The Twenty-Year Death (16 page)

None of them responded to the question of whether or not a superior had asked them to do something against the rules. Everyone had a different opinion about the number of prisoners who had been stabbed and how many had actually been killed.

After four hours, Pelleter held up his hand for a break.

“I told you this would get us nowhere.”

“On the contrary.”

“You think that you’ve learned something from this?”

“How many more are out there?”

“A lot? At least thirty.”

“Then we’re not done.”

Pelleter lit a cigar, and took several puffs in contemplative silence. He glanced at the notebook on the table with the varied handwriting covering the page. Another list of names. So many names, but none of them were the right one.

The smoke from his cigar floated to the ceiling and formed a cloud with the smoke from his previous cigars. The interrogations were exhausting, but he was convinced that he would find
something. One of these people had to know something about removing the bodies. He just had to find which one.

He waved to Letreau to let the next one in. Letreau brought in a young guard, and they each took their respective seats. The guard was no more than twenty-two, and the scruff that he must have considered a beard was still patchy in parts, the space under his lower lip completely bald.

“What’s your name?” Pelleter began.

“Jean Empermont.”

Pelleter frowned. “You’re the guard who marked Meranger as present the morning after he was killed.”

The man looked down at his hands, which were in his lap. “Yes,” he said, almost so quietly as to not be heard.

Fournier had said that the man had been reprimanded, and Pelleter would not have been surprised to find that Fournier knew all too well how to dress a man down. He softened his tone.

“How long have you worked here?”

The man was slow to answer, and at first it seemed as though he might not. At last, still looking at his hands, he said, “It will be a year next month.”

“And before this?”

“Nothing...I tried university, but I was no good at it...I helped my father with his painting business...then this.”

All the time the man had not looked up. Here was a man who was familiar with failure. Who, in his short years, had tried his hand at several things, but always seemed plagued by ill-luck. He no doubt felt as though this new failure would soon lead to his termination, an action for which Fournier was no doubt simply awaiting the warden’s return, and that he would once again be forced to make a fresh start of things.

Pelleter sat forward, eager but also gentle. “Can you tell me what happened Wednesday morning?”

“Nothing!” the man burst out. Then he looked up to see what effect this ejaculation had had, panicked that he had damaged
his case by showing his exasperation. “Nothing,” he repeated quietly, his eyes pleading. He took a deep breath. “Each guard is responsible for roll call on his cell block. But it’s almost a formality in the mornings because where would the prisoners have gone? I guess they could have died.”

He stopped short, realizing what he had said.

Letreau shifted in his seat beside Pelleter, but the inspector stayed still, watching the guard intently.

He started again, holding his hands palm up. “We don’t even let them out of their cells at that point. Each guard has a list, and he walks along the block, calling the names, and the prisoners respond. Then you mark them as here. I guess we’re supposed to look through the windows, but nobody does. I went along the block. I called Meranger. Somebody said, ‘Here,’ and I marked him as present.”

“They said it from inside the cell?”

“I thought so.” He dropped his hands to his sides, and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Who told you to mark him as here?”

“No one.”

“Fournier?”

The guard shook his head, confused. “No. No one. Somebody said here. It was just like every day.”

“The warden?”

Letreau coughed suddenly, and turned in his seat.

“No.” The guard’s eyes were wide. “No. He said, here. I marked him here.”

“Okay,” Pelleter said, and sat back. He put his cigar in his mouth, but found that it was no longer burning. He tapped the gray bud of ash from the end of the cigar onto the floor.

“Okay?”

“Oh. Write your name on the notebook, and let in the next person.” Pelleter was relighting his cigar.

The guard reached for the notebook as though he were waiting for some kind of trap. But as he wrote, Pelleter looked off into the distance, as though he had already forgotten that the man was there. The guard left on silent feet.

“Pelleter—” Letreau started, but the next guard had already come in.

