“Am I right in thinking you’re accusing me of the murder of my husband?”
“Have you noticed the way nobody’s got a good word to say for your husband? A thief, a scheming politician, a blackmailer, a gangster—in fact, the only person favorably disposed toward him is you. Even your brother-in-law, Jacques Calais, has difficulty in hiding his distaste. But then, Raymond Calais was a distasteful man, and you did a lot of people a considerable service by destroying him.” Anne Marie shrugged. “I hasten to point out that murder is a crime—and punishable in the last resort with the guillotine.”
“I shall make some tea.”
“A good idea.”
Anne Marie leaned forward as Madame Calais plugged in the electric kettle. “I must say I like your bracelet.”
“A friend bought it for me in Madagascar.” Madame Calais set two cups on the table. “Milk or lemon?”
“Neither.”
Later, as Madame Calais poured the tea, Anne Marie noticed that the freckled hand was trembling. The tremble was transmitted to the flow of amber liquid.
A bowl of brown sugar was placed on the blotting pad.
“Only your family could’ve had access to the gun. When Hégésippe Bray went to French Guyana, he left no family in Guadeloupe.”
“Sugar?”
“No thank you.”
“An interesting theory—but not sufficient to convict someone with. You seem to forget, mademoiselle.…”
“Madame,” Anne Marie corrected her.
“I’m a fairly wealthy woman. The best lawyers—I can get them from France, and I can pay for them.” For the first time the mask of her face broke into a smile. “An argument like yours won’t last five minutes in a court. You must realize that. If you really want to pick on the Calais family, I don’t see why I should be considered guilty rather than Jacques.” The eyes held Anne Marie’s look. “It wasn’t me my husband blackmailed. But he did blackmail Jacques Calais.”
“Unlike Jacques Calais, your husband tried to murder your son.”
The smile died slowly, leaving her lips hard set. There was a whiteness about the pinched nostrils.
“You see,” Anne Marie said softly, her hand on her lap, “I am a mother, too.”
73
Children
“A husband—you can never completely own him. You can love him, but you can never be sure he’s yours. A child is different—a child is part of you; he’s your own flesh and blood.”
Madame Calais handed the thin cup and saucer to Anne Marie.
“After nearly forty years, perhaps I’d have done the same thing myself. Perhaps your husband deserved to die. But by deliberately rigging the evidence, you put the blame on Hégésippe Bray. That old man was arrested for a murder he’d never committed. He killed himself, and as far as I’m concerned, it was you who placed the noose around Hégésippe Bray’s neck.”
“He was going to die.”
“He still had several years to live—years to live in the love of his family. After forty years in South America.”
Madame Calais sipped her tea. “My husband was going to die. I was doing him a favor. A clean death—rather than the long, drawn out suffering and the antiseptic smell of hospitals.”
“You murdered Raymond Calais because you hated him.”
There was a long silence.
“I don’t know whether I hated my husband.”
“Why else did you murder him?”
“Raymond had lied to me. And he had stolen my child from me. Through no fault of mine but through his own stupidity, his own arrogance. Black skin—for Raymond Calais, it was the greatest dishonor imaginable—as if the color of our skin is going to make any difference when we come to meet our Maker. As if he didn’t know there was black blood in the Calais family. One of his grandfathers was a mulatto—and on his mother’s side, there were at least two octoroons. But of course, like all men, he could never admit his own responsibility.” She laughed without humor and set down her cup. “The Békés are all convinced they’re as white as the driven snow. They’ve got as much black blood as the mulattos—and they’re no better than the mulattos.” She stopped and looked at Anne Marie. “You’re very shrewd.”
“I’m a woman.”
“When did you realize all this?”
“The day of the funeral—the day they buried Hégésippe Bray. I saw Marcel Suez-Panama walking with his mother—with the woman who’d brought him up. And behind them there was Armand, your son. I’d noticed something familiar about Armand—and I’d just assumed it was his likeness to your husband. The same jaw.”
