Death Du Jour_ A Novel Part 12

"I AM SO SORRY AM SO SORRY," DAISY SAID, SMILING WARMLY. "I SEEM TO ALWAYS SEEM TO ALWAYS be keeping you waiting. Have you and Sandy introduced yourselves?" Her hair was in the same impeccable bun. be keeping you waiting. Have you and Sandy introduced yourselves?" Her hair was in the same impeccable bun.

"Yes, we have. We've been talking about the joys of shelving."

"I do ask them to do a lot of that. Copying and shelving. Very tedious, I know. But a great deal of real research is just plain tedious. My students and helpers are very patient with me."

She turned her smile on Sandy, who gave her own brief version and returned to the journals. I was struck by how differently Jeannotte interacted with this student compared with what I'd seen with Anna.

"Now, then, let me show you what I've found. I think you'll like it." She gestured toward the sofa.

When we'd settled she lifted a stack of materials from a small bra.s.s table to her right, and looked down at a two-page printout. Her part was a stark white line bisecting the crown of her head.

"These are t.i.tles of books about Quebec during the nineteenth century. I'm sure you'll find mention of the Nicolet family in many of them."

She gave it to me and I glanced down the list, but my mind was not on elisabeth Nicolet.

"And this book is about the smallpox epidemic of 1885. It may contain some mention of elisabeth or her work. If nothing else, it will give you a sense of the times and the enormity of suffering in Montreal in those days."

The volume was new and in perfect condition, as though no one had ever read it. I flipped a few pages, seeing nothing. What had Sandy been about to say?

"But I think you're especially going to like these." She handed me what looked like three old ledgers, then leaned back, the smile still on her lips, but watching me intently.

The covers were gray, with deep burgundy binding and trim. Gingerly, I opened the top one and turned several pages. It smelled musty, like something kept for years in a bas.e.m.e.nt or attic. It was not a ledger, but a diary, handwritten in a bold, clear script. I glanced at the first entry: January 1, 1844. I flipped to the last: December 23, 1846.

"They are written by Louis-Philippe Belanger, elisabeth's uncle. It is known that he was a prodigious journal keeper, so, on a hunch, I checked with our rare doc.u.ments section. Sure enough, McGill owns part of the collection. I don't know where the rest of the journals are, or if they've even survived, but I could try to find out. I had to pledge my soul to get these." She laughed. "I borrowed the ones that date to the period of elisabeth's birth and early infancy."

"This is too good to be true," I said, momentarily forgetting Anna Goyette. "I don't know what to say."

"Say you will take exceedingly good care of them."

"May I actually take them with me?"

"Yes. I trust you. I'm sure you appreciate their value and will treat them accordingly."

"Daisy, I'm overwhelmed. This is more than I'd hoped for."

She raised a hand in a gesture of dismissal, then refolded it quietly in her lap. For a moment neither of us spoke. I couldn't wait to get out of there and into the journals. Then I remembered Sister Julienne's niece. And Sandy's words.

"Daisy, I wonder if I could ask you something about Anna Goyette."

"Yes." She was still smiling, but her eyes grew wary.

"As you know I've been working with Sister Julienne, who is Anna's aunt."

"I didn't know they were kin."

"Yes. Sister Julienne called to tell me that Anna hasn't been home since yesterday morning, and her mother is very worried."

Throughout our conversation I'd been aware of Sandy's movements as she sorted journals and placed them on shelves. The far end of the office now grew very still. Jeannotte noticed, too.

"Sandy, you must be quite tired. You go on now and take a little break."

"I'm fi-"

"Now, please."

Sandy's eyes met mine as she slipped past us and out the office door. Her expression was unreadable.

"Anna is a very bright young woman," Jeannotte continued. "A bit skittish, but a good intellect. I'm sure she's fine." Very firm.

"Her aunt says it isn't typical for Anna to take off like this."

"Anna probably needed some time to reflect. I know she's had some disagreements with her mama. She's probably gone off for a few days."

Sandy had hinted that Jeannotte was protective of her students. Was that what I was seeing? Did the professor know something she wasn't telling?

"I suppose I'm more of an alarmist than most. In my work I see so many young women who aren't aren't just fine." just fine."

Jeannotte looked down at her hands. For a moment she was absolutely still. Then, with the same smile, "Anna Goyette is trying to extract herself from the influence of an impossible home situation. That's all I can say, but I a.s.sure you she is well and happy."

Why so certain? Should I? What the h.e.l.l. I threw it out to see her reaction.

