The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “Maggie, darling, you've heard me talk about Marie, my art instructor?” Grace touched the back of a free chair at their table. “Please join us, Marie. And so this is Pijou? Je suis très heureux de faire ta connaisance, Pijou. Your mother talks of you often. Souvent.”

  Pijou said nothing but sat in the proffered chair while her father gathered in two other chairs from nearby tables. Marie settled into one of them with the baby on her lap and covered Grace's hand with her own slim, aging one.

  “She is exquisite, Grace, your Zou-zou. You must let me paint her. Babies are wonderful to paint, especially such happy babies as this.”

  “What are you doing in Avignon?” Maggie asked. She felt a sudden surge of excitement at the group’s intrusion. It was if the newcomers had brought a mysterious and special secret with them.

  Marie took on a look of mock horror.

  “Quoi?! You have not been to the show?” She looked at Grace and shook her head gravely, wagging a finger at her as well. “I thought this was the reason we are seeing you in Avignon. 'Bon!' I say to René, there is Grace, she has come to the abstract impressionist show just as I have advised my entire class.'“

  Grace laughed.

  “I'm sorry, Marie. The lure of the sale was just too much. But I found a lovely bargain or two.”

  As if Grace needs to hunt for bargains, Maggie thought with a smile as she finished off the last of her espresso. The waiter came, seemingly annoyed that there would be more work for him and he might have to, presumably, suffer through a larger tip, coldly took their orders and left.

  Maggie studied the new arrivals while Grace and Marie chatted easily in French to each other. Marie had once been a great beauty, that was obvious. But she was an expressive woman and years of lively animation had worn grooves in her face that blander women would never wear. As a result, her face, even relaxed, had taken on a look of perpetual tension. Her dark, graying hair was long and wound tidily into a loose, glossy bun that nestled against her neck, just a few delicate tendrils escaping to frame her heart-shaped face. Maggie guessed the woman to be in her mid-fifties and still as charismatic and alluring, for all her early aging, as a cinema star at her height.

  Her husband, René, sat quietly, seemingly content, watching his exceptional wife. He was big and handsome and Maggie imagined Laurent might look something like him when he was his age. René, who was probably sixty, was robust and seemed charged with good humor, as if a smile were always tugging at the tips of his long, gray mustache. She wondered if Laurent would ever sit in the company of a group of women and smile adoringly at her while she burbled on to a chum.

  And then Pijou, who was too old to be a sullen teenager but was broadcasting just enough ennui at the whole social gathering to be considered at least mildly rude. She was slim and tall in contrast to her stout father and diminutive mother. Pijou was fair; she had a pleasant face, if not quite pretty. She dressed almost in opposition to her mother's artistic, dark, flowing clothes by wearing a very tailored jacket and slacks, her fingers coated with gold rings, her throat with looping gold chains. The look was, surprisingly, not a bit overdone. Her tastes may be different from her mother's but it was clear she'd inherited her sense of style.

  Maggie caught Pijou’s eye and was favored with a brief smile, followed by a rolling of her eyes as if to seduce Maggie into joining her in her boredom at the social duty.

  “And so you will talk with Jacques, n'est-ce pas?” Marie turned toward Maggie, her charm and attention radiating outward to the rest of the table now.

  “Jacques?” Maggie asked, looking from Marie to Grace and back again.

  “Jacques would be good,” René said solemnly, nodding. “He would be very good.”

  “Of course, you must also talk with René,” Grace said taking the baby back from Marie who seemed to relinquish her reluctantly. “René is a marvelous cook. He made dinner for Win and me...when was that, Marie? A month ago?...that was simply incredible. Seriously incredible. I'm still stuffed from it, I made such a cochon of myself!”

  The idea of beautiful, correct, elegant Grace Van Sant making a pig of herself was too absurd an image to form in Maggie's brain.

  “Jacques is a chef?” Maggie asked Marie.

  “Oui! A wonderful chef, and Grace is right, you must, of course, interview René. He is as good as any of the chefs in all of the south of France. In all of France!”

