“We must drink other wines,” Laurent said. “To compare, to enjoy. We do not always eat at home, n’est-ce pas?” He watched her as she deposited the grisly morsel on the side of her plate and then tipped the shell’s contents of garlic and butter into a small pool onto her saucer. She dabbed her bread into the ochre grease and popped it into her mouth.
“Maggie, you are wasting good food,” he said.
“I’m just picking the bugs out of my dinner,” she replied, picking up another snail shell.
Laurent sighed and seated himself. “Bernard was arraigned today,” he said.
She looked up. “How do you know that?”
He shrugged. “Jean-Luc told me.”
“For someone who’s practically a hermit, Jean-Luc always seems to have the latest scoop on everything. How is that?”
“I don’t know, chérie.” Laurent chewed a snail and took a swallow of wine.
“Yeah, me neither,” Maggie said, prying another snail out of its shell and plopping it on the small pile of corpses she was building on her plate. “So you think ol’ Eduard is after our blood, too, huh?” She shook her head. “You know what I think?”
“No, chérie,” Laurent said as he watched her work. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s Gaston.”
Laurent lifted his eyebrows in a have-it-your-way gesture and gave his attention back to his plate.
“I’m serious, Laurent,” Maggie said. “You’ve signed off on Gaston and he’s the most obvious.”
“Most obvious for what?” Laurent asked. “To have killed my dog? Pourquoi? For revenge against me?”
“That, and he’s the most obvious one for Connor too.”
“You still think Gaston killed Connor?” Laurent rolled his eyes
“Stop that, please. It makes more sense than Bernard killing Connor.”
“Je suppose.” He stood up and collected their plates. “If you really think so, why not show it?”
“What do you mean, show it?”
Laurent called to her from the kitchen where he dished up the sea bream. A strong scent of fennel drifted back to the table. “Prove it,” he said. “You would make a lot of people very happy if it could be proved that Bernard is innocent.”
“You mean, like Babette?” Maggie said sweetly.
Laurent came into the room and set down their plates. “And Paulette,” he said. “And Bernard.”
“Do you think Bernard killed Connor?”
Laurent picked up his fork and thought for a moment. “Non,” he said, finally. “But I don’t think Gaston did either.”
Maggie surveyed her dish with pleasurable anticipation. It looked good, smelled wonderful.
“Maybe I will prove it,” she said as she scooped up a large forkful of the grilled bream stuffed with anchovy paste. “Laurent, this smells exquisite. As usual.”
“Bien sûr,” he said, waving his fork casually in the air over his plate.
For the rest of the meal, they chatted and laughed together, watching the sun disappear from their terrace in a display of bloody reds and purples, grateful for the renewed warmth and closeness that they had forged between them. The cold-weekend thoughts of relief at being apart from him were tucked into proper perspective for Maggie, the brief moments of happy freedom seen for just what they were, a weekend escape from problems, intimacies, responsibilities and emotions. She was glad to be back, she was glad to be with Laurent.
As Laurent proceeded to recount for her―in dry, amused tones and with much eyebrow accompaniment―his discovery of the array of dirty wine glasses and chipped supper dishes that Jean-Luc has stacked and perched and hidden about his ramshackle, dilapidated bachelor’s mas, it occurred to Maggie that with the relatively simple act of killing one of his own dogs, Jean-Luc Alexandre had removed any suspicion of guilt from himself for a wide variety of crimes.
Chapter Fourteen
1
Without an accurate English translation, Maggie could only get the gist of the newspaper article that Grace now held in her hand. Between Grace and herself, it was a very rough gist, indeed.
Grace pulled her chair closer to the library bench, careful not to snag her YSL hosiery against the rough underside of the wooden desk that she and Maggie had piled high with notebooks. Down the length of one notepad, a list of microfiche numbers was written in pencil in Maggie’s precise hand. A good deal had been written about the murders back in 1947. But the story contained few new facts. Oddly, even Patrick’s trial had received little press.
