A French Country Murder

by Peter Steiner

  Hugh asked himself how he could best restore his advantage, how he could regain maneuvering room. By the time his plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base and he had been helicoptered to the Department of State, Hugh had composed his letter of resignation as secretary of state.

  December 15

  Mr. President,

  It is with mixed feelings that I am tendering my resignation as secretary of state. My sense of satisfaction at all the things we have accomplished together is mixed with regret that I am leaving the job while so much remains to be done.

  As you know, Ruth’s sudden death not six months ago was devastating to me beyond description. I have fought to recover, but have finally come to the conclusion that her death is, and will remain, a distraction from my doing my best work for some time to come. I am sorry for not having recognized that fact sooner. I only hope I have not, in the meantime, brought harm to your vision for an enlightened and rational foreign policy.

  Of course, I serve at your pleasure and will gladly stay in my current position until a new secretary of state has been chosen and confirmed by the Senate. Beyond that, I hope to be able to serve you and your administration in whatever advisory capacity you might require of me.

  Thank you, Mister President, for your continued faith in me, and for your unwavering support, especially in these last months.

  Sincerely,

  Hugh Bowes

  Secretary of State

  The president was shocked when he read the letter which Hugh handed him. “Why, Hugh? Why now all of a sudden?”

  “I am a slow study in some things, Mister President. I did not imagine how Ruth’s loss would affect me. I was so preoccupied with various matters of state that it only dawned on me slowly to what extent I might have lost my edge and concentration.”

  “That is simply not true, Hugh. Isn’t there any way I can persuade you to change your mind?” There was pleading in the president’s voice and eyes. Hugh sipped from a glass of bourbon.

  “It is time,” said Hugh, “for a new generation to move into power. I am certain you will have no trouble at all finding many capable candidates. I will be only too happy to help you through the process. If you like, I can oversee the selection.”

  The president leaned back in his chair. “You have someone in mind.”

  “Several names come to mind,” said Hugh. “James Dillworth, for instance. He was invaluable to me as undersecretary for European affairs. He has gained visibility and universal respect as ambassador to the United Nations.”

  “Who else,” said the president.

  Hugh named others. None of the people he suggested were either too independent or too courageous. “And of course, Mister President, if you choose to keep me on as your personal advisor, I would have the capacity to act and to direct the further development of your foreign policy without the constraints that might encumber me as an official in your administration.”

  At his next press conference, the president announced that he was accepting Hugh’s resignation with great regret, and that he was naming James Dillworth to be Hugh’s successor. He praised Dill-worth as a worthy successor, whose vision and belief in the power of diplomacy echoed Hugh Bowes’s. “And let me add this personal note,” said the president. He laid aside the pages of his statement and stepped to the side of the podium. “Hugh Bowes has served his country with courage and singular dedication throughout this and previous administrations. I knew, when I named him secretary of state, that I was getting an exceptionally capable man to direct my foreign policy. But I did not know his true mettle. In my studies of American political and diplomatic history, and you know I am a devoted student of these subjects, I have found no diplomat who has served his country better than Hugh Bowes has. He has been my most able counselor on matters, not only foreign, but also on prickly domestic matters. But he has also been a friend. And, goodness knows, a guy in my position can use a friend, especially when you folks in the press cut loose from time to time.” The assembled reporters laughed along with the president.

  Later that week, Hugh held a meeting with State Department officials assembled in the large auditorium to offer them his personal farewell. “You are the finest people there are,” he told them. “It has been an honor serving with you as we all together serve this great democracy. It will be hard to go, but you know me: I won’t be going far.” There was laughter from the assembled diplomats. “Most of you know how terrible Ruth’s loss was for me. I am, I have been surprised to discover, a slow healer. At this time in my life, I want to take some time to think. I want to write, memoirs perhaps, certainly some thoughts about the conduct of foreign policy which, I fancy, might be of some modest use to those that come after us. I might teach. I will certainly offer advice, whether it is asked for or not.” Again there was laughter. “And now it is time to stop.” Hugh Bowes’s voice suddenly choked with emotion. “It has been wonderful, to know you and to work with you. I will miss you all.” The assembly sprang to their feet and applauded enthusiastically and with genuine affection.

