Swiss Vendetta (Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)(89)

“Anne-Marie?” he said weakly. “Frédéric?”

“Yes, me,” Estanguet said. “The little boy you sent away. The little boy who had to change his name—”

“Frédéric?” Arsov repeated.

Agnes pulled her scarf off and pressed it to Arsov’s side, trying to staunch the blood that now dripped from his chest to his legs. “He thought he was saving you,” she said. “The invasion threatened.”

“What do you know?” Estanguet raged. “Those people were not my parents and they never let me forget it. Their oldest son threatened to hand me over to the Nazis and they didn’t stop him taunting me. Every day I lived in fear. I knew what the monster Nazis were and every day I thought I would be sent to them. To be tortured and killed. Even after the war, when the boys at school mocked me for being circumcised, they did nothing to protect me. And when my false parents died, they left me with nothing. A teenage boy with no name of his own and no family. They made me take their name and I had nothing left. I was no longer Frédéric Faivre. What boy understands this? Why should this be forgiven? Why should this man live to be old, rich, doing whatever pleases him, when she is dead and I am alone? I was alone my entire life. He took everything from me. My name, my family. The life that should have been mine.”

Agnes felt woozy and understood that blood was pooling in her shoe. The cut to her leg was deep. Estanguet had lost touch with reality overnight. His eyes were no longer those of an elderly villager, they were crazed.

“I took what he loves,” he said. “Let’s see how he feels when Mimi is never found. I was never found. No one ever came for me. No family claimed me after the war. She will die and he will always know that he killed her. He won’t know where she is but he will know she is dead. This is my revenge. He came here with his trucks of antiques and here, in Switzerland, I will have revenge for what happened all those years ago.”

“But we have found her,” Agnes cried. “She is safe and unharmed.”

“You lie. You’ve searched. I helped, and no one knows where she is.”

“In the dungeon. We found the door behind the tapestry. She is safe.”

Estanguet howled like a wounded animal. He stalked toward the bed and flicked the tip of his knife toward her.

Agnes kept her body between him and Arsov to protect the older man, pressing her shoulder into Estanguet’s chest, grappling for his knife, knowing Arsov was losing consciousness and couldn’t sustain another injury.

Estanguet stopped aiming his knife at the other man and turned on her. The movement caught her off guard and she lost her hold on him. The blade sliced into her and she spun away. Falling. On her hands and knees she looked over her shoulder and saw Estanguet lean over Arsov. She struggled to breathe, wondering what was wrong. Everything seemed heavy. Gripping the handles of Arsov’s wheelchair, she pulled herself up. First to her knees. She heaved with pain.

Estanguet pulled Arsov to a sitting position, holding the old man, whispering into his ear. Tears rolled down Arsov’s face and Estanguet dropped him to the bed and ran for the door. Agnes tried to follow him, to pull herself up, to stand, but she couldn’t. She felt something sticky under her shirt.

Estanguet reached the tapestry screen at the entrance to the bedroom and stopped to take one last look at the man he had hated for so many decades. The blanket on Arsov’s wheelchair slipped and Agnes lost her grip. Her head hit the seat. It hurt. She opened her eyes, then she smiled.

Nurse Brighton walked through the door carrying a tray of the morning’s medicines and Agnes tried to call out a warning, but the nurse saw Petit on the floor and screamed, dropping the tray. Estanguet twisted to grab her, his knife at the ready.

Agnes watched him turn, watched the arc of his arm, the direction his shoulder tilted. She judged the distance, the movement of air, her own nerves, and found her kneeling stance.

The shot reverberated. The gun she had found in Arsov’s chair dropped from her hand. Estanguet fell backward, an ugly patch of red flowering high on his chest, near his shoulder. She watched him release his knife and go still. Then she passed out.

When she opened her eyes, Julien Vallotton was kneeling over her. In her line of sight blood had pooled on the beautiful parquet floor. Somewhere in the background a woman, one of the maids, she decided, was crying. She turned her head to watch Nurse Brighton lean over Arsov.

“Is he dead?” she murmured.

Julien Vallotton took her hand and followed her gaze. They watched Nurse Brighton pull a clean blanket over Arsov’s face, her eyes brimming with tears.

Agnes tried to pull herself up to a sitting position and failed. “I took a first at Bienne. George was proud.” Her thoughts were disconnected, but she remembered that was the day George met Carnet. In her mind that was also the day she had practiced for, and was the reason she had handled so many weapons, but it was too late to save anyone.

She started to shake. Vallotton removed his coat and laid it over her. She tried to object but her hand struck the floor and she felt the warm stickiness dripping from her side and closed her eyes thinking that now she knew how George had felt. Unafraid. At peace.





Thirty-four

The doorbell rang and Agnes called out to say she would answer it, but her eldest son ran to the door before she could move. She sighed deeply and sat back, not knowing whether to be grateful or worried. The boys hadn’t been allowed to see her the first days in intensive care, and afterward in the hospital she hadn’t wanted them to worry. Now, at home, they had missed the worst of the bandages and the medicines streaming in through tubes, but she knew that their father’s death was on their minds, and now they had nearly lost their mother. It was too great a burden for children.