L'Assassin

by Peter Steiner

  Also by Peter Steiner

  A French Country Murder

  (available in trade paperback as Le Crime)

  L ’ A S S A S S I N

  Peter Steiner

  Thomas Dunne Books

  St. Martin’s Minotaur New York

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  L’ASSASSIN. Copyright © 2008 by Peter Steiner. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Steiner, Peter, 1940–

  L’assassin / Peter Steiner.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37342-9

  ISBN-10: 0-312-37342-2

  1. Americans—France—Fiction. 2. Police—France—Fiction. 3. Country life—Fiction. 4. France—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3619.T4763 A93 2008

  813′.6—dc22

  2008012475

  First Edition: July 2008

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Jane

  I

  It looked like a simple burglary at first. In fact, as crimes go, the robbery of Louis Morgon’s house in the village of Saint Leon sur Dême seemed noteworthy only for its ineptitude. The burglar, a small-time criminal known to French police as Pierre Lefort, came to the house in broad daylight and broke a window to let himself in. He poked around the house for a while, and then he cut the lock on the barn, where Louis had his painting studio, and went in.

  A short while later he loaded up his loot and left. The old car backfired as Lefort drove down the steep driveway and turned onto the lane. Solesme Lefourier was pruning her roses, and she paused to look as he passed. The handle of Louis’s lawnmower bobbed and waved from Lefort’s open trunk like a semaphore.

  Solesme’s eyes were failing because of her illness, so she could not read the license plate, but she got a good look at the car and the driver. She went inside and called the police, which in Saint Leon meant Jean Renard. He was wrestling with some overdue reports and was relieved to hear the phone ring. “Renard, you better come,” said Solesme. “I think Louis’s house has just been robbed.”

  Louis had returned home by the time Renard got there, and Solesme had flagged him down and told him what had happened. Louis was going through the house to see what might have been stolen, while Solesme sat outside at the table under the linden tree. Renard joined Louis inside. He wrote an inventory of what was missing, but as far as Louis could tell, nothing much had been taken.

  Louis seemed disappointed, as though he had mainly been robbed of a bit of excitement. “It was a pathetic effort on the thief’s part,” he said. “Besides the lawnmower, which would barely start, the guy took some screwdrivers, an electric drill, and a couple of sweaters. I’m always glad to see you, Jean,” he said to the policeman, “but I’m sorry you had to come out for this.”

  “Worst of all,” said the policeman, “it means writing another report.”

  Renard went back outside and pulled two chairs up beside Solesme while Louis heated water. The air was heavy with the perfume of linden blossoms, and the three friends sat sipping tea and listening to the bees at work just above their heads in the sullen afternoon air.

  When Solesme saw Louis looking at her in that way he sometimes had now, she waved her hand as though a bee had flown too close to her face.

  Renard pushed his chair away from the table. “I have to get back,” he said, and stood to drink his last sip.

  Once the policeman was gone, Louis said, “So, what did he say?”

  “Who?” said Solesme.

  “Who. Bertrand, of course.”

  “Bertrand! He’s just guessing. What does he know? They’re all just guessing.”

  “He’s your doctor,” said Louis. “So tell me: what did he say?”

  “He said it has spread,” said Solesme. “It is in my bones. But still, even with all his tests, what does he really know?”

  “He’s your doctor,” said Louis, sounding helpless this time.

  Louis had expected this news, but he was not ready for it. He stood, but he did not come around the table to her, as she feared he might. The last thing she wanted right now was his comfort.

  “I’m just going to look at the garden,” he said, and took a few steps in that direction. Solesme stood up to go with him. Her spine was deformed—it had been since birth—which caused her to shift her body oddly as she rose, projecting her right shoulder forward and rising under it. She had the same slight twisting motion in her walk. To Louis she always seemed to be dancing. It was a subtle and odd dance, but he still found it mesmerizing, as he had from the first time they had met.

  Thirty years ago he had just arrived in Saint Leon for the first time. It was the summer solstice, the night of music. All over France cities and towns stationed orchestras and bands and choirs in their streets, and music filled the night. The town square in Saint Leon had been decorated with colored lights and cleared of cars. A small stage had been erected.

  Louis had not planned to stay the night, but the Chalfonts, who ran the hotel, had insisted he be their guest. Chalfont leaned close to him and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “This night is not to be missed, monsieur,” he said. Then the music began to play and the entire village rose to dance. The spectacle swept over Louis and somehow, in a way he did not understand that seemed—though he certainly did not believe in magic—to be magical, transported him out of his unhappiness.

  As it happened, later in the evening Louis was seated next to Solesme, and, though it was not something he would normally have done, he invited her, a complete stranger, to dance. He had always found dancing to be dangerous somehow—its sexuality was so public, but he invited her nonetheless.

  Solesme stood up in that peculiar way of hers. “Oh, madame, I am sorry,” Louis said in his awkward French. “I did not know. Please forgive me.”

  “But I love to dance,” said Solesme with raised eyebrows and a charming smile, and held out her hand to him. The gypsy musicians played and sang plaintive waltzes, and Louis and Solesme danced around and around the square, caught up in the swirling throng.

