Returned to the sanctuary of their summer cabin, Émile and Sandra Cinq-Mars enjoyed a peaceful late-afternoon nap. The timbre of birdsong lulled them to sleep, and as they awaken, the scent of sea air wafts through the open windows, a magical stimulation of the senses. Rising with some minor muscle soreness brought on by their long trek, Émile reconfirms that he’s glad not to be on the job. Glad also not to be running down the murder that’s presented itself locally, like some kind of devilish, or at least impish, temptation.
He wants no part of it.
This is so much better than that. Just lying around.
Besides, the time has come for drinks.
The high that routed the storm brought with it warmer temperatures, and the day progressively heated up. They choose to occupy the shady side of the porch to imbibe. To combat the heat, Émile opts for a long vodka tonic, while Sandra fixes her favorite cranberry cosmopolitan. A few salty snacks and mixed nuts come out. Sandra tucks her legs in under her on a comfy wicker divan and opens her newly acquired, nearly antique book on numerology, while Émile is content to stare out at the grasses and the bay beyond, observing a dalliance of warblers and thrush, goldfinch and pine siskin. Way off to the right a dog romps freely, literally bounding into the air as though its abundant happiness is all but impossible to contain.
Sandra observes, “We’ve had quite a day, Émile.”
Although she contends that he always has some other level to achieve in any talk, Émile has detected a pattern that’s similar in her. Whenever she utters what might sound to be nothing more than a casual observation, a way of breaking a silence, such thoughts with Sandra inevitably instigate the onset of a trail worth traveling, as if her life is perpetually littered by bread crumbs. Émile conveys a soft utterance and waits for her to say more, then smiles to himself when she does so.
“Taking care of horses … putting in a hard day’s work is satisfying, you know? Get all the chores done, the animals exercised, watered, fed, brushed, put to bed. And yet the prize for that long day’s work—which is hard, and you can never ask the horses for a weekend off—the prize is always to get up in the morning and realize that you have to do it all over again.”
“Whereas here, we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”
“My sentiment exactly. I like this. I love it. I could get used to it in a hurry.”
“Mmm,” he concurs, although vaguely.
“Horses are demanding,” she imparts from long experience. “Seven days’ work and the next week begins. Only it never ends.”
He agrees again, yet with only a slight grunt.
For her part, she knows that he is thinking of something and so delays speaking, hoping that he’ll come out with it. He doesn’t always. Émile prefers to keep contrary thoughts to himself.
This time though, he declares his position. “Ironic, in a way. Today I bitched about devoting my life to criminals. Chasing them down really means being tied to them by a kind of umbilical cord. I wasn’t complaining exactly, and you’re not either, but I was reflecting on what a shame it is to devote one’s life to criminals. You have a similar thought—namely, that the care of horses takes up the bulk of your life. Both the better part of your day and ultimately, let’s face it, the better part of your life. You’ll notice a similar theme running through here.”
She does. “Careers are demanding, no matter what they are. Even though we’ve been lucky enough to choose ours, and to have enjoyed them, a career can still have a shelf life. Comes a time to move on.”
No grunt this time, which she extrapolates to mean that he’s not quite ready either to agree or disagree, but he’s taking her ideas deeper into his consideration.
“So, individually,” he begins, “our lives have been changing, right? Yours and mine. Maybe I’m just being hopeful here, but perhaps our couple troubles stem from that, when really we should count ourselves fortunate. We’re both seeking a change. The trick might be to find out what we’re looking for and track it down together.”
A different prong to the discussion altogether, and Sandra muses that she may have been apprehended by her husband’s famous penchant for speaking at cross purposes to help foil a culprit’s gambit. Yet she puts that notion aside. He’s right, of course. They have to talk about this, get down to the root of the matter.
“I’m not sure about anything being a trick, Émile. I take your meaning. I take your intention. But we can’t be facile if this is going to be real.”
“Expressed poorly, then. But … you do take my meaning?”
“We need to go over what we do next. No criminals for you. No horses for me. Is either possible? If so, what else is there? Dogs and cats?”
He laughs, and sips his vodka tonic. “Why not? Go save wildlife. A zebra in Africa one week, some kind of lizard in Brazil the next. Then off to the Rockies to rescue Bigfoot from an avalanche. Exciting, no?”
“Haven’t you had enough excitement for one life?”
He surprises her. “What I’m feeling right now, with this view and this drink and the company of my lovely wife, is as relaxed as I’ve ever been. I’m skeptical that this is real, but I like it. As the kids used to say, I can dig it.”
