight at the local gendarme barracks, so she had been taken to St-Lô overnight and driven back early that morning to appear at her arraignment. I doubted she’d gotten much sleep.

  A young policewoman walked her to the chair Guido had recently vacated and sat her down. I assumed that the gray-haired woman who took the chair next to her was her lawyer. They bent their heads together and I wondered if this whispered conference was their first meeting.

  Someone seated in the row behind me leaned forward and rested his elbows on the back of the chair next to mine.

  “Oi, Miss Hollywood Star. Fancy running into you here.”

  I turned my best scowl on Harry, the collector of war salvage this-and-that. I said, “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

  He flicked his chin toward Erika. “Can’t wait to hear what the old girl has to say, huh?”

  “Do you know her?”

  “We’ve talked,” he said. “It’s time for us to talk again.”

  The judge tapped his pen on the table, calling the court back into session, and all conversation stopped. Harry leaned back into his own seat. Next to me, Moss was sending a text on his mobile to Jean-Paul. He had snapped a photo of Harry.

  The judge asked the prosecutor to state the charges being filed against the defendant. Renée Ferraro rose and read them aloud: Criminal trespass of a private residence, burglary of an inhabited structure, brandishing Nazi paraphernalia or images at a public meeting or gathering. The charges were repeated for Erika in German. When she was asked if she understood the charges, her lawyer answered that she did, though Erika sat as still as stone as Renée listed her offenses.

  Erika was asked to identify herself, and to give both her legal place of residence and her local place of residence. That last caused a little ripple through the room when she said that she supposed her local address was the jail in St-Lô.

  Renée was called to the judge’s table for a conference. Étienne Moss took that opportunity to explain to me that the last charge was tacked on because of the photographs of her father in Nazi uniform that Erika had shown around at the Saturday market. It was a bogus charge, he said, but it was there to allow the prosecutor to get information about Erika’s purpose for being in the area into the record.

  I saw Ma Mère slip in through a side door and take a seat at the far end. She caught my eye and gave me a little smile. When I thought about it, I was surprised that she had come.

  “Call the first witness,” the judge intoned. Renée motioned me back to the same chair at the front table where I’d sat before. Moss came with me and took the chair beside mine.

  “You again,” the judge said, pulling his glasses further down his nose to look at me. “It pains me to do so, but I must ask you state your full name for the court.”

  Before I could speak, though, he held up a finger for me to wait. Then he asked the court reporter if he had sufficient paper. When he got the little twitter of laughter from the crowd that he apparently was after, he nodded at me. “Madame?”

  Before I began, I looked for Ma Mère because she was among those responsible for the long string of names I had to carry through life. She put her fingertips to her lips and blew me a kiss.

  I said, again, “My full name is Marguerite Eugènie Louise-Marie Duchamps MacGowen Flint.”

  “Phew,” the judge said for the crowd’s benefit. “Madame le ­procureur, please proceed with this witness.”

  Renée stood to one side of the open area between the judge’s table and mine, the area that would be the well of the court in a formal courtroom, and read her questions off an electronic pad.

  “Madame MacGowen,” she began, “are you familiar with the prisoner seated to your right?”

  “I am.”

  “Old friends?”

  “Not friends at all.”

  “What is the circumstance of your acquaintance?”

  The judge leaned forward and addressed me. “This is an arraignment hearing, madame. Our goal is to determine whether the charges filed have sufficient merit to bring Madame Erika Karl to trial. In your answers, I would like for you to feel free to answer fully. What our prosecutor is asking you, one little drop at a time, is, how is it that you came to know Madame Karl? Please, start at the beginning.”

  He sat back and Renée, chastised by the judge’s comment, nodded at me to go ahead.

  Moss patted my hand, I took a deep breath, and began.

  “I first became aware of Madame Karl on Friday morning of last week,” I said. “She left a note on my grandmother’s door relating that she had learned of the German war remains that were discovered near my family’s carrot field Thursday. She said that her father had lived in our home during the war and had spoken fondly of the place. He went missing dur
ing the war. She asked for permission to come calling.”

  “Was she then invited into your home?” Renée asked.

  “Absolutely not,” I said, trying to keep the heat out of my voice. “Madame Karl’s father was Major Horst von Streicher, the commanding officer of a platoon of German SS Occupation troops that commandeered my family’s home during the war and put them into forced labor. My grandmother wanted no contact with her Nazi occupier’s daughter. But Madame Karl began to hang around the estate, uninvited. Saturday morning when my grandmother was working in her garden we saw Madame Karl sitting outside the garden gate.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “Weeping.”

  “Weeping?”

  “Sitting and weeping.”

  “Did you speak with her then?”

  “No,” I said. “The first time I spoke with her was later at the market in the village. Madame Karl was showing photos of her father in his full Nazi uniform to various elderly people at the market, asking them if they knew her father. As it happens, some people did. One of the vendors slapped Madame Karl’s face. Another tore up the photos and spat on them. I thought that someone needed to get Madame Karl away from the immediate area before the situation escalated, so I took her by the arm and walked her to a place where the crowd would not see her. She told me then that she was only trying to find out what happened to her father. She pleaded with me to ask my grandmother for permission to see the house where he was last known to be alive.”

  “Your grandmother is Élodie Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ask Madame Martin if she would speak with Madame Karl?”

  “I told Grand-mère what happened at the market. She told me that she would not speak with Madame Karl because what she would have to tell her, no child should know about her father.”

  “Your grandmother said that?” the judge asked.

  “She did.”

  He scribbled a note while Renée asked her next question.

  “Did you see Madame Karl again after the Saturday market?”

  “Yes. On Sunday morning after church I came home and found her standing in the middle of my bedroom.”