The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Maggie turned her back to them to finish her conversation. She could hear Nicole’s high-pitched laughter from the balcony.

  “And Roger?” she said into the receiver. “Is he still there?”

  There was a moment of silence and then loud static as Laurent spoke.

  “I can’t hear you, Laurent,” Maggie said, raising her voice. She heard her parents shift and move away from her where she was sitting on the bed in order to give her more privacy.

  “...evening’s train.”

  “So, he’s gone?” she asked.

  There was only silence punctuated by the crackle of static on the line. Maggie wasn’t sure whether he was angry with her for asking or whether he hadn’t heard her question. She decided not to push it.

  “Things really happen down there in ol’ St-Buvard way, don’t they?” she said, trying to keep her tone light.

  “...bad line,” Laurent said. “I will call again tomorrow evening?”

  “I’ll be home tomorrow evening,” Maggie said with impatience. Did he not even know when she was coming back? “Or did you think I’d hang around up here awhile?”

  “Quoi que,” he said. Whatever.

  With barely suppressed fury, Maggie hung up the phone without finishing the conversation. She turned and smiled bravely as Nicole burst into the room from the balcony.

  “Aunt Maggie!” Nicole said, her dark curls swinging over her shoulders as she moved to where her aunt was sitting on the bed. “You should see the birds! They’re everywhere.”

  “Astounding,” Maggie said as she put her arm around the girl, “that flinging great quantities of food at them should have that effect.”

  “I love Paris, don’t you?” Nicole’s eyes shone with her delight, she looked earnestly into Maggie’s face.

  “Yeah, I do,” Maggie said. “So did your maman. When she was young.”

  Maggie could see Elspeth turn her head at the reference to Elise to listen to the conversation.

  “She was a great painter in Paris, you know,” Nicole said happily, not waiting for a response as she bounced off the bed. “I love the pigeons of Paris!” she crowed out the open French doors that led to the hotel balcony.

  “Settle down, darling,” Elspeth said, smiling at the child. “Poppa is already downstairs in the lobby. Why don’t we join him?” She looked over at Maggie and increased the wattage on her smile. “Maggie? Are you ready for another day’s walking and shopping and eating?”

  Maggie nodded and stood up. He knew how to call her back, she thought, if he wanted to finish their conversation. But she knew he wouldn’t. She was surprised to find herself so calm after hanging up on him. She was also surprised to discover that she hadn’t really missed Laurent on this trip. Oddly, there had been a sort of relief at being without him.

  She followed her mother and Nicole out the hotel room door, listening to Nicole’s excited little-girl chatter and her mother’s amused answers.

  What did all this mean? Was she falling out of love with Laurent? Or was she just trying the feeling on for size? As she closed the door, she heard the refrains again of the Joni Mitchell song in her head: “...I was a free man in Paris...I felt unfettered and alive...”

  5

  The woman stood in the doorway, her face harsh from too many years of facing into the mistral, of hard work and dashed expectations. Her arms were thin but tough, like the cords visible on a gutted rooster. She looked at Laurent without surprise or interest, as if she’d been expecting him.

  “Madame Delacore?” Laurent said, his hands resting lightly on his hips.

  “Monsieur Dernier,” the woman said dully, not inviting the big man across her threshold.

  “Please,” Laurent said. “Call me Laurent. I am here to tell you how sorry I am for your troubles and to see if there is anything I can do for you. Is there something I can do?”

  The woman stared at him blankly as if she failed to understand her own mother tongue.

  “Bernard is a good man,” Laurent continued. “He has friends.”

  “Yes,” the woman said without emotion. “He has friends. Eduard is helping us, too.”

  “Maman? Who’s at the door?”

  Paulette Delacore hesitated for a moment and then beckoned Laurent into her house. She had been beautiful once, he knew. He’d heard some of the old women milling about the various shops in the village talk about Paulette Delacore. Not particularly smart or clever at school, but quite beautiful―perhaps, they said, even the most beautiful girl in all of St-Buvard. That was a long time and a rather difficult marriage ago. Laurent estimated that the woman was a year or two younger than himself.