  René chuckled, shook his head modestly and beamed at his wife.

  “So there you are, darling,” Grace said airily. 'Two chefs to interview--both of them friendly and not about to rip your tonsils out if you ask a dumb question, not that you would, and so to hell with Laurent.” She turned to Marie as an aside, “who, by the way, is a wonderful cook and very hunky besides.”

  Marie touched the sleeve of Maggie's cotton blouse lightly with her hand. “The creative process is so important, Madame Dernier,” she said. “I understand it very well. Sometimes the blank paper, the empty canvas...I know, it is as terrifying as facing nude all your enemies at once, eh? I know. I know.”

  Maggie felt a spurt of affection toward Marie.

  “It's been really hard to get started,” she admitted.

  “Bien sür, I know this,” Marie said, nodding. “But to write a cookbook! In France there are few things as noble to do, eh?!” She patted her flat stomach, “Or as satisfying!” Everyone laughed. Tiny Marie hardly looked like a hearty gastronomic.

  “I have une ideé merveilleuse,” Marie continued as she brought her espresso cup to her lips. “You must come to my studio tomorrow.” She took a quick sip and settled the cup back into its saucer. “Grace, ma chére, you will come too, yes? To make your friend more at ease?” Marie turned back to Maggie without waiting for a response from Grace. “You will see my studio and the work I am doing and René will make you an exceptional lunch, okay? Is that good?”

  Maggie looked at René who was nodding and then back at Marie.

  “I couldn't possibly put you to that much--”

  “And so it is settled, yes?” Marie turned to Grace and clucked her thumb under baby Zou-zou's chin. “Yes?”

  Grace laughed a silver bell of a laugh and looked at Maggie who found herself laughing too.

  The afternoon was turning out very differently.

  2

  The sky was Naples yellow. Marie used patches of newspaper to blot out areas of color, then filled in the gaps with streaks of indigo and cadmium red while the sky was still wet. It gave the painting the overall softness she was looking for. She stood in front of the oversized paper clipped to a board that measured three feet by six feet and she nodded. It was a good start. And perhaps not this painting or even the next two that she would begin just like it, but before the end of the week, she would have the effect she was looking for. She touched a tree into the damp paper with a flat brush.

  The phone rang. She paused, hoping René would answer it from the living area of the house but soon tossed down her brush and strode to answer it herself.

  “Oui?” she said crisply, an artist interrupted at her work.

  “Maman?”

  It was Brigitte. Marie's irritation vanished and she settled onto a stool in her studio and began wiping paint from her fingers onto her smock.

  “Chérie! What a nice surprise! How are you? Is everything all right?”

  “I'm sorry, ma mere, you were working, weren't you? I hoped Papa would pick up.”

  “Ça ne fait rien, mon chou! I was finished for the day anyway,” Marie lied. “Everything is all right?” she repeated.

  “Bien sür, of course,” Brigitte replied unconvincingly. “I just wanted to call and say 'hello' and see how you were doing. With all the business about the murder, I knew you’d be worried.”

  “Yes, of course we were worried. Someone at Yves’ hospital...poor girl. Did you know her?”

  “A little, actually. She was a nurse who worked with Yves sometimes.” Brigitte cleared her throat. “It was such a terrible bu
siness. Look, Maman, I'm sorry I couldn't make it the other night, was Papa too disappointed?”

  “Not too bad,” Marie lied again. “Is Yves feeling better?”

  “Yes, he's better.” The quiet unhappiness seemed to slither out of the receiver at Marie. For a moment, she was speechless. Then,

  “Brigitte, you must come home. Can you come tonight?”

  “Come home? Mother, don't be silly. I can't come home. I mean, I'm sorry about the other night but I'm really busy at the--”

  “I would like to talk with you, chérie. I need to see my daughter face-to-face and talk with her.”

  “Well, Mother, no one would like that better than I would...” there was a strain in Brigitte's light tone and Marie had the horrified thought that she was in the process of receiving a “duty” call from her daughter. “...but I've got a husband to take care of and my responsibilities as charity director at the hospital and I can't just drop everything and drive to Arles. You understand, Marie?”

