The morning found Verargent soaked in sunlight, but Pelleter could tell even from his hotel room that there was a nip still in the air by the way the people in the square walked with their hands in their pockets and their elbows pulled tight to their bodies.
Pelleter left the hotel still pulling on his overcoat, a troubled expression across his brow. He shoved his hands in his pockets against the chill, and found a wad of folded paper there. He pulled it out. It was the newspaper Servières had pushed on him the night before.
ESCAPED CONVICT MURDERED IN THE STREET
After last night’s unsuccessful manhunt, this seemed like old news. But it was big news for a town like Verargent, and the Vérité had treated it accordingly, devoting the entire front page and most of page two and three to the article. The byline was Philippe Servières.
It was all speculation, although none of the facts were incorrect. They had interviewed the baker. They had Meranger’s name and history. They mentioned the Rosenkrantzes by name, although they didn’t yet have Clotilde’s disappearance. Pelleter figured the paper could expect to hear from an irate Monsieur Rosenkrantz today anyway. Otherwise there was nothing new.
There were also public opinions, and a brief history that recounted the three previous escape attempts from Malniveau much as they had been described to Pelleter the first day of the investigation.
Pelleter refolded the paper and stuffed it back into his pocket. He didn’t see how it would affect his investigation one way or the other, but he still didn’t like it. Newspapermen were just sensationalist leeches.
There was a tired group of men standing outside of police headquarters, smoking cigarettes in silence. This was what was left of the volunteer search party, men who could put off their day’s work or had no work to go to.
Pelleter went inside. The entire Verargent police department was there behind the desk that divided the public space from the department offices. Officer Martin tried to catch Pelleter’s eye, but Pelleter ignored him, intent on Letreau’s office.
Letreau was squatting before a tearful woman who Pelleter recognized as the woman that had been waiting the day before as he left to investigate the coffins in the field. Madame Perreaux, no doubt. Had that been just yesterday? There was too much happening too fast without enough answers.
Pelleter lit a cigar, and leaned in a corner beside a filing cabinet without a word.
“We will find them no matter what,” Letreau was saying, as the woman shook her head back and forth, back and forth. “We will find them, but you need to let me give my men orders.”
Madame Perreaux shook her head again. She was hysterical.
Letreau came to the same conclusion, and stood with the woman still shaking her head, tears pouring down her face. He looked over at Pelleter with grave eyes, and then took a step towards the door.
Pelleter met him in the doorway, and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“You must search the basements.”
“What basements?”
“All of the basements.”
“I was going to do another concentric circle search based from the Perreaux farm. If that was where they were heading from the sweet shop and they got lost, it’s most likely they’re out there.”
Pelleter nodded. He could not argue with that. As he had told Martin and Servières the night before, Mahossier was in prison; he most likely had nothing to do with this. Still, the basements needed to be checked.
“Then assign only two or three officers to check the basements. Whatever you can spare.”
“What are you thinking?”
Pelleter looked back at Madame Perreaux, who was still bawling, twisting a handkerchief in her lap. He pulled Letreau out of the office.
“If they got lost, you’re right, they’re probably somewhere close to home. But if they got taken...”
“You think this is a kidnapping?”
“I think we need to search everywhere.”
“Fine. You can have four men. I’m going to organize the rest.”
Pelleter shook his head. “I’m going to Malniveau.”
Letreau lost his cool then, puffing out his cheeks. “Pelleter, I have six dead prisoners in my jurisdiction and two missing children! I’ve said it before, I appreciate your help, but I’m not sure I see how you’re helping.”
Pelleter ignored this outburst. “I’ll take a taxi to the prison. Search the basements.”
Letreau’s cheeks puffed out again, and his eyes blazed.
Pelleter said nothing. Letreau had a tendency to get overwhelmed, but in the end he was a good policeman. He would do what Pelleter had suggested, because he knew that Pelleter might be right.
The chief inspector pushed his way back through the officers towards the front door. As he did, he heard Letreau begin to give orders behind him.
