Tangled Ashes (13 page)

Beck tested the solidity of the wrought-iron elements that rose like a teepee above the well, supporting in their center a pulley from which a bucket had once hung.

“Philippe,” he said to the boy, whose eyes were wide and excited. “Run to my office and get the flashlight off my desk, will you?”

Philippe’s little chest swelled with pride at his mission, and he took off running in the direction of the back door.

The wrought-iron tripod hadn’t bent permanently when the cover plate had dislodged it from the stone. Beck quickly pulled the leg back to the hole from which it had been torn and dropped it into place.

“There,” he said, casting Thérèse a “what’s the big deal?” look. “Tragedy averted. Any other cataclysmic destruction I need to know about?”

Thérèse pointed at the well with both hands. “But don’t you find it odd that—”

“Yes.”

“And don’t you wonder who would possibly—”

“Yes.”

Thérèse’s shoulders slumped, as if Becker had disappointed her dramatic expectations. In a much calmer voice, she said, “Well, I guess there wasn’t any lasting damage done. Except to the cover plate.”

Philippe came running back with a large black flashlight he held by its yellow string. “Here it is,” he said breathlessly, holding the flashlight out to Beck. “Are you going to go down the well?”

From the look on his face, Beck could tell that the boy really considered Beck rappelling down the narrow well to be a possibility. “Not if I can help it,” he said, shining the powerful beam down the three-foot opening. The shaft of the well was only about twelve feet deep, and there appeared to be a collection of debris sitting in a shallow puddle at the bottom. What caught Beck’s eye was not the rotting wood and rusting bits of metal. It was the bright-blue nylon rope coiled on the mound of refuse.

He looked at Thérèse and Jade. “You sure this well was completely covered until this morning?”

“Yes, of course,” Jade said, leaning over the edge and following the beam of Beck’s flashlight to the blue rope at the bottom. “That rope looks new.”

“Well, new or not, it’s not part of the original design.”

Jade peered more closely into the well. “Why would anyone want to go exploring in an old, dried-up well?”

“Jojo,” Thérèse declared. “He’d do something like this.”

Jade ignored her, taking the flashlight from Beck’s hand and aiming it more specifically at a portion of the well floor. “Do you see that?” she asked.

Beck leaned in closer, a little uncomfortable at the proximity, but his curiosity was aroused by the surprise in her voice.

“What am I looking for?” he asked.

“That,” Jade answered, circling an object on the well floor with the beam from the flashlight.

Eva, who had shuffled over to Jade, pulled on her arm and asked, nearly in a whisper, “Is it Jojo?”

The question made Becker smirk and Jade momentarily straighten to lay a hand on the six-year-old’s head. “No, Eva, it’s not Jojo.” Eva seemed immensely relieved. “What I think it is, however,” she said, leaning in again to get a closer look, “is a flashlight. And the flashlight appears to be tied to the end of the rope.”

“Well, that’s just preposterous,” Thérèse clucked. “Who would lower a flashlight down a well and leave it there?”

“Jojo?” Philippe asked. The kids were clearly intent on making the mysterious old man the protagonist of this story.

“Whoever did it,” Beck said, putting special emphasis on
whoever
, “probably didn’t intend to leave the rope and flashlight down there.” He glanced at the shattered cement slab lying at the foot of the well. “They might have been startled when the cover fell off and shattered. . . .”

“And they just let go of the rope?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Interesting theory, Sherlock,” Jade said. “Do you think we should dust for fingerprints or something?”

Beck turned on her, taking the flashlight from her hand. “You’re mocking me.”

She smiled. “I am indeed.”

“Well, whatever the explanation is,” Thérèse said, “I’m just glad the structure wasn’t damaged. It might not look like much now, but with the right kind of landscaping around it and some creativity, it could make a stunning water feature.”

Beck raised an eyebrow. “A well as a water feature? How original.”

Eva hadn’t finished working herself into a terror. “I think Jojo did it,” she whispered loudly enough for all of them to hear.

