Blackbird Fly

by Lise McClendon

  “I might have mentioned the house. But I didn’t tell him where it was. He must have found out on his own.” She fiddled with her spoon. “Do you think he has a legal claim to the wine?”

  “No.” Pascal took her hand. “It is ancient history. An old family story, that is all. He is a swindler, a thief, a killer. I don’t believe a word he says.”

  “You’re sure? I don’t want to take something that isn’t mine.”

  He looked at her, tipping his head. “The wine is yours, Merle. All yours.”

  As they walked out into the street she invited him for dinner. “On one condition,” he said. “You make your coq au vin again. It is just like my grandmother’s. And, yes, that’s a good thing.”

  They sat outside in the garden in the evening, sipping pear eau de vie that Pascal had brought. It went straight to her head, making her dizzy even sitting down. Tristan was inside listening to music. The night was quiet, peaceful for once. She listened to the birds in the trees, the frogs in the vineyards. This was the way she imagined her French summer, not full of injury, intrigue, violence. She shut her eyes and tried to forget all that. The music rolled out the open door into the night, American music in a French garden, a perfect match.

  She’d thought more about Anthony, or rather Hugh Rogers, and his connection to the wine. If he’d had a decent claim he could have pressed it with her. Instead he chose to steal the wine. That negated any thread of legal claim, she decided.

  Pascal held out his hand. “Vous dansez, mademoiselle?” The music was Annie’s album, old Beatles songs. She swayed in his arms, as he twisted the hair on the nape of her neck. A bittersweet moment made ludicrously romantic by the night sky and his strong, warm hands. Even this — especially this — she had never imagined. And why not, her little voice asked, having finally released her from the what-what? She felt free, calm. A person who asks why not? A new person altogether.

  She closed her eyes tightly, memorizing the way he felt, his shoulder under her hand, the smell of his skin, his breath on her ear.

  As the song wound down, he took her face in his hands, smoothing her hair. “Blackbird. That is your song.”

  “Is that what my name means?”

  “All your life,” he sang in a breathy, French accent. “You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”

  He pulled her to his chest and sang along with John and Paul — the dark black night, broken wings, blackbird arising — as he stroked her hair. He smelled like fruit and life and sunshine.

  Criminy. It was going to be hard to leave.

  BOOK FOUR

  The Beginning

  Chapter 39

  The skies hung low and gray with flocks of crows squawking in the bare trees. November in London was short, dreary days followed by long, damp nights. A change from her last trip to Europe but Merle wasn’t watching the skies. No dawdling this time. Pascal had helped arrange the auction of the “Fine Vintages, Rarely Seen,” as the Sotheby’s catalogue read. He had called Merle half a dozen times in the last three months. She often missed the calls because she was in meetings or wining and dining the corporates.

  She had dreaded starting her new job, but to her surprise she wasn’t half bad. She began viewing herself as an anthropologist who studies corporate lawyers, dissects their social structure, mating rituals, and mindsets. They weren’t that complicated really. She enjoyed appealing to their generous sides, and most of them were generous if you knew how to press their buttons. Lillian Wachowski called her a magnificent closer and even took her out to dinner one Friday evening to celebrate signing a big firm to a long-term pro bono agreement.

  The hotel smelled of fish and chips, full of bus loads of culture hounds. As she checked in, the clerk handed her a large envelope with the auction house imprint. The copies of the contracts she’d signed last month were inside, with more details on the auction. Her father had gone over the fine print and everything seemed in order. She was nervous about the auction. If the prices weren’t good, she had decided to refuse the sale. She hoped that didn’t happen, but the economy was still shaky.

  The auction was in the morning, early, but her internal clock was off and she wandered the streets for awhile, considered a movie in Leicester Square, watched juggling instead, and window-shopped at rare book stores. A fine mist began to fall as she walked back to the hotel.

  “Miss Bennett!” the desk clerk called. He handed her another envelope, letter size with the hotel imprint. Inside was a fax, handwritten. She sat on the edge of the bed.

  Cher Merle,

  As you see I am not in London. Things are very busy with the trial approaching. Gerard Langois and Hugh Rogers will be put on trial together for the fraud, a time-saving maneuver which I hope will not blow up in our faces. Rogers now claims Jean-Pierre Redier is responsible for Justine’s fall, or alternately that it was an accident. Can you come for the trial, my little blackbird? Pascal

  PS. Enclosed my translation of the report on the pissotiere bones, just completed.

  The next sheet, the forensic report on the bones, was short.

  “The bones are female, 20 to 40 years old at time of death, approximately one-hundred-forty-three centimeters in height, brown-black hair, who has not delivered a child. The skull had received a hard blow, fractured: probable cause of death. Bones are contemporary based on clothing fragments and hair samples found within the encasement, possible burial thirty to seventy years past. Without dental records or DNA sampling, identification is incomplete.”

