“A heart attack.” They stared at her through the smoke. “Oh, come on.” Merle rolled her eyes. Now she was a serial killer? “I had nothing to do with my husband’s death, nor with the death of Madame LaBelle. I walked down the road from the Shrine. Several people saw me as they drove up.”
“Can you give us names or descriptions?”
“A white van. I didn’t see the driver, I was too busy jumping behind a tree to avoid being killed. A green — one of those little cars. A woman was driving.” That should narrow things down. “I had a croissant and a coffee at the patisserie about eight o’clock. I bought a paper at the tabac, the International Herald Tribune. The agriculture strike is on the front page. I went back to my room and straightened it up. Monsieur le Gendarme can confirm that it was broken into yesterday and several things were stolen.”
The gendarme spoke to the captain. “What are they saying?” Merle asked the teacher.
“He says you reported a burglary.” The teacher listened to the captain. “What does your watch look like?”
“A gold link band, small with a pearl face with four tiny diamond chips. A Tag Heuer, old, scratched.”
The captain spoke to Redier who left the room. In a moment he was back with a small plastic bag with black writing on it. Inside was her watch.
Merle pushed the plastic down around the face of the watch; the scratch on the crystal, just as it’d been for years. “Where did you find it?”
The teacher blinked. “On the arm of the dead woman.”
Arnaud Rancard roared into town in late afternoon, just as Jacqueline Armansett tired of the translation game and said she had her own work to do. Merle had told and retold the details of her meetings with Madame LaBelle to the point she had nothing left to say. Capitan Montrose seemed to be satisfied, although the connection between her watch and the arm of Justine LaBelle was troubling. Redier seemed to think this constituted a smoking gun. His reasoning was classic: Since the American wanted the house she had to eliminate the squatter. Americans take what they want by force. Americans bribe people with expensive watches. Montrose, clearly the brains and her new best friend, shook his head at each of his proclamations.
Arnaud had called the hotel for Merle and received the news she had been arrested, true enough to get him to race his Benz over the roads to Malcouziac. Merle heard him shouting at Redier outside the interview room. The calmer voice of Montrose intruded and finally Arnaud was allowed to see her.
He kissed her on both cheeks. His color was high, and he spit out his words. “What the hell is going on in this little ville? They are crazy, all of them! I wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor was behind all this, that idiot!”
Merle felt confused, and a little frightened by what was going on, but she didn’t need to get as riled up as Rancard. Stay calm. “What are they going to do with me? Have they told you?”
“It is all a terrible mistake. I will call the Embassy for you. There is an American consul in Nice.”
“What can they do?” Nice was far away.
“Make sure your rights are not violated by these peasants.” He gestured wildly then sighed. “I will help you too, Madame. Whatever I can do, although of course I am not a criminal lawyer. Capitan Montrose, he is from Bergerac, from the courts. He will take over the investigation. In France we do not let the crazy gendarmes do investigation. They are too close to the population.”
“He seems reasonable,” she said.
“The Capitan will do you well.” He stood up suddenly. “I must talk to him.”
“Am I being charged with something?”
“Not yet. Do you have with you all the documents about the house?”
“In my backpack. They have it out there.”
She thought of Tristan in Paris again. His father dead and his mother in the Bastille. Merle hadn’t spoken to any of them since she left the U.S. Now she would have to call. She didn’t want Stasia to come, to get excited about all this. They didn’t need an international incident.
She put her head down on the table and felt the sun from the tiny window on her neck as if saying: See— France can be gentle and lovely.
No need to go back to the ‘burbs. No need to go home at all.
Chapter 16
Merle sat on the tumbledown wall looking out over the vineyards. A bird flew to one of the stakes, perched there, singing. It made her forget about her headache for a moment. High on the tops of the hills, where the old forest still grew tall, wind tugged at the treetops. The sky was so blue it made her eyes hurt.