Philippe nodded with the vigor of conviction. “He was looking for a treasure, but he didn’t find it ’cause he dropped the flashlight.”

“And now the treasure is stuck at the bottom of the well and nobody can get to it,” Eva finished with the kind of dramatic flair that might have earned her a role on Broadway.

“Why does it have to be Jojo?” Beck asked them, hands on hips.

Twin sets of shoulders hunched up in an “I don’t know” gesture that made Jade laugh. “All right, you two. Let’s leave Mr. Becker to find the culprit and get back to our books.”

“But . . .”

“I promise you he’ll let us know just as soon as he traps the bad guy, Philippe,” Jade added, lowering her voice to a dramatic purr on “bad guy.” The boy seemed satisfied with the promise.

“You tell us, okay?” Eva’s soft voice held fascination and command.

Beck snapped a salute as the trio walked away. “You’ll be the first to know.” As an afterthought, he added, “But don’t go accusing Jojo of anything! There’s no reason to think he did this!”

At least, that was what Becker chose to believe. There were so many tugs-of-war being waged in his head that he didn’t need to add another to the mix. Whoever had done this must have had a good reason. Beck wondered as he walked away if it was the same reason that had prompted the late-night excavating under the patio.

JANUARY 1944

M
ARIE WAS
in the laundry room, scrubbing stubborn bloodstains out of cotton sheets, when Elise found her. She leaned back against the doorjamb, sighing dramatically, clearly waiting for Marie to ask her about the ball.

Marie wasn’t in the mood for listening to her friend wax romantic about the Nazi of her dreams and was tempted to let the silence stretch until Elise got bored and went away, but it was not to be.

“Ask me about the ball!” Elise chimed when Marie failed to broach the topic. She had the look of a cat after a five-course canary meal.

Marie scrubbed a little harder, taking some of her worry for Elise out on the soiled linen. “Tell me about the ball,” she mumbled.

“It was . . . grand,” Elise gushed, her eyes on the ceiling, as if a reenactment of the event were being projected on its white surface.
“The castle was . . .” Her excitement got the best of her, and she ran behind her friend, wrapping her arms around Marie’s waist as she continued to stare off at the scene she was reliving. “It was magical, Marie. There were lanterns all the way around the lawn out front. Flowers everywhere, even in the bathroom! And waiters and a chamber orchestra in the ballroom. And the canapés—Marie, you should have seen the canapés! They were tiny little edible works of art.”

Marie pried the arms from around her waist and turned to face her friend, leaning back against the washboard. “I’m glad you had fun, Elise.”

Elise studied her face for a moment. “No, you’re not. You’re not happy at all!”

“Elise.”

“But if you had been there . . .” She twirled gracefully as if she were in her partner’s arms on the ballroom’s polished floor. “The ladies all wore dresses of the most exquisite fabrics. Silks and taffetas and Chantilly lace. And their hair. Oh, Marie, you should have seen their hair. It was all so . . . so elegant!”

Marie couldn’t help but smile, albeit sadly. Her friend was entertaining on the most common of days, and this post-Cinderella’s-ball version of Elise was as endearing as it was disquieting. “Did Karl treat you right?” she asked.

Elise paused in her exuberance and met Marie’s straightforward gaze. “He treated me like I was made of china. Marie, he treated me like I was made of gold . . .”

Their gazes held for a moment longer before Marie turned back to her scrubbing, alternating salt and vinegar on the stubborn stains. “And is he a good dancer?” she asked. “Or do you have bruised feet to show for your adventure?”

“He dances like a Greek god,” Elise breathed.

This made Marie pause again, hand on hip. “Elise, what on earth do you know about Greek gods?”

Elise giggled. “I know they dance like Karl,” she offered. She took the sheet Marie had been working on to the tub on the tall counter by the window and immersed it in bleachy water while Marie riffled through a laundry basket for her next cleaning project.

“Were there any townspeople there?”

Elise was silent for a moment before answering, in a much more serious voice, “A few of them. The caterers who provided the wine and hors d’oeuvres . . . and a couple others.”

