Provence - To Die For

by Jessica Fletcher

  The road curved sharply to the right, past a stand of dark cypress trees and just before the turnoff to town. I rode around the arc and had to swerve wide to avoid hitting a green car stranded in the right lane. A woman was walking on the shoulder, kicking at the dirt in obvious frustration. It was Mme Roulandet.

  “Is this your car?” I asked, braking the bike and pointing behind me.

  She scowled at me. “And who else’s car would it be?”

  “If you leave it in the road, it’ll be the junkyard’s,” I said. “The next automobile along will crash into it.”

  “There have been no automobiles,” she said, furious. “I want there to be an automobile, but no one comes, except you.”

  “What happened?”

  “Stupid machine! The engine, she won’t start.”

  “Let me help you,” I said, looking back toward the dead sedan.

  “Do you have a phone with you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. Mine only works in the States.” I walked the bike back to her car. “Do you have a sign or a light or something we can put in the road to alert any oncoming driver there’s a problem ahead?” I asked.

  She shook her head, but opened the trunk. We peered inside. It was filled with crates of fruits, bunches of herbs, sacks of flour and sugar, baskets of eggs—she must have just come from the market—but nothing I saw could serve as a flare or warning sign. “I’ll be right back,” I said, climbing on the bike and pedaling back the way I’d come.

  She was standing on the shoulder when I returned with three strapping members of the road crew trotting behind me. A rapid-fire exchange ensued, from which I gathered that the men would push the car off the road, but their crew chief had the only phone, and he wasn’t due back for several hours.

  I circled back on my bike to head off any traffic that might unknowingly round the curve and threaten the lives of our good Samaritans. Fortunately, the road was still deserted, but might not be for long as a thin slice of the sun edged over the horizon. Mme Roulandet was going to be behind schedule. Her customers might have to do without their baguettes today.

  Minutes later, the road crew reappeared from around the curve, laughing and talking, happy for the break in the routine of their digging. I thanked them and caught up to the baker, who’d started walking down the road again toward the village, this time at least with her car safely parked on the shoulder. When I reached her, I hopped off the bike.

  “Do you have someone to help you at the bakery?” I asked.

  “Only in the summer when the tourists come,” she replied. “If I am early, I can manage to do it all. But today ...” She trailed off, a worried look on her face.

  “Do you ride a bicycle?” I asked. “You can take mine to ride to the farmhouse. It will be a lot faster for you.”

  “No,” she said. “The legs, they are not good.” She smiled wryly. “But thank you. That is very kind of you to offer.”

  “It’s ironic,” I said. “I was riding into town to see you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. You didn’t answer your phone, and now I know why.”

  “Poufft! So many calls I will miss this morning, and no one to bake the bread.” She sighed. “Why did you want to see me?”

  “I need a ride.” We both laughed. “I want to go into Avignon, and I was going to ask you to call Marcel to see if he can drive me today.”

  “Alas, Marcel, he drives his cousin to Marseilles today. Perhaps tomorrow?”

  “Oh, dear. I was hoping to go today.”

  “Quel dommage! What a pity.”

  We walked along quietly. I, enjoying the crisp, clear morning, and she, fretting about the business missed. Then she brought up a new topic.

  “I hear from a bird that you and your houseguest were in Avignon at the hotel where Bertrand was killed,” she said.

  I smiled. “Mme Arlenne knows how to fly around.”

  “A story like that is too good to keep under your basket. It’s worth at least a glass of pastis in the brasserie. There will be many to buy her a drink for the next month, especially if your little friend gives her more to work with. Even if she doesn’t, Mme Arlenne knows how to embroider a good story.”

  “I’m sure she does,” I said. “Did you know him at all, Chef Bertrand?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m thinking all the good bakers knew him. He was not above stealing a recipe or two if he thought it would do him some good.”

  “Martine told me there was a scandal associated with Bertrand. Did it have to do with stealing recipes?”

  “There was a story, some years back,” she said, standing still while she searched her memory for the tale. “I’m not sure I can remember. I forget so much these days.”

  “Ah, where is Mme Arlenne when we need her?”

  Mme Roulandet had a big laugh for a small woman. “She would certainly remember,” she said.

  The sound of an engine far behind us broke into our conversation. We turned and waited until a truck came rocketing around the curve where Mme Roulandet’s car had been only moments ago. Four arms went up in the air as we signaled the driver to stop. With brakes squealing, the pickup shuddered to a halt on the shoulder of the road.

  The driver was a young man with a shock of black hair slicked back from his forehead. He stuck his head out the window and yelled back at us, “Marie! What has happened?”

  “Ah, Antoine, the automobile, she stops,” Mme Roulandet replied, hurrying to his door. “Can you give us a ride to the village? I will call the mechanic.”

  “Absolument!” He jumped from the truck and lifted my bike into the bed, resting it against a folded tarpaulin.

