Son of Holmes

by John Lescroart

  The rain became fierce, and again I found myself soaked. In no mood to continue an already disagreeable walk, I hired a carriage back to my home. Fritz greeted me at the door with undisguised concern, tempered with reproval.

  “Are you well, sir?”

  “Damn it, Fritz, no. No, I’m not well. I’m drenched, my clothes are ruined for the second time, I’m tired, and my oldest friend has been murdered in my house. No, I’m not well at all.”

  He stood back and silently took my clothes.

  “I’m sorry to snap,” I said, “but it has been a trying time.”

  “Monsieur Lupa came by this morning and told me you were in good hands. Madame Chessal went home after breakfast. Would you like some tea or brandy?”

  He handed me my robe, and I went into the front room to sit before the fire, where I brooded for a while about my age until Fritz came back with tea laced with brandy. After one cup I fell off to sleep.

  Fritz woke me again when it was already dark, served me a small meal of coddled eggs with sherry and black butter, and suggested I retire, which I did.

  5

  Ironically, but predictably, the sun blazed forth on Friday morning for Marcel’s funeral, and found me well rested. Fritz always rose at dawn and, when the weather permitted, breakfasted by himself in the arbor. Since I was rarely awake by then, he justly considered this his time, and I was loath to disturb him, so I poured myself a cup of espresso before walking out. I was ashamed of myself for the way I’d acted the day before. These days at home had weakened me. I resolved to shake myself out of this softness.

  I walked to the arbor in my robe and bare feet, enjoying the feel of the wet grass. Fritz sat on a cushion that he’d brought out for the stone bench, eating a brioche with some ripe Brie and drinking his coffee. Already, at seven o’clock, the chill had gone from the air. The house and arbor had a striking, newly washed quality. A slight mist rose from the shingles of the roof.

  “Good morning, Fritz. Don’t get up. No muffins for me. I’ll just be having coffee in the mornings for a while.”

  We sat for a while without speaking. The stream murmured peacefully. At such a time it was hard to imagine the trenches, the carnage, a Europe—perhaps soon a world—at war. Yet it would be fatal to be lulled, to allow oneself to forget.

  Fritz pulled me from my reverie after he’d drained his cup. “You’re going to the funeral?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Madame Chessal, then, asks if you’ll pick her up on the way.”

  In a half hour, I had dressed and gone to the old servants’ quarters, where I kept my automobile, a Ford from America that I’d been allowed to keep after mobilization, though there’d been a substantial and very local “tax” for the privilege. The car started without any problem, and within minutes I pulled up to Tania’s house. She sat out on the front patio of the long, light blue structure, nibbling halfheartedly at her croissant.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  She stood quickly and came over to embrace me. She looked tired.

  “But you,” she said, “where did you go that Monsieur Lupa wound up taking care of you? Are you all right?”

  I patted her shoulder. “I’m fine. I think I just needed to forget, or perhaps to remember. At any rate, to lay Marcel to rest. I’m perfectly well now. Come, are you ready? You don’t look as though you’ve had such a wonderful night yourself.”

  She took my arm, leaning a fragrant head for a moment against my shoulder. She sighed. “Sometimes we’re so alike it’s frightening. I couldn’t stop thinking about poor Marcel. Last night I’m afraid I drank rather too much wine. Danielle had to put me to bed.”

  “Fritz did the same for me.”

  We got into the car and drove to the cemetery. The service wasn’t due to begin until ten o’clock, so we had nearly two hours to walk through the surrounding countryside and compose ourselves. I decided that my suspicions about Tania on the day before had been ridiculous, but resolved not to say anything unnecessary to anyone until this mess had been cleared up.

  When we finally walked down to the cemetery proper, Georges and Paul had arrived. Paul looked especially out of place in a dark suit. In the time that I’d known him, I couldn’t ever recall having seen him dressed even semiformally before. We joined them by the gate.

