The Bleeding: The dazzlingly dark, bewitching gothic thriller that everyone is talking about… E-Book
Johana Gustawsson
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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Queen of French Noir, Johana Gustawsson returns with a spell-binding, dazzlingly dark gothic thriller that swings from Belle Époque France to 21st-century Quebec, with an extraordinary mystery at its heart … FIRST in a bewitching new series **Shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger** `A wonderfully dark, intricately woven historical thriller spanning three generations … it will have you hooked from the very first page´ B A Paris `A gripping story of murder and black magic …Gustawsson slowly weaves together three seemingly disparate strands of her narrative with a skill that shows why she is such an admired crime writer in her native France´ The Times BOOK OF THE MONTH `Intriguingly dark and vivid, and so cleverly told through three different time frames´ Essie Fox ________________ Three women Three eras One extraordinary mystery… 1899, Belle Époque Paris. Lucienne's two daughters are believed dead when her mansion burns to the ground, but she is certain that her girls are still alive and embarks on a journey into the depths of the spiritualist community to find them. 1949, Post-War Québec. Teenager Lina's father has died in the French Resistance, and as she struggles to fit in at school, her mother introduces her to an elderly woman at the asylum where she works, changing Lina's life in the darkest way imaginable. 2002, Quebec. A former schoolteacher is accused of brutally stabbing her husband – a famous university professor – to death. Detective Maxine Grant, who has recently lost her own husband and is parenting a teenager and a new baby single-handedly, takes on the investigation. Under enormous personal pressure, Maxine makes a series of macabre discoveries that link directly to historical cases involving black magic and murder, secret societies and spiritism … and women at breaking point, who will stop at nothing to protect the ones they love… _________________ `This novel is a whirlpool that draws you irresistibly into levels of darkness so much deeper than you can possibly be ready for´ Ambrose Parry `I found myself racing through the book, always wanting one more page, one more chapter. A wonderfully creepy, unsettling read, with a superb twist in its tail´ James Oswald `Gustawsson's writing is so vivid, it's electrifying. Utterly compelling´ Peter James `I was hooked from the first page – a stunning and beautifully written gothic thriller full of atmosphere, intrigue and delight´ Alexandra Benedict `Brilliant … the last chapters knocked me sideways, and it's a long time since that's happened´ Lisa Hall `A dark world of elegance and grotesque … mesmeric´ Matt Wesolowski `Harrowing, compelling, haunting, vivid, twisty and shocking! ´ Noelle Holten `A powerful page-turner´ Livres Hebdo ***NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER IN FRANCE*** FOR FANS OF Laura Purcell, Stacey Halls, Bridget Collins, Anna Mazzola, Essie Fox, Ambrose Parry and Laura Shepherd-Robinson Praise for Johana Gustawsson `A satisfying, full-fat mystery´ The Times `Assured telling of a complex story´ Sunday Times `A real page-turner, I loved it´ Martina Cole `A bold and intelligent read´ Guardian `Utterly compelling´ Woman's Own `Cleverly plotted, simply excellent´ Ragnar Jónasson `A must-read´ Daily Express `Gritty, bone-chilling, and harrowing – it's not for the faint of heart, and not to be missed´ Crime by the Book `A relentless heart-stopping masterpiece´ New York Journal of Book
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PRAISE FOR THE BLEEDING
‘An intricately woven historical thriller spanning three generations, The Bleeding will have you hooked from the very first page’ B.A. Paris
‘Wonderfully dark and creepy, with a superb twist in its tail … I love how Johana weaves the madness over a whole century, the effect of that first horrific crime rippling out across the years’ James Oswald
‘Begins with a truly macabre and ritualistic crime that leads back to mysteries in Belle Époque Paris, and 1949 post-war Quebec. Intriguingly dark and vivid, and so cleverly told through three different time frames’ Essie Fox
‘Johana Gustawsson is my go-to when I want to enter a dark world of elegance and the grotesque … mesmeric’ Matt Wesolowski
‘What a brilliant, brilliant book … the last chapters knocked me sideways, and it’s a long time since that’s happened’ Lisa Hall
‘I was hooked from the first page – a stunning and beautifully written gothic thriller full of atmosphere, intrigue and delight’ Alexandra Benedict
‘Harrowing, compelling, haunting, vivid, twisty and shocking!’ Noelle Holten
‘The intensity never wavers, never fails, with a darkly ethereal aura surrounding every word and bewitching us to keep reading, desperately compelled to discover the truth’ Bethany’s Bookshelf
