“Especially,” I added, pointing to the portrait above the mantel, “when what we have to say directly involves old ghosts.”
He hesitated a moment, ducked his head slightly, and said, “Very well. I shall return in a moment.”
He wasn’t gone thirty seconds before the silent giant of before appeared through a different door, pushing ahead of him a cart filled with coffee cups and a silver urn, which he abandoned in our midst like a sacrifice.
Lacombe didn’t hesitate, rubbing his hands and examining some cake slices he found under a silver dome. “Would any of you like this?”
Gary and I passed. Paul, after a pause, took him up on the offer and joined Labatt and his boss in coffee and cake both.
They’d just finished snacking when the double cherry doors swung back and Gaston Picard reappeared, pushing an old man in a wheelchair before him, and accompanied by another-tall, dark, broad-shouldered, and watchful-who struck me as something more than a bodyguard.
We all rose to our feet. Marcel Deschamps sat like a pampered scarecrow dressed in fine clothing, his skin stretched and pale to translucence, his few remaining strands of white hair sticking like cotton candy to his skull. The only sign of vitality-strong and unyielding-were his eyes. Black-rimmed and hollow, they gleamed with intelligent ferocity. Despite the overall frailty of the package, those eyes confirmed the ruthlessness Lucien Pelletier had described.
Picard made the introductions, remembering all our names perfectly, and identified the dark newcomer as Pierre Guidry. We stood in a circle respectfully, not shaking hands, since Deschamps kept his under the blanket draping his knees, and Guidry made no move to be conversational. It occurred to me as we finally broke ranks and settled back into our seats that neither Marcel nor Pierre was that much older than I. Yet while the former looked ancient enough to be somebody’s great-grandfather, the latter had the appearance of a man in his early forties.
Marcel’s voice, when he finally spoke, mirrored the strength in his eyes, however, and the fact that he chose French-not Joual-showed his tactical abilities were fully alive as well, for I was sure his command of English was as good as my own-either that or half the library’s contents were unreadable to him.
Paul Spraiger nevertheless took up his assigned role as translator.
“I’ve been led to believe,” Deschamps told Lacombe, “that you have something important to say to me-something that justifies this invasion of my privacy.”
Lacombe responded in English. “That is true, and in courtesy to our guests, I think we should speak their language.”
Deschamps indicated Guidry with a slight toss of his head, keeping to French. “My colleague and business partner would have a hard time with that, and I’d like him to be a part of this.”
I was about to suggest it didn’t matter either way, when Lacombe rose to his feet and calmly announced the meeting concluded.
I quickly stood to back him up, the others joining in ragged suit.
Deschamps’s expression turned to disgust, but his reaction proved that we’d adequately baited the hook. “Sit down,” he said in perfect English. “This is childish-it doesn’t become you.”
We all sat back down.
“Let’s do this quickly,” Deschamps added. “Since you have tumbled to my condition, you can appreciate why.”
“Mr. Deschamps,” Gary Smith asked, “when was the last time you saw your father?”
Marcel looked at him stolidly for a moment, as if wondering how he’d come to appear in the room. “Nineteen forty-seven,” he finally said.
“When in nineteen forty-seven?”
“Winter. He came to bid us all good-bye in this very house. He was dedicating the rest of his life to the contemplation of God. I never saw him again.”
“That story’s due for a revision.”
“Why? It’s the truth.”
“Is your father still alive?”
A thin smile crossed the cadaverous face. “Of course not. He died years ago.”
“How and when?”
Gaston Picard interrupted. “Gentlemen, you must know that this entire conversation is being conducted out of our good grace alone. You have no right to be here, and you certainly have no right to badger my client. If you have something to say, please say it.”
“We will,” I said, “but we want it placed in context.”
Again, Deschamps scowled. “He died at the Abbey of St. Benoit, twenty years ago, of a heart attack.”
Picard looked at him sharply, the disapproval clear on his face.
Gary extracted a picture from his inside coat pocket, crossed over to Deschamps’s wheelchair, and dropped it on the other man’s lap. “Is this your father?”
Deschamps hesitated glancing down at it, and when he did, he became so still it almost seemed as if he’d stopped breathing.
“Where did you get this?” he finally asked, glancing back up, even paler than before.
“We took it at his autopsy a couple of days ago,” I said. “He’d been stabbed with an ice pick, or something just like it.”
Marcel looked confused, staring at the picture again. “I don’t understand. He looks younger than me. What do you mean he was stabbed? When?”
“A long time ago,” Gary explained. “Back when you claim he went to the abbey.”
“Mr. Deschamps,” I said. “We know the religious story was so your competitors wouldn’t sense a weakness and put you out of business. But your father was murdered. I think even your lawyer will tell you that keeping to the old story wouldn’t be smart. It might make us wonder why you were being so evasive.”
Deschamps was very still for a moment, still holding the photograph in one bony, blue-veined hand. “Explain what this means,” he finally said in a soft voice. I was struck by his overall reaction. Either he still had reserves enough to be a very effective actor, or his apparent grief was real.
“We found your father last week on top of a mountain in Vermont,” Gary explained. “He’d been frozen stiff since the time of his death-approximately fifty years.”
This time Picard was the one who looked baffled. “It’s not that cold in Ver-”
Deschamps interrupted him with a quick command, his emotional stability fully restored. “Enough.”
He then stared at me. “How was he kept frozen so long?”
I was impressed at his immediate grasp of the situation. I could almost see his brain whirring behind those penetrating eyes. “No doubt a commercial freezer,” I answered. “Are you more inclined now to tell us how and why he disappeared?”
Picard suddenly bent over at the waist and whispered something in Marcel’s ear. The ailing man smiled slightly and said, “I will admit to fabricating the story of his religious conversion. If you had known my father, you would have been amused by that invention. Unfortunately, the truth is no more revealing. He simply vanished-took the car, supposedly for a drive, and never came back.”
“But that was rare, wasn’t it?” I asked. “Didn’t Mr. Guidry there usually drive him? And wasn’t he more concerned for his own safety to be so casual?”
“Yes and no. He was a strong-willed man, not given to showing weakness. It wasn’t his nature to hide from his enemies.”
“Meaning he’d gone to meet with one of them?”
“Meaning nothing of the kind. We have no idea what happened to him. One day he was here. The next he was not. It is that simple or that complex. We don’t know. There was even talk that he’d died of a heart attack while driving in the country. But every time we thought of an explanation, something cropped up to undermine it. Such as, what happened to the car? If a competitor killed him, why did no one brag about it? If he simply ran away, why no letters or bank withdrawals or early indications that he was unhappy with his present life? In the end, we were left with a mystery, which,” and he waved the photo in his hand, “has apparently officially become your property.” He extended the picture back to Gary, who rose once more to receive it. “I wish you luck.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “We tell you we finally found your father and that he was stabbed to death, and you wash your hands of it? Hardly a response to make us think you innocent.”