Tasha Alexander - Dangerous to Know

“I’m sure I couldn’t carry it off,” I said.

“I believe you could,” Cécile said. “But what is our plan now? Shall we go door to door in search of Vasseur?”

“That would take too long,” Mrs. Hargreaves said. “Let’s think about what he would have needed when they came—somewhere to stay—we can check the hotels—”

“Have you any idea how many there are in a resort like this?” Sebastian said.

“It’s not a large town,” I said, refusing to be daunted. “And we can see if there are any houses for rent, or houses that have recently been rented. And we can talk to the physician in town, who might have been aware of the child.”

“Shall we divide and conquer?” Monsieur Leblanc asked.

“No,” I said. “Whoever murdered Edith and Dr. Girard wouldn’t hesitate to put a stop to what we’re doing. We’ll be safer together.”

“Have you any suggestions, Monsieur Leblanc?” Mrs. Hargreaves asked. “You do, after all, live here. To whom would you refer friends in search of lodgings?”

“It’s difficult to say. Holidaymakers are one thing—there are plenty of hotels for them,” he said. “But if Vasseur was looking for a home, he could have wound up anywhere.”

“So you’ve no way to narrow the field?” she asked, looking at him with a critical eye.

He could not, he apologized, offer any further ideas. So we set off, ready to interview the entire town if necessary. In the course of the afternoon, we spoke to more people than I could count, most of them friendly and helpful, but all, sadly, without information that aided our search. One woman did remember seeing a girl of Lucy’s description, walking on the cliff path with her mother, but her recollection was not clear, and she never saw the child again.

After several hours of this, Cécile demanded a break, and we stopped at a café housed in a rambling fifteenth-century mass of timber and plaster, full of elaborate wooden carvings of animals and figures and ordered cold glasses of good Norman cider. Mrs. Hargreaves was particularly taken with the image of a salamander, while Cécile preferred some sort of bird. As Sebastian and Monsieur Leblanc started to add their opinions, frustration filled me.

“Maybe coming here was a mistake,” I said.

“Étretat is never a mistake,” Mrs. Hargreaves said. “We can walk on the cliff path.”

“I need to find Lucy,” I said. “We don’t have time to play tourist. I’m sorry—I don’t mean to sound snappish, but I’m deeply concerned about her.”

“Of course you are,” she said. “But think on it. A child who’d been brought here would want to play on the beach. Perhaps some of the vendors on the boardwalk will remember her.”

“An excellent idea,” I said. We set off as soon as we’d paid the bill. The day was a brilliant one, the sunlight scattering over the choppy waves of the sea, the sky crisp, the air warm. The beach was only a few blocks from the café, and Mrs. Hargreaves’s suggestion was an excellent one—lines of carts and stands filled the area nearby, their owners hawking ices, crêpes, creamy caramels, and every other sort of sweet imaginable.

Lucy, it seemed, had little interest in ice cream. Or caramels. But when we reached our fifth crêpe stand, operated by a short gentleman in a striped sailor-type shirt and a jaunty beret, hope filled my heart.

“A girl you say?” he asked.

“Yes, about six years old. Her mother’s about my size and build, with similar hair? Lucy’s blond. Her father used to be in the Foreign Legion and has bright blue eyes.”

“The Legion? Yes, I think I remember them. He was in Indochina, wasn’t he? New to the area, renting a ramshackle house on the hill.” He gestured at the cliff behind us. “Don’t remember anything striking about his eyes, though. The little girl had ones like that, bluer than anything I’d ever seen. She liked lemon on her crêpes, with butter and sugar.”

“Do you know which house?” I asked.

“Not sure, madame, sorry,” he said. “Talk to the owner of the Hôtel La Résidence. He assists nearly everyone in town looking for a long-term stay.”

We thanked him and darted to the Hôtel, where we quickly found the proprietor.

“Oh, yes, the Myriels, bien sûr ,” he said. “They were in the Guerlot Cottage. I can give you directions if you wish, but I’ve not seen them for months. Madame’s health was not so good and her husband wanted to take her back to Paris.”

His map, though hastily drawn, proved easy to follow, and soon we stood in front of the small house in which Edith and Jules had tried to make a home with their daughter. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. Not wasting any time, Sebastian started to work on the lock, and it clicked open almost at once.

“The place has undoubtedly been rented to someone else,” Monsieur Leblanc said. “So let’s proceed with caution. We could be discovered at any moment.”

He was correct. The rooms were full of evidence that the cottage was occupied by a family visiting the seaside: postcards strewn on a table waited to be addressed, the kitchen was stocked with food, and the bedroom wardrobes were full of clothing.

Sebastian darted through the rooms, his eyes sharp and bright. Mrs. Hargreaves and Cécile, both uneasy at the thought of being discovered, stayed near the front door, watching as the rest of us searched, not knowing what to look for. I started to move more methodically than I had done on first entering the place, carefully looking over every inch of the rooms. Then, in the corridor between the bedrooms, something struck me, and I called for Sebastian.

“Something’s wrong here,” I said.

He pressed his hands along the plaster, which I’d noticed was a slightly different color from that in the rest of the hallway. “It’s newer,” he said. “Shall we look inside?”

I hesitated, unsure if destroying the wall was a good idea. Monsieur Leblanc arrived on the scene, quickly followed by Mrs. Hargreaves and Cécile. My mother-in-law, her eyes narrowed and focused analyzed the situation in an instant.

“Take it down,” she said.

Sebastian did not require further encouragement. He removed from his jacket a metal blade that he used to cut through the plaster, tracing the line of the lighter color. When he reached the end, he pushed it in farther, jiggled the blade, and started to pull out a bit of the now crumbling wall. It came down in easy pieces, and as he removed them, a smell of decay—not overwhelming, but not insignificant—assaulted our senses.

Behind the wall was a body, badly decayed, certainly beyond the point where anyone could recognize him, but I could not doubt it was Monsieur Vasseur. None of us was prepared for the sight of sinewy bones and missing flesh. I ran into the garden where Cécile held my hair back while I was sick. My mother-in-law, however, stayed with Sebastian and Monsieur Leblanc, helping him to lay out the body on the floor, while I, having pulled myself together, summoned the police. Mrs. Hargreaves didn’t fall apart until we reached home, where we found Colin waiting, ready to shoulder the burden for all of us.

22 July 1892

Never again do I want to see what I did today. I’m writing on the train, as it seems the only way to escape the insanity of what we witnessed, of the horror one man will inflict upon another.

I’d not given it much consideration before—and was, no doubt, far too harsh in my judgment of Emily after she’d found poor Edith Prier. The fresh wounds must have been even worse.

Monsieur Vasseur reminded me more of the mummies in the British Museum than of a man recently dead. The police said he’d been stabbed. I’ve not the slightest idea how they could tell, but certainly didn’t want any further detail on the subject.