S. Cedric - Of Fever and Blood

“What’s her name?” Leroy demanded. “No more beating around the bush. We need to know who that woman is!”

“Unfortunately, knowing her name won’t help you much.”

“And why’s that?” Vauvert mumbled.

“Because that person is dead. She had a fatal disease, and she was terminal during her time at Raynal.” Fabre-Renault shut his eyes and uttered her name. “Judith Saint-Clair.”

“Doctor, you have to explain what happened,” Vauvert insisted. We’re running out of time. Someone’s life is at stake.”

“I know, detective. You don’t understand. This whole story makes no sense. Judith Saint-Clair could never have harmed Christine Garnier or anybody else. She was so weak, she couldn’t even get out of bed.”

“And so she’s dead now?”

“She has to be.”

“You mean she didn’t die at Raynal?” Leroy said, becoming increasingly upset.

Fabre-Renault absently arranged the mugs on his desk as he framed the response in his head.

“No, she didn’t die at the hospital. She left us just before she died. As I told you, she was terminal. Her family hired an ambulance to take her home so that she could spend her last days there.”

“So, you’re not certain that she died?”

Fabre-Renault made a weary gesture.

“That was three years ago, detective. She was on her deathbed. I examined her myself.”

“That illness you’re talking about, what was it? Cancer?”

“No. She had progeria. To be precise, Judith Saint-Clair suffered from what is called Methuselah Syndrome.”

“What’s that?” Vauvert asked.

“I’m sure you’d recognize it,” the doctor responded. “Haven’t you ever seen those photos of children with old people’s faces?”

Vauvert and Leroy nodded.

“That’s it. That’s the illness. It can manifest itself in many ways, and appear at different stages of life, but everyone suffering from it has the same problem of cell and protein regeneration. Methuselah Syndrome is the most terrible form, because it is practically undetectable before the onset of symptoms, and then it is devastating once the illness has set in.”

“Judith Saint-Clair was aging in fast forward? Is that it?” Vauvert asked.

“That’s it. Although, technically, it is not actually aging, but rather cells being unable to divide normally. Yes, the result is quite the same: the patient appears to age ten times more quickly than a healthy person. In Saint-Clair’s case, the first signs of the illness appeared when she was twenty-five.”

“Is there a treatment?”

“None. The cells can’t code the proteins correctly, there’s no hope at all. The patients develop cardiovascular complications. They rarely survive more than a few years. Judith Saint-Clair was exactly thirty-one years old when she arrived at Raynal. The illness was already at an advanced stage. Her face…” He tried to come up with the right words, but obviously couldn’t find any. “She had the face of a very old woman. Old, and in very poor health. She had lost all of her hair. Watching herself die that way drove her mad with rage. She had been a beautiful young women. She had won a number of beauty pageants. She had dreams of becoming an actress.”

“So, when she started losing her looks, she couldn’t cope with it?”

“Precisely. She couldn’t stand watching her body fall apart while her brain remained perfectly lucid. She raged against the nurses and kept the blinds in her room drawn day and night.”

“It’s her,” Leroy said. “This has to be the woman we’re looking for.”

“Sounds like it to me, too,” Vauvert replied.

“You don’t understand,” the doctor said. “She can’t still be alive.”

“What if she found a cure or at least a way to slow the illness?”

“As I said, there’s no cure,” the doctor insisted.

“And yet, you admit that mysterious events took place at Raynal.”

Fabre-Renault did not know what to say. He twisted his fingers on the desk.

“Do you have this woman’s address?” Leroy asked.

“I’ve kept some of the Raynal documents on my computer. I can give you the address I have.” Fabre-Renault turned on the laptop on his desk. The screen lit up. He tapped on the keyboard, then wrote the address on a piece of paper. Leroy took it from him and got up.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a few phone calls to check out some things.”

He went into the hallway to be alone, and Vauvert knew that the detective would have to tell his colleagues some very big lies in order to get information on Judith Saint-Clair.

But he had to do what he had to do.

They needed the information, as fast as they could get it.

Vauvert let out a long sigh.

“Thank you for your cooperation, doctor.”

“You’re welcome,” Fabre-Renault answered. “You really believe that she could be involved in what’s happening now?”

“Someone is reenacting a very old ritual. We’re talking about human sacrifice. It’s possible that Judith Saint-Clair is dead, as you believe. But it’s also possible, even though it seems crazy, that she’s still alive and that she has convinced herself that this ritual could save her life.”

Fabre-Renault seemed lost in his own thoughts.

“Who wouldn’t dream of being healed, even by means of a pact with forces from beyond?” he said. “Saint-Clair was certainly desperate enough to believe in such things, I admit.”

“And to make other people believe it, too.”

“People like the Salavilles?”

“Exactly. If she was bedridden, as you say, she had to find disciples to carry out the crimes.”

“I follow your train of thought, detective. But all this just seems insane.”

“And yet it’s the only explanation. You never noticed some sort of special relationship between the Salaville brothers and Judith Saint-Clair?”

“I wouldn’t have noticed anything like that, I…” Fabre-Renault hesitated. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead again. He wiped them off with a napkin he had brought in with the coffee. “I’m not sure how to say this. I avoided those two patients. I was afraid of them. That’s the truth. I did all I could to not get involved in their treatment.”

“They weren’t sedated?”

“Of course they were. Their first week, they broke a nurse’s nose because she wouldn’t bring them cigarettes. I can assure you that we had them pumped full of drugs. But the drugs were never enough. They managed to terrorize the entire staff. Animals, that’s what the Salavilles were. I know someone in my field should never say something like that, but it’s the hard truth. Claude and Roman were wild animals, impossible to control. If you think that a dying woman managed to tame them, well,” The doctor paused. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. But if it is the case, then you’re dealing with a woman in possession of an extraordinary gift.”

Vauvert tried to imagine the scene: a gravely ill woman in a secluded hospital room converting two feeble-minded beasts to her own barbaric religion.

Maybe this woman did have a gift. An extraordinary gift. Irrational, maybe, but a gift that enabled her to…

Manipulate people’s minds?

Show things that weren’t real?

Things like wolves?

“Doctor, one last thing. Was Judith Saint-Clair at Raynal when your patients suffered from hallucinations?”

“Well, now that you ask,” Fabre-Renault paused to think. “I seem to recall that the hallucinations began immediately after her admission.”

While Vauvert and Fabre-Renault talked, Leroy made a series of phone calls. He came back into the office, his face grim.