Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 5. Whole No. 813, May 2009

L’Etang du Diable by Caroline Benton

Caroline Benton’s novel The Path of the Dead was published by Constable, in the U.K., in 2006. She is currently at work on a follow-up novel, which she expects to complete early in 2009. She has also been producing a lot of short stories, mostly in the crime genre, but also some tales of the supernatural and women’s fiction, which she has sold in the U.K. and Scandinavia. She previously appeared in EQMM in 1/09.

I laughed when Gabrielle told me Le Coisel was haunted. Ghouls and ghosts are not part of our modern vocabulary, except as ingredients of a particular genre of movie intended to scare, and more recently of emotive love stories intended to cause weeping. I expected Gabrielle to laugh with me, but her face remained solemn.

“I know what I know,” she said cryptically.

I smiled. “And what do you know, Gabrielle?”

But she was not to be drawn. She snatched up her duster and told me she was too busy to talk.

Gabrielle is Le Coisel’s femme de menage, the daily help. It was she who held the keys to the house after the death of the previous owner, and she who, when we first discovered it, silently showed us around. She lives with her farm-labourer husband, Jacques Prudence, in a one-storey maison rustique a kilometer from here, where the track from Le Coisel meets the small country road. They are the nearest neighbours.

Like most of the farming community in this quiet area of Normandy, Gabrielle speaks not a word of English. Never a problem for my wife, a fluent speaker of French, but frequently one for me, though on this occasion I was sure I had not misunderstood her. Back in my study I checked the dictionary to make sure. No, no mistake. Hante — haunted. I smiled at the credulity of countryfolk.

Her revelation had come as a result of my request for help the following Friday evening when we were to give our first small dinner party. We had met an English couple the previous weekend in the paint section of the local brico, and had pounced on each other as only expats can. Already we were missing our native tongue.

Neil and Penny Morgan had a house twenty kilometers to the northeast in the area of Calvados known as the Bessin, and had been permanent residents for two years. The countryside around them was flat, they told us, but coming from Norfolk, they were used to that. They were a little vague as to how they were surviving. He mentioned doing building work for other Brits — of which, it seems, there are many — and she enthused wildly about “running chambres d’hotes” when their own renovation was completed, which I gathered was a long way into the future. They seemed envious of my writing, though more for my ability to generate income in a foreign country than from any literary kudos I might have acquired. They had not (apologies all round) read any of my books.

We asked them what they missed most about England. Cheddar cheese, they said, and bacon, and cream that isn’t sour, at which point my wife — who, forewarned, had a quantity of cheddar still in the deep-freeze — invited them to dinner. They were an odd-looking pair, younger than us and a trifle “New Age“: he tall, spare, and bearded, she with long braided auburn hair and voluminous skirts. I suspected we would have little in common other than language.

Le Coisel is a haven for a writer. There is nothing exceptional about the house itself. It is typical of the area — large, sturdy, built of the local stone beneath a steeply pitched slate roof, although it does have a rather ornate central dormer of carved stone which gives it an air of rural grandeur. It was the situation rather than the house that we fell in love with.

One thinks of Normandy as a vast tract of horizontal dullness, and indeed much of it is, but the area of southern Calvados known as the Bocage is more engaging, with gently rolling hills and lush valleys, a rich farming land not unlike the Gloucestershire countryside where I grew up. Le Coisel is situated where Bocage and Bessin meet, not far from...

But forgive me if I do not reveal its exact location. I bought it for peace and seclusion and have no wish to be overrun by people deeming to satisfy a morbid curiosity. Suffice it to say, Le Coisel faces south along a wood-enclosed valley from which no human habitation can be seen, and through which runs the gentle Ruisseau de la Vierge on its way to meet the Drome.

