The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Maggie nodded

  “She’s his niece.”

  “Really?”

  “And the woman at the pharmacie? “ Connor continued. “Have you met her yet?”

  Maggie and Laurent both shook their heads.

  “She’s, like, married to her own half-son.”

  “Step-son, Connor,” Grace corrected, rolling her eyes, a laugh bubbling to her lips.

  “Half-son, step-son―it’s still incest, n’est-ce pas?” Connor tore off a piece of bread and popped it into his mouth. His eyes were devilish.

  “What about the beautiful young Babette, eh, Mister Funny?” It was the first sentence Lydie had spoken all evening and Maggie found herself reacting as sharply as if a ventriloquist’s dummy had jumped up and demanded the floor.

  “Babette?” Laurent said politely, since no one else seemed willing to take up the issue.

  “Oui, the little cochon who is working at the boulangerie?”

  Connor waved his hand and swallowed his bread as if it had become extremely dry. “That’s not interesting,” he said, coughing. “She’s somebody’s third-cousin or something. Big deal. We’re talking about people marrying or having babies by people they―”

  “I am talking about people screwing people. It is the same thing!” Lydie’s face was flushed from the numerous glasses of champagne she’d consumed without the buffering of food.

  “Lydie―” Connor seemed unperturbed in the face of Lydie’s obvious distress, more annoyed, almost, at having the pace of his running gag interrupted.

  “She is the niece of Madame and Monsieur Marceau,” Lydie said sternly, looking at Connor.

  “Wow, that’s really disgusting,” Connor said flatly, staring at her. “Their niece did you say? Makes my skin crawl to―”

  “Always you are trying to be so funny!” Lydie tried to stand up but only succeeded in knocking over her glass. Connor pulled her gently back into her chair. “And you are the one who is screwing her! That is what is disgusting!”

  Ah, so that’s what all this is about. Maggie took a slow drink of her wine. The girl with the broom at Madame Renoir’s bakery. Very interesting, dear Connor.

  “My Gosh, Lydie, you certainly have a way with a story. Anyone ever told you that before?” Connor smiled thinly as he mopped up his date’s spilled champagne.

  Instantly, the girl jumped up, clutching her mouth and, making gagging noises, ran into the recesses of the restaurant. Connor stood up as if to follow her but Grace motioned him to sit back down.

  “Leave her alone, Connor. You’ll just make it worse,” she said, pointing at the bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône at his elbow.

  He sighed and poured her a glass. It spilled out in a deep, dark red. “You’re undoubtedly right.”

  “What’s her problem tonight, anyway?” Grace asked as she glanced in the direction Lydie had run.

  “God, who knows,” Connor said.

  “What’s her problem any night of the week?” Windsor asked, helping himself to a large chunk of fried bread soaked in hot garlic and olive oil. Maggie watched the greasy concoction as it traveled to his lips.

  “Windsor!” Grace said.

  “No, no,” Connor said, holding up his hands. “He’s right. She’s a pain all the time, it’s true.”

  “I guess she gives good back rubs,” Maggie said, feeling more and more a part of this close group.

  Everyone laughed heartily.

  “That she does, me girl,” Connor said cheerfully. “That she does. But listen...” He cleared his plate to one side and pulled yet another bottle of wine in front of him. “Enough about our Provençal love problems. I want to know what Maggie and Laurent think about living at Domaine St-Buvard.”

  Maggie didn’t answer as she reached for a large wedge of almond and cream gâteau. Doesn’t dessert signify that you’ve come to the end of eating? she asked herself hopefully.

  “I love it so far,” she said mechanically. “It’s beautiful and big and―”

  “No, no, no,” Connor said, pouring himself more wine. “I mean as far as ghosts in the old Fitzpatrick farmhouse? Seen any vaporous Englishmen wailing and flailing their breasts in the kitchen after midnight? Heard any children crying and pleading for their lives before dawn?”

  Maggie looked at him, the fork of gâteau frozen halfway from plate to mouth. “Huh?” she said.

  Connor looked up, his eyes flashing.