  Louis read the brief announcement of Hugh’s resignation in the International Herald Tribune. A few days later he received a note from Sarah.

  Dear Louis,

  I thought this might interest you. Is it good news for you, or bad? Does this mean he is finished with you, that whatever was going on is over?

  Jenny told me she is going back to school. She wants to be a nurse, she thinks. Her timing isn’t great—health care here is a mess—but I think she’ll be a very good nurse.

  I hope you’re well.

  Sincerely,

  Sarah

  She had enclosed a story from the Washington Post about Hugh Bowes’s resignation, followed by an account of his long and illustrious career. “Hugh Bowes is the consummate diplomat, the diplomat’s diplomat. For, not only is he universally respected by the international diplomatic community, he is liked and admired by the press corps as well. That is a test few Washington insiders are able to pass. For the press is susceptible to no amount of diplomatic skill. And political pressure counts for nought. ‘Either the press likes you or they don’t,’ said Rusty Martinez, diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times. They like Hugh Bowes. From his earliest days in Washington, Hugh Bowes was a favorite of reporters. ‘You could always count on Hugh to be straight with you,’ said Stan Edmonson of ABC News.”

  Hugh Bowes was paid an enormous advance for his projected memoir, which he titled All the World a Stage. It appeared a year later to enthusiastic reviews. “It is filled with intelligent insight into the political process in the United States and in the world at large,” wrote one reviewer. “Only a major actor on the world stage could have seen what Hugh Bowes has seen. And only a major actor could tell the stories Hugh Bowes has to tell. The immense value of this book is a measure of his success as a politician, diplomat, and human being. He is generous to his allies and magnanimous to his adversaries.” Louis ordered the book and read it with interest.

  The president continued to call on Hugh to help with ticklish situations no one else seemed able to deal with effectively, and Hugh helped where he could, with the enthusiasm, perspicacity, and generosity for which he was known. Hugh was invited to speak before prestigious groups, which he did with eloquence and humor. He continued to play a lively part in the highest echelons of Washington and New York society. He got quietly rich. He did not marry again.

  Was it over? There was no way for Louis to tell. Had Hugh abandoned his desire for retribution, or had Louis’s victory only redoubled his determination? Perhaps Hugh had resigned as secretary of state to devote himself more fully to his revenge. Or perhaps he had put it aside, was moving past it, just as he might move past any other small obstacle on the road to his renown. Neither possibility was unthinkable.

  Louis only knew that he could not forget about what had happened, or let go of the fear that, if Hugh decided to commence their struggle anew, there was nothing Louis could do to prevent it. Whatever peace
Louis had found in Saint Leon had been taken from him. Gnawing fear, which gradually faded to uneasiness, had been left in its place.

  Louis was convinced that Hugh would not kill him outright. Louis had given taped copies of the broadcast conversation at Charles DeGaulle Airport which Jean Marie had lifted from the master tape to Renard for safekeeping in his police files. Jean Marie had also obtained a list of people on duty at the airport that night—ticket agents, security people, maintenance and janitorial people, freight and baggage handlers—who might have heard the broadcast conversation. There were seventy-six in all. Louis did not send a copy of the tape to Hugh Bowes since, he reasoned, Hugh’s uncertain recollection of what he had said was probably far more powerful than the tape itself could ever be.

  Isabelle Renard made a celebratory dinner and invited Louis and the Lefouriers. Jean Marie came from Paris with a young woman he had been seeing. Isabelle roasted two capons with onions, carrots, and potatoes. The crisp brown skin of the birds was studded with cloves of garlic. After the meal she served cheese and fruit. Solesme explained how she had hired a taxi and followed Louis to Le Mans, and that she was in the same train as he going to Paris, how she had followed him in the RER to the airport and then in the navette.