  He entered the apartment hallway.

  “How is Babette?” he asked.

  “Maman?”

  “It is Monsieur Dernier,” Paulette called to the back room. There was no tension or sign of impatience in her voice. It, like her manner, was flat.

  There was no answer from the back room.

  “I am sure,” the woman said quietly, “that she would like to see you, Monsieur Dernier.”

  Laurent nodded formally and walked down a narrow hall in the direction where Paulette pointed, her arm looking like a broomstick as it directed him down the hallway. It was clear that she would not accompany him. He tapped on―then pushed open―the door to the sitting room.

  Inside, Babette lay propped on a couch. She was fully clothed, her hair unwashed and her face mottled from tears, but her prettiness was still evident. She seemed to Laurent a beguiling gamin―thin, unhappy, yet winsome.

  “Laurent,” she said, her eyes still holding the surprise of when she had heard her mother speak his name a few moments earlier.

  Laurent stood at the foot of the couch, his arms crossed in front of him. He felt a rush of sympathy for the girl. In many ways, her miscarriage, even her father’s imprisonment, were the least of her problems.

  “How are you, Babette?” he said. “I was very sorry to hear the news.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, blinking her large, red-rimmed eyes at him. “I’m better.”

  “I was telling your mother that if there is anything I can do for you or your father...” he let the sentence trail away, the offer standing between them like a referee.

  “Thank you,” the girl said, watching him closely. “My father did it because of the baby. You know that, don’t you?” She clutched great wads of bedclothing in her hands and pushed herself to a sitting position. “And now there is no baby.” She looked toward the hallway as if anticipating her mother, or someone, to be there listening. “And no Papa either.” Her eyes glazed over for a moment as she continued to stare past Laurent into the hallway.

  “Are you allowed to visit him?”

  Babette stared at Laurent as if he’d begun spouting Latin. “Visit him?” she repeated as if in a daze. “No, we don’t visit him.” She looked down at her hands. “My uncle Eduard is giving us money,” she said. She looked up at Laurent sharply. “More money than my father earned when he was here! Funny, huh?” She laughed abruptly. “It’s actually better now without him.” The sound of her laughter was harsh and ugly in the little sickroom.

  “Well, I’ll call again, yes?” Laurent reached out a hand to touch the couch, but only wagged his fingers vaguely in its direction. He turned toward the door.

  “Laurent?” Babette called out, her voice filled with pain and desperation.

  Laurent turned around, but stayed in the doorway. With his mission completed, he wanted now only to be on his way to his dinner at Le Canard Café.

  “Yes, Babette?”

  “I love you.”

  Laurent looked at the girl, drawn up and small on the couch, the old sofa pillows―once new and tasseled―now stained and faded, the dingy duvet held in crumpled mountains between her blue-jeaned knees. She bit a bloodless lip and watched his eyes.

  “Take care of yourself, chérie,” he said, before turning and walking away.

  6

  “So, it was
just for a visit? Roger’s arrival at St-Buvard?”

  Elspeth sat across from Maggie in the little Parisian café, sipping her coffee. A small fruit tart, glossy with glaze, sat on its doily and china saucer between them.

  “Well, no, Mother.” Maggie shook her head. “He asked Laurent to do a job with him.”

  Elspeth Newberry’s eyebrows arched, but she said nothing.

  “I mean, it wasn’t a visit like normal people have visits, you know? Roger’s a crook, a con artist. Those kinds of people never rest.”

  “What did Laurent say to him?”

  “That’s just it, he didn’t say anything to him. That I know of.”

  “He didn’t accept.”

  “Well, he didn’t not accept. I got the distinct impression he wanted to think about it.”

  “Maggie―”

  “No, now, listen, Mother, Roger can be very compelling, you know. He waved an attractive deal in front of Laurent sung to the strains of remember-how-much-fun-we-had-in-old-days-ol’-chap and Laurent is seriously considering it.”