  “Don’t tell me I’m going to be the first one to tell you about the Fitzpatrick family massacre?” He clapped his hands together with glee.

  “My farmhouse used to belong to a family named Fitzpatrick?” Laurent asked. He poured himself a hefty portion of Calvados in a large, balloon wineglass and eyed Connor with interest.

  “Before your uncle bought the place,” Grace said.

  “I’m telling this,” Connor said, playfully slapping Grace’s hand as it cupped her wine glass.

  “They were killed in our house?” Maggie set the untasted forkful of gâteau back onto her plate.

  “I am not doing this in true-or-false question style,” Connor wagged a finger at both Maggie and Laurent. “So, you’ll just have to be patient. Man, this is great,” he said happily, sparing a glance over his shoulder in case the unfortunate Lydie might be returning. “Okay, it’s like this. About, what, forty years ago?” He looked at Grace, who shrugged noncommittally and drank her wine. “Maybe forty-five, fifty years ago, an English family named Fitzpatrick owned your very―”

  “Rented, I think, Connor,” Windsor said.

  “Fine, Windsor,” Connor said. “Thank you for that real estate update. I’m sure it’ll make for a more complete story.”

  “A more accurate one, anyway,” Windsor said under his breath to his wife.

  “Okay, so they rented your farmhouse,” Connor continued. “A man, wife and two small sons. I don’t know how old they were, Windsor, and it doesn’t matter. Suffice to say, they were little kids. One night in December―that’s important because it was the middle of hunting season out here―the whole family was murdered―shot to death by a dove hunting rifle―killed in the front walkway of your very house.”

  Maggie flashed a look at Laurent to see how this news was affecting him. He looked amused.

  “One blast to the head of each member of the―”

  “Did they ever find out who did it?” Maggie interrupted.

  Connor, happy to be the authority on the village mystery, nodded solemnly.

  “They did. Turns out one of the leaders of the village―a Patrick Alexandre―a Resistance fighter if you can stand it, a real out and out hero―was having an affair with Mrs. Fitzpatrick...”

  “So he shot her?” Maggie screwed up her face and looked to Grace for confirmation.

  “She was rejecting him, I guess,” Connor responded. “She was found, all bloody and untidy, clutching this note that her lover had given to her just before he offed her and it was all about how he was sorry it had to come to this and how he forgave her and stuff―”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he―”

  “The family was leaving to go back to England.”

  “Oh.”

  “And he was all cross and bothered that she was, you know, rejecting him by leaving.”

  “I see.”

  “And so he killed the whole family,” Windsor said. “Even the little boys. They were five and seven years old.”

  “How awful,” Maggie said, reaching for her gâteau again.

  “Yeah, not everybody believes that the famous and decorated hero―by Charles DeGaulle himself, they’re quick to point out―”

  “Believes what?” Laurent asked impatiently, his interest in the story evident for the first time.

  “Well, not everybody believes that he did it,” Connor said. “I mean, he confessed and all, and the note was in his handwriting, but he was the village favorite son, you know? St-Buvard didn’t want to believe it.”

  “But he confessed?” Maggie asked. She acc
epted a cup of cappuccino from the waiter although she knew it meant little sleep for her that night.

  Connor nodded, his mouth full of cake.

  “You didn’t tell the best part, Connor.” Grace said. She took a dainty sip from her own tiny cup of espresso. Her lips left pink tattoos against the white ceramic. “Monsieur Alexandre was sent to prison―”

  “Alexandre?” Laurent lit a cigarette. His first of the night, Maggie noticed with amazement. He really was trying to cut down.

  “As in ‘Jean-Luc’ Alexandre?” Laurent asked.

  Grace nodded.

  “He was Jean-Luc’s half-brother.”

  “See what we mean about everyone being related?” Connor said.

  “But that’s not the best part,” Grace repeated.

  “Isn’t Jean-Luc, like, hideously embarrassed to be related to this mass murderer?” Maggie was fascinated with the story. “I mean, this must have been a big deal to this little village, having a family of four―”

  “It is, it was,” Grace said. “But Jean-Luc hardly knew his brother. They had different mothers and Jean-Luc was just a small boy when Patrick was sent to prison for the murders.”

