The Marble Mask Page 18

  “That’s kind of you to say,” I answered. “I was afraid we might be imposing.”

  She led the way to a small, richly decorated living room with a sweeping view of distant mountains across miles of dazzling white, snow-covered countryside.

  “Make yourselves comfortable. I prepared tea. Would you like some?”

  She placed herself in an armchair facing a silver service matching the plush setting, if not the financial image, of a long-retired secretary. Paul and I had no choice but to sit like schoolboys on a small sofa opposite her. The windows ran the length of the wall across from us, their curtains wide open, and the snow-brightened light coming through them was enough to hurt our eyes. Despite her seemingly impeccable manners, Marie Chenin made no offer to ease our squinting at her.

  For the moment, I decided to play along.

  She smiled cheerfully as she passed us tiny cups and saucers. “I’m afraid the pleasure of your company will be all mine, since I can’t imagine what I can add to what I told the other young man.”

  I took the time to sample my tea. “Actually, Madame Chenin, it’s your helpfulness then that brings us back now. There aren’t many people left from those days who have your sharp memory.”

  Her smile remained, but I could tell she was slightly irritated. “You haven’t said if you like your tea.”

  I placed the cup on the low table between us. “Wonderful. We’re not here to bother you about those papers you took from the Deschamps, by the way. That’s ancient history.”

  She cut me a quick look and then offered us a small bowl. “I should have offered you sugar. I’m becoming forgetful.”

  We both passed. “We’d like to know more about Antoine,” I explained.

  She was visibly surprised. “Antoine? Why?”

  “We think his death may have had something to do with Jean’s disappearance. I understand you knew Antoine, before he went off to Italy?”

  “Yes, of course I did.” But she still seemed confused by my approach.

  “Tell me about him—how he was, how he worked with his father, how he got along with his brother.”

  A change came over her then, and she settled back in her chair, abandoning the role of hostess. I sensed a burden slipping from her and remembered the intel report about her first interview—how merely mentioning Antoine had changed the tone of the conversation. I tested this theory by slowly rising, closing the curtains to quell the glare, and silently returning to my chair, all without protest from her.

  She spoke softly. “Antoine was a wonderful boy—strong, handsome, intelligent, and graceful. Very much like his father. I used to think they worked together more like brothers than as father and son, they joked together so.”

  “That must have been tough on Marcel.”

  Her face hardened slightly. “Who could tell? Marcel wasn’t like Antoine at all. He was withdrawn, unathletic, given to moods. And he was devious, always working behind your back. I don’t think Antoine’s friendship with their father struck him as anything other than stupid.”

  “Did they fight?”

  “The two brothers?” She shook her head. “They barely had anything to do with one another, and there was enough money so they could pursue different interests.”

  “Like what?” I asked, struck by this very different family portrait.

  “I wouldn’t know about Marcel. Probably money management. He always had the soul of a banker, even though Antoine was supposed to take over the business.”

  “We heard they both were, as a team.”

  She waved one hand dismissively. “That was the story later, after Antoine died. Marcel might have played a role in money matters, but the operational head was supposed to have been Antoine.”

  I was struck by her language—very business-oriented, as if she’d also been involved in the family’s commercial affairs. I thought Lacombe might find it interesting to check the finances of this supposed retiree.

  “Legend has it,” I continued, “that Jean was a bit of a pirate in the old days, building an empire out of nothing, hard on his enemies and loyal to his friends and family. Was Antoine like that, too?”

  She smiled sadly. “He had many of those qualities.”

  “Why did he go to war?” I asked.

  Her eyes widened. “Everyone did. Patriotism meant something back then. Our country called and we responded en masse. It was the right thing to do.”

  “Marcel stayed in Canada.”

  “Yes,” she said sourly. “Still managing his affairs.”

  “With Jean’s connections, he could’ve secured Antoine’s safety, too. Fighting isn’t the only useful thing that can be done in wartime.”

  But she was adamant. “Antoine wouldn’t hear of it, and I doubt Jean even brought it up. Jean would have gone himself if he’d been accepted, but he was considered too important to the war effort.” Her tone abruptly turned bitter. “Both he and Antoine thought the fighting would be a grand adventure, so it was up to the son to live vicariously for the father. And die.”

  I added fuel to the fire, suspecting that Marie Chenin’s affection for Antoine—and perhaps his father also—went beyond that of a loyal employee. “All to the benefit of the son who stayed behind.”

  “Yes,” she admitted darkly. “He made out well.”

  “We’ve also been told Jean was so distressed after Antoine died that he made up the murder story to rationalize an otherwise senseless death.”

  She bristled at that. “Nonsense. Jean Deschamps was not some mental cripple. He had good reason for believing what he did.”

  “What was that?”

  She stopped dead in her tracks, obviously at a loss. “I don’t know. He never told me,” she finally said.

  “You must have had some idea, working with him so closely.”

  “He was told about it by someone he believed, but I don’t know if it was by letter or in person.”

  “Was anyone else in the family aware of this?”

  “No,” she said emphatically. “I was certainly ordered not to breathe a word once he began his investigation.”

  “What about Picard and Guidry? They worked as a team with Jean, didn’t they?”