  Suddenly, to everyone’s astonishment, Pierre, the great pyramid, began singing to himself. He sang off-key. His voice was hoarse from more than sixty years of smoking black tobacco. Then, still singing, he rose from his chair and began dancing, circling slowly about the dining table. The others turned in their chairs, one by one, as he passed behind them. They watched in silent amazement.

  Pierre held his right arm behind his imaginary partner’s back and his left arm perpendicular to the floor. He turned small, careful circles, balancing on his toes, his great body swaying to the rhythm of his own singing. The song, a familiar one, croaked and wheezed out of him as though he were some ancient and decrepit instrument, which, in a sense, he was. After a few moments, Solesme stood and slipped into his arms. Her voice joined his, though he hardly seemed to notice. He danced with his eyes closed and his mouth smiling.

  Louis and Isabelle stood at the same moment, and they too began singing and dancing, and then Jean Marie and Renard stood and began singing and dancing together, while Jean Marie’s astonished girlfriend watched and laughed, her hand in front of her mouth in a state that alternated between amusement and shock.

  It was a short winter. In late February, the grass began to grow and the jonquils and crocuses appeared. The wheat in the surrounding fields turned vivid green, buds appeared on the fruit trees. Louis and Solesme held each other as people do who are certain of their own deaths, wanting to obliterate forgetting and loss, hoping that the ferocity of their longing alone might accomplish that impossible feat.

  They walked through the fields together. Once, taken by sudden desire, they made love in a barn in the straw. It was not the sort of thing people their age did, but they did it anyway. Their breath rose in hot puffs of steam. Their skin was covered with red dots where the straw had pricked it. They admired each other naked, gasping and laughing in the cold, then hurried back into their clothes.

  Pierre died in March. His death was sudden, but not unexpected. How could it have been unexpected at his age? The hearse left the church in Saint Leon and moved up the hill to the cemetery on the edge of town. Solesme led the mourners. Her brother and a sister walked beside her. Louis walked with Renard and Isabelle in the crowd of townspeople. They walked through the square, past the Hotel de France, past the police station, the post office, the bakery. Outside the stationery store, a mother stooped to comfort her small daughter who had begun to cry at the sight of so many old people dressed in black.

  Pierre was buried under a wrought-iron cross with his picture on it and his name and dates in gold leaf. Afterward, people shook Solesme’s hand or embraced her. They stood about in small groups, talking about how the young were all moving to the city, and the government could do nothing to prevent it. Unemployment was epidemic. Village life was dying. Everyone nodded their heads in sad agreement.

  XXVI

  APRIL CAME, THEN MAY. LITTLE BY LITTLE, THE ROUTINE AND order of the day-to-day worked its way back into Louis’s heart, until the chaos which had landed on his doorstep had been smoothed out and pushed into memory. The story of the dead man and Hugh Bowes became, like everything else that resides in memory, just another moment from his life, one more piece of experience. In his garden, Louis cut the small white heads of lettuce one by one. He pulled the radishes. He drew the earth up over the burgeoning asparagus stalks. He pinched off the tendrils from the strawberry plants. He hoed away the weeds. He planted and staked the tomatoes. He planted beans. He planted a row of zinnias. In the evening, he passed up and down with a large green watering can and carefully soaked each plant, each row, refilling the can from the spigot beside the garden.

  Standing high on the wooden ladder, he cut back the Virginia creeper to keep it from growing under the roof of the barn. He cut the laurel hedge. He marveled, with Solesme, how everything had grown. He fertilized and pruned the roses. He stood below and watched as the Lagrande brothers clambered over the roof, replacing broken and missing slates. Guy Vivet hung the new oak shutters he had made for Louis. Guy had salvaged the hardware from the old pine shutters, which had not cost much, but had not lasted very long either. “Shutters,” said Guy, “should be oak.”

