The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “I just can’t believe it,” she said to Windsor, her eyes filling again with tears.

  “I know,” he said, picking up one of the hard-boiled eggs and dipping it into the mayonnaise. “It’s unbelievable. Incredible―”

  “Why did you order all this stuff?” Grace said crossly, stubbing out her cigarette and picking up the new pack from the table. “It’s disgusting.”

  “We need to eat, Grace,” Windsor said reasonably, biting into his egg.

  “When did the police say they wanted to talk with us?” Grace wanted to put her head down on the table and weep with fatigue and hurt.

  “This afternoon. They’re questioning everyone, I guess.”

  “Do they think we had something to do with it?”

  Windsor shook his head and scooped up one of the slippery snails with a pair of silver tongs. “It’s what the police do. They ask questions. Of everybody.”

  “Poor Maggie,” Grace said softly, blowing out a long stream of smoke. “She must be beside herself. I feel bad not calling her this morning.”

  “I’m sure it’s a madhouse at Domaine St-Buvard about now,” Windsor said. “You can call her this afternoon.” He looked up through the shade of a large sycamore tree hovering over their table. There were a large number of dead leaves still on the branches.

  “Poor Maggie,” Grace repeated, laying her head on her folded arms upon the table. “Poor Connor and poor all of us,” she said softly, as she tried to blot out the odors of boiled cod and eggs.

  2

  “Garlic is what keeps the French youthful. A little parsley and there you are! No bad breath. We French never get cancer. Americans? Always cancer. The French? Never liver disease, rarely heart disease. And why do you think that is?”

  Maggie looked at the young police detective sitting in her living room and willed herself to be numb, to feel nothing. She stared blankly at him.

  “Garlic?” Elspeth, seated beside Maggie, ventured the answer.

  “Bien sûr!” L’agent nodded solemnly at Maggie’s mother.

  The police had arrived on the scene a full hour after Laurent had rung them but they made up for their tardiness by refusing to leave once they’d arrived. They roped off the cave and sent photographers, coroner, pathologists, artist and detectives below for several hours. Maggie was surprised that the basement could hold them all. She found herself making turkey and tapenade sandwiches and serving them up with gallons of boiled, black coffee.

  The police questioned each of them separately. During her interview, Maggie tried to concentrate on what the young police officer was saying to her, but all she could think of was Connor’s impish laugh, Connor putting the fear of God into Taylor, Connor enlivening the whole party, the whole evening, just by walking through the front door. She felt her face tighten with the effort of trying not to cry because a white sheet-draped stretcher in the arms of two burly gendarmes was how Connor had left the party. And in case she wasn’t absolutely sure of that, a red-checkered arm had escaped its cover to prove it to her.

  She watched Laurent as he stood on the terrace, smoking and talking to another police officer in yet another series of questions and more questions. Maggie was sure the questions were the same: Why was Connor late to the party? What sort of mood was he in? To whom did he talk? Were you good friends of his? And most importantly: when was the last time you saw him?

  Her father sat in a chair across the room from her, his face grim and unrevealing, his eyes watching his wife and daughter with concern. Nicole, bored and cross, sat on the floor with Petit-Four curled up in her lap.

  “And so, you see,” the arrogant young officer continued, “our herb, sage, will cure diabetes, our lavender the stomach cramps...” He gripped his thin flap of a stomach as if to demonstrate this and rolled his eyes at them. “And our savory? You have tasted it, Monsieur? You will not have trouble with impotence if you eat much savory in Provence! We French are a healthy people―”

  “May I...offer you...a drink?...un pastis?” John asked the detective.

  The detective looked momentarily surprised. He glanced briefly at his superior outside with Laurent and then smiled at John. “Je veux bien,” he said, nodding sternly as if to show that just because he would have a little drink, they were not to think he was a pushover.

  John rose to fetch the drink when Petit-Four barked sharply, its ears standing up at attention and pointing in the direction of the front door.

  There was a loud, heavy banging at the door which set the little dog off all the more. Maggie saw Laurent toss down his cigarette and make motions to leave the terrace to answer the front door himself.

