“And you two are what? Investigators?”
“I’m a lawyer. Mr. Keane is . . . someone who sorts things.”
Overnight parcels, if we were being literal. Crevier looked to me with higher expectations. “Yes?” he prompted.
“Do you have an enemy?” I asked. “One who would do anything to get to you?”
“All men have enemies, Mr. Keane, unless they are saints. Perhaps especially if they are saints. Why are we discussing my enemies? Why not yours or Mr. Ohlman’s? Why not the Le Clares’, since it was their daughter who was killed?”
“The Le Clares, Mr. Ohlman, and I don’t fit other . . . requirements,” I said. Crevier’s face seemed to droop even more, and I hurried on. “You may recall something the minister said during the ceremony: Those gathered there were a new community created by Kit and Emile’s love.”
“I remember.”
“I think those words inspired the crime. I think someone in that community was desperate to recreate it. There was one sure way to accomplish that. He or she could kill Kit and Emile, either making it look like an accident, which would have taken time to plan, or like a random killing committed during the commission of a robbery. The marriage community would then be reunited for a double funeral.”
“Why would anyone go to those lengths, Mr. Keane?”
“That’s what I asked myself next. It had to be that a guest at the wedding saw someone very important to him, saw him so unexpectedly that he was not prepared to act. Before he could gather himself, this unexpected person left. So I had one characteristic of the murderer’s real target. He didn’t attend the reception.”
“I did not,” Crevier said.
“This target had to have some other characteristics to explain what happened in Quebec. Even if he’d given the murderer the slip after the wedding, it should have been possible to trace him through the Derivals or Le Clares without resorting to violence. That didn’t happen, so the target had to be unapproachable through any conventional means, someone who lived behind a wall of security that the murderer couldn’t breach, someone who had to be tricked into the open.
“I asked Mr. Ohlman to inquire about such a person. If there hadn’t been one, I would have accepted the killings at face value. But there was one, Mr. Crevier. You. So I have to ask you again, do you have a mortal enemy?”
The old man drew deeply on his neglected cigarette. “To answer that, gentlemen, I must tell you a story.”
6.
“Are you familiar with the Algerian War of Independence?”
I would have had to say not very. Luckily, Harry was tired of sitting out the hand.
“It was an uprising against French colonial rule back in the fifties,” he said.
Crevier nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Some of us did not consider Algiers to be a colony. We thought of it as part of France. It seems an odd conceit after all this time. But the belief was strong enough then to support the fighting for years. By nineteen sixty-one, however, the French people had had enough. They voted in favor of separation with Algiers. Some elements of the French army refused to accept this decision. They seized control of Algiers in April nineteen sixty-one. I was a member of that group. The man you are seeking—if Mr. Keane’s conclusions and mine are correct—was another.
“The putsch lasted but a few days. General de Gaulle rallied the nation against us, and key army units refused to follow us. The generals and colonels in command of the insurrection fled or were arrested. I myself was almost killed.
“I had decided to surrender to the civilian authorities and return my troops to the flag of France. My second in command, a major named Burnon, urged me instead to join a group of officers who planned an underground resistance. Burnon had lost a brother in the fighting and become a fanatic. When I refused to join him, he shot me, condemning me to this chair. Nevertheless, with the help of Tritt—” he indicated the man behind him with a wave of his cigarette— “I escaped Algiers with my life.
“I came to the United States, hoping for a cure for my legs that did not come. I stayed because I had friends here, some ex-patriots, some American. I had served as a liaison to the Americans in North Africa in the war against the Nazis. Those old comrades proved more faithful than Burnon.”
“What became of him?” I asked.
“He joined the OAS, the terrorist organization formed by survivors of the Algiers putsch. When the OAS was crushed, there were rumors that Burnon had been killed, but I never believed them. I believe he has been living in exile all these years, as I have, under a false name, as I have, enduring God knows what indignities and privations for which he now blames me. He must have formed some connection to the French ex-patriot community here, which is natural enough. By an unhappy chance, he was also a guest at the wedding.”