"Daisy, I know this sounds bizarre, but I've heard that Anna is involved in some kind of satanic cult."

The smile disappeared. "I won't even ask where you picked up that information. It doesn't surprise me." She shook her head. "Child molesters. Psychopathic murderers. Depraved messiahs. Doomsday prophets. Satanists. The sinister neighbor who feeds a.r.s.enic to trick-or-treaters."

"But those threats do exist." I raised my eyebrows in question.

"Do they? Or are they just urban legends? Memorates for modern times?"

"Memorates?" I wondered how this concerned Anna.

"A term folklorists use to describe how people integrate their fears with popular legends. It's a way to explain bewildering experiences."

My face told her I was still confused.

"Every culture has stories, folk legends that express commonly held anxieties. The fear of bogeymen, outsiders, aliens. The loss of children. When something happens we can't understand, we update old tales. The witch got Hansel and Gretel. The man in the mall got the child who wandered off. It's a way to make confusing experiences seem credible. So people tell stories of abductions by UFO's, Elvis sightings, Halloween poisonings. It always happened to a friend of a friend, a cousin, the boss's son."

"Aren't the Halloween candy poisonings real?"

"A sociologist reviewed newspaper accounts from the 1970s and 1980s and found that during that time only two deaths could be shown to have occurred due to candy tampering, both by family members. Very few other incidents could be doc.u.mented. But the legend grew because it expresses deep-seated fears: loss of children, fear of the night, fear of strangers."

I let her go on, waiting for the link to Anna.

"You've heard of subversion myths? Anthropologists love to discuss these."

I dug back to a grad school seminar on mythology. "Blame giving. Stories that find scapegoats for complicated problems."

"Exactly. Usually the scapegoats are outsiders-racial, ethnic, or religious groups that make others uneasy. Romans accused early Christians of incest and child sacrifice. Later Christian sects accused one another, then Christians pointed the same finger at Jews. Thousands died because of such beliefs. Think of the witch trials. Or the Holocaust. And it's not just old news. After the student uprising in France in the late sixties, Jewish shopkeepers were accused of kidnapping teenage girls from boutique dressing rooms."

I vaguely remembered that.

"And most recently it's been Turkish and North African immigrants. Several years ago hundreds of French parents claimed children were being abducted, killed, and eviscerated by them, even though virtually no children had been reported missing in France.

"And that myth continues, even here in Montreal, only now there's a new bogeyman practicing ritual child killing." She leaned forward, widening her eyes, and almost hissing the last word. "Satanists."

It was the most animated I'd seen her. Her words caused an image to take shape in my mind. Malachy lying on stainless steel.

"Not surprising, really," she continued. "Preoccupation with demonology always intensifies during periods of social change. And toward the end of millennia. But now the threat is from Satan."

"Hasn't Hollywood created a lot of that?"

"Not intentionally, of course, but it has certainly contributed. Hollywood just wants to make commercially successful films. But that's an age-old question: Does art shape the times or merely reflect them? Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist. What do these movies do? They explain social anxieties through the use of demonic imagery. And the public watches and listens."

"But isn't that just part of the increasing interest in mysticism in American culture over the past three decades?"

"Of course. And what's the other trend that has taken place during the last generation?"

I felt as if I was being quizzed. What did all this have to do with Anna? I shook my head.

"The rise in popularity of fundamentalist Christianity. The economy had a lot to do with it, of course. Layoffs. Plant closings. Downsizing. Poverty and economic insecurity are very stressful. But that isn't the only source of worry. People at every economic level are feeling anxiety due to shifting social norms. Relations have changed between men and women, within families, between generations."

She ticked the points off on her fingers.

"The old explanations are breaking down and new ones haven't been established yet. The fundamentalist churches provide solace by presenting simple answers to complex questions."

"Satan."

"Satan. All the world's evil is due to Satan. Teenagers are being recruited to devil worship. Children are being abducted and killed in demonic rituals. Satanic livestock killing is spreading across the country. The Proctor and Gamble logo contains a secret satanic symbol. Gra.s.s roots frustration locks on to these rumors and feeds them so they grow."

"So, are you suggesting that satanic cults don't exist?"

"I'm not saying that. There are a few, what shall we say, high-profile, organized Satanist groups, like that of Anton LaVey."

"The Church of Satan, out in San Francisco."

