Love & Death in Burgundy

by Susan C. Shea

  Katherine couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t sound as if she was being rude, although she longed to tell the girl to stand up straight and try wearing clothes that wouldn’t make her look so frumpy.

  “You said the police aren’t precisely certain yet, I mean about the old man’s death? What do you think?” Pippa said, her head tipped to one side like a curious, tall bird.

  Katherine paused. Of course, it must have been an accident. And yet … “I doubt the police would miss anything obvious. But they may not know much about Reigny-sur-Canne. I wish Albert hadn’t offended so many people one way or another.”

  Pippa got a faraway look in her eyes. Katherine hoped she hadn’t stirred up the writer’s creative imagination too much. On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to confide in someone. Penny was too subjective when it came to Yves. And Betty Lou didn’t really care about any of this, being only a summer visitor. “I only wonder because Albert has lived in that house for the better part of forty years, and conducts his little tours that include climbing the stone steps as often as twice a week in season.”

  “Hmmm … So he wouldn’t be likely to fall, would he?” Pippa said briskly. “Yes, I see. Who do you think did it?”

  Katherine blanched. Lord, but the young woman was tactless. “I’m not saying anyone did it, only that he had been up and down the stairs many times before. I’m only thinking out loud.”

  “Of course, I understand,” Pippa said, although the look on her face signaled that Katherine’s comment had gone into some corner of her brain, to be taken out and examined earnestly over tea. “I’ve slowed you down enough. Such lovely dogs. Thank you for inviting me to the lunch. It was rather an event, wasn’t it? If I hear anything or have any ideas about Albert, I’ll pop over and we can think through it together. Must get back to feed the cats and rack my brain for a way out of a locked cellar.” Pippa beamed.

  “Someone’s in your cellar?” Katherine said, thoroughly confused.

  “In my manuscript, you know.”

  * * *

  “Come on, beasts, I have no more time for this,” Katherine said ten minutes later as she opened the gate to let the dogs back into the garden. They wandered off to check out something or other, unperturbed, and she drifted into the cool of the dark living room. Katherine was still thinking about Pippa. Should she ask her to be in the fête, or would it lose its French character even further? She had felt awkward including Betty Lou, but at least this woman lived here. Everyone knew about her, if only because her Fiat was a familiar sight as it zipped past on market days. Maybe she could be pressed into selling plastic cups of wine.

  She knew she should pull out her easel and work on the big painting, the centerpiece of her upcoming exhibit, the one that would stop people in their tracks to exclaim over her sly capture of rural Burgundy’s past and present. Jeannette was a fine model if you didn’t mind her twitching and talking, which Katherine didn’t since what she needed most was the drape of her long blue dress and the tumble of her hair, which had the unsettling effect of turning into a golden halo when the sun was directly behind the girl’s head. No angel, that one, Katherine silently fussed, but it was not to be borne that she should be allowed to crumble into her father’s stunted lifestyle, sloppy and manipulative with no goals beyond grabbing at things, any things, for the sake of getting something for nothing. No, it wouldn’t do. She would talk, discreetly of course, to Betty Lou about that son of hers. No good simply hoping Jeannette would have the good sense to avoid sex with a summer visitor if he paid even the slightest attention to her.

  The phone rang. “Katherine, is that you?”

  It was Adele, and Katherine was as pleased as if she’d been given a present. Adele was thinking about her friend. “Adele, dearest, how are you? Have the officials left you in peace?”

  “There is no peace for me ever again.” Katherine heard the pain in the new widow’s voice, but also the smallest touch of something else, perhaps irritation? “Sophie is here.” An image of Adele and Albert’s adult daughter, passive and frowning, presented itself to Katherine.

  “You know I will help any way I can.”

  “She did some shopping for me, and is home again, but would you come over? There is some shocking news. Sophie is having what you Americans call a nervous breakdown, I am sure, and I am simply not strong enough to take care of her and deal with the undertaker and the newspaper writer and the police. It is too much, too much.” Adele choked back a sob.

