The Twenty-Year Death (18 page)

“I’ll get the resident physician,” she said, her weight already shifting, ready.

“No,” the chief inspector said. “I’m fine.”

Madame Rosenkrantz was sitting in one of the chairs along the wall of the main entry hall, her lost blank expression back
on her face. She looked up at Pelleter as he came in, but she made no comment about the bruise he could already feel welling up on his face. When he held out his hand, she stood up, and walked past him out the front entrance.

The nurse, still standing, watched them go, shaking her head, but whether in disapproval or disbelief, it could not be said.

Outside, Madame Rosenkrantz did not speak, nor did she ask where they were going. He took her by the arm and led her back to the center of town where a single car was crossing the square, and then out to the Rosenkrantz home.

In front of the gate to her house, she stopped, resisting, and he at last let go of her elbow.

She looked at him, and there was some color in her cheeks from the walk. Her eyes seemed more focused, but the pain was still written across her face. “Will this ever stop?” she said.

“You should be safe now,” he said.

She shook her head. That was not what she had meant.

He nodded. “It’ll stop.” But his neck ached, and he did not know.

“I guess I thought he’d always be there for me if I really needed him.”

“Have you needed him?” Pelleter said.

“No.”

“Go home to your husband.”

She put her hand on the gate, and Pelleter turned away, heading back into town without watching whether or not she really went home. When he was a few steps away, he heard the gate close behind him.

He ate dinner alone at the hotel, and he called his wife before going to bed just to say good night.

In the morning, Pelleter was in high spirits, even with the soreness from the previous night’s adventure. When he had come to Verargent, it had been to receive the testimony of an already incarcerated prisoner, no more than a day trip. Five days later, there were six dead bodies—seven, if he was not mistaken—at least one other murder attempt, and a building full of suspects. But today, Sunday, he was certain that he would have the answers to his questions, and that he could go home.

In the hotel lobby, he found Officer Martin sleeping in the lion’s-footed armchair Fournier had waited in Friday night. Martin was dressed in the same uniform he had worn yesterday, now thoroughly wrinkled, and a day’s growth of beard covered his face. He had a number of files clutched to his chest, his arms crossed over them.

Pelleter called to the boy behind the counter, somebody he had never seen before, “How long has he been here?”

“I come on at seven and he was here then.”

It was only a little before eight now. The first train from the city came into Verargent at nine-forty, and Pelleter wanted to be there when Lambert arrived with his prisoner.

He hated to wake Martin if the man had been working most of the night, but there was nothing to be done about it. Besides, Letreau wouldn’t want one of his men to be seen with his mouth hanging open in the hotel lobby. He reached out and touched the young man’s shoulder.

Martin started, grimaced, and looked around without moving his head, a quizzical expression on his face. “Inspector,” he said, stretching in the seat, and then sitting upright, letting his burden of files down into his lap. He rubbed a hand across his face, and then became aware of the fact that he was being observed by a superior officer. His eyes went wide, and he prepared to stand.

“Inspector, I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep. I wanted to be sure to get you these.”

He started to sort through the files on his lap.

“It’s okay,” Pelleter said, amused at the young man’s enthusiasm. It seemed to contribute to the upbeat temper at the end of a case. “Take your time. No need to stand. What time did you get in?”

“Maybe five. What time is it now?”

“Eight.”

Martin had the files in order now, and he looked up at the chief inspector. His eyes went wide for a second time at the sight of Pelleter’s battered face. “What happened?”

“Apparently somebody thinks we’re too close to finished. Once you show me those files, I have a feeling we might know who.”

Martin handed three of them up to Pelleter. They were thick files with years of paperwork on uneven paper of various colors, the oldest sheets an almost amber-brown.

Pelleter opened the first one. It was Passemier’s, the guard who had had nothing to say. He had been a large man. It was possible that he had been Pelleter’s attacker, but he had seemed too certain of his invincibility. “Fournier let you take these out of the prison?”

Martin went slightly red. “Fournier wasn’t there, and I thought nobody would mind...”

Pelleter opened the second file, which was the warden’s. It showed that his service had begun in 1899, the same as Passemier, on cell block D. While Pelleter looked, Martin talked:

“You were right, as you can see. Those three men all started as guards at Malniveau within a few years of one another.”

The third file was for a man named Soldaux. He had started in 1896, also on cell block D. The top of his file had been stamped, “Retired.”

“And if you look at their detail...”

“All three worked the same cell block when they started. Does Soldaux still live in town?”

“Yes.”

Pelleter smiled and nodded, looking off into the distance. It looked as though he might burst out singing. He would not be surprised at all to find that Soldaux was also a very large man.

Martin was startled to see the inspector so pleased. He stood then, and handed the inspector the file in his hand, coming around so that he could look at it at the same time as Pelleter.

“If you look here...Since the files of the murdered prisoners were marked transferred, I got the idea that we should see what a file looked like if a prisoner was murdered and it was marked properly...”