“And they recognized you?”

“They spoke to me in French, so . . . yes, I guess they did.” A sad edge had crept into her voice. It seemed her magical night had not been all magic after all.

Marie wiped her hands on her apron and moved to the window where Elise, arms folded over her stomach, stared out at the woods just outside the manor’s gates. “What did they say to you when they spoke to you in French?” she asked.

Elise bit her lip. “They called me a traitor. . . .” She averted her gaze, but not before Marie had seen the tears gathering there.

“Elise,” she said, her hand on her friend’s back.

“It’s not fair!” Elise protested. “I’m no less French than they are.”

“But . . .” Marie didn’t know how to make her see the villagers’ point of view. “But they saw you dance with a Nazi,” she finally explained, trying to sound sensitive, but intent on getting her point across. “They saw you talking with him and laughing with him. They saw you eating the food and drinking the champagne they had served the Nazis. They know you’re French, but, Elise, if you work for the
boches
and have a relationship with a
boche
and dance with him at a ball hosted by the
boches
for the
boches
 . . . what do you expect their conclusion to be?”

A tear rolled down Elise’s cheek. “Maurice spit at me,” she said, taking in a hiccupping breath.

“He did?”

She nodded. “He walked right up to me as I was waiting for Karl to come back with our drinks and he spit at me.” She turned watery eyes on her friend. “And then he just—walked away.”

Marie’s hand traced slow circles on Elise’s back. “Are you sure it’s worth it?” she asked. Then, as Elise looked at her quizzically, she added, “Are you sure you love Karl enough to go through this—to risk what you’re risking?”

Elise nodded, her blonde curls bobbing and her eyes determined. “He said he wants to marry me.”

Marie felt her lungs constrict. “He wants to—?”

“Not right now,” Elise added, some excitement coming back into her gaze. “But soon. When the war is over.”

“Elise . . .”

“He said his family owns a lot of land near Heidelberg where we can build a home and breed horses.” Cheeks flushed with excitement, she took her friend’s hand and squeezed it. “And you can come and visit us. You can live with us if you want!”

“Wait! How can you be sure this is what you want? Why raise horses in Germany when your home is right here—in Lamorlaye—and your family—”

“Stop trying to be my conscience, Marie,” Elise interrupted, her face and voice suddenly hardening. “You don’t know what it is to love someone and to want to spend the rest of your life with him.”

“You’re right, but . . . Elise, he’s a
boche
!”

Elise’s face lit up with the kind of pride that made Marie’s skin crawl. “He wants me to serve the Führer with him, to obey Himmler’s order to bear children who will restore the Aryan race.”

“Elise . . .”

She turned on Marie with a hysterical sort of intent on her face. “Don’t try to talk me out of it!” she nearly yelled. “Just—don’t! Karl says it’s our duty to repopulate the Reich. Just like all the women in the manor are doing! You see how they’re treated,” she continued, her voice now nearly pleading. “They’re special, Marie. They’re doing something that has . . .” She searched for the right word. “Something that has a higher purpose. If I can bear a baby for the Führer . . .”

“Elise, stop it!” Marie grabbed her friend’s arms and shook her, trying to jar the enraptured expression from her face. “You’re talking nonsense. You’re not old enough to have children. And the war isn’t over. The Nazis might not win, you know. And then what? What do you do then with your bastard baby?”

The slap resounded in the room like the crack of a whip. Marie covered her cheek with a hand that shook from shock and horror. Elise raised her chin and gave Marie a look so cold that it sent a shiver down her spine. “Don’t ever speak of my baby that way again,” she said, her voice low and threatening. “Nor of the man I love, nor of the Führer.”

“Elise . . .” Marie was at a loss for words. She knew her friend loved Karl but had never suspected that the love would lead to treason. “Just wait. Okay? Before you . . . do anything about having a baby. Give it a little more time.”

Elise moved toward the door, stopping to turn to Marie before she exited. There was a dreamy smile on her face when she said, “It might already be too late for that.”