The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe

by Timothy Williams

  The procureur gave a thin smile. “All the signs of rape, Anne Marie.”

  “Why didn’t the dogs run off with her clothes?”

  “The fisherman found the bikini over there.” He gestured toward the sun-bleached timbers of an old fishing boat, ten meters up the beach. He rubbed his chin. “Bruising of the thighs and on the lower abdomen.” He added, “If it’s not her bikini, it’s quite a coincidence. It’s her size and it’s new. Nothing else on this beach but washed up tires and tin cans.”

  “Top or bottom?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a bikini top or bottom?” Anne Marie asked testily.

  “Bottom,” the procureur said.

  Sweating in his dark suit, the case under his arm, Trousseau stood on the hot, shadowless beach. Anne Marie wondered whether he could hear what was being said. She also wondered why he did not move out of the sun into the shade of the sea grape trees.

  Arnaud was saying, “Everything’s been sent off to the Institut Pasteur. Flesh rots fast in this climate.”

  8

  Golf

  “I can count on your discretion, Anne Marie?”

  “You always have.”

  “One of your many virtues.” The procureur nodded. “You’re also very efficient.”

  She let her head drop back onto the upholstered headrest and stared at the roof of the car. “Arnaud, the gendarmerie knows exactly what to do.”

  “I want you to deal with this.”

  Anne Marie asked, “This girl’s death is so important?”

  “More important than the Dugain dossier. You’re wasting your time and making a lot of enemies among the SRPJ.”

  “You gave me the Dugain dossier, Arnaud. Remember?”

  He smiled grimly. “You really think I was expecting you to follow it up?”

  “I’m not a mind-reader.”

  “You’re best rid of it.”

  “How am I supposed to know what you want?”

  “Not what I want—it’s what the politicians want.”

  “The politicians want me to drop Dugain?”

  “A nest of vipers.” A sigh of exasperation. “Anne Marie, I’m not a free agent.”

  “The word’s to lay off the Dugain dossier?”

  “The murder of a tourist is of paramount importance.” He tapped the steering wheel in emphasis.

  “Who’s to tell me this Vaton murder isn’t a nest of vipers?”

  “A white girl, Anne Marie. And a tourist.” He took the pack of Stuyvesant from his shirt pocket and pushed the lighter into the dashboard. “It’s very important.”

  “Put Monneron on it.”

  “It’s you I want, Anne Marie. I want you and the préfet wants you.”

  “Anybody’d think I was pretty and unmarried.”

  He ignored her. “Murder in Guadeloupe rarely goes beyond the family. A jealous, drunk husband who takes a machete to the mother of three of his seven children. This is different.” The procureur drove the Volkswagen Golf in a jerky, undecided manner, his hands making sharp tugs at the wheel, while his foot hesitated between the brake and the accelerator. “The industry’s only just getting back to where it was before Hugo.”

  “Murder Incorporated?”

  He glanced at her unhappily. “You’re being facetious.”

  “Tired, Arnaud. Middle-aged and tired.”

  He smiled as he lit the cigarette. “You’re looking marvelous.”

  “That’s not what my mirror tells me. I could do with a shower. And some sleep.”

  “Time you got married again.”

  “A forty-two-year-old woman—who’s interested?”

  “I’d be.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She turned her head on the headrest and closed her eyes. “What about Hurricane Hugo, Arnaud?”

  He took a hand from the wheel and lightly touched her cheek. His fingers smelled of nicotine. “You’re a complicated woman. I like you, Anne Marie. You know that.”

  “You call me away from my children and fly me over to Saint-François just to talk about my private life, Arnaud?” A small laugh, her eyes closed. “Let’s stick to business. And whatever happened to your lady friend from the checkout desk at the Bonheur des Dames?”

  The hand returned to the steering wheel. “Bonheur des Dames?” Very slowly the procureur inhaled on the cigarette.

  “Put Monneron on it—he’s better than me when it’s political.”

