Murder at Malenfer Read online

  “Well, I for one hope he pulls through,” Émile pronounced patriotically.

  “And so do I! God bring him health, and save us from the consequences. Better the master you know than the one you don’t.” The old man was a pragmatist.

  Another head popped in and shut them all up for a second. It was only the scullery maid. “Émile, your brother’s outside looking for you.”

  “What for?” But she had gone. “It’s not my turn at the gate yet!” he called after. “All right,” he said resignedly, making an effort in getting up. “See you lot later then.”

  “Yes, my boy. Good night.”

  * * *

  As soon as he was out the door, the cold and draft set in. Émile made his way down the cluttered hallway with his head turned low, not looking. He fumbled at his buttons while trying to put his jacket on.

  “Hello, Émile.” He startled and pulled up, surprised. It was a girl’s voice from the shadow, a voice he couldn’t mistake.

  “Simonne? What… I mean… what are you doing down here?”

  She was dark and slim and pale of skin with long straight raven hair.

  “I was following someone.” She paused, flustered, but didn’t elaborate. “She’s gone now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Berthe?” he suggested, trying to be helpful. “Berthe’s in the kitchen.” Simonne shook her head no. Émile was left unsure what she was talking about, but that was sometimes the case with Simonne.

  “Well... can I help you? ...with anything?” He felt the need to clarify. “With anything you might need... down here?”

  Her lips were flush and open a touch so he could see her tongue behind them. Émile always felt uncomfortable beside her, and the knowledge only agitated him further.

  “I know what’s going to happen, Émile, I know.” She whispered it, and there was anguish to her voice. She tried retreating back into the shadow.

  “Know?” He didn’t understand. He took a step towards her. “Simonne? What do you mean? Tell me,” he said, concerned. “Know what?”

  “It’s Michel, Émile, it’s about Michel.” Simonne was trembling.

  “What are you talking about?” He was getting annoyed. Why is she always like this?

  She shared it like a sticky sweet: “Michel is going to die.”

  “What did you say?” he was incredulous. “What are you saying? Simonne? Simonne, stay!” Émile appealed to her without reply, for Simonne had turned and fled. Her long thin nightgown billowed behind her; her small slippered feet carrying her away.

  Michel Malenfer shook awake. He felt a disturbance, although there was no one visible in the room, nothing to occasion his surprise. It was the middle of the night, ten minutes to two by the carriage clock on the mantle. The fire was burnt down, an occasional lick of flame from the last of the logs the only light to be had. He looked around. There was no nurse, her usual chair unoccupied. Likely she had gone to fetch something to eat, and that was what he’d heard. The patient lifted a glass from his bedside table and managed a few sips of water. He returned it with a trembling hand, knocking a spoon from a bowl. Cook had been sending up a distillation of broths that he couldn’t stand the taste of. He reached over to try to pick it up but gave up from the effort. Mother had even sent for oranges – in winter, and with food being rationed. But the taste of them burned his chapped lips, and Michel had refused them.

  It could wait. All of it could wait. Tomorrow he’d make himself eat again. Tomorrow.

  He was just settling down when the door opened quietly. Michel looked around, expecting his caregiver, and was surprised to see the visitor.

  “Oh, hello,” he said. “What are you doing up at this time? Is there something going on downstairs?” But he got no answer. “What are you doing?... Now wait!...”

  The muffled sounds of the short struggle went no further than the bedroom walls. Michel was a puppy in his weakened state and weighed down under lamb’s wool blankets; his arms were constricted beneath tight linen sheets that cost a month’s wages for some. The goose down pillow fit snuggly to his face; a mask he wore for a minute. His animal thrashing stalled and subsided, and he finally lay quiet.

  The pillow was fluffed and placed back on the bed. The blankets were straightened a little. Michel’s head was turned, his tussled hair petted down, and his open, gasping mouth gently closed. He looked in the end like a boy at peace. The visitor left the room.

