“No.” Vehement. “David hates this man. Occasionally they”—she broke off, cautious about word choice—“need each other.”
“So Mr. Evil just handed Claudine over to your husband. What? She get too old for his market?”
Again, Obéline’s eyes dived, recovered. “David gave him money.”
“Of course. David Bastarache, rescuer of maidens.”
I wasn’t buying this, but Kelly Sicard’s story of liberation from Pierre nagged at me.
I looked at my watch. Ryan had been gone almost twenty minutes.
“Where does this man operate?”
“I don’t know.”
At that moment my cell chirped. It was Ryan. Bastarache had managed to get onto the twenty and was heading west. Ryan was following, discreetly, hoping Bastarache would further incriminate himself. He’d be a while.
Great. I was carless in Quaintsville for God knew how long.
Feeling trapped, I jammed my phone into my purse. Before the flap settled, it rang again. The area code was unexpected. New York. Then I remembered. Rob Potter.
Eyes steady on Obéline, I flicked on.
“Hey, Rob.”
“Do you love rock and roll!”
“Sorry I couldn’t return your call last night.” I was far too tired and cranky to be witty.
“No problem. You got a few minutes? I have some thoughts you might find interesting.”
“Hang on.”
Pressing the phone to my chest, I spoke to Obéline. “I need to take this alone.”
“Where has that detective gone?”
“To arrest your husband.”
She cringed as though I’d threatened to strike her.
“And you’re stuck with me.”
She rose.
“Don’t go hitting your speed dial,” I added. “Warning David could end up making you a widow.”
Rigor stiff, she walked from the room.
I dug a pen and notepad from my purse. Then I hooked on my earpiece, laid the cell on the table, and resumed my conversation with Rob, glad for a diversion to pass the time.
“Shoot,” I said.
“Long or short version?”
“Tell me enough to make me understand.”
“Got the poetry there in front of you?”
“No.”
Hearing the clatter of cookware, I assumed Obéline had gone to a kitchen not far from where I sat.
“No big deal. I’ll review it. Now K is code for poems written by your gal pal back in the sixties, and Q refers to those contained in the Bones to Ashes collection.”
“Known versus questioned,” I guessed.
“Yes. Fortunately for the analysis, as I’ll explain, both the K and Q poetry is written in English. Since your friend was a native French speaker.”
I didn’t interrupt.
“An interesting thing is that, even when people try to disguise their language, or mimic someone else’s, a forensic linguist can often see below the surface to areas not under control of the speaker. For example, most people in the United States say they stand ‘in line’ at the post office. In New York, people say they stand ‘on line.’ American speakers, either from New York or elsewhere, don’t seem to be aware of this. It’s very distinctive, but beneath the level of most people’s consciousness.”
“So someone mimicking a New Yorker would have to know that. Or a New Yorker disguising his speech would have to be aware of that.”
“Exactly. But typically folks are oblivious to these quirks. Grammatical differences can be even more subtle, to say nothing of pronunciation.”
“Rob, we’re dealing with written poetry.”
“Written poetry draws on all levels of language. Differences in pronunciation might affect the rhyme scheme.”
“Good point.”
“Going back to words, and awareness, ever hear of the devil strip ransom note?”
“No.”
“It was a case brought to my mentor, Roger Shuy. He looked at the thing, predicted the kidnapper was a well-educated man from Akron. Needless to say, the cops were skeptical. Write this down. It’s short, and it’ll help you understand what I did with your poems.”
I scribbled what Rob dictated.
“Do you ever want to see your precious little girl again? Put $10,000 cash in a diaper bag. Put it in the green trash kan on the devil strip at corner 18th and Carlson. Don’t bring anybody along. No kops! Come alone! I’ll be watching you all the time. Anyone with you, deal is off and dautter is dead!”
“One of the first things linguists look for is the underlying language. Is the person a native English speaker? If not, there may be mistaken cognates, words that look like they should mean the same in both languages but don’t. Like ‘gift’ in German means ‘poison’ in English.”
“Embarazada in Spanish.” I’d made that mistake once in Puerto Rico. Instead of saying I was embarrassed, I’d said I was pregnant.
“ Good one. Systematic misspellings can also show a foreign native language. Notice that in the note the writer misspelled ‘kan’ and ‘kops’ for ‘can’ and ‘cops.’ But not ‘kash’ for ‘cash,’ or ‘korner’ for ‘corner.’ So it probably wasn’t that the writer was educated in a language where the k sound was always spelled k and never c. And over all, the note’s pretty fluent.”
“So the writer’s an English speaker, not pregnant, who can’t spell ‘trash can.’ How did Shuy know he was educated?”
“Keep looking at the spellings. He can’t spell ‘daughter’ either, right?”
“Right. But he can spell ‘precious.’ And ‘diaper.’ And his punctuation is correct, not like someone’s who can’t spell ‘cops.’”
“I knew you’d get this immediately. In essence, it’s the same thing you do in your job. Look for patterns that fit and don’t fit. So if the perp can spell, why doesn’t he?”
