The Twenty-Year Death (2 page)

As they ate, the rain streamed down the café windows, distorting the town square, rendering it invisible.

The café was empty of other customers. The proprietor stood
behind the counter with his arms crossed, watching the water run. Two electric wall sconces had been lit in deference to the continued storm.

An automobile passed around the square, its dark form like some kind of lumbering animal, its engine sawing diligently, audible and then gone.

Nobody was out who didn’t have to be, and not many people had to be out in Verargent early on a Wednesday morning. The weather had been worse last night. Why would a drunk choose to be out in the rain instead of sitting it out in some bar?

“Tell me about the dead man,” Pelleter said.

“We don’t know him. None of my men had seen him before, and in a small town like this, you get to know the faces of all the night owls. He had no documents on him, no billfold, no money. Just a drifter. We’ve sent his fingerprints in to see if there are any matches.”

“You get many drifters here?”

“No.”

Pelleter sat back and retrieved a cigar from his inner coat pocket. He lit it, and blew out a steady stream of smoke.

“Would you go with me to see the baker?” Letreau asked.

Pelleter chewed his cigar. Seeing Pelleter smoking, the proprietor came to clear the plates. The two lawmen waited for him to leave.

“I need to get to Malniveau. Madame Pelleter expects me home.”

“It won’t be a minute. This is exactly what it looks like, a drifter drowning in a puddle. I just need to be careful, and if I arrive with you, an inspector from the city, if there’s anything to know, we’ll know it. Benoît will be too scared to hide anything.”

The rain continued outside.

“Not that I think he has anything to hide. I just need to be careful.”

“Tell me about the baker.”

“Benoît? He made the bread we just ate. His father was the baker here before him, but the old man died many years ago. He works seven days a week, and does little outside of his house and his shop. In his domain, he can seem very commanding, but when you see him anywhere else, at the market, at the cinema, he is a small man. My men said he sat last night in the station as though he had been called to the headmaster’s office at school. And he’s fifteen years older than my oldest officer! His wife works in the bakery too.”

Pelleter called the proprietor over to pay, but Letreau told him that it was taken care of.

“I have a tab,” he explained, standing.

Pelleter made sure that his cigar had gone out, and then placed it back in his pocket. He took his rain slicker from the standing coat rack just inside the door, and his hat.

Letreau called goodbye to the proprietor, who answered as though he had just been awakened. Fixing his own coat, Letreau said, “I hate to go out in this rain.” Then he opened the door, and the sound of the weather doubled in strength, like turning up the radio.

There were more people on the street than it had appeared from the café, but each walked separately with the determination of someone who had places to go. Most walked with hunched shoulders and heads down, but there was the occasional umbrella.

The bronze statue atop the ten-foot concrete column in the
center of the square watched the faces of the shops on the north side of the street.

It was cold.

The two men walked in silence. Letreau led, but they walked so close together it would have been impossible to say whether or not Pelleter knew where they were going. They crossed the square, and took the southern of the two roads that entered the square from the west. The buildings here were still a mixture of shops and houses. The baker’s shop was on the first floor of a two-story brick building, five storefronts from the square. The words
Benoît and Son Bakery
were emblazoned on the plate glass window in green and gold paint.

There were several women in the store buying bread for the day, but when Benoît saw the policemen enter, he came out from behind the counter. “Monsieur Letreau! I’m glad you came. This terrible business from last night has my wife very upset. She could hardly sleep. And we have to get up very early. Very early to make the bread. We could hardly sleep.”

Despite his loud greeting, the baker looked exhausted, the spaces under his eyes dark and puffy. There was a small patch of light stubble on the left side of his chin at the jaw line where he had missed a spot shaving.

“And my basement is ruined. One day my house will collapse. You’ll see. The town must do something about this. Every time that gutter gets clogged, I must spend the next two days bailing out my own house. The worms come through the walls.”

The customers conducted their business with Madame Benoît, the women apparently used to the baker’s little tirades. As each one left, the sound of the bell hanging from the top of the door mixed with the shush of the rain.

“This is Chief Inspector Pelleter,” Letreau said. “He’s come to see about this business.”

Pelleter was annoyed by the introduction. He could see himself becoming more involved in this investigation than he wanted to be. He moved his lips, but it was unclear what the expression meant.

Benoît stepped in towards the two men. “Is it that serious?” Then he got excited. “Or are you here to inspect our sewers, and solve this problem? I can take you to my house right away. My wife can take care of things here. There’s still water in my basement. Let me show you.”

“I’m with the Central Police,” Pelleter said.

Benoît became grave again. “What happened?”

“Nothing as far as we know,” Letreau said. “We just wanted to hear it again from you.”

The door opened. The bell tinkled, letting the last customer out. Madame Benoît watched the three men, but she remained behind the counter.

“I was going to bed when I thought to check the basement. As I said, these storms often cause floods. When I saw the water, I rushed out to the street, and found the drunk lying there. We tried to call the police, but the lines were down, so I went to the station myself. It probably caused another two feet of water, leaving that body there like that.”

“The men said he was face-up when they got there.”

“He had been face-down. I rolled him over to see if he was all right. Then I saw he was dead...”

“Did you hear anything? See anything?”

Benoît gripped his left hand in his right, rubbing the knuckles. His voice had grown much quieter, almost timid, and he glanced
at his wife before looking back at Pelleter. “What was there to hear? Only the rain... Only the rain...”

Benoît turned to his wife. “Did you hear anything last night?” he called to her.

She pressed her lips together, and shook her head.

Letreau caught Pelleter’s eye, and Pelleter nodded once.

“Okay, Benoît,” Letreau said. “That’s fine.”

“Did...” Benoît looked at his wife again. “Was... Did something...happen? The man was drunk, right?”

“Sure. As far as we know.”

