‘You don’t actually believe that?’
Soulier made a hiss of irritation. ‘I had a gang throwing bricks through my window because of what Roudy wrote. I told him to back off. If he wants to go sticking his neck out, that’s his affair. I’m not getting dragged into it.’
‘I’m not a journalist, Elsa – may I call you that? I’m a private detective investigating a completely different affair.’ Except I’m not because it’s over. ‘I just want to know if your brother received many visits. His social life. Whatever you tell me will be in the strictest confidence.’
‘He kept himself to himself,’ said Elsa with a sigh. ‘I told them that. What enemies could he have?’
‘Someone from his past, perhaps, his work? He was a warehouse manager, I believe.’
‘I never heard of any problems. Besides, he retired eight years ago.’
‘Yet someone came to see him that night. And we both know it wasn’t Benamrouche.’
She looked up sharply but didn’t contradict her. ‘I don’t know who he could possibly have argued with,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘His book was the only thing he was passionate about.’
‘Book?’
‘Napoleon.’ She nodded vaguely to a bookshelf above the radiator. ‘He was writing a book about him.’
Magali turned, quickly locating a big, glossy book with Napoleon, Master of War in large white letters along the spine.
‘You mean it was published? May I?’ She took it down from the shelf. It was brand new, still in a plastic cover. But the author was someone called Thomas Legros. ‘He wrote under a pseudonym?’
‘Oh, no, not that one,’ said Elsa with a laugh. ‘He never got that far. All I’ve got is a pile of notebooks in a box.’
Magali replaced the book on the shelf. ‘Well, that might help.’
‘What?’
‘The notebooks. Did the police go through them?’
‘No.’
‘They didn’t?’ Magali said. ‘Why not?’
Elsa flapped her hands, as if she was being accused herself. ‘It’s just about Napoleon. I don’t see what they could find.’
Magali hesitated. How would Xavier classify this? ‘All the same. I’d like to look at them if I may.’ Stage four lunacy. The sort where people believe in the Holy Grail.
‘You’ll be doing me a favour if you keep them.’
‘Well, I… Don’t you want to hold on to them?’
‘They just clutter up the place.’ Elsa went through a door and came back a moment later with a cardboard box which she deposited on the table. ‘I was going to burn them but it didn’t seem right. I’ll get you a bag to put them in.’
Magali took out a thick spiral notebook and opened it at random. The handwriting, though small, was neat enough to be legible despite all the arrows and crossings out. There were half a dozen similar notebooks, equating to several hundred pages of typescript.
Elsa came back with a bag. ‘He wrote it all up on the computer so I’ve got the finished thing, as it were. Though he only got as far as Austerlitz so finished is hardly the word.’
Lunacy indeed to think that in this old man’s obsession could lie the clue to his murder. But Elsa Soulier was happy to see them go, one less burden to deal with. ‘Albert started to look for a publisher but he didn’t get very far. I said to myself I’d find one, for his sake, but I don’t know how to set about it. You know better than me, I’m sure, maybe you can help.’
‘Mmm.’ Magali let it show that she had no trouble curbing her enthusiasm for that particular idea. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
***
On the Sunday after she got back, as the first chill of autumn stung the air, Magali walked to the Roquefavour aqueduct with Antoine. She’d chosen the aqueduct because it was where they had discovered their affinity, which apart from a single kiss that never happened, was, she now accepted, entirely platonic.
Antoine had never witnessed one of her moods. She’d intended to hide it for longer but they hadn’t gone far before the face she put on was no longer brave enough. ‘Is something the matter?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’ But then she added, ‘I don’t think I ought to be doing this.’
‘Doing what?’
‘This whole detective thing. It’s getting too weird.’
‘Weird?’ He said the word as if it applied to nothing less than creatures from outer space.
‘It’s become an obsession but at the same time it’s like a game.’ She told him about the Terrals’ house and Balland. ‘I was actually standing next to where they’d been killed and of course it was horrible and yet I was buzzing with excitement. Don’t you think that’s sick?’