“Speaking of digging,” Sandra asks, “what was that fisherman up to this morning with his shovel?”
He laughs again. “Maybe you should do the detective work from now on, San, and I’ll take care of creatures. The change might do us both good. I could become a bird-watcher maybe.”
“Okay, now, here’s a subject!” She springs this on him, and her sauciness is evident before she explains a thing. “Speaking of what suits us both. Old story, but we’ve noted that your libido is not what it used to be.”
“Now what?” He isn’t really perturbed, knowing that she’s always delicate around the subject.
“Hear me out. It’s understandable. You’re older. But I was thinking. Why wait for nightfall, when you’re tired, to try? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? I know you want to meet me halfway on this.”
“All the way, I’d say, is what I want,” he teases.
“So then, I was thinking. You know what some people call ‘nooners.’ We could have … cocktailers. No pun intended. It’s just a suggestion. No pressure whatsoever. But a drink, a romp in the hay, a sleep, then dinner, then a quiet evening. We could try it, Émile. Not now. That’s pressure and unfair. But we could try it. You might like it. The way our life is set up here, by the sea, could be the ticket.”
The idea has merit, although he’s not sure about one thing and says so. “Why not now?”
She smiles in return, and something might develop, but the sunny disposition of their day is clouded by the sound of a car, not a vehicle in the best running order, pulling up in front of the cottage. Sandra goes down to the end of the back porch and peers around the side wall. A tall, astonishingly long-legged woman uncurls from an older Porsche. The visitor neglects to turn the engine off at first, and leans back inside the small frame to eject her keys. When she stands upright again, she catches sight of Sandra around the corner of the house and smiles. A perfunctory greeting, the smile fading immediately upon being summoned. Sandra notices that the young woman appears under duress.
“May I help you?” Sandra calls out.
“I’m looking for Émile Cinq-Mars. The detective.”
Mentioning his old profession is a warning sign, but Sandra invites her around to the back.
Émile is on his feet by the time the visitor appears. She scales the short stairs and arrives with her open palm extended, stepping past Sandra to shake his hand. She’s a handsome woman, though not a conventional beauty, her features strong, and she carries her height with confidence. She then retraces a step and offers her hand to Sandra. “My name is Madeleine Orrock. How do you do?”
“Miss Orrock,” Émile says. He has a handle on whom she must be.
“I go by Maddy.”
“I’m Sandra, and of course my husband, Émile. What can we do for you?”
“Can we talk?” the tall woman asks. “Sorry to intrude. I’m a bit shaky. I’ve just had news. Sir, it was suggested that I come to see you.”
“Who by?” Émile inquires.
“The police,” she states.
Sandra takes a deeper breath, glances at her husband, and offers Maddy a drink. The woman declines until Émile insists, then she opts for a vodka tonic like his. She’s ushered into a wicker chair and Sandra volunteers to make the cocktail. Émile sits on the love seat closest to her. He doesn’t mean to inflict his incisive stare down his imposing long beak but does so in any case. Force of habit. She seems ready to bolt, he projects, so breaks off his penetrating gaze.
“What police?” he asks. “Louwagie, I presume.”
“No,” she says, “no. This one came to see me on his behalf. Officer Louwagie is taking some downtime, this other officer told me, but they both thought that I should be informed right away.”
“Informed?”
“That was the question I asked. Informed? So, expecting to be informed, I invited the officer into my house, where he proceeded to interrogate me.”
Sandra hears this last line as she opens the screen door with her hip and places her guest’s drink down on the small oval table beside her. Maddy takes a sip at first, then a gulp, and Sandra asks, “Should I leave?”
Maddy begs her to stay. “This isn’t private. I mean, it is. I hope you don’t tell anyone about this, but I’ve interrupted, I’ve intruded. Please stay.”
Sandra agrees after receiving her husband’s subtle nonverbal accord—he is the person this woman has sought out, after all—and Émile continues. “You were interrogated. About what?”
“You two are visitors. You have no reason to care.”
“We heard about a recent murder. Is this related?”
“No, sir. At least I presume that’s a coincidence. My father died two nights ago.”
“You have my sympathies. I’d heard. The police told me. An autopsy is to be conducted.”
“Normally, no one bothers with the death of an old man. Not here. But because of the murder, a visiting medical examiner is handy.”
“What’s become of that?” Émile is forming an impression of his visitor. Her intelligence is apparent, and she probably keeps herself together and controlled. Something’s upset her, and he doubts that she’s accustomed to being in a state. He imagines that her life normally goes along swimmingly.
