Renard walked slowly up the driveway again, watching the ground as he walked. Louis was sitting at his little table on the terrace.
“I have to look around,” said Renard.
“Of course,” said Louis.
“You didn’t find anything, did you?” asked Renard.
“Nothing,” said Louis. Renard knew that Louis would have already gone around the house, centimeter by centimeter, and that he, Renard, was now searching in vain.
III
AT THE BASE OF THE DRIVEWAY, LOUIS HAD FOUND A BUSINESS CARD from the Hotel du Chateau and its restaurant called La Rilletterie. They were located, as the card said, just two hundred meters from the chateau on the main road in the village of Villandry. Closed Mondays. Someone had drawn circles on the back of the card, trying to get the ink started in a ballpoint pen. Louis had gone all the way around the house and barn and up and down the driveway several times by the time Renard had arrived. But there was nothing else to be found.
Louis spent the rest of the day painting. Then he drove into town as he did every evening before supper. He bought a trout at the fish market. At the bakery he got a baguette. He stopped at Madame Picard’s house to buy eggs and butter. At home he picked some green beans and got some potatoes from the barn. The sun was still high as he sat down at the small metal table to eat the trout, slicing it carefully down the middle, lifting the tender flesh away from the bones, lifting the skeleton out and putting it aside. He gave the head to Zorro, the cat. The beans were firm, the potatoes sprinkled lightly with pepper and dill. Everything glistened under a film of Madame Picard’s fat golden butter. He mopped up the butter with a piece of baguette.
He usually lingered after supper while the sun set behind the hill. But tonight he quickly carried the dishes inside and put them in the sink. He backed the car out of the barn and drove off south toward Villandry. It was late July, and the days were already growing shorter. The weather had begun to shift ever so slightly. It was still hot during the day, but days of such extreme clarity, as today, had become rarer. And even today, a slight haze built into the air as evening fell. Some nights there was fog on the rivers. Faint clouds trailed across the sky. A pheasant shouted.
Louis put on dark glasses and drove into the sun. He kept to back roads. If anyone was following, he did not want to make things too easy for them. Besides, he liked the back roads, and his car was no longer suited for highway speeds. No one followed him. The drive took just over an hour.
La Rilletterie was a tourist restaurant connected to the small Hotel du Chateau. They sat snug against the road which ran past the chateau and through the edge of the village of Villandry. The restaurant’s small terrace was filled with diners. Directly across the road on the banks of the Cher was a campground filled, as it always was at this time of year, with vacation caravans. Lights flickered in the caravans, and the sounds of laughter and television drifted across to Louis as he left his car.
Inside, the restaurant was filled with diners too. A young woman greeted him. She was pretty. She had a quick smile and an appealing gap between her front teeth. Her brown hair was pulled back, but a few strands had come loose at the sides.
“I only want to ask you a few questions,” he said as she began to show him to a table.
“We are very busy,” she said, gesturing toward the tables with both hands.
“Just two questions.”
“Quickly then.” She picked up her pen and looked into her reservation book.
“Do you have a black man working here?”
“No,” she said, and then as an afterthought, “are you from the police?”
“No,” he said. “Have you seen a black man in the company of some white men?”
“No.”
“They could be Americans, perhaps, or North Africans. They would have been here yesterday or the day before.”
“We were closed yesterday. We’re closed on Mondays.”
“Or the day before.”
“We get people from all over the world. Americans and Africans, Japanese. Please excuse me now. I’m sorry, I’m very busy.” She picked up some soup bowls at a table and went into the kitchen. She returned carrying two plates with steak and frites . The people she was serving looked at Louis curiously. He walked to the bar and sat down. The young woman waited on him. He drank a kir.
He left the restaurant and walked across the street. The sun had set. Reflections of the first stars were dancing in the water. At the campground, everyone had gone into their caravans. The hotel was brightly lit. He went inside and asked the young man at the desk the same questions he had asked in the restaurant. The answers were the same. He asked for a room for the night, but none was available.
Louis was not so much looking for anything or anyone in particular, as he was trying to attract the attention of anyone who might have been interested in him. It was probably a futile thing for him to do, but it was all he could think of. As he had told Renard, he had no interest in solving the murder. In fact, the possibility that the life he had carefully and meticulously built for himself here could be disrupted and ruined in the course of a murder investigation was nearly as frightening to him as the likelihood that he was an intended victim himself.
He did not harbor any secrets that might be of importance to anyone else, at least, as far as he knew. He had kept his past to himself simply to keep it at bay, and he clung to this secret in a superstitious way, as though it were the key to his continued tranquility. But he saw now that his tranquility was probably lost, gone forever. Moreover, he felt certain—he did not know why, but how could it be otherwise—that when the killer, or killers had finished playing with him, they meant to kill him too.