  “Where he died,” Windsor said with some satisfaction.

  “Yes,” Grace said, a little vexed. “But that’s still not the best―”

  “Oh, out with it, Grace!” Connor clapped her on the back. “What is the best part?”

  “The best part is the gypsy, Connor, whom you completely forgot to tell―”

  “Oh, yeah! The gypsy―”

  “Forget it, buster. I’m telling this part.” Grace smiled at Connor who leaned back in his chair with mock resignation.

  “What gypsy?” Maggie asked, forcing her hands to stay in her lap and not pull that last créme de coca thing over to her barren plate.

  “Before Patrick confessed, the villagers found a passing gypsy. A classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie said, cutting the chocolate rectangle with the side of her fork.

  “They hung the poor man―in your vineyards―for the family’s murder.”

  Again, the forkful stopped before it reached Maggie’s mouth. “Our vineyard?” she said unhappily.

  “There used to be this great cypress tree on the property,” Grace said. “Your uncle, Laurent, had it taken down. He said it was because it took up precious planting space in the field, but it’s understood he did it because of the group guilt St-Buvard felt about stringing up the wrong cow-poke.”

  “God,” Maggie said, looking at Laurent. “This all happened at our cozy little bungalow of a home, dearest.”

  Laurent gave her a don’t-be-ridiculous look and finished off his Calvados. “Perhaps,” he said to Connor, “you would be a welcome sight to Lydie, about now.”

  “God, I forgot all about her,” Connor said, jumping up.

  Grace and Windsor shared a bemused look and touched hands on top of the table. Then Grace Van Sant leaned over the clutter of glasses, bread crusts and ruined dishes and smiled at Maggie.

  “Let’s get together tomorrow for...I don’t know, how about...?”

  Maggie laughed and finished for her, “...anything but lunch.”

  Chapter Three

  1

  She picked up the used syringe, careful not to stick her fingers with the tip, and tossed it into a square cardboard box she kept in the bathroom. She touched a tentative finger to her left hip. The area was still sore and bruised from last night’s injection. Carefully, she sponged up the drops of spilled dilutant, and cleared away the filter needle and the empty syringe packaging. It had hurt last night. It always hurt. Not just a sting or a pinch like the nurses had suggested, but insistent and cruel like a little hook embedded in her delicate flesh, pulling and pulling.

  Grace finished wiping the sink surface and then straightened to look into the mirror. Last night had been fun but had taken its toll. Her eyes looked sunken, her mouth was pulled downward in tiny and not-so-tiny lines. She brought a hand to her face and felt a wave of hopelessness sift gently through her body. Three years and no pregnancy, she thought as she stared at her own sad reflection. Three years of hoping and trying and crying and resenting each other. Two years of injections and special trips into Aix to the clinic for ultrasound sessions and blood tests. Three years of failure. Now the French doctors at the fertility clinic (such an unamusing euphemism, she thought ruefully) were suggesting that they seriously consider artificial insemination. Grace turned from the mirror and rested her unbruised hip against the sink. The way things had been going between her and Windsor lately, she had actually felt relief at the thought of no more forced lovemaking schedules. Just let the docs do it, she thought, miserably. Let Win jack off into a bottle and let the docs just shoot it up there. She wasn’t sure Windsor would ever agree to it, for the same reason he refused to consider “in vitro” or any of the other options that were open to them.

  “It isn’t natural, Grace,” he had said stiffly.

  “And having three amps of menopausal nun urine injected into my rump every night is?”

  “At least the drugs you take aren’t artificial,” he’d said. “I don’t feel there’s anything foreign or unnatural going on...”

  “How wonderful for you.”

  But in the end, she had capitulated. He had been adamant about not going further than this stage with infertility treatment. And, finally, she had stopped arguing with him. After all, nightly shots of Pergonal and timed intercourse were better than nothing. And without some kind of treatment that’s exactly what Grace was convinced they’d end up with.

