Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  He whistled as he walked, and arrived at the train station in time for the one-fifty-three train, showing his ticket to the controller and explaining the delayed metro.

  “You’ll still have to buy a new seat.”

  “What?” Verlaque exclaimed. “It wasn’t my fault. There was a suicide at one of the metro stations.”

  “That’s what they all say. You have to allow yourself extra time for things like this. That will be ninety-five euros for a new ticket, in second class.”

  Verlaque handed him his credit card and cringed at the thought of sitting on one of the narrow seats in second class. “There will be plenty of empty seats, don’t worry,” the controller said. “You can pick any one.”

  The controller was right: the train was only half full, and Verlaque was able to have to himself four seats facing each other, spreading out his books and papers. He looked around for an outlet to plug in his laptop, but this car didn’t have one. He hoped he had enough battery power. The countryside whizzed by, in the full, glorious sun of an Indian summer day, and Verlaque felt as happy as he had ever been. He had begun to draft some e-mails that he had been avoiding when a terrible noise, as if some teenagers had pelted the train with rocks, or the train had run over some fencing, was heard. His fellow passengers stopped what they were doing, setting down books and magazines and removing headsets. The noise continued for a few awful seconds. The train slowed down and finally came to a full stop, while the passengers let out a communal moan. “We’ve hit something,” the man across the aisle said to himself.

  “No,” an elderly woman said, “it was more like the sound of something being thrown at the train. Like rocks.”

  The car had remained silent for a few seconds when two young girls came running through, looking for the controllers. “There’s a broken window in our car.”

  The passengers again moaned, not knowing how the window came to be broken, but knowing that this would mean a delay, possibly for hours. Verlaque was about to text Marine and tell her to eat without him when one of the TGV’s staff—a short, thick woman with spiked white hair—came through the car, her face as pale as her hair. “We hit someone,” she said, resting her hand on the back of Verlaque’s seat. “Suicide. Three hours’ delay, at least.” Verlaque texted Bruno Paulik about the delay, since the commissioner had offered to pick the judge up at Aix’s TGV station. He would be getting in too late for that now, and would take a taxi or the shuttle bus into Aix. He leaned back and closed his eyes. A few of the passengers got back to work, unperturbed by the delay: they had work to do, and there was nothing anyone could do. Others pressed their faces against the glass, trying to see a bit of blood or scoping out the possibilities of slipping out for a quick cigarette. A woman behind Verlaque called home, instructing whoever it was who answered about which leftovers to heat up for the children and not to forget that petit Charles did not like zucchini but was to eat it anyway.

  Verlaque looked out at the sunny day, feeling the warmth of the late-afternoon sun on his forearms. He suddenly missed Marine, terribly. He felt saddened, not by the delays and the fate that seemed to rule this day, but by the desperation that led people to take their own lives. It was a threat that Monique had used to use on the young Verlaque: “If you don’t come, I’ll do something drastic.” Verlaque closed his eyes, angry at himself for allowing the ghost of Monique to reappear. He hadn’t thought about her in months.

  The emergency teams arrived, and passengers began talking among themselves and inviting each other to the bar car for coffee or beer. Two hours later, they were still there, in the middle of a flat but pretty countryside, and a farmer drove by on a parallel farm track. Verlaque looked up and watched the farmer as he drove, dust flying up behind the tractor, and noted that he did not turn his head to see why police and firemen were gathered around a stopped TGV. Work to be done. Or perhaps the farmer had seen this sort of thing before? The fields on either side of the train tracks were planted with some kind of fruit trees, Verlaque now noticed, and the yellow wildflowers that lined the tracks began waving in the breeze.

  Chapter Five

  An Attack in Éguilles

  The TGV pulled into Aix’s contemporary wood-and-steel station four hours late, at 9:15 p.m. A sigh of relief swept the tired passengers as they reached for their coats and bags. “Well, have a great evening, everyone,” joked a middle-aged man as he tucked his laptop into his briefcase.

