“I believe you.”
I left, sensing her eyes on the back of my neck. There was a cabstand nearby and I had to wait a few minutes before I was able to hail one. Before getting into the car, I looked back at the terrace, but she’d already gone.
I went to the hotel and stayed in my room the whole evening, skipping dinner. I listened to the unfamiliar noises, closing my eyes and thinking about what had happened in that place forty years ago, almost seeing the outlines of the three players, as young as they were back then, almost teenagers.
It was already clear to me that Josh had told me his side of the story, which was neither true nor entirely false, just as Abraham’s jottings were merely some figments of his own delusion rather than a proper diary. But beyond those things, beyond the inherent distortion of facts brought about by the time passing, beyond lies and confusions and errors and subjective perceptions and delusions, there was at least one fact, as solid as a rock: Simone had vanished without a trace that night.
Josh had probably had a violent past in his adolescence, and he’d punished himself by giving up his entire inheritance. Abraham had possibly already been ill in Paris, and he was fighting against the disease that was later to crash his mind completely, turning him into a murderer. Did Mrs. Gregory really leave Paris, as she claimed, after realizing that Abraham was head over heels in love with another woman? Or did she decide, overwhelmed with jealousy and despair, to do something more than send a slanderous letter? Was Lucas Duchamp frightened that Simone, his favorite, would leave the country with one of those American boys who were courting her, even though Claudette had told me that for her it was nothing but an innocent flirtation?
And there was another crucial question: why didn’t Lucas Duchamp use his connections to chase down Josh and Abraham? He was obsessed with Simone, so he should have done everything in his power to find out what really happened to her. Did he know something else right off the bat, something that had stopped him from acting as he should have? Did Laura witness something that night, something horrible enough to make her drop out of university and lock herself up for years in a mental clinic?
Gradually, the room became pitch dark and so quiet that I could hear my own breathing. Time and space ceased to exist. While the answers were still hiding from me, I remembered a story from my childhood.
One day, after he got home from work, dad told me to get in the car and we headed out to a kennel on the outskirts of town, next to the Kansas Turnpike. He proudly told me that I was about to witness with my own eyes the secret method dog breeders used when they wanted to pick out the best of a litter of newborn puppies. We were in Kansas, back in the early eighties. I’m not sure whether people still do this nowadays. Probably not.
Dad parked his car under an oak tree, and we walked into a large, grassy enclosure, encircled by a high wooden fence. He smoked a cigarette and talked briefly to an old man—or maybe he just looked old to me at the time. I waited by a barn, examining my surroundings. A strong smell hung in the air, and from inside the barn I could hear dogs barking and whining. Up ahead in the distance, I could see a small pond, its surface glinting in the sunset. About twenty yards from the barn, there was an old camper without wheels, its axles resting on logs.
The man went into the barn and dad said to me, “Come closer, J., he’s gonna bring out those puppies.”
I walked over to him, but when I was halfway there, I stopped and turned on my heel to see what was happening: one of the dogs inside the barn was whining loudly, in a way I’d never heard before; it was the bitch, whose puppies were being taken away.
There were four of them, each no bigger than a clenched fist, their eyes still closed, and their small heads trembling. Dad’s friend walked to the middle of the yard and put them down on the grass. Then I saw him grab a canister of gasoline and I froze.
He poured the liquid around the puppies in a large circle, around five or six yards in diameter, and then he went back into the barn and brought out the bitch, holding her up by the collar. She was a German shepherd, trying hard to escape from his grasp. “Now, Don!” the guy shouted, and dad lit a match and threw it on the grass. In an instant, two things happened: a ring of fire about one foot high shot up around the puppies, and the breeder released the mom.
Without any hesitation, she darted inside the burning ring. She nosed around for two or three seconds, and then grabbed one of the puppies in her teeth by the scruff of its neck and jumped back through the fire.