It was summer when we first saw it, one of those glorious hot weeks in July. The sun had turned the car into a furnace, so the tree-shaded track offered a welcome relief. Before even entering the house we walked down to the stream and stood in quiet contemplation amongst a carpet of bog iris, their yellow heads thigh-high, holding out our bare arms to let damsel flies in iridescent blues and greens alight upon our hands, whilst at our feet the water burbled and the hot air pulsated with the songs of birds. Paradise. The pressures of London seemed as remote as Mars and we did not need to speak to know we would buy it.

The house itself, shuttered and unlived in for many years, felt like a tomb when Gabrielle finally turned the great iron key and creaked open the door, but both Stella and I immediately recognised its potential. Massive fireplaces, beams the size of buttresses, exquisite floors of handmade hexagonal pave were enough to make an interior designer swoon. It had suffered from its period of abandonment, but only through damp. In England, it would have been vandalised. The whole came with five hectares of land, which included the valley and the surrounding woodlands.

In truth, I would have preferred something farther south, where the weather is hotter and summer more reliable, but my wife, a keen gardener, preferred more northern climes. That’s where she was that morning, at a garden near Bayeux, conducting her research. She had just received the go-ahead from her publisher for a second coffee-table tome with the provisional title The Gardens of Northern France.

She returned in late afternoon, cold and exhausted (there are no damsel flies in March!), and huddled beside the woodburner to thaw, whilst I, still an Englishman at heart, made a pot of tea. Had I remembered to ask Gabrielle about Friday, she wanted to know, and I told of the strange refusal.

“Haunted?” said Stella. “Le Coisel?”

“Has she not said anything to you?”

“Nothing. Not a word.” She thought for a moment. “Did she say what form the haunting takes?”

I shook my head. “I thought you might ask her. You’ll have more chance of understanding what she says.”

She nodded. “I’ll ask on Saturday. Assuming I’m still able.”

I raised my eyebrows and she laughed. “If we haven’t been scared to death the previous evening.”

A cold draught seeped under the door and I moved closer to the stove.

There was a frost that night. The valley next morning was powdered with a fine white dust and icicles hung in sabre-toothed clusters along the banks of the stream. I put on my thickest jacket and went out for a walk. Thursday was not one of Gabrielle’s mornings and Stella was already in her study typing up the previous day’s notes.

I let myself out the back door and walked briskly, feet crunching, my breath wafting in clouds before my face. I went first through the orchard, where cider-apple trees sagged beneath huge balls of mistletoe, and from there up into the woods. I love the woods of Le Coisel. They are old as time, deciduous, suffocated by undergrowth so dense that in summer they are impenetrable to all but the creatures that inhabit them. But they fill me with a strange sense of pride. I can only attribute such feelings to the “lord of all he surveys” syndrome and confess it has taken me by surprise. How well, I wonder, do any of us truly know ourselves?

But I digress. In the winter months, when the undergrowth had died down, I was able to forge my way in and from then on walked there most days, regardless of weather — alone, mostly: Stella was usually too busy — and it was on one of these early forays that I discovered the etang. To be precise, I almost fell into it. As is usually the case on my walks, my mind was elsewhere, and although I was vaguely aware of a clearing ahead of me I had no reason to suspect it contained water. Only by grabbing a young ash branch was I able to prevent what could have been, in such temperatures, a fatal accident.

The pond was twenty meters across, dark and still, its surface broken only by rotting leaves and the occasional drip of water from the rock face rising some thirty feet above it. The slow drip-dripping was the only sound, and echoed around the clearing like a death knell. I stood at the lowest part of the rim, where the water was no more than a foot below me, and leaned forward. My reflection stared up at me, the decomposing body of a shrew hovering at my right ear. I gave a cry and leapt backwards, then turned and hurried away. The clearing smelt of rotting wood, humus, and death, and I had no wish to linger.

Later I told Stella of my find.

“Is it natural or man-made?” she asked.

“I’ve no idea. It could be an old quarry.”

“Deep?”

“Probably.”

She resumed her typing.

“Don’t you want to see it?”