  It was Michel’s nurse that found him. Despite what she’d witnessed in the war and through the Flu, she was not inured to grief. She was saddened by what she discovered in the bedroom – the young ones upset her the most. She sent, quite unnecessarily, for the doctor, who paid his patient a final visit. A death certificate was issued, along with an invoice, before the sun had dried the dew on the windows.

  Master Michel Malenfer, the last of his line, had passed away February 9th, 1919, “from complications of influenza.”

  3

  The Western Front (1916)

  The big shell fell short. Fifty yards too soon it dropped, while the men in the tunnel still labored. On the surface of the earth the soldiers scurried, hunkering down in their trenches. They whispered prayers to their Christian God in muffled Prussian accents, while those deep below heard nothing at all as the noise from the shell whistled closer. One hundred feet before Fort Vaux, the shell landed above their tunnel.

  The shock shattered the timbers. The bracing that supported the excavated run blew out all around them. The ceiling caved in and the dirt moved quickly, keen to reclaim what had been stolen. The surge pummeled the breath from the miners’ lungs and cracked ribs with its force and pressure. Men and rock were cast about; the hard air stove in eardrums. In a moment all was black and tight, and the earth was close and settled. The sappers’ tunnel was as quiet as a tomb, for that was what the big shell had made it.

  * * *

  Dermot awoke in a black grip that held him, unaware of which way was up. There was dirt in his mouth; he spat it half clear, feeling it run off his lips. His breath seemed to come from close by, and there was a weight pressing down on his chest.

  “Hello?” He spoke into the pitch. His voice was soft, respectful almost; he had to think about where he was.

  “Have you ever seen such a darkness as this, Sergeant?” The familiar voice was close at hand.

  “Arthur?” Dermot tried to move a little. He wiggled his fingers and toes. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m all right. It’s been about an hour, I reckon, though I think I was out for a while. Welcome back, Sergeant. I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

  Dermot turned on his side, stirring the soil that held him; only his foot remained trapped now. Somebody – he tried to see Arthur but could not – somebody had dug him out. He dragged himself entirely free, his ears ringing painfully as he did so. He felt an ache in his neck that he tested with invisible fingers.

  “Are you okay?” Arthur was near him.

  Dermot drew his hand away; the back of his skull was sensitive, his fingertips sticky. There was a tight pain he couldn’t lose in his knee, but nothing anywhere felt broken. Dermot felt sick; he bent over and had to hold onto his legs for balance. Recovered, he braced a hand against the roof and took a blind step forward.

  “What about the others, Arthur?” He walked towards the voice.

  “I don’t know, Irish. It’s just us here. Bertrand is dead; I think it’s Bertrand. His body is behind me.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “The cave-in starts about five feet back, and I found you at the other side.”

  “Is it shut?”

  “Completely blocked. I’ve no idea how far it goes.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Arthur’s voice seemed only feet away. Dermot stopped moving. Who could believe that such a large man as the Lieutenant could disappear so completely?

  “How many do you think were up front?” asked Arthur.

  Dermot racked his brain. His head was sore. He was trying
to account for his men. “Three? Maybe four. I think I passed Dardenne on the way up here. Have you heard anything from any of them?”

  “I haven’t heard a sound at all. No noise at all, Irish, till you came back. I thought I’d been buried alive.”

  They were near the end of a sapper tunnel, one hundred yards from the mouth of their trenches. They’d been digging under the German lines to mine the enemy defenses. Dermot’s hand fell on a shoring post that had likely saved their lives. He leaned against it to take the weight off his knee and reached forward towards Arthur’s voice. He found Arthur sitting down.

  “You’ve got me.”

  “Well, this is certainly cozy.”

  “Do you want the good news or the bad, Sergeant?”

  “Right now, I’m just happy to be here.”

  “Glass half full, Dermot. Glass half full. Could you do with a drink?” asked the Lieutenant.

