The Girl Who Remembered the Snow (30 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl Who Remembered the Snow
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“How long did this go on?” asked Emma, realizing why Zuberan's investigators weren't able to find the trail of Etienne Lalou in New York. He was in France.
“We had you for about two years. Then we went on a vacation in Switzerland, the four of us: I, Henri-Pierre, his mother (whom I divorced shortly thereafter), and you in the custody of a nanny, a woman who had not been with us very long and was not too bright. Somehow, when the rest of us were away from the hotel, a man came to this nanny and persuaded her to give you to him. He said that her grandfather had sent him to fetch her. This man was Etienne Lalou himself, of course. He then changed his name and with the child he disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“But I don't understand,” said Emma. “I thought my grandfather had changed his name and run away because he had stolen a treasure.”
“He ran away because he had stolen you,” said Armand Caraignac.
“But he told me …”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I have stolen the most precious treasure of the sea.'”
“Where those his words?”
“No,” said Emma. “He was upset and spoke in French. He always spoke in French when he was upset. He said,
‘J'ai pris le plus grand trésor de la mer
'—I have taken the most precious treasure of the sea.”
“Perhaps it was not ‘
J'ai pris le plus grand trésor de la mer'
that he said,” said Armand Caraignac after a moment of thought. “Perhaps what he said was
‘J‘ai pris le plus grand trésor de ta mère
'—I have taken the most precious treasure
of your mother.”
Emma fell into a stunned silence. It was exactly the kind of obscure, convoluted phrase Jacques Passant would have used. The most precious treasure of your mother. The treasure was she.
“I hired detectives,” Caraignac went on. “But of course Lalou had left France and would not return to San Marcos. I did everything I could to get you back, but no trace of Etienne Lalou or his little girl was ever found. Until three weeks ago.”
“What happened then?” said Emma, desperate to know everything.
“Back when we had gone diving on San Marcos, Marie Lalou had found a funny gold whistle and chain in the sand one day. Three weeks ago it came up for auction in New York City. More than thirty years had passed since he had last seen this artifact, but Henri-Pierre recognized it immediately. He bought it and through it he somehow managed to track down Etienne Lalou—who had changed his name to Jacques Passant. I know this because Henri-Pierre told me. He made me fly to San Francisco from Paris to meet him in his hotel room on the last day of his life.”
“You were in San Francisco? You saw Henri-Pierre before he was killed?”
Caraignac nodded.
“It was a brutal journey for an old man. Even in first class, thirteen hours in the air is very difficult. But when Henri-Pierre
told me that he had found Etienne Lalou, and that something terrible had happened, I knew I must come at once.
“You must understand, Emma. Henri-Pierre was a handsome, confident man on the outside, and because we live in a world of appearances, people assumed certain things about him. But he was not what he seemed. He had mourned the loss of Marie Lalou and their child his entire life. He suffered from grave personal problems and depression stemming from guilt. His whole life had been dominated by his having allowed me to make these decisions for him when he was so young, before his character had had a chance properly to form. Henri-Pierre had had terrible arguments with me, first for forcing him to abandon Marie, and then for going to court and wresting Emma away from her grandfather, who clearly loved her. But he was just a boy then, and my will prevailed.
“After Etienne Lalou came to Switzerland and stole you away, however, Henri-Pierre found the courage to break away from me. He went off and enlisted in the army. Unable to forgive himself for what had happened, he did his best to get himself killed, I believe, but instead was just decorated over and over again for bravery.”
“What happened when you got to San Francisco?”
“I met Henri-Pierre in his hotel room. He told me how he had tracked down and met with Lalou—Jacques Passant.”
“Henri-Pierre met with Pépé?” said Emma.
“This was his second chance, you see. His opportunity to put things right. Henri-Pierre called your grandfather and told him who he was and insisted that they meet. They did so in San Francisco's great park. There, Henri-Pierre begged to see you, pleaded that a place be made in your life for him again. Henri-Pierre said that he could now be the father you had never had. He could give you money and opportunities. He could love you.
“Your grandfather refused, however. His granddaughter knew nothing of anything that had happened, he said; she believed that
her father had died in an automobile accident. It was better to leave things that way, he said. Henri-Pierre argued. He pleaded. He desperately wanted a proper reconciliation, and for this he needed your grandfather's cooperation. But Jacques Passant was adamant in his refusal.
“They had wandered deep into the park, where no one was around to see them. Henri-Pierre took out the gun he was licensed to carry. The horrible gun he took everywhere with him, because he often carried large sums of money and valuable art objects, and because my son never felt safe, pursued as he was by his personal demons. He was not in his right mind, he told me, and foolishly began to threaten Jacques Passant. He felt that this was his last chance to correct the terrible wrong that had happened so many years before. As near as he could remember, he just wanted to show Jacques Passant how serious he was, he told me, but Lalou reached for the gun. They struggled. The gun went off accidentally. Jacques Passant was dead.”
“Oh, dear God,” said Emma. “Do you mean that my grandfather was killed by my own father?”
“Instead of rectifying the old wrong that had dominated his entire life, Henri-Pierre had perpetrated a worse one,” said Armand Caraignac, his voice cracking. “In a daze, his military training took over. He made it look like a robbery and walked away. He was paralyzed, in shock. He did not know what to do. He sat in his hotel room for days, agonizing. He could not go back to New York and resume his life as if nothing had happened. He would have liked to turn himself in to the police, but this was impossible, too, for then you would discover who he was and what he had done. He was consumed with guilt, yet he longed to see you, the daughter whom he had loved. And lost.”