“Do you know who my father is?”
“Should I?”
“He owns this island. Or he did. Hell, I guess I do now.”
“Owns,” Cinq-Mars repeats, both a leading question and a criticism.
“Okay, an overstatement. I’m understating it if I say that not much on this island was bought or sold without my father raking in a cut.”
“I see. And he died of old age?”
“I thought so. I drove in from Boston because he assured me left, right, and sideways that he was on death’s door. Honestly, I didn’t want to come. We had that kind of relationship. Anyway, I was hoping against hope that he might say something. He insisted that he wanted me here. I came, hoping for a deathbed confession. Or apology. Or something.
“You drove through the storm.”
“I did, yeah.”
“As we did, actually.”
“Really?”
“On a different errand entirely. How did you find your father when you got here, Maddy?”
“I arrived too late. He was already dead.”
“Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yes. Well. Nobody else is. Truth be told, it’s not much of a loss. You’ll find that out sooner or later if you take this case, so I might as well tell you now.”
Sandra and Émile exchange a questioning glance.
“Maddy, there may be a misunderstanding. I don’t know why you’re seeking me out.”
“Officer Methot—Réjean Methot—he suggested it. He said that you already said no to investigating the murder of Reverend Lescavage, but he also said that you might be my only hope. Things aren’t looking too good for me otherwise.”
Émile laments, “I’m still in the dark here.”
“Sorry. I’m rattled. Making no sense. Okay, I arrived home. My father was dead. I’ve been told that he was being looked after by his housemaid. She was relieved that night by Simon Lescavage. That’s what she told me anyway.”
Up to this moment, Émile is feeling that he might be in the company of a soft loony, someone who is bright and privileged from whom he might need to extricate himself early on and perhaps with difficulty. Now the parameters are beginning to interest him.
“The same clergyman who was killed.”
“That’s him. When I arrived home, he wasn’t there. My father was neatly tucked in his bed with two nickels on his eyelids. The bedcovers smoothed out. He seemed peaceful in death. As though he passed away quietly.”
Émile sips from his own drink. He wipes a bead of perspiration from his left temple. Now that he’s gotten over his concern that she might be a trifle daffy, he sees that she’s not only smart but credible. He doesn’t feel he’s dealing with someone who’s trying to put something over on him. Though if it’s true that a policeman directed her to him, he needs to have a word with that man.
“What was the agenda for this so-called interrogation? What did Officer Methot want to know, essentially?”
“Honestly, I think he wanted to know if I killed Simon Lescavage.”
“Really?” Émile is surprised. He recalls that the two officers on the island had not been given laudatory reviews. One was dismissed as being of lesser intelligence, the other a basket case. “Did he indicate why he might think that way?”
“I arrived here during the storm. By boat. With the power on the island off. That’s held against me as if I’m responsible for the rain and the power outage. I was home alone. That’s also held against me. Apparently, the whole point of my arriving in a storm was to do away with people when no one was around. They think I was the last person to see Reverend Lescavage alive, since he was in my house. He left before I arrived. How do I prove that? No witnesses were out on a night like that one.”
“The slimmest, barest of threads. Only natural they’d ask questions, given that you and the minister were in the same house on the night that he was killed, even if it was at different times. They don’t know that for certain. Are you sure that the officer is accusing you of anything? Not just asking the necessary questions?”
All three persons on the porch know that he’s coddling Maddy Orrock now, patronizing her, and both Émile and Sandra see that she does not take it well.
“It gets worse, sir.” Her voice is strident. “Much worse.”
“Go on.”
“The autopsy on my father has confirmed that he apparently did not die of natural causes, as everyone, including myself, had assumed. He died of suffocation. My father, apparently, was put to death. He was murdered. And, while an endless line of persons known and unknown would’ve liked nothing better than to do that to him, I am, apparently, considered to be in that line and also, quite probably, close to the front. Or first in line. So I’m a person of interest in the death of my father, and, since he was last seen in my house, of Reverend Lescavage, too.”
“Did you kill your father?” No longer humoring her.
“Please. Of course not. He was dead when I arrived. Would I have, if I had the chance? I’m not the type. Could I have? Yes, in the sense that I had the opportunity if—if—I arrived earlier, but I still don’t have it in me. Did I have motive? I’m inheriting a fortune that was coming my way anyway, so the most I can be accused of with respect to motive is impatience. The whole thing is preposterous, except that I know this island. Once the word gets out—and it will—that my dad was murdered, everybody, and I mean everybody, will believe it was me.”