  “I’ve got my own... no, what?” He touched his pockets in vain. “Where the hell has it gone?” Dermot looked around out of habit.

  “I took the liberty earlier, and helped myself to your pockets. Sorry, Sergeant, but I wasn’t sure you’d be needing it. Here, have a sip yourself.”

  Dermot reached out slowly, fingers grasping, then met the big hand coming towards him. He received his half-empty hip-flask back and gratefully worked its top.

  Dermot took a sharp swig. He felt much better for the instant glow. “Thank you kindly. You’re a fine man for looking after it, Lieutenant.” He raised the flask to toast him. “You mentioned there was good news?”

  “You just drank it.”

  Dermot paused to consider this. “And the bad news, Arthur?”

  “Well, my Celtic chum, it occurs to me there’s a distinct possibility we’ll both end up dying down here.”

  Dermot unwound the bottle cap he’d just screwed back on and took another liberty. He tried to look around, one hand on the post, his boots stuck in the mud beneath him. He was dizzy from the pain of his sore bent knee, and the ringing in his head persisted. He was fighting to know which way was up, still disoriented by the darkness. His stomach rolled and he heaved and gagged, but he kept his liquor inside him.

  “Let me have a feel about, and let me have a think on it. It happened an hour ago, you said?”

  “I think so.” Arthur was the officer, but Dermot was the expert.

  “No tapping, no voices, no scraping?”

  “Only from me.”

  “Jesus Christ. You’ve got no matches, I take it?”

  “I even searched your pockets.”

  Dermot went through them again anyway. He didn’t have his jacket with him; the work was too warm to wear it. Dermot shook himself alert. Their predicament needed consideration. He tried to arrange the facts.

  Oxygen in fresh air is 20.9% by volume: dangerous below 19.5%; mental and physical impairment at 17%; unconsciousness followed by death comes very quickly at anything lower than that. Assumption that the present air is fresh? Flawed logic. No gauge. Move on.

  “Have you felt any air move? Is there any ventilation?”

  “Nothing at all that I have felt, Dermot.”

  Dermot got down on his knees and fumbled through the mud until his hands found the hose he was seeking. The airline, their pipe to the outside world, was pinched somewhere and flat.

  An adult at rest inhales one-fourth of a cubic foot of air per minute. 5% of the air’s volume is converted from oxygen to carbon dioxide, which you can’t breathe unless you’re a tree. Am I a tree? No such luck. Two large adults, both of them active? – 1 cubic foot per minute? More? We lose 5% oxygen and we’re goners.

  “How much space do we have in here?”

  “I counted about twenty feet in the tunnel.”

  Dermot moved back towards the mine face, reaching out with a blind man’s hand. His path was soon blocked, the tunnel full of rubble, with not a sound from the other side.

  “Twenty-two feet from you,” he said, having measured it.

  “And my ass is on the other wall.”

  Dermot paused and considered, his mind racing.

  Volume of a cylinder: π x the radius squared times the length at 25 feet? Only this isn’t exactly a cylinder. He did the math.

  “Not a lot of room,” he said.

  “I was right? It’s not good, then?” Arthur asked, his voice low.

  “No, Français, it isn’t.” He was reluctant to speak further.

  “What are we looking at, Irlandais? I’d rather have it clear.”

  Dermot shifted. He sat down on his heels and rested his back against the tunnel wall. A strange calm descended on him. “We have air problems and water problems, as you might have guessed already. If it’s raining, it will start to seep in, and it might not drain away fast enough, though we’re above the water table. But we haven’t drowned yet, Français, so that makes air our biggest concern. Any water will displace our air even further.”

  “Not good, no?” Arthur sounded solemn.

  “And the walls are shot. Completely unstable. They might collapse on us further, though I think not unless we try to dig out. And don’t make too much noise.”

  “Noise will bring down the ceiling?”

  “No, but my ears are bloody killing me.”

  Back in the void, Arthur may have cracked a smile. Dermot liked to think so. “But you don’t want to dig? The stability? Or do you?” Arthur was uncertain.