Verargent’s sole taxi sat parked outside the café across the square. As Pelleter reached for the rear door handle, the driver came out of the café straightening his paperboy hat.
“Malniveau Prison.”
Pelleter settled in to the backseat relieved that the driver was one of the astute drivers rarely found in provincial towns, who knew when his fare preferred silence to small talk.
He pulled out his oilskin notebook, and added the details he had been too tired to add the night before.
His notes ended:
Thursday morning another prisoner is knifed at the prison... Nobody can agree on the number of prisoners stabbed or killed in the last month.
He corrected himself so that the entry read, Thursday, April 6, approx. 10 AM. It wouldn’t do to be imprecise. With so many happenings, it would be important to know exactly when everything took place. He continued:
Approx. 1 PM—Coffin uncovered in field halfway between Malniveau Prison and Verargent. Further investigation reveals a total of five coffins containing murdered prisoners.
The chief inspector looked out the window at the passing landscape. It was so uniform that it was incredible to him that whoever had buried the bodies had been able to locate the same burial ground each time, since he was convinced that the bodies had been buried on five separate occasions. He would know for sure when the medical examiner had examined the corpses.
Tuesday, April 4, Approx 5 PM—Georges Perreaux (six years old) and Albert Perreaux (five years old) go missing. Last seen at Monsieur Marque’s sweet shop.
Letreau had interviewed Monsieur Marque himself. He assured Pelleter that Monsieur Marque was in no way involved with the children’s disappearance. And why would he be? In a small town like Verargent the owner of the candy store could not afford to have a bad reputation with regards to children.
Pelleter turned back to his earlier entries, and tried to fit in the margin beside the entry on Madame Rosenkrantz’s visit to the hotel,
Last time Madame Rosenkrantz is seen.
He did the same for the warden beside the entry on Mahossier’s claim that prisoners were being systematically murdered.
He looked at what he had written, and he felt the anger well up in him again. It was time to take the offensive. There was too much going on, and up until now they had been reacting. Events happened and they tried to keep up. Even the manhunt the night before was a reaction. But today, at least, he would find out what Mahossier knew.
To calm himself he started at the beginning and reviewed everything so far, but it didn’t help. He knew what had happened in many instances, but he did not know why or how, and therefore he did not know who. He knew nothing.
The prison loomed before them. The taxi drove up to the gate, and Pelleter got out, instructing the driver to return in two hours and to wait if he was not yet ready. The chief inspector showed his documents to the guard at the outer gate, crossed the space where several cars were parked, moss and wild grass growing in places from between the cobbles, and then he showed his documents again at the inner door, where he was admitted to the prison.
“I hear there was more excitement in town last night,” Remy said.
“Any excitement out here?”
“Oh, it’s always exciting here.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Pelleter passed in to the administrative offices. The young woman at the first desk took one look at him and reached for the phone. She was a plain girl who would have been prettier if she had had the conviction to either cut her hair shorter or to grow it longer. Instead she had settled on an awkward style that paid homage to a bob without being one.
She whispered into the receiver with her head bowed, blocking her mouth with the closed fist of her free hand.
There was a kind of lethargy in the rest of the office that came perhaps from some of the men having been involved in the search the night before, but Pelleter had spent enough time in police stations, courts, and prisons to know that the usual situation in those places was of utter boredom.
He saw a desk towards the back of the room stacked with files. This, no doubt, was Officer Martin’s workspace. The prison workers had been unsure if they were allowed to clean it up yet. Pelleter made a mental note to get Officer Martin back out here as soon as possible. Even if he found nothing, it was better to have someone on hand.
The young woman replaced the receiver of the phone, and sat up rod straight as though the phone cradle were a switch attached to her spine. She looked up at the chief inspector with pursed lips, took a breath, and said, “Monsieur Fournier is otherwise engaged at the moment, and does not know when he will be available to assist you. He suggests that you come back another time.”
She waited then, as if to see if she had passed some recitation exam.
Pelleter could not help but smile, and the girl slumped a little sensing that she had failed.