“To throw the cops off. Maybe in his community he’s known as well educated. So instead of hiding his education, his attempt at concealing it sends up a flare. But what about Akron? Why not Cleveland? Or Cincinnati?”
“Read the note again. What words stand out?”
“‘Devil strip.’”
“What’s your word for the grass strip between the sidewalk and the road?”
I thought about it. “No idea.”
“Most people haven’t a word for it. Or if they do, it’s a local one. County strip. Median strip.”
“Devil strip,” I guessed.
“But only in Akron. Not even in Toledo or Columbus. But no one’s aware. Who ever talks about devil strips? You still with me?”
“Yes.”
“So language varies by educational level and geographical region. You can also throw in age, gender, social group, and just about every other demographic feature imaginable.”
“Language demonstrates what group you belong to.”
“You’ve got it. So the first thing I tried with your poems was linguistic demographic profiling. What does the language tell about the writer? Then I used microanalytic techniques to discern in each set of poems an individualized language pattern, what we call an idiolect. Based on all this, I was able to do the authorship analysis you requested, and answer the question: Did the same person write both sets of poetry?”
“Did she?”
“Let me go on. This analysis was especially interesting, since the K poems were composed by a French native speaker writing in English. As any foreign language teacher knows, you try to speak a second language using the linguistic system you already know, your native tongue. Until you get good, your native language bleeds through into your acquired one.”
I thought of my own use of French. “That’s why we have accents. And funny sentence structure. And word choice.”
“Exactly. For your analysis, as I worked through all the poems, when I spotted interesting passages, I put them up for split-screen comparison. On one side, I placed the poems as they are. On the other side, I altered the poems to refle
ct what a French speaker may have been trying to communicate in English, but failing because she was incorrectly translating from French, her first language, and using false cognates. If the overall coherence of the poem improved due to my changes, I took that as evidence the writer was perhaps Francophone. Do you want me to take you through some examples?”
“Bottom line.”
“It’s pretty obvious that both the K and Q poems were written by a native French speaker with limited formal schooling in English.”
I felt a hum of excitement.
“Next, I looked for idiosyncratic rhetorical devices common to both the K and the Q poetry, and any statistically significant skewing of vocabulary or grammar. You with me?”
“So far.”
“Listen to these lines from a K poem:
“Late in the morning I’m walking in sunshine, awake and aware like
I have not been before. A warm glow envelops me and tells all around,
‘Now I am love!’ I can laugh at the univers for he is all mine.”
The words rising from my past caused a constriction in my chest. I let Rob go on.
“Now listen to these lines from a Q poem:
“Lost in the univers, hiding in shadow, the woman, once young, looks
Into the mirror and watches young bones returning to dust.
“In both the K and the Q, the author meters in dactylic hexameter.”
“The same device Longfellow used for ‘Evangeline.’ My friend loved that poem.”
“Dactylic hexameter is common in epic poetry. So in itself the similar metering is not particularly meaningful. But of great interest is that throughout these two K and Q samples, similar mistakes appear consistently. And throughout both, the word ‘universe’ lacks the final e.”
“Univers. The French spelling.”
“Oui. Now let’s go back to geography. Your friend was Acadian from New Brunswick. She spent time in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Listen to the title poem from the Q book, Bones to Ashes.”
“What am I listening for?”
“Regional dialect. This Q poem contains the motherlode.”
Rob read slowly.
“Laughing, three maidens walk carelessly, making their way to the river.
Hiding behind a great hemlock, one smiles as others pass unknowing
Then with a jump and a cry and a laugh and a hug the girls put their
Surprise behind them. The party moves on through the forest primeval
In a bright summer they think lasts forever. But not the one ailing.
She travels alone and glides through the shadows; others can not see her.
Her hair the amber of late autumn oak leaves, eyes the pale purple of dayclean.
Mouth a red cherry. Cheeks ruby roses. Young bones going to ashes.”
“Same metering,” I said.
“What about vocabulary? You’ve spent time in New Brunswick and South Carolina?”
“The phrase ‘forest primeval’ is straight out of Longfellow.”
“And refers to Acadia. At least in ‘Evangeline.’ What else?”
I looked at my jottings. “‘Dayclean’ is a Gullah term for dawn. And in the South, ‘ailing’ is colloquial for being ill.”
“Exactly. So these two together point to South Carolina.”
A poet with ties to Acadia and South Carolina. A poet influenced by Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” A Francophone writing in English. Talk about a linguistic fingerprint.
Sweet Jesus. Harry was right. Bones to Ashes was written by Évangéline.
A flash fire of anger seared through my brain. Another lie. Or at best an evasion. I couldn’t wait to confront Obéline.
Rob spoke again.
His words sent ice roaring through my veins.
38
“W AIT.” I SPOKE WHEN MY LIPS COULD AGAIN FORM WORDS. “Back up.”
