Syndrome E

53

Sharko awoke with a start: his telephone was vibrating on the nightstand.

He detached himself from the warm body he held tightly against him and rolled onto his side.

At the other end of the line was Pierre Monette. He’d found the origin of the key Philip Rotenberg had entrusted to Lucie: it opened a locker in Montreal’s main train station. The Canadian policeman arranged to meet him there at noon, after he attended to some other business.

The inspector hung up and turned back to the woman sharing his bed. With the tips of his fingers, he caressed her back. Her skin was so soft, so young, compared with the thick shell that had turned him into a street cop. So many roads separated the two of them… Delicately, he buried his face in her blond hair and became intoxicated one last time with the blend of perfume and perspiration.

He couldn’t lie to himself anymore: he wanted her. Since they’d first met, he had never really been able to banish her from his mind. Quietly, he got up and went off to shower. While he ran the water, while he looked at himself in the mirror as he dressed, he searched for Eugenie. He remembered with surgical precision the small hand movement she had addressed to him the night before. And those tears running down her childish face. Could it be that Eugenie was happy? And that she would finally leave him alone?

No, no, he couldn’t believe it. He was ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, which required him to take medicine until the day he died. Things just didn’t happen like that. Not in real life.

After swallowing his morning pill, he returned to the bedroom. Lucie was sitting at the far end of the bed, gazing at him steadily.

“Someday, will you tell me what those pills are for?”

As if he hadn’t heard, he walked up and kissed her.

“We’ve got work to do. Breakfast, a visit to the nuns, then the train station. Sound good to you?”

He briefed her about the locker key. Lucie stretched, got up, and suddenly threw herself against him.

“I felt happy last night, and that’s something that hasn’t happened to me in a long time.” She smiled. “I don’t want it to end.”

Sharko put his hands on her back, which he massaged with a tenderness that surprised even him. He spoke into the hollow of her ear, also in a half sigh.

“We should think all this through. Agreed?”

Lucie sank into his eyes and nodded.

“Someday I want to come back here and experience this country other than through a waking nightmare. I’d like it if it could be with you.”

Regretfully, she gently detached herself from him. She wished that instant could last an eternity. She knew how fragile their relationship was, and she’d already begun thinking of the return to France. The business of life threatened to separate them without their even realizing it.

“I’m going back to my room to get my things. I could give the room up—what do you say?”

“You know the administration and how people gossip. Better we have separate bills. Don’t you think so?”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

They had just left the Delta hotel. Like two perfect tourists, they walked slowly, side by side, heading toward the convent of the Gray Sisters, which, according to the map they’d been handed at reception, was less than a mile away. Without talking about what had happened the night before, they turned onto Rue René-Lévesque and moved forward among the awe-inspiring towers of corporate headquarters. They finally arrived at a wide path protected by a locked gate.

After they had identified themselves on the intercom, the gate opened to let them in. The noise of traffic soon faded into silence, the crests of the skyscrapers disappeared, yielding to a graveled path bordered by gardens. At the far end stood the convent, once the general hospital of Montreal. It was shaped like an H, and in the middle of it rose the Roman chapel, the cross at its summit gleaming in the sun. Two long gray wings spread out on either side. The Guy Wing housed the community and the Saint Matthew Wing welcomed the elderly, the infirm, and the orphaned. Four floors, hundreds of identical windows, an icy architectural rigor… Lucie could easily imagine the ambiance that must have reigned in such a place in the fifties. Discipline, poverty, self-sacrifice.

They silently skirted the dark brick building. In front of an entrance to the Guy Wing, they ran into the mother superior of the Gray Sisters. Framed in black and white, her face was harsh, leathery like a host. She made an attempt to smile at them, but a Christlike dolor drew her features taut.

“The French police, you said? What can I do for you?”

“We’d like to speak with Sister Marie du Calvaire.”

The mother superior’s features tightened further.

“Sister Marie du Calvaire is more than eighty-five years old. She’s suffering from arthritis and spends most of her time alone, in bed. What is it you want with her?”

“To ask some questions about her past. About the 1950s, to be exact.”

The nun kept an impassive face. She hesitated.

“This is not about trouble with the Church, I trust?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re in luck. Sister Marie du Calvaire has an excellent memory. There are certain things you never forget.”

She invited them inside. They walked down cold, dark corridors, with high ceilings and closed doors along the side. There were whispers; a couple of distant shadows vanished like fluttering handkerchiefs. A muffled noise vibrated from somewhere. Christian chants.

“Has Sister Marie du Calvaire always lived with you, Mother?” asked Sharko, almost in a whisper.

“No. First she left us in the early fifties, under strict orders. She joined the congregation of the Sisters of Charity at Mont Providence for several years, before coming back here.”

Mont Providence… Lucie had already seen that name in the archives. She reacted immediately.

“So she worked at the school that was turned into a psychiatric hospital by order of the Duplessis government.”

“Indeed. A hospital that ended up taking in as many lunatics as those of sound mind. Sister Marie du Calvaire worked there for several long years. At the expense of her own health.”

“And why did she return here to you?”

The mother superior turned around. Her eyes shone like flames from a candle.

“She disobeyed orders and fled Mont Providence, my daughter. For more than fifty years, Sister Marie du Calvaire has been a fugitive.”