Grace held a hard copy printout of that morning’s discovery in the microfilm library. “This one says the bodies of four people were discovered early on Thursday morning, December 10, 1946 at Domaine St-Buvard...” She looked at Maggie who hovered over her shoulder. “Isn’t that creepy? Hearing the name of your place like that?”
“What else does it say?”
Grace returned to the sheet in her hand. “...Shot in the head at point-blank range by a 22-caliber hunting rifle. The murder weapon, belonging to a Monsieur Patrick Alexandre, was found at the scene.”
“I guess that didn’t look too good for ol’ Patrick,” Maggie said. She pulled her cardigan closer around her. The chill in the Avignon public library felt like it was seeping into her very veins.
“Shouldn’t we get a real live French person to translate this?” Grace asked. “I mean, France must be full of them.”
“You’re doing great. What else does it say?”
“...Monsieur Robert Fitzpatrick,” Grace continued, “an Englishman and his family. His wife and two small sons...”
“Does it give their ages?” Maggie asked.
Grace scanned the article and shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”
“Okay, go on.”
“That’s about it, really. It says something about how the Fitzpatricks had lived in St-Buvard for two years and that Robert Fitzpatrick was running the vineyard.”
“He was a winegrower?”
“Doesn’t say. Just says he was employed by running Domaine St-Buvard.”
“Not much to go on,” Maggie said. She picked up the notepad with the list of microfiche numbers and scratched through one. “There’s still a couple more newspaper accounts,” she said.
“Why don’t we check the Paris papers too?” Grace asked. “It would have been big enough news to have made it up there and they might have a better slant on things. You know how biased small town presses can be.”
Maggie agreed. “You check the last of these small town presses,” she said, handing the notepad to Grace. “And I’ll rummage up what the Parisians thought of it. Can we make extra photocopies of all these clippings, do you think?”
Maggie went back to the front desk to be insulted once more by the surly, elderly librarian in charge. With few words and no eye contact, the unpleasant woman located and handed over a large book containing the major Paris news stories for 1946. Maggie thanked her, then thumbed through the book until she found all references to “Fitzpatrick” and jotted them down in another notebook.
Maggie left the resource book on the table and walked to the next room where the microfilms were kept. After twenty minutes of spinning film carousels and flipping through indexes, she located the Paris write-up on the St-Buvard Fitzpatrick Massacre. She hurried back to Grace with the curling strip of film in her hand.
“Did you find anything new?” she asked Grace as she settled in next to her.
Grace looked up blankly. “Gosh, Mags,” she said, innocently. “It looks like four people bought it on your front doorstep on December 10, 1946.”
“Okay, nothing new.” Maggie handed Grace the microfilm. “Here, check these out. There’s a machine over there.”
Grace stuck the Paris microfilm story into the slider screen, adjusted the focus and began to read.
“Well?” Maggie asked impatiently.
“We really should get someone who understands the stupid language to read this thing,” Grace said
, frowning. “Yes, yes,” she read, scanning the story. “Four people dead, shot, 22-caliber. Oh, here’s something.” She pointed at the screen. “Here’s where they tell that Patrick Alexandre was decorated by DeGaulle in 1945.”
“Yeah?” Maggie scooted in closer and looked at the story herself. “Do they call him a hero?”
Grace read for a minute. “I don’t know the French word for hero,” she said, finally.
“We’ll copy it and get Laurent to read it,” Maggie said. “What else?”
“Wow, this is interesting,” Grace said, her blonde eyebrows disappearing under her fringe of bangs.
“What?” Maggie asked urgently. “What’s interesting?”
“This...” Grace pointed to a line. “It says here that the bodies were found by Jean-Luc Alexandre.”
“Jean-Luc found the bodies?”
“That’s what it says. He was fourteen years old―”
“Does it say what he was doing there?”
“Yeah, something about delivering the family’s bread.”
“At six in the morning?”