‘A thoroughly absorbing story which gradually and suspensefully unravels’ FictionFromAfar
‘Compelling, authentic, dark and full of perfectly pitched twists and revelations … an absolute winner’ Jen Med’s Book Reviews
‘An exhilarating ride, it is clever, it is dark and shocking … It just blew me away’ From Belgium with Book Love
‘Her best yet, moving seamlessly through three different timelines following three women inextricably linked by darkness ... A literary delight’ Liz Loves Books
‘Three stories unfold and draw the reader into a gripping plot … As soon as you start reading this, you’ll see it as something special’ The Book Trail
‘A haunting, graphic yet poignant story . It’s a tale of witchcraft, murder and so much more. I absolutely loved it’ Sally Boocock
PRAISE FOR JOHANA GUSTAWSSON
LONGLISTED for the CWA International Dagger
WINNER of the Balai de la Découverte
WINNER of the Nouvelle Plume d’Argent Awards
‘A satisfying, full-fat mystery’ The Times
‘Assured telling of a complex story’ Sunday Times
‘Dark, oppressive and bloody, but it’s also thought-provoking, compelling and very moving’ Metro
‘A bold and intelligent read’ Guardian
‘Utterly compelling’ Woman’s Own
‘A must-read’ Daily Express
‘A real page-turner, I loved it’ Martina Cole
‘Gustawsson’s writing is so vivid, it’s electrifying. Utterly compelling’ Peter James
‘Cleverly plotted, simply excellent’ Ragnar Jónasson
‘Bold and audacious’ R.J. Ellory
‘Gritty, bone-chilling, and harrowing – it’s not for the faint of heart, and not to be missed’ Crime by the Book
‘A relentless, heart-stopping masterpiece, filled with nightmarish situations that will keep you awake long into the dark nights of winter’ New York Journal of Books
THE BLEEDING
JOHANA GUSTAWSSON
Translated by David Warriner
For Eva, my Catalan angel
‘I’ve wrapped my arms around you And I love you so, I quiver’
—Louis Aragon (Translated by David Warriner)
Contents
Author’s Note
While the story Maxine, Lina and Lucienne tell in these pages is straight out of my imagination, the facts and anecdotes that inspired the appearance of several women and men of renown in the story, the likes of Catherine de Médici, Victor Hugo, Arthur Conan Doyle, Goya, Rembrandt, Eusapia Palladino and Émile- Jules Grillot de Givry, are borrowed from the great and only too real book of history.
1
Maxine
2002
My car skips off the paved road and sways like a boat set afloat. I’m navigating the potholes one stomp on the accelerator at a time. Bloody hell. The tires are screeching, biting into the gravel and its coating of frost. Spitting crud onto the verge, then crunching back on track.
The Caron place is at the end of this bumpy driveway, cut as straight as a matchstick through the heart of a wood as thick as a fleece. Nestled in a blanket of snow at the centre of a clearing, it looks like the pupil of a lifeless eye: still, dark, ringed in white.
I lift my foot off the pedal to slide over a patch of black ice without losing control of the car again. I think about Hugo. I’ve had to leave him in his pram. I asked Charlotte to take him out, like I always do after his mid-morning nap. She looked at me as if I was out of my mind. I wonder what happened to my kind, gentle, tender Charlotte.
A hot flush makes me regret keeping my parka on for the drive. Jumping into the car earlier, Marceau barking orders into the phone with her usual charm, I didn’t have time to take it off. I wipe a droplet of sweat from my upper lip. I think about the indelible rings in the folds of my grey sweater, the beads of perspiration running between my breasts that suggest I have a baby due for a feed. The greasy, greying roots I’m hiding under my woolly toque.
It had to be me they called. Me.
A marked Sûreté du Québec patrol car is parked right in front of the entrance with the arrogance a police badge often grants. Two uniforms are bending over the porch steps, as if they’re mooning at me.
They straighten up and turn around at the sound of my involuntary skid, and wave madly as if to stop me. I feel like I should remind these imbeciles I’m not completely blind. Another two bright sparks, here to serve and protect.
I park off to the side, zip my parka up to the chin and release a heavy breath as I open the driver’s door. The air feels like a freezer on my face. With a grimace I tug the hat down over my ears and hunker my way over, head down against the wind.
‘Lieutenant Grant!’ I announce, having to yell to make myself heard.
I flash my badge, but they don’t even bother to look at it.
‘She’s refusing to move, lieutenant,’ the uniform on the right says. She sounds apologetic.
I take a step closer and Mrs Caron’s face comes into view, in profile. The old schoolteacher is sitting on the porch, head turned to my car, shoulders cloaked in a survival blanket.
‘She won’t even put anything on her feet. She’s been screaming,’ the uniform tells me. ‘You should have heard her.’ She rolls her gaze skyward as I eye the black socks resting on the snow-covered step.