The magnificent gardens of Villandry were closed and deserted. The last gardener had locked away his tools and gone home. The chateau had been closed up, and the people of Villandry were closing and shuttering their shops and homes for the night. The day’s heat had lifted, and it was getting chilly. Here and there, a thin shaft of light shone through curtains that were not quite closed. The sound of cutlery on china escaped into the narrow streets. Dogs barked behind ancient wooden doors and in courtyards as they heard Louis pass, his steps echoing against the high stone walls. He wandered from street to street, uphill, away from the river, behind the castle gardens.
As he walked along the high garden walls, he came to an enormous wooden gate. In the middle of the gate was a door with a small sign that read: NO ENTRY. BY ORDER OF THE ADMINISTRATION, VILLANDRY CHATEAU AND GARDENS. The door was unlocked. He slowly pushed it open and stepped through. He found himself overlooking the darkening chateau gardens from above. He could still make out the great square plots below, with their rows of flowers and vegetables, and their patterns of exquisitely carved hedges. The trellises of roses, the precise curlicues of box sent their fragrance into the night air. Stars and a wisp of moon, which seemed to have suddenly appeared, were reflected in the great still pool.
It seemed impossible that whoever had dumped the murdered man at Louis’s door the night before could have left the card from the Rilletterie intending for Louis to pick it up, come to Villandry, and then come up the winding streets and through the gate to this very spot. Still, Louis was suddenly on his guard as he realized in what a completely vulnerable position he found himself. He stepped back against the wall and looked around himself in every direction.
He saw something move in the bushes, not ten meters to his side. He moved soundlessly across the short grass. He leaned across a low hedge of boxwood, only to find himself peering into the upturned faces of startled lovers. “My God,” they said, terror in their voices, “who are you?” “What do you want?”
Louis muttered an apology and quickly stepped back through the gate into the street. He leaned against the wall while his heart pounded. His earlier life, a life he had thought long buried, a life where deception and treachery were the norm, this life that he had finally loathed and wanted to be completely and absolutely rid
of, had resurfaced and taken him over again, in the instant it takes to slice someone’s throat. Changing your life, escaping to rural France, to Timbuktu, for that matter, would not make any difference. It was like a spiritual virus that, once contracted, lived on in you until it became virulent and broke out all over again.
His car stood bathed in light beneath a street lamp. It appeared not to have been tampered with. But, as he was leaving Villandry, a car followed him at a close distance. They crossed the Cher, then the Loire, then drove through Langeais, then left off the main highway at Cinq-Mars, up the hill and out into the country. The car behind him did not make any effort to conceal itself. They drove along deserted country roads and through darkened towns. In the Bois de la Barre, the road was straight and narrow, barely wide enough for one car. The dark pines flashed by on both sides and formed a tunnel overhead. Two deer leapt across the road ahead.
At Neuille Pont Pierre, Louis stopped at the traffic light. The street was deserted. The other car pulled slowly up beside him. It was a large late-model BMW. A man was driving, his face completely in shadow. The woman in the passenger seat talked to the driver, then laughed silently at something he said and turned to look in Louis’s direction. The top of her face was in shadow. She continued her conversation with the driver as she gazed toward Louis. Was there a gap between her front teeth? Louis could not be sure.
As the light changed, the BMW turned left. It had a white oval decal beside the license plate with the initials CD, which stood for corps diplomatique. Louis memorized the license number. Then he drove on to Saint Leon, which was only a few kilometers further on. The next morning he called the Hotel du Chateau in Villandry and reserved a room for that night.
IV
IT TURNED OUT THAT SOLESME LEFOURIER, LOUIS’S NEAREST NEIGHbor, had seen something. She greeted Renard pleasantly and inquired after his wife and his mother. Renard tried to press ahead with his inquiry. Of course, she had seen the ambulance leave. She was glad Monsieur Morgon was all right, she said. She did not ask what the ambulance had been doing there. Nor did she ask why Renard was asking her questions. Renard concluded from this that Louis had already spoken with her and had told her about the dead man.
“This is only a routine police investigation,” said Renard nonetheless, hoping to make their interview as brief as possible. He spoke in what he thought sounded like an official voice. “I regret, madame, I cannot say any more.”
Solesme Lefourier lived with her husband in the small cottage a few hundred meters below Louis Morgon’s driveway. She had inherited the house, along with its modest barn and garden, its wine cave cut into the hillside, from her parents while still a young woman. Every day she tended her garden or sat at the window with a book, in either case, rarely out of sight of the road which passed in front of her house. Very little escaped her notice. Even after her ancient husband Pierre—he was nearly forty years her senior—was long asleep, Solesme Lefourier sat in her chair at the window and looked into the night. Solesme Lefourier had been crippled since childhood. Her spine was fused and twisted, so that lying down for any length of time caused her pain. So she sat at the window night after night, waiting for sleep to come. She heard the high barking of foxes that sounded like a child crying. She heard the wavering call of an owl and the shrill scream of a rabbit being killed. And she saw the few vehicles that passed up and down the narrow road.
