Read Chapter 28: Pierre's Confession

The visiting room smelled of disinfectant and stale coffee. Élodie sat at the scratched plastic table, her hands folded in front of her, watching the reinforced door on the other side. A guard unlocked it, and Pierre Duchamp shuffled in wearing the grey uniform of the regional detention center.

He looked smaller than she remembered. Older. The arrogance that had once filled his face had drained away, leaving hollow cheeks and eyes that avoided hers.

They sat in silence for a long moment. The guard positioned himself against the wall, close enough to hear but far enough to pretend he wasn't listening.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me," Élodie said quietly.

Pierre let out a dry laugh. "I'm not sure I had much of a choice. You're the only visitor I've had. Except my lawyer, and he's paid to pretend he cares."

Élodie pulled a folded paper from her coat pocket and laid it flat on the table. It was a photocopy of a police record, grainy and age-stained. "This is the file on Basile Moreau. The groundskeeper's son. He disappeared a week after my great-grandfather."

Pierre's face went pale. He reached for the paper, then stopped himself, pulling his hands back to his lap.

"I didn't kill him," he said. The words came out flat, rehearsed.

"I didn't say you did. But I found the file. I saw the original interview notes, the one where you were questioned and released. And I know you forged a letter to support your story about Antoine running off to Paris."

Pierre's jaw tightened. His eyes flickered to the ceiling, then back to her. "What do you want, Mademoiselle Marchand? I've already confessed to killing Antoine. I'll die in prison. There's nothing left for me to give you."

"I want to know where Basile is buried."

The words hung in the air between them. A second passed. Then two. Pierre's whole body seemed to deflate, his shoulders dropping, his head bowing forward.

"I loved that boy," he said, barely above a whisper. "Loved him like my own."

Élodie said nothing. She waited.

"His father worked the grounds before me. When he passed, I took over. Basile was just a lad, fourteen years old. I taught him everything. How to prune the roses. How to read the weather by the clouds. How to tell when the river was about to flood."

His eyes grew distant, lost in the memory. "He was a good boy. Curious, always asking questions. And one day he asked the wrong question."

"What question?"

Pierre ran a weathered hand over his face. "He was working in the south garden, near the old well. We'd covered it years before, said it was unsafe, sealed it with concrete and stone. But Basile was clever. He noticed the seal had been disturbed. Fresh mortar, not old. He asked me why they'd opened it up and closed it again."

"Pierre had killed Antoine by then," Élodie said quietly. "Almost a week earlier."

"A week to the day." Pierre nodded slowly. "I thought I'd been careful. The well was in the oldest part of the grounds, long forgotten. But a week of rain had caused a small collapse in the limestone around the well's base, and the maintenance crew—young men, summer workers—had noticed. I told them it was just settling, nothing to worry about, and sealed it myself. I thought that was the end of it."

"Basile saw you."

"He saw me mixing the mortar at dawn. He knew Antoine had been missing. He put it together." Pierre's voice cracked. "He came to me that evening. He didn't threaten me, didn't raise his voice. He just said he couldn't keep quiet. That Antoine had been a good man, and the town deserved to know the truth. He said he was going to the police in the morning."

"And you killed him."

The words were flat, undramatic. Pierre flinched as if she'd struck him.

"I panicked. I asked him to wait—just one more day. I told him I would turn myself in, that I wanted to put my affairs in order. He believed me. That's the worst part. He believed me."

Pierre's eyes welled up. He wiped them roughly with the back of his hand.

"I told him to meet me at evening, near the old pear orchard. He came because he trusted me. I had a spade hidden behind the tool shed. I hit him once, from behind. He fell and didn't get up." Pierre paused, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. "I held him as he died. Held my own boy in my arms because I loved him, and I killed him anyway."

Élodie felt her throat tighten. She had come for answers, for closure. But looking at this broken man, she felt only a profound, aching sorrow.

"Why?" she managed. "Why not just go to the police? The truth would have come out. You might have gotten a lighter sentence. Basile was going to give you that chance."

Pierre shook his head slowly. "Every day since, I've asked myself that question. I don't have an answer. I was young, I suppose. Amélie had rejected me. I'd killed her lover in a jealous rage. I was terrified. And Basile's face when he said he couldn't keep quiet... he looked at me with such disappointment." He met her eyes now, his own brimming with tears. "I think I killed him because he was the only person in the world whose respect I still had, and I knew I was about to lose it forever."

The silence stretched long between them.

"He's in the old orchard," Pierre said hoarsely. "The north corner, under the gnarled apple tree that never bears fruit anymore. I buried him deep, with a small stone marker I carved myself. No name, just a lily."

"A lily," Élodie repeated. She thought of the water-lily key in her safe at the château. "Why a lily?"

"Basile loved the white lilies that grew along the riverbank," Pierre said. "He used to sit by the water and sketch them. Every spring, he'd press one in his Bible." He smiled faintly, a ghost of tenderness. "When I buried him, I placed a lily on his chest. I've never told anyone that."

Élodie reached into her coat pocket again and pulled out a map of the château grounds, folded into neat quarters. She pushed it across the table.

"Mark it," she said. "Exactly."

Pierre took the map with trembling hands. He uncapped the pen Élodie slid over and drew a small, precise X in the corner of the orchard. "Between the apple tree and the low stone wall. Two feet deep, maybe less. I didn't bury him deep because the roots—" He stopped, his voice breaking. "Because the roots made it hard to dig."

Élodie took the map back and folded it carefully. She stood to leave.

"Mademoiselle Marchand." Pierre's voice stopped her. "When you find him... will you say a prayer for him? He deserved better than what I gave him."

She looked at him for a long moment. This man who had killed twice, who had buried his own son in an unmarked grave under a fruitless apple tree. There was no forgiveness in her heart for him—she didn't think she could ever muster that. But there was grief now, where before there had only been a cold desire for answers.

"I'll see that he has a proper burial," she said.

She turned and walked toward the heavy door. It opened for her, and she stepped into the fluorescent light of the corridor beyond, the map folded tight in her fist.

Behind her, she heard Pierre begin to cry. It was a raw sound, a sob wrenched up from decades of silence. She didn't turn back. But she held the grief in her chest like a stone as she walked outside, into the grey winter light, where Julien waited for her in the car.

He looked at her face and didn't ask what had happened. He just started the engine.

On the drive back, Élodie stared out the window at the flat French countryside, at the bare trees and grey farmhouses, and thought about loyalty. How it could make you kill—and how it could make you hold the one you'd killed in your arms as they died.

Basile had trusted Pierre because Pierre had raised him. And Pierre had buried him beneath a tree that no longer bore fruit.

She opened the map, looked at the small X in the corner of the orchard, and let out a long, shuddering breath.

"Turn left at the next crossroads," she said. "I want to see the orchard before we go home."