“You met my husband?”
“I saw the photographs.” Anne Marie shook her head. “Then I saw Armand and Marcel—and there were only a few meters between them. By some coincidence, they were wearing similar clothes. It was inevitable I should see the similarity. But it took me some time before I realized that they were brothers.”
“Brothers.” For a long moment, Madame Calais sat staring at Anne Marie, staring without seeing. The eyes glazed over and started to water. “Brothers,” the woman repeated, “and I could have gone to my grave thinking the little boy had died. My little boy.” She wiped at her eye with a lace handkerchief. “What on earth drove Raymond to do that? I thought he was a man—but he was a monster. He was capable of coming between a mother and her child—just because the child didn’t happen to have white skin and he was terrified of a scandal.” She shook her head. “I’d always assumed the poor thing died at birth. That’s what Raymond told me—and later, when the doctor came from Sainte-Anne, he told me the same thing. A couple of days later, there was the funeral. It was awful—awful. I was just married, you know—and had been married for less than a year, and for all of the next year, I wore black. Black for the child I’d lost—and all the time I thought it was my punishment from God. And Raymond was so cold with me, so cold and uncaring. It was as if he hated me, and he wanted to punish me. There were nights when I cried myself to sleep and wished that I could die—or be like these steatopygous Negro women for whom having children is second nature, a habit like straightening their hair with hot combs or sewing their clothes for the carnival. Raymond had other women, and I lived virtually alone on the estate. He refused to sleep with me. Young and innocent—and don’t forget that I came from an English island where the whites never had anything to do with the local women. How was I to know why my husband was acting so strange?” She tried to smile. “Perhaps in his stupid, male pride, it never occurred to Raymond the poor child was his son, his own flesh and blood. I’m not an educated woman—but in Barbados, those unsmiling nuns had taught us about Mendel and his sweet peas. Perhaps Raymond really thought I’d been unfaithful. With some sweaty laborer from the fields. Or with Hégésippe Bray.” A tear fell from the corner of her eye. “I was alone, so alone, especially after Monsieur Calais died. There was nobody to talk to. I felt so utterly rejected. Just nineteen—and in four years, I don’t think that Raymond and I could have shared the same bed more than three times. During all that period, I could feel he hated me, and I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand he’d married me for my money. He was so hurtful, so unkind. The loss of the child—and then to be rejected by the man you love.”
“Now you know the truth.”
“But I am old. An old woman. Those forty years—I wanted him to pay me for them. I didn’t say anything—but there was a look in his eyes before I pulled the trigger, and he must have realized. I hope he realized—but Raymond was so selfish and so self-centered that he could never understand I acted out of love. Out of love for the poor, sweet child he had stolen from me.”
“Marcel Suez-Panama’s in prison at the moment. He admits to having killed your husband. I suspect he’s trying to protect his mother—his adoptive mother, because he thinks she killed Raymond Calais. On the Sunday that he died, Marcel and Madame Suez-Panama were both over at the Sainte Marthe estate, visiting Hégésippe Bray.”
“The boy needn’t
worry. I’ll get a lawyer for him. I’ll make quite sure he’s set free.”
“Once you’re arrested for the murder of your husband, Suez-Panama will be automatically released.”
“Forty years—and I’d never have suspected a thing if the Salvation Army hadn’t picked up that old man. And if his sister hadn’t come to visit us.” She shook her head. “Forty years—and I’d never seen him. Not even at his birth. There was no doctor, but the girl from Martinique gave me her magic potions, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Then forty years later he was standing in front of me. My child. He had come with the old woman to ask about the land—and immediately I knew. It was like a flash of lightning. I nearly fainted. I knew he was my child.” Her face softened. “My own child, from my body. Despite the color of his skin—the eyes, the jaws, the eyelashes. He was mine. I began to tremble and I had to leave the room.”
“What did you do then?”