‘Magali, my dear.’ He bestowed an affectionate, but somewhat pitying, smile. ‘I don’t know whether I may presume to offer some advice.’
‘Of course.’ She tilted her head. ‘That’s what friends are for, isn’t it?’
‘Sick is no doubt excessive, but I don’t think this venture is right for you. At your stage in life, do you really want to be getting into such complications? I thought you wanted to paint.’
‘I do. I am.’ Stage? Which one was he thinking of? She glanced at him. ‘I’ve been painting everything I saw at Enzo’s house.’
‘Really?’ Well, that is definitely sick. ‘Whatever for?’
She threw up her hands. ‘I don’t know. My morbid obsession again. And the worst thing is they’re better than anything I’ve done before.’
‘Well, I don’t want to sound old hat but I’m sure there are other sources of inspiration than murder.’
‘Of course, I just… I thought it might give me a clue.’ She spoke slowly, recalling her original reasoning. ‘That looking at everything from different angles and perspectives would somehow lead me to an insight. It didn’t, of course. And it’s solved now anyway, so you’re right, I need to find another subject.’
‘Solved?’
‘Mmm. It was Brigitte Bussert. Darlier busted her alibi. So now he’s got his culprit and Charlotte will be relieved and my services are no longer needed.’
‘So that makes it easier, doesn’t it? The decision’s been taken for you.’
‘But the thing is I don’t believe it. I mean I have to believe it but I don’t want to. I want to carry on looking.’
‘How can you? If there’s nothing to look for any more.’
‘Precisely,’ she said curtly.
They walked a short way in silence. Then she pointed to the hill in front of them. ‘Race you to the top!’
As she waited for him to arrive, she examined the trunk of an oak tree, wondering if it might provide a better source of inspiration than murder.
***
Twenty minutes into the session, Paul was talking about his mother’s hip, which ought to be operated on but she was afraid of the anaesthetic, sometimes they get it all wrong and you don’t wake up, when Magali said gently, ‘Paul?’
‘Yes?’
‘You were going to tell me about your father.’
There was a long silence. ‘I don’t have one.’
‘I know. He’s dead.’
‘I never did.’
She waited for more but nothing came. ‘What do you mean, Paul?’
‘I never knew him. I was three when he died.’
‘I thought he died six years ago. That’s what you told me.’
‘When I was little. His name was Patrick.’
Another silence.
‘Do you remember him, Paul?’
He clenched his jaws. He stared at the painting of the flower in front of him, saying nothing. For the next twenty minutes he played with his bits of string, discarding them one by one on the floor, till Magali finally said, ‘Right, that’s it for today, Paul. Twenty-five euros, please.’
It didn’t bother him at all. Perhaps he thought it a bargain, twenty-five euros for the right to sit in her armchair and litter her floor with string. Presumably it was his mother paying anyway. Magali wasn’t sure about the
Freudian implications of that, but if it didn’t bother him, she wasn’t going to let it bother her either. All in all, therapy was a much easier job than detective work. It didn’t matter if they talked and it didn’t matter if they didn’t. And it wasn’t like the Job Centre, where you had to actually listen and provide an answer. Here you only had to pretend to listen, while your thoughts wandered off on therapeutic journeys of their own: taking stock of your life, confronting your obsessions, deciding it was time you returned to common sense.
***
‘Three days a week, 2 to 8 p.m.’ The manager of the Spar, an amiable, round-faced man called Simon Retsky, was a little surprised when she pointed to the sign by the till and asked if he still needed a cashier. She’d never really spoken with him apart from the usual small talk, but word got around in Sentabour, and he hadn’t expected Xavier Borelly’s wife to be asking him for a job. On the other hand, he also knew that even a surgeon’s wife can fall on hard times. ‘It’s paid the minimum wage,’ he said, a little embarrassed.
‘Fine,’ said Magali, who knew from the Job Centre what it was like to go hunting for work.
‘The hours might change a bit from week to week,’ he added. ‘There’ll be a bit of shelf-stacking with it.’
‘Fine,’ said Magali again. ‘Suits me down to the ground.’