"Yes. But they're a small, small group. Most 'Satanists'"-she hooked both index fingers in the air, placing the term in quotation marks-"are probably just white, middle-cla.s.s kids playing at devil worship. Occasionally these kids get out of line, of course, vandalize churches or cemeteries, or torture animals, but mostly they perform a lot of rituals, and go off on legend trips."

"Legend trips?"

"I believe that term came from the sociologists. Visits to spooky sites, like cemeteries or haunted houses. They light bonfires, tell ghost stories, cast spells, maybe do some vandalism. That's about it. Later, when police find graffiti, an overturned gravestone, a campfire site, maybe a dead cat, they a.s.sume the local youth are all in a satanic cult. The press picks it up, the preachers sound the alarm, and another legend takes flight."

She was, as usual, totally composed, but her nostrils dilated and contracted as she spoke, betraying a tension I hadn't seen before. I said nothing.

"I am suggesting that the threat of Satanism is vastly overblown. Another subversion myth, as your colleagues would say."

Without warning her voice rose and sharpened, causing me to jump.

"David! Is that you?"

I hadn't heard a sound.

"Yes, ma'am." m.u.f.fled.

A tall figure appeared in the doorway, his face concealed by the hood of his parka and an enormous m.u.f.fler wrapped around his neck. The hunched form looked vaguely familiar.

"Excuse me a moment."

Jeannotte rose and disappeared through the doorway. I caught little of their conversation, but the man sounded agitated, his voice rising and falling like a whining child's. Jeannotte interrupted him frequently. She spoke in short bursts, her tone as steady as his was volatile. I could make out only one word. "No." She repeated it several times.

Then there was silence. In a moment, Jeannotte returned, but did not sit.

"Students," she said, laughing and shaking her head.

"Let me guess. He needs more time to finish his paper."

"Nothing ever changes." She looked at her watch. "So, Tempe, I hope your visit has been helpful. You will take care of the diaries? They are very dear." I was being dismissed.

"Of course. I'll return them by Monday at the latest." I rose, slid Jeannotte's materials into my briefcase, and collected my jacket and purse.

She smiled me out of the room.

In winter, the Montreal sky displays mainly gray tones, shifting from dove, to iron, to lead, to zinc. When I stepped out of Birks Hall moist clouds had turned the day a dull pewter.

I slung my purse and briefcase over my shoulder, stuffed my fists into my pockets, and turned downhill into a raw, damp wind. Before I'd taken twenty steps tears filled my eyes, making it hard to see. As I walked, an image of Fripp Island flashed across my mind. Palmetto palms. Sea oats. Sunlight glinting on the marsh.

Knock it off, Brennan. March is windy and cold in many parts of the planet. Stop using the Carolinas as a baseline against which to measure the weather of the world. It could be worse. It could be snowing. With that, the first fat flake struck my cheek.

As I opened the car door, I looked up to see a tall young man staring at me from the far side of the street. I recognized the parka and m.u.f.fler. The hunched form was that of David, Jeannotte's unhappy visitor.

Our gazes locked for a moment, and the raw anger in his eyes startled me. Then, without a word, the student turned and hurried off down the block. Unnerved, I climbed into the car and locked the doors, thankful he was Jeannotte's problem and not mine.

On the drive back to the lab my mind went through its usual paces, rehashing the immediate, and worrying about things undone. Where was Anna? Should Sandy's concerns about a cult be seriously considered? Was Jeannotte right? Were satanic cults little more than youth clubs? Why had I not asked Jeannotte to elaborate on her remark that Anna was safe? Our conversation had gotten so fascinating I'd been sidetracked from asking further about Anna. Was that deliberate? Was Jeannotte purposefully concealing something? If so, what and why? Was the professor merely shielding her student from outsiders prying into a personal matter? What was Anna's "impossible home situation"? Why did David's behavior seem so sinister?

How would I ever get through the ledgers by Monday? My flight was at 5 P.M P.M. Could I finish the Nicolet report today, do those for the babies tomorrow, and work through the ledgers on Sunday? No wonder I had no social life.

By the time I got to rue Parthenais, steadily falling snow was sticking to the street. I found a parking spot just outside the door, and said a prayer that the car wouldn't be plowed in when I came back.

The air in the lobby felt steamy and smelled of wet wool. I stomped my boots, contributing to the slick, shallow pool of melted snow spreading across the floor, and punched for an elevator. On the ride up I tried to clean streaked mascara from my lower lids.

There were two pink message slips on my desk. Sister Julienne had called. No doubt she wanted reports on Anna and elisabeth. I wasn't ready on either. Next. Ryan.

I dialed and he answered.