Benoît’s expression eased slightly at that. He had clearly been shaken very badly by the whole incident, and the idea that something more might have taken place was too much for him.

“Ah, the mop!” he said looking down. “We need the mop.”

The door opened, letting in another customer, and before it closed a second new customer snuck in as well. They commented on the terrible weather.

Benoît looked for permission to go, and Letreau said, “Thank you. We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

Benoît stepped back, his expression even more natural now. He reached one hand out behind him for the mop, which was still several feet away in a corner behind the counter. “Come to my house, and I’ll show you the flood. The water was up to here.” He indicated just below his knees with his hand.

Pelleter opened the door, and Letreau followed him out into the street.

“What do you think?”

“There’s nothing to think.”

“I just had to be sure.”

Pelleter nodded his approval. Water sloshed off of the brim of his hat.

They began to walk back towards the square. “Come back to the station. I’ll drive you to the prison.”

They waited for an automobile to pass, and then they crossed the street. The rain had eased some again, but it was still steady. Lights could be seen in the windows of various buildings. It was like a perpetual dusk even though it was still before ten in the morning.

They stepped into the police station through the entrance on the side street beside Town Hall. The station was an open space separated into two sections by a counter. In front of the counter was a small entryway with several chairs. Behind the counter were three desks arranged to just fit the space. Doors led to offices along the back and left-hand wall. Letreau needed to get keys to one of the police cars.

“Chief,” the young man behind the counter said. “There’s a message for you.” The officer looked at Pelleter, and then back at his commanding officer. Pelleter had never seen the man before, but it was obvious that the young officer knew who he was.

“This is Officer Martin,” Letreau said to Pelleter. “He’s the one who went out to the baker’s house last night.” Then to Martin as he started behind the counter towards his office, “Did we get an ID on our dead drifter?”

“Not yet,” the man said. “It was the hospital.”

Letreau stopped and looked back.

The young man picked up a piece of paper from the desk on which he had written the message, but he didn’t need to look at it. It was more to steady himself. “Cause of death was multiple stab wounds to stomach and chest. No water in the lungs.”

Pelleter looked across at Letreau who was looking at him. Letreau’s face had gone pale. His drunken drifter had just turned
into a homicide. And no water in the lungs meant the man had been dead before he ended up in the gutter.

The young officer looked up. He swallowed when he saw the chief’s face.

“Anything else?” Letreau barked.

“There were no holes in his clothes,” the officer said. “Someone stabbed him to death, and then changed his outfit.”

The sudden silence in the station was stunning. It was made all the more awkward when two other officers appeared from the back, laughing over some shared joke.

They saw the state of the room and fell silent as well.

Letreau stepped heavily across the small space to the counter, and took the message from out of the desk officer’s hand. “I have to call the hospital,” he said, and disappeared into his office, slamming the door behind him.

Pelleter saw Martin look up at him, but he turned away, uninterested in any paternal conversation. He retrieved the cigar he had started at the café from his pocket, lit it, and took the seat that the baker had occupied the night before.

The two officers who had been joking returned to their respective desks.

Pelleter concentrated on the fine taste of the smoke from his cigar. He opened his coat. Light drops of water continued to fall on the floor around him.

If Letreau was going to be long, he would have to take a taxi. Visiting hours at the prison were short. The warden refused to be accommodating, annoyed by Pelleter’s visits. He felt that they were unprofessional, that the prisoners, once under his guard, were dead to the outside world. Pelleter’s own displeasure for these visits didn’t soften the warden’s opinion.

The three officers talked amongst themselves in quiet tones. A murder in this town was big news.

Pelleter looked at his cigar as he blew out a plume of smoke. It was more than half gone.

Letreau’s office door opened. The officers fell silent, but he ignored them as he strode across the station to the door. “Come,” he said to Pelleter. “Let’s go.”

Pelleter stood. It was obvious that Letreau was distraught, his easy nature covered by a set jaw and a gruff manner. “I can take a taxi.”

“No. There’s nothing to be done right now. Let’s go.”

They went back out into the rain to one of the police cars parked just outside the station. The doors had been left unlocked. Letreau got behind the wheel and Pelleter sat beside him in the passenger seat.

Letreau started the car, turning on the windshield wiper, and then he pulled out of the spot, and headed east out of town.

“Any news?” Pelleter said.

“Just what you heard.”

The two men remained silent for the remainder of the half-hour drive.

When the town fell away, it was replaced by fields that extended beyond the wire fences on either side of the road. There was the occasional outlying farmhouse or barn. Cows milled in a large enclosure, the hair on their undersides hanging in muddy clumps matted by the rain. Even in the countryside all colors were muted and everything seemed pinned down by the spring gale. The sky was large and gray.

The prison was visible ten minutes before they arrived there. It was a heavy, awkward structure imposed on the land, a dark blotch. It appeared a remnant from some earlier age.

They pulled into the drive. A guard, so bundled as to be indiscernible, appeared from the guard house, waved at them, and went to open the twenty-foot iron gate.

“A man could kill himself here,” Letreau said, “and no one would blame him.”

The guard had the gate open. Letreau pulled the police car through, and the guard waved again, but Pelleter still could not make the man out.

There were several other vehicles—a truck, two police cars, three civilian cars—parked in the small cobblestone courtyard before the front entrance. There was another courtyard in the center of the building where the prisoners took their exercise. The narrow windows in the stone walls were impenetrable black slits, dead eyes watching over them.

“There’s something wrong about having this place out here,” Letreau said, parking the car. “The men they put here come from far away, from other places. That way the rest of the country can forget about them. And my town is the closest. All the men who work in the prison live in Verargent. Don’t you think they bring some of this back to town with them? We’re a peace-loving community. Most of our complaints are petty thefts and the occasional late-night drunk.”