Tom Savage - Mrs. John Doe

Another noise behind her, a soft creaking sound. She whirled around, straining to see. No, nothing. She hadn’t latched the gate; that was all.

She followed the path down the row to the middle, to another walkway leading straight back, toward the fruit trees. Now she headed that way, peering down at the stones as she passed by them: perrault, robin, masson,…devereaux . Here they were, in the center of the churchyard, right next to the Vanels’ crypt. devereaux, rené et jeanette . Below their names and dates, Jeff had added an epitaph for them: À DEUX AUX CIEUX.

Together in heaven . Nora smiled at the sentiment. She stood at the grave, the flowers in her hands, looking around the shadowy cemetery. The church just behind her on her right, the little Vanel tomb beside her on her left, the rows of graves, the fence and the trees beyond, the windblown branches of the firs and cypresses. It was ten o’clock-a bit after ten, actually. Where was…?

“Jeff?” she called softly into the darkness. “Jeffrey? C’est moi. Où es tu? ”

She heard the wind in the trees, and somewhere, off in the village, a dog barked once, a single cry cut off by a sharp command from a sleepy master. The sound of her own subdued voice in this empty place chilled her. She was once again aware of the remoteness of this town. Since leaving the autoroute to climb into these hills, she and Jacques had encountered exactly three vehicles, four people in all: a young man and a laughing girl in a speeding sports car, an old man in an ancient sedan, and a dozing farmer on an excruciatingly slow horse-drawn cart.

As for Pinède, well, everyone here was asleep. There was one gendarme in the town, she remembered, connected by phone to the Gendarmerie Départementale station in the bigger town down the hill, but he-she?-would probably be in bed as well. This churchyard felt vacant, forlorn. In that moment Nora knew, as one could only know after twenty-one years in the same marriage bed, that her husband was not anywhere nearby.

Dix roses pour Grand-tante J ce soir . Had she misunderstood the message after all? Was he waiting for her at his great-aunt’s house down the road? Did the ten mean something else entirely? For whatever reason, however it had come about, Nora was alone here, alone with the dead.

She had to get out of here. The thought entered her mind, forcing her into action. She knelt to place the roses on the mound before the gravestone, feeling around for a big rock to weigh them down in the wind. As she did so, her hand came upon a depression, a drop of some kind near the marble slab. Then her palm hit a wall of cold, smooth, flat metal. Some implement was sticking up out of the ground beside the drop. She leaned over on her knees, squinting in the dark, feeling up from the ground with her fingers. The flat wedge of metal ended, topped by a wooden pole extending three feet straight up into the air. A shovel. She thought, What on earth …?

She reached into the pocket of her trench coat, pulled out the flashlight, and switched it on. In the powerful beam she saw the drop next to the shovel very clearly: six feet long, three feet wide, four feet deep. A gaping rectangle in the ground by the Devereaux headstone.

A fresh grave. Empty. Waiting.

Oh God, she thought. Jeff!

Nora rose slowly to her feet, fighting for breath, for balance. Her legs barely accommodated her to a standing position. She stood, riveted, calculating the distance to the gate behind her, the length of the road back to the car. To Jacques Lanier, small and slight and in his sixties but better than nothing. She would run, run all the way back, just as soon as she could will herself to move.

She switched off the flashlight. In the sudden, utter darkness that followed, spots danced before her dazzled eyes, a million bursting stars. A particularly bright spot appeared on her shoulder and flickered there for a moment before fluttering down to land on her raincoat in the center of her chest. She blinked, clearing her vision, but the spot was still there. She thought it must be some kind of insect, and she absently raised the hand with the flashlight to brush it away. She looked more closely down at her chest and froze, transfixed, mesmerized by the dancing dot of light.

The bright red, dancing dot of light.

Nora stared. The flashlight fell from her hand, landing with a thump at her feet. The infrared dot came to a stop on her left breast, just above her heart.

Then her shoulders were seized from behind in a powerful grip, and for the second time in two days-the second time in her life-she was flung violently to the ground.

She landed on soft grass, inches from the Vanel mausoleum, her face colliding with black dirt. The strong hands from behind her were now pulling her along the ground toward the little building. She screamed, preparing to kick out with her boots, when one of the hands was clamped viciously over her mouth. In the same instant, she heard a spitting sound from the orchard and the ground near Grand- tante Jeanette’s headstone erupted, sending a spray of earth flying up into the air.

“Stay down, mademoiselle!” The whisper was in her ear, and the hands continued to pull her toward the crypt. Jacques was flat on the ground beside her, urging her onward. Nora crawled to the building and rolled over, leaning back against the marble, wiping dirt from her eyes and mouth. Her little driver was now crouched against the wall next to her, and he had been transformed. He wore a black plastic band around his head, with dark goggles covering his eyes, and he was gripping a large silver gun with a fat barrel in his right hand.

Another spitting sound from the direction of the orchard was followed by another explosion of dirt mere inches from where they lay. She drew in breath to scream again. Again, his hand over her mouth stopped her.

“Quiet! Stay here. Do not move from here,” he whispered, and he was gone. She was alone beside the crypt, her legs dangling in the space formed by three steps that led down to the little door below ground level. She looked at the metal door. Would it be unlocked? Could she slide down the steps and crawl into the subterranean room, to hide among the moldering caskets of dead Vanels? With worms that are thy chambermaids …

No. If someone was after her, and Jacques and his nasty-looking handgun failed to prevent their advance, then a small, enclosed space was the last place she’d want to be. She’d need to be free, in the open, in case she had to run. Better to do as Jacques commanded and stay right here, with the mausoleum between her and-

And whom? The Pakistani? The ugly man from the museum? Who the hell were these people? And who the hell was Jacques?

Whither should I fly? Shakespeare again, some part she’d played a hundred years ago. The silly line arrived in her fevered mind, a familiar sign of panic, but it was appropriate. Where should she go? The rectory? An elderly priest and his no doubt equally wizened servants. The car? She’d never make it, not with that infrared scope to find her in the dark and fix on her as she ran down that long stretch. Jacques would have the keys anyway, so the car was out. Her best bet would be the village; get out through the gate and run, screaming her head off, directly into the center of town. The gendarme was there, and sixty or seventy forestiers, big men with big arms for wielding axes. And guns-they’d certainly have guns…

There was a sudden, ominous silence in the graveyard behind her. No spitting sounds or shouts or breathing-nothing but the constant sighing of the wind in the trees. Where was Jacques? Was he all right? And what about the other man, the shooter? It must be a man; it couldn’t be a woman. Was it the Pakistani? He was in the orchard, but he might have moved. He could be creeping around the iron fence toward her even now, as she sat here, exposed. He would kill her to get what he wanted.