The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (39 page)

“Oh, God,” she screamed, horrified, as the dog launched himself through the air. The man swung around at her scream, pointing the gun in the direction of the dark kitchen. At that moment, he saw her behind the French door. Their eyes met as Max charged and sank his teeth into the man’s thigh. The dog held on as the man frantically tried to beat if off. Anna heard a muffled “pop” as she spun around and ran into the kitchen to look for a knife. Another “pop” and the dog let go and staggered backward. His legs trembled, his head drooped, and he fell into a whimpering heap. Diamanté grabbed the man’s hand at the same instant and tried to wrestle the gun away from him.

“Oh God, oh God,” Anna was screaming as she frantically searched for Jacques’ cleaver in the pitch-dark room. Then she stopped in cold terror as a muffled shot echoed from the garden. Her mouth went dry as she saw the man with whom Diamanté was wrestling fall forward against him, then slump to the ground.

At the edge of the garden, Elise stood motionless, holding a small, derringer-style pocket pistol.

“Are you okay, my
Lobo
?” she said in a low voice, still pointing the pistol at the fallen figure.

Diamanté tossed the man’s gun into the barbeque pit and bent down to check the lifeless body. After a moment he said, “André’s dead. You put a bullet hole right through his temple.”

Elise let her pistol fall to the ground and rushed to Diamanté. He put his arms around her shoulders.

Anna stood over Max, crying and trembling. She dropped to her knees and touched the mutt’s quivering paws. His brown eyes looked up at her pleadingly, and his tongue hung out. He was bleeding badly and panting heavily.

“It’s so unfair,” she said, tears spilling from her eyes. “Max shouldn’t have to die because of that evil, evil man.”

“He saved my
Lobo
’s life,” Elise said as she looked lovingly at her husband and patted his cheeks with both her hands.

“I could barely hear the conversation,” Anna said to Diamanté. “Who was he?”

“André Narbon, my half brother. He was a killer.”

“
Oh là
,” added Elise with a heavy sigh. “I’m glad it’s finally over. This has gone on for too long.”

“Where did you ever learn to shoot like that?” Anna asked.

“When you live through a war, my dear, you have to be prepared for anything.” Elise walked over and picked up the small, jeweled derringer. “Many years ago, my husband Ferdinand taught me to use a pistol. This pistol was given to me by my Russian tenant. It has come in handy, once or twice.”

“It saved all our lives tonight,” Diamanté said. “I have no doubt that André intended to kill.”

“I saw him before,” Anna said. “It was during your wedding, at the evening festivities. He was standing over there.” She pointed toward the kitchen garden in back of the barbeque pit. “In the shadows. I thought he was creepy with those thick, square glasses.”

Diamanté and Elise looked at each other. Diamanté shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t see him.”

“Nor did I,” Elise said.

“I mentioned it to C-C, but I couldn’t read his reaction.”

Diamanté took off his beret and rubbed his scar. “I told Charlie to be careful.” He shook his head. “I told him to watch himself. André intended to get rid of him, too. He said so just now. He was following Charlie when he went over the cliff. Said he didn’t even have to do a thing and laughed as if he were delighted that Charlie had done his job for him.”

“It’s not your fault, my
Lobo
.” Elise patted his arm.

Anna walked to Diamanté and put an arm around his shoulders. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

Just then came the throaty voice of an old woman from the other side of the fence. “Ah, Diamanté, I heard something. Still after the critters stealing your tomatoes,
hein
?”

Diamanté responded in a nonchalant voice, “Ah
oui
,
Madame
Boulot. I think I got the culprit this time. Go back to sleep. Sorry to disturb you.”

“
Ah bon! Bonne nuit, alors
.” There was silence.

“She’s very old and a bit
sénile
,” Diamanté said, tapping his temple with his index finger. “Every time she hears a noise in the middle of the night she thinks I am shooting ‘the critters,’ as she calls them. She won’t remember anything in the morning.” Then he turned to Elise. “You had best pack. I’ll take care of the body.” He looked sadly at his loyal mutt and corrected himself. “Bodies. We’ll leave at dawn and take Anna to Nice Airport, then we’ll head to Corsica.”