Mrs Caron’s face is spotted and streaked with brownish spatters that span her wrinkles and bridge the cracks in her blue, chilled lips. Stray strands of her pale bob lie matted at her temples and ears like greasy breadsticks. A veil of dried blood stretches over her skin like a mask.
‘We’ve managed to wrap her fingers like you asked, ma’am, but that’s all,’ the uniform continues.
Wrap her fingers. What have these country plods been watching?
I crouch down beside the woman who taught generations of children in Lac-Clarence to read and write.
‘Mrs Caron? It’s Maxine Grant. I’m here. I’m here now. What’s happened, Mrs Caron?’
2
Maxine
2002
‘Mrs Caron?’
The schoolteacher won’t take her eyes off my car. She runs her tongue over her lips, erasing some of the brown splotches. She doesn’t react to the taste of her husband’s blood. One of the uniforms pulls the blanket back over her shoulders, and she doesn’t push away his hand. I’m not there; no one else is there. And neither is she, really.
I get to my feet; my right knee creaks, my left nearly gives way under me.
‘Shall I walk you through, ma’am?’
‘Lieutenant Grant.’
‘Yes, sorry ma’am. Lieutenant Grant.’
I nod, repressing the urge to slap some sense into her. Probably not the best thing for me to do to mark my return from mat leave. And slowly, I climb the porch steps, taking care not to step in the bloody prints Mrs Caron has left.
‘Right there, ma’a … Lieutenant,’ says the muppet as soon as we’re inside.
Her posture makes it clear to me she has no intention of going any further. She’s pointing to the only room with a light on, to our right, eyes sweeping over the scarlet footprints bleeding into the pink carpet that rolls like a tongue towards the French doors of the lounge.
I pull on the pair of gloves I grabbed before I left, and press myself against the wall as I creep down the hallway. The sweetish, ferrous stench turns my stomach. Nine months away from any encounters with death, that’s all it’s taken for me to forget the smell of it. Nine months nose to nose with a newborn life, which, for the record, is nowhere near as angelic as the sales pitch promises. Ugh, the nappies overflowing with unspeakable filth and the sickening spit-ups.
I know what’s waiting for me in this room and still I freeze at the door. My eyes sweep across the light pine floor to the stone chimney breast, up the pale-yellow walls to the decorative ceiling and its mouldings, over the corduroy velvet sofas, the tasselled cushions, the flowery curtains, the plush oriental rug, the glass coffee table, the side tables. Smears of blood, droplets and spurts sully, criss-cross and disfigure the room.
Pauline Caron’s husband, whose torso is now nothing more than a heap of grotesque strips of flesh, is lying in a pool of blood muddled by hand and footprints. The blood is soaking into the rug and it’s licking at the chimney breast and the legs of the sofas. The footprints are telling. Mrs Caron has walked out of the room where her husband has just died.
Oh, God.
I swallow back the bile, the acid rising in my throat, and suck in a breath of foul air. Nausea has me in its grasp. I tilt my head back, hoping gravity will help me avoid throwing up like a rookie. After twenty years on the force, that would be hard to explain.
‘Ah, there you are, Sweet Maxine, love of my life!’
Startled, I turn around, unable to muster a smile or find that laugh my partner always squeezes out of me.
‘Hey, Chickadee,’ I reply to the man who stands a good four inches taller than my five-eleven.
‘You’re glowing,’ he says with a wink.
‘Give me a break, Jules.’
‘No, seriously, Grant, motherhood at the peak of a midlife crisis really suits you. Don’t mind if I don’t give you a proper kiss hello here, it’s kind of off-putting, eh?’ he says, pulling me into his arms, his full beard cushioning my cheek, before planting a kiss on the top of my toque.
He pulls away from me with a grimace. ‘Bloody hell…’
‘You can say that again.’
Four soft-footed crime-scene technicians approach us, zipped up in their white coveralls. They raise a hand to me. My name ricochets between them. I respond with a nod of the head and a circumstantial smile.
‘Have you seen Marceau?’ Jules continues.
‘Not yet. But I’ve had her barking at me down the phone.’
‘Oh, lucky you.’
Jules swallows audibly. ‘I saw the wife on my way in. She’s in shock. Did you manage to get a word out of her?’
I shake my head.
‘Right, back to it, then?’ he carries on.
‘Oh, so you’re giving the orders now, are you?’ I say, in jest.
‘No two ways about it, you’re like a deer in the headlights. Makes a change from nappies, eh?’
The nausea’s swelling inside me. ‘Almost makes me miss them, you know.’