  The young cop hopped up and held up his hand to Maggie who had also gotten up to answer the door. “I will see it is who,” he said firmly.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” Maggie said to her mother as the skinny officer strode to the front door, nearly tripping over the dog. Immediately, she could hear Madame Renoir jabbering away at the man in her excited, high-pitched voice. Maggie hurried to the door.

  “Who is this woman?” the cop said, his hands on his hips.

  Maggie ignored him and addressed Madame Renoir.

  “Madame Renoir...” she began.

  “Babette is telling the town,” the woman said. She was wearing the same outfit she had on last night. The same outfit, in fact, that Maggie had always seen her in. Maggie had an image of a whole closet full of black wool uniforms―each identical to the other―that Madame simply rotated after each washing. There was a determined set to the baker’s face.

  The policeman turned to Elspeth. “Is this a service woman of some kind? There can be no cleaning of the murder site. It is absolutely forbidden.”

  Elspeth sighed in exasperation from where she sat in the living room and looked at her husband, who now stood next to her with a tray of glasses and a small bottle of pastis.

  “I have come to help,” Madame Renoir said to Maggie.

  Maggie had to admit that it was a sort of balm to see the old girl. Her sweet face helped soften the ugliness of the morning. “I...there’s really nothing―” Maggie said.

  “La petite fille?” Madame Renoir said peering shyly into the house. “The little girl is in the way?”

  Instantly, Nicole was at the front door, the squirming puppy in her arms.

  “Oh! You like la petite chien, hein?” The woman smiled at Nicole, who looked up at Maggie.

  “She’s the one gave us Petit-Four, right, Aunt Maggie?”

  “Madame Dernier...Maggie...” Madame Renoir became grim and serious once more. “I am not to be a trouble to you. If the girl wants to come with Madame Renoir for l’après midi, then Monsieur may bring her back to you ce soir.”

  She was right, of course. Smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation was no place for Nicole. The whole morning had been tense and tearful and awful. It was a wonder that her niece hadn’t protested more, Maggie thought, as she looked down at Nicole.

  “Please, Aunt Maggie?” Nicole brushed a lock of silky brown hair from her face and dropped Petit-Four gently onto the floor.

  Maggie touched Nicole’s hair. “What? You mean you’d rather spend the day in a pastry shop than stay here and keep out of everyone’s way?” she teased.

  Elspeth moved past the now disinterested policeman who was pouring his own pastis, and put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder.

  “Merci, Madame,” she said to Madame Renoir. “That would be so very kind of you. The day is hard for all of us.”

  Madame Renoir broke into a beam of pleasure.

  “Bon,” she said. “She may ride on the back of my bicyclette.” She smiled kindly at Nicole who was already climbing into her jacket.

  As the heavyset older woman and the child walked down the path and away from the house, Maggie could hear Madame Renoir chattering away to Nicole about the puppies still left at the boulangerie.

  God. I hope we don’t inherit another dog from all this, she thought.

 
Laurent spooned into the crunchy topping of the cassoulet and served up Maggie’s plate. The four of them sat quietly around the dining room table. The remaining two detectives had finally left the house to find dinner in the village, but had left two policemen downstairs to sift and dust, bag and collect.

  “When in the world did you have time to make this?” Elspeth asked Laurent as she helped herself to a salad of three different kinds of lettuce sprinkled liberally with fennel and thyme.

  Laurent looked up, distracted, his brow furrowed in worry. “Pardon?”

  “The cassoulet,” Elspeth said, nodding at the steaming earthenware casserole. “It smells divine. When did you make it?”

  Laurent shook his head. “The Marceaus,” he said, pointing to the terrace as if the Marceaus could be found standing out there. “They sent it over.”

  “Really?” John looked up from his dish. “That was thoughtful.”

  “Because MacKenzie was American,” Laurent said, pouring each of them a large glass of Côtes-du-Rhône. “I think they feel as if it is like a death in our family.” He shrugged and looked at Maggie. “Je ne sais pas.” I don’t know.