  “Bien sûr, and I’ll bring some food, shall I? A dish for the oven. But I don’t understand. Why is a newspaper pestering you, and why are you still having to talk with the police?”

  “It is frightening and too much to relate on the phone. I shall tell you everything when I see you, yes? When might that be? I am not sure how much longer I can maintain calm in the face of all this.”

  Worried and curious in equal parts, Katherine bundled the duck confit she had planned to serve that night, plus some plump green beans she had cooked in garlic, mushrooms, and olive oil into her second-best tureen, a piece of milky-white faïence in the shape of a bird. She had found the piece a month ago under a pile of musty-smelling tablecloths at an otherwise disappointing vide-grenier in a town that had missed out on Gallic charm and was simply a place they went to when they needed garden stakes or new tires for the Citroën. She would have to think of an indirect way of asking Sophie to make sure the pot was returned. Things had a way of disappearing, and it was too much to think of losing such a beautiful piece, and such a bargain too. She would deal later with Michael’s disappointment about a dinner of leftovers.

  * * *

  “They found a gun,” Adele said, waving a fresh handkerchief. Katherine was so distracted by Adele’s changed appearance that she didn’t immediately grasp what the woman was saying. Adele, always impeccably groomed, calm, in control, had given way to an old woman hunched on the sofa in a bathrobe, her hair frizzy, no makeup, no pearls. “One of Albert’s. In the shrubbery.” She waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the driveway.

  “He was shot? Not an accident?”

  “No, no, not shot, but the gun was removed from his display case.” A sob caught in her throat and she applied the handkerchief to her eyes.

  “Stolen?” Katherine balked at this magnitude of change in what had been described as a simple fall by an elderly person twenty-four hours ago. “Who told you this?”

  “The police were here this morning.” The voice came from deep inside a tall wing chair. Sophie Bellegarde leaned forward without saying hello. She was a wisp of a thing who looked much younger than her thirtysomething years, with pale hair that seemed to be demonstrating its own sorrow by hanging listlessly on her neck. She did not appear to be breaking down, Katherine thought, but her face was white and she looked like someone who was being forced to chew and swallow her own grief. When asked by Katherine, she said Maman had been like this almost since she had arrived.

  “My Albert,” came a moan from the sofa, “how can I not weep?” Adele draped the cloth back over her eyes and collapsed into the sofa, clutching the neck of her robe.

  “Of course, Maman,” Sophie said through clenched teeth, “I don’t begrudge you your grief. But I do wish you would give me some direction.” Her voice was surprising, with a quality of steel that helped account for her success in her father’s business.

  Although, Katherine realized, the urgent need to step in and run the company on a day-to-day basis might account for the voice.

  There was no response from the new widow other than a loud sigh. “I will have to arrange everything,” Sophie said to Katherine, switching to impeccable English for the recital of her burdens. “You know, the undertaker, the neighbors, the papers the gendarmerie has asked for.” Her brow contracted and she grabbed her lower lip with her teeth. “And the lieutenant wishes to speak to me, too, although I cannot think why. I was at the apartment in Paris when my father fell.”

  “The poli
ce are not satisfied?” Perhaps the French had procedures Katherine wasn’t aware of, or Albert’s former status in the government meant they needed to be especially vigilant in their reports. Had they found a clue upstairs?

  A weak voice spoke up from the couch. “Alors, I am being besieged by policemen, Katherine. They are everywhere, looking into the cupboards and churning up the flower beds.” Adele pulled herself to a sitting position. “I have not even had time to prepare a tisane for my poor, poor Sophie and myself, something to give us strength.”

  Sophie said in rapid-fire French, “That is going beyond the facts, Maman. There are no gendarmes here now and I saw no disturbance in the gardens other than what the rabbits have done. The only sign of the intruder, if there was one, was the unlocked window in this room.”

  “Albert always locked all the windows,” Adele said in a tragic voice. “He cannot be faulted.”

  “The window is unlocked, Maman, and there were some small signs that someone could have entered. They have checked for fingerprints.”

  “And made a terrible mess of my window,” Adele said, tragedy now blended with indignation.

  “So there may have been an intruder. Do the police think that person pushed poor Albert?” Katherine said.