  “Yeah, it’s been a blast,” answered a student, putting his headphones and iPod in a tattered backpack. The woman behind Verlaque was once again on the phone as she made her way up the aisle—it seemed that petit Charles had indeed eaten all of his vegetables, but he was now refusing to go to bed until Maman was at home.

  Verlaque smiled at the elderly woman who had been sitting across the aisle and let her pass in front of him. “We have been inconvenienced,” she said, admiring her handsome fellow passenger with the dark, sad eyes. “But that’s nothing compared with the poor desperate soul who ended his or her life today.”

  Verlaque nodded. “Yes, madame, we are inconvenienced, but fortunate.” He didn’t bother telling her that it was his second suicide of the day. “Would you like me to help you with your suitcase?” he offered, seeing that she had a large brown suitcase on the luggage rack as well as a carrier bag.

  “That’s very kind,” she replied. “Yes, I would. My son-in-law should be waiting for me on the platform.”

  Verlaque lifted her suitcase and followed her out onto the lit-up platform. A man in his late thirties was there, arms outstretched, to greet her. She embraced her son-in-law and thanked Verlaque, and they wished each other well. It was the first time on any of his TGV journeys that he had made an acquaintance. The shock of the suicide had been great, he realized.

  Verlaque looked out into the night sky and saw a full moon over Aix. He stood there for a few seconds, wondering if he should drag himself to the other side of the station and down several flights of stairs to where the shuttle might or might not be waiting, or simply walk out the door and take one of the taxis that were lined up just a few meters away. But he didn’t have to make that decision: Bruno Paulik came quickly through the automatic doors that led from the parking lot to the tracks. “I’m sorry I’m late,” the commissioner said.

  “I only just got here. Bruno, you certainly didn’t have to come and get me. I assumed that when I texted you with the train’s delay you would just go home.”

  “I was at home, but at eight p.m. I got a call from the Palais de Justice, and I drove to Éguilles,” Paulik answered. “Here, get in,” he said, opening the door of his older-model Range Rover for Verlaque.

  “I want to thank you for going up to Paris to speak to that wine expert,” Paulik said as he pulled up to the parking gate and paid. “Hélène and Olivier too. They send their greetings.”

  “I had some papers to go over with my parents this morning, and our wine expert, Hippolyte Thébaud, lives around the corner,” Verlaque answered. “He gave me some useful information, including the fact that he’s sure the thief will be back.”

  Paulik groaned. “I was afraid of that. Okay, I’ll warn Olivier.” He got onto the highway and then looked quickly at the judge. “Are you hungry?” Bruno Paulik thought often of food.

  “Not really, thanks. When we stopped to change trains in Valence, we were given boxed emergency meals. I was half expecting to find a toy inside.”

  Paulik laughed. “They had to change trains?”

  “Yes. The front of the train was too damaged to go any great distance. We limped along to Valence.”

  “The poor soul,” Paulik quietly said.

  Verlaque nodded, then realized that the commissioner had been called back into the Palais de Justice after being comfortably at home in Pertuis, twenty minutes away. “So, tell me, what was the call about that made you drive back into Aix and wreck your evening?”

  “That’s partly why I’m picking you up, sir,” Paulik replied. “I tho
ught I could fill you in, and I wanted to beat Roussel to it.”

  Verlaque didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to—Yves Roussel was Aix’s hyperactive prosecutor. “What happened in Éguilles?” he asked.

  “A young woman was raped early this evening,” Paulik replied. “She was badly beat up and then strangled, but she didn’t die. She’s at the hospital, fighting for her life.”

  “Oh my God.” Verlaque buried his head in his large hands and breathed deeply. He looked up and saw the city lights of Aix in the distance. “This morning the world was looking like a rosy place,” he said, still looking out of the window. “But, then, I always think that when I’m sitting in a park in Paris.”

  “Her name is Suzanne Montmory,” Paulik continued. “She’s twenty-eight years old and lives by herself in an apartment in Éguilles. The immediate neighbors didn’t hear anything except her television; we’ll be interviewing more tomorrow morning.”