He was a large man—over six foot—and older than most of the other men they had seen so far, at least as old as the inspector, with hair graying at the temples. He sat up straight in the chair, pushing out his broad chest over his rounded belly, and met Pelleter’s eyes. “I’ve got nothing to say,” he said.

Letreau noticed that Pelleter’s manner changed. The inspector’s movements, already slow, grew slower, and his eyelids dropped halfway. “How about your name? Will you say that?”

The guard sucked in his lower lip, and resettled his bulk on his chair. “Passemier.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Thirty-two years.”

Pelleter raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Impressive.”

“I’ve been here longer than most.”

“But not the warden,” Pelleter said. “He got his start here as well.”

“We started together. We’ve been here the same amount of time.”

“How come you’re not warden?”

Passemier shifted, pressing his lips together. He paused before answering, weighing what he had already said versus
what he was going to say. “We can’t all be the warden. The warden’s a good man. A great friend.”

Pelleter turned the notebook towards himself. There was apparently something very interesting there all of a sudden that was more pressing than the interview.

Passemier waited him out, not saying anything.

“So you don’t know anything about any of this?” Pelleter said, still looking at the notebook, although he wasn’t reading a single line there. All of his energy was focused on the guard.

“Any of what?”

“Any of this?” Pelleter pushed back the notebook, and looked at the old guard.

“Meranger?” the man said, squinting. He brought a hand to his chin.

Pelleter made a gesture with his hand, but it was impossible to tell what it meant.

Passemier resumed his self-assured military pose. “Nothing.”

“Okay,” Pelleter said. He picked up the notebook and turned to a fresh page. “If you could just write your name here...”

“Okay?” The guard looked surprised. He had been prepared to get grilled. He glanced at Letreau and then back at Pelleter. “That’s it?”

“You have nothing to say. You don’t know anything about this. You’re a long-standing guard here. What more can I ask?”

The guard shrugged, and his whole figure loosened up, the weight of his stomach pulling his shoulders forward. He reached for the outstretched notebook and pencil, and held the notebook in hand while he wrote instead of setting it down on the table. When he finished he set it down, sighed, looked at both men again, and then stood by pushing his hands against his thighs.

When he was at the door, Pelleter said, “One last thing...
How many stabbings would you say there have been in the prison this month.”

“Seven,” Passemier said, his hand on the doorknob.

“Is that a lot?”

Passemier shrugged. “It’s happened before. But it’s not usual.”

“Thank you. No one else was sure.”

Passemier nodded, and stepped out into the hall.

“You think he knows something,” Letreau said as soon as they were alone.

“I know he knows something,” Pelleter said, smoking again. “He knows that there were seven stabbings. No one else guessed more than four.”

“So what now?”

“We continue.”

But as the remainder of the employees filtered in one by one, Pelleter seemed disinterested, eager to get through them so that he could move on. He allowed Letreau to question some of them. Letreau followed the same method that he had seen Pelleter use all morning, and Pelleter would step in if he thought that something was missing. But no one else excited the same interest.

In the administrative office, Pelleter went directly to Martin, who had indeed been given the desk in the corner that Pelleter had spotted the day before. He had stacks of files spread out before him.

“So?” Pelleter said.

Martin handed him a small stack of six folders without saying anything. The top one was Meranger. At the end of the file it said that Meranger had been transferred to the National Prison at Segré.

He went through the other five folders. They were the men who had been found in the field. They too had each been transferred to the National Prison at Segré.

“Good,” Pelleter said, and handed the files to Letreau, so he could see.

“There is no national prison at Segré,” Martin said, still seated and looking up at the inspector.

“I know.”

“My god,” Letreau said.

Pelleter stepped over to one of the nearest desks and picked up the telephone. He waited while he was connected.

Fournier arrived then. “Are you satisfied, now that you’ve terrorized my staff?”

Pelleter turned his back on the assistant warden, and spoke into the phone.

“Who is he calling?” Fournier said to Letreau, annoyed that the inspector was ignoring him.