‘Are we off then, or should we stick around like a couple of spare parts? We can come back and take a closer look when they’re done, right?’
‘You really want to get out of here, don’t you, Chickadee?’ I say, forcing a smile.
‘You have no idea.’
3
Maxine
2002
We walk out of the lounge to find Cécilia Lopez, our medical examiner, fighting her way into her crime-scene coveralls in the hallway.
‘Grant?’ Her made-up eyes look at me in surprise, as she continues her struggle with the suit. ‘I thought you were coming back next week? How’s that little cherub of yours? What a cutie pie,’ she smiles, with a shake of her head. ‘When are you going to let me take him off your hands for a while?’
‘Don’t tell me your six grandkids aren’t enough for you?’ I reply, suddenly lulled by the scent of Hugo, recalling the joy of nestling my nose in the crook of his little neck.
The withdrawal clutches me by the bosom.
‘They’re at the age when they only come to see me when they want something. They’ll scarf down a slice of cake and leave crumbs everywhere except on their plate, chug a can of pop, give me a quick hug or an air-kiss on the cheek, all in the hopes that I’ll pull out a banknote for them, then they go back to their video games. You get the picture.’ She pauses to yank at her zip. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what the hell they think they’re playing at with these suits. This one’s a medium and look at me, I’m stuffed into it like a great big sausage. Like I need to display any more rolls of fat.’
She straightens up and pulls the hood over her tomboy cut streaked with grey. ‘The young guns out front said it’s a hot mess in there, right?’
‘More like cold cuts at the deli counter.’ Jules wrinkles his nose. ‘Apparently, his better half really stuck it to him.’
‘Apparently,’ I insist, thinking about the schoolteacher still sitting out on her frozen front steps.
‘I managed to persuade her to get into the ambulance,’ Cécilia tells me, as if she can read my mind. ‘Any longer out there in the cold and she’d be losing toes.’
‘How did you do it?’ Jules asks. ‘No one else could get her to move a muscle.’
‘I did the same thing I do with teenagers: I didn’t ask her anything, that way she couldn’t say no. I just took her by the arm and walked her to the ambulance. End of story. She went along without a word. Have you had a chance to question her? Do you know what happened?’
I shake my head. ‘She hasn’t opened her mouth, Céci, not a syllable. She’s not even responding to questions. No reaction at all. She’s completely catatonic.’
‘I noticed the cuts on her hands and the blood smears on her clothes, so chances are, it was her who tore her nearest and dearest to shreds. But don’t quote me on that until I hear what he has to say for himself,’ she says, with a tip of the chin towards Philippe Caron’s corpse. ‘This is Caron the Montreal university professor, isn’t it? The famous historian, author, and what have you?’
I nod and can’t help but gulp.
‘You’re not used to the smell anymore,’ Céci smiles. ‘Right, I’ll get started. You know where to find me.’
She turns on her heels and walks away, her hushed steps accompanied by the swish-swish of her coveralls.
‘Want to come over for dinner with us tonight?’ Jules offers as we pull off our gloves and he removes his shoe covers. ‘You can bring the little guy if you like, or would that mess up his bedtime routine? Marius can’t wait to mollycoddle him. And see you too, of course. I imagine Charlotte’s too caught up in being a teenager.’
I open my mouth to reply, not knowing how to refuse his invitation.
‘Grant!’ My name sounds like a primal growl.
Reluctantly I go and stand in the doorway, where my gaze plunges into the pool of blood surrounding Philippe Caron’s body.
‘Yes, Simon. I’m here. What’s up?’
‘Get suited up, you two, and come have a look at this,’ the crime-scene technician says.
He’s leaning over an ebony table in the shape of a hexagon. The table top is a tray and it’s now sitting on the floor. Céci gets up and goes over to join him.
‘Oh, shit,’ says Jules through gritted teeth.
We each grab some coveralls from the box the crime-scene team has left by the front door and pull them on – more easily than Céci did.
‘What have you found, Simon?’ I ask, stepping around the body.
‘I … I’m not sure. I was collecting a blood smear from the edge of the table and I nearly tipped the top over when I pressed against it. I had no idea the thing came off. I didn’t realise it was a tray, I mean. When I went to put it back in place, I noticed there was something inside … something inside the table, or the chest, whatever you want to call it.’
Making our way over, we lean over the table in a slow, coordinated movement, the way you peer into the crib of a baby who’s fallen asleep at last. Internally, I wince.
‘What the hell is it?’ Jules says.
‘It looks like a glass dome,’ I reply, eyes glued to the object.
‘No, the thing inside the glass?’
His question hangs, suspended, between us.
‘Have you taken photos? Can we take it out?’ I ask Simon.