  “Bombs and terrorism for nearly ten years. Then just when it looked as if Guadeloupe had at last found tranquility, last September we get the worst hurricane in recorded history. Winds at three hundred kilometers an hour—it didn’t do the hotels any good.”

  “It’s the tourist industry you’re worried about?”

  “Lots of things I’m worried about.” The finger returned to her cheek.

  Anne Marie opened one eye.

  “I can take you to lunch somewhere, if you wish.”

  “My children are waiting for me.”

  He blew out cigarette smoke. “Bring the children.”

  For a moment, Anne Marie bit her lip in thought.

  “Well, Anne Marie?”

  “It’s a long time.”

  “You need a man in your life.”

  “Three days, Arnaud. If Evelyne Vaton was dead for nearly three days, why didn’t anybody see her? You’re not telling me the fisherman was the only man to go onto that beach.”

  “That’s what you’ve got to find out and fast.”

  “Fast?”

  “Tourism’s the only industry that brings in any money on this island.”

  “Monneron’s good and you won’t have to waste money on taking him to lunch.”

  “You’re good, Anne Marie.” He grinned. “It’s your female intuition. And you know how to deal with the press.” His voice softened, after a brief hesitation. “These are all things we can discuss over a meal.”

  “Not a good idea, Arnaud.”

  “You need a good man.”

  “I need a headache?”

  “Not all men are rats. You can’t forget your ex-husband, can you?”

  She looked at him coolly. “Nor, it seems, can anybody else.” She removed his hand from her face. “But thanks for the invitation.”

  For the rest of the way back to Pointe-à-Pitre, Anne Marie dozed off, despite the jerky driving, a smile on her lips, the smell of nicotine in her nostrils.

  The procureur remained silent.

  9

  Mobylette

  Béatrice put Létitia to bed and then went to her room. Fabrice was doing his homework on the veranda. He was sprawled across a hammock, listening to heavy metal on his Walkman.

  Anne Marie sat down in front of the television. She had gone back to the palais de justice and got to the beach just as Fabrice was rolling up the sail. Anne Marie was now tired, too tired to read the magazines that had piled up, unopened, on the bookcase. She watched the bright screen and the advertisements unthinkingly. A couple of times she glanced at her watch. An untouched glass of rhum vieux stood on the armchair beside her.

  She did not want to think about work.

  The Dugain dossier was in her attaché case. It could wait until tomorrow. She would take the procureur’s advice. Why bother, why make enemies? Anne Marie yawned. “Poor Arnaud,” she said to herself.

  A dog barked somewhere beyond the cemetery and other dogs answered in antiphony.

  The advertisements came to an end and the announcer, smiling and uncomfortable beside a vase of studio anthuriums, announced the evening link-up with Antenne Deux in Paris.

  The phone rang.

  France—perhaps she ought to return. Soon Fabrice would be at university; and it was time Anne Marie thought about her career. Eleven years as juge d’instruction in the same backwater. Colonial backwater, as her husband always used to say. She shook her head. Time to move on, to go to Brittany to be with her sister.

  She picked up the receiver on the fourth ring.

&
nbsp; “Anne Marie? Hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “I was about to go to bed.” She stifled another yawn. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Eric.”

  “Eric?”

  “Eric André of the Tourist Bureau.”

  “Of course.” She smiled and put her head back against the armchair. “How are you?”

  “Off to New York at the end of next week. We’re expanding the Guadeloupe office on Broadway.”

  “And the family, Eric?”

  “Perhaps we could go for a meal.”

  “We?”

  “You and I.”

  “A meal with a married man?”

  “A business lunch.”

  “Eric, how’s your wife?”

  “In Paris—with the children.”

  “On holiday?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” She heard him catch his breath. “Anne Marie, I’d like to speak with you confidentially. Are you free tomorrow?”

  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the Pointe des Châteaux?”

  From beyond the house, on the far side of the mangrove and the endless chirruping of the night toads, a noisy Mobylette scooter went past, heading toward Sainte-Anne.

