“More coffee? No? So from being frightened, I now started to be worried. What was going on? I can tell you my mind touched on all kinds of possibilities. I mean you never really know anyone, do you? I mean, if other people knew what was going on inside our heads, we’d all be arrested, or at least very hard to live with, I’ve often thought that. So — do you remember that Ingrid Bergman movie about a man who was trying to drive his wife mad so he could get her money? I don’t have any money, of course, but it did occur to me that maybe he wanted to be free of me and was starting some sort of campaign. I mean, once you realise you don’t know all about someone you’ve lived with for twenty years, there might be a lot of things you don’t know. All the rest of the stuff in his head, or his psyche, I guess.
“Luckily, I woke up very clear-headed one morning and realized that if I went on like this I would go mad. So I decided to find out. How? First, I thought, I would fly to Paris, and see if the actual restaurant would bring back memories.”
“You flew to Paris?”
“No, dear, I thought of it, but then I had an idea for a simpler and cheaper way. I found a detective agency in Paris that could make my enquiries for me. You know how distinctive Robert was in appearance. He shaved his head when he started to go bald, and that along with the new goatee and the gold earring he put in when he got his Ph.D. made his appearance at least memorable, if not as distinguished as he hoped, so I dug out a couple of recent pictures of him and e-mailed them to the agency with some instructions. I told them to find out if any of the waiters remembered seeing Robert lately, and who was with him. I suggested they could say he was wanted by the Toronto police, but they said that wouldn’t be necessary.
“It took them two days to reply, saying that all, my dear, all of the waiters as well as the cashier, who was the proprietor’s wife, remembered him, because of his appearance and his clumsy French. And they all remembered that his partner was an attractive woman of a certain age with pretty hair. That was a surprise, but I found a picture of who it might be and e-mailed it to the agency. Sure enough, I’d guessed right.
“Now there was just the mystery of the letter. How had he screwed up? Sit down for a minute, Daisy, I won’t be long.
“Robert may have seen himself as the suave adulterer — I think he did — but he was also an academic so he was a bit of a fusspot, especially, lately, around his computer. He had taken his laptop with him, of course, but I guessed that he had backed everything up, twice over, probably, so I set about looking through his files, you know, his backup discs, where he would have stored everything in case he lost his laptop. It took me a couple of days, but I found it eventually.
“I started searching with the name of the restaurant, Au Bon Coin,you remember? That was all I needed. I found the name mentioned in one letter, in the paragraph I just read to you, and then I had an idea. I found a phrase somewhere else in the letter that was very distinctive. Here it is: ‘I was reminded of a poem by Lamartine: “Le Lac.” ’ I searched for and found exactly the same phrase in two other letters to different people. So I started a real search and, to cut a long story short, I realized what he had been in the habit of, so to speak.”
Now Daisy spoke. “Sending the same letter to different people? Surely not. It must have been a glitch in his address book.”
“No, inserting the same travel-writing chunk in different letters. Harmless enough if he had more skill with his computer, and hadn’t been so obsessive about backing everything up. The thing is, along with the travel bit, he had screwed up and copied — highlighted, probably — more than he intended. Once you realized what he had done, you could see it all.”
Daisy said, “Is there a chance that all of his correspondents would have got the same message?”
“We’ll never know, will we? Let’s move on.”
“Did you kill him?”
“One step at a time. I didn’t mean to kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. It was an accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just wanted to land a symbolic blow before I kicked him out. It seemed appropriate. His field was the French Symbolistes,after all. So I waited until he put down his laptop — I wanted to hit him with that — that’s what I call symbolism — and I picked it up and swung it down on his head. The thing that killed him, though, according to the doctor, was hitting his head on the corner of the table as he went down. He was dead when the paramedics arrived. It was the hall table, not me. So it was accidental. That’s the verdict.”
“You meant to hit him, though.”
“Just symbolically.”
“What did you tell the police?”
“I said he tripped on the rug and hit his head on the table. They were very sympathetic.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Obviously, so that you will know. I think you ought to know how your little dalliance in Au Bon Coinended.”
“Isn’t that a bit of a risk? If I take this story to the police?”
“Not much risk of that, is there? I’ll keep the letters on file. There’s the other story there, isn’t there, the one you wouldn’t want to share with anybody?”
Daisy stood up. “Robert told me all about you. I see now what he meant.”
“Did he? He didn’t say a word to me about you, and that’s rather the point, isn’t it?”
Copyright © 2011 by Eric Wright
The Last Days of the Hols
by Robert Barnard
In September of 2010, a large-print edition of Robert Barnard’s much-praised novel A Stranger in the Family (Scribner, June 2010) was released by the Wheeler Large Print Book Series. Also new from the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner is his podcast for EQMM of his story “Rogues’ Gallery” (March 2003), which can be accessed from iTunes, from PodOmatic (eqmm.podomatic.com), or from our website (www.the mysteryplace.com/eqmm).
Miss Trim, the English teacher and form mistress of 6A, looked around at the eleven-year-olds staring stolidly back at her. “The essay topic for your Easter break,” she said, then paused solemnly. She had begun to sense a giggle going through her class every time she set the inevitable “How I spent my school holidays” as the vacation task. This time they were going to get a surprise: “is ‘How I spent the last day of my holidays.’ ”
She was disappointed, because she sensed an identical giggle going around the class. She frowned like a disappointed fish, her protuberant eyes glaring through the rimless spectacles until she noticed that Morgan Fairclough was already setting down the odd note on a piece of rough paper. She did not ask herself how Morgan could be making notes for an essay on the last day of his holidays when the holiday had not yet begun. She approved of Morgan: solid and hard-working, though these virtues were tinged with arrogance when he talked to his less gifted classmates. But his estimable qualities were so much better than brilliance or flair that she looked forward to reading his account.