“What happened to her?”
“What didn’t,” said Bergeron.
I shifted my gaze from one to the other. Even stooped the dentist was over six feet tall, and I had to look up to meet his eyes. His white frizz was backlit by a fluorescent ceiling light. I remembered Claudel’s comment about an animal attack and suspected why Bergeron’s Saturday had also been spoiled.
“It looks like she was hung by her wrists and beaten, then attacked by dogs,” said LaManche. “Marc thinks there were at least two.”
Bergeron nodded. “One of the larger breeds. Maybe shepherds or Dobermans. There are over sixty bite wounds.”
“Jesus.”
“A boiling liquid, probably water, was poured on her while she was naked. Her skin is badly scalded, but I couldn’t find traces of anything identifiable,” LaManche continued.
“She was still alive?” My gut recoiled at the thought of her pain.
“Yes. She finally died as a result of multiple stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. Do you want to see the Polaroids?”
I shook my head.
“Were there defense wounds?” I recalled my own ordeal with the mugger.
“No.”
“When did she die?”
“Probably late yesterday.”
I didn’t want to know the details.
“One other thing.” LaManche’s eyes were full of sadness. “She was four months pregnant.”
I moved past them quickly and slipped into my office. I don’t know how long I sat there, my eyes moving over the familiar objects of my trade, not seeing them. Though I had some emotional immunity, inoculated by years of exposure to cruelty and violence, some deaths still broke through. The recent onslaught of horrors seemed uglier than most I could remember. Or were my circuits simply overloaded to the point that I could not absorb more heinousness?
Carole Comptois was not my case, and I’d never laid eyes on her, but I couldn’t control the visions surfacing from the darkest depths of my mind. I saw her in her last moments, her face contorted in pain and terror. Did she beg for her life? For her unborn baby? What kind of monsters were afoot in the world?
“Damn it to hell!” I said to the empty office.
I shoved my papers into my briefcase, grabbed my gear, and slammed the door behind me. Bergeron said something as I passed his office, but I didn’t stop.
The six o’clock news began as I drove under the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Comptois murder the lead story. I jammed the button, repeating my last thought.
“Damn it to hell!”
By the time I got home my anger had cooled. Some emotions are too intense to persist without ebbing. I phoned Sister Julienne and assured her about Anna. Claudel had already called, but I wanted to make personal contact. She will turn up, I said. Yes, she agreed. Neither of us fully believed it anymore.
I told her Elisabeth’s skeleton was packed and ready, and that the report was being typed. She said the bones would be picked up first thing Monday morning.
“Thank you so much, Dr. Brennan. We await your report with great anticipation.”
I did not avail myself of the opening. I had no idea how they’d react to what I’d written.
I changed to jeans, then prepared dinner, refusing to allow myself to think about what had been done to Carole Comptois. Harry arrived at half past seven and we ate, commenting on little but the pasta and zucchini. She seemed tired and distracted, and willing to accept my explanation of having fallen face forward on the ice. I was completely drained by the day’s events. I didn’t ask about the night before, or about the seminar, and she didn’t offer. I think we both were glad to neither listen nor respond.
After dinner Harry read her workshop material and I started with the diaries again. My report to the sisters was complete, but I wanted to know more. The photocopying had not improved the technical quality, and I found it just as discouraging as I had on Friday. Besides, Louis-Philippe was not the most exciting chronicler. A young medical doctor, he wrote long accounts of his days at the Hotel Dieu Hospital. In forty pages I came across only a few references to his sister. It seemed he was concerned about Eugenie continuing to sing in public after her marriage to Alain Nicolet. He also disliked her hairdresser. Louis-Philippe sounded like a real prig.
Sunday Harry was gone again before I got up. I did laundry, worked out at the gym, and updated a lecture I planned to give in my human evolution class on Tuesday. By late afternoon I felt reasonably caught up. I lit a fire, made myself a cup of Earl Grey, and curled up on the couch with my books and papers.
I started where I’d left off in the Belanger diary, but after about twenty pages I shifted to the smallpox book. It was as fascinating as Louis-Philippe was dull.
I read about the streets I walk every day. Montreal and its surrounding villages had over two hundred thousand inhabitants in the eighteen-eighties. The city stretched from Sherbrooke Street on the north to the port along the river on the south. To the east it was bounded by the industrial town of Hochelaga, and to the west by the working-class villages of Ste-Cunegonde and St-Henri, which lay just above the Lachine Canal. Last summer I’d pedaled the length of the canal bike path.
Then, as now, there was tension. Though most of Montreal west of rue St-Laurent was English-speaking, by the eighteen-eighties the French had become a clear majority in the city as a whole. They dominated municipal politics, but the English ruled in commerce and in the press.