  Mme Roulandet and I scrambled up into the cab, and minutes later the two of us and my bicycle were deposited in front of the bakery. She unlocked the shop and picked up several pieces of paper that had been slipped under the door. “Come, come,” she said. “You deserve a special treat this morning.”

  “No, first call the mechanic,” I said, “and then tell me how I can help you here.”

  Mme Roulandet frowned, but picked up the telephone and called the garage, explaining where her car was located and asking them to bring her the supplies in the trunk before they towed the vehicle for servicing. Several customers poked their heads in the bakery and waved to her. She bustled to the door, explained the problem, and said she would reopen soon. Then she locked the door again.

  I unbuckled the little bag I wore at my waist and looked around to see what needed to be done. Since I had no idea about the prices of her baked goods, I would be no help to Mme Roulandet as a salesperson. Instead, I pulled an apron off a peg near the cash register, put it on, and went into the little café. The chairs were piled on top of the tables to leave the floor clear for cleaning, so that would be my first job. I found a broom and started sweeping while the baker pulled bowls of dough from the refrigerator and set them in a just-warm oven for rising. I swept out the shop while she consulted the orders that had been faxed and phoned in. I pulled down the chairs, arranged them around the tables, and wiped off the table-tops while she shaped the croissants, placed a tray of rolls into an oven, and cut out circles of cookie dough. I brushed the crumbs from the display shelves and washed the canister for the baguettes while she started a new batch of dough, iced a cake, and put away the supplies from her trunk that the garage had delivered. All the while, she kept shouting at me to stop, but I can be very stubborn when my mind is set on something. An hour later, with the alluring aroma of baking bread and cookies making my mouth water, she unlocked the bakery door and admitted her first customer.

  “This is Madame Fletcher,” she said, introducing me to an elderly lady with a scarf tied under her chin. “She is visiting from America and staying in the house of Martine Devries.”

  As villagers entered, placed their orders, and left with their purchases, Mme Roulandet introduced me to them, explaining my presence, and crediting me with saving her day. In between sales, she answered the constantly r
inging phone, punched down her bread dough, formed her baguettes, placed a damp towel over the loaves, baked her first batch, and slid trays of the second batch onto a warm shelf. At eleven o’clock, when the crush of customers finally subsided, she poured us two cups of coffee, which we drank standing up.

  “Madame, you have been my savior today,” she said. “I will not forget it.”

  “It was my pleasure,” I said sincerely. It had been fun to see how her bakery operated and to experience the myriad complicated steps it takes to get started in the morning. The hours had flown, and while my feet were tired, I was feeling exhilarated, grateful to have played a small part in the daily life of a French village.

  “If there is anything I can do for you, Madame Fletcher, you have only to ask it.”

  “There is one thing,” I said.

  “It is yours.”

  “I’d like you to call me Jessica.”

  “And I am Marie,” she replied.

  I put out my hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  She grinned, wiped her hand on her apron, and replied, shaking my hand, “The pleasure is all mine.”

  The phone rang again, and Marie smiled at me while she spoke to someone called Robert on the other end of the line. “Oui, she is here now. I will tell her.”

  “Was that someone I know?” I asked when she hung up.

  “You will,” she said, putting some warm rolls in a bag and handing it to me, along with a box of my favorite almond cake. “Robert is my brother. He is coming now to pick you up.”

  “Pick me up?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You want to go to Avignon today.”

  Chapter Ten

  Claire’s gray eyes were puffy and bloodshot, her shiny black curls lank and dull. She shuffled to the metal chair in the visitor’s room of the Commissariat Centrale d’Avignon and sank onto the hard seat. Chin on her chest, she leaned forward, her thin arms hanging down between her knees and her shoulders curved as if the chair had weights pulling all parts of her body toward the concrete floor.

  “Hello, Claire,” I said. “I’m sorry to see you here.”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes downcast.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her shoulders rose slightly and fell again.

  “You’re not surprised to see me here, are you?”

  This time she shook her head slowly from side to side.

  “Why not?”

  Gradually she raised her head and slumped back in the chair. “Emil said you write about murder,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

  “I do write about murder,” I said, “but what I write are stories, not true crime.”

  “I wish this was one of your stories.” She lifted her arms and ran both hands through her hair. “I would like to read about it in my own bed at home, where no one screams at night and no one watches me through a window and no one asks the same questions over and over.”

  “What do they ask you?”

  “‘Claire,’ ” she mimicked in a harsh tone, her eyes squinting and her mouth turned down, “‘did you kill Emil Bertrand?’ ”

  “And what do you reply?”

  “Non. I tell all of them ‘non’—the captain, the magistrate, the lawyer—but they don’t believe me.”

  “Where were you when he was killed?”

  “Did they ask you to ask me these questions again?”

  “No.”

  She was quiet for a while, her eyes staring at the gray wall over my shoulder.