  “Of course they did.” She looked at me nervously for the first time, and then glanced around the room, like an actor groping for a line. I was struck by the notion that she might have erred in some way. When she spoke again, it was slowly and with obvious caution. “There were many conversations I wasn’t privy to… And they weren’t that much of a team.”

  I sat forward and leaned my elbows on my knees, suddenly struck by a thought. “Madame Chenin, let’s stop doing this. Things are going on here I’m sure you don’t know about—things you never intended to be a part of. Do you know why you were told to give us that receipt?”

  She stared at me, her mouth slightly open. “What do you…?”

  “What did they say would happen?” I interrupted. “Do you realize the receipt was the primary piece of evidence used against Marcel for the murder of his own father?”

  Her whole face contorted with confusion. “What?”

  “Because it was known you so disliked Marcel, you were used to frame him for Jean’s death. The receipt led us to the inn, which led us to Jean’s old luggage, and that took us to a letter supposedly written by Marcel luring Jean down to Stowe so he could be killed. Did Marcel know how to use a typewriter back then?”

  She rubbed her forehead as if fighting off a migraine. “No,” she said vaguely. “I did all the typing… I don’t understand. It’s not what they said.”

  “Who said?” I pressed her. “Who told you to give us the receipt?”

  Her hand dropped back down to her lap, and she shook her head forcefully. “No one. I have committed no crime. I took the receipt and I gave it to the police because I thought it would be helpful.”

  I was silent for a few moments, letting the lie float in the air between us. Then, speaking very gently, I switched topics again. “Mad
ame, after the police collected all the papers in Marcel’s office, they found several concerning Jean’s search for Antoine’s killer. But they weren’t complete—some were missing. Would you be able to help us find them?”

  She looked at me, again caught off balance, her face suddenly drawn and tired as if exhausted by all the voices arguing in her head. “Why do you care?” she finally said, addressing us all, I thought. “They are both dead. No one has discussed this in over half a century.”

  “I would like to put things right,” I said simply. “I’d like the truth to stand on its own, and for people to stop making the two men you loved into things they were not.”

  Her eyes focused on some midpoint between us. In the silence I could hear what sounded like an old grandfather clock ticking loudly in another room.

  “And I think,” I added, almost holding my breath, “that you did love them both very much—in every way a woman can.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes wet, the surprise revelation giving her some welcome relief. “Not many people know that.”

  “Nor will they—not from us.”

  She thought a moment and then rose slowly to her feet. “I will be right back.”

  Paul Spraiger glanced at me as she left the room. “That was a gamble,” he said quietly.

  “What did I have to lose?”

  Marie Chenin returned a few minutes later carrying an old accordion file laced shut with a black ribbon. She resumed her seat, the file on her lap, and began working the knot with her gnarled fingers. “When Marcel told me to go, after his father disappeared, I collected a few things to remember Jean and Antoine by. Marcel spoke of them so harshly after they’d gone and changed so much of what they’d done. I’d thought Jean’s passion to find an explanation for Antoine’s death was like one of those tragedies I’d read in school, but Marcel’s anger was even worse—I wanted some remnants of the days before Marcel.”

  I watched her fumbling with the knot, letting her focus on it as a way to settle her mind, and visualized her decades ago, in love with two men, both vibrant, creative, and dangerous, taking them both to her bed at different times to fulfill different needs, and then being abandoned almost overnight. It had to have been a life-altering experience, creating far more baggage than the thin file in her hands. Seeing this old, bent woman, I wondered at the reservoir of feelings within her, and at how she might have chosen to channel such abruptly thwarted passions.

  I knew I’d surprised her, revealing how her dislike of Marcel had been so manipulated—so I also asked myself what she might do with her newfound knowledge, if anything.

  She bent back the file’s cover and peered into its depths.

  “What I took were not things of importance. I was so unhappy then, all I wanted were tokens of the life I was leaving, or which had left me.”

  She extracted a couple of sheets of paper—thin, flimsy, once creased—and held them in her hand. “Those are two letters Jean received. They’re from men who were in Italy with Antoine. They meant a great deal to Jean—I remember when he got them how happy he was when happiness came so rarely. I took them for that reason, even though they don’t say much. Maybe they’ll mean something to you.”

  Marie Chenin seemed spent by the simple act of handing them over, so despite my wanting to press her further, I rose to my feet, sensing I might have gotten all there was to get. As used as she’d been, both by others and by me just now, she was still no fool—and certainly not innocent of the ways of the criminal world. Her slightly doddering appearance notwithstanding, she struck me as a woman of strong will—who now that she was better informed wasn’t going to be taken by surprise again.

  I did ask one more question, however. “When Jean left for Stowe, do you remember where Marcel was?”

  She seemed genuinely puzzled. “No.”

  “What about Guidry and Picard?”

  She stared at me as if I’d just walked into the room, bringing her news she wasn’t expecting. “I don’t know,” she finally murmured, sounding deeply lost in thought.

  I reached out, took her hand in both of mine, and held it like a small, warm bird. “Madame Chenin, I am sorry to have brought all this back. Most of us try our best to let old ghosts sleep. I apologize for having woken yours up.”