Elise nodded and went back into the kitchen. They could hear her slowly climbing the stairway.

When Elise was out of earshot, Diamanté said to Anna, “My half brother had a longstanding vendetta with me. That is where it started. You know that letter you told me about? The one Charlie wrote to you and I insisted you burn?” Anna nodded. “Well, other than Charlie and myself, the only person who knew the truth was André. An unlikely combination of events had put us all together in that strange situation. Charlie knew that he was being followed. I suspected André, but I couldn’t prove it. And furthermore, I couldn’t catch him, though I tried. Sometimes I even followed Charlie myself at a distance.”

“What about that night in the street outside the apartment in Paris? C-C was so afraid. It’s what drove him to leave.”

“I know. I departed on the same train. We arrived here together. André followed us. I’m amazed he didn’t try to get rid of us then. I asked him that tonight. He said…” Diamanté’s voice broke.

“I heard what he said to you. About the wedding gift for Elise. What a cruel man.”

“Anna, I do not believe that you are in any danger. Even André Narbon didn’t know of your existence.”

“But he was watching me tonight…when I was burning C-C’s letters.”

“Did you say anything aloud?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

Diamanté was considering what she had just said when he saw the dog move ever so slightly. He bent down on one knee and put his ear close to Max’s nostrils. “I think this old fellow isn’t done with this world quite yet,” he said as he picked up the limp-limbed canine. “I know someone who might be able to help nurse him back to health.” He turned to Anna and saw the tears in her eyes. “Try now to get some sleep, my dear. I’ve work to do before daylight.”

CHAPTER 70

T
he next morning, the sky was azure blue, and a few fluffy, white clouds danced merrily in a soft breeze. An emotionally and physically exhausted Diamanté was just putting the last piece of luggage into the trunk of the car when he was startled by a loud vibrating noise.

From behind the convent, a yellow helicopter rose like a dragonfly, rotors gleaming in the sunlight. In a moment it was circling low over the village square, looking for something.

Diamanté watched with keen, black eyes as it hovered above the Ajaccio for a moment, kicking up dust and scattering the outdoor furniture. He put two fingers to his forehead in salute. The pilot returned his salute, and then the dragonfly pulled up and was gone.

The monastery’s bells rang for the first time in months.

Diamanté glanced at Anna in the back seat as she stared after the disappearing helicopter. He smiled and whispered to himself, “They are safe.”

CHAPTER 71

A
s they drove out of Castagniers, Anna, exhausted and numb, stared at the back of Diamanté’s beret from the car’s backseat. She hesitated, then decided to ask a question she had been brooding over throughout the sleepless night. Clearing her throat, she began, “I am curious about your half brother. You said last night that he was a killer. How did he get to be that way?”

Diamanté gazed straight ahead in silence. It seemed to Anna that he was agonizing over the answer. She immediately regretted having asked him.

In the front passenger seat, Elise was watching her new husband. “She should know the truth,
Lobo
,” she said finally, putting her hand on his right arm. “
Enfin
, after all, she is your only blood relative now, your only legacy.”

Diamanté gently took her hand. It would be ten more long minutes before he spoke.

Finally he said, “Have you ever heard of a game, a child’s game, called “The Seven Turns,” Anna?”

“No.”

“It’s a game we played in Corsica, my brothers Ferdinand, André, and I. One player, the one who is it, gives a map to the others, a map with seven turns. It is always circular in nature, and at the seventh turn, often very near the starting point, there is a prize. The game’s name comes from an old expression: ‘the snail’s shell has seven turns.’”

Anna bit her lip. “Actually, I’ve heard that expression before, in a different context. A waiter in a Paris café once drew a map of the arrondissements for me. It looked like a snail’s shell. He called it ‘The Seven Turns of the Snail’s Shell.’ I just thought it was a clever way of remembering the numbering scheme of the arrondissements because I never could figure out where there were seven turns on that map.”