A quiet lingers on the porch, then Sandra says, “That’s dreadful.”
“And how—” Émile begins a question, then checks himself to make sure he is not being impolite. “Not that you are not welcome, you are perfectly welcome, but how have you come to arrive on my doorstep?”
She understands his query. This is an out-of-the-blue visit for her, as well. Less than an hour ago she’d never heard his name.
“My father and I,” she explains, “did not have a good relationship. You’ve gathered that. Yes, an understatement. Still. He’s my father. So having him die, I haven’t known what to think or how to react or even what it is I feel. I have to concede that I’m feeling more than I expected. I’m being hit with a few things that go back a long way.”
Both Émile and Sandra can understand that, and encourage her with nods.
“This policeman arrives. He essentially accuses me of murder. Or suggests I did it. Holy shit. I mean, what? What? And I learn that my father was suffocated and that’s like, what? Why? You know? God, he was going to die anyway, why would anyone bother?”
“Good point,” Cinq-Mars murmurs.
“I’m not proud of this, sir, and it surprises me. I kind of came apart. You know, with the cop in my living room. Got all weepy and frantic and angry and, in the end, indignant. The Orrock in me came out. I questioned who these plebeians are to dare challenge anything I say. Not my best trait. I fell apart. I had the shakes. I still do. Fuck. Excuse me. I haven’t slept much. I think he felt sorry for me, this cop in my house accusing me of murder. I doubt if cops are supposed to be that sympathetic. Maybe he liked me or something.”
She digs out a Kleenex from the front pocket of her tight jeans, swipes away a few sniffles, then resorts to her drink to moisten her throat. They wait. They both know that when she says that the policeman may have liked her, she means that he was attracted.
“The thing is, and this is ironic, and so goddamn baffling in a way, I wanted my father…” This time, and for the first time, she chokes up on mentioning him. “I wanted my father to be here, because he’d know what to do. He would know how to deal with this mess and with this person and with the police and with everything. Even with his own funeral, and I don’t have a clue how to handle that.”
They see for themselves that the stresses of the last two days are resident inside her, suppressed and managed, but liable to burst out and seize control. She is a strong woman despite that, which they see as she effectively pulls herself together again.
“I was angry at myself, more than anything, for wanting my father alive again so he could take charge of the situation. Anyway. Tears and tantrums later, the officer told me about a retired detective who has declined, he said, to help out with the investigation of the murder of Reverend Lescavage. He suggested that I talk to you. He couldn’t help me out. He has a job to do. Throw me in jail, I guess, I understood the gist of his job to be. He said if I need help—which is obvious—then maybe I could ask you to investigate my father’s death. That’s why I’m here. To ask for your help. I can pay you, God knows. I imagine I’m wealthy now, so that’s not an issue.”
Cinq-Mars gives her speech some thought, nods, and mulls things through. He shares a glance with his wife but doesn’t want to hold that look for long. He starts out by saying, “Maddy, you have to understand that I’m taking a break—”
“Émile,” Sandra interrupts. This time he’s obliged to hold her gaze a longer time, give her take on the situation more weight. She can’t see a way around the circumstance that’s presented itself. If he thinks that she should devote her time to rescuing wildlife, if he figures that that’s in her DNA, then there’s no time like the present. As well, he is who he is, she knows it, and the situation is a call to action. “You can’t say no.”
He may be able to argue against her point of view, but decides without any fanfare that that will not be worth the effort. The young woman now appears quite hopeful when he faces her again.
“I cannot accept payment.”
“I know how this sounds, but money is nothing to me, sir. I’d feel better about imposing. You’re on holidays, like you said.”
“The thing is, I’m not a private detective. Or a detective for hire. The difference is this. If I investigate what’s going on, I’ll be interested only in the truth. That may save you from further difficulty, or the truth may reflect badly on you. Do you see? You may know your innocence in the affair, but I do not. If I am in your employ, charged with getting you off, I would be hired, essentially, to prove your innocence even if you’re guilty. I won’t do that. If the truth sets you free, if I help you out, when everything is over I’ll submit an invoice, enough to purchase a future trip for my wife and me. Perhaps enough to pay for this one. Such as it is. We’ll see. Should the truth put you behind bars, that is what I’ll deliver when the time comes, if I discover that that’s how things should go.”
She understands. “I’m not afraid of the truth. I’ll be so grateful if you take this on.”
“Mmm.” He’s not wholly committed as yet. “Let me ask you a few questions first. Direct questions, Maddy.”
