World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 15

“Well,” said Olivier. “I’ll be damned.”

A small delegation stood on the landing just outside the church and stared across the village to the rooflines of the interconnected shops below. Monsieur Béliveau’s General Store, Sarah’s Boulangerie, the bistro, and finally the bookstore.

A very light rain had started falling, more like a fine mist. Low clouds shrouded the hills, surrounding and enclosing the village.

“You were right,” said Myrna, looking at Fiona.

A roof, just visible, was jutting out at right angles from Myrna’s loft.

“How could we not have seen it before?” asked Clara.

“We weren’t looking,” said Myrna.

“Well, we would have found it eventually,” said Gabri. “As soon as we fixed the roof.”

“In about twenty years,” said Billy.

“Can I get my sledgehammer now?” Clara asked Olivier.

“You might want to wait.” But it wasn’t Olivier who’d spoken. It was Billy.

“What’s wrong?” asked Myrna.

“What’s wrong, Armand?” asked Reine-Marie.

They were sitting in their kitchen. He’d waited for Fiona to leave before bringing out the ring and placing it on the table. And then he told Reine-Marie what had happened the night before.

When he’d finished, she picked the ring up, turning it over and around. “An engineer’s ring, for sure. It’s pretty worn. Old. Looks to me like it might’ve been there for a while.”

She replaced it on the table.

“True. Fiona still has her ring, I checked. And I’ll check out Harriet, just to be sure. The ring aside, someone was here last night.”

“You think it was Sam, don’t you.”

“Who else could it have been?”

“Fiona.” She raised her hand slightly, to indicate she had more to say, but needed a moment. Which he gave her. “It’s possible none of this is threatening. She might’ve just been curious and bored. Wandering around the house, picking things up. Snooping more than spying.”

She studied him, holding his eyes.

“It’s possible,” he admitted.

Reine-Marie admired Fiona’s spirit, but, if she was honest, she was never completely comfortable with the young woman. Never totally trusted her.

In fact, neither Reine-Marie nor Jean-Guy could understand Armand’s support for Fiona and his enmity bordering on hostility toward Sam.

Jean-Guy had even, albeit at Armand’s suggestion, kept in touch with Sam for a few years after the trial, eventually losing track of him in his late teens.

But Armand had not lost track. He’d kept a close eye on Sam, as he’d grown from a child, to a teen, to a young man. Sam had not committed another crime. Not that Armand could see. Though crimes had been committed around him.

Assaults. B&Es. There was a murder in Saskatoon, in the building where Sam worked as a janitor. Sam had not been implicated.

Armand had flown out and gone over the evidence. Making sure.

Two other murders happened in other parts of Canada where Sam lived. It was, Armand knew, rare for anyone to have one murder in their life, never mind a series of them.

A serial.

But he never could connect Sam Arsenault to any of them.

As for Fiona, Reine-Marie had agreed to join him in sponsoring her parole. But there was always a membrane, a very thin barrier Reine-Marie had put up between herself and the young woman. The one thing she’d said to Armand when he’d first broached the idea of Fiona’s parole was that she was not to be around the grandchildren.

Armand had no trouble agreeing to that.

“Why would Sam want to snoop around our house?” Reine-Marie now asked.

“I don’t know,” Armand admitted. “But someone did. And they didn’t just snoop. They turned the family photo around. They moved items. They sprayed cologne. They lay on our bed.”

If it sounded to Reine-Marie like the Three Bears, she did not say anything. But for the first time, after reading that story to their children and now the grandchildren countless times, she stopped to think how frightened the three bears must have been.

“There was no effort to hide it,” Armand was saying. “In fact, whoever was here wanted us to see. To know. There was an intimacy about what they did. Can you see Fiona lying on our bed? Picking up my book and moving the bookmark?”

“No, but I can’t see Sam doing it either. You think there’s more to it, don’t you? You think it was a deliberate message.”

He nodded.

“To say what?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I suspect it’s just a mind game. Nothing sinister.”