Harry never wanted to go to France. He lived for work. He would have missed out on great opportunities to make money, his most compelling desire. That single-mindedness defined him. She saw now, in a flash, that he could never have cared as much for her as he did about his money. Maybe he loved Courtney. Maybe he was incapable of that sort of love.
He did love Tristan. They had him in common. She would see her son tomorrow, either here or in Paris. Arnaud had been arguing her case relentlessly for the last twenty-four hours. For an estate lawyer he did like to argue. She smiled, thinking of him waving his arms in front of the stony-faced inspector. They would smoke Gauloises and decide her fate.
They had kept her overnight at the tiny gendarmerie, giving her a cot with fresh sheets and a cold dinner of chicken and salad and a glass of wine. She hadn’t slept well. The wine took the edge off her tension but she woke again at midnight, smelling their cigarettes outside the room. They talked on and on. The French have a great capacity for debate.
Early this morning she was served coffee and a croissant. An hour later, the inspector released her. Arnaud Rancard was not there. The inspector told her slowly: do not leave the village. Absolutement, he said gravely. Then handed her a note.
‘Meet me at the house at 11:00. A.R.’
Now, on the wall, Merle checked her watch but it wasn’t there. She had left the hotel at ten, after a shower and change of clothes. Who had ransacked her room? How had her watch gotten on the arm of Justine LaBelle?
Strange that they didn’t even know who Sister Evangeline was. She must have been at the Shrine when it happened. Maybe she was even the guilty party, although Merle didn’t think so. A nun? Well, was she really a nun? Either way she didn’t come off as an evil person. Could someone have merely frightened Justine by the edge of the cliff, causing her to lose her balance?
Merle checked her backpack again. Everything she owned of importance was in there, except her passport. They had confiscated it. She had tried to call the American Embassy this morning about it, but hadn’t gotten through. She’d catalogued the contents of her backpack in a notebook. The documents about the house were there, the photographs, the mementos from the deposit box. They had rifled through it all then put it back except for the passport.
The stones of the wall were uncomfortable. She stood up and stared at the house. So silent, closed, absent. Was Sister Evangeline inside? What life had gone on there? She closed her eyes and imagined all the shutters painted — Sky blue? Grass green? Apple red? — and open to the breeze. The glass washed, the air changed. It would be a revival, a resurrection. Would anyone ever do it?
She hadn’t called Stasia yet. One more day and she might have some answers. Let it ride, Harry would say. Commit yourself, then let it ride. All you have to do is hang on.
Could it be the ride of my life, thanks to you, Harry Strachie?
He was dead, gone, buried. But he remained a force, a consciousness, a way to look at life. Not her way, but she had learned from him. To trust her instincts, to not be so rigid, to play the occasional hunch. She couldn’t deny the years they’d had. As much as she wanted to erase them from memory.
What would he say now — what the hell do you want that old wreck of a house for? She sighed. He didn’t care about houses, but he thought she did. Was he wrong?
The tires of the Benz squealed on the cobblestones as it turned the corner and came to a stop in front of the house. Arnaud wore
the same clothes as yesterday, except for a clean shirt. He looked tired but immaculate, as always.
He kissed her on both cheeks. “How did they treat you? Okay?”
“I’m fine. How did you get them to release me?”
The old woman from across the street (Arnaud said her name was Madame Suchet) appeared on her stoop with her broom. She wore a scarf and high heels, watching and listening as she took tiny strokes with her broom.
“Through logic, of course,” Arnaud said as he opened his trunk. “Why would you, an American, come over here and murder an old woman? You are a lawyer yourself, one who helps poor people find housing in the United States. An officer of the court, a good citizen, an exceptional citizen. Not a greedy person but one who works for the state just like he does. Several times you spoke about wanting to find housing for Madame LaBelle. That is not someone who has villainy in their heart.”
He pulled a pair of long-handled bolt cutters out of his trunk. “And now, the house is yours.”
“Wait,” Merle said as he walked to the door and wedged the tool through the crack in the shutters. “Have you discussed this with the inspector?”