‘Have you worked at a cash desk before?’ he asked.
‘No. I used to work at the Job Centre.’
‘Not quite the same thing. Still, you should do all right. The first couple of days you’ll have someone to help you. It’s hardly rocket science. As long as you keep your wits about you.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ She thought it was nice of him to assume she had wits to keep.
‘Good.’ Retsky stretched out a hand. ‘When can you start?’
Chapter 12
Common sense having prevailed, Magali brought her murder-related activities to a halt. She stuffed Albert Roncet’s writings into a drawer, stacked her Enzo paintings beneath a sheet and abandoned the notes she’d started about the Terrals. Her assignment would be as sensible as her life: an observation of shopping habits in the Spar. In fact, come to think of it, was there any point in doing an assignment at all? The whole idea of gaining a qualification for a job she shouldn’t have started in the first place lost its appeal. I’m sorry, Monsieur Verney, I said you could count on me but you can’t.
Every morning, instead of going for a run, she watched Les Z’amours with a glass of wine and a packet of bacon crisps. The first time she did it, she felt guilty. Who watches game shows at half eleven in the morning? But she quickly got used to peeping into other couples’ marriages. She imagined herself on the show with Xavier, guessing all his answers correctly while he guessed none of hers. Or perhaps – who knows? – the opposite.
The doldrums. Luc used to think it was a place. ‘Mummy’s in the doldrums,’ he’d say, as if she’d just popped out to get some food.
But at least, in the doldrums, you could indulge yourself. And working in the Spar, far away from doolally land, made her feel virtuous: this is what sensible people do. Luc and Sophie said she was brave, as if sitting behind a till was the modern equivalent of the trenches. He didn’t say it in so many words but Luc, she was sure, approved – it might well be in the mud of Verdun, but at last she had her feet on the ground. Sophie was less convinced, but then she hadn’t grown up watching a cuckoo flap about in the clouds.
As for Antoine, he thought she’d gone from one extreme to another. ‘A bit radical, isn’t it?’ he said, to which she replied it was a matter of necessity. This was no doubt true, though she’d never actually sat down and done the maths. She found it hard to get her mind around bank statements.
Antoine had broached the topic once. She was lucky, he said, not to have to work, and with interest rates what they were, she either had a tidy pile or some investments tips he’d very much like to hear. He, obviously, had done the maths, as carefully, no doubt, as he did the accounts of the Hikers’ Association. And with a fair idea of what the house could have sold for, he wondered what she was living on. Magali remained evasive. The fact was that thanks to Xavier, she’d never had to be careful with money, and she’d got so used to this that she’d assumed it would never change.
For a man so busy keeping his customers satisfied, Simon Retsky (she was careful always to call him ‘Monsieur’) was talkative. In two weeks sitting at the till in the Spar, she learnt more about the inhabitants of Sentabour than in all the months she’d been living there. Happiness, it seemed, was not to be found in abundance – or else it was simply that Retsky preferred to focus on woes. Madame Perrault’s daughter had thrown herself off a cliff, Francis Talmy’s wife was cheating on him with a plumber, poor old Romain Chappe had been swindled out of everything he owned. Most of the time these snippets would be muttered in her ear as the person in question was in full view, pondering over the pasta or filling a bag with carrots. Magali made encouraging sounds of astonishment. The work, to be sure, was dull and poorly paid, but Retsky’s gossip was priceless.
She preferred, in fact, the days when she worked in the Spar because the rest of the time she was at a loose end. That was the major disadvantage of the doldrums: you flopped about aimlessly and couldn’t get excited about anything. Every so often she stood in front of her easel and stared at a blank canvas. A different source of inspiration from murder? What could that possibly be? Does having a painter’s block make you a painter?
She didn’t write to Nîmes to say she was stopping because she didn’t know if she was or not. This was a state she was also familiar with: dither. Funnily enough, Xavier had never latched on to that, but even as she was telling her Job Centre clients it was vital to be proactive, she herself would often be stuck in a swamp of indecision. She didn’t read Verney’s brochure or order the books on her list, she would let events decide for her – if she did no work, she’d be thrown off the course anyway. I’m afraid we’re expelling you, Madame Rousseau. For a mature student, you know, you’re remarkably immature.