  The next day Louis continued on his journey, but afterwards he was drawn back to Saint Leon, and not only because of that evening. The town was small, and out of the way, and ordinary. It suited him—someone who wanted to disappear and begin life anew—perfectly. He bought the house and the barn at the top of the hill. He cleaned out the barn and made it into a painting studio, although he had never painted before. He planted a large vegetable garden and flowers and shrubs, although the only gardening he had ever done had been to push a lawnmower back and forth around his yard in Virginia.

  Louis and Solesme had now been lovers for most of those thirty years. It was not surprising, therefore, that he did not give the burglary as much thought as he might have. Her illness terrified him. However, the burglar, Pierre Lefort, seemed determined that Louis should not forget his handiwork. The day after the burglary, while Louis was in the market picking out a fish for supper, he saw a man—Pierre Lefort—walking across the square wearing his sweater.

  “You won’t believe it,” he said as he burst through the door of Renard’s office. “I just saw the thief.”

  “What?!” sai
d Renard.

  “The burglar,” said Louis, “the man who robbed my house. I just saw him. He fits Solesme’s description, and he’s wearing my sweater.”

  By the time Louis and Renard rushed outside, the man was no longer in the square. They walked through the side streets. “How do you know it’s your sweater?” said Renard. They found Lefort behind the post office wearing a vivid, blue and yellow striped sweater, too short in the body and too long in the arms. He was getting into the car Solesme had described. Renard confronted him and placed him under arrest.

  Pierre Lefort appeared before a judge in Tours. He was convicted of burglary and was sentenced to serve a year in the Granville prison. Louis repaired the broken window, replaced the padlock on the barn door with a new, sturdier one, and forgot about the robbery.

  Dr. Mauricio Bertrand, the oncologist, had been unsparing in describing for Solesme the likely course of her cancer, how it had moved from her bones to her organs, and how it would eventually spread into her brain. “There is nothing more we can do,” he said finally. “We can, however, keep you comfortable until the end.”

  “And when is the end?” Solesme wanted to know.

  “It is only a guess,” said Dr. Bertrand, shrugging, “but judging from the scans, I would say two months, three at the most.”

  Solesme was resigned to her illness and to her death, but Louis was not. “It is something we all have to do,” she said. “Even you.” But the thought of having only three months weighed heavily on him. Ninety days. “It is only a number,” said Solesme, “and it is only Bertrand’s number. It will come when it comes.”

  Louis dredged the fish in cornmeal and rosemary and put it on the fire. The air grew fragrant with burning rosemary. After eating, they watched a movie together, a funny thing called Les Visiteurs. They had both seen it before, but they laughed and laughed all over again. Then they sat down together to read.

  “I’m going,” said Louis suddenly. He stood and went to the door. Solesme did not try to stop him. He left without looking at her and trudged up the steep driveway to his house. The smell of rosemary hung in the air, like a promise, or a memory. He wanted to weep. How could Bertrand be correct? Solesme seemed fine. She still accompanied him on long walks across the valley. And just last week they had spent the entire afternoon visiting museums and galleries in Tours. They had even returned to several galleries because she had insisted on buying him a small pencil drawing that he had admired, and he could not remember which gallery it had been in.

  But now a number had been named. And the limit on their time had become specific and severe. It forced its way into his consciousness again and again, and sometimes—like now—it became all but unbearable. Time was now unimaginably precious. And yet, at the same time, he felt as though he might suffocate in her presence. In his mind he could not separate Solesme from her death. How dare she be dying?

  Louis lay in his bed listening to the church bell. Four o’clock. He had heard every hour and every half hour through the night. Louis thought about death, the utter absurdity and the complete power of it. He gave death a face in his half-awake mind, and it came up looking like Hugh Bowes: nearsighted, pallid, fat, and dangerous. Louis had not thought of Hugh for a long time, and suddenly there he was, looming in his mind’s eye like the moon.

  In his first life Louis had gone straight from graduate school to the United States Department of State and the CIA at Hugh Bowes’s urging. And, thanks to Hugh’s encouragement and support, he had risen rapidly through the ranks. He was married, had two small children, and everything was on track for a brilliant future. Then, one day, he was called before the secretary of state and accused of serious malfeasance. Carefully constructed evidence was produced, and, though the charges and evidence were false, Louis was summarily dismissed. As so often happens, one catastrophe led to the next. He was estranged from his wife and children, his marriage ended, and he found himself alone and lost.

  It was a long time before Louis realized that it was Hugh, his mentor and patron, who had engineered his destruction. Louis tried to understand Hugh’s hatred but could not. He wallowed in his own misery for a while, but eventually the entire episode mutated in his mind into a set of philosophical questions about truth, about justice, about the human soul, about evil. It was rich material, and he ruminated on it for years after his dismissal, but slowly these ruminations subsided too. Louis came to Saint Leon sur Dême and found a sort of peace.