This was another old file, as full as the others. It was for a prisoner named Renaud Leclerc. He had been sent to Malniveau in 1894 on a conspiracy charge, an anarchist believed responsible for a series of bombings in which several people were injured although no one was killed.

Martin, excited over his discovery, talked faster than Pelleter could read. “Leclerc was killed two months ago, at least a month before any of the men found in the field. He had no family any longer, so he was buried here in Verargent, which is why we didn’t know about it. The police are only informed if the body has to go out by train.”

“Good work, my boy,” Pelleter said, still reading through Leclerc’s history. “Good work.”

Martin beamed, and his broad smile juxtaposed with his shabby appearance was comic. He had the makings of a fine detective.

Pelleter closed the file, and looked closely into Martin’s face. “Listen to me, we’re nearly finished. This is what I need you to do...Go to Soldaux’s house, and bring him to Town Hall. Stop by the station and get a partner first. He may not want to come with you, and I don’t want him getting away...I have a feeling he’ll be a big man...yes, I’m certain of it...Then the same with Passemier. Again, two men...I have to meet the nine-forty train with Chief Letreau...Do you think you can handle this?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Martin waited expectantly for the inspector to say something else, but Pelleter continued to look off into the distance with a smile on his lips.

“Yes...” the inspector said to himself. His smile broadened. He saw that Martin was still standing next to him. “Go. Go. I want everybody there by ten-thirty at the latest.”

Martin turned and practically ran out the door. Pelleter wasn’t far behind.

The weather fit the inspector’s mood, not a trace of the storm from earlier in the week. It looked as though it never rained in Verargent.

“Inspector,” somebody called as Pelleter turned towards the police station. Officer Martin was already out of sight. “Inspector!”

It was Servières.

Pelleter didn’t stop, but instead called behind him, “Come to the station around ten o’clock. You’ll get your story then.”

Servières surprised at this jovial command, stopped short, and Pelleter hurried on to the police station.

The Verargent train station was little more than a wide patch of beaten dirt at the side of the track just outside of town. A small wooden enclosure open on two sides had been built at some time to offer protection from the elements, but it had clearly long been a target of vandalism for the Verargent youth. There was a hole through the roof, and every square inch had been carved into more than once.

Pelleter and Letreau stood under the post that read
Verargent
outside of the enclosure. The weather was warm, and Pelleter had removed his jacket and held it draped over his arm. He whistled as he looked down the length of railroad track that cut through the countryside.

Letreau paced, impatient. He appeared less ragged than the day before, but still on edge.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, not for the first time. He had already asked Pelleter about his injuries and had not been happy that the chief inspector had not given him much of an answer.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Pelleter said, and resumed whistling.

“It’s all well and good for you, but I have to live here. We don’t want any problems with the prison. We want to forget that it’s there. I haven’t spent so much time out there in one week in my life.”

The distant steam of the locomotive could be seen on the horizon.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Now that the train was visible, Letreau stopped, and stood beside Pelleter. Pelleter put his jacket back on, and put his hands in his pockets. He would have liked to smoke a cigar, but he had not had a chance to replenish his supply.

“You hope to leave tonight?” Letreau said.

“That’s the plan.”

“It’ll really be tied up?”

“You might not have all the answers you want, but I think you’ll have the ones you need.”

“My wife’ll never forgive you for skipping all those dinners.”

The tracks began to sing their metallic whine.

The two policemen stood side by side like immovable objects. The train whistle sounded, and the air brakes hissed while the train was still two hundred yards away. The chuff chuff of the wheels slowed, the expanse of metal slowing impossibly, and then the engine stopped just past them, and the escaping hiss of gas marked the train’s arrival in Verargent.

A round-hatted conductor appeared on the platform of the first car before them, and called, “Verargent,” and then Lambert appeared.

Pelleter smiled at the sight of his old friend and colleague, but he didn’t take his hands out of his pockets.

“You are some trouble, aren’t you?” Lambert called, as he stepped down.

Behind him, a tight, pale face appeared, an older man carrying two large leather cases in front of him.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Letreau said again, a refrain that had long since lost its meaning.

The older man stepped down as well. The warden of Malniveau Prison was home.

Being escorted home by a national police inspector had made the warden quiet. He looked as though he were in danger of throwing up at any moment.

His wife, however, had no qualms about laying into Inspector Pelleter.

“Who do you think you are that you have us taken on a train against our will, and on our vacation, too! My husband is a very important man. You think you can push him around!”

The warden ignored his wife’s outburst, and headed directly for the police car that was parked just off the side of the road near the train stop.

Letreau tried to catch Pelleter’s eye, but unable to, he turned to follow the warden.

“The reason we have an assistant warden is just so that this kind of thing does not happen,” the warden’s wife continued, her cloying perfume sweetening the air. “It’s not a one-man job, certainly not anymore, now that my husband’s not a young man. You take this up with Fournier. We would have been back tomorrow.”