  “Did he tell you that, darling?”

  “Oh, Mother,” Maggie said with impatience. “He’s not going to tell me, is he? He knows I’d have a sh...a fit.”

  “And Roger is gone now?”

  Maggie nodded and pushed the tart towards her mother. “Laurent says so,” she said.

  The café was quiet and deserted. Nicole and Poppa were napping back at the hotel and Maggie’s train was due to leave in a few hours.

  “Surely, you believe him, Margaret?”

  Maggie looked at her mother and allowed her eyes to water.

  Elspeth touched Maggie’s hand. “It’s hard, I know how hard it is. But I really do think one of your problems is that you’re not busy enough.”

  “Mother, I’m constantly doing stuff.”

  “I’m sure you are, dear, but I’m not talking about having lunches and buying bread rolls and walking little Petit-Four around the vineyards. You used to have a very hectic schedule in Atlanta...”

  “Well, yeah, I was working, wasn’t I? I had places to go, people to see. I’ll be that way again when I’m home.”

  “You need to be working now, darling.” Elspeth smiled and rearranged the gold silk scarf at her throat. Her hands were immaculately manicured and Maggie wondered where her mother had had them done. Her own nails were blunt, unvarnished and short.

  “Doing what? And don’t tell me to help Laurent in his grape fields, I’m not into it.”

  “What are you into, darling?”

  “Mother, that’s not fair, I’d work if I could. There’s nothing for me to do in St-Buvard.”

  “I think there is.”

  “Really? Well, I’d like to know what.”

  “Have you been getting much writing done? I thought you were going to try to write a book while you were abroad.”

  Maggie put her head down on her arms on the table.

  “Margaret, darling, lift your head, please, we’re in a public restaurant.”

  “Mother, you’re right,” Maggie said, a sour look on her face as she raised it from the table. “I haven’t done any writing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I just haven’t. I guess because it’s easier to take the dog for a walk or slice up aubergines or sweep beetles off the terrace than it is to figure out character developments and plot swings. I don’t know.”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Maggie, I’d appreciate your not taking the name of the Lord in vain.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I have an idea of something for you to write about.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Mother.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself. You’re right down there living in one of the most beautiful spots in the world―”

  “I have no interest in writing a travel article, Mother. I’m not the kind of writer who―”

  “And you are living in the very house where a fascinating murder occurred.”

  “Do a crime novel about Connor’s death? Are you serious?”

  Elspeth was quiet for a moment, looking at her impatient only daughter. She took a sip from her coffee. “I was thinking of the Fitzpatrick murders, dear,” she said. “Everyone finds the story engrossing, even forty years later, and it did happen right on your doorstep, as it were. I think it would make a marvelous book. I’d certainly read it. I’m sure a lot of people would.”

  Maggie blinked at her mother. “It is a good story,” she said, hesitantly.

  “Well, it’s a sort of mystery, isn’t it?” Elspeth asked. “Danielle Marceau said there was some question as to Patrick Alexandre’s guilt.”

  “Question?” Maggie frowned. “No, there’s no question, Mother. The man confessed.”

  “Yes, but Danielle said the village refused to believe it,” her mother persisted.

  “Even in the face of his confession?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Well, you know, Gaston Lasalle is the grandson of the gypsy they hung.” Maggie turned her gaze out the café window as she began to envision all the characters in the drama. She felt a pulse of excitement. It was the recognition of a challenge, and with it the high she hadn’t felt since she had faced down a particularly difficult client during a presentation of the agency’s Kiddi-Rompers account last spring.

  “And Jean-Luc is the killer’s brother,” Maggie said, her eyes watching the Parisian rain delicately spatter the befogged café window and the Rue de Rivoli beyond. “There might be something here. I could ask some questions. I mean, the research would be easy enough to do.”

  “You mean, to prove that Alexandre was innocent?”