“That’s fine,” the chief inspector said. “I wasn’t here to see Monsieur Fournier anyway. I can just show myself around,” and he began to turn back to the door.
“But...”
“No need to bother,” Pelleter continued in his light tone. He pointed at the door. “I’m on my way to the infirmary. I know the way.”
The young woman looked around at her colleagues, imploring for help. They were paying attention now, but only with surreptitious glances that relieved them of any responsibility.
As Pelleter pushed open the office door, the young woman stood up behind her desk but did not move. He turned back. “You could do me one favor,” he said as though it were an afterthought. “I’ll need to see Mahossier again. Please have him brought down.”
The woman’s shoulders sank, but Pelleter did not wait for an answer. As he stepped back into the entry hall, he could only just see one of the other men stand behind her.
“Open this door for me, Remy. I’m going to the infirmary.” Pelleter tried to remember if there was another locked door between this one and the infirmary, but he thought it best to keep moving and worry about it when the time came. If the young woman had recovered herself, she no doubt was on the phone to Fournier once again, and it was only a matter of a few minutes before the assistant warden made an appearance.
As Remy unlocked the inner door, Pelleter said, “Could you be sure that they’re bringing Mahossier down to the interrogation room for me as well. There seemed to be some confusion about that in the office.”
“I’m sure there was,” Remy said, smiling. “There needs to be a paper for everything, and god forbid if you miss one little paper.” Remy pulled open the door, stepping aside to allow the chief inspector to pass.
Just as he was about to step into the hall, the office door jerked open and one of the clerks appeared. He pulled himself up short in an attempt to regain some composure, and then he said, “Right this way, Monsieur Pelleter.”
They must have decided that it was safest to have somebody accompany the chief inspector if he was going to force his way into the prison. Or perhaps Fournier had given the order that Pelleter was to be watched. In either case, the young man stepped ahead of Pelleter, and then led the way to the left towards the infirmary.
“Any more incidents since yesterday?” Pelleter asked the nervous young man from one step behind him.
The man did not turn. “Incidents, sir?”
“What’s your name?”
“Monsieur Vittier.”
“Okay, Vittier. Fights, stabbings, murders. Incidents.”
“I’m sure I can’t say, sir.”
“I’m sure you can’t.”
They came to a steel partition with a door in it that divided the hall into equal intervals. Vittier fumbled with a ring of keys he produced from his pocket. So there had been another locked doorway before coming to the infirmary. Then Pelleter was glad for the chaperone.
Vittier managed to get the door open, and this time Pelleter stepped through first. The air in this stretch of the hallway had a bottled-up mustiness to it, cut with the ammoniac smell coming from the infirmary.
Pelleter strode along the hall, unconcerned as to whether Vittier was with him. The door to the infirmary stood open. Apparently it was assumed injured prisoners were in too much pain to try to escape.
In the infirmary, there was none of the hurried excitement from the day before. A guard sat in a straight-backed chair just inside the doorway. The stabbing victim was the only prisoner taking up one of the four cots. He was small, pale, and gaunt, as though he had been in hospital for weeks instead of twenty-four hours.
Pelleter crossed the room and set himself on the edge of the cot beside the prisoner. He saw that the prisoner was handcuffed to the bed.
Vittier came up beside him, standing at the foot of the bed.
Pelleter held out his papers, but the prisoner, whose eyes darted between Pelleter and Vittier, showed no inclination towards reading what was held before him.
“I am Chief Inspector Pelleter with the Central Bureau. I’ve come from the city to look into things here. I was hoping you could tell me something of what happened yesterday.”
The prisoner’s eyes again darted between Pelleter and Vittier. No other part of him moved. His face remained blank. He seemed unimpressed with Pelleter’s credentials.
“Do you know who it was who stabbed you?”
The man turned his head away from the chief inspector, wincing as he did.
Pelleter shifted his weight on the cot. The metal rod of the frame cut into the back of his thighs.
“Vittier!”
