The Corpse with the Silver Tongue

by Cathy Ace

  Alistair brings a huge bowl of salad from the kitchen, and we all pass it around and eat. The dressing is good. We use the bread to mop it up. Alistair replaces the bowl with a huge platter mounded with steaming, garlicky snails, and a round of applause greets its arrival. Everyone comments on how wonderful Alistair’s escargots always look. Apparently, he is famous for them. Alistair takes a huge portion and passes the platter to Madelaine, who needs help, it is so heavy. Beni stands to assist her. He serves her, then himself, passes the platter to Gerard, and it finally reaches me, Chuck, and Tamsin. Tamsin takes a tiny portion. Alistair takes more snails, then raises a glass of champagne and shouts, “Bon appétit!”

  We all drink and eat. There are comments about how tasty, plump, and juicy the snails are. I agree. They are. Alistair and his hill farmers are doing a great job! More bread is passed around, more champagne. I speak to Gerard, who tells me about the gardens, and the way they have developed over the years into different sections—Italian, formal, Mediterranean, English Country, and so on, with all the different sections requiring different types of tending.

  Alistair and Madelaine are disagreeing about something. Lots of “Non, non, it is bad for here . . .” from Madelaine, and “But it will be good—yes, yes . . .” from Alistair.

  Gerard shouts, “It is sacrilege!” He slams his aged fist onto the table. He is clearly very distressed.

  “Please stop fighting at my party,” I hear Tamsin say. “The swimming pool is divisive!” I nearly choke with surprise, but all becomes calm again, and Alistair and Madelaine clink glasses by way of declaring a truce. Beni rolls his eyes at Gerard, who shakes his head in reply. Then Alistair coughs, drops his bread, clutches at his chest, and falls into his plate of snails.

  Now . . . now I must concentrate. Who does what? I have to slow down the movie and study each face.

  Tamsin: She throws down a morsel of bread and says “Ally! Stop it! Stop messing about!” Her whole attitude says . . . annoyance.

  Madelaine: She brings her hand to her chest in surprise, almost matching Alistair’s motions and says “Mon Dieu!” quickly, and quietly. She is at full alert, leaning toward Alistair. She knows something is very wrong.

  Beni: He laughs and throws his hands up, booming “Alistair! No!” His face shows amusement, but some annoyance.

  Gerard: He’s looking intently at Alistair. He’s alarmed. Immediately. His hands move to the arms of his chair, so he can rise. He says nothing.

  Chuck: He’s facing me, with a puzzled look on his face. “What’s Alistair up to now—fooling around again, I guess?” He smiles broadly, then turns to look at his dead host.

  There isn’t one look of relief at the table. Not one hint of guilt. All the reactions are natural, or at least, explicable.

  Then I leap up, quicker off the mark than Gerard, and I rush to Alistair. I lift him, with Beni’s help. I feel no neck pulse. I shake my head. Tamsin starts to wail. Chuck comforts her, holding her in his arms . . . She pulls away and rushes to the staircase.

  “He’s gone . . . Ally’s gone!” she wails as she runs upstairs. I wonder where she is going, but I am trying to lay Alistair back onto the table top, and deciding if we should move the plate of snails first. I think it best to move it to one side, wipe the garlic butter from his face, and replace his head onto the table—gently.

  Tamsin arrives with her damned twigs, Beni suggests we leave the table, and we all agree. We troop through the kitchen to the balcony. Gerard comes out and announces the imminent arrival of the emergency services. Tamsin is last to join us, as she’s waggling her sticks about. When we’re all outside Beni goes back to make sure that she hasn’t set anything alight with her antics. It appears she hasn’t. I suspect this is a miracle. Then Madelaine collapses, the paramedics arrive, and all hell breaks loose.

  There. That’s it. I’m done. In more ways than one.

  I must have slept then, because the next thing I was aware of was a dig in my ribs and a nurse telling me, “Go home.”

  Fantastic!