  “Was it a break-in?” Verlaque asked, getting interested in the case.

  “The lock wasn’t damaged.”

  “So perhaps she knew her attacker?”

  “It looks like that; most women do. The place was trashed. Mlle Montmory put up a good fight, it looks like.”

  “What time did it happen?”

  “Sometime after four-ten and before seven-thirty p.m. Mlle Montmory’s co-workers—she works at a branch office of the Banque de Provence in Éguilles—said that she was complaining of a sore throat and left a bit early. She left the bank just before four p.m., and it’s only a ten-minute walk.”

  “Who found her at seven-thirty?” Verlaque asked.

  “A colleague was worried and went to check on her. He knocked a few times, and when she didn’t answer he said he thought he’d try the door, which was unlocked. He found her and called emergency right away.”

  “Check him out.”

  Paulik sighed. “That’s exactly what Roussel said, and when I left the two of them, Roussel was raking the kid over the coals.”

  “Good.”

  Paulik looked surprised. The judge was usually more compassionate and prone to thinking about the big picture.

  “I’ve had a day of death,” Verlaque said, looking over at the commissioner. “Why would this guy go and check on a co-worker who just has a sore throat? People have sore throats all the time. I don’t believe him.”

  “He says he has a crush on her, so he used the sore throat as an excuse to pop by. He was going to ask her out to dinner.”

  “That’s a little more believable. What do you think?”

  “I believe him,” Paulik said, turning the car off the highway and into Aix. “He couldn’t stop crying. Sobbing, actually. And then he got mad, really mad. His emotions were all over the place. He’s a Sciences Po grad, and this is only his second job.”

  “Going to an elite university doesn’t exempt him from a crime, but you’re right, his emotional response isn’t that of a killer,” Verlaque said as they drove into the downtown, down the narrow Rue de la Mule Noire. Verlaque looked out the window at the golden light that lit up Aix’s stone façades. This was the only positive thing to come out of the train’s delay, he thought: he always preferred to come home to Aix at night, for the town was at its best then. “This woman…” he said.

  “Mlle Montmory,” Paulik answered.

  “Thank you. If she lives, she’ll be able to identify her at-tacker.”

  “Exactly. I put two officers on patrol at the hospital, and two are watching her apartment.”

  “Good.”

  “Should I take you home, sir?” Paulik asked. They were at a fork in the road where turning right would take the judge home, to his fourth-floor apartment overlooking Aix’s cathedral, and turning left would take them to the Palais de Justice.

  Verlaque turned to the commissioner and asked, “What do you feel like doing?”

  “Flamant has been putting together a file on Mlle Montmory. I thought we could look at it. But if you’re tired, we could call it a night and start early tomorrow morning.”

  “Is there any cold beer in the building?” Verlaque asked.

  Paulik laughed. “Yes, I think there may be some left over from Flamant’s pot.”

  “What was the pot for?” Verlaque asked. He hadn’t heard about the celebration, but maybe he had received an e-mail and disregarded it.

  “It was last night. He’s engaged.” Paulik coughed. He wasn’t sure if Antoine Verlaque had been invited. Perhaps he should have mentioned it, but he was never sure if the other policemen liked his boss. He turned left and said, “We’ll do a little work, then. I’m up for it.”

  “So am I. The delayed journey home somehow gave me a second wind, or at least didn’t exhaust me the way I thought it would.”

  They parked Paulik’s car in the underground garage of the Palais de Justice and walked into the common room to look for something to eat. As Paulik had predicted, there were leftover cans of beer in the fridge, and not-quite-stale potato chips and pretzels sitting out in bowls. They grabbed four cans and the chips and pretzels and made their way upstairs to Verlaque’s office. As soon as Verlaque called Marine to apologize, they sat down with the file Flamant had prepared and left on Verlaque’s desk.

  Verlaque put on his reading glasses and leaned over the desk, his forearms resting on the glass surface. “Tell me what you have.”