The night in question had been cool. But she had had the window open. It was not surprising that she had noticed the passing of an unfamiliar car. She could see the bottom of Louis’s driveway and the very top of his house above the crest of the hill, she explained. Renard turned around to look. Years before, she continued, she had watched from here while the roofers, the Lagrande brothers, took off the old slate tiles, repaired the beams and lath, and replaced the slate.
“And last night?” said Renard, trying not to sound impatient. Solesme smiled at Renard but ignored his question.
Louis had stopped by her house and introduced himself shortly after he arrived. A retired gentleman from the United States, he had spoken halting French. His French had gotten quite excellent over the years, didn’t Renard think so? She liked his accent, found it charming, cultivated. She smiled at Renard again.
“Louis Morgon has become a trusted neighbor and a friend.” He helped her with little things, like repairing a shutter. Of course, he liked to speak about painting. He was passionate about painting. She knew nothing about painting, but she admired his paintings.
Renard shifted impatiently from foot to foot. So far I haven’t learned a thing about the murder, he thought. Meanwhile, I have heard all about their friendship. Solesme’s loquaciousness masked her care and discretion. Though Saint Leon was a small village, and everyone knew everyone else, no one, not even Louis’s friend, the gendarme Jean Renard, knew that she and Louis were lovers.
Solesme began to talk about the events of Monday night. She had fallen asleep at the window as she did most every night. She had fallen asleep with the window still open. She awoke as a car passed by slowly. It drove without lights, which made her take special note. And it stopped near the bottom of Louis’s driveway, out of sight of his house but not entirely out of sight of hers. It was partly obscured by a small stand of trees. The car stopped in the road, not on the gravel. The engine was shut off.
Two people got out of the car. Or maybe more. Solesme could not be certain how many there were. They did something together, but she could not see what it was. She thought that they might be lovers, but they did not stay long. They may have been there for five minutes. They may have opened the trunk. She couldn’t be sure. She thought one might have stepped down the road a few meters, then back up to the car.
“What did he do down the road?” asked Renard.
“Nothing. I don’t know. He may have dropped something. I don’t know.” She sounded apologetic that so much could have happened that she was unsure of.
“The others were already in the car. He got in the driver’s side, I think, or in the backseat behind the driver, and they drove off.” She had not been able to read the license of the car, but she thought it was a BMW. Renard was surprised that she would recognize a BMW in the dark, but she seemed fairly certain.
“A big one. Black or some dark color.”
“Did you see any of their faces?” asked Renard.
“The inside light did not come on when they opened the door.”
“Could you tell if they were white men or black?” asked Renard. He did not know what Louis might have told her. He might have been giving away more than he wanted to.
“Black?” said Madame Lefourier. She seemed surprised at the question. She thought for a moment. She decided she had been unable to tell.
“What about the brake lights?” asked Renard.
“The brake lights came on briefly. But I couldn’t read the number. The light was too dim.”
“Did you notice anything else about the car?”
She thought for a long moment. “There was a small white oval,” she said finally. “A decal of some kind. I couldn’t read it.”
“Which way did they leave? Up the road or back down?”
“Up the road. I thought they would turn around and come back down. But they must have known the road, or they would have turned around. What do you think this is all about?” she asked.
Renard sighed. He wanted to be somewhere else. He preferred mediating disputes between neighbors to investigating murders. Then you did not have to lie and conceal things from people. You did not have to fear the arrival of the big officials with their smooth hair and their suits and uniforms.
“Madame,” he said, adopting his official tone, “you have been very helpful. If you think of something else about what you saw, please let me know. And now, one last question about the other night: Do you know what time it was when you saw the car?”
“It was just before three,” she said without hesitation. “The clock rang three right after they lef
t.”
“Thank you again, madame,” said Renard and stood to leave.
“One moment,” she said. She stood slowly, pressing herself upward off the chair with strong arms and hands. She led the way out to her cave. Though she walked with difficulty, she moved with surprising grace and even agility. Solesme Lefourier, Renard could not help noticing, was a beautiful woman.
She picked two jars of honey from a sagging wooden shelf and handed them to Renard. “For Isabelle,” she said, handing him the one then the other. “And for your mother.”
V
RENARD DREW A LARGE CIRCLE ON THE MAP WITH HIS FINGER, retracing the circle he had drawn earlier with a red pencil. It took in a quarter of France. “The African was killed,” he said, “within three hours’ drive of your house. He was still alive at midnight. And he was drunk.” Louis sat looking at the map Renard had spread on his table.
“How do you know he was driven the entire way?” asked Louis. “Orly, Charles DeGaulle, and other smaller airports are well within your circle.”
Renard chose not to respond. “He was brought here by at least two men in a dark BMW just before three o’clock in the morning. They carried him up from the street and left immediately. We do not know the license number. The car had a white decal, an oval, perhaps from the corps diplomatique.”
“Solesme Lefourier,” said Louis with a smile. He met Renard’s eyes. “She misses very little.” Renard looked at Louis sharply. Renard had the distinct feeling that he was missing a great deal.
A French Country Murder Page 2