“Haven’t time,” she said, fingers flying over the keys, so I went out and closed the door. I’d hoped she would be excited.

The pond had a name, I learned later from Gabrielle. The locals called it l’Etang du Diable. When I asked why, she was unable — or unwilling — to enlighten me, though eventually, with much apologetic gesturing, she admitted that it is by this ominous name that Le Coisel itself is known. It seems I wallow daily in the Devil’s Pond.

On the morning of the dinner party no water dripped into the l’Etang du Diable. Instead, swords of ice stabbed downwards from the rock face, aiming their points at the frozen skin on its surface. It looked magnificent — the pool of the mountain king; the Snow Queen’s bathtub. I walked to the edge, obliterating with my hefty footprints the delicate tracery of birds’ feet feathering the frost, but did not bother to lean forward. Ice gives back no reflection.

Emerging from the woods, I saw Jacques coming towards me on his tractor, spraying gravel over the verglas of the track. He pulled up beside me and reached down to shake hands. When we had exchanged the usual pleasantries and concerns regarding the weather, I told him I had come from the etang.

Jacques frowned. It would be wise not to go there, he told me.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “C’est dangereux.”

“Is it deep?”

He shrugged again, and taking a pouch from his pocket began with painful slowness to roll a cigarette.

“Did somebody once drown?” I prompted.

He ran his tongue carefully along the paper and fumbled in several pockets to find his matches. At last the flame hissed and he held it to the tobacco. “Helene,” he said, inhaling deeply. “Helene Bazire.”

“Gerard Bazire was the previous owner,” I said.

He nodded. “Helene was his wife.”

I stared down towards the house. “How did it happen? Was she alone? Did she fall or...?”

“Who knows how these things happen,” said Jacques. “She drowned. That is all I know.” He spurred the engine.

“Is that how it got its name?” I shouted over the din, but Jacques didn’t answer. He let out the clutch and the tractor lurched forward.

It was bitterly cold that night and we had severe doubts as to whether our guests would arrive, but shortly after seven-thirty we heard the crunch of tires on gravel and the slamming of doors. They came in, red-nosed and rheumy-eyed, stamping frost from their feet as they unwound numerous layers of clothing. I poured us all a pastis, including Stella, which was unusual.

Penny said it was nice to be somewhere warm for a change, pounced on one of the many bowls of amuse-gueule Stella had set out, and huddled in front of the stove. She nibbled frantically, as if she’d not eaten for a week, though unless the bulk was caused by further hidden layers, her figure told otherwise. Heaven only knew what lay beneath the colossal mohair jersey, and I, for one, preferred not to speculate. But they seemed a pleasant enough couple. We talked of general things — houses, the best places to shop, the peculiar customs of the French — and were finishing our third glass of pastis when Stella informed us the food was ready. We were already a jovial foursome when we sat down to dine.

The wine, in its turn, flowed freely. Even Stella, normally so abstemious, was swilling it back with the rest of us and I hoped she wouldn’t regret it later. She and alcohol have always made uncomfortable bedfellows. By the end of the second course it was clearly having its effect and she was expounding loudly on her forthcoming volume, having discovered, to her apparent delight, a fellow enthusiast in Neil. I let her continue, removed the plates, and brought the cheese, watching with amusement as our guests ignored the creamy richness of Pont l’Eveque and Roquefort of which we were so fond, and devoured instead the much-yearned-for cheddar. Would we be like that, I wondered, in two years’ time?

Stella continued both to drink and to talk gardens. She and Neil were leaning closer now, becoming animated. Her face was flushed and her eyes had a sparkle I had not seen in them for a long time. Penny, on the other hand, appeared bored.

“Shall we talk about something else?” I said at last. “We don’t all share your enthusiasm, darling.” At which Stella spun towards me.

“For gardens, or for my new book?”

“For gardens, of course,” I replied patiently.

She continued to stare.

“It must be really exciting,” said Neil, somewhat ingratiatingly, “having a wife who’s a successful writer.”