“Oh, yes. It makes the most sense of any alternative. He wants you to stay in the village, yes? Then return the house to you. And so — ” He positioned the cutters around the padlock and with a grunt pulled them together. A second try, with a grimace on his close-shaven face, and a clunk as the lock fell to the doorstep. Madame Suchet dropped her broom and disappeared into her house, presumably to call the gendarme. “Voila!”
“Did the inspector look at the papers?”
“Oh, yes, he looks over them all, and agrees that the house belongs to you. You pay the taxes all these years. That is evidence. The taxes are accepted because the state recognizes you — your husband — as the owner of the house. The inspector speaks to the mayor who has nothing to say. There is no argument, unless you are an insane gendarme who has your head up your arse.”
He set down the bolt cutters and pulled on the door shutters. The rusty hinges creaked. The left one refused to move. The open one revealed the front door with its multi-paned window and pretty, carved wood with faint traces of blue paint.
“And now, madame?” Arnaud said. “Your French home.”
Merle stared at the door. “You have a key?”
“You did not bring it?”
She unzipped her backpack and found the big skeleton key loosely taped to the letterhead .
“This is not for the door, madame.” He handed it back. “One moment.” He went back to his trunk, throwing in the bolt cutters and returning with a small tool kit. “We will change the locks anyway.” He stuck a small screwdriver into the lock, twisted it around, and gave the door his shoulder. On the third push Merle could see it was about to go and offered her own shoulder. They tumbled into the dark, moldy room.
Arnaud paused to brush his shirt clean as he looked around the room. Merle stood blinking, letting her eyes adjust. The front room was large, with a head-high mantel over a blackened fireplace complete with iron tools and a large pot. The air was dank and foul. A large table with thick legs, scarred with knife wounds, dominated the room.
The lawyer ran a fingertip across the windowsill on the side wall. “Not much of a housekeeper, was she?”
Merle took small breaths through her mouth. “Have the police been here?”
“Yesterday. There was so little, the inspector said, he wasn’t sure she even lived here.”
“So it’s all right to move in? It seems — disrespectful.”
“He took her things, what little there was. Some clothes, some food.”
“What about Sister Evangeline?”
“She was renting a room over the bistro. But now she has gone, I hear. Her self-proclaimed duty was to help Madame LaBelle. When the woman died, her responsibilities ended. So she told the owner of the bistro.”
Arnaud disappeared into another room. Merle walked to the side of the large room, near a side window. There were stains on the wooden ceiling as if water had come through the roof. Spider webs and dust everywhere. The smell of mouse droppings and mildew. A staircase rose from the far corner into the dark. She looked up the stairs and saw a door at the top was closed.
“Mon Dieu, quel boue.”
Arnaud stood in the back room holding his nose, staring at burlap sacks of grain piled in the corner. Corners of them had been gnawed by rodents, with corn and wheat spilling onto the floor. The smell of rot hung thickly. The floor in this room was different, stone versus the dark-stained wood of the front. Arnaud opened the back door, letting in fresh air.
She stepped back into the parlor. On either side of the room sat a moth-eaten armchair and a tall, battered cabinet nearly six feet wide. Dozens of jars of ancient preserves in shades of gray, covered with dust, on the open shelves. She kicked the chair. Squeaks of vermin confirmed her fears.
“Merle! Come quick!”
Arnaud stood outside the back door in a flower garden bursting with blossoms. Lavender grew in a fragrant hedge, its purple spikes held over the gray leaves. Delphiniums, daisies, hollyhocks grew six feet high, blue, pink, white. On one wall red climbing roses, next to a framed grapevine with tiny grapes hanging in clusters. Arnaud pointed to the house. A pear tree had been trained onto a metal frame, flat against the stone house. Miniature green pears hung from the branches.
“And more, look,” Arnaud said. On the other sidewall, lavender wisteria had been trained to grow along the top. By the back gate, clematis bloomed white and purple in intertwining vines, covering the arch. A small stone building with a mossy tile roof was covered with a red clematis and pots of geraniums stood on either side of its door.
