My urgency must have communicated itself to Darcy, for he didn’t try to stop me after that, and in the end he got down beside me and helped to shift the pile of stones. And when we had finally uncovered the upper part of the body, we stayed for a long time on our knees without moving or saying anything, for the whole side of the man’s face had been laid bare.
‘An axe did that,’ Darcy said at length, and I nodded. But though it was what I’d feared, I hadn’t been prepared for such a ghastly wound. The right ear was gone completely and the cheek had been laid open to the bone, so that the teeth showed white through the curled and vitiated flesh. And yet it hadn’t killed him outright, for pieces of gauze still adhered to the wound, where it had been bandaged, and the face, like Briffe’s, was hollowed out by privation and suffering. The beard was still black, almost luxuriant in growth, so that he looked like the wax image of some crucified apostle.
‘That settles it,’ Darcy said thickly. ‘I’ve made up my mind. We start back tomorrow, and we leave him here.’ He meant Laroche, of course, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention his name, and I wondered whether to tell him what was in my mind. ‘Well, say something, can’t you?’ he cried angrily. ‘Do you think I’m wrong to leave a man to die — a man who could do a thing like this?’
I had uncovered Baird’s right hand then, the wrist all shattered and a gritty bandage covering the wound where some fingers were missing. And below the hand was the top of a canvas bag. ‘Paule won’t go,’ I said, and I wrenched the bag out from under the stones that covered it. It was an ordinary canvas tool bag and it was full of those dull-grey pebbles that were so heavy and metallic to the touch. The body itself was less terrible to me then than the sight of that canvas bag, and as I stared at it, appalled, I heard Darcy, behind me, say, ‘How do you know she won’t go?’ And I knew he hadn’t understood its significance.
‘She told me — just now. She’s staying with Laroche.’ I said it impatiently, for my mind was on that bag full of nuggets so carefully buried with the body — like a sacrificial offering. And there was that tin can full of them that Darcy had found on the grave. The man who had buried Baird had given to the dead all the wealth he’d picked up; a gesture of abnegation, a madman’s attempt to purchase absolution? ‘My God!’ I thought to myself. The irony of it, to want it all for himself and then to die alone in the midst of it!
Darcy plucked at my arm. ‘I’ll go and talk to her,’ he said.
‘It won’t do any good.’
‘No? Then I’ll bring her here. You think she’ll want to stay with the man when she’s seen what he’s done?’ He had got to his feet.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘You can’t show her this.’ I glanced down at the dead man’s face and then at the bloodied hand, remembering suddenly that Briffe’s hand had been injured, too. ‘And if you did,’ I said, ‘she still wouldn’t change her mind.’ I looked up at him then. ‘Laroche didn’t do this,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was Briffe who went berserk.’
‘Briffe?’ He stared at me as though I’d gone crazy.
I nodded, for now that I’d said it, I knew it was true; I could see how it all fitted in — the wound on Laroche’s head, his decision to trek out on his own. And no wonder he’d been convinced that Baird was dead. How could he have expected any man to live with his head cut open like that? And then his determination that nobody should find the place, that the search should be abandoned and Briffe given up for dead. He’d been prepared to go to almost any lengths to save Paule from the truth.
But even when I’d explained all this to Darcy, he didn’t seem to grasp it. ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he muttered.
‘Then what about this?’ I said and thrust the canvas bag at him. ‘And the can full of them you found on the grave. It was Briffe who buried Baird, not Laroche.’ And I added, ‘You know the sort of man he was — you said it to Paule just now. He’d spent all his life prospecting, and this was one of the places he’d always wanted to find. She told me so herself the other night. Well,’ I said, ‘he found it.’ And in my mind I could picture the scene as it must have been when the three of them stood on the lake shore here and Briffe held that first nugget of gold in his hand.
‘I still can’t believe it — her own father.’
‘If we ever get out alive,’ I said, remembering now that first day in Labrador, ‘you go and talk to McGovern. I think he knows what really happened. I think Laroche told him.’
He was silent a long time then. Finally, he said, ‘Well, see you don’t let Paule have any idea what’s in your mind. It’d just about kill her.’ And when I didn’t answer, he seized my elbow in an urgent grip. ‘Do you hear me, Ian? You may be right. You may not. But Laroche is going to die here anyway. She mustn’t know.’
‘She knows already,’ I told him. ‘She knew the instant you handed her the nugget.’
He looked at me a moment, and then he nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ he murmured unhappily, and he crossed himself. ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ he breathed. And as I started to cover Baird’s body again, he said, ‘We’ll have to bury him — up here beside Baird.’ And then he added, with sudden decision, ‘But we leave in the morning. You understand? Whatever Paule decides, we leave in the morning. We got to.’
CHAPTER THREE
That Paule now knew the truth was obvious as soon as Darcy told her we would be leaving in the morning. ‘We’ll make him as comfortable as possible,’ he said, nodding to Laroche, ‘and then the three of us, travelling light — ‘
But she didn’t let him finish. ‘Do you think I will leave Albert to die here alone?’ she cried, staring at him, white-faced and determined. ‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly — not now.’ And then she added softly, ‘I love him, Ray. I love him and I shall always love him, and I shan’t leave him. So don’t ask me again — please.’ She was past tears, past any show of emotion. She stated it flatly, and I saw that even Darcy accepted her decision as irrevocable. ‘You and Ian — you leave in the morning. Try to get through. I will keep the fire going as long as I can. If you have good luck, then per’aps you get a plane out to us in time.’
Darcy shook his head slowly. ‘There’s ice forming on the lake already. In a few days it’ll be impossible for a floatplane to land here. And it’ll be too thin for a ski landing.’
‘Then per’aps you get the helicopter.’
‘Yeah, maybe the helicopter could make it, though there’s not much room.’ He eyed the narrow beach doubtfully. And then he said, ‘We’re just going to bury your father, Paule. Maybe you’d like to be there.’
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then her hand went slowly up to the little gold chain at her neck. ‘No,’ she said in a small, dry voice. ‘Bury him, please. And I will say a prayer for him here — with Albert.’ There was a little crucifix attached to the chain and she pulled it out of her shirt and held it, tight-clutched, in her hand.
Darcy hesitated. But when he saw she intended to stay there, he put more wood on the fire and then said to me, ‘Okay, let’s get it over with, and then we’ll have some food and decide what we’re going to do.’ I followed him back to the place where we’d left Briffe’s body, and as he stood over it, staring down at the emaciated face, he said, ‘I guess you’re right. She knows.’
He didn’t say anything more and we carried the body along the shore and laid it out beside Baird’s grave. Then we covered it with stones and the black silt from the beach. It was a slow business, for we’d no tools but our hands. And when we’d finished, Darcy got his axe and cut two branches and fixed them over the grave in the form of a cross. ‘May God be merciful to you and may you rest in peace.’ He crossed himself, standing at the foot of the grave, and I murmured, ‘Amen.’
‘Well, that’s that, I guess,’ he said, and turned abruptly away. ‘How much food you and Bert got?’
‘I don’t think we’ve any.’
‘Hmm. We got a little coffee, some chocolate and raisins, a few biscuits and some cheese. Hungry?’