  The dogs were still barking, call and answer.

  “I thought it’d be a good idea if we could talk, Anne Marie.”

  “Eric, I have a job to do.”

  “So do I, Anne Marie.”

  “I’ll let you get on with yours.”

  “Half past twelve at the Tribun. I’ve booked a table.”

  “You’re very sure of yourself.”

  “Very sure of my sister-in-law.”

  “The ex-sister-in-law of your wife.”

  A brief laugh. “Half past twelve at the Tribun. I’m counting on you.” Eric André hung up.

  The receiver still in her hand, Anne Marie closed her eyes.

  For a few minutes, unaware of the noise and flickering image of the television, she thought about Eric André.

  She went to bed without touching the rhum vieux.

  10

  Palais de Justice

  Thursday May 17, 1990

  “So much for discretion.”

  Trousseau was smiling and he ran a finger along the line of his moustache. With the other hand, he handed Anne Marie the newspaper.

  She sat down at her desk, and yawned. “Another day.”

  “I like the red shoes. As always you’re looking marvelous, madame le juge.”

  “I bought them in Caracas.” She placed her bag in the drawer and glanced at the headlines: YOUNG TOURIST RAPED AND MURDERED. Beneath, in smaller print, WOMAN’S MUTILATED CORPSE DISCOVERED NEAR THE POINTE DES CHTEAUX.

  A passport photograph, badly reproduced and badly printed.

  “Not very good for the tourist trade,” Trousseau said.

  “Not very good for anybody.”

  Anne Marie liked her office—the same place she had been given when she had first arrived in 1979. It was little more than a cupboard, just big enough for her desk and the greffier’s, a couple of filing cabinets, a floor of polished mahogany and a small sink. It was at the top of the palais de justice and the gentle winds came through the open shutters and pushed against the lace curtains. The same Chantilly lace that she had bought in Paris before sailing out to the Caribbean with her husband and son.

  Anne Marie leaned her elbows against the desk and glanced out over the vivid red of the corrugated roofs of the nearby bank and the old Chamber of Commerce that had been converted into the Tourist Office. Ship masts, bare without their sails, rocked to the movement of the green sea within the small port.

  Pointe-à-Pitre.

  In the distance, standing out in clear relief against the sky, La Soufrière. The mountain range filled the horizon and the volcano, with all the intricate detail of its eroded flanks, its gullies and its tropical vegetation, rose up above everything else until its summit was lost in a dark crown of clouds.

  After all these years, the view still managed to impress her. “Those curtains are dirty. They need changing.” She turned to look at her greffier sitting behind the Japy typewriter. “Well, Monsieur Trousseau? Apart from the newspaper?”

  “Two faxes, madame le juge. Not sure they’re any use.” He paused, nodded toward to the France Antilles. “Our local paper seems to have more information than Paris.” He stood up and moved round the desk. Taking the paper and holding it at arm’s length—his long-sightedness had notably worsened over the last two years—Trousseau read aloud, his voice nasal:

  “The young woman, Evelyne Vaton, had been in our département for less than ten days. She was staying with the family of a doctor friend from a hospital in Villejuif, outside Paris. Monsieur and Madame Lecurieux of rue de la Manufacture in Basse-Terre, both retired schoolteachers, whose daughter is a doctor in the hematology department at Villejuif, said the young woman was charming and very friendly. Evelyne Vaton arrived on Saturday, May fifth, and spent her first week in Guadeloupe visiting the Basse-Terre region. Last Saturday morning she shopped in the town of Basse-Terre and went to mass in the evening. After an early breakfast on Sunday morning she had taken the hired car, announcing her intention to visit the Pointe des Châteaux. She bid her hosts goodbye for the last time at seven o’clock Sunday morning. They were never to see her again.”

  Trousseau ran a finger along the side of his nose before continuing.

  “The police are now reconstructing the events of the last day. It is believed that the young woman was murdered at about midnight, Sunday.”

  “That’s all?”