Harry said, “You saw him there?”
“No. Believe me, gentlemen, when I say that if I had known Burnon was there, if I had guessed that he posed the least threat to those children, I would have acted to save them.”
“We can still get the guy,” Harry said. “We’ll give the police what we know. They’ll go over the guest list, narrow it down, and nail him.”
“They never will,” Crevier said. “If Burnon was responsible for that horror in Quebec, you must believe that he has cut himself free of whatever identity he has been living under, so he could melt away at the first suggestion that the police had uncovered his plans. They could establish his discarded persona but never put their hands on the man. There is only one way to do that, gentlemen.”
He handed me the punch line with a glance.
“Go ahead with the funeral,” I said.
“Yes. Go ahead with the funeral. I will attend. That will draw Burnon out of hiding.”
Tritt didn’t like the idea, or so I concluded from a tightening of his mouth and a darkening of his skin that made the scar on his cheek glow white. Harry didn’t like it either, and he spoke up.
“We could be adding to the list of innocent bystanders. Suppose he puts a bomb under the church.”
“Not Burnon. He will shoot me face-to-face as he did thirty years ago. He will sacrifice his own life to do it.”
“It’s hard to stop an assassin who’s willing to sacrifice himself,” I observed.
“I am a soldier, Mr. Keane. Danger is part of my profession. I would face this danger just to avenge those two young people. But I also have a motive of my own. You have observed, perhaps, the manner in which I live. Not uncomfortably, thanks to some investment advice, but not freely. There has been a price on my head since nineteen sixty-one, placed there by the government I once served. All these years, I have waited for the knock on my door and the hand on my collar.
“Now that has changed. Not long ago, an amnesty was passed in France for the officers who led the putsch. I have made inquiries since and learned that, if I desired to return to my native land, I would not be molested. My dream is to go back to the village where I was born and live quietly and simply, without locked doors around me. But until Burnon is caught, my plans must wait. I dare not leave this prison I have made for myself while he is free.
“So, gentlemen, how do we proceed?”
He addressed the question to me, but Harry answered. “We contact the authorities down in Somerset County. And we make our plans.”
7.
Harry had likened my original deduction, the one that led us to Crevier, to the work of Rex Stout, but I stepped from that tower thinking instead of the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Of The Sign of Four and “The Crooked Man” and the others in which some ancient crime, committed in an exotic place, is recounted and accounted for in the present.
I would have shared this reflection with Harry, but he was, as usual, all business now that there was business to conduct. “We’ll have to get in touch with the police in Quebec,” he said as we waited for the tower’s doorman to snag us a cab. “They’re the ones who’ll end up with Burnon, assuming we get him alive.”
“As
suming we get him period,” I said. “I don’t think we surprised Crevier today. I mean, when we told him why we were there, he looked sadder, but he never seemed shocked.”
“The Le Clares told him yesterday about my call, Owen. So he had all night to work it out. We just confirmed his worst fears this morning. Don’t feel bad if he reached the same conclusion you did. He had a lot more pieces of the puzzle to work with. Burnon, for one.”
The doorman landed our taxi, and we headed off at the usual breakneck pace. Today, it seemed justified. We had plans to make, as Harry had said. That is, he and the other responsible adults did. That Harry had been referring to a group that didn’t include me when he’d used the second person plural was brought home to me when he asked if I wanted to be dropped at Penn Station or the Port Authority Building.
I selected the train station, and we careered along in silence for a time. I didn’t blame Harry for excluding me. I’d had some close calls during my years as an amateur sleuth. I couldn’t enter a barn or a liquor store without thinking of two especially close ones. Luckily, I hardly ever entered a barn. But for the most part, my cases didn’t involve shootouts or blood feuds. So I wouldn’t contribute much in a strategy session with a SWAT team. And I was consoled by the certainty that the police would dump Harry as quickly as he had dumped me.