Stella laughed. “Oh, I don’t write, Neil. Only writers of fiction write, isn’t that so, darling? They are the creative ones, whereas I merely record facts.”

She spoke in jest, but there was no denying the underlying sarcasm. Neil shifted uncomfortably. It was, of course, the drink talking.

“I once made the mistake of referring to her first book as a coffee-table tome,” I said lightly, trying to put him at ease. “I’m afraid she’s never forgiven me.”

“Nonsense,” replied Stella. “What is there to forgive? That’s exactly what it was, lots of pretty pictures and not much text. A mere piece of frippery.” She reached for the bottle and yet again replenished her glass.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked, but she ignored me and offered the bottle to Neil. He did decline, on the grounds that he was driving.

“Stay,” said Stella magnanimously. “We’ll put the radiator on in the spare room. Won’t we, darling.”

I waited for a further polite refusal, and when none came reluctantly climbed to my feet and went upstairs. Our new friends were pleasant enough, but I had no wish to prolong their visit.

When I returned, Stella had served the final course and was struggling to open a bottle of Sauternes. “Let me,” I said, fearing, in her present condition, some frightful accident with the corkscrew. For a moment I thought she would refuse to let it go, but finally she relinquished it and resumed her seat.

“I’ve been telling Neil and Penny about our reputed haunting,” she said. “Penny thinks we should be concerned.”

“I would be,” Penny affirmed, looking around the room as if some ethereal being might at any moment materialise through the wall. “I wonder whose ghost it is?”

“Probably Helene Bazire’s,” I said, pouring the wine.

“Who?”

“The wife of the previous owner,” said Stella. “Why do you say that?”

I realised I had not told her of my conversation with Jacques.

“She drowned in the etang,” I said. “Jacques told me this morning.”

“Good God. When?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“What etang?” asked Neil.

Briefly I described the pond in the woods and its sinister reputation. Penny shivered. “How did it happen?” she asked.

“Jacques doesn’t know. At least, he says he doesn’t.”

Her eyes widened. “Does he think she was murdered?”

“I don’t know. I’m merely repeating what he said.”

Stella looked thoughtful. “Her husband mistreated her, you know. Gabrielle told me.”

“Then perhaps he did it.” Penny sat forward excitedly. “Perhaps he killed her and pushed her in. Ghosts are supposed to be the corp...” she stumbled over the words, “the corporeal manifestations of victims of violent death,” she said at length, and slumped back in her chair. “I’ve drunk too much,” she giggled.

It was becoming apparent that we all had.

“Sounds like a good basis for a story,” said Neil to me. “Perhaps you can use it in your next book.”

I smiled stoically and Stella laughed. “What an excellent idea, Neil. God knows he needs something to stir the creative juices.”

My hand firmed around the stem of the glass. “I have plenty to inspire me without resorting to ghost stories,” I said coldly, and Neil and Penny exchanged glances.

“Neil’s brother’s read your books,” she said. “He phoned during the week and I told him we’d met you. He teaches English in Lincoln.” She shot a sidelong glance at her husband. “He said you haven’t published anything for ages. He wondered if you had writer’s block.”

Beside me Stella gave a snort of laughter. “Writer’s block doesn’t exist, does it, darling? It’s — and I quote — ‘a fiction in its own right, propounded by those who lack ideas.’ ”

I winced in embarrassment. She was slurring her words and was by now quite obviously drunk. “Why don’t you make coffee?” I said.

“Why don’t you!”

She leaned towards Neil and placed her hand on his. “Tell your brother, my husband has been resting — a long rest, I agree, but creativity is exhausting. As for writer’s block... tch!” She dismissed it with a wave of her hand and sent the bottle flying. Wine gushed over the tablecloth and onto my trousers but she seemed not to notice.

“But let me tell you this, Neil,” she continued, leaning still closer, “it’s a good job some of us still have ideas or we wouldn’t be paying the bills. Even if we aren’t real writers.”