Grace flipped off the screen light and wrinkled up her nose. “What the hell was Jean-Luc doing delivering bread?” she asked.
“His uncle owned the boulangerie, remember? How do you think Madame Renoir got the bakery?”
“Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten they were related.” Grace continued to frown. “But Jean-Luc didn’t go into the bakery business.”
“No,” Maggie said, pulling the microfilm out of the machine. “Laurent said Jean-Luc’s father was a vigneron so it was natural for him to become one too.”
“Yeah,” Grace said, still looking at the darkened screen.
“Something?” Maggie prompted.
“Huh?” Grace looked at her and then shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking about something.” Grace extricated a silver compact from her hand-tooled leather handbag while Maggie went in search of another sotto voce tongue-lashing from the assistant librarian.
“Disappointed, Maggie?” Grace asked as they drove back to St-Buvard. As usual, she was dressed in country Chanel― the gold chains of her jacket draped casually in three rows and jangling softly against the Mercedes steering wheel. Maggie wondered if Grace had ever worn jeans in her life.
“I’m just trying to figure out what we came up with,” Maggie said, looking out the car window and spotting several magpies sitting on the rim of a farmer’s ditch.
“I forget,” Grace said, her eyes on the road. “Are you trying to prove Patrick Alexandre did or didn’t do it?”
“I’m not sure.”
They both laughed.
“It just seems too cold-blooded though, you know?” Maggie tightened the leather thong that kept her duffel-style book bag in one piece. “The motive’s not there for me.”
“You mean, the reason why Patrick killed them?”
“Yeah, that’s a lot of killing for one little feeling of rejection, don’t you think?”
“Gosh, Maggie, you don’t know the French!”
“I guess not,” Maggie said, unconvinced.
“Maybe the Englishwoman was pregnant with Patrick’s baby?” Grace suggested. “That could’ve spurred Patrick on a bit.”
“The autopsy report would’ve shown something like that.”
“How do you know it didn’t? Have you seen the report? I mean, Jesus, Maggie, the local rags didn’t even mention Jean-Luc. I can’t imagine they would’ve mentioned information from the autopsy report if it were unfavorable to their local boy.”
“It’s easy enough to get a copy of it.”
“It is? How?”
“Well, there should be a copy of it at the Aix police department. That’s where Alexandre was arraigned and held and everything.”
“Just like Bernard Delacore.”
“It’s funny that there’s little mention of Alexandre’s credentials in the local papers, you know?” Maggie stared at the mahogany driving panel in Grace’s car.
“What about the account of the trial?” Grace asked. “In La Provençal, it just said there was a trial, he was indicted and sentenced. Boom, boom, boom.”
“Yeah, that was weird. When Eduard as much as said that the murders and Patrick’s arrest were the biggest point of gossip and argument and conversation in St-Buvard for fifty years. He said they still talk about it in the cafés.”
“So, the papers glossed over it all―La Provençal, Le Méridien, Nice-Matin―in what seems like a sort of deference to Patrick,” Grace said.
“But the villagers can’t shut up about it. Interesting.”
“Well, you know how people love to talk when their neighbors die en masse before breckie.”
“I think we’re missing the human element on this story,” Maggie said.
“Gee, isn’t that true anywhere you go in France?”
“I’m serious. We need to talk to someone who knew the Fitzpatricks. Personally.”
Maggie flung out her arm and pointed, nearly catching her finger on one of Grace’s gold-hammered loop earrings.
“There it is,” she said, pointing out the driver’s side window. “Pull over. Park.”
“Maggie, the mud’s knee high here.”
“No it isn’t,” Maggie said, still craning her neck. “It just looks bad.”
“I am not getting out in all that muck.” Grace stopped the car in front of the dilapidated chapel and turned off the engine.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been here,” Maggie said.