  I was pleased to be getting out of the hospital at last—still alive.

  Saturday Morning

  I HAVE A SUSPICION THAT Nicoise hoteliers are used to seeing guests leave on a Friday evening and return on a Saturday morning, looking somewhat the worse for wear. The relatively disinterested yet knowing glance I got from the guy behind reception when I finally got back to my hotel implied as much. When I closed the door to my room and got a good look at myself in the full length mirror, I was surprised that the reception guy hadn’t let out a cry of horror upon my arrival. I know that at five four, weighing one hundred and eighty pounds and being forty-eight years old with greying hair, I’m not anything to write home about at the best of times—but good grief, even I thought that I looked a state!

  I usually keep my hair carefully swept straight back from my forehead into a ponytail and caught with a long scarf tied in a big floppy bow. But now it was a mass of ends and lumps and knots. Yuk. My clothes, my ubiquitous set of black bouncy, drapy layers, that suits most occasions, and which never, ever creases, looked as though I had slept in it—which, of course, I hadn’t; they gave me a delightful little gown to wear—you know the type. My mascara had worked its way down to the middle of each cheek, and the eye shadow had somehow wound up in my hairline. Lipstick smudged my chin, but my lips were completely colorless. No wonder the guy downstairs had that knowing look. Little did he suspect that my state of disarray was not thanks to a session of unbridled debauchery, but courtesy of a night on a gurney. I’d have traded one for the other in a heartbeat.

  I put aside thoughts of all the fun ways I could have ended up looking like such a mess, and set about cleaning myself up. An hour later I was feeling much fresher, and wondering what on earth to wear. When I’d packed my sadly shabby suitcase, I’d given thought to “nibbling salade Nicoise on the sea front” clothes, and even “enjoying a glass of rosé wine at a fine hotel” clothes. “Suitable for an interview as a possible murder suspect” clothes hadn’t really featured in my planning. I was a bit stumped. I decided that navy linen pants and a navy and white striped, boat-necked, lightweight top would do. (Horizontal stripes, in case you’re wondering—because whatever they say about them making you look wider, I still wear them: I firmly believe that people will look at me and think that it’s the stripes that are making me look twenty pounds heavier than I am. Ha! Take that, fashion editors!)

  On my way out of the hotel I stopped at reception to ask for directions to the police station. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would give cause for concern. The guy who’d seen me arrive in such a sorry state earlier on was clearly trying to find out why I needed to know where the police station was. Was Madame well? Had Madame experienced anything unpleasant? Was everything acceptable for Madame at the hotel? His English was really quite good, if a little formal, which was very fortunate given that my brain still wasn’t up to much real effort. I reassured him that everything was just fine, that I was in town to speak at the conference for criminologists, and that I wanted to go to meet with the police to help with some research I was doing. He looked relieved and satisfied. He was also kind enough to draw a map showing me the location of the address I’d given him.

  I followed the little map easily, but I didn’t arrive at the police station until five past eleven—it was farther away than I had thought, and much farther than the map had suggested. I’d asked the receptionist if he thought I could walk it in fifteen minutes and he’d said yes—but he was clearly a hopeless judge of distances. I’d been almost running for the last ten minutes and I was still late.

  Having told the uniformed policeman behind the plate-glass divider who I was and who I had come to see, I still sat there for twenty minutes. Waiting. By the time the English-speaking policeman from the night before came to collect me, I’d had a chance to cool down, mop the sweat off my face, and tidy up my once-again dishevelled hair.

  “Ah, Professor Morgan, please come with
me,” he said, as he opened a little side-door with a polite bow.

  “Please, call me Cait,” I replied.

  He smiled and nodded, and drew close to me. “And I am Pierre,” he whispered, “but here I am Lieutenant, or Officer, Bertrand,” he added with a warm smile, “so you had better be Professor Morgan.” He winked and opened a heavily embossed dark-wood door, holding it open for me to walk through. “Professor Morgan, Captain Moreau.”