  Maggie wrinkled up her nose. “Mother, Patrick Alexandre confessed. He wasn’t innocent. He was having an affair with the woman. Besides, that’s so obvious, innocent man dies for crime he didn’t commit, blah, blah, blah. No, my hook would be different.”

  Maggie leaned forward across the table toward her mother. “This is great,” she said. “I’ll tell the story of how a World War II resistance hero―beloved by all―came to be possessed by love and passion―to the point where he would commit the one crime that no one is able to believe he could commit.” She nodded her head. “It’s great stuff. Graham Greene kind of stuff. Complex, psychological characterizing, you know?”

  Maggie dug in her purse for a notebook and a pen.

  “I just want to jot down a couple of ideas while I’m thinking about them,” she said. “Want to order another tart?” She flipped to a blank page and began scribbling in her notebook, while Elspeth sipped her coffee and smiled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1

  Rope after golden rope of fresh roasted garlic hung from the temporary market rafters. Looking like a French Christkindlesmarkt for food, the market at Châteaurenard―the biggest in Europe―was a stunning array of every kind of fresh fruit and vegetable. Thousands of shiny aubergines, their glossy bulbs of blue and purple-black stacked in rows, sat next to piles of dirt-encrusted potatoes and pyramids of olives in colors Maggie had never imagined olives could come in orange, blue, purple, and yellow.

  There were mountains of peppers―their colors as vivid as brightly waxed fruit. The perfume from the various spices and herbs was intoxicating. One truckful of rosemary parked at the end of a long row of bananas was so intensely fragrant that nothing else could be smelled within an entire city block.

  Grace hefted a flat round of goat cheese in her hand and smiled at the squat, grinning woman in her spotlessly white apron manning the cheese booth.

  “I forget,” she said to Maggie, who was peering at the impressive presentation of cheese wheels. “Are we supposed to bargain or just give them what they ask for?”

  “Laurent always bargains,” Maggie said, shifting her string bag bulging with vegetables and fruit to her other hand and shaking cramps out of her fingers. “Can we grab lunch, please? I
’m starving and the groceries are breaking my arm.”

  Grace decided to pay the marked price for the cheese.

  “You come here a lot?” she asked Maggie, with a hint of respect in her voice, as the two turned to leave the colorful vegetable market.

  “Laurent likes to come,” Maggie said. “I’ve gone with him a couple of times. It’s sort of overwhelming.”

  “I’ll say.” Grace tucked the cheese into her string bag.

  Seeing her sole purchase, Maggie was reminded that the woman had a cook who did the family’s food shopping.

  “This must be quite an excursion for you,” she said to Grace. “Running errands and all.”

  “I run plenty of errands, thank you. Let’s try this place.” She pointed out the uninviting façade of a small restaurant not far from where her Mercedes was parked. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”

  The two entered the restaurant and were seated. Two sweet, overweight, afghan hounds roamed amiably from table to table politely begging for food.

  “So you went to none of the fashion boutiques while you were in Paris?” Grace asked as they shook out their napkins and awaited the first course of a light lunch.

  “Grace, I was only there a weekend.”

  “You can’t shop in a whole weekend?” Grace sipped the light red table wine, then nodded her approval to the waiter, who proceeded to fill Maggie’s glass as well.

  “Why do they always ask you if the wine’s okay?” Maggie asked, picking up her glass, and making them both laugh.

  “No, seriously, Maggie. Did you enjoy your visit?”

  Maggie spread a thin smear of tapenade across a crusty bread roll. “Yeah, it was great. Turns out...” she nibbled a small piece of her bread. “...it was a good idea to go without Laurent after all.”

  “Gave you some time to think.”

  “And it gave me a chance to talk to my folks. I never have a chance to be alone with my dad, for example, because he and Laurent are such good chums. Try this stuff, Grace, it is to die for.” Maggie pushed the pâté toward her friend. “And don’t tell me it’s made from baby sparrow’s liver or something, okay? I don’t want to know.”