“I’m a big girl. Shoot.”
“Why did you arrive in the middle of the night? In a storm?”
“I drove from Boston. The weather slowed me down. I called my dad. I told him I wouldn’t make the last ferry. He arranged for me to come by private boat. Today, I had that skipper load my car onto the ferry and I drove it off, then all this happened. Anyway. My dad didn’t want me to wait for the morning ferry because he didn’t think he’d live long enough to see me. That he wanted me to visit at all, you understand, was a first. Enough to make me curious enough to come, ASAP. I wanted to hear what he had to say.”
“About what?”
She reflects on the question a moment. His tone demands more than a simple answer, that she go to the grit of the matter.
“Not just about why he was such a bastard. I was secretly hoping he’d beg me. You know. For forgiveness. That was a fantasy. I warned myself to put no stock in it, but I’m human. Realistically, I wanted him to say something about my mother. He never told me much. Almost nothing. I always felt that there was something he’d held back from me. I wanted to know what.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was thrown off a cliff.”
“Really. When?”
“When I was a child. She was thrown off Seven Days Work onto the rocks below. The man who found Reverend Simon Lescavage’s body, his name is Aaron Roadcap, his father threw my mother off Seven Days Work.”
“Why?”
Maddy lifts her shoulders and shakes her head at the same time. She holds the pose, as though this is the mystery of her life. “That’s what I wanted to talk to my dad about.”
“What can you tell me about Mr. Roadcap, the younger? What does he do?”
“Do? He lives in a tar-paper hut over in Dark Harbour. He cuts dulse.”
“Dulse,” Cinq-Mars says, although he knows what it is.
“Yeah, the seaweed we harvest around here. The Bay of Fundy brings in nutrients from the sea with our huge tides and takes all the dirt back out to the Atlantic, day in, day out. That’s why the whales are here and the fish and that’s why the seaweed is so rich in nutrients. We cut and ship the dulse as chips. Also, my dad owned a small plant that pulverizes dulse. He shipped the powder to health-food nuts around the world, but mostly to California and Scandinavia. He’s pretty much cornered a monopoly on that. Anyway, Aaron Roadcap cuts dulse and lives in squalor, as near as I can tell.”
“Is there anything else you can say about him? Did he have a quarrel with Lescavage, for instance?”
“I wouldn’t know. Down through the years, we’ve met from time to time. Awkward. The thing about him is…” She stops a moment, as though to reconfigure this insight, then forges on. “A couple of things, really, apart from living in squalor, are strange.”
“What’s that?” Émile asks.
Maddy looks at him, then glances over at Sandra, almost as though to suggest that she is more likely to understand this part. “I hate to say it, but he’s as handsome as a god. Seriously. Literally. And the other thing is, he’s no dummy. He’s smart, and he talks well. He doesn’t talk like some dulse-cutting drug user.”
“Do dulse cutters use drugs?”
She shrugs. “The fishermen do. A lot of fishermen do, so why not those at the bottom of the totem pole? Only makes sense, really. Who wouldn’t, if what you do all day is walk in tidal pools and harvest seaweed? Pretty boring.”
“A simple enough life,” Émile remarks, which the three of them understand is not the same evaluation.
“The policeman,” Maddy notes, “implied that my arrest is a distinct possibility. Maybe imminent. I’m feeling a bit desperate. I have to bury my father, defend myself, and deal with the judicial system and with the fallout on this island. I hope you can help, sir. I really have no one else I can turn to. My dad is dead and my only friend here, really, was Simon Lescavage.”
Émile’s been noncommittal, but he’s forthcoming now. “You won’t be arrested. It might take one call, it might take two, but that’s not going to happen.” The evidence is circumstantial, at best, but a local cop might grasp a straw and run with it. Émile is connected to everyone up the ladder, and if the investigating officer doesn’t see that it’s in his best interest to tread slowly, superiors the cop has never met will educate him otherwise. Émile is confident of that. His connections will be powerful in this instance.
“You can do that?” Maddy asks, already impressed but, as a woman of the world, suitably skeptical.
“He can,” Sandra assures her. “He will. If you’re innocent, you can’t have a better person in your corner.”
What Maddy says next impresses them both, especially the wary detective.
“Innocence, as you must know, is in short supply on this planet. I’m not painting myself as lily-white or squeaky clean. But I did not kill my father, nor did I have the opportunity, nor would I have had the will even if I’d had the opportunity. Nor did I have the inclination to do so—it never occurred to me! It occurred to someone, apparently. And cut up the one adult I ever admired? Do that to him? Me? I’m sorry, but that’s preposterous. That’s strictly maniacal. I might be screwed-up, I know that much about myself, but I am not a homicidal maniac. The problem is, I was home alone, which isn’t much of a defense.”
