15. Camille #2
He goes quiet, and I imagine him thinking of his own life—what he’d left behind. Finally, he asks, voice tight, “What happened to the investigation?”
“Very little.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I bite back a retort. “The lead investigator died about a month in.”
Ryan’s head snaps up. “Whoa—What?!”
“Inspector Fournier. A snakebite while hiking.”
A long, stunned silence. “You’re kidding.”
“Officially, it was accidental.”
Ryan laughs, but it’s hollow. “That is the least accidental-sounding accident I’ve ever heard.”
“The region does have venomous snakes,” I offer. “I’m only stating the official finding.”
“So you think Henri…?”
“I think the timing deserves suspicion.”
Ryan runs a hand through his hair. “This gets worse every time you explain something.”
“I warned you.”
“No. You absolutely did not! You gave me vague little riddles!”
I stifle a grin. “I did no such thing.”
Ryan glares at me.
After a minute, he asks, “What happened after the cop died?”
“The investigation continued, but momentum declined. Le Mas closed. Approximately six months later, the estate was sold to a development consortium based in Lyon.”
“And Henri?”
“Gone.”
“As in fled?”
“As in no reliable public record after that period. Publications stopped. Institutional affiliations ended. No public forwarding address. No confirmed death certificate.”
Ryan looks toward the security monitor. “So if that car is connected to him…”
“He may still be alive.”
Ryan glances back at me, his face pale. “Do you think he waited for Alberte to die?”
I choose my next words carefully, but not deceptively. “It is one possibility. I have also lived here for several years thus far and have never noticed anyone suspicious.”
Ryan’s shoulders slump. “Maybe whatever my grandfather had was insurance against Henri coming after him.”
“Potentially.”
Ryan’s breath catches. “Like a guarantee? Like—He runs to America and somehow makes sure Henri knows that if anything happens to him, the evidence comes out.”
“You could say that.” I fold my hands on the desk.
“But if Alberte was in America and the evidence was left here, why would that stop Henri? Couldn’t he have just searched the cottage himself? And like how would the evidence ‘come out’ if Alberte was so far away from it?”
“That is precisely the problem,” I say.
Ryan’s forehead wrinkles. “What is?”
“The assumption that the cottage itself was the insurance.”
He stares at me for several seconds, waiting for me to elaborate, and when I do not, impatience sharpens his features. “Camille. Explain.”
My focus remains on the pages in front of us. “I am thinking.”
“Think faster.” He makes an aggrieved sound and folds his arms.
I ignore him and lean back in my chair, studying the open file between us.
The old pages have become so familiar that sometimes I no longer see documents when I look at them, only the conclusions I formed years ago.
Ryan, in contrast, sees every inconsistency freshly, without the burden of two decades spent fitting each fact into theories that have calcified through repetition.
“If Alberte possessed evidence against Henri,” I begin, “then the value of that evidence depended largely upon uncertainty. Henri did not necessarily need to know where the original records were. In fact, it would have been considerably safer for Alberte if he did not.”
Ryan hums thoughtfully. “Because if Henri knew exactly where everything was, he could just take it, like I said.”
“Yes.”
“So he could’ve hidden the originals here but convinced Henri there were copies somewhere else.”
“Possibly. Or there really were copies elsewhere. A solicitor, a bank deposit box, someone in America, instructions scheduled to be acted upon if Alberte died under suspicious circumstances. There are dozens of possibilities, and I have never found proof of any one of them.”
Ryan chews the inside of his cheek. “But then Alberte dies, and nothing comes out.”
“Nothing publicly, at least,” I add.
“So if Henri is alive, he waits a little while to see if anything gets released, nothing does, and then…” He points toward the frozen image of the sedan. “This.”
“Potentially.”
“Which would mean whoever is in that car thinks the evidence still exists and is at the cottage.”
“Or believes the cottage is the most logical place to begin looking.”
Ryan falls quiet.
The silence stretches long enough that I hear the faint ticking of the antique clock behind me.
Eventually, he says, “But Alberte knew he was getting old.”
I look at him. “He was sixty-nine, not ninety.”
“I know, but still. He had to know that eventually he’d die. Why wouldn’t he tell someone where everything was?”
“Perhaps he did.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Ryan drags both hands over his face, the gesture leaving his hair standing unevenly around his temples. “Every answer creates five more questions.”
“That is generally how investigations work.”
“It sucks.”
“It does.”
“And why me?” The question comes quieter.
I do not understand it at first.
“Why leave the cottage to me?” he clarifies. “If there’s something dangerous hidden there, why give it to the grandson who doesn’t know anything?”
A difficult question.
One I have asked myself many times since learning of Alberte’s will.
“I cannot know what Alberte intended.”
“He could’ve left it to my dad.”
“Would he have accepted it?”
Ryan’s lips part, then press together again. He looks away. “No. God, no. He’s too busy getting wasted to care about anything other than himself.”
“Well, perhaps Alberte knew that.”
“Then why not leave it to nobody?”
“Property has to pass somewhere.”
“He could’ve sold it.”
“Yes.”
“Destroyed whatever was hidden.”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t.” Ryan’s gaze drifts toward the photograph of Le Mas. “Maybe he wanted someone to find it.”
I’ve considered the same. “If he did,” I say, “he left remarkably poor instructions.”
Ryan snorts. “Sounds like my family.”
The tension in his shoulders softens slightly. He rubs at the back of his neck. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean I hate that he’s dead. I barely knew him, but now I have all these questions, and he’s conveniently not here to answer any of them.” There is a bitterness in his voice that feels strangely intimate, less anger at Alberte than anger at absence itself.
I know that particular frustration exceptionally well.
The dead are excellent at withholding answers. They leave behind artifacts and consequences, but rarely explanations.
For one treacherous instant, I think of my mother’s handwriting preserved in a box only a few meters away, the final letters becoming increasingly sparse as 2003 approached.
I think of my father’s frantic notes to investigators, entire paragraphs underlined twice, then three times, as though sufficient pressure from a pen could force someone to listen.
I force the images away.
Ryan is watching me.
“What?” I ask.
“You went somewhere,” he observes softly.
“I am here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I was thinking.”
“About what?”
My parents.
Henri.
You.
Instead I say, “About Alberte.”
Ryan accepts that, nodding.
Another omission. Another piece neatly removed from the truth.
The shame barely surprises me anymore.
I stand abruptly and move toward the shelving behind the desk, more to escape his scrutiny than because I need anything there. “I have something else to show you.”
“Oh, good,” Ryan says. “I was worried the murder-snakes-trafficking portion of breakfast was over.”
I slide a large archival envelope from the shelf, its paper musty with age. “Your humor is becoming increasingly defensive.”
“Yeah, well, my defense mechanisms are charming.”
“They are certainly persistent.”
He sticks his tongue out at me, and I can’t help but laugh. I’m smiling as I place the envelope on the desk and open it.
Inside are copies of the property surveys, older cadastral plans, and photographs of the cottage taken over several decades. Ryan leans forward as I spread them across the wooden surface, his earlier unease briefly displaced by curiosity.
“What are these?”
“Property records.”
“Why do you have property records for my house?” he asks, sighing.
“Because I have researched Alberte extensively.”
“Uh-huh. That’s totally normal. Not weird at all, Camille,” Ryan mutters sarcastically.