  Gradually, some other of Marcel’s friends and relatives began to appear, and the four of us who had been in the room that night found ourselves effectively ostracized. Henri and his wife arrived among a small group who left them immediately after they’d passed the gate. Madame Pulis, whom I’d never met, was weeping, and Tania walked over to comfort her. Henri joined the rest of us.

  After a few moments of uncomfortable small talk, we walked over to the grave. Marcel’s parents had died long ago, and he hadn’t been married. I had probably been his closest friend, and yet the others around the grave treated all of us as though we’d been his enemies. We stood in a knot while the usual forms were followed and, when the body had been lowered, were the first to turn and go. Madame Pulis had been constantly crying throughout.

  Georges walked crookedly next to me. “Rather ugly, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I don’t suppose you can blame them.”

  Gathered around my car, we stopped to talk. Tania packed Madame Pulis into their carriage and walked pensively back.

  “I can’t understand those people,” she said. “Henri, your wife . . .” She stopped.

  “I know, I know. I suppose I shouldn’t’ve brought her along. She’s so emotional. She was fine until we met that other group. They asked if I’d been there Wednesday and acted as if . . . well, you know. And she’s very sensitive to that sort of thing. You’d think one of us killed him, the way they were acting.”

  Paul was seated on the running board, his tie now off, his coat across his legs. “It appears,” he said, “that one of us did.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” stormed Henri. “I goddamn well didn’t!”

  “I didn’t say you did, Henri. Calm down. But it isn’t unreasonable to assume that one of us planted that poison now, is it? You might as easily assume that I did it.”

  I looked sharply at him.

  Georges spoke up. “Have the police mentioned to any of you their suspicions? Motives, hints, clues?”

  Everyone said no.

  “The point is, they mentioned to me . . . well, we shouldn’t go around picking each other to pieces. They mentioned that it seemed to them to be at least as good a bet that it was suicide.”

  “That’s absurd,” I said. “I’d been with him most of the day. He hadn’t been depressed. In fact, he’d been looking forward to the summer.”

  “Well, the alternative, of course,” said Paul, standing up, “is that one of us did it.”

  “Again, not necessarily,” said Georges.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not necessarily one of us. One of ‘us’ isn’t here.”

  “Lupa!” said Henri.

  “It does seem strange he didn’t come,” said Tania, “though some people simply cannot abide funerals.”

  Paul laughed. “No one likes funerals.”

  “My wife does.” Henri shook his head, and we all laughed as the tension broke. “Speaking of . . .” He smiled at all of us and began to walk to the carriage. Tania called after him and asked if she might go with him, since I’d told her that I had business in St. Etienne.

  The three of us remaining watched them move off slowly, and I asked Paul if he needed a lift. Georges said he had some deliveries to make at St. Etienne and would I mind if he accompanied us? Since he had to pick up his supplies, we all agreed to meet later in the afternoon, and I drove off alone toward La Couronne. On the way, I remembered the beer I’d promised Lupa and detoured back by way of my home.

  Chez moi, I changed into something more comfortable and asked Fritz if he’d mind arranging the delivery of several cases of the beer to Lupa. Since it was lunchtime, Fritz insist
ed I stay and have something to eat, and he quickly prepared a small plate of ham croquettes, fresh bread, and a delicious paté made, he said, from the liver of a wild hare. Since he didn’t hunt, I had reason to doubt him, though one of the neighborhood boys might have come around with his catch. Still, wild hare or not, it was excellent. I had one of my own beers to overcome my lurking fear about them, and during the first few sips, Fritz looked at me with real anxiety. I smiled.

  “They don’t produce cyanide of themselves,” I said.

  He didn’t think that at all funny and crossed back into the house, where he could eat in his cool and shaded kitchen, washing everything down with his daily demi-bouteille of uncomplicated wine.

  I decided it would be a waste of time to see Lupa before I’d been to St. Etienne, and so I found myself for the second time that day with some spare time on my hands. I walked slowly up the stairs to my room and reached into the false bottom of my lower left-hand drawer, taking out my pistol.