  Renard came by for coffee. The people who had kidnapped Solesme seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. The search for them had gone nowhere, and once she had been released unharmed, the investigation had been shunted aside by more urgent matters. The resources of the police were stretched too thin. Louis showed Renard his newest painting, a still life of lettuces and radishes. “It looks good enough to eat,” said Renard. He never knew what to say about Louis’s paintings.

  One morning in the middle of May, Louis was finishing a late and leisurely breakfast on the terrace. The weather was changeable: menacing clouds followed by brilliant sunshine. Charly Matrat arrived in his little yellow van with the mail. There was a letter from Jenny. Her handwriting was careful and round. All the periods were neat little circles.

  May 10

  Dear Dad,

  I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write. I’ve been really busy.

  Good news! I have been accepted by the nursing program at Marymount College in Arlington! Thanks for your encouragement in this. Mom has been encouraging too. Even Michael, when I told him what I was going to do, said “Go for it, Jen.” So I guess I will, though I’m still scared about doing it. It’s a completely different direction for me, something I never even thought about before. But somehow it really appeals to me.

  Thanks too for your invitation to visit and your offer to pay for my ticket. It is very nice of you. I have so much to do, so much to figure out between now and the start of classes in August, including a chemistry course I have to take this summer (a condition of my admission), that I just can’t afford the time away. I can’t afford the time away, Dad, but I decided I’m going to do it anyway! Michael told me you invited him too, but he isn’t coming this summer. He said to say that he’ll write you. As you can tell, now Michael and I talk from time to time.

  As it happens, the dates you suggest are good ones for me. But is it all right if I just stay for a week? Let me know how to get from Paris to your house. I’ll see you June 18! It’s barely a month away! Just this minute I realized I am really going to do this and got very excited!

  Jenny

  On June 17, after tending and watering his garden, Louis drove to Le Mans and once again took the train to Paris. He slept in a small hotel, the Istria in Montparnasse, and early the following morning, he took the RER to Charles DeGaulle. It was another sunny, crisp day, just the sort of day Louis had hoped for.

  Louis stood with his eyes fixed on the board announcing the arriving flights. He almost expected to see Jenny’s name appear on the board. Jenny’s plane arri
ved at eight o’clock. A half hour later she pushed her luggage cart through the swinging doors that led from customs. Her eyes searched the crowd and quickly found Louis. To her surprise and his, she threw herself into his arms, and he held her for a long time, caressing her hair and kissing her forehead.

  Jenny was tired, of course, so Louis suggested they go straight home and save Paris for the last day of her trip. To see Paris thoroughly, she would have to come back again and stay longer. In the train, Jenny fell asleep against his shoulder. Louis looked at their reflection in the window, afraid that if he turned to look at her directly, she might vanish altogether.

  When they drove up the driveway, Jenny wanted to go straight to her room and sleep. “Just a nap, Jenny, or you won’t be able to sleep tonight.” Louis sat on the terrace and gazed out over the garden at the wheat swaying tall and green, showing the first hint of gold. While she slept he went shopping. He made a salad for lunch. He woke her after she had slept for two hours. “This is where I eat my breakfast every morning, all year round,” he said and waved his hand to take in the landscape before them. “And lunch and dinner when the weather is good.”

  “You’re a good cook, Dad,” said Jenny.

  “It’s a salad, Jenny. But you’re right: I am a good cook.” He had invited the Renards and Solesme for dinner that evening. He made a roast pork loin with prunes, potatoes, and spinach. Jenny had had three years of French in high school. She had forgotten most of it and was shy about using what remained. Solesme and Isabelle knew very little English. Renard would not admit to knowing any. And yet, somehow, the dinner conversation was spirited. Renard would, from time to time, suddenly contribute a perfectly formed and horribly pronounced English sentence, which delighted everyone each time he did it. Solesme and the Renards were glad to finally meet someone from Louis’s family. “She has your nose and mouth,” said Solesme.