A block from the station, Harry broke the silence. “The toughest part of this may be keeping Mary away from the funeral.”
“You’re still thinking about a bomb?”
“Bombs, bullets, water balloons. I don’t care what this Burnon uses. I don’t want Mary within a mile of him. I don’t want to risk her life.”
That might have been a dig at me and my past performance as a guardian of Mary—she’d been tied up with me in that long-ago barn—but I didn’t care. I liked hearing that Harry was concerned for her safety. Ever since I’d danced with Mary at the reception and she’d asked about Harry’s happiness, I’d been worried. And I’d been looking for an opening for a conversation with Harry that I really didn’t want to have. Now, it seemed, I didn’t have to have it.
A moment later, as we pulled up in front of Penn Station, Harry yanked that deep-pile misconception out from under me.
“Here’s the thing about a rut, Owen. You only live in one in the first place because the world outside it frightens you. The last thing you want is for anything to change.”
8.
I had time on my hands when I stepped from the train in Elizabeth, where I rented rooms. I’d gotten the morning off by switching with someone on the second shift, which was still hours away. So I walked the hills of the old city. It had been badly served by the twentieth century, had in fact become an apt symbol for modern life, squeezed as it was on all sides and sliced through the middle by super highways. But it wasn’t a bad place for a walk, in daylight at least.
I fell into thinking about Crevier’s world, comparing his Spartan apartment to the busy streets around me. His empire was cleaner than downtown Elizabeth and certainly safer, but it was very much less alive. I could understand his desire to return to his native village, perhaps to watch the comings and goings from a table in the café, if it had one, on the central square, if there was one.
From there I moved to wondering how Crevier had spent his years of exile. Not buttoned up in his tower, surely. Not completely. De Gaulle and his successors didn’t have that long a reach. And if he’d never ventured out, Crevier would never have met the Le Clares and become a favorite of Kit’s. If he got out at all, New York would have been a comfortable place for his exile. A prison, perhaps, but one with a very nice exercise yard, complete with restaurants, theaters, and museums. I’d known people who’d passed much harsher sentences on themselves. In fact, I’d done it myself, once upon a time.
That led me to wonder whether, should Burnon be captured and Crevier returned alive to his village, the old man would be content with his choice. Would he miss the bright lights when he was sitting beside some trout stream, waiting for a bite?
Regretted choices were a regular feature of my contemplations, not surprisingly, given the odd course my own life had taken. But that day the subject seemed especially pressing, and not just because of Crevier. I was also worried about Harry, the man who had brought me the Crevier case and then bumped me from it. In fact, one of the reasons I was thinking about the Frenchman now—pointless though it was since my demotion to spectator—was to avoid thinking of Harry’s assessment of his marriage: You only live in a rut in the first place because the world outside it frightens you.
That paraphrasing came to my mind against my will, and I tried to force it out again by returning to the subject of Anton Crevier. The transition was easy to make, so much so that I was almost able to fool myself into believing Harry had been referring to the old soldier’s life and not his own when he’d spoken of ruts.
The coincidence brought me up short in the middle of Broad Street. I recovered just as the light changed and managed to reach the far curb in one piece. There I checked through my reasoning before setting off again at a run. I started for my apartment and then spotted a much nearer alternative: a supermarket where I’d once stocked shelves. Inside its door, between the mechanical bronco and the gumball machines, was a pay phone. I used it to place a somewhat breathless and very collect call.
9.
The Derivals and the Le Clares got a nice day for the joint funeral, for whatever solace that was to them. The church where Kit and Emile had been married was pressed into service again, and was even more tightly packed. Or so I judged from the crowd that streamed past my sentry post. That crowd included Harry and Mary—who hadn’t been talked out of attending—and Beth Wolfe. I didn’t escort her today, preferring for some reason to stand apart from the proceedings.