  She would write to Dr. Beynac, maybe he knew who the dentist was in Malcouziac fifty years ago. But the chances were slim. Weston Strachie had probably wiped out all evidence of Marie-Emilie’s existence. The shame of the connection still made her ill. He may be long dead, and good riddance, but he was still the lowest sort of pond scum. She sunk into the worn bedspread. If only Pascal were here, to stroke her hair and tell her it was all over years ago.

  The bidding on the Malcouziac wine began at 11 a.m., after a lot of 2000 vintages from Château Latour in Pauillac. Prices for those were good. Merle listened to the talk in the gilded rooms on New Bond Street before the bidding on her wine began, standing with well-dressed men and sophisticated ladies looking at three bottles, the representatives of her lot — Château Pétrus, Château Cheval-Blanc, and Château L'Église-Clinet, their old labels brittle but the glass shiny and bright, cleaned for the day. There was no tasting as they’d done for the new vintages; the bottles were too valuable to open. The Pétrus had the biggest reputation. The wine critic Robert Parker had given it his highest rating, 100 points. You could almost hear him salivating between the words. The L'Église-Clinet was less well-known but might, according to one gentleman, attract those looking for something different.

  She settled into the back row, in good line of sight of the auctioneer. With amazing speed the Château Pétrus, 1946, sold for £2200 a bottle. The Cheval-Blanc '47 went for £2100, the L'Église-Clinet, 1949, sold in a split lot, half for £1200 and half for £1450.

  Then it was over. Stunned, Merle had to stare at her notes for a moment before the figures sunk in. She punched in the numbers on her calculator, pounds to dollars. On the Pétrus alone, before the consignment fees, over 100,000 pounds sterling. That was more than $152,000 US. On the others, over $240,00. Altogether nearly $400,000. She couldn't believe it. She sent up a silent thank-you to the old bastard, Weston Strachie, then almost fainted from relief.

  A ripple, a murmur, then the auction moved on. She drew a deep breath. All that scrabbling, angst, and panic over bottles of wine was finished. Pascal should be here. He had not let her down. He had done what he said he’d do, restoring her faith in men, or at least Frenchmen.

  She gathered herself and stood up. She would see Pascal again, sometime. But now there was one more loose end.

  The quiet village in Somerset, a crossroads of two narrow highways, could have served as a set for a Masterpiece Theater program, something from Thomas Hardy perhaps. No th
atched cottages, but very nearly. Merle had taken the early train from London after a little solo celebrating — and banking — in London. The village was a couple blocks long in businesses, with old homes mixed in, an inn where she intended to spend the night, a small food shop, a bakery, a garage.

  She asked the rental car clerk at the train station for directions to the even smaller village of Hockingdon. A flock of geese honked overhead, pointing her in the direction of the hamlet. Carefully she urged the little car onto the pavement (stay left/stay left, her right-handed brain scolded), into the rolling pastures and hills. Hockingdon wasn’t far, and she made it there by mid-morning. Fortifying herself with the thermos of tea she’d brought, she parked in front of the Round Robin Inn.

  Still there, after all these years, and still open for business. Amazing. Weston’s archive of memories, including the menu from the Round Robin, sat on the seat. The fat bird on the sign matched the menu imprint. They hadn’t even changed the sign in sixty years. She had found a listing for the inn — complete with plump fowl — in a British touring magazine, but she’d also found six other Round Robin Inns from Leith to Aberystwyth. She hoped she’d guessed correctly. With that sign, she felt sure she had. Closest to London and over a hundred years old, the inn apparently embodied the village, nestled in the center of the single block of buildings.

  Pushing through the heavy door, Merle stepped into the lobby. It smelled of grease and wet wool and bread baking. She took a seat in the deserted restaurant. An older woman, plump and red-faced, wearing a dirty apron, arrived at the table with a kettle and teapot.

  Outside a motorcycle zoomed by on the street, rounding a school bus and barely missing a small child. Several pedestrians waved their fists in anger. A couple made their way across the street and into the inn.

  The man and woman hung up their coats and scarves, chatting as they sat down at the window table. They were both gray-haired but looked youngish, talking in their country accents. Odd to be in a foreign country where you could understand the natives. Merle plucked a scone from the tray.

  Tea in a pot was brought for the couple. Merle waited for them to settle in, then stood up. They didn’t seem startled at her approach. A good sign, she thought.

  “Pardon the intrusion. I was wondering if you might be able to help me,” Merle said. “I’m looking for someone in the village who lived here in the fifties, someone who might remember a relative of mine.”

  They were quick to introduce themselves and find her a chair to join them. “Gavin Towne, and this is my wife, Gloria.”

  “The fifties?” Gloria said. “Gavin lived here.”

  “Yes, ma