“What could I do? Tell him that this old white woman with the sagging chins and the loose flesh on her arms, tell him she was his mother? And although I knew the truth, I had to be sure. In my heart I knew—but in my head I was confused. He was black—how could I be sure he was my darling, darling boy?” She caught her breath.
“So?”
“So I did the only thing I could do.”
“You asked your husband?”
“You think he wouldn’t lie to me? He’s spent all his life lying to me. He once told me he loved me—but that was before we were married and that was before he got his hands on my share of the family fortune. Raymond Calais was a liar. He lied with every breath he took.”
“What did you do, madame?”
“Jacques was never like Raymond. Jacques is a good man—and if I’d had any sense, and if I hadn’t been blinded by love, it was Jacques Calais I should’ve married. But in those days, Jacques was infatuated with a silly little mulatto girl from Basse-Terre. I went to see him in the showrooms. I knew Jacques Calais would tell me the truth—but by then, I’d guessed everything.”
“The truth, madame?” Anne Marie placed her hand on top of the pile of brochures. “What truth?”
“Raymond Calais wanted to destroy the child. His own flesh and blood, the cement of our marriage—he wanted him killed. It must’ve been early morning when I went into labor. It came suddenly and unexpectedly—at least two weeks premature. There was nobody in the house, other than Eloise Deschamps. And my husband. Perhaps they were having an affair—I wouldn’t put anything past her. She was an evil, scheming vixen, and she led her husband a fine dance. They say she was a witch. Perhaps she was—and perhaps she threw a curse on me. She knew all the magic potions. For me she made a herbal tea from tree bark. The pain—the terrible pain, a pain I’ll never forget—began to lose its edge. I think I must’ve gone into a coma—because after that, I don’t remember a thing. I don’t even remember coming round when the little child was born. Later Raymond told me my baby had been stillborn—and I didn’t even cry. I just felt empty—terribly empty.”
“What did your husband do with the child?”
“According to Jacques, he gave it to the Martinique girl, and he told her to kill it. Of course, Raymond didn’t have the courage to carry out his own dirty deeds. And the girl—perhaps she was a woman after all, and I must be grateful to her—she ran away and she took the baby to Pointe-Noire. I can only assume the Suez-Panama woman thought the child was the girl’s. That’s why she kept her secret—and that is why she bought the baby up as her own.
“And then the Martinique girl tried to blackmail your husband?”
“That’s what Jacques told me. Eloise Deschamps was a grasping, evil woman.”
“You were at Sainte Marthe at the time of the murder of the girl. You must know about it—you must know what happened.”
“Monsieur Calais was already very ill. He wanted a grandson—and he was almost as upset as I was by the loss of my baby. He was very kind to me, and he didn’t want me to hear anything or know anything that might upset me. He wanted to protect me—he had no idea that his son had left the marriage bed.”
“Jacques Calais knew what happened?”
She nodded. There were traces down her powdered cheeks. Despite the nice clothes and the makeup, she looked a tired, old woman, and Anne Marie found herself feeling sorry for her. The sense of elation—and satisfaction—brought on by the woman’s confession had now evaporated.
“Raymond knew the only alternative to being blackmailed indefinitely was to kill the girl. And that’s probably what he did. He poisoned her.”
“And the vials? And the magic ointments that Hégésippe Bray admitted to having tampered with?”
Madame Calais shrugged. “A coincidence—which most certainly suited my husband. During those four years that he refused to touch me, I thought it was because of the girl. I was convinced she’d put a curse on our marriage because my husband had killed her. I knew he’d poisoned her—the way he acted guilty, the way he grew angry when I mentioned Eloise Deschamps’ name. And Jacques knew it, too—and instead of my husband, it was that poor, stupid black man that was sent to French Guyana.”
“You did nothing to save him.”
“I was nineteen years old, madame le juge, and I was in love with my husband.”
“Something could have been done.”