Strangely, though, a book arrived anyway, with a card inside that read ‘Please find the enclosed as per your order. Thanking you for your custom.’ It wasn’t posted in Nîmes but in Dijon and although it was a course book for law students, it wasn’t the one prescribed on the list. A mistake, she supposed, and would have returned it if there had been an address on the card. One day, perhaps, she’d read it, if ever she summoned the commitment, motivation and discipline that Verney had so rightly said were needed.
***
Thank you for your visit. I’m sorry if I wasn’t much help but I’m sure you understand I don’t want it all raked up again. About Albert’s book, I wasn’t thinking at the time but would you like me to send you the Word file? It would be easier for you to work on. Thank you for offering to help, Albert would have appreciated it. Best regards, Elsa Soulier.
Magali sighed. Either her lack of enthusiasm hadn’t been obvious enough or Elsa had chosen to ignore it. I’ll let you know, she wrote back. For the moment I’m still reading the notebooks.
Well, at least it’s something to do, she thought, as she stretched out on the settee and opened notebook number one.
Louis Ragolin was in a tight spot, about to be pierced by an Austrian bayonet, but he managed all the same to note the details of his assailant’s uniform, right down to the scalloped hat-lace and yellow buttons. He even had time to reflect upon the respective merits of Austrian and French bayonets. Then, just as his enemy thrust, he rolled out of the way. Phew, he thought. That was a narrow escape.
Find a publisher, Elsa said. Magali suspected that finding any murderer on earth would be easier. Yet the notes had a certain hypnotic quality. After a while you became fascinated by button engravings and musket flints. Then suddenly you were back with Ragolin rolling out of the way or diving to safety. It was curiously therapeutic. For herself, anyway; she doubted it would be of much use for Paul Daveney. And at least it was more interestin
g than company law.
Ragolin’s first observations were at the Battle of Montenotte in 1796, which was cleverly won by Napoleon despite inferior numbers. From there Roncet’s hero went on to every battle in Egypt, Austria and Prussia, noting in painstaking detail the movements of troops, dates, weather, distances covered, names of battalions and commanders, information sent back and forth between the Emperor and his generals.
Roncet, in his way, was as mad and obsessed as she was, avidly recreating past events, trying to recapture something for ever gone.
Occasionally, among the mass of facts and figures, there were jottings harder to decipher, reminders to himself, it seemed, written perhaps when he stopped for a break so that he would know how to continue. ‘Upset with friend.’ Was he talking there about himself or Ragolin? ‘Reckless.’ ‘Lost in woods.’ ‘Farmer’s wife.’ ‘Poultry.’ These no doubt referred to Ragolin rather than Roncet, but it wasn’t always clear. There was an episode in which Ragolin stole a chicken, but she found no mention of a farmer’s wife nor of being lost in the woods. ‘Good!’ figured frequently in the margin, presumably meaning Roncet was satisfied, though Magali found it hard to identify why. He was keen to make sure that what he wrote was accurate, often adding ‘Check’ or ‘Plausible?’, with references to what might be other works on the topic: ‘Vallet – Egypt’, ‘Mendeau, p. 86’, ‘Caille useful here.’ Some of the references had ‘done’ or ‘OK’ written next to them.
Halfway through the Battle of Marengo, she put the notebook down, yawning. Too early for a drink? Give it another few minutes – hold out till five o’ clock.
Twelve of the minutes had passed when she got a call from Vincent. Ten days now since he’d called her in Alsace and several times she’d reached for the phone, only to hold back. Dithering again: she knew he fancied her but she didn’t know if she fancied him, or at least she didn’t want him to think she did. There might be a logic in there somewhere but it wasn’t very obvious. On the other hand, she reasoned, there are better places to look for logic than matters relating to the heart.
One Green Bottle (Magali Rousseau mystery series Book 1) Page 9