  Once, just a few years ago, Hugh Bowes had inexplicably tried to destroy Louis all over again. Hugh had become the secretary of state by then. Louis was shocked by Hugh’s continued enmity even after all this time. But again, despite the lethal nature of Hugh’s efforts, things had turned out well enough for Louis, and so he let this episode disappear into the recesses of his mind, as the earlier one had. For Louis, as long as it remained in his past where it belonged, it was of little concern or interest.

  Louis was startled out of his reverie by the clock ringing five. It was still dark, with only the first light showing, but he got out of bed anyway. He dressed and stepped into his leather boots without turning on the light. He pulled the laces tight and tied double knots. The first band of light in the east broadened, and the sparrows began chattering and rattling about under the eaves.

  In the kitchen he toasted two pieces of baguette and slathered them with butter and marmalade. He sat at one end of the long table, his elbows on the checkered oilcloth, and sipped from a bowl of café au lait. He watched his reflection in the window. The glass twisted his features in strange and alarming ways. But as the light rose outside, the linden tree and the barn came into view through the glass. His reflection disappeared and with it his uneasiness.

  Louis got out his knapsack and stuffed it with a few clothes, a drawing pad, and a book. By the time he opened the barn door and pulled the old Peugeot to the top of the driveway, the sun had risen, and all that remained of the night was a lingering coolness. He stopped the car and looked out across the garden and into the fields beyond. The freshly turned soil went from black to purple to golden. The sun rose above the laurel hedge and cast the car’s elongated shadow the entire length of the garden and into the plum trees. Louis saw his own shadow inside the car’s shadow and raised his hand and watched his shadow wave back. I’m still here, he thought. The sun rose higher and found the roses, one by one, and the tomato plants with their tiny green fruits and the carefully tended beans and beets and lettuce.

  Even as he was greedy to escape, he was reluctant to do so. He got out of the car again and stood in the morning sun. I am being stupid, he thought. I am afraid of shadows. I am frightened of death. Of hers and of mine. He had said more or less the same thing to Renard a few days earlier, although he had left out the particulars. “I am frightened,” he had said, “and I don’t like being frightened. I am not used to being frightened.” Renard was not used to hearing confessions of this sort from his friend and could not think of anything to say.

  Louis released the hand brake, coasted down the drive, and turned onto the narrow lane. He coasted past Solesme’s house so she would not hear the engine. He knew, though, that she would hear him anyway. He tried not to look, in case she might be watching from the window. He could not bear to think of life without her, and of course he could think of nothing else. He remembered their entire time together, all at once, in one long endless moment, as though he were drowning.

  It had rained the night before, and puddles in the road reflected the brilliant morning sky. At the corner, Louis turned toward Marçon. The narrow road wound through fields of wheat and sunflowers, along pastures where Holstein cattle grazed, past the mill owned by the Belgians, past the small vineyard they had planted. In Marçon he carefully nosed the car out of the narrow lane and turned toward Flée. He got stuck behind a tractor, but eventually the farmer pulled as far off the road as he could manage and waved Louis by. Louis drove past farms and through forgotten villages as though he were alone in the world, away
from death and inept burglaries. Only when he entered the city of Le Mans did he find himself caught up in the rush of morning traffic. Inexplicably he felt relieved to be among people.

  He left the Peugeot in the car park, bought a ticket for Quimper, punched his ticket in the orange machine, and went to the platform to wait. The fast train from Paris to Quimper raced into the station, and Louis got on board and found his seat by the window. He pulled the book from his knapsack, but it remained on his lap while he watched the landscape fly past, like a sped-up movie, like a sped-up life. Wires swooped exuberantly above the fields, cows grazed for an instant, villages appeared and disappeared in a flash. The gray, granite city of Laval came and went in a matter of seconds. He wanted it all to slow down, to give him time to catch his breath and to understand what he was seeing, but it would not. Then the landscape flattened out, and before long the train slowed and they arrived in Quimper, the capital of that region of Brittany known as the Finistère.

  The Finistère, le Finistère, is the westernmost part of France, a thick finger of land in the north just below the English Channel which reaches far into the ocean and toward the New World. Surrounded as it is by the cold waters of the Atlantic, it is a windswept and bitter landscape, buffeted by frequent storms. Its people have long been cut off from the rest of France by geography, by their culture, and by their language, and consequently they are tough and solitary and self-reliant. Their flag is black and white.

  It struck Louis as fitting that the defiant Bretons would have a flag without color. During the time of Caesar, the Roman soldiers stationed in those far reaches had found life here to be utterly lonely and desolate. It was beautiful in its way, but it was a world too far from gentle Italy, so they called it finis terrae, which in Latin means the end of the earth.

  Louis left the Quimper train station and boarded a waiting bus whose sign indicated it would be going to the Pointe du Raz, which was the westernmost point of the Finistère, in essence the end of the end of the earth. He wondered whether it was far enough. He paid the driver and took a seat by the front door. After a few minutes the driver tugged on a long handle and closed the door, and, with a gaseous groan, the bus backed up and lumbered out of the station and out of town.