Neil looked embarrassed and I averted my eyes in disgust. There is nothing more odious than an inebriated woman — especially an older woman. I plucked the wet fabric from my leg and squeezed it in a napkin.

Eventually Stella staggered to her feet and went to the kitchen. Penny excused herself and followed, presumably to find the bathroom, and Neil and I were left alone. “You must forgive my wife,” I said, all too aware that I was probably slurring too. “She rarely has more than a glass or two. It affects her badly.”

“We all do it once in a while,” said Neil generously.

“Not Stella,” I said. “Stella never lets go. Stella never allows herself to...”

But I didn’t finish the sentence. There was a muffled shriek above our heads, followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs. The door burst open and Penny came hurtling in. She threw herself at Neil and began to babble incoherently.

“Now what?” I cried, jumping to my feet and tipping over the chair, but Neil looked as bemused as I did. He gathered her into his arms and began stroking her hair, all the while murmuring “there, there” as if she were a child. The noise brought Stella from the kitchen.

“What’s happened? Is she ill?”

“God knows,” I said. “She’s talking gibberish.”

“I want to go home!” cried Penny with sudden lucidity. “I won’t stay in this house. It’s evil, it’s...”

“What’s she talking about?” asked Stella, swaying against the jamb. “She can’t go. She’s drunk.”

“Oh yes, I can!” screamed Penny, pushing Neil to one side. “Where’re our coats? Coats! Coats!”

I felt like slapping her. She was clearly becoming hysterical. She started rushing around the room like one demented, searching for the coats, as if we’d simply thrown them into a corner.

“Do something,” Stella said to me. “They’re drunk. They can’t...” She collapsed into a chair.

“I’m not their keeper,” I said, and fetched the coats from the hall.

I saw them to the door. Penny scrambled into the car as if the hounds of hell were after her, leaving Neil to mutter a few garbled words of apology and thanks. I stood outside and watched the lights of their Deux-Chevauxmove slowly up the track and vanish into the trees.

And that, I’m ashamed to say, is all I remember. My sudden exposure to the bitingly cold air must have been too much for me because I, too, succumbed to the excesses of the evening. For the first time in more than twenty years I was intoxicated to the point of oblivion.

I awoke in my bed, dehydrated and nauseous. I tried to get up but the pain in my head forced me back down. I reached across for Stella but the sheet was cold.

Some time later I woke again. The thirst was unbearable. I felt like death. It took me some time to realise that the intrusive hammering was not only in my head but also outside. Someone was banging on the door. I forced myself to sit up.

I was naked. Where were my pyjamas? More to the point, where were my clothes? I managed to stand and grabbed my dressing gown. “I’m coming,” I muttered angrily as I made my way downstairs.

I opened the door to find Jacques, his employer Monsieur Chicot, and a younger man whom I didn’t recognise standing on the step. They were bareheaded and solemn. It was Jacques who spoke.

It is difficult to be alert or coherent when in the throes of a severe hangover, even more so when one must converse in a foreign tongue. I couldn’t at first grasp what he was saying, and wished only that he would go away so that I could get a drink of water and some aspirin and return to my bed. I was aware of how I must look, unshaven and haggard, and of the coldness of the tiles beneath my bare feet. I gathered he was speaking of my wife and eventually I caught the word etang.

“Again,” I told him. “Slowly.”

I must go with them, he said. To the etang. There had been an accident.

My stomach filled with ice. “Stella?” I asked.

He hung his head.

It was the third man who had found her, the one they called Alain. He was a hunter and had gone into the woods to shoot. Normally, he said, he avoided the etang, but for some reason that morning he had been drawn. He had found her facedown in the water, frozen into the ice, and had run to Jacques, who in turn had called Chicot. The three of them had returned and dragged her out. Then they had come for me.