“So Henri-Pierre was following me when we met on the Sausalito ferry.”
“Yes.” Armand Caraignac nodded. “A week had passed since his crime, and his passion had given way to an icy calmness.
Henri-Pierre went to your house in a rented car, hoping just to catch a glimpse of you. You came out and he found himself following you down to the ferry. He couldn't resist boarding the boat with you for a closer look. When he had an opportunity to meet you, to talk with you, he told me he jumped at the chance.”
“I can't take this,” whispered Emma, but was unable to stop Caraignac from continuing.
“Knowing that you would be out of town, he later retrieved his rented car and drove to your house. He let himself in somehow; he was very clever with locks. My son told me that he just wanted to see where you had lived, Emma, to touch the things that you had touched. In a bedroom he found a model of the
Kaito Spirit.
He could not think clearly. Fearing it could somehow be connected with him, frantic that you must never be allowed to find out what had happened, what he had done, he took it.”
“Then there was no treasure concealed in it?”
“Unfortunately, there was.”
Armand Caraignac rose and walked to an ornate ormolumounted Louis XV desk, opened a drawer and took out a white box about six inches square and a stack of letters. He walked slowly back and handed the letters to Emma.
“These are your mother's letters to my son,” he said, sinking into his chair. “The ones I had marked ‘Delivery Refused' and sent back so many years ago. Henri-Pierre discovered how to open the secret compartment in the model boat when he returned to his hotel. Inside he found these letters and read them for the first time. Letters to his sixteen-year-old self from the only woman he had ever loved, would ever love.”
So
that
was the legacy Jacques Passant had talked about in his will—not any monetary treasure, but the letters from her mother to her father!
“As I told you,” Armand Caraignac continued, “my son suffered gravely all his life. Now he suffered worse. He had heard how much you had loved your grandfather—heard it from your
own lips. He had stolen you from him once, and now he had stolen your grandfather from you. When Henri-Pierre read in the letters of Marie Lalou's deep love for him, and her despair that he could ignore her in her hour of need, it was too much. The enormity of his crime, the hopelessness of his position crashed down on him.”
The old man fell silent for a moment. Emma wanted to tell him to stop—she didn't want to hear anymore—but found she couldn't speak.
“How could my son live with such guilt?” said Armand Caraignac. “And who better to share it with than me—the wretch who had counseled him so poorly when he needed a father's wisdom the most. Henri-Pierre called me in Paris and demanded that I drop what I was doing and fly to San Francisco right away. I met him in his hotel room and he told me the story I have just told you. Then, before my very eyes and before I could stop him, Henri-Pierre took out his pistol, put it to his head, and pulled the trigger.”
Emma let out an involuntary gasp.
“The walls were thick, the shot was not heard,” Armand Caraignac went on, his voice barely audible. “You see, Emma, there is justice in this world. I had been responsible for what had happened thirty years ago and now it had come back to me, been laid at my doorstep. Now the guilt was mine alone. I took my son's money and the model boat to make it look like a simpler crime—and the gun, of course. How can suicide be suspected if there is no gun? I stole away back to France, hoping that you would never learn what had happened. But now you have found me. Have found everything. This, too, I took from Henri-Pierre's room. It belongs to you now.”
The old man opened the white box and took out a thick golden chain at the end of which was a strange, yet familiar, creature. The dragon.
Emma turned away. She had been looking for the dragon all
this time, but now she didn't want it. She never wanted to see it again.
“I know you must hate me very much,” said Armand Caraignac sadly, “but it doesn't matter. I am a broken man. My life is over.”
“How could he do it?” said Emma. “How could Henri-Pierre kill Pépé?”
“I wish I could make sense of this for you, but I have made nothing but trouble and misery. I, your other grandfather, am not entitled even to console you. I shall live my remaining days with this terrible thing on my conscience. The deaths of my son, your mother, your Pépé. All I can tell you is that Henri-Pierre loved you very much.”
“He didn't love me,” said Emma, feeling the hot tears running down her cheeks, not remembering when they had started. “He was selfish and cowardly and cruel, and I hate him.”
“He did love you, Emma,” said Armand Caraignac, with tears in his own eyes. “He did.”
“No,” said Emma. “I'll never believe it. There's nothing you can say that could ever convince me.”
“If only you could have seen,” said the old man, shaking his head, wiping his eyes, “the way he used to look at you, Emma, when you were a baby. You would know. You would understand.”
“I don't want to know,” said Emma, rising and picking up her coat. “He killed my grandfather.”
“I will never forget,” said Armand Caraignac as she walked to the door, almost to himself, “how he was with you that last day in Switzerland,”the last time we would see you again until now. We had gone there to ski, but he had walked you through the village first, showing you your first snow.”
“Snow?”
“Yes, a big storm had just come through and a record snow had fallen. It covered everything like a benevolent white blanket.
That is how I shall always remember him, walking you through the great mountains of snow.”
Emma had stopped at the door. As Armand Caraignac's tired voice trailed off, the image that had haunted Emma her entire life sprang once again into her mind. The thick flurries, punctuated by tall black skeletons of trees. The great stone houses all around her. The hand in hers, the loving hand.
Only this time, for the first time, Emma could see to whom the hand had belonged. She could see the person's face. It was a young and handsome face with blue eyes and soft brown hair. It was the face of Henri-Pierre Caraignac. It was the face of her father.
“Maybe I'll take that, after all,” said Emma after a long moment, pointing to the dragon whistle which the old man was still holding in his limp hand.

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