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The house and its gardens had been searched by the police, as had the woods beyond. Alarmingly, on the flagstones at one side of the house, at the foot of the scaffolding, they had found a large puddle of blood, which was later confirmed as matching Freddie’s blood type. That was the point at which people had started taking things a lot more seriously. Everywhere you went in college, the past couple of days, you could hear people discussing what had happened, sharing the latest developments, exchanging theories.
One of the scenarios the police were considering, we were told, was that Freddie had climbed up the scaffolding and fallen—and then, injured and possibly concussed, had attempted to drive himself to the hospital, only to veer off the road and into the water. They were exploring the possibility that injured, and impaired by the alcohol and other intoxicants he had consumed, he had then exited his vehicle and been carried away by the current.
“If any of you know anything which would help the police with their investigation,” the master interjected, “we would encourage you to inform them as soon as possible.”
I tried not to look at Athena. Eric Lam stared very hard down at one of his shoes. Ivo Strang was gazing out the window. The truth was, we had all heard the rumors swirling—that the vet school was investigating a large quantity of missing tranquilizers, that Freddie was on course to fail his final year.
After an uncomfortable half hour of further interrogation, we were told we were free to leave. Athena was out of the door almost before the master had finished opening it.
Harry and I walked Arabella and Cameron to their waiting taxi. When we got to the car, Cameron paused for a moment, then turned to us.
“If you boys know anything about what’s going on, you need to tell us. For Frederick’s own good,” he said sharply.
Harry stiffened. “I think you’ll find we are all very concerned about Freddie,” he said.
“I think you’ll find,” Cameron said, in a mock-British accent. “Well, I think you’ll find we already know you’re lying about his drug use,” he added. “That’s not news to us—we got a letter home from his house master when he was thirteen to say Freddie was smoking pot. Did you know he was also selling drugs? Were you boys buying from him? Because some of your lot evidently were. His college friends. Your party guests. The police have told us that when they pulled Freddie’s car from the river, they found a black carryall in the trunk containing a kilo of cocaine, the same of ketamine, and hundreds of Ecstasy pills.”
“Bloody hell,” I said. Of course I had known Freddie was dealing, but not on that scale. Harry said nothing. I looked at him. It was then I realized how angry he was.
“How dare you,” he said, his pink cheeks mottled with fury. “How dare you come here and lecture me about Frederick’s best interests. As if either of you has ever shown any interest in his best interests, or in him, before now.”
Arabella flinched.
“Do you know how much it would have meant to him, if you had both invited him to stay with you over there in South Africa just one summer, one Christmas, instead of palming him off on us at Longhurst? Did it ever strike you as a funny coincidence that he was studying to be a vet, and you run a game reserve? Did you never think that all those times he got in trouble at school, and you had to engage with his existence, might have been an attempt to get your attention?”
The taxi driver, looking over his shoulder to see what was going on, asked how many of us were getting in.
Arabella climbed into the back. Cameron followed, slamming the door behind him. It took him a couple of experimental fumbles before he got the window down. He met Harry’s glare steadily.
“Perhaps,” he said, “if Freddie and his mother hadn’t been cheated out of what should have been rightfully theirs, if Arabella’s father hadn’t been passed over in the order of inheritance and drunk himself to death trying to work out why, then a lot of things might have been different. But that’s not something we talk about ever, is it, Harry, eh? That’s not a thread anyone in your family wants to start pulling at.”
Arabella leaned forward to say something and then thought better of it.
Cameron was not quite finished: “Here’s something else for you both to chew on: according to what the police have told us, in the glove compartment of Freddie’s car was a notebook. Full of names, phone numbers, addresses. All the people he was selling to. The people he was buying from. All of it in his own handwriting. And from what I understand it makes very interesting reading indeed.”
JULIETTE’S JOURNAL, PARIS, 1937
Fifth Entry
Monday, 20th December—The idea was a simple one, Oskar assured me. Evidently the arrangements were not. It took Oskar several days to put everything in place, sneaking off at odd hours, refusing to tell me what was going on. All traces of his former sulking vanished now that he had found a way of reestablishing something of our usual dynamic: Oskar the wise and generous mentor, me the uncertain and anxious neophyte. It felt a bit like our early days in Paris all over again.
At breakfast this morning, he could barely keep a smug look off his face. Midafternoon, he disappeared on an errand, shrugging on an overcoat and marching out of our apartment, cap down over his eyes. All through dinner at Les Deux Magots I could feel his excitement brewing, his mood turning impatient, like a child with a secret. As I drank my coffee, I sensed him resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the tabletop, to start tapping a foot.
All the way up the Boulevard du Montparnasse—the pavement still slick with rain, a fine drizzle haloing the streetlamps—he stayed a step or two ahead, ignoring all inquiries about where he was leading me. A church clock was flatly striking midnight as we turned onto the rue le Verrier. It was then that our destination finally dawned on me. I hesitated. He turned and smiled, nodded once, and wordlessly reached out his gloved hand for mine. Every time we passed another person, he would force us both to slow our hurried pace briefly, to avoid attracting attention. He was, after all, someone whose name people knew, whose face sometimes appeared in the newspapers.
We passed the main entrance of the hospital without stopping. I glanced at him. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. This way, he whispered, as we navigated the tangle of alleyways. Then another tug on my hand—This way, Jules—his head jerking left to indicate a door I would never have noticed. Confidently he led us inside, both of us still smartly dressed from dinner, heels clicking on the parquet, our pace adjusted to the man ahead, struggling with the tall cart of clean laundry he was pushing. There was a sharp smell of disinfectant in the air.
I was gripping his hand tightly. Hospitals always make me tense. I suspect they have that effect on anyone who has been inside one and not allowed to leave.
We turned. We turned again. People passed in the other direction—a doctor and a nurse, a man in blue overalls. Despite the rush of alarm I felt each time, only the nurse gave us so much as a second look.
At the end of a long half-lit corridor a porter was waiting for us. Nobody made eye contact. “Une heure,” was all he said, as Oskar slipped something into his palm, which he pocketed, checking his wristwatch in the same deft gesture. Then he stepped aside and opened the door next to which he had been standing. Oskar, after checking the time on his own watch too, directed me through it.
The room into which we stepped was long and windowless, cold, with a brick vaulted ceiling. At the far end was a metal gurney, a white sheet covering its occupant. I swallowed. As in a dream, as in a nightmare, I was not aware of willing myself to move and yet somehow I was making my way toward it, the echo of our footsteps the only sounds to be heard.
Oskar pulled back the sheet. On the bed was a body, naked, female. Despite myself, I shuddered.
Her eyes were closed, her hands folded neatly across her chest. Dark-haired, young, pretty, freckled, she was the kind of girl you see walking with her sweetheart in the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the sort of serious-looking maid in a starched uniform you might pass pushing her employer’s pram through the Jardin des Tuileries. She could not have been much older than twenty-one.