  Marie hated it when her sophisticated and too-grown up daughters would call her by her Christian name. It usually indicated a condescension that, in itself, typically heralded an attempt to hide something from her. She found herself growing upset.

  “Chérie, I think you need to come home.”

  “Mother, I am home. Remember? My home is with Yves here in Nîmes.”

  Marie's eye strayed to the watercolor she was working on. From a distance of eight feet, it looked much more right. Random patches of dry, stark white paper jumped out of the gray landscaping, giving believable bursts of light. Marie was surprised at how successful the painting was--and that she hadn't realized it.

  “Of course, of course,” Marie murmured. “I just wish...your father and I are sorry not to see more of you.”

  “You see Pijou quite a lot? She says she's always dropping by.”

  “I suppose she is,” Marie said quietly, her eye tracing the soft and hard edges of her work.

  “Well, there you are, and we'll get together soon, I promise...”

  “Yves is all right?” Marie asked suddenly.

  “I told you he was. He's fine.”

  “Treating you well, is he?”

  “What's that supposed to mean? He treats me like a princess. He treats me too well.”

  “Don't be ridiculous.”

  “Well, don't insinuate things like that. “Does he treat me well?' You know what you're really asking.”

  “And what is that, Precious?” Marie looked away from the painting and felt her shoulders sag within her artist's smock.

  “It's for this very reason I don't come home half as much as I could. You're always trying to show up Yves as some sort of, I don't know, as if he were a wife-beater or something. For crying out loud, Mother, he's a doctor! And a beloved one! Everyone at the hospital...”

  Marie was alarmed at the tremor of tears she could hear in her daughter's voice. Brigitte was not one given to crying easily.

  “Mon chou...” she said, frustrated with the restrictions of the telephone.

  “Oh, forget it, Mother. Just forget it,” Brigitte said, her composure nailed securely back into place. “But just know one thing, okay?”

  Marie braced herself for the pain.

  “Even if he beat me every night and cheated on me, okay? That's what you think he does, right?” Brigitte's voice had become shrill. “Even if he beat me every night, I love him. Do you understand? He's the one I want.”

  “Oh, Brigitte,” Marie whispered through her own tears.

  “Right,” Brigitte said quietly. “Exactly. So, I'll talk to you soon, Mother. Give my love to Father.” And she hung up the phone.

  Marie stood holding the phone. Slowly, she settled it back into its cradle and then looked back at the painting. There wouldn't be the interim attempts after all, she thought to herself, the long process of rough drafts and revised sketches. This time, she'd gotten it right the first time. She moved toward the easel, hugging herself tightly as she walked. Sometimes we can look too closely, she thought, and see it all wrong.

  René popped his head through the studio door.

  “Was that the phone, chérie?” he asked. “I was cleaning the oven.”

  “It was Brigitte,” Marie said.

  “Yes? Everything is all right?”

  3

  Grace Van Sant smoothed out the creases in her red Dana Buchman shawl scarf as it draped from her shoulders. The matching gilded merino wool knit jacket and pleated skirt she wore on her slim build looked impeccable whether she was crushed into a sitting position behind the wheel of car or striding down le rue de Mirabeau. But then, that's quality, she thought with satisfaction, as she pointed her jet-black Mercedes in the direction of Maggie and Laurent's large winemaker's mas.

  She loved this little village they shared. St. Buvard. Perched on the side of a sudden hill with the remains of a Roman aqueduct at its base, St-Buvard was perhaps tinier than most little French villages in the rich area of Aix-en-Provence and Avignon and Marseilles. With one charcuturie, one newsstand, one café-restaurant, one boulangerie (and that closed now for two years and not replaced, unthinkable, really, in a Provençal village that there should be no fresh bread except what was brought in fortnightly by the traveling food vendors), St-Buvard was indeed petit. And that was precisely why she and her husband, Windsor, and their daughter, Taylor, had decided to settle here over six years ago. They lived in a small renovated chateau ten kilometers outside the village and although it was true that Grace spent more of her time in Aix than St-Buvard, she claimed ownership of the provincial little town as if she'd been born there.