  It was an older but nevertheless effective weapon, excellent for close quarters and concealment. I don’t know why I’d stopped wearing it when I’d returned home this last time. That had been foolish. It was a derringer, its tiny butt overlaid with carved ivory. For all its beauty, it was a terribly powerful weapon—the same gun, though of course an earlier model, had been used to assassinate the American President Lincoln. I carried it in a special holster that I wore under my shirt. Up in my room, I began to clean and oil its few moving parts, so that by the time I left the house, I felt finally prepared for the work I might have to do.

  It was still early for our rendezvous—I was meeting my friends at the town fountain at one thirty—so I stopped by Tania’s house to see if she’d come back yet. I found her inside, fuming. Sitting down next to her, I kissed her on the cheek.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “That man is such a . . .” She was so angry her voice was shaking. “And I thought you were to be in St. Etienne.”

  I explained the delay, though her eyes still flashed in anger. “It’s not really you—it’s him. He’s so infuriating, I . . .”

  “Now, now,” I continued, “Henri’s under a lot of pressure, and . . .”

  “Not Henri. That other man, the one you asked to join us the other night. Lupa!” She stood up and stalked around the room.

  “What’s he done?”

  She stopped and glared across at me. Then suddenly her face softened, and she walked back and kissed me.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just very upset. Let’s go outside and talk, shall we?”

  So we walked out to where she’d eaten earlier that morning. She asked Danielle to bring us some tea, then sat down.

  “Now,” I said, “what’s wrong? What’s Lupa done?”

  “He’s done nothing. He’s just so arrogant! He omits doing things, and so superciliously . . . well, no. I’m being hysterical.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the table.

  “We were coming back, and as you know, Madame Pulis was very upset by the whole thing, and I was thinking of the callousness of our fellow townspeople. We happened to pass La Couronne on our way, and we saw your Monsieur Lupa sitting under the awning, reading a newspaper and drinking beer. I wanted to scold him—all right, I know I’m too much a mother sometimes—but I did want to. I asked Henri to stop.

  “Now,” she continued, stopping me before I could interrupt, “don’t think I was going to snap at him for missing the funeral. After all, I realized that he hardly knew Marcel. I was just angry. I really don’t know why I stopped. Perhaps I was being too whimsical. But nevertheless, I did it. Henri let me out and I walked over and asked if he’d mind if I joined him for a moment. Do you know what he said?”

  I smiled. “I’d guess he said something like, ‘To be frank with you, yes, I would mind.’ ”

  “Well, of course, he wasn’t that rude, but I certainly wasn’t made to feel very welcome. After I’d sat down, he carefully ignored me while he finished the column he was reading, drank off his beer, called for the waiter, and ordered two more. Finally, he looked straight at me, and in the sweetest voice asked if I’d like some refreshment.

  “I asked for a café au lait, and he appeared to shudder slightly as he ordered. I asked him if something was wrong, if he’d rather I left.

  “ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I simply have a prejudice against milk and coffee together in the same cup. Two tolerable beverages by themselves, but together,’ and here he turned his mouth up the smallest degree, ‘together rather like a man and a woman who individually are pleasant but who fail as a couple.’ So we sat in silence until the waiter returned.”

  Danielle came back with the tea, and we poured.

  “I still fail to see, my dear,” I said, “what he’s done to so upset you. I grant you that he’s arrogant and outspoken, but not without a certain charm.”

  “Well, he’s not learned to polish his charms, so they appear cheap.”

  “All right, now, what else?”

  She sipped at her tea. “As soon as the waiter had gone he looked at me in all politeness. ‘And now, madame, what can I do for you? You look a bit tired.’

  “ ‘I am a bit tired,’ I said. ‘One of my dearest friends was buried this morning.’

  “ ‘Yes?’ he answered, as if to say, ‘Well, so what?’

  “By this time I was so rattled that I’m afraid I rather blurted, ‘We were wondering why you hadn’t bothered to attend the funeral.’

  “ ‘We?’

  “ ‘Yes, we. Those of us who’d been at Jules’s. We were all there, as was proper. Except, of course, for you.’