The breeder put the fire out with an extinguisher, picked up the other puppies, and laid them beside their mom. She worried over them, almost smothering them in her panic. Then the breeder took a small paint sprayer out of his pocket and marked the first puppy with a small red mark.
“That’s our champ,” dad said. “Would you like to have her? I’ll buy her for you, if you want. We can take her home in a couple of weeks, after she’s been weaned and had her shots.”
I’d never had a dog before and I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted one. But I said yes, thinking I’d be protecting the puppy from any other potential cruel experiments, maybe even crueler than the one I’d witnessed.
We took the puppy home a month later. Mom named her Erin, a strange way of paying respect to that environmental activist from Lawrence. She was a good, intelligent dog, and passed away long after I’d left home to go to university.
And just then, surrounded by darkness, in a suite of the very hotel where that young woman died long ago, while all the details of that story were rolling in my mind, I finally saw the big picture and knew what had really happened that night.
Houdini once said that the best magician isn’t the one who’s capable of producing an elephant from a hat—no man could ever do that—but one who knows how to divert the public’s attention as the elephant enters the stage.
This whole time I’d been looking for the elephant rather than the magician.
twenty
I LEFT FOR LYON in the morning, and it took me over two hours to get there by train, traveling through a monotonous, gray-tinged landscape. It had been raining for a while, but by the time I arrived at the railway station, the sky had cleared. A pale sun and a cluster of clouds lent the surroundings a heavy, sad atmosphere. I took a cab and headed for the Duchamp estate.
When I saw the mansion, I remembered the feeling I’d had in the Hogarth house. The mansion was painted light yellow and lay in a cul-de-sac at the edge of a pine forest. It consisted of a two-story-high central corpus and two adjoining twin smaller buildings of the same color. A large porch at the top of a flight of steps led to the main door, which had a brass mailbox in the middle.
The façade was partially covered in ivy and the white frame windows peered at you through the snaking brown branches like some huge eyes. To the right there was an old barn, and on the left I could see a garden with rose bushes and a few apple trees. The whole property had a gloomy air, an impression which was heightened by the somber sky swathing the place like an old blanket. The silence was as heavy as concrete.
I climbed the steps and rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. As I was getting ready to press the button again, I spied a small blue Renault Clio approaching the house on the dirt road. The car made a turn and stopped by the barn. An elderly woman stepped out and opened the doors, then parked the car inside. She reemerged from the barn and headed for the house, carrying a transparent plastic bag full of groceries in her left hand.
She noticed me on the porch and came to a halt at the bottom of the steps, looking up at me. She seemed to be around the same age as Claudette Morel, but much better looking, despite her age.
“Hello there,” I said, “and sorry to bother you. Are you Ms. Maillot? My name is James Cobb, and I’ve come from the States with a personal message for you from Mr. Joshua Fleischer.”
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, as if she hadn’t understood what I’d said, and then she asked me, “Am I supposed to know this gentleman?”
“I know that you and your sister, Simone, met him and his friend, Abraham Hale, in Paris, back in the mid-seventies. Simone and Abraham actually worked together for a few months at a foundation called L’Etoile, as far as I know.”
She didn’t answer, but started climbing the steps to the entrance. I descended to help her with her groceries. When we arrived in front of the door, she took her bag back and said, “I don’t have time to talk to you right now, Mr. Cobb, I’m sorry. My father is ill and I have to look after him. It’s not a good time, I’m sure you understand.”
She took a complicated brass key from the pocket of her raincoat and unlocked the door.
“Joshua Fleischer died from leukemia, Ms. Maillot,” I said. “Abraham is dead too. He passed away in a psychiatric hospital, after he killed a prostitute he was paying to play the role of your sister.”
She looked ashen but said nothing, and after a moment’s hesitation gestured for me to follow. I went inside and closed the door behind me. I found myself in a spacious hallway, with a marble floor and wood paneling.
“Papa, j’arrive,” she yelled. “Nous avons un visiteur! Tout va bien?”