‘It’s all right. Go ahead.’
I reach my latex-gloved hands around the sides of the glass dome and touch the bottom of the table. My fingers curl around something that feels as dense as wood. It must be a plinth, a base of some sort. The dome is attached to it. I bend my knees to steady myself and delicately extract the thing.
‘What the hell…?’
Jules doesn’t finish what he’s saying. None of us have any desire to put what we can see into words. We stare at the thing as if we’ve just reached into a cradle and pulled out a monster.
‘It’s a hand,’ Céci replies. ‘A hand,’ she repeats, in a whisper.
4
Lina
1949
I knew I was playing with fire. But if I had kept turning the other cheek, as that imbecile Father Dion suggested at confession, those two witches would have kept getting nastier. I had to spend the whole lunch hour kneeling on sacks of rice, but honestly it was worth every grain that dug into my skin.
But now, of course, I won’t be laughing so much.
‘For God’s sake!’ I cry, trying to extricate my boots from another drift of snow.
What was I thinking, taking a shortcut through the woods? I’m sinking up to my knees. My toes are frozen and I’m shivering to the tip of my hat. I passed that garden house thing a while back. I can’t be far away now.
Mother is right: sometimes I can’t see further than the end of my nose, which is a block of ice right now.
When she was called in to see Mrs Morin, Mother went mad. And didn’t I know it. She flew into her familiar refrain: my father must be seething with rage up there, seeing his only daughter behave that way. I’m not showing myself to be worthy of him, his legacy, or the hero he was. Now and then, I hear different things about my father, but that’s another story. Mother decided that from now on, after school, I shall be going to meet her at her work. The only thing is, she works at the madhouse. ‘Your mum cleans up crazy people’s crap,’ the witches tease, the ignorant bitches.
At last, I can see the side of the grand old building. The former manor house of the Lelanger family, I’m told. What an idea, to turn it into an asylum for degenerates. ‘A rest home,’ Mother would correct me. A forced-rest home, if you ask me, because they’re not exactly right in the head anymore.
I arrive on the driveway, walk up the steps and realise I can’t feel my toes.
A bearded man whose belly is threatening to burst through his uniform opens the gate for me. His lips are buried beneath an avalanche of black hair. He’s not from around here, otherwise I’d know who he was. Lac-Clarence is the kind of place where we all know each other, and everything about everyone.
‘You’re Lisette’s girl, are you?’ he asks me, his face rigid, like a ventriloquist’s.
I nod, turning my tongue seven times inside my mouth to resist the urge to tell him it would have been smarter just to ask my name. But then, in a madhouse I suppose they have to keep closer tabs on people going out, not coming in.
‘Bloody hell. What have you gone and done now?’ Mother’s voice is lecturing me before I’ve even laid eyes on her. I haven’t even had the chance to unbutton my overcoat. She’s standing at the turn of the corridor.
‘Just look at your legs, you’re soaked through. Lina, I don’t know how you do it. How do you manage to always make a hash of everything? Come on, follow me. And take off those boots and socks, will you? I’ll dry them for you, otherwise you’ll catch your death.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m going to set you up in the rest area so you can do your homework.’
A rest area in a rest home. I lower my eyes and bite my lip so I won’t laugh out loud. Mother is a master of surprising me at the precise moment I have sinned.
‘Do you have your English exercise book?’ She peers into my satchel.
I nod.
‘Liliiiii! Liliiii!’
We turn around at the same time, Mother and I. A little old lady with a back as rounded as a walnut shell is waving her hand as if she’s holding a bell.
‘Yes, Solange, what is it?’ My mother’s tone is not so much empathetic as exasperated.
‘I can’t find Léonard. He’s been missing an hour or more. I’m really starting to fret. He’s only four years old, you see, Lili.’
‘Yes, I know, Solange.’ There’s the same note of impatience in her voice.
‘He might drown in the pond, or burn himself on the stove in the kitchen, or…’
‘Are you sure Anne-Marie hasn’t taken him for a bath?’
‘No, he had a bath on Sunday.’
‘Have you had a good look in your wardrobe?’
They put kids in wardrobes, here?
‘Ah, no.’
The old lady’s face lights up, only to darken again. ‘I’m afraid to open the wardrobe.’
My mother sighs. ‘All right, Solange, I’ll come with you. I’ll be back,’ she tells me. ‘Wait there in that room for me.’ She points to some French doors on our right.
‘Charming kind of place,’ I mutter under my breath.
‘I heard you!’ my mother warns me, without turning around, hand in hand with this Solange, whose fingers are clutching hers.