The young man jerked towards Pelleter. He had been lost in contemplation of the prisoner’s wasted form. Now he looked as though he were awaiting a sentence of his own. Was it the prison itself that made everyone here somber, or did Fournier have his men—both his staff and his prisoners—on edge at all times?
“Give us a moment,” Pelleter said, and he nodded his head in the direction of the door.
The young clerk went to the entrance and stood beside the guard. They did not speak to one another.
Pelleter leaned forward then, his elbows on his knees, and lowered his voice. “Can you tell me who stabbed you?”
For a moment it seemed as though the prisoner was going to act as though he had not heard the repeated question. But at last, without turning his head, he said just above a whisper, “I don’t know.”
“Do you know why you were stabbed?”
The prisoner closed his eyes and shook his head. He had been thinking about it, and he didn’t know. Prison gave a man lots of time to think, but almost getting killed must make him think in new ways.
“What about the other men that were killed? Are people saying anything about them?”
There was another long pause, and Pelleter was worried that he would have to start from the beginning again. But at last the wounded man said, “No one’s saying anything.”
“If you say something,” Pelleter said, leaning even further forward until he felt the cot begin to tip beneath him, “then maybe I can help.”
Still there was no reaction.
“No one will know it was you. I’m going to talk to other prisoners as well.”
The man turned his head quickly towards Pelleter now, his eyes wide. “I don’t know anything. It was crowded in the yard. It could have been anyone who went for me. I had no beef. I don’t know nothing else.”
“Okay,” Pelleter said.
The whites of the man’s eyes showed around large pupils, his nostrils flared, the look of a man afraid and in pain and backed into a corner.
“Okay.” The chief inspector stood. He watched the man carefully. “But this will probably be the last chance I have to talk to you without Assistant Warden Fournier.”
There was no reaction. The man’s face remained the same, full of pain and indignation. Fournier’s name had changed nothing.
The chief inspector considered the man for another moment, frustrated that he had not learned anything more from him. With each new incident, Pelleter seemed to know less, and even the victims were ignorant. Sometimes there was nothing that could be done on a case—it was just a matter of waiting—but Pelleter was unwilling to believe that was true here. Too many things were happening, and somebody knew why. It was just a matter of asking the right person the questions in the right way.
Pelleter turned away from the man on the cot.
“Vittier,” he called. “Take me to Mahossier.”
Mahossier was already in the examination room, his hands and legs once again chained. To Pelleter’s surprise, Monsieur le Directeur Adjoint Fournier had still not made an appearance. Pelleter left Vittier with the guard outside the door, and took up a position behind Mahossier and just to the side.
“Why did you stab the man in the yard?” Pelleter said.
Mahossier made no attempt to turn around. “Why, Inspector! I’m surprised at you. Surely you know that I didn’t have yard privileges yesterday. Some days I do, some days I don’t. Monsieur Fournier sees to that. It’s for my own protection, you see. Some of the boys here don’t like me very much. I couldn’t say why.”
Pelleter could hear the hilarity in Mahossier’s voice. The criminal did not seem put out to have Pelleter behind him. Pelleter was in no mood to be toyed with. He tried to keep his voice calm. “What do you do those days for meals? Are you allowed in the mess?”
“One of the good boys brings it to me in my cell, but assistant warden’s careful for it to be a different one as often as possible. What’s the matter? He didn’t tell you any of this? Is he not being helpful?”
Pelleter would not be drawn in.
Mahossier put on a tone of absolute concern. “Have they found those two little boys yet? I’ve been so worried about them.”
“And how do you know about the missing children?”
“How is Madame Pelleter by the way? Well, I trust. But why wouldn’t she be?”
Pelleter grabbed Mahossier by the shoulders then, and threw him to the side, causing the prisoner to fall heavily to the floor, his head knocking the stone with a dull thump, followed a second after by the clatter of the chair falling to the ground. With his hands chained to his legs, Mahossier was forced to remain in a fetal position in the shadow of the table, a small old man, unable to even raise himself.
Pelleter kicked the chair, which had settled partially on Mahossier, into the corner.
The old man was shaking, laughing soundlessly.