Somehow I managed to dress — I still couldn’t find my clothes — and followed them to the pond. They had left her lying on the bank, face upwards in the frosted leaves, as though staring at the cold circle of sky above the clearing. Her lashes were thick with ice. The grey woollen frock, saturated and (since they had come to fetch me) frozen over, clung to her body like a diseased second skin, coarse and putrescent. I turned away and vomited.

A moment later I heard shouting. The police had arrived. There was much arguing and gesticulating — mainly, I gathered, because the body had been moved. For the first time I looked at the dark gash in the ice. Already it was filming over.

Gabrielle appeared and, despite my wild protests and demands to stay with my wife, she, Jacques, and a policeman led me back to the house. They took me to the kitchen and stared aghast at the mess. The dining room was in even greater chaos — spilled wine, kicked-over chairs, sprawling empty bottles. Had we really behaved so disgustingly?

“Party,” I mumbled as Gabrielle made a space for me to sit down and began to clear the debris.

The following days were a nightmare. I kept expecting Stella to appear — there were so many things I wanted to tell her — but then I would remember and my stomach would churn. I howled with loneliness. The police interviewed me many times, but there was little I could tell them, other than that we had all drunk far too much and I had eventually passed out in a stupor. I cringed with shame. Neil and Penny confirmed my story but, like me, could offer no logical reason why Stella should have gone to the etang. Penny’s suggestion that she had been drawn by whatever evil presence lurked in the house was dismissed, quite rightly, as nonsense. Although I have since learned that Helene Bazire was not the first woman to die there, I still cannot accept supernatural intervention. For pity’s sake, we are no longer peasants.

The press, it goes without saying, were obnoxious. The incident had all the ingredients of a sensational story — mysterious death, well-known protagonists, hints of the paranormal. Even implications of foul play which I did my best to ignore. They couldn’t substantiate, of course — any evidence had been destroyed when Jacques and his companions removed her body and by our footprints walking to and fro — but it added to the speculation. Which did not displease my agent. Sales of my books soared. Penny too, I’m told, was paid handsomely for her chilling descriptions of “The Ghost of Le Coisel,” although I suspect the “woman pleading for mercy at the top of the stairs” was the product of a business mind rather than psychic disturbance, and I doubt if we’ll ever know what, if anything, she truly saw that night. I eschew the use of cliches but at times it is hard not to think of the proverbial ill wind.

Later that day I found my clothes. Gabrielle was pulling them from the washing machine when I stumbled into the kitchen. They were wet and clean, the cycle completed, so I said nothing and allowed her to continue. There seemed little point in drawing attention to what had otherwise passed unremarked.

The verdict of the inquest was predictable — death by drowning whilst under the influence of alcohol — and I pray there isn’t an afterlife or Stella will have died a second time through shame. I returned to Le Coisel, determined to sell, determined to have the etang filled in. In the event, I have done neither.

To be frank, there seems little point. I never go near the Devil’s Pond now, and nor, I feel sure, do the locals. This latest incident will have done nothing to diminish its evil reputation. And as for selling...

I thought at first I would move south, but I find I am strangely content here. Yellow flags again line the riverbank and damsel flies dart jewel-like amongst the leaves. It is a haven of peace and tranquillity. I sit daily beside the water and have come to rely on its gentle murmur for solace, even, I suspect, for inspiration. I have begun writing again and my first novel for many years is under way. I see little reason to move.

Perhaps content is too strong a word... The night of the tragedy is never far from my mind and at times I am deeply troubled. But there are some fears one cannot fully express even to oneself. That way lies madness.

I am a gentle soul, I tell myself, when I lie awake in the early hours, heart pounding and bathed in sweat. I am kind and compassionate, incapable of inflicting even the mildest hurt. But then the other voice begins to speak, soft and insidious, reminding me that we are all capable of good and evil, and that I, as a writer, should know that better than most. Whereupon I begin to sweat again and strain to hear the former voice for reassurance. How well, I wonder, do any of us truly know ourselves?

©2009 by Caroline Benton