  “No, I would have heard an argument,” Adele said, through fresh tears. “He must have heard something and slipped when going to check on it. But the police keep poking around, disarranging everything and telling me nothing. We cannot move without being harassed.” She began to wail again.

  Adele had seemed clearheaded yesterday, Katherine thought, looking from one woman to the other in confusion, but perhaps she had been in shock. Not knowing what to say and looking for a chance to do something after her walk over in the midday heat, she said, “Let me put this casserole in the refrigerator, then I can fix some tea, or coffee if you would rather?”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, the women sat at a low table in front of what Katherine was tempted to call Adele’s fainting couch, porcelain cups in their laps, a small measure of normal existence restored. “I doubt the police will have many questions for you, Sophie,” Katherine said, not really sure but wanting to ease the younger woman’s obvious tension.

  “They can’t, can they? I wasn’t here,” Sophie repeated. “It is so frustrating that I had to catch the late train. Everything is happening too fast.”

  Apropos of nothing, as the rapid French was directed toward her and she nodded in what she hoped looked like sympathy rather than confusion, Katherine registered the fact that Sophie’s nose was pink and shaped a little like a rodent’s. A pity, Katherine thought, since, with her ashy-blond hair, red-rimmed eyes, and slight overbite, she looked like one of the rabbits her father tried to eradicate from the château’s garden. It couldn’t be helped, she chided herself, and was ashamed that she was so shallow as to notice it at a time like this.

  The coffee was a good idea, Katherine told herself. Adele calmed down and Sophie retreated to the big chair again, but with a bit more color, as her mother filled Katherine in on the police visit. Albert had died of a broken neck, most certainly caused by falling hard and at a terrible angle on the steep stairs that wound down to the kitchen. The gun had been taken from one of the cases that were set into small alcoves along the steps, places that Albert explained were built so servants running up the stairs with hot-water bottles or breakfast trays would not collide with servants running down the stairs with laundry and chamber pots. The key for that case, kept in the lock, was missing, but the old pistol had been found, almost by accident, by a uniformed policeman looking around because he thought he heard someone moving in the overgrown shrubbery on the other side of the driveway. Katherine immediately suspected Jeannette as the source of the sound but said nothing. After all, the girl wasn’t a criminal for being curious. An unwelcome thought caused Katherine to feel a sudden chill. The girl couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—climbed in an open window to prowl around, would she? Should Katherine try to find out, or would that simply cause Jeannette to lie if she had? Katherine was uncomfortable. “The gun was lying there in the grass? How odd. Were other guns missing? Was anything else stolen?”

  “Not that we know of. Albert would not have removed it from the display case unless he felt he had to use it. I think he kept it locked, didn’t he?” Adele looked over at Sophie.

  Sophie looked up. “How would I know?”

  “But you know everything, my darling girl.”

  “Well, I don’t know that.”

  Katherine guessed that mother and daughter were so close that sniping at each other was routine, and the stress right now had to be terrible. “I’m sure there’s some perfectly simple explanation for all of that,” she said, working to keep her own concern out of her voice.

  “I can’t tell if the lieutenant thinks the explanation is a criminal one. He doesn’t say,” Adele said. “I wish he would be more clear.”

  “Has he said anything specific about someone else being involved?” Katherine asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

  Adele gave her a helpless look as if to say she had no clue. When Katherine turned to see what Sophie might say, the woman was looking down at her fingernails. There was no hope of getting any closer to the facts at this point.

  “The best thing might be for you to rest a bit,” she said, standing up. “I need to get home and work on a painting that has to be done soon so the gallery in Vézelay that’s showing it doesn’t smell like turpentine and varnish on the day of the opening. Oh dear, I suppose you won’t be coming, Adele. I wonder if I should postpone it out of respect to Albert.” She held her breath, wishing she hadn’t opened the door for Adele to shame her into changing it. The invitations had been printed and sent. It would be a disaster to cancel it now.

  “Of course not, Katherine, although I doubt I will be strong enough to come. Perhaps Sophie…?” She trailed off and looked pointedly at her daughter.