I also stayed well away from the police, who were there in force, though discreet. The headquarters of my stakeout was a little three-sided park across the street from the church. From there, I saw Anton Crevier arrive at the last possible moment, pushed by Tritt, whose head never stopped turning on its stork’s neck. Crevier didn’t scan the crowd once, but he didn’t slump in his chair either. He sat as upright as his damaged body would permit, looking straight before him. As far as I could tell from my vantage point, none of the other stragglers so much as met the old man’s gaze.
After the service, the process was reversed, Crevier and his bodyguard leaving a little after the main crowd and drawing no special attention. Tritt seemed to grow edgier as they neared the limousine that had carried them out from the city. Crevier, in contrast, sagged visibly, like a man who’d tired of waiting for his firing squad to come off break. The process of loading him into the car forced Tritt to lower his guard. Still, no one approached them.
I joined the waiting Ohlmans and Beth for the short ride to the cemetery and then deserted them again, climbing a hill from which I could just hear the words of the graveside service. When it was over, the mourners drifted away, leaving, finally, only two men, one in a wheelchair. I walked down the hill to them.
“Our plan has failed, Mr. Keane,” Crevier said. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his jowly face. “My penance is not over yet, it seems.”
Harry joined us, accompanied by two men. I would have tagged them as policemen even if I hadn’t been in on the day’s proceedings.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said to the old man. “We’ll have to think of something else. Owen has an idea.”
“Yes?” Crevier said, fixing me with his black eyes.
Tritt was also watching me intently. I reached into the side pocket of my suit coat, a bit of stage business designed to hold their attention a moment longer. As my hand came out empty, the two policemen grabbed Tritt, one on either arm.
“What is this?” Crevier demanded, struggling to turn in his chair.
By then, Tritt had been relieved of a slim black automatic. When they led him off, his head was bowed almost to his chest.
“What is this?” the old man ask
ed again, this time of me.
I asked him a question in turn. “Where was Tritt the day the Derivals were killed?”
“It was his free day. I don’t know what he did.”
Harry told him. “He flew to Quebec. The police identified the flight and the alias he used. He killed Kit and Emile.”
“But Burnon—”
“Died in nineteen sixty-one, probably,” I said. “When we came to see you at your apartment, you weren’t surprised by anything we told you. Why was that?”
“We had worked it out for ourselves after speaking with the Le Clares.”
“We?”
“Tritt and I . . .” Crevier’s voice trailed away to nothing.
I said, “We accidentally played into Tritt’s hand by coming up with our solution. If we hadn’t, he would have found some other way to get you thinking about Burnon. He needed you to be frightened for his plan to work.”
“What plan?”
“His scheme to hold on to a life he couldn’t give up. He didn’t want your exile to end. He didn’t want to be let go or to find himself living in a little village in charge of a staff of one. He couldn’t undo the amnesty your government had offered you. But if he could get you living in fear again, his routine would be safe. So he committed murder to do it.”
10.
The driver of Crevier’s limousine approached, nervously scanning the headstones around us. His employer held him off with a raised hand.
“And for that two young people died?”
Meaning, of course, that it wasn’t enough, that the solution to the mystery didn’t satisfy him. One selfish man’s wishes couldn’t balance scales holding two young lives. I understood his disappointment. I’d filed the same complaint at the same window more than once, for all the good it had ever done me.
When he tired of waiting for an answer, Crevier waved his chauffeur up. Harry went with them, to help with the challenge of moving the old man into the car. I hung back.
I was tempted to pluck a flower from one of the arrangements and toss it onto the gleaming caskets, as I’d seen other mourners do. Instead, I fell into thinking, for the last time, of the sermon from the wedding service. The minister had said then that no one knew what had happened to the lucky couple who had been married at Cana, and it occurred to me now that that wasn’t true. We certainly didn’t know the details of their married life. But we knew how the couple had ended their years or months or weeks or days together. They’d ended them exactly as Kit and Emile had, minus the fancy trappings. They’d died, perhaps together, more likely not. But if death had parted them, it had reunited them eventually. They’d ended up together in some plot of land, like the one near which I stood.
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 Page 19