  She glanced at her watch. It was a little after nine a.m. Windsor would just be dropping Taylor off at her school in Aix. It was a long drive to make twice a day, but worth it, they both felt. She winced at the memory of breakfast with Taylor.

  The child had been impossible.

  And you want more of these? Windsor’s look had said to her as he herded a crying, red-faced four-year old out the door and into the car. Grace swallowed hard at the thought that had rushed, uninvited, to her mind as they left. No, I want to get it right next time. It was just anger, she told herself. A mother’s vexation at her dearest little one. A human being reacting in a normal, understandable, human way.

  She tossed the sponge into the sink and left the bathroom. It adjoined the master bedroom suite―an unusual feature in French country homes, but she and Windsor had done extensive remodeling on their not-so-modest château. And château it certainly was. All forty-one rooms of it, complete with turrets, dungeon basement and stone watch tower. They’d first seen it looming up over the stark, surrounding fields―a purplish-gray apparition, like a falling-down version of Cinderella’s Castle, and they had known it would be more work than warmth to try to live in it. They bought it from the county agent within sixty days.

  The château no longer had land connected to it; all of that had long been sold off to neighboring vignerons. And a castle with no acreage―no obvious means of supporting itself―was a white elephant in this part of Provence. A tad too remote to attract tourists as a summer rental―and too dilapidated to do it had it been better located―the château had cost them less than half of what they’d expected to pay. The remodeling, on the other hand, had cost nearly ten times the purchase price. It didn’t really matter. They had the money, and little else to do but worry about plumbing and wallpaper and thirteenth century heating ducts.

  Grace sat gingerly on the king size bed and began peeling off her robe and filmy nightgown. She never bothered to dress before Windsor had left in the morning with Taylor. In fact, there had been little else to do, period. Life in St-Buvard was downright dull, what with her difficult daughter in school from seven until seven at night―and many times staying in Aix in a boarding situation if weather or circumstances prevented the Van Sants from retrieving her. Windsor was usually embroiled in writing his memoirs up in his study. Even more so now that the château had fin
ally snapped into shape and seemed to require little more attention than cleaning, something which Grace, of course, had never had to do.

  She turned on the shower and tested the temperature of the water with her hand. Imagine, she thought as she stepped under the fountain of warm water, a waterfall faucet and a Jacuzzi tub in the garden room―in a thirteenth century French castle in the middle of the French countryside. She sudsed her entire body with a rough washcloth and enjoyed the sweet, soapy smell as the steam engulfed her in a penumbra of warmth.

  The muffled sound of the phone ringing penetrated the soft drumming of the shower as she poured shampoo into her wet, shoulder-length hair. I hope it’s Maggie, she thought, as she closed her eyes and massaged her scalp and tried to remember if she’d left the answering machine on. The days could be so long, so uneventful. The reality of her life in St-Buvard just didn’t live up to the colorful letters about living in the South of France she liked to write home to her jealous friends.

  She finished her shower and turned off the water, cocking an ear to try to hear if the machine was recording a voice even through she knew the bedroom was too far from Windsor’s study, where the answering machine was kept, to be able to hear. She toweled off briskly and inspected her nakedness in the large gilt-framed mirror that dominated the bathroom. Not bad for forty-one, she thought, holding her stomach in just a bit. Still plenty of baby-making material here. She stole a glance out the one small window in the room to the fields below. Already, the workers from the village had been picking for several hours. She shook her head and returned to the steamy mirror. She squinted into her reflection again and then quickly smoothed away the creases she had caused by squinting. Windsor had put his foot down at the idea of restoring the small moat that once ringed the château. She tugged gently at a gray hair sprouting from her perfect brow line and sighed heavily. Too bad. She had had some wonderful ideas for a moat.

  2

  Awaiting the retrieval truck of Cortier & Fils, the baskets of dark grapes lined the front driveway at Domaine St-Buvard. One hundred and fifty baskets in all, each one filled to the brim with the large, juicy grape of his own vineyard. Laurent stood next to a large, rough-hewn man named Bernard Delacort. He was one of the pickers from the village. Laurent selected a bunch of grapes and hefted them in his hand.