He looked down at the ring on the old pine table, then picked it up. “But I am just going to make a call.”

Going into his study, he called Nathalie Provost. After brief pleasantries she asked what he wanted.

“I’ve found an engineer’s ring in our basement. It looks old. Can you tell me something about them?”

“Well, I think you know that they were originally made from the metal remains of the first Québec Bridge. It collapsed in 1907, killing eighty-six workers. It was a catastrophic failure of engineering. The rings were made to remind engineers of that disaster, and the consequences of what they, what we, do.”

“I don’t see a name inside,” he said, holding it up to the light. “Is there any way of knowing whose it is, or was?”

“I don’t really know. I’ll have to check. The rings are supposed to be returned to the Société when the person retires or dies, so no name would be engraved. They’re given out over and over again. A sort of thread that connects us to each other.”

She looked down at her own. Few were so hard-won.

“If you can make some inquiries, I’d appreciate it.”

“Consider it done.”

“Merci,” he said and hung up just as there was a shout from the living room.

“Bonjour?” It was Clara. “You two home?”

“I’m in here,” Reine-Marie called from the kitchen.

Clara appeared at the door and Armand arrived right behind her.

“Can you come to the bistro?” Clara asked. “Billy wants to show us something. Something to do with the hidden room.”

“It’s there?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Looks like it. Billy’s gone to get Ruth to bring her along too.”

“Why Ruth?”

“Oh, how often have we asked that question,” said Clara.

“So, Billy,” said Olivier when they’d all assembled in the bistro. “What’s this all about?”

They were sitting around the huge fieldstone hearth. The fire had been lit, as much for comfort on the gray morning as warmth, and Gabri had brought over rich cafés au lait and lemon loaf.

Armand glanced at Harriet’s hand, where a freshly polished engineer’s ring sat snug on the little finger of her right hand. A tiny memento of a huge tragedy.

He shifted his focus to Fiona. He’d suggested to Reine-Marie that they say nothing about the night before. Better to pretend they hadn’t noticed anything and see what happened next. If anything.

It was possible, probable, that it was done to provoke, and when there was no reaction, Sam, or whoever, would tire of the game.

Billy put a letter on the coffee table. “I got this in the mail a couple of months ago.”

“Jesus,” said Gabri. “Look at the date. It took Canada Post a hundred and fifty years to deliver it?”

“No,” said Billy, with a small laugh. “Someone must’ve found it. It was sent to my old family home, and the woman who lives there now forwarded it to me.”

They passed it around. When it came to Armand, he put on his glasses and read it through. Twice. Then passed it along.

Only when it returned to Billy did Armand ask, “Who’s Pierre Stone?”

“My great-great-grandfather. Might even be another ‘great’ in there,” said Billy.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Ruth.

The fact that “pierre” was French for stone, making the letter writer’s name essentially Stone Stone, or Pierre Pierre, surprised no one coming from a family with a Billy Williams.

Besides, centuries ago, people were often identified by their trade. In this case, a stonemason.

“The date on the letter is 1862,” said Myrna. “The same as the brick you gave me.”

“Yes,” said Harriet. “Do you think he was talking about this place? That room?”

Monsieur Stone was writing to a woman, perhaps his wife or fiancée, maybe a sister. He described having to learn bricklaying in order to get a job. Fewer and fewer places were made with stone, now that bricks were being manufactured.

It was a glimpse into a changing world, and the sadness a skilled craftsman felt having to give up that craft. For a man named Pierre Stone, switching to bricklaying was clearly painful.

But the emotion in the letter went far beyond that.

The stonemason had, for the sake of his livelihood, accepted a job in a village he’d never heard of, though he’d lived in the area all his life. It was called Three Pines.

The job was small, but he was desperate. He’d accepted it, but with growing unease.

He did not meet his employer. They only communicated through written instructions, and part of the payment was left at a public house in the nearby village of Sweetsburg.

He was to build a wall. Just that. It would seal off an attic room in a newly made building. The materials and tools were already on-site in the attic. He was to arrive after dark and finish the job in one night, leaving before dawn. He was not, under any circumstances, to go into the room.