  Paulik opened the folder and began reading through the papers that Flamant had assembled. “Mlle Suzanne Marie Montmory. Born in Avignon on July 18, 1978, which means she just turned twenty-eight. Single, never married. Lives alone, no pets.”

  Verlaque said, “Go on.”

  “She’s worked at the Banque de Provence since she got out of community college eight years ago. She was hired back then by her current boss, the director, Kamel Iachella. He’s married with four kids and lives in Éguilles. Flamant has made a note here that Iachella was ‘in shock’ at the news of her attack.”

  “He must have been, given that he gave Mlle Montmory her first job,” Verlaque said. “They would have been close.”

  “Given the late hour, it was agreed that we’d go to Éguilles tomorrow morning and interview her colleagues at the bank,” Paulik continued. “They’re closing the bank until noon.”

  Verlaque took a sip of beer. “What about this kid who has the crush on her?”

  Paulik turned a page and leaned in to read. “Gustav Lapierre, age twenty-five, graduated from Sciences Po Lyon three years ago. This is his second banking job; he wants to be an investment banker, apparently.”

  “Working his way to the top, is he?” Verlaque asked. “If he graduated from one of our best schools, what’s he doing working in a rinky-dink branch office of a so-so bank?”

  “Good question,” Paulik answered, sipping his beer. “One of my cousins graduated from Sciences Po and immediately moved to Paris and got a great job at the Ministry of Culture.”

  “Bruno, just how many cousins do you have?” Verlaque asked. Bruno Paulik was reared on a farm in the Lubéron and came from a very, very large family.

  Paulik grabbed a handful of pretzels and began eating. “First cousins? Only forty-two. Second cousins? More than two hundred.”

  Verlaque smiled. “Any more information?”

  Paulik turned the page and came to the end of the file. “Nope.”

  “Let’s call it a day, then. I’ll meet you at the bank tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah. It’s in downtown Éguilles, near the hôtel de ville. Just before nine a.m.?”

  “Great.”

  They threw their beer cans in a recycling bin near Verlaque’s office. “By the way,” he asked, “is there news on that missing woman?”

  “Mme d’Arras, yes, I meant to tell you. It was just as you had predicted, sir. She was indeed at Monoprix and then decided to get her hair done. She seemed confused after the appointment, so one of the hairdressers walked her home, where M. d’Arras was waiting for her. I’m sorry to have wasted your time
with it, sir.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Bruno,” he said, remembering Bruno’s uncle Jean. He put on his jacket and decided that he would sleep at his place tonight, texting Marine with a promise that they would see each other the next evening, when he’d cook dinner. He thought of his cousins—he had two—whom he hadn’t seen in years, perhaps decades. His father had been an only child, and his mother had two brothers, one of whom had never married, the other a widower with two sons. The older cousin was a heart surgeon in Geneva; the last Verlaque had heard, the younger one had given up his job as a high-school history teacher and now lived somewhere in the Massif Central, rearing sheep.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Marine thought she had properly hidden the disappointment that she wouldn’t see Antoine that evening. But she had never been very adept at hiding things from her father. “Antoine’s back from Paris, but he’s working late,” she said, hanging up the phone. Because of the rain, her father had driven her mother to choir practice at Saint-Jean de Malte, and so his visit had been unplanned but very welcome. Marine wished that it happened more often. “Care for a glass of wine?” she asked. “Or herbal tea? I know that you and Maman are crazy for that stuff.”

  “I have, late in life, delevoped a love for herbal tea, it’s true,” Anatole Bonnet told his daughter. “But I’ll have a glass of wine to keep you company.”

  “I have some cheese in the fridge, and olives,” Marine called from the kitchen. She came back into the living room carrying a platter of cheeses: a pyramid of chèvre from the Loire, a slice of Stilton, and a Saint-Marcellin that was so runny it could only be served with a small spoon. She went back into the kitchen for the wine and glasses, and when she came back, her father was leaning over the coffee table, a small knife in hand, anxious to cut into the pyramid.