“OK. I said that a speaker’s mother tongue often comes to the fore when he or she is under stress. Then you’re more likely to use false cognates because emotion is boiling through your native language. It may happen in these lines because of the terrible feelings of viewers, because of the unimaginable yet real images on TV of burning victims leaping to their deaths.”
“Read the lines again.” It wasn’t possible. Rob couldn’t have said what I thought I’d heard.
Rob repeated what he’d read.
“I see the terror that comes from hate
Two towers fall while men debate
Oh where is God? Even brave people, chair, blessed by fire,
Jet to death!”
My heart was banging so hard I feared the sound would carry across the line. Rob continued talking, oblivious to the emotions raging inside me.
“‘Chair, blessed by fire’ isn’t very coherent in English, but the medium is poetry, and in poetry the flow of information and the frames of reference elicited are expected to be murky and different than in everyday speech. Except in these lines it is almost everyday speech, at least in French. Chair is flesh. And se jeter, here the verb ‘jet,’ roughly means ‘to throw yourself.’ And blesser means ‘to injure.’ In French this verse means ‘Oh where is God? Even brave people, flesh wounded by fire, throw themselves to their deaths!’”
“You’re certain it’s a reference to nine-eleven and the World Trade Center?” Impossibly calm.
“Has to be.”
“And you have no doubt the poems in Bones to Ashes were written by my friend Évangéline.”
“None. Can I finish explaining how I arrived at that conclusion?”
“I have to go now, Rob.”
“There’s more.”
“I’ll call you.”
“You OK?”
I clicked off. I knew it was rude and ungrateful. Knew I would later send flowers or cognac. At that moment I didn’t want more talk.
The poems were all by Évangéline, and some were recent.
Down the hall, a door opened. The argument between Homer and Marge grew louder.
At least one poem was written after September 2001.
The argument concerned a trip to Vermont. Homer wanted to drive. Marge preferred flying.
I sat motionless, paralyzed by the implications of Rob’s findings.
Évangéline was alive in 2001. She had not been murdered decades ago.
Bart and Lisa joined the debate, advocating a motor-home holiday.
Obéline had lied about Évangéline dying in 1972. Why?
Was she truly mistaken? Of course not, she had the poems. She must have known approximately when they were written.
A murmured giggle augered into my musings. I looked up. The room was empty, but a shadow crossed the floor at the doorway.
“Cecile?” I called out softly.
“Can you tell where I am?”
“I think”—I paused, as if unsure—“you’re in the closet.”
“Nope.” She hopped into the doorway.
“Where is Obéline?”
“Cooking something.”
“You’re bilingual, aren’t you, sweetie?”
She looked confused.
“You speak both French and English.”
“What does that mean?”
I took another tack.
“Can we chat, just you and me?”
“Oui.” She joined me at the table.
“You like word games, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“How does it work?”
“Say a word that describes things and I’ll make it round.”
“Gros,” I said, air-puffing my cheeks.
She screwed up her face. “You can’t do that one.”
“Why not?”
“Just can’t.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Words make pictures inside my head.” She stopped, frustrated with her inability to clarify. Or with my inability to understand.
“Go on,” I encouraged.
“Some words look flat, and some words look crookedy
.” Scrunching her eyes, she demonstrated “flat” and “crookedy” with her hands. “Flat words you can make round by adding o at the end. I like those. You can’t do that with crookedy words.”
Clear as a peat bog.
I thought about my initial exchange with Claudine. The girl spoke a jumbled Franglais, seemingly unaware of the boundaries between French and English. I wondered what conceptual framework divided flat from crookedy words. “Sparkly” and drôle were obviously flat. Gros was crookedy.
“Fat.” I tried my initial word in English.
The green eyes sparkled. “Fat-o.”
“Happy.”
She shook her head.
“Fort.”
“Nooo. That one’s crookedy, too.”
“Fierce,” I said, baring my teeth and curling my fingers in a mock monster threat.
“Fierce-o.” Giggling, she mimicked my fierceness.
Whatever semantic ordering her mind had created would remain forever a mystery to me. After a few more exchanges, I changed topics.
“Are you happy here, Cecile?”
“I guess.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. Smiled. “But I like the other place, too. It has big birds on poles.”
The house in Tracadie. She’d probably been there when Harry and I dropped in.
“Can you remember where you were before you lived with Obéline?”
The smile collapsed.
“Does thinking about that place make you sad?”
“I don’t think about it.”
“Can you describe it?”
She shook her head.
“Was someone mean to you?”
Claudine’s sneaker made tiny squeaks as her knee jittered up and down.
“Was it a man?” Softly.
“He made me take off my clothes. And.” The jittering intensified. “Do things. He was bad. Bad.”
“Do you remember the man’s name?”
“Mal-o. He was bad. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
“But he gave me something cool. I kept it. Want to see?”
“Perhaps later—”
Ignoring my reply, Claudine shot from the room. In seconds she was back carrying a woven leather circle decorated with feathers and beads.