“It’s not that there are always exactly seven turns, Anna. It can be seven twists, or seven circles, or seven changes of direction or, as in the case of Paris, it could even be seven roundabouts or squares. The important thing is to reach the prize or discovery.”

“Oddly, I told that waiter that I was looking for someone. C-C, actually.” Anna paused as a feeling of overwhelming emptiness temporarily overtook her. Elise looked back at her sympathetically. “Do you think that the waiter could have been Corsican then?”

“Quite possible. There are thousands of Corsicans who live and work in Paris.”

“At least he seemed to be aware of the expression, but why would he have warned me? He said something to the effect that I would find what I am searching for, but to be forewarned that it may not be what I hope for.”

“It is because it can be a very macabre game. Between my brothers and me, it was to see who could surprise or, in André’s case, horrify, the finder of the prize. I dreaded playing when André won the opportunity to draw the map, because every so often I knew that he would kill or maim something. You asked how he became a killer. I think the instinct came to him early. Once Ferdinand and I found a dead rabbit; another time a strangled baby bird; yet another time a puppy with a broken leg, which Ferdinand and I nursed back to health. When I found our beloved family cat, skinned, at the end of one game, I ran to our mother, but André lied and told her that I was the one who had killed the cat. We were only about seven or eight years old.

“He was evil from as far back as I can remember, my half brother André. He and I were not quite a year apart in age—eleven months, to be exact. Ferdinand was the eldest by two years. Our father, Jean-Pierre Dante Loupré, was killed by robbers in the interior while on his way home to Castagglione from Ajaccio. That was just before I was born. Our mother was young, beautiful, and unable to support herself and two young children. There was a wealthy landowner by the name of Narbon who had taken a fancy to her before my father won her away. She didn’t love him, but she had no recourse. She married him two months after my birth, and André was born nine months later.

“André Narbon and I grew up hating each other. He was the rich one, athletic, wiry, and quick, always plotting. He beat me up a few times, but I became tough and learned to fight him back. His father, old Narbon, sent him away to a fancy prep school in France when he was thirteen. He learned languages, was well educated, and had money. Ferdinand and I, on the other hand, were very poor, uneducated, and extremely unhappy. No one, except for our mother, cared what happened to us, but she was helpless. Her husband abused her.”

Diamanté looked over at Elise. “Ferdinand left home first. Ambitious, he was a hero to me, and I loved him. I couldn’t stand it after he left. When I was fifteen, I too decided to leave Castagglione for good. I kissed my mother good-bye and took the ferry to Marseilles, where I lied about my age and got a job working at a metallurgical plant. It was hard work, and the workers were brutal. I became hardened during those years. Then the war broke out. I was only eighteen.”

Diamanté fell silent, remembering.

Anna said, “Guy told me about your being captured and tortured during the war.”

“Yes, well, I was glad when those terrible years were over.” He smiled gently toward Elise. “The only good thing was that I met Elise during the war years.” He looked at Anna in the rearview mirror and added, “And good friends like Stu Ellis. Did Guy tell you the story of how I added
Tigre
to my name, Anna?”

She shook her head.

“A close friend of mine from Marseilles joined the army and was killed in the early combat. He called himself
Le Tigre
. I took his name as my
nom de guerre
. I became Loupré-Tigre.

“It was during the war that André and I saw each other again. By then he was wearing those thick, square, dark-rimmed glasses because his eyesight had been partially destroyed from a grenade attack. We were both members of the
maquis
. He was the one who did the killing. He enjoyed it; he even laughed as he blew the enemy’s brains out. There was no remorse, no feelings, in André. He was just as he had been when we were children and he had skinned our cat. I hated him. Then he wanted Elise.” Diamanté looked at his wife tenderly. “You see, Anna, André became interested in Elise when he learned that I was in love with her.” He reached over and pulled Elise’s hand to his lips. She smiled and wrinkled her nose. “He and I fought bitterly, as we did about everything, but in the end she chose Ferdinand.”