Chapter 64: The Borrowed Voice

 

The words on the cassette were written in ink that had not faded.

Elara looked from the photograph to the greenhouse, where officers were sealing the hidden cabinet.

“Someone reached those tapes recently,” she said.

Brandt nodded. “Or added the warning after finding them. We’ll examine the handwriting and ink. Nobody plays anything until the evidence technician checks it.”

Rhys stared at the screen.

“DON’T LET HIM LISTEN ALONE,” he read. “Who gets to decide that?”

“You,” Elara said. “Not the person who wrote it.”

He turned toward her, surprised.

“I’m asking you to stay,” he said.

“I will.”

Beyond the police barrier, a stretcher rattled toward the ambulance. Vale lifted his head as the attendants passed. His eyes met Rhys’s, and he flinched as though the boy he had treated had finally caught up with him.

Rhys made no move to follow.

At their feet lay severed irises. Elara gathered one bruised bloom and set it carefully in the shade.

 

The tapes went to a police media laboratory in Paris. Brandt arranged for them to be examined and copied under supervision before anyone listened to the content.

By evening, he called Elara and Rhys into a small room with a recorder and three chairs. Priya waited outside with Gabriel. Neither brother had slept properly, and Elara had persuaded them not to turn a recording into another family spectacle.

Brandt placed a sealed transcript pad on the table.

“The label appears old,” he said. “The warning on the reverse is recent. We haven't identified who wrote it. The cassette itself is intact, although the recording has gaps.”

“Did Lucille record it?” Elara asked.

“We don't know. It uses a portable recorder common at the time.”

Rhys looked at the recorder. “If I ask you to stop?”

“I stop,” Brandt said.

Elara moved her chair closer. She would not promise that the truth would be kind.

He pressed play.

A low mechanical hiss filled the room. Footsteps followed, then a child's cough.

“Can you smell the orange?” asked a woman.

Rhys stiffened.

Elara recognized the accent, but not the voice. It was higher than the voice on her mother's cassette, with a clipped impatience behind every word.

“Not anymore,” the child answered.

Rhys gripped the arms of his chair.

“That’s me.”

The woman spoke again. “Tell me what you remember about the door.”

A pause.

“It's blue,” the boy whispered.

“Good. Who gave you the key?”

Another pause. A faint tapping sounded, three knocks followed by two.

Then the boy said, “The lady who sang.”

Elara felt Rhys reach for her hand. She took it.

“What's her name?” the woman asked.

“Lucille.”

The woman gave a short, satisfied breath.

“And if anyone asks, what did Lucille tell you to do?”

There was a scraping sound, as though a chair had moved.

“Lock it,” the child said.

Rhys inhaled sharply. His fingers twisted as if turning an invisible key. Elara saw the burns on his knuckles. The recording could explain a memory. It could not erase the scars.

 

Brandt stopped the recording.

Rhys pulled his hand away and rose so abruptly the chair struck the wall.

“That’s why I thought I did it.”

Elara stood too. “You repeated what an adult asked you to repeat.”

“You don't know that.”

“No. But listen to her questions. She doesn't ask what happened. She tells you what answer she wants.”

Rhys stared at the recorder. His face had gone very pale.

“Who is she?”

“We'll compare the voice with other recordings,” Brandt said. “And there may be more on this tape.”

Rhys sat down again, carefully this time.

“Play it.”

The hiss returned. For several seconds there was nothing else.

Then a door slammed somewhere near the microphone.

“You had no right to question him,” another woman said, breathless with anger.

Elara knew that voice.

Lucille.

Not from memory alone. From the cassette in the Paris safe house, the one she had played until her mother's tired tenderness hurt to hear.

“He's confused,” the first woman said.

“He isn't confused. You frightened him and fed him words.”

“I'm protecting the family.”

“Then why did you make him say my name?”

Silence.

A man's footsteps approached. The recording crackled as somebody touched the machine.

Lucille spoke again, suddenly close to the microphone.

“If this is ever found, the child did not lock that door. He was told to say he did.”

The tape clicked.

Rhys covered his mouth.

Then, beneath the hiss, a man's voice said one final sentence.

“Marguerite, turn that recorder off.”