  I walked into a magnificent room: a high vaulted ceiling with a deeply embossed cornice, tall double windows with shutters, walls with plaster panels and, a good twenty feet from me, a small man sitting at a large modern desk. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his greying hair looked as though it had been freshly raked, leaving it delightfully messy.

  “Bonjour, Professeur Morgan. Entrez. Je suis le Capitaine Moreau. Asseyez-vous.” His voice sounded gentle enough, as he motioned toward the seat he wanted me to use. Polite. He flashed his teeth, but his eyes were not smiling.

  “Merci,” I ventured, as I walked across the expanse of the room. I hoped this man’s English was better than my French. I suddenly felt nervous. Ordering food and getting directions, or even attempting to hold a polite conversation about the weather or the locale, are all within my grasp in French, but a police interview?

  “Parlez-vous français?” he asked, reasonably enough, with some hope in his tone.

  “Je suis desolée,” I managed, “je parle français un petit peu seulement.” I was pretty sure I’d said “I’m sorry, I only speak a little French” properly. His smile suggested that I hadn’t quite got it right, but that he understood quite well what I’d meant to say.

  He sighed. “Ah, tous les mêmes, ces Anglais,” he muttered under his breath. I wasn’t letting that one pass!

  “Mais, Monsieur, je suis originaire du Pays de Galles et je vis maintenant au Canada. Je ne suis pas Anglaise.” I smiled, knowing that I was being a little wicked in pointing out that rather than being English, I was originally Welsh and now lived in Canada. I wondered if he would know, or understand, anything about the feelings that Welsh people have when they are lumped in with the English.

  He smiled and nodded. It seemed he understood something. “Excusez-moi, Professeur, je comprends.”

  “Bertrand, entrez. Traduisez,” he called to Bertrand, who was still hovering at the open door. The young policeman, now designated the official translator, closed the door and hesitantly walked in. He stood at attention behind my chair. It felt a little intimidating.

  Captain Moreau and I then spoke directly to each other, and we each waited for Bertrand to translate. It was an odd way to proceed, but that’s how it went for the next twenty minutes. Through Bertrand the senior officer made it clear that he was making general enquiries into the events of the evening before; that I was being interviewed informally as a witness to those events; and that, while notes would be taken of what I was saying, I was not yet going to be required to make a formal statement, as there had been no decision taken as to whether an actual crime had taken place, or if our party had succumbed to a case of accidental poisoning. He further explained that if he felt that his investigations, and the results of tests being carried out by the police forensics department, suggested a crime had been committed, then I would be required to attend a more formal interview, at which time I would be required to make a legally binding statement, and he suggested I should then be aided by a French lawyer who spoke English.

  Nothing like making a girl feel comfortable before you have an “informal chat” with her, eh?

  I felt a bit flummoxed at all this explanatory preamble. Well, more than a bit flummoxed! You see, I’d been on the “right” side of the law for so long that I had forgotten how being questioned made me feel. For a moment or two I was right back at that police station in Cambridge, fifteen years ago, defending myself against the pretty heavy-handed assertion that I must have killed my boyfriend because I was the only other person present in our flat at the time of his death. I had been cooped up in that dreadful place for a terrible couple of days, with the entire weight of the police force trying to make me say or do something that would prove me guilty. The feelings of panic I’d had at that time were beginning to creep back.

  I kept telling myself that I hadn’t had anything to do with Alistair’s death, and that the French police would quickly discover that to be the case. Though even as I ran these thoughts through my head, I only half believed them myself. I realized I was picking at the sides of my fingernails as the captain spoke, and I looked up to wonder if he could read the inner turmoil in my face and in my actions. I was probably looking as guilty as hell! And terrified too. I had to pull myself together. I gave myself a quick talking to, settled my shoulders and tried to keep steady eye contact with him as he asked me to recount the events of the evening before.