Pelleter circled the table to prevent himself from kicking the downed man. He thought of Servières asking him that first night how he could be in the same room with this monster and not kill him. The thought cooled his anger. The play had been made, and it was not a bad one. He would see what effect it had.
He came around so that he was standing in front of Mahossier’s face. The murderer, still laughing, was straining to see the floor beneath his head.
“Very good,” he said. “I think I’m bleeding.” He licked the cold stone, and his grin spread even wider. “I am bleeding! Very good.” And he laughed some more.
Pelleter squatted before Mahossier and said the one thing he thought might force a straight answer out of the man. “I will leave on tonight’s train. I don’t have to be a part of any of this.”
“I suppose you could,” Mahossier said from his place on the floor. “Whether you have to be a part of it...that depends on what the press thinks and what the Central Bureau thinks about what the press thinks when Le Maire and Letreau and Le Directeur decide that it would be nice if it was the fault of that detective from the city that several dead bodies turned up and several people went missing. It’s true you have no obligation to me.”
Mahossier thought he had Pelleter in his control and the chief inspector bristled at the notion.
“But you know these small towns...It never seems to be the people in charge, just people drifting through.”
“Now you’re a political activist? Or is it a social reformer?”
“I prefer concerned citizen.” The shadows on his cheek deepened as a grin spread. “I love the word concerned. It’s so... useful.”
Pelleter stood to relieve the ache that had begun to burn in his thighs from squatting. He pulled out the still-standing chair, the one that he had sat in two days prior, and sat down. From there he could not see Mahossier, but instead, looked across the table at the sweating stone wall across from him. The rough-hewn faces of the stones were a miniature topography in which an ant could be lost forever. From his point of view, able to take in the whole wall’s surface, Pelleter did not think it made any more sense to him than it would to the ant.
Mahossier filled the silence. His one weakness when he felt as though he had a worthy conversationalist. “I don’t know anything about those missing boys. They have nothing to do with this.”
“Then if you know about everything else, wouldn’t it be easier to tell me?”
“I don’t know about everything else.”
“Then what do you know about?”
“Dead prisoners.”
“I know about them too.”
“See, you’re not a total loss, Chief Inspector. And I was trying to come to terms with the disappointment.”
It was easier to talk to the man without being able to see him, his voice floating up from below.
“Who moved the bodies?” Mahossier said.
That was the question. But he responded, “Who killed the men?”
“Perhaps...” Delight returned to Mahossier’s voice again, as though ice cream had been suggested and the question was now which flavor. “Perhaps you answer my question and I’ll answer yours!”
“You’re not worried about being a snitch?”
Mahossier’s delight turned to anger. “Listen, detective! I am already reviled. I told you that to start. But being reviled isn’t always a bad thing.”
Pelleter wondered how that could be. Still, Mahossier had highlighted once again the question that seemed most pressing. How had those prisoners’ bodies gotten out of Malniveau? Who had moved them?
Pelleter contemplated the wall. After a few moments, Mahossier began to hum, and the tune eventually penetrated the chief inspector’s thoughts. It was a children’s tune. If Pelleter remembered correctly it was about going to grandmother’s house.
Pelleter stood, his chair scraping the floor, cutting off Mahossier’s song.
He had learned nothing here. The initial summons, the oblique aspersions regarding the assistant warden...it all seemed to be for Mahossier’s own amusement, and Pelleter was jumping through his hoops like an amateur.
The chief inspector went to the door. He raised his hand to knock, but held it there, suspended in the air. A noise came from the other side of the table, a shuffle, and the clank of chain on stone, but Pelleter could not see what Mahossier was doing.
“Mahossier,” Pelleter barked.
The movement stopped.
“If those boys don’t turn up soon, and alive, you may find that you have yard privileges every day again.”
There was no response from the floor.
“Or perhaps the next time I send guards in here to pick you up off the floor, I’ll only have to follow your body to find out how they get dead prisoners out of Malniveau.”
With that, Pelleter allowed his fist to drop against the metal door, a hollow echoing clang, signaling that he was ready to go.