  Trousseau nodded. “The same photo as in the dossier.”

  “Show me the faxes, would you?”

  He handed her the two sheets of flimsy thermal paper.

  “The girl’s mother will be coming this evening on the early flight from Paris. She’s required for a formal identification of the corpse.”

  “Somebody’ll have to pick her up at the airport. Can you see to it, Monsieur Trousseau? And a room in a one of the better hotels in Gosier.”

  “Madame Vaton won’t make it in time for the autopsy this afternoon.”

  “Get hold of the Lecurieux people. I’ll have to see them.” She made a short note on the small Air France calendar.

  “Of course, madame.”

  Anne Marie coughed. “Monsieur Trousseau?”

  Trousseau glanced at her inquiringly. “Yes?”

  “I’m still waiting for you to tell me about the man.”

  “What man?”

  “What does he want?”

  Trousseau frowned.

  “The man sitting outside in the corridor. I’m not supposed to be seeing anybody this morning, am I?”

  Trousseau shook his head. “He was here when I arrived at half past six.”

  “Call him in. There’s work to do on this Pointe des Châteaux dossier.” Anne Marie added, “Damn it.”

  11

  Green

  The eyes were staring at her.

  The man held a leather case under his arm. He was dressed in green. Green trousers, a safari shirt with epaulettes and short sleeves, a green foulard tied at the neck. Grubby green canvas shoes. He entered the room walking slowly with a slight stoop of the shoulders.

  “Please be seated.”

  He did not smile. The eyes were close together and deep set; they looked at Anne Marie attentively, glinting slightly in the oblique light.

  “Monsieur?”

  He sat down and crossed his legs. He placed the case on the floor, then folded his hands on his lap.

  “You wished to see me, monsieur?”

  A small smile, revealing narrow teeth. “I met the girl.”

  “Which girl?”

  He had the pale, yellow skin of the metis: some black blood, a lot of white blood. “The murdered nurse.” He nodded toward the open newspaper on the desk.

  “You can help me?”

  “Why do you think I’ve been waiting here?”

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sp; “That’s very good of you.” They stared at each other. The man hardly blinked.

  “With your approval, then, there are a few questions about yourself that I’ll need to ask.” Anne Marie took a note pad from the second drawer. She also took the recording machine. As she uncapped her pen—a Mother’s Day present from Fabrice—she raised her head. “How did you know I’m dealing with the case?”

  He raised his shoulders. “I asked downstairs.”

  “At seven in the morning?”

  “Last night.”

  “You should’ve gone directly to the police.”

  “I’d rather see you than the police.” He turned to look at Trousseau, who had closed the door and returned to his seat behind the Japy typewriter. “You want me to leave?” The man bent over to pick up the suitcase. Anne Marie noticed a hole in the green ankle sock.

  “You say you saw the nurse?”

  He sat back in the chair. A long, ringless finger started tapping nervously on his knee. “That is why I am here.”

  “When did you see her?”

  “You know who I am?” He nodded toward the notepaper beneath Anne Marie’s uncapped pen. “Name, address, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, social security number?”

  “I know how to do my job.” Anne Marie faced the unblinking eyes.

  “I have better things to with my time than sit waiting in the palais …”

  She smiled. “I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

  His lips tightened as if in recognition of an apology, but still the eyes did not blink.

  “Your name and your date of birth please, Monsieur Desterres. And your mother’s maiden name.”

  “You know my name but do you know my social security number?”

  Trousseau chuckled from behind the typewriter.

  “Yes, I know who you are, Monsieur Desterres.” Anne Marie raised her hand and gestured vaguely to beyond the roofs of the city. “You own a small restaurant near the beach Tarare, a few kilometers from the Pointe des Châteaux.”

  The eyes remained on Anne Marie. “Five kilometers from the Pointe des Châteaux—and a kilometer from where the girl’s body was found.”

  “I’ve seen your posters, Monsieur Desterres. You’re an ecologist, I believe, and you’ve run in various municipal elections.”