“I don’t know,” Letreau said.

Pelleter hung up then. “Good. How’s our stabbing victim from yesterday?”

Fournier seemed put off by this question. He had been expecting something else. “He’s fine.”

“Good. We’ll see you later, I hope.”

“Wait one second. What’s going on?”

Pelleter turned to Martin. He showed him his notebook. “Pull these two files. Then go through all of the employee records. I want to know anyone else who started at the same time and is still on staff.” Pelleter paused for a moment. Then he added, “Or was on staff until recently.”

Martin stepped off.

Fournier sputtered. “I demand that you tell me what is going on.”

Pelleter smiled, and it seemed to only make Fournier angrier. “Soon,” Pelleter said. “When the first train arrives in the morning. We’re almost done now.”

Pelleter turned to Letreau, and then headed for the front door. Letreau fell in behind him.

Fournier called behind him, “Wait!”

Pelleter said, “We’ll let you know.”

Then he and Letreau went out to the car, which was just then in a bright ray of sunshine.

It was dusk when they reached the police station in Verargent. As always, the town in evening was a shadow of its daytime self. The square was deserted. The lights in the café, the hotel, and a few other buildings were the only indication that the town was more than a stage set.

“You must join us for dinner tonight,” Letreau said, slamming the police car’s door. “My wife’s appalled that I’ve let you take dinner by yourself through all this.”

Pelleter met Letreau at the front of the car. “I haven’t eaten alone yet. If people know where I am, they can reach me.”

Letreau shook his head. He looked worn out, the lines in his forehead deeper than usual, his cheeks lax, pulling his eyes down. “Do you really have this thing nearly wrapped up? Because I don’t see it.”

“Some of it. We’ll see what I actually know in the morning.”

Letreau studied the inspector’s face to see if he could read the solution there. He sighed, and dropped his hand on Pelleter’s shoulder. “You’re sure about dinner?”

“I want to go for a little walk now,” Pelleter said. “But thank your wife.”

Letreau shook his head. “You’re not making things easy for me.” He laughed, but it was strained, his face muscles tight. He dropped his hand, nodded, seemed as though he was going to say something else, nodded again, and then went up the station
steps. At the top of the steps, he turned, hand on the door, and called, “First thing in the morning.” Then he disappeared into the station.

Pelleter wanted to check on something before he returned to his hotel. He walked away from the square.

The streetlamps had been lit, and the light from the houses cast a pale glow into the night. The evening had a safe coziness to it proper to the town, and it was hard to imagine that Verargent could ever feel unsafe. When he came to the hospital, the extra light from the building seemed harsh and unnecessary.

The hospital was a single-story structure that had been built at what was once the outskirts of town, but was now embedded in the town proper. The building was simple and functional, which made it appear institutional even from the outside.

Pelleter went inside. A nurse sat at a desk just inside the door, reading the new special edition of the
Verargent Vérité
. Its headline simply read, “Murder!”, which meant that Rosenkrantz had been very convincing when he spoke to Servières about not mentioning his wife in the paper.

“May I help you?” the nurse said, looking up.

“I’m Inspector Pelleter. I’ve come to look in the morgue.”

“We don’t have a morgue. More of an all-purpose storage room in the back. But they’ve sure filled it up with bodies this week...Take that door there. That’s the men’s ward...There are double doors straight back, which lead into a hall...The first door in front of you will be the storage room.”

The ward had twelve beds along each of the longer walls. There were windows lining the outer wall, but the inner wall was a solid partition separating the men’s ward from the women’s. It didn’t extend to the ceiling.

Only eight of the beds were occupied, two of them by children,
both asleep. Pelleter stopped and looked at the boys. They must have been the Perreaux brothers. It was amazing that such little forms could stir up so much trouble. The chief inspector’s mind turned involuntarily to the fate he had imagined for these two boys when it seemed as though Mahossier could have them. He looked away. A nurse was distributing dinners from a cart in the center aisle. Pelleter went on.