The dying sun hits me full in the face the second I open the doors. I blink and step into the room, shading my eyes with one hand.
It looks like a small drawing room, with two armchairs facing a tall window stripped of its handle. There’s a pedestal table to the side.
I sit in the chair on the left, then take off my boots and soaking-wet woollen socks. I wipe my feet on the floor to rid them of the damp, tuck them beneath my buttocks, hoping to warm them up, and lean forwards to grab my satchel. I’m just about to pull out my book when the door opens.
‘Here we are…’ I recognise Anne-Marie’s voice. It’s deep and nasal, and carries like a man’s.
‘Oh, Lina … hello,’ she says, stopping the chair she’s pushing.
Her surprise soon gives way to a look brimming with rebuke. This I prefer a thousand times to the lecture lurking behind it. Her eyes linger on me for a second, then drift down to my dripping socks draped over my boots.
The old lady in the wheelchair has a long grey braid curling over her shoulder, running down to her thigh like a rope. She catches sight of me reaching into my bag, and I feel as if I’ve somehow been caught red-handed..
She gives me a knowing smile. I pull my hand out again.
‘Does your mother know you’re here?’ Anne-Marie asks me, pushing the wheelchair over to the window.
‘Yes,’ I mumble.
The old lady puts a notebook on the pedestal table beside her. Her grey wisps of hair turn blonde in the setting sun.
‘She went off with a woman named … Sonia. No, Solange.’
Anne-Marie shakes her head with a sigh. ‘Right.’ She turns on her heels and walks out of the room, leaving the door open.
The old lady turns her back to me, which I don’t mind in the slightest because for one, I don’t feel like making conversation with her; plus I don’t feel like listening to her ramble; also I’m planning to read English, not revise it; and finally, the bright sun would claw at my eyes if she wasn’t in the way.
I wait a few seconds before digging my hand into my satchel again.
‘I won’t say a word,’ the old lady says without moving.
I flinch. ‘Sorry?’
‘I’m sure you’ll learn many more things from your book.’
I don’t know what to reply. Someone else who’s got eyes in the back of her head.
‘I know how to keep secrets, and it’s not because my memory’s failing me that…’
‘No, I…’
She starts to laugh. A young laugh that doesn’t go with her grey mane, or her wrinkled face.
‘Read your forbidden book. Just lift your eyes once or twice to watch the sun die. It’s surely the only thing that looks good when it’s dying.’
5
Maxine
2002
Jules and I duck into the ambulance, having exchanged a few words with one of the emergency medics. According to him, Mrs Caron is suffering from only mild hypothermia, which could in no way be responsible for her current clouding of mind. He would not qualify her state as ‘catatonic’ either, given that she had allowed herself to be examined without resistance. She seems more in a state of shock, he thinks.
Using her grey matter for once, the rookie has the sense to make room for me to sit beside Mrs Caron. My former schoolteacher is lying on the stretcher, drilling holes into the roof liner with her eyes. She’s wrapped up to her chin in a heavy throw to keep her warm. The shiny edges of a space blanket are sticking out by her feet.
I shift to the edge of my seat; it squeaks unpleasantly.
‘Mrs Caron? It’s Maxine Grant. You have to tell me what happened with Philippe. With your husband.’
‘Plus, you were the one who asked for Lieutenant Grant,’ the rookie chimes in. ‘So it’s important to speak up, madam, isn’t it?’
I send her a murderous glare that nails her trap shut. Her cheeks flush purple, as if I’d given her the slap she deserves. Interrupting an interview. Where do they train their young recruits these days?
Jules gets up, opens the door and orders the muppet to get out. A blast of icy air rushes into the ambulance, sending shivers through me.
‘Mrs Caron, you’re perfectly safe talking to me,’ I continue, once Jules has returned to my side. ‘And Detective Sergeant Jules Demers is my colleague. We’ve been working together for many years, you can trust him.’
‘Would you rather I stepped outside, Mrs Caron, and left you alone with Maxine?’
She doesn’t respond; she seems lost in her thoughts.
Jules casts me a quick glance. ‘You were Maxine’s teacher, weren’t you?’
The silence lingers, she’s not budging an inch.
‘Mrs Caron,’ I say, ‘we’ve found a hand in your living room.’
The survival blanket twitches, the rustling almost startles me, but her eyes are still locked on the same spot as when we came in.
‘A hand hidden inside a—’ I interrupt myself.
Jules frowns. He’s asking me his question silently. Ah, how well my Chickadee knows me.
‘—inside one of your side tables.’
I wait a few seconds, mentally pacing up and down, because I have only one desire: to get the hell out of this ambulance and go and see if there’s anything to the crazy idea that’s just sprung into my mind.