“I know.” Grace produced a pack of Marlboro Lights from the recesses of her purse and snaked out a single cigarette. She surveyed the grounds, which included a cemetery and the ruined church. “And it looks to be a veritable highlight of St-Buvard.” She sucked the smoke down into her lungs greedily. Maggie noticed she hadn’t had a cigarette all morning and wondered if she were trying to quit.
“I can’t believe you’re still smoking,” Maggie said.
Grace gave her a baleful look and exhaled a stream of blue smoke out the window of the car.
“Darling, I am not getting out of this car. Now, I think it’s best that we all accept that and the sooner the better.”
Maggie sighed. “Well, anyway,” she said. “I told Laurent I thought Gaston killed Connor.”
“Really?” Grace followed Maggie’s glance out the window and into the disheveled little graveyard. Withered stalks of milkweed and creeping thistles poked up in thick clumps between most of the graves. Maggie imagined the little plot of ground was probably covered with buttercups and poppies in the height of summer.
“You think that’s odd?” Maggie asked.
“What was his motive?”
“His motive? Revenge.” Maggie unsnapped her seatbelt and turned to face Grace in the car.
Grace looked unconvinced.
“Revenge against the hanging of his grandfather,” Maggie reiterated.
“So, why kill Connor?” Grace dropped her cigarette out the Mercedes window. “Connor wasn’t anywhere near St-Buvard when Gaston’s grandfather was getting his neck elongated.”
“It’s symbolic, don’t you see? Gaston saw Connor as the embodiment of all foreigners and foreigners are what got his grandfather killed.”
“Gaston doesn’t really strike me as a symbolic kind of guy, Maggie.”
“Besides,” Maggie continued. “Gaston is violent and bloody-minded. He’s capable of it and he had the opportunity.”
“Hmmm.” Grace traced a long, lacquered fingernail against the inside of the windshield. “Little weak on motive, though,” she said, and then turned to Maggie. “So the long and the short of it is that you told Laurent you’d prove to him that Gaston did it?”
“Thereby freeing Bernard,” Maggie said.
“And making the world a better place in general,” Grace agreed.
“Something like that.”
“So we’re looking into Connor’s murder as well as the Fitzpatrick murders?” Grace nodded
her head as she spoke. “I believe that one needs to check out all the violent deaths that are committed in one’s living room. I’m sure Martha Stewart would agree; it’s much tidier this way.”
“I thought you’d think so. Now, are you sure you’re not going to see these gravestones? They might be able to tell us something.”
“I’ll let them tell you something, darling. And you can pass it on to me.”
2
Paulette poured the coffee into Laurent’s mug and then settled back into her chair. Today he had called first so she’d had time to brush and tie back her hair and put on a clean house dress. She had surprised herself that she cared enough to bother. And the realization gave her some hope.
Now the big Frenchman sat opposite her, drinking coffee, and talking about Bernard and grocery prices and Paulette’s health. A couple of visits before, when Laurent continued to come in spite of Babette’s absence from the house, Paulette realized that the man was coming to see her, not her daughter. She steeled herself against the bad thoughts that had lately begun to creep into her head, thoughts that asked how her life might have been different, if she had married someone like Laurent Dernier instead of Bernard Delacore. She steeled herself too, against the thoughts that, had she married Laurent, she would have transformed him from the strong, compassionate man he was into the man that Bernard had become―wild, drunk, angry, impotent.
“What now?” Laurent asked her. “Will you stay in St-Buvard?”
Paulette looked down at her coffee. Her mother had given her these china cups years ago and they had not a chip or a scratch to show they’d ever been used in the last twenty-five years.
“Where else would I go?” she asked him.
Laurent shrugged. “They will be moving Bernard,” he said. “To just outside Lyons.”
Ah, so that was it, she thought. The man is thinking of conjugal visits, of frequent support sessions with his wife and daughter. He was thinking that this was not the end after all, that it could all be glued back together in some sort of makeshift fashion. She looked back at her coffee.
“Perhaps we shall move,” she agreed. “To be near him.”
The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 56