Impressed, Cinq-Mars sits back in his chair. He’s on the case. His wife doesn’t mind, has even insisted on it, so he’s in the clear on that account. The case is more complex and intriguing the more he learns. The day has been grand, but the days ahead show a different promise, and he’s rising to that challenge, and perhaps, to that pleasure.
“Émile will help you sort out what happened to your father and to the Reverend Lescavage,” Sandra promises. “I’ll help you with the funeral arrangements. I’ll be happy to have something to do while he’s occupied. I won’t say it’ll be fun, but we can keep each other company.”
Maddy Orrock seems to want to decline the offer, but she really can’t bring herself to do so, and nods both consent and thanks. Sandra wears a smile right through the censor of her husband’s glance. She guesses that he wants her to tread cautiously. On that, she doesn’t give a hoot.
“Our conversation has kept you from your drink, Maddy,” Émile points out, “and me from mine. Let’s drink up slowly—while we do, tell me about yourself. This will mark the beginning of my inquiry. I need to learn a lot quickly. I won’t grill you, but please say whatever comes to mind. What I need to acquire right now is what I do not have, and that’s local knowledge. Talk. Free-flowing. Never think that anything is too incidental. It’ll all help.”
That conversation is proceeding and their drinks are finished and renewed when they hear the dull buzz of a cell phone vibrating on a wood surface inside the cottage. Sandra hunts it down so that Émile can continue his fact-finding mission, and brings it out to him. She’s already answered and exchanged a few words, and the look on her face is one of apprehension. He reads the caller’s ID off the smartphone, excuses himself, and walks off the porch and across the back lawn. Where the tall grasses take over, he converses for some time before returning to the porch. He finds the women sharing a peek at Sandra’s book on numerology. She’s written down her guest’s birth date and full name, with which she intends to experiment with her new hobby. The two women look up as he arrives back, and each sees that his visage demonstrates some evident disquiet.
“Maddy, you’re a prof at Harvard,” Émile says.
“Sociology. Born and raised on this island, yet my specialty is the sustainable development of big metropolitan centers. Go figure, hey?”
“Up the road from where you live, another Harvard professor resides.”
“Oh, a few Ivy Leaguers are on the island. Summer people. Harvard’s well represented, oddly enough.”
“But one professor in particular. His name is Jason DeWitt.”
“I know him.”
“We met him ourselves yesterday. Again this morning. In fact, he invited Sandra and me up for drinks. Are you close friends?”
“Casual acquaintances, let’s say. If we pass in the street or a corridor, we nod. Unless he corners me.”
“Corners you?”
“I find him overly affable. He seems to think that everyone he meets is a bosom buddy. In Boston, he introduced me one time to a friend of his as if I was also a friend of his, and as if the other friend and me were now inseparable for life. If you’ve met him, then you know that Professor DeWitt makes himself difficult to ignore. We’re neighbors here, although I’m not around much. Academically, we’re in different fields. Why?”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, as it may invoke a certain bad memory, but this afternoon, our Professor DeWitt went over the side of Seven Days Work.”
Sandra is dumbfounded, but clearly Maddy Orrock is stunned and in some dismay. “That’s impossible. I just saw him. When did this happen? Just now? Oh my God, what’s going on? What happened? I mean, did he trip and fall? Was he pushed? Did he jump?”
Émile responds initially with a soft utterance under his breath. Then reports, as though to himself, “Apparently, on this island there’s a fourth option.” He speaks up, explaining himself and dismissing his comment at the same time. “Around here, some people hope to fly. Exactly what happened remains to be determined. Apparently, a fisherman out on the water saw someone drop off the cliff and called it in. The professor’s body was recovered on the rocks below.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“What is it?” Sandra asks.
Maddy’s voice falls to a frail whisper. “I went to see him this afternoon. A courtesy call. I guess I was looking for support. That means I was probably one of the last people to see him alive. Maybe the very last, unless someone killed him.” She looks up at Cinq-Mars, staring into his eyes, imploring him. “Honest to God, it wasn’t me,” she insists.
Cinq-Mars nods and touches her hand in sympathy. He knows what everyone does, not just cops, that that’s what people say, particularly the guilty, when accused of a terrible crime. He’s sympathetic, yet in no position to take her at her word.