At last I get up and step outside, Jules right behind me, then we’re almost running to the front door of the house.
We pull our coveralls on again.
Jules hasn’t asked me anything. He’s waiting. He’s surely the only man who can read me this well.
‘Simon!’ Now it’s my turn to yell his name. ‘See if you can open that for me, over there,’ I call, pointing to a second side table tucked in behind some plants, identical to the one that revealed the severed hand.
Simon gets to his feet. He looks from one table to the other, then hurries across the living room and crouches down to lift the tray top off the second.
As soon as we’ve pulled our hoods up, we join him.
The tray top is stuck, so Jules has to hold the table steady while Simon tries to loosen it like the lid on a stubborn jam jar. There’s a hollow sound as the top pops open. Céci abandons Philippe Caron’s body and comes over to see. I re-enact our earlier scene, reaching my latex-gloved hands around the sides of the glass dome to extract it delicately from the chest.
‘Oh, shit,’ Céci and Jules curse, practically in unison.
It’s a hand with an open palm, this time severed a touch higher up the forearm. The fingers, much longer, are pressing against the glass as if they’re feeling for a way out.
‘Bloody hell, they really look mummified,’ Jules comments.
Céci sets him straight: ‘More like dried or tanned.’
‘Three times a charm?’ he jokes, giving me a what-if kind of look. ‘I’m going upstairs,’ he adds, making a hasty exit from the living room.
‘OK,’ I reply, falling into step.
‘Do you think there are more?’
‘I’ll give you a shout if we find any, Simon.’
‘I’ll start in the entryway,’ Céci suggests.
‘Perfect.’
I walk across the hallway and am about to go into what looks like the Carons’ study when I notice another table to my right, below a window overlooking the garden. I stand right in front of it and feel a terrible temptation to open it.
‘I’ve found another one. Simon, come over here with your camera!’
I can hear his muffled steps as well as a creaking of floorboards over my head from Jules moving around upstairs.
Simon stops in front of the window, takes a few photos and points to the table top. I tip my chin. He bends down, grasps the sides of the table top and pulls it towards him. This one gives more easily.
‘One in the kitchen too!’ Céci calls from the far end of the hallway. ‘What kind of crazy shit is this?’
‘We’ve got another hand,’ I announce, seeing the fingers under their dome. ‘Simon, can you take care of it? I’m going to have a look in the study.’
‘Three times a charm, no kidding,’ he mutters, plunging his hands into the table’s belly.
In the study, the first thing I see is yet another table.
‘Simon!’ I yell, not daring to think what these finds could mean, and what – and whom – they’ll implicate.
I quickly scan the room and its furnishings: two desks facing one another, bookshelves all the way up to the coved ceiling, a wingback chair, a floor lamp and that side table, a carbon copy of those in the hallway and the living room.
‘Nothing upstairs,’ Jules reports, finding me again. ‘So how many have you found, then?’
‘Maxine. There’s one in the dining room too,’ Céci calls.
‘I was going to say five. But that makes six,’ I say.
‘Six – so far,’ he replies.
6
Lucienne
1899
The nannies are seated on two iron chairs between two poplars. The Jardin de Luxembourg has never been so popular; everyone in Paris comes here to stretch their legs.
‘Maman, Maman! Look at my cart.’
Jeanne puts her bucket full of gravel down on my dress.
‘Jeanne!’ her nanny chides. ‘You’re getting your mother’s dress all dirty.’
‘Leave her be,’ I smile, picking up some of the chips of gravel with my gloved fingers to place them in the hollow of my palm. ‘And what is your cart carrying, ma chérie?’
‘Forage.’
‘Forage?’
‘Yes, Mademoiselle Saint-Genêt said this morning that there are thousands upon thousands of horses in Paris. I don’t want them to be hungry. How many was it, nanny?’
‘Eighty thousand.’
‘Eighty thousand,Maman, can you believe it? That’s rather a lot, I think, eighty thousand.’
‘It is, indeed,’ I smile. ‘And Rose, what are you doing?’
Jeanne rolls her eyes and turns to her sister, who doesn’t appear to have heard me. ‘She’s baking cakes.’
Rose is crouched down, her summer coat sweeping the gravel. She’s sprinkling a pile of stones with soil, and getting her chubby hands filthy. Suddenly she stops what she’s doing and tugs at the tie of her hat.
‘Rose,’ her nanny tuts, watching her out of the corner of her eye.
Without taking her eyes off her play baking, my daughter manages to doff her hat.
Her nanny puts down her sewing and shakes off the dust that cakes the hat’s pale-pink ribbons, flashing a contrite smile at me.