  He asked fairly predictable questions: Why was I in Nice? Why was I at the party? How did I know Alistair? Did I know any of the other guests? Had we all eaten and drunk the same things? What had been my impressions when Alistair collapsed? Had I seen the stolen necklace?

  It was at this point that I dared to ask a question, because I was getting quite curious about this stolen necklace.

  “At the time that Tamsin Townsend mentioned the ‘Curse of the Celtic Collar’ there were people dropping like flies, so I dismissed it—but are you able to tell me what she was talking about?”

  Moreau thought for a moment, then leaned forward across his desk and spoke rapidly, his fingers lacing and unlacing as he spoke.

  “Monsieur Townsend was planning to give a valuable necklace to Madame Townsend for her birthday. We believe that the necklace disappeared from the apartment some time after lunch on the day in question. That is when Madame Townsend says she last saw it. Her husband then took it away so he could present it to her later that evening.”

  He might as well have said he couldn’t tell me anything, because I wasn’t much the wiser. Clearly, I was in the frame for theft, even if not murder.

  “So there has been a crime committed,” I observed, maybe a bit wickedly, “but you can’t be sure if there’s been a murder as well as a theft. Am I being questioned as a suspect for theft?”

  The translation of my question clearly made my translator uncomfortable, and drew raised eyebrows from his boss, who pushed himself back in his seat, smiled wryly and said in a broad accent, “Ah, the professeur of criminology she is . . . mmm . . . sharp, I think.”

  I smiled back, but thought about the impression I wanted to make—I didn’t want to seem to be a smart aleck.

  “I sometimes work with the Vancouver Police Department,” I explained. “I get called in to cases to help develop a deeper understanding of the victim. It’s my specialty. And sometimes I can provide insight in questioning suspects—the more the investigators know, the better able they are to assess whether the suspect is lying or telling the truth. Now, personally, I know nothing about this necklace, but clearly you have more information about it than you are telling me. Should you be ‘cautioning’ me—or whatever it is you do in France when you are questioning a suspect about an actual crime?”

  Captain Moreau nodded his head and drew in a long breath as Bertrand translated.

  “Professor Morgan, I do not need to caution you at this time as we are still establishing if the necklace in question is missing or if it has simply been hidden by the dead man. We do not know if M. Townsend was poisoned intentionally or accidentally. It is all unknown. But, tell me, I am interested in the opinion of a criminologist—what do you think happened last night?”

  I weighed my words carefully, and was as honest, and brief, as I could be.

  “M. l’Capitaine, I think that someone poisoned something that we all ate or drank last night, and that, for some reason, the poison affected Alistair more than the rest of us. I don’t know if he was the target of the poisoning, or if someone else at the gathering was supposed to die, or if we were all just supposed to become
ill. As I have told you, I didn’t know anyone else at the party other than Alistair, so it’s difficult for me to be more informative. If I think about Alistair as the intended victim, I’d say that at least three people, Chuck Damcott, M. Fontainbleu, and Mme. Schiafino, disliked Alistair’s involvement in a project to build a swimming pool in the gardens of the Palais. As for my own knowledge of Alistair—well, I might as well be open and tell you that he was known, during his working life, as a man who liked to have information about people that he could hold over them, in order to get them to do his bidding. I have no idea if that was a pattern of behavior he had continued into his retirement here in Nice.”

  The captain rubbed his hand through his hair as Bertrand translated. He looked thoughtful as he scratched the side of his nose and leaned closer to me across his desk. “Did you like M. Townsend, Professor?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered bluntly, “I disliked him intensely.”

  He nodded, appearing to have made up his mind about something. Then, quite abruptly, he stood up and held out his hand to shake mine.

  “Thank you for your honesty, Professor Morgan,” he said, looking down at the notes he’d been making. He looked me right in the eye as he added, “It is interesting to hear the point of view of someone who did not like the man whose dinner invitation they accepted, and who was the only guest unknown to anyone else at the table. You will not be leaving Nice until we have discovered the exact cause of M. Townsend’s death, Professor.”