Swiss Vendetta (Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)(15)
Agnes wanted him to stop; he was veering too far from what she needed to know, but she couldn’t speak. He was Russian and of a certain age. She knew what had happened in the last World War. The mass murders.
“In my life there are entire weeks that I don’t recall; that day I remember each fraction of time. It is as if I lived it once and then saw it every day after. Do you know this feeling?” he asked.
She swallowed, remembering George’s death. The distant scream that only later she knew was his. How the rain started to fall. The exact temperature of the air. The sound of traffic. All ordinary and yet all now part of that day in a way that made her pulse quicken and her mouth taste of adrenaline.
“I can tell you how the air tasted heavy with fir,” Arsov continued, “and the smell of cow dung mixed with fresh earth. The air was dry and cold. Truly cold, so that our lungs hurt while we walked and so dry you could draw a spark merely by rubbing against someone.” He tapped his cigarette ash and it fell to the floor and singed the antique carpet. Transfixed, Agnes watched the silk threads char.
“The sun touched the tops of the trees and the pit was in shadow. It took us a few extra seconds to understand. To see. Those who came before had laid their shovels at the edge of the ditch and were waiting. Not running or threatening or begging, but waiting. Disbelief on their faces. You know what is about to happen but your mind says—impossible.”
Yes, impossible, she wanted to scream. Impossible that he was dead. That he had killed himself. That he deliberately left her and their sons. She reached for a glass of water and it shook, sloshing liquid onto her lips and down her suit jacket.
“I held my mother’s hand and helped her climb across the uneven ground. My baby sister, my Anya, clung to my other hand and behind us I could feel the touch of the others bracing so they wouldn’t stumble as we pressed together. We didn’t want to humiliate ourselves. Can you imagine the state of someone’s mind to ignore the men with guns pointed at them, the harsh commands of a tongue few understood, and the obvious threat of that ditch, and yet be concerned about falling? About loss of dignity?”
Agnes glanced up at the light of a candelabra to stop the tears from forming. Why? she had wanted to scream every day since George’s death. Why?
Arsov smoked and watched the fire. “The Germans are an efficient people. It took only a few minutes for us to be in place and another few for the job to be over. I had never heard gunfire like that. The report of a rifle I had known from infancy, but not the thunder of a machine gun, and it sounded like the end of the world. In a way it was. My mother and sisters turned to me, they clung to me in desperation and that is how they saved my life. When the guns sounded I fell with my family, pushed down the embankment as they collapsed. The bastards shot into the ditch. My father taught me languages and I could understand the orders and heard them pointing out survivors. ‘There! In the blue cap!’ ‘There, the woman with the crying baby!’ You can’t imagine what these words meant to me. My friend in the blue cap he hated but that his grandmother made for him. My older sister and the crying baby, her daughter.”
Outside there was a loud crack followed by a thundering boom. Agnes half rose. Branches, even entire trees, were snapping under the weight of the ice, bringing down more power lines and blocking roads across the region. Arsov ignored everything and she sat down awkwardly.
“Few died instantly. I could feel them move and whimper. Blood from my mother and sister drained onto my face and into my mouth and eyes but I couldn’t wipe it away; I was pinned by their bodies. I held my baby sister’s hand as she died and felt her struggle to breathe with a bullet in her lung. I lay there from the time the sun hit the tops of the trees until it had disappeared and the sky was filled with stars.”
Agnes remembered the blood on the ground beside George, how they had tried to cover it, but she saw. And the edge of his hand when it slipped off the gurney. Later she wished she’d been allowed to touch it, to touch him while he still had the vestiges of human warmth.
Arsov motioned toward Mimi. “She is Anya’s age, almost. They can’t last long in the cold at that age, they are so frail. Anya’s fingers were those of a musician, long and thin and frostbite would have taken them even if she lived. I held her hand and felt it grow cold. All around me the cries turned to rasping gurgles and low moans, then they stopped. First Anya, then my mother. My older sister and her baby. All around me was death and still the Germans toyed with us. Then night fell, the wind rose, and the temperature dropped. Like tonight.
“When the Germans left, I couldn’t believe it. They had their beautiful coats and gloves and boots, but they were too cold to stand over us and watch us die. They were too cold to finish the job. I waited until the moon was halfway across the sky, but not one of the bastards returned and so I pulled myself out from under my dead family and childhood friends and crawled out of the pit and started walking away from my village into the night. I had survived and swore I would cut down these weak men who hid behind bullets but ran from the cold.”
Agnes pictured the dead woman outside, and the ice and wind, and felt despair.
Five
It was the middle of the night and Agnes thanked the Vallotton housekeeper once again for offering the hospitality of the chateau in such strange circumstances, telling Madame Puguet she could find her own way to her bedroom. Over the past hours they had done all they could, although it hadn’t felt like enough. Theft of money was a terrible crime, but this, stealing a life, weighed more. Now, walking the corridor to the bedroom wing she followed the directions she’d been given, clutching a small leather bag under her arm. Pleased that she had remembered the emergency “stop-over” kit George had put together years ago. She had laughed at his Swiss-ness when he showed it to her. Nothing left to chance. Always prepared. Just a few toothbrushes and other toiletries, he had said, before putting it in the car and most likely forgetting about it. Now it was a talisman of his thoughtfulness. How he’d taken care of her … of all of them, really. She wondered if she had appreciated him enough. She was certain she had. He must have known how she felt. But then, why? Why had he taken his life? No note, no explanation, but a dozen witnesses who saw him carefully climb the railing and step off the Pont Bessières. A deliberate choice.