  “Claire?”

  “I don’t know who did it. I didn’t see anything.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “you see things you don’t even realize. Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

  She heaved a great sigh, and her head dropped down on her chest again.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s awful to keep repeating the same things over and over. But do it one more time for me, please. Maybe together we can learn something.”

  A single tear ran down her cheek and dripped off her jaw onto her lap. She didn’t bother to wipe her face. “All right,” she said wearily. “What do you want to know?”

  “First tell me what Madame Poutine was saying to you in the office.”

  “She tells me what she always tells me,” she said, her voice quavering, “that Emil is unfaithful, that he does not love me, that he has many lovers.”

  “Why do you think she told you that?”

  “Because she is jealous?”

  “I’m asking you. Is that what you think?”

  “Yes. I think she wants him for herself.”

  “Were they ever, lovers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “He wouldn’t talk about her. He was very discreet. I asked him; he wouldn’t say. But I knew.”

  “Did you live with Emil?”

  “No. No. I have my own apartment on Rue Saint-Joseph.”

  “And Emil?”

  “He lived near the restaurant on Rue Racine.”

  “But you were lovers?”

  “He loved me. I know he did.”

  “Yes. He loved you,” I said, smiling at her. “After Madame Poutine spoke with you, where did you go?”

  “I was very upset.”

  “I know.”

  “I went to the back room behind the stairs. It’s for storage. No one goes there. I could cry in private.”

  “Did anyone see you go into the room?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.”

  “No one came in while you were there?”

  “No.”

  “No one at all?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I hear Emil in an argument. I recognize his voice, but I cannot hear what they say. The boxes are in front of the window.”

  “There’s a window in the storage room?”

  A nod.

  “One that overlooks the cooking school,” I guessed.

  Another nod.

  I recalled the first time I’d seen the windows in that ancient courtyard, when Guy had taken me downstairs to give me a tour. The room had chilled me, and I remembered feeling that it wasn’t just the temperature of the air that had given me goose bumps.

  “Claire, did you see who killed Emil?”

  “No. I told you, the boxes—”

  “Did you hear the person who killed him?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did you recognize the other voice?”

  “No. I—”

  “What? What did you hear?”

  “They were fighting. That’s all I could tell. I hear Emil yelling that it’s his decision what happens to the restaurant. Then the voices were low again.”

  “Could you make out any other words?”

  “Something about ‘partners’ and ‘Paris.’ I wasn’t really listening at first.”

  “How many voices did you hear?”

  “Two, but maybe someone different the second time.”

  “The second time?”

  “The arguing stopped for a while, and, then someone came back in and they argued again.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I thought I heard a moan and a crash, like a chair falling over. But I wasn’t really paying attention to the argument. I just wanted them to stop so I could run downstairs and find Emil. I wanted to tell him what Madame Poutine had said. I wanted him to tell me she was wrong.”

  “And when you went downstairs?”

  “He was ... dead.”

  “How did you know?”

  She moaned and began rocking back and forth in her chair. “I didn’t know. He was lying there. I saw the knife in his chest.”

  “What did you do?”

  Her breath hitched and she began to sob. “I pu ... I pulled out the knife and ... and ... and threw it on the floor.” H
er shoulders were heaving, her whole body convulsed.

  “Why, Claire? Why did you remove the knife?”

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I ... I ... I thought if I pulled it out, he would be okay. There wasn’t a lot of blood.” She looked at me, her eyes pleading for understanding.

  “There never is with a single stab wound.”

  “I thought that must mean he could ... could heal. He would get better and I would take care of him and we would be together forever.” Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body as she rocked on the chair. Slowly her eyelids lowered. “I kissed him,” she whispered hoarsely. “I kissed him ... and ... and then I took his shoulders and shook him. I yelled at him to breathe.” Her own breath hitched convulsively.

  “And then? Keep going, Claire. Just a little bit more.”

  “And then I... I ... I heard Madame Poutine scream and I ran out the door.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The matron, a squat woman with hard eyes, came to take Claire away. When Claire saw her jailer, her body seemed to fold in on itself again, the mantle of fatigue settling once more on her narrow shoulders, the light of interest gone from her eyes.

  She’d been questioned on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday the police had taken her in again, and this time they’d kept her. In France, the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours of custody are called garde à vue, which means to “keep an eye on” someone while an investigation is proceeding. On Friday morning Claire had been brought before a magistrate who determined that sufficient evidence existed to charge her. When I saw her, she was under détention préventive. and because of the nature of the crime she was accused of, she would remain in jail until her trial.

  I’d been with Claire for twenty minutes, all that was allowed, and promised to return another time. I was concerned that the conditions in the jail would have an impact on her health. She appeared much thinner than I remembered. She was worried about what would happen to her, of course, but she was also in mourning for the man she loved and who, she was certain, had returned her affection.