The garden was bursting with flowers. Under an acacia tree in a corner was a hammock. There was a graveled seating area, with two iron chairs and a small table. On the table was a potted yellow marigold.
“Wow,” Merle said. “Wow.”
“This jardin — it is like the Luxembourg Gardens!” Arnaud said, spinning to see it all. “These grapes will give you wine. Your own French wine, madame. Not much, maybe one glass, but your very own.”
Merle looked around, seeing the old woman’s work. “But — it’s her garden. Justine’s.”
“She was only the gardener.”
Some of the rose bushes were ancient, and the trunk of the grapevine was as big as her arm. He was putting on his jacket. “I’m sorry, madame. I must drive to Cahors again. The widow with too many children awaits me.”
“You’ll be back?”
“My work is done here. Ah, the name of the criminal lawyer.” He pulled a slip of paper from his inside pocket. “Antoine Lalouche, in Bordeaux. Excellent man. Give him a call.” He passed her the paper with his phone number on it. “It has been my pleasure, madame.”
“I can’t thank you enough. You — you saved me, not to mention my — my house.”
He gave her a little bow. “That is what I wanted to hear — my house. Congratulations. A lovely one it is.”
Then he covered his nose from the stench as he walked through the house. She felt her heart sink. Would the Inspector make a case against her? Is that why Arnaud had given her the name of a criminal lawyer?
From her doorway, Madame Suchet watched, arms across her ample chest, a frown on her face. After Rancard drove away Merle swallowed hard and walked across the street toward her. As she approached the old woman stepped inside and shut her door with a definitive thud.
“And a bonjour to you too,” Merle muttered, turning back to the house. Inside the front room she attempted to open some windows, hitting the sashes with the heel of her hand. Two complied, revealing generations of moths. She unlocked the shutters, sweeping the moths outside. She sneezed, and sneezed again.
A utilitarian space, both sitting and dining, basic, utilitarian. For a moment she thought she dreamed it, the sunlight streaming through the dust motes, the footprints across the dusty floor, the rough beams of the ceiling
strung with spider webs. On the mantel was a small vase, white china painted with a delicate but unremarkable blue design. It was a cheap thing, yet it had somehow survived.
Nothing but dead flies inside. Maybe it was Harry’s mother’s, a relic from her French life. Marie-Emilie had dumped the last flower out with the water, onto the ground, then set it on the mantel to say goodbye.
She wandered through the ground floor, eyeing the piles of grain sacks with disgust. It was soon apparent to her there was no electricity in the house. Not an outlet or a light fixture. The only water was rainwater caught in a metal cistern sitting on hefty posts ten feet off the ground. Gutters off the roof funneled the water down to it and with a pull on a chain it flowed into a large washtub on the ground.
The stone house in the backyard was a latrine, an outhouse complete with rough stone stool topped with a porcelain ring. A rank odor and a multitude of dead insects as well as their buzzing descendants filled the small, dirt-floored space. A small, filthy window at eye level provided light. Merle hurried out into the garden, gulping air.
Summoning her courage, she mounted the stairs. The door at the top was stuck. She pulled on it until the doorknob fell off in her hand. Behind the door she could hear cooing and the occasional flutter of wings. A regular covey of pigeons, it sounded like. Back downstairs she pulled out her notebook and began making a list.
TO DO — Les choses à faire
Install new locks.
Drag furniture outside and wash.
Drag grain sacks outside.
Patch glass in windows as necessary.
Wash walls and ceilings.
Sweep & wash floors.
Clean chimney/fireplaces.
Fix shutters, paint.
Find roofer.
Arrange electrical hookup.
Ditto water service.
Find electrician.
Find plumber.
Take trash, chair (upstairs junk?) to — dump?
Paint walls.
Replace floorboards.
Wash windows.
Blackbird Fly Page 11
