Chapter 66: The Room Next Door

 

Rhys leaned toward the screen.

“Gabriel was locked up while you questioned me?”

Marguerite's face crumpled. Her solicitor put a hand on the table, but she shook her head.

“He was in the next room. Conrad said he'd let him go once the recording was finished.”

“Finished saying what?” Elara asked.

“That Lucille gave Rhys the key. That she told him to lock the door.”

Elara felt sick. Her mother's name had been turned into a lesson for a frightened child to recite. She remembered the photograph of the atelier, the way Lucille stood before its doors with her sleeves rolled up. A lifetime of work had been reduced to a single accusation, carefully placed in the mouth of a boy.

“Where did this happen?” Brandt asked.

“Saint-Claire. October 2004.”

“Three years after Lucille died,” Elara said.

Marguerite nodded.

Rhys stared at her. “And the woman's voice at the end?”

“An earlier recording. Lucille argued with us before the fire. I heard Conrad ask Vale to copy her voice onto the cassette afterward.”

“Did you hear Vale do it?” Brandt asked.

“No.”

“Then tell us what you know firsthand.”

Marguerite swallowed. “I held the recorder in 2004. I heard Sylvie ask the questions. And I heard Gabriel knocking through the wall.”

Three knocks. Then two.

Elara glanced at Rhys. His fingers had already begun tapping the pattern against his leg.

 

Brandt ended the call after arranging a formal recorded statement. As the screen darkened, Rhys walked straight past everyone.

Elara found him outside the interview room, staring at a fire exit.

“She knew,” he said. “Marguerite watched me struggle to remember for twenty-one years. She knew someone had put words in my mouth.”

“She says she did.”

“You still doubt her?”

“I doubt anyone who tells us only what we can already prove.”

He turned sharply. Then the anger went out of him.

“I'm tired, Elara.”

She stepped closer. “I know.”

“No. I mean I'm tired of being a case file. Every memory I offer becomes evidence someone can use against someone else.”

“Then tonight you don't have to offer any.”

His shoulders sagged. When she held out her arms, he came to her without hesitation.

She felt his breath against her neck.

“I believed that I hurt your mother,” he whispered.

“You were taught to believe it.”

“What if I never know what really happened?”

“Then I'll still know who you are now.”

He held her a little tighter. She had not meant it as a promise about their marriage. From the way his hand trembled, she knew he'd heard one anyway.

 

Gabriel was sitting beside Sylvie's bed when Brandt asked to speak to him. Sylvie went pale at the mention of the recording.

“I didn't know they'd kept it,” she said.

Gabriel looked between them. “Kept what?”

“Your mother questioned Rhys at Saint-Claire,” Brandt said. “Conrad allegedly held you in an adjoining room.”

Gabriel's hand closed around Sylvie's.

“I remember the room,” he said. “No windows. There was a vent near the floor.”

Sylvie began to cry.

“I thought if I did what Conrad wanted, he'd release you. He said the medicine was making your heart fail.”

Gabriel shook his head. “You told me you weren't there that day.”

“I was ashamed.”

Elara watched him pull his hand free. It was a small movement, but Sylvie looked as though he'd walked out of her life again.

“Did you know the answers were false?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“And you never told Rhys?”

“I was frightened.”

“So was I.”

No one rushed to fill the silence. Elara wanted to comfort Sylvie, but Gabriel deserved the space to be angry. She had learned that love did not cancel the damage of a lie, even a lie born of terror.

At last Gabriel stood. “I need a minute.”

Rhys stepped aside to let him pass. For once, the brothers' faces held the same hurt.

 

Near midnight, the technician called Brandt.

The cassette had two physical joins, and the voice attributed to Lucille came from an older recording. Preliminary analysis suggested different recording conditions, though definitive dating was not possible.

“There is one more sound,” Brandt told Elara and Rhys. “Between the knocks and the boy's answer.”

He played the cleaned segment.

Three taps. Two taps.

Then a whisper, muffled by a wall.

Don't say her name.

Rhys gripped Elara's hand.

“Gabriel,” he whispered.

The technician played the next second, one they had missed beneath the hiss.

A man answered from close to the recorder.

Then we'll use the other child.

Brandt stopped the audio.

“Whose voice?” Elara asked.

Rhys was looking at the screen, horror dawning.

“Conrad,” he said.

And from the corridor behind them, Gabriel spoke.

“No. That's my father's voice.”