“What? What could Jacques do? He knew his brother was guilty—but if his father had known, it’d have killed him—and it would’ve been the end of the Sainte Marthe estate. A scandal—a terrible scandal with Raymond Calais denounced as a murderer. Jacques was ashamed of himself. Now I can see that’s why he ran away to America.”
“You don’t feel guilty about inventing false evidence? You don’t feel you’re responsible for sending Hégésippe Bray to jail for a second time?”
“How did I know he was going to hang himself?” Her face broke into an unexpected smile, as if she needed to escape from her memories. “More tea, madame le juge?”
74
Boulevard Légitimus
Outside, beyond the blue-tinted window, beyond the hum of the air conditioner, there was a lull in the midday traffic along the Boulevard Légitimus.
“I will have to make out a warrant for your arrest.”
“Arrest?” Madame Calais lifted the cup to her lips.
“For the murder of Raymond Calais, your husband.”
Madame Calais shook her head. Then she drank.
“I have no choice.”
“I know you have no choice, but I shan’t be arrested.”
“You are mistaken.”
“It’s you who are mistaken.” Madame Calais set the cup down and poured more tea. Her eyes remained on Anne Marie. “You’re mistaken because you don’t understand Guadeloupe. You believe you’re still in France. This isn’t France, madame le juge, and I can tell you we don’t behave in the same way here.”
“Murder is murder.”
“What would happen to your husband?”
“My husband?”
Her shoulders no longer sagged. “This is a small island and information travels fast. Very fast—particularly when you belong to a powerful minority. Do you really understand the Békés?”
“My husband has no effect upon the way I do my job.”
“You won’t be able to do your job—it’s as simple as that. It is not you and it’s not France that controls Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is ours. France sends the money, but it’s my people who decide how it’s spent. Do you really believe that the Calais family and all the other families—you think they’ll allow me to go to prison like a common criminal?”
“You’ve committed a crime.” Anne Marie’s voice was forced and unnatural.
“I’ve perhaps committed a crime according to your law—the law of France. Here in Guadeloupe, I’m in my own country and among my own people. Trust me—even if there were no solidarity among us whites, there’d still be no chance of my ever going to jail. Because the government—your government—need
s us. Monsieur Giscard d’Estaing and Paul Dijoud and all the others—they need us because they need our vote. Without our active support, they know Guadeloupe will go to the Socialists. And that’s the last thing they want in Paris.”
“Party politics are not the concern of the judiciary.”
“You’re young and naive. Are you sure you wouldn’t care for another cup of tea?”
Anne Marie stood up. She picked up her bag.
“Perhaps my husband was not educated—but he was cunning and he knew how to protect himself. And he always knew something could happen to him. That’s why he told me all about the SODECA affair. I have most of the documents. Very compromising documents. Of course, the Chamber of Commerce and the bankers and even my dear friend the procureur—such a nice man—of course they’re a little bit worried. The SODECA business could be most embarrassing for them. But they know that as long as Giscard’s in power, there’s nothing for them to be afraid of. A debt of fifty-three million francs?” She made an amused, dismissive gesture. “A mere bagatelle. The taxpayer can foot the bill, and within a year, it’ll all be forgotten. Perhaps one or two discreet resignations—but nothing a quick whitewash can’t cover up. But if you.…” Madame Calais smiled. “But if you decide to put me in jail—the wife of Raymond Calais—all my good friends know I possess a lot of information. Let the cat out of the bag—and in the process ruin several powerful families? You see, they’re going to be annoyed. Not just annoyed … they’re going to get angry. Very angry indeed.” She paused and again she laughed, as if recalling an old joke. “Perhaps I’ve underestimated you, madame le juge. Perhaps you really do believe in justice. And perhaps you aren’t afraid. But be warned.”
“It’s not for you to warn me.”
The woman held up her hand. “Fifty-three million francs is a lot of money. And for a lot of people in Guadeloupe, your life—and the life of your son—aren’t worth fifty-three million francs.”
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