Just seal it off and leave.

Talk to no one. Take his own food and drink. Leave no evidence behind.

Pierre Stone wrote that he’d been told never to visit the village again. To forget it even existed. He regretted taking the commission but couldn’t see any way out now. Besides, he needed the money. He ended the letter wondering what else he’d do for money. For family.

“‘The Cask of Amontillado,’” said Myrna, quietly. Saying what they were all thinking. Well, almost all.

“What?” said Harriet and Gabri at the same time.

“An Edgar Allan Poe story,” said Ruth.

Seeing Gabri’s eyes widen in dread, Olivier said, “It’s about happy puppies.”

“Yeah,” said Myrna. “Like ‘The Raven’ is about happy birds.”

“What do you think?” Billy asked.

Armand’s eyes narrowed as he recalled “The Cask of Amontillado.” He stared into the fire for a few moments, then looked over his left shoulder toward the door that connected the bistro to the bookstore.

All eyes followed.

“You say you think the room is there?” he finally said.

“Yes,” said Harriet. “We could see it from up at the church. The roofline.”

“How do you feel about breaking through that wall?” Armand asked Olivier.

“Sure. I’m as curious as anyone else.”

Olivier kept his tone light, but Gabri heard the strain. While he didn’t know what the “Amontillado” thing meant, Gabri was pretty sure whatever was up there wasn’t happy puppies.

While Billy got his tools, Olivier took the plans over to the long wooden bar of the bistro and unrolled them, using the candy jars to hold down the corners.

“Looks like the room would be here,” said Harriet, placing her finger on one of the walls in her aunt’s loft. “You agree?”

Fiona leaned in and nodded.

Olivier had taken photographs when they were at the church, and he brought one up on his phone. They gathered around. Now that they could see it, it seemed so obvious. And yet, for a hundred and sixty years, that room had remained hidden.

“The caretaker said we would’ve found it eventually,” said Myrna. “Once you replace the roof.”

“What? There’s no—” began Olivier.

“Breathe, honey,” said Gabri. “You don’t have to do it tomorrow.”

“Roof’s fine,” he muttered as they climbed up to Myrna’s loft.

Once there, they lined up, staring at where the room would be, should be. Probably was.

“Still a bit of a risk,” said Myrna. “We might knock a hole right through into thin air.”

“Not much of a risk,” said Billy. “I can chisel out one brick, and look.”

“What’s the fun in that?” asked Ruth. Though it seemed this cavalier attitude was a pretense. She was, in fact, pretty tense.

At a signal from Olivier, Billy began to chip away mortar that his great-great-great-grandfather had put in place one very long night, a hundred and sixty years earlier.

Reine-Marie, at Armand’s quiet request, had brought out her phone and was videoing it.

Once the brick was loose, Billy wiggled it out of the wall and handed it to Fiona, who gave it to Harriet. Who examined it.

“Exactly the same as your brick, Auntie Myrna.”

“May I?” asked Armand, and Billy stepped aside.

He shone the flashlight on his phone through the small opening. By instinct he also sniffed the air. Not that he expected to smell anything. If it had really been sealed up for more than a century and a half, anything organic would have fallen to dust. Anything, or anyone.

As a homicide investigator, his mind naturally went there. Though it seemed unlikely.

He squinted and peered, but his light only illuminated motes of dust hanging in the air. Undisturbed for more than a century. But that was about to change.

As he went to step back, his light caught something. It looked like a face. And then it was gone. It so surprised him, he leaned away with a start.

“What is it?” Myrna’s voice became unnaturally high.

“I think there’s something in there, but I can’t see clearly.” He did not say “someone.”

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” said Gabri, his eyes wide.

He’d looked up “The Cask of Amontillado.” It was the story of some guy who’d walled up a rival and left him there to die. Not a puppy in sight.

Armand looked at Olivier, who nodded to Billy, who swung his sledgehammer.