  “I feel like it is too,” Maggie said. “I guess because it happened at our house. What a horrible Thanksgiving...”

  “We didn’t know him particularly well,” Laurent said. “But we are particularly...” he paused to search for the word, “...affected by him.”

  “Will the police finish with us soon?” Maggie took a bite of dinner, finding herself surprisingly hungry. “When will we get our house back?”

  Her father cleared his throat. “They’ve already given us the okay to leave when ever we want,” he said.

  “You’re kidding.” Maggie looked at Laurent to see if this was news to him. It didn’t appear to be.

  “They can see that our return flight out of Paris isn’t for another three weeks.” John said. “So they feel relatively safe letting us go, I think.”

  “They never looked at you as suspects, did they, Dad?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so.” John Newberry looked over at Laurent as if the two of them shared a secret of some kind. “They just wanted to make sure they’ve exhausted me as a possible source of information.” He cleared his throat. “Having discovered the body and all.”

  Maggie laid down her fork and took a sip of her wine. It was fruity and full. She could feel it going straight to her head. “How did you find the body?” she asked.

  “Maggie...” Laurent said and frowned.

  “Please don’t tell me this isn’t decent dinner table conversation, Laurent,” Maggie said. “Nicole’s not here. And besides, you weren’t the only one blithering away to French cops all day, you know. Connor’s dead and it was in our basement and I’d like the facts filled in, please. Besides, he was a friend of mine.”

  She noticed her mother leaning in to hear as well.

  “Well...” her father glanced at Laurent and then sighed. “When we went down and were sort of rummaging around among some of the shelves where Laurent keeps his private stash―”

  “Private from whom, darling?” Maggie spoke to Laurent.

  “It’s just a turn of phrase, Maggie,” her father reproved her. “And as he was finding the bottle he wanted to bring out, I happened to see what looked like the shape of...I don’t know...a strange shape hunched on top of the...” He looked at Laurent before finishing for himself, “...the small horizontal basket press. You know the one?” he asked Maggie.

  Maggie hadn’t a clue. She thought all the wine fermented away in big wooden barrels and then got siphoned off into bottles. Voila!

  “You put the skins in there,” her father continued. “It’s a cylinder and it crushes the skins and forces the juice, or wine, out the sides into a container of sorts. You crank it to run it.”

  Maggie tried not to look impatient. “And Connor was inside this basket press thing?” she asked.

  Laurent sighed. “No, Maggie,” he said. “Only grapes may fit into the press. She is too small.”

  “Okay, so where does this press thing fit in?”

  “Well, that’s what caught my eye, you see,” John said, glancing at Laurent as he told his story. “This shape was hunched under the press. I went to look at it and, my God, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A man’s body half-submerged in the storage vat of free-run wine―”

  “The wine made from the grape skins in the press,” Laurent added.

  “...shoved up under the basket press,” John said. “I thought it was a joke at first. You know, that maybe Laurent had set the whole thing up...a dummy positioned to look like a man, you know...”

  “My God,” Maggie said. “Poor Connor.”

  “Connor didn’t look very good,” Laurent agreed, spooning out another portion of the cassoulet.

  “Drowned in a butt of malmsey,” her father said, speaking to no one in particular.

  “Huh?” Maggie said.

  “The Duke of Clarence,” John said. “I seem to remember that’s how he died. Drowned in a butt of malmsey. Apparently it was his favorite wine and when he got too much in the way of his brother, King Richard, that was his chosen way to die.”

  “Reluctantly chosen way,” Elspeth added, smiling.

  “One might assume,” John agreed.

  “Great brotherly relations,” Maggie said.

  “At any rate,” her father continued, looking around the table at each of them, “we still have a very scary question.”

  “I know,” Maggie said with a shiver. “Who killed Connor? Well, I suppose, it had to be someone we invited to our house, right?” Maggie looked at Laurent.

  “You mean, a friend?” Laurent asked, frowning.