  Recovering somewhat, she squeezed my fingers in return. “I don’t think you need to,” she said distractedly. “Sometimes the price is worth paying. Thank you for coming by.”

  It was graciously done, and maybe sincere. But the sudden hardness I heard in her voice made me wonder if her thanks was for what I’d said, or for something I’d unwittingly told her.

  Chapter 18

  MARIE CHENIN HAD BEEN RIGHT ABOUT THE CONTENTS of the two letters she’d given us. They were both bland, straightforward responses to inquiries by Jean Deschamps. But I understood why he’d been happy to receive them. Unlike the disappointments from the Canadian Army and others, these two were from men who’d apparently been with Antoine right up to the end. And they both expressed a willingness to meet with their late friend’s father.

  It took us a few days to trace the whereabouts of the two writers, one of whom turned out to have died ten years earlier, and more time still to secure the records I’d asked Lacombe to locate. The good news, though, was that by the end of all the digging, we had double confirmation that the surviving letter writer—Richard Kearley—was living outside Montreal.

  Apparently, the unit they’d both served in was of some renown, as Paul Spraiger informed me. “Wow,” he said, holding the paperwork in his hand. “The Special Service Force. I hadn’t realized that before. Those guys were amazing—a joint Canadian-U.S. outfit. They were the forerunner of the Green Berets. The Germans in Italy called them the Devil’s Brigade… This is incredible.”

  I looked at him without comment, causing him to flush slightly. “Sorry. I read a ton about World War Two when I was a kid. Still do, when I can.”

  I wasn’t going to stop him now. “So?” I prompted.

  We were back in the Sûreté basement, to which we’d both gravitated as our home away from home. It was quiet, private, and while keeping us in the building also removed us from the bustle overhead.

  Paul made himself more comfortable in his chair. “The Special Service Force was a small, elite group designed for guerrilla fighting in Norway. A civilian thought it up—an English guy named Pyke. He figured if a bunch of men with specially engineered snowmobile transports could be dropped into Norway, they could hassle the Germans enough with smash-and-run operations that the Germans would have to divert a disproportionate number of troops from the Russian front to go after them. The snow machines and special training would give the Force the edge over the bad guys—kind of like a mongoose and a snake, I suppose.”

  “Sounds suicidal.”

  “It was,” he said brightly, “but it never happened anyway. The whole Norway idea was scrubbed, the snow machines dumped, and the unit used as shock troops instead—still suicidal but without the Commando glamour. They never used their parachuting skills, their skiing, or any of the sabotage, behind-the-lines techniques they’d been taught. Basically, Mark Clark in Italy—he was the head U.S. general over there—used them for ops no one thought they could win. And once, in something like twenty-five days in January 1944, they had fourteen hundred casualties out of a total of eighteen hundred men.”

  “Christ,” I commented. “They had better odds in trench warfare.”

  Paul’s eyes brightened. “Don’t get me wrong. They weren’t just cannon fodder. If it hadn’t been for the fact they were considered a secret weapon, they would have been the most famous unit in the war. They were surreal—climbing sheer cliffs, carrying equipment on their backs up trails mules couldn’t handle, fighting against amazing odds, and winning every engagement they were in. They were a total killing machine.”

  I heard that with mixed emotions. I’d been in combat a long time ago, and I remembered units like that. Every war had them. They we
re made up of people so well trained to do what they did, they almost became unfit for anything else. Very scary guys to be around.

  “From what we know about the Deschamps family,” I said, “Antoine might’ve been perfect for this bunch.”

  Paul agreed, “If Marie Chenin was right about him and his father being gung-ho about the war effort, they couldn’t have found a better outlet. Rumor had it that, on the American side at least, a lot of the manpower came out of the stockades. The Canadians had entrance intelligence tests, but the killer instinct probably made them all more or less equals. From what I read, once they were in, their handlers were pretty careful not to let them mix too much with conventional units.”

  “You know a lot about them, even for a history buff,” I finally said.

  He laughed. “They were stationed in Burlington just before they shipped out—Fort Ethan Allen. My grandmother worked there on the janitorial staff during the war. She’s the one who told me about them first. She thought they were great—full of spit and vinegar, as she said. Kind of made me wonder about her later, after I read up on them. Hard to think of your grandmother in that light.”

  I thought back to Marie Chenin and to the photograph of a dashing Jean Deschamps. I knew what he meant. “You have a map of Montreal?” I asked. “Let’s go talk to this guy.”

  Dick Kearley actually lived in the suburbs of Montreal, in a small community of one-story houses not far from the St. Lawrence River, and closer still to a cluster of warehouses and factory buildings. If it hadn’t been for an oddly European feel about some of the architecture and landscaping, I might have felt transposed into any industrial area in the United States, the only additional difference being, I was embarrassed to admit, the general cleanliness of the place. Whether it was the snow acting as a blanket or simply the truth, it seemed the whole neighborhood had just been given a thorough scrubbing.

  Which still didn’t make it in any way affluent. Though tidy, the houses were worn and tired, like a poor, hard-working man showing up brushed and polished to a child’s graduation, proud to be there and eager to make a good impression.