She took off her coat, hung it on a rack, and invited me to do the same with mine. I left my parka and briefcase in the hallway and followed her upstairs.
We crossed a large kitchen and entered a huge living room with a long table in the middle. To the right there was a marble fireplace, and a mahogany buffet to the left. The place was clean, well lit, and looked like a museum, stuffed with antique furniture, paintings, etchings, and panoplies with edged weapons. A man was sitting in a wheelchair close to the fireplace, swathed in a woolen blanket like a mummy.
She rushed over to the man, searched the blanket, and sighed.
“Please wait here for a minute,” she told me. “I’m sorry, but I have to change him.”
She released the safety catch, pushed the wheelchair into the next room, and closed the tall doors behind her. I sat down on a chair at the table. The floor had been recently polished, and the walls repainted. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling. In one corner there was a small pillow and a half-drunk bowl of water, a cat’s nest without a cat. In another corner, I saw a strange shrine: on several wooden shelves there were icons, crucifixes, and a couple of small statuettes, laid out in some mysterious order. In the middle of them, there was a framed photo of a young woman, next to a small oil lamp.
It was very warm and the air was sultry. I stood up and checked the radiators; they were burning hot. From the other side of the doors, I could hear the woman’s voice buzzing monotonously, like a bee trapped in a jar.
When she came back, after ten minutes or so, I noticed she’d changed her clothes and was now wearing corduroy trousers and a light woolen sweater. The old man in the wheelchair was tall and round-shouldered and looked so aged you would have sworn he was over a hundred. Despite the heat, he wore a thick calf-length smock, beneath which I could see a pair of pants of the same color. His hair was completely white and covered his skull in long disheveled locks. In the bright light, his face looked like vintage parchment, his eyes sunken deep in his head, staring into empty space.
“We’re good now, aren’t we, Papa?” she asked him, running her fingers through his hair. “Perhaps we should offer our visitor a glass of wine, what do you think?”
I told her not to bother, but she hurried off to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Lucas Duchamp. I moved my hand up and down in front of his face, but he seemed not to notice, and his eyes didn’t follow the movement. His cheeks were covered in dark blotches, and his face was furrowed with deep wrinkles.
She returned carrying a silver tray with two glasses and a carafe of red wine. She put the tray on the table, poured the liquor, and half-drained her glass without waiting for me.
“Would you like to join us for lunch, Mr. Cobb?” she asked me. “We have andouillette, one of Papa’s favorites.”
I told her that I wasn’t hungry, and she said, “Well, actually I’m not hungry either, but my father is probably starving. We can talk while I feed him.” I took a sip of wine and waited once more, watching Lucas Duchamp, who remained motionless in his black wheelchair.
She laid the table with sweeping gestures, as if performing a long-established ritual, and brought out some sausages and fries. She started feeding her stepfather, dabbing his lips with a kitchen towel after each morsel. I said nothing, waiting for her to talk again.
“He was the best father in the world,” she said. “When my sister and I were little, he never laid a finger on us, ever, under any circumstances. I hired a nurse, who comes twice a week, but I enjoy looking after him, for me it’s not a chore or a hassle.”
She sipped her wine and smacked her lips, searching my face.
“Now please tell me, Mr. Cobb, how do you know Abraham and Joshua, and how do you know so much about their past?”
“I’m a psychiatrist, Ms. Maillot, and Josh was one of my patients. He told me about the period of time they had spent in Paris in the mid-seventies. After he died I came across a diary that belonged to Mr. Abraham Hale.”
“You told me that you had a personal message for me from Joshua. What could it be?”
I told her as briefly as I could what I knew about Josh and Abraham and she listened to me carefully, without comment. Finally, I mentioned that before coming to see her, I’d met with Claudette Morel in Paris.
“I’ve learned from one of our mutual acquaintances that she hasn’t been exactly sound in the head these last few years,” she stressed. “If I were you, I’d take what she says with a big grain of salt.”