  “Desolée,” Sophie said quickly, then switched back into English to explain to Katherine. “I expect I’ll be back at the office. With Papa gone—” She hesitated for a second. “—there will be much business to attend to.”

  “Well,” Katherine said, feeling relieved and guilty at the same time, “I must go, but you will call me? Enjoy the confit. I’ll come around again soon.” Her good-byes said, she hurried out. She was halfway down the driveway when running footsteps and a childish shout made her turn.

  “Not you again,” she said, startled by the adolescent who almost ran into her on long, gangly legs.

  “’Allo, ’allo, Katherine,” Jeannette said, grinning and slipping her hand around Katherine’s arm, falling into step with her. “Is it true,” she said in a loud whisper, “that M. Bellegarde was very, very rich and that his money has disappeared?”

  “Where did you get such an idea?” Katherine said, trying ineffectually to shake off the girl’s hand.

  “Papa says maybe he was murdered. Papa says he was a Nazi and made his money by having people killed.”

  “He did no such thing, and it’s not nice to pass along rumors. He became a French citizen long before you were born. Anyway, he’s too young to have been in the war.”

  “But Papa says not. He says there were teenage SS in the Yonne and that the neighbors hid in the forest and shot at them. He says there are still Nazis around, even here.”

  Katherine could well believe the girl’s father would say something like that. Hatred of the World War II German occupiers was alive and well in this region of Burgundy, and reminders of the brutality were everywhere, never to be forgotten. As the head of a long lineage of poor quarrymen, and acknowledged everywhere in Reigny as a petty thief, he was the lowest in Reigny’s social standing and might be expected to stir neighbor against neighbor out of spite.

  He had been indignant in his criticism of Penny’s renovation project behind her back, making a show of being unable to fish in the stream that her rectangular lap pool had slightly inf
ringed upon, pretending to all who would listen that his children depended on his catch to have food in their bellies. It was ridiculous. They lived on a diet of chips and canned cassoulet as far as Katherine could figure out. It was more likely that Jean hadn’t gotten any work from the project and was stewing about the missed opportunity to overcharge her for moving piles of bricks, or repairing the roof in his fashion. However, if there was one person the villagers were less likely to accept than the local thief, it was the rude American who threw her money around. They had banded together in dislike of Penny. Katherine wondered if they would do that now, turning on Albert in death as they had not dared to do in life, letting their generations-old resentment against Germans emerge.

  With her new suspicion nagging at her, Katherine stopped walking and looked hard at the girl. “Do you know anything you haven’t told the police? If so, you must tell me now.”

  There was a flicker of something in the girl’s eyes before she said, “No, I promise. Only what I’ve heard from Papa.” As she spoke, she began rubbing something she’d been carrying between her fingers. Nerves? No, it was impossible to believe this innocent girl could be involved in a murder. Katherine would not give in to such fanciful ideas. Leave that sort of fiction to Pippa.

  “All right then, child, understand that the poor man fell down a steep flight of stone steps in the dark. I almost fell down the same stairs when the Bellegardes gave me a tour last year, and that was in the middle of the day, when there was some light on them. That’s all it was. You must not gossip, and you must be kind to Mme Bellegarde and her daughter.”

  “But what about that show-off, Yves? He was so angry when Monsieur broke a plate on his head—that was so funny—and maybe he sneaked back and pushed Monsieur. Or maybe someone else did.”

  “Nonsense, Jeannette. Stop that right now.”

  Jeannette fell silent, only squeezing Katherine’s arm with her free hand and leaning into her side, trying to match her steps to Katherine’s. Feeling hemmed in, Katherine disengaged her arm, then scolded herself. The girl had no mother, a constricted and not entirely pleasant life, and was undoubtedly bored to death in a place with no one else her age. Katherine recognized, or at least interpreted, the teenager’s noisy affection as a symptom of the same longing she had felt at that age to be loved, to be noticed and valued. If she were being entirely truthful, she still felt like that, although she didn’t have enough nerve to go up to Mme Pomfort on the street and take her arm as companionably as Jeannette had taken hers.