  “He picked up his beer and drank as though completely dismissing me. I tell you, Jules, I was sorely tempted to slap him. Finally, he put his glass down, told me I was upset, and asked me if I would care to lunch with him. Then he proceeded to speak of his upcoming lunch as though it were all that mattered in the world. I’ll try to give you some of the flavor of it.”

  As she spoke, Tania tried to imitate Lupa’s deep baritone: “ ‘Sausages. I was in Spain a few years ago and one day I was standing outside a tapas bar, and the smell of fresh sausage pulled me inside. A large, smiling woman, Señora Beran, was grilling ten or more sausages behind the bar, and so I sat down and began talking with her. She said the sausages were prepared by her son, Jerome, and the recipe was his special secret, but I was welcome to try them. As soon as I’d tasted them, I knew them to be superb, and the flavor remained with me until, indeed, I could think of nothing else. Daily, I went to this same bar and, I’m afraid, badgered that poor woman to distraction. I had to have that recipe. Finally, though, I had to leave and, since that time, have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate that flavor. I’ve written to Jerome Beran personally, through his mother, but he’s been elusive. So now once each month I try again. Not more often because the frustration of failure is bitter indeed. And I dare to call myself a chef. Ha!’ ”

  She looked down into her tea. The forenoon breeze whipped her shining dark hair intermittently into her eyes. She reached out her hand across the table for me to take it. “Can you imagine, Jules? He sat and talked about that sausage as though there were no war, no deaths . . .” She paused for a moment to control her voice. “Then, when the sausage arrived, he took a bite and immediately removed from his pocket a small notebook and wrote something. ‘It’s not right,’ he said simply. ‘I must use less brandy and more fowl.’ Thereupon he proceeded to eat every last bit of sausage, pausing at regular intervals to shake his head.

  “It was not until he had finished that he addressed himself to me again. ‘Now, as to your question, madame. By the way, are you enjoying the sausage? Excellent wine, even though it’s Spanish, don’t you think?’ Food, food, food. All right, the man’s a chef, but really, Jules . . .”

  I patted her hand.

  “ ‘Why didn’t I attend the funeral?’ he finally began. ‘There are two reasons. Both, I’m afraid, quite selfish. One, I dislike funerals. A man
is a man until his death, after which he becomes mere mineral matter. If one is of a cathartic cast, there may be benefit in public interment, but, even then, the catharsis is misdirected. Death is not tragedy but pathos. Two, lately I’ve been becoming much too flexible in my schedule, and I decided to end that flexibility.’ He looked at me as though he’d explained everything.”

  “He is rather intractable,” I offered.

  “I was so upset by this time, I didn’t know what to do. He sat looking at me from across that small table, seemingly quite pleased with himself. I wanted to leave, but I wanted to, well, to make him mad, so I stood up and said, ‘If I were you I’d be a little more careful. More than one of us believes you killed Marcel,’ and I turned to go. He spoke my name then, so abruptly that everyone looked up, and I came back to the table.

  “ ‘Let’s not be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘I am an acquaintance of Monsieur Giraud. In fact, I’ve spoken to him at some length. For now, you are upset, and I suggest you go home and get some rest.’

  “With that, he called for a carriage and sent me on my way. What should I think of him, Jules? Is he a friend of yours?”

  Of course, Lupa had told her nothing about our real relationship, leaving it to me to make that decision. I’d tried to be honest with Tania as much as possible, though I hadn’t told her what I really was. There had been no need. And now, I was reluctant to tell her because I was afraid of her. Afraid that she might not understand or, on the other hand, would understand too well. So I temporized.

  “I wouldn’t worry about Monsieur Lupa, dear,” I said. “I spent the night at his place on Wednesday after my walking took me downtown. He’d come to the gathering only to try my beer, and was genuinely upset at the way things turned out. He’d only met Marcel that afternoon and they had had no disagreements. They seemed to get on quite well. Certainly, he had no reason to kill him.”