  “I don’t know,” Dermot answered truthfully.

  Dig or wait? Both options were fraught with risk, but he preferred to be the master of his own fate. To sit and do nothing and suffocate before rescue came... the idea put his teeth on edge. He made up his mind.

  “We should dig. Up. We’re a fair bit down, but it’s either that or try to go back, and that’s not happening without shoring. Only thing is, we’re behind enemy lines.”

  “Then we’ll sneak back to our side come nightfall.”

  “Well, that will be the plan, if we get out. But if we’re caught – well, they don’t treat sappers too kindly. And we still need to get out first.”

  “Why don’t we wait, then? They’re bound to send help for us soon.”

  “You’d hope so. Eventually. Only we’re back to the air problem, Arthur, and I’ve no idea how far back our tunnel is down.”

  “How deep did you say we were?”

  “Deep enough.”

  “I don’t think we have another choice, my friend. I think you are right. Up we should go.”

  “Maybe. But it isn’t good, all the same.”

  “You think it’ll collapse?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That’s not so good, Irlandais, as you say.”

  “We should try and find something to dig with. I hope you don’t bite your nails, you big French bastard, because it looks like you might just need them.”

  “Excellent, Dermot, I’d wondered what had happened to your cheery disposition. Let’s go see what the Germans are up to.”

  “This is a bit of bad luck for us all the same,” Dermot said, gesturing fruitlessly to a mythical sky while he felt with one hand for a shovel. “Wasn’t the rule no shelling?”

  “Maybe it was one of theirs?”

  “Maybe. But behind their lines? I’m guessing it was one of our boys.”

  “Then General Nivelle is generous with his gifts. Poor Bertrand here, his mother will thank him.”

  “He was only seventeen, Arthur.”

  “I know. What a place to be buried in.”

  “Well, next time you drop by the officer’s mess, you be sure to thank the General.”

  There was silence, then: “I don’t want to die here with Bertrand, Dermot. One hundred feet below no-man’s-land. I want to die with the fresh air around me, in the heat of the sun, and the love of my children. I want to die a happy old man.”

  The burn of the whisky glowed warm in Dermot’s gut but even now was beginning to fade.

  “Here, have the last drop.” He o
ffered the flask back to Arthur.

  “Thank you, my friend. You’ve always been a good sort. I’m sorry to get maudlin this way.” Arthur finished the dregs. “I’ll keep this so I can refill it some day.”

  “You do that.”

  “I want you to be the first to know, Dermot, I’m putting in for a transfer to the flying corps. Turns out I’m not overly fond of small tight spaces, and I don’t think much of the dark.”

  Dermot laughed heartily. “Then perhaps, Lieutenant, it’s time we both got out.”

  4

  The Ladies

  Michel Malenfer was dead. The boy was laid out in a casket and kept in a cool room. Black crêpe was hung from the mirrors and windows, and armbands were worn by the staff. The Malenfer women traded their dresses for those of darker hue; all except Madame, that is, for whom mourning garb was already de rigueur.

  Mademoiselle Simonne found it oppressive: The house lingered under a veil. She was expected to be patient, to sit and mourn her poor departed uncle. Uncle. She had never thought of Michel that way. He was her mother’s baby brother, and Simonne, eighteen and two years his senior, treated him the same. As a child he had only been an annoyance, a little pain that would come into her room. Now he was lying on a cold shelf downstairs, waiting to be buried.

  Look at her chewing! Rolling that beef around in there. How long is she going to take to finish it? Just swallow it already!

  Simonne was very sad for Michel and had cried that whole first day. When she had seen the girl, she’d known Michel would go; she had believed it and it had come true. Simonne had liked Michel well enough – when she’d thought of him much at all – so long as he kept out of her way and didn’t ask stupid questions. They were family, yes, but their formative years had been spent apart. The soil of company in which kinship could flower had been denied them too long.