SPOILER ALERT – this summary reveals who is the culprit. Knowing it can prevent the pleasure of reading the book.

 

As soon as was the meeting confirmed, Simone knew that the brilliant investigator Evariste Fauconnier wouldn’t resist to tell her about some of his last cases.

Sit at the Café de Flore, the eye shining from a languorous May sun, she enjoyed the confidences her friend was telling her:

― Seven deaths, repeated Simone with round eyes, I can’t even imagine the mess of the situation. But I am sure this is exactly why you decided to rush to Venice.

― You know me so well, dear, answered Evariste a bit simpering. When my assistant and I were called by Louise Duval…

― … the nurse suspected by the police for the murders, interrupted impatiently Simone.

― Yes. When she asked for help to prove her innocence for the murder of her colleagues, I couldn’t foresee the magnitude of the case and the scheme.

Simone refilled her cup of tea, before asking:

― How the police could suspect this woman to have poisoned her colleagues in such a crowded place? And furthermore, why would she do such a thing?

― The day before the murders, during the event organised by her employer, the Sorel foundation, Louise Duval had quarrels with some of the victims. She apparently had a weakness for spirits, which explains her repeated outbursts. So when she discovered the bodies, the police believed her instability and the fact that she was a nurse to be enough for her to commit the murders.

― This is such a man thing to take a feminine weakness for an irrational murderous hysteria.

Evariste nodded with a smile, and kept on:

― We then went to Switzerland, to Neuchatel, the Sorel foundation appearing to be at the forefront of the case.

― I have heard it is a charming town.

― Yes, it is, answered Evariste openly showing the natural despise he felt about small towns.

― But what did this foundation was about?

― Its purpose was to help people with psychological aftereffects linked to the war no hospital could cure. Its founder, Marcel Sorel, lost his son in the concentration camp of Struthof. When Louise showed us her work place, my assistant and I were surprised by the modernity of the building, as well as the treatments.

― War made so much victims.

― And then some we couldn’t suspect. We indeed discovered this foundation treated children. Young children.

― Children victims of abuses?

― It is what we thought. To say the truth, it appeared the foundation used its perfect reputation to convince parents to entrust them with their child as soon as the poor boy or girl didn’t match their expectations.

― You mean that these young ones weren’t really sick?

― Unless you consider trouble sleeping or caprices as illnesses.

― Dear God… they treated children for being…

― … children.

They let a tense silence pass before continuing:

― The more we investigated, the more it appeared to us that someone at the foundation gave treatments that were not far from some medical experimentations done by doctors in the Nazis camps.

― Are you telling me that this perfect institution tortured its patients?

― A malevolent shadow hovered above it. The children who succeeded to talk to us referred all to a beast who abused them.

― And not a single parent ever reacted?

― You know as well as I the power of the tormentor on its victims. The poor terrified kids were so convinced no one would believe them they kept quiet.

― And I suppose all of it was linked to the murders in Venice.

― Only in appearances, because all of the seven victims took part of the experimentations. We thought at first they were killed because either someone discovered the truth or because, out of guilt, they were on the verge to reveal what was happening in the foundation basement.

― But is wasn’t so?

― No. This case, you see, left me with a bitter taste. And you know how much I know the dark corners of the human soul.

― Alas, this is your gift to see and hunt it.

― All this story relied on the impossible meeting of the most dramatic event and the most perverted mind which resulted in an Evil maelstrom. After some research, we found that Louise Duval was, too, held captive in Struthof. But she offered her talents as a nurse to the Nazi doctors. Her already unstable and tortured mind discovered then a new field of research about mental manipulation. After the war, she wanted to follow through with the Nazis’ experimentations in order to create perfect human puppets to whom she could order to do anything. The beast designated by the children was in fact Louise Duval.

― Unbelievable, murmured Simone, bewildered. But, why?

― To show the world what a brilliant woman who had been underestimated all her life was worth. To do that, she had in mind to pick among the children already treated by the foundation to create ticking bombs.

― What did she expect? A carnage?

― She hoped that the children she programmed would kill their families as soon as they got home. The tragedy would have ensured her revenge on society she hated since she was a young girl.

― In that case, why kill seven people in Venice? It targeted her directly and set you on her trail.

― My dear, this is where life played a strange trick to this town and where the case takes a step further. Three women living in Neuchatel had been severely marked by tragedy. Three women who united their pain to settle their revenge. Therese Lavoisier, intendant at the foundation, whose fiancé was killed in Struthof. Odette Lambert, owner of the hotel we stayed at and mother of the fiancé. And Marie Vauchez, known chemists and mother of one of Louise’s victims. These three women discovered Louise’s real face and decided to kill two birds with one stone. Kill the doctors Therese identified as experimenting on the children and expose Louise, condemning her publicly.

― Except that in doing so, they made Louise call on you and precipitated them to their end.

― An horrible and ironic unwinding, for sure.

― I admire you, Evariste. Each day you work in the shadow of humanity to re-establish the balance, yet when I see you, there is still the same burning spark in you eyes.

― I give you back the compliment, miss de Beauvoir, and I renew my congratulations for the Goncourt!

 

The story takes place in the small Swiss quaint village of Neuchatel and the Sorel Foundation, nestled in the forest nearby. When people wander through it, it offers either a great stroll among the trees and sunshine by day or becomes heavy and mysterious by night, full of dangers. It is a character on its own, able to help our heroes or loose them to swallow them all.

 

The foundation is nestled in the forest like a jewel made of black wood and light, and seems to become a part of the natural settings. Actually, there is a heavy weight felt in the shadows it casts upon those who dare to venture nearby.