“She told me that you were best friends back then and shared an apartment.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. We were friends, yes, and we shared an apartment, but—”
“She also said that you asked her to come with you to the hotel where Simone had arranged a meeting with Joshua. It was the night when your sister disappeared.”
She’d finished feeding her stepfather, and cleared the table, coming back from the kitchen with an ashtray and a pack of Vogue. She produced a lighter from her pocket, lit a cigarette, and said, “I can’t remember many details, Mr. Cobb, it was so long ago. And it doesn’t really matter anymore, don’t you think? What was Joshua’s message? I don’t have much time, I’m very sorry. I know you’ve made such a long trip to come here.”
“Before we get to that, I’d like to ask you something, Ms. Maillot, if I might be so bold. Do you think that Josh or Abraham, or maybe both of them, were involved in your sister’s disappearance?”
“I beg your pardon? No, I don’t think so. Why?”
I took from my pocket the gold pendant that Josh had sent me and put it on the table, in front of her.
“Josh asked me to give you this.”
She glanced at the jewel, but didn’t touch it.
“Well, I don’t have a clue why he did this, but thank you, Mr. Cobb. I’ll keep it and treasure it. Is there something else you would like to tell me?”
“What happened that night, Ms. Maillot? You were right there, in the next room. What happened to your sister after Claudette left the hotel?”
She stubbed out the butt of her cigarette and looked me straight in the eye.
“I don’t think that’s any of your concern, Mr. Cobb. I don’t know what Claudette told you exactly and I don’t think it matters anymore. Now—”
“But you know exactly what happened, don’t you?”
She stood up and pushed the wheelchair to the fireplace. Lucas Duchamp’s eyes were now closed, as if he’d fallen asleep. She sat back down on her chair, lit another cigarette, and said, “Are you insinuating that I had something to do with my sister’s disappearance?”
“No, I’m not insinuating anything. I’m certain.”
“And I suppose that you want me to confirm whatever Joshua’s imagination has conjured up. I can’t and won’t. I think you’d better leave. At the end of the day, I don’t know w
ho you are, why you came here, and what you want from me. If you don’t leave immediately, I’ll have to call the police.”
I decided to play my ace up my sleeve. “Ms. Maillot, have you ever heard about a man named Perrin, Nicolas Perrin? Does this name ring a bell?”
Her face turned red, and for a moment I thought she was going to suffer a stroke. Her hands were shaking, and she almost dropped her cigarette from between her fingers. I heard a choked, gurgling sound coming from Lucas Duchamp’s throat, as if he was struggling to say something, but the words drowned before reaching his lips. His eyes were now wide open and focused on me.
She made an effort to pull herself together, cast a glance at her stepfather, and asked, “Would you like to go outside? There’s a nice place by the garden in which we can stay and talk.”
We stood up and went downstairs. She took her coat from the rack and threw it over her shoulders, then exchanged her slippers for a pair of boots. She ushered me along a paved path around the side of the mansion. There was a large sunhouse and we walked inside. The place was full of old things—clothing, garden tools, broken pottery, empty bottles, watering cans—but by the entrance there was a fold-up table and four chairs.
The smell of damp and dust hung in the air. A black and white cat appeared out of the blue and rubbed against her legs. She bent over and fondled the scruff of its neck, then searched her surroundings and fetched a mug to use as an ashtray.
We sat down and she lit a cigarette. “Now tell me how you came across that name you mentioned,” she asked.
“Before that, I want you to know something about Josh. He never knew the truth about that night and spent the rest of his life suspecting himself of being a murderer. The sense of guilt ate him up inside. When your friend, Claudette, sent him a letter a few months ago, accusing him of having been involved in your sister’s disappearance, he tried to get to the truth one last time. He hired me to help him, but I couldn’t do anything. For him, over the years it became less about what really happened that night, and more about what might have happened and what he might have been capable of doing under certain circumstances.”
Bad Blood Page 21