  “Oh, give me a break, Laurent.” Maggie laughed and tossed her napkin down. “You were handing out invitational-fliers in the parking lot at the Marseilles A&P for this dégustation.”

  Laurent looked at Elspeth. “Un peu plus?” he asked, spoon poised over the heavy casserole pot. She handed him her plate.

  Maggie took a long breath and closed her eyes. Through an open window in the living room she could hear Laurent’s hunting dogs barking at something in the fields. She looked under the table, spotted Petit-Four contentedly chewing on an old leather sneaker of hers, and gave the dog a gentle scratch behind its floppy ears. Instantly, it dropped the shoe and begged to be allowed into Maggie’s lap.

  “No dogs at the table,” Laurent said gruffly, pouring her father another glass of the heady wine.

  “If it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t here last night,” Maggie said, pulling the dog onto her lap, “I’d vote for Gaston Lasalle as the murderer.” She turned to Laurent. “Did you tell Mother and Dad about him?”

  Laurent gave her an exasperated look.

  “Who is Gaston Lasalle?” Elspeth asked, looking first at Maggie, then at Laurent.

  “He’s an unsavory slimebag that Laurent had help with the grape picking last month.” Maggie said. She settled back into her chair with Petit-Four curled comfortably on her lap. “He’s come around for a little mischief now and then.”

  “Mischief how?” John Newberry spoke directly to Laurent.

  Laurent waved his hand in a dismissing gesture. “It is nothing,” he said. “If Maggie has told me everything...” He glanced briefly at Maggie. “...he is merely a...what?...a nuisance.”

  “What will happen now?” Elspeth stood up and collected the plates. “I’ll get the coffee, darling,” she said. “You stay put.”

  “Thanks, Mother.” Maggie softly stroked Petit-Four’s silver curls. “I really don’t know. Laurent? Are the police going to move in and start telling me how to make my légumes farcis?”

  “You are going to start making légumes farcis?” Laurent said with a smile. Maggie gave him a mock scowl. “I would only be making guesses,” he said, folding his napkin and surveying the bleak remains of the table.

  Laurent looked at John as if to gauge how much to say to his daughter. The mu
ted sounds of the two policemen in the cellar drifted up to them through the closed stairway door in the kitchen.

  “I am thinking they will leave soon,” Laurent said, accepting a cup of coffee from Elspeth. “Merci, Elspeth. “

  Maggie was always amused with the way her mother’s name sounded in Laurent’s mouth: El-spess.

  “Really? You think they’re nearly finished?” Elspeth asked, surprised, handing Maggie a steaming cup.

  Laurent screwed up his face in a tight frown as if all this talk of police were making him highly uncomfortable. Maggie wondered, thinking of his private conversations with today’s gendarmerie on the terrace, if he had had to reveal very much of his own past to them. She wondered if Laurent’s older, other life had included a police record.

  “The police will be here for the funeral, yes?” he said.

  The thought of Connor’s funeral hadn’t occurred to Maggie until Laurent had spoken the word.

  “And then, they will make an arrest,” Laurent said. He stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and spoke as if he were finishing the last instructions of a recipe for sugar glaze or marinated olives. Something simple.

  Elspeth returned with two more coffees, handed one to her husband and then sat down. “Do they suspect you, my dear?” she asked Laurent.

  Laurent shook his head. “I do not think so,” he said. “Or peut-être, they do, but...” he noticed Maggie’s suddenly worried face, “...it is only temporary.”

  “My God, Laurent,” Maggie said, her voice tense and surprised.

  “Zut!” Laurent clucked at her, and took Maggie’s hand in his.

  “I don’t feel altogether comfortable leaving you―” John began.

  “Don’t be ridicule!” Laurent said, a look of real surprise on his handsome face. “Everything will work out. The police will discover that Laurent did not murder Maggie’s American friend―”

  “Wait a minute,” Maggie said. “What do you mean my American friend?”

  Laurent shrugged. “He is more your friend than mine.”

  “So the police think you’ve got a motive...as in jealousy?” Maggie asked. She looked unhappily at her parents. “That’s why they suspect you?”