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“I have no idea. We had the letter in our lost and found and mailed it, but we wouldn’t have kept a record of where. Why so interested?”
“We’re not really. Do you mind?” Reine-Marie held up her phone. “I’d love a photo with the three of us. To show her.”
“Of course.”
They took a selfie.
“I’ll just send it.”
“No phones allowed in here, but you can go out onto the terrace.”
Reine-Marie did. As soon as she connected up, her phone came alive with messages, all from Armand.
“You’re all right?” he said, picking up her call before the first ring had ended. He’d showered and had just changed into clean clothes.
“Yes, why?”
“I couldn’t reach you.”
“I’m sorry. What’s happened?”
He told her, succinctly, what he’d just told Captain Moel.
That John Fleming was out. That the former head guard had been murdered. That everything that was happening, including and especially the items in the bricked-up room and the altered painting of The Paston Treasure, was almost certainly done by Fleming.
Reine-Marie sat on a stone bench and stared, dazed, across the pretty city.
She remembered the trial in the closed courtroom in Montréal. They were still living in the city at the time. Armand would come home every evening more and more drained, as though his essence were seeping out as he listened to the testimony. As he looked at the photographs. Heard the recordings.
He’d become convinced that Fleming’s crimes were not limited to those seven murders. To that spree in New Brunswick. There were others, he was sure. Even after Fleming was convicted and put away, he spent years tracking down possible evidence. Still did.
But now it seemed he had to find the man himself.
“He’d be in his seventies now, wouldn’t he?” she said. “What does he look like?”
“He’s seventy-one. Five seven. Slight build, gray hair thinning. Bright blue eyes. Remarkable eyes.”
He did not sound very formidable. But Reine-Marie knew the power of madness. The strength it gave people. Not just physical strength, but strength of purpose. A person who was simply bad, nasty, would always try to justify their cruelty. A madman did not waste time and energy on that.
John Fleming at seventy-one would be as dangerous as he would have been at twenty-one. Perhaps even more so. He now had experience on his side.
“Can you send a photograph?” she asked.
“There are no recent ones. Why?”
“Because we’re talking to someone, the local expert on The Paston Treasure, who fits your description. I have a picture. I’ll send it.”
“You need to come home,” said Armand. “Now. Get David to drive you straight to Heathrow and get on the first flight out. Anywhere. Then make your way home.”
“Oh, he’s coming over,” she said, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “His name’s Cecil Clarke. With an e. Armand, he’s Canadian, from New Brunswick. Au revoir. Je t’aime. I’ll call you from the car.”
With that, she hung up and put the phone away.
She forgot to send the photo. She also forgot, or didn’t realize it might be important, to tell him that Cecil Clarke was a retired engineer.
Reine-Marie texted to say they were in the car with David. He could relax.
Armand called his team in Montréal and had them do a search for a Cecil Clarke, about seventy years old, from New Brunswick, now living in Norwich, UK.