‘For goodness’ sake, Rose,’ she chides.
My daughter waves her off rudely.
‘Rose,’ I intervene, my voice rolling into the deepest of tones.
‘It hurts here, Maman,’ she says, showing me a spot beneath her chin.
‘I know, ma chérie, but look at me,’ I say, tilting my head to show her my veil. ‘A worldly lady does not reveal her locks when she leaves the house. Tomorrow, I shall ask Nanny to put yours up with hairpins so it won’t smart your skin anymore.’
‘Like you, Maman?’
‘Yes, like me.’
‘Merci, Maman.’
Rose pulls a face as her nanny ties a double bow under her chin, but doesn’t dare undo it again.
We stay another hour in the gardens, Jeanne’s nanny sewing a skirt, and Rose’s a set of handkerchiefs. Meanwhile, I listen to my daughters playing and the cheerful conversations of passers-by out to catch a ray of sunshine.
When we get back to Avenue Foch, Jeanne and Rose retire to their quarters, and I to mine. I have a few letters to write and my attire to prepare for tomorrow. I must ask Mary to confirm that my dress suits me, as I can’t allow a slip in taste to set those ladies’ tongues wagging, or to cause my husband embarrassment.
For, tomorrow, I am to accompany Henri to the Palais Garnier. We are going with another couple, the de la Courtières. This time I cannot feign a migraine and stay at home with my cousin Mary. I have no choice but to go, turn a cheek to the taunting and make a good impression. But they won’t let me in, these Parisiennes, they keep me outside of their impenetrable world, of their codes I don’t always understand, and their French, which at times has everything of a foreign language.
I’ve told Henri I’ll be dining in my apartments. I have no desire to spend two evenings in a row with him; tomorrow is already enough.
Once the nannies have turned in for the evening, I go in to kiss Jeanne and Rose goodnight. Mary joins me and we tell them, as we like to do at bedtime, unbeknownst to the household and away from their prying ears, about our Quebec, our Lac-Clarence, her dense forest, her fresh air, her snow that melts in the mouth like a communion wafer and her river of clear waters, a life in colours painted by God and not by men like here, in Paris.
I shut myself in my bedroom later than usual, turning the latch to signal to Henri that I shall not be accommodating him this evening. I fall asleep with a heavy heart and fear in my stomach, thinking about the day that awaits me.
I wake long before morning comes, roused from my bed by dreadful cries. Those of two housekeepers. Two maids. I’m leaving my room just as cousin Mary is about to knock at my door.
A cloud of foul air rushes into my apartments, bringing on a ghastly coughing fit. Mary is breathless too, unable to speak. Thick smoke is seeping under the service door leading to the floor above.
My house is on fire.
I’m stricken by panic. Cousin Mary takes me by the arm and we hurry along the hallway to the central staircase.
‘Jeanne … Rose?’ I ask, trembling.
The smoke is burning, stinging so much I can barely keep my eyes open.
‘The nannies … are down below,’ a maid replies, coughing.
‘And monsieur?’
‘I … don’t…’ She shakes her head and hurries down the stairs.
I hang on to Mary’s arm and we run as quick as can be, holding our breath, our eyes half closed, down to the street.
It takes me a long moment to pull myself together and open my eyes to see our building, the thick black smoke spewing from the upper floors.
Henri, still in his suit, hurries to my side.
‘The children?’ he questions me, fear darkening his brow.
‘…With … nan … nies,’ I sputter, overcome by another coughing fit.
He shakes his head, eyes wide with dread.
An explosion erupts in the sky, with a rumble like thunder.
In a flash, we’re crouching on the ground, unsure where the terrible roar is coming from. From beneath my folded arms, I catch a glimpse of the flames, licking like tentacles from the windows of my bedroom. And the children’s.
7
Maxine
2002
You can reproach Marceau for many things, but not her professionalism or her responsiveness. They make the rest tolerable: her savage bark, her total lack of empathy, her aversion to children and family life, and I’m weighing my words here. In mere hours, the municipal hall in Lac-Clarence has been turned into an incident room, and we have everything necessary to unravel this affair, which has proved itself to be more complex than expected; or at least, a dimension has emerged that is radically different from anything I suspected this morning. Seven hands. We’ve found seven hands at the Caron house. All encased in domes, as if they were precious antiques, and concealed in identical chest tables spread throughout the ground floor.
‘Lieutenant Grant?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’
Because of the hypothermia, the medics were opposed to us undressing Mrs Caron in the ambulance. Now that her condition has stabilised, forensics are examining her clothes here, at the incident room we’ve set up. This morning, they were only able to collect samples from the exposed parts of her body. Her hands, her face and her hair.