  Grace pushed in a selection of music from her CD player and the sounds of Puccini's O Mia Babbino Caro filled the car. Windsor was too much of a snob to allow her to play such sentimental nonsense when he was driving with her, but she took every opportunity to enjoy it when she was on her own. She drove quickly through the small village, nodding at the ancient post mistress who scowled back at her, drove past the Catholic church on the outskirts of town, and finally over the stone bridge which gradually turned into a low stone and rock wall that separated the road from hectare after verdant hectare of planted vineyard. She followed alongside the wall, rolling down her window to catch the definite fragrance of lavender in the air and the sun-drenched grass and trees.

  It was a spectacular day. Warm and bright and clear. The colors of the landscape, usually so mild in Provence, seemed to jump off the horizon at her and she wondered if it were her new interest in painting that made her more aware of them. The bright, sturdy blue of the grapes mingled with a delicate pallor of lilac, and the sky wasn't just blue but blue and aqua and pink and green. Grace tried to imagine how she might capture the sky on paper, remembering that Marie said that a proper watercolor artist ought to try to paint at least one sky a day. Ochre, definitely, she thought, over a wash of lightest blue. Beyond that, she wasn't sure. The music welled up inside her and she touched the button to roll down all the windows in the car so that the countryside scents might overwhelm her.

  When she arrived, Maggie was waiting for her at the end of the gravel driveway. She wore black leggings and a tailored gray tablier she must have picked up in the village or perhaps even the Sunday market. A pretty blue silk scarf was knotted at her throat. Maggie cared little to nothing about what she wore, Grace knew, but she nonetheless had her own distinct look and Grace thought it fit her quirky, winsome friend beautifully.

  Maggie opened the passenger’s side door and slid in.

  “God, Grace, you look like you drove through a wind tunnel.”

  Grace laughed and touched her wind-tossed hair.

  “I guess I got a little carried away with the beautiful day. Isn't it scrumptious? How are you? Is Laurent at home?” Grace backed up the car and turned around in the Dernier's gravel drive way.

  “Fine. He’s home. He’s getting ready to perform surgery, or something, on a few wayward vines. He and Jean-Luc.”

  �
�How is Jean-Luc? I don't think I've even seen him since all the trouble.”

  “He's fine,” Maggie said. “He and Danielle are together, you know.”

  “Mm-mm, you told me. I think it's great. Don't you?”

  “I think Danielle could do better, frankly. Jean-Luc's old.”

  “Maggie!” Grace laughed and looked sideways at her friend. “They're contemporaries, darling. He's no older than she is.”

  “He seems it.”

  “Do they live together yet?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I guess that means ‘no’.”

  “At least not while her husband is still alive.”

  “Do you hear anything from him? Win and I are so out of touch with local gossip.”

  Maggie touched a button and rolled up all the windows in the car. She did not look relaxed.

  “Laurent said he heard he'll be getting out sometime this year and rumor has it he'll get an annulment from Danielle when he does--if you can believe anything so ridiculous-- and then I guess he'll do us all a favor and disappear.”

  Grace frowned and pushed the car onto the A20 highway in the direction of Arles.

  “Why do you say getting the annulment is ridiculous? You're in a very strange mood this morning, darling.”

  “They've been married for nearly twenty years, Grace! Doesn't that sound a little ridiculous to you? To get an annulment after twenty years? It's a joke! Why not just get a divorce like the rest of the world and be done with it?”

  Grace turned to look at Maggie who was biting her bottom lip and staring out at the landscape, made bleaker and more colorless by the intrusion of the super highway. She turned the music down to a whisper.

  “Well, you know,” Grace said reasonably, keeping her voice cheerful, “Danielle and Eduard never had any children. That helps their case of annulment...” She hurried on as she saw Maggie's impatience with this argument. “...and of course, if they were to divorce, Danielle, who is a good Catholic, would not be able to re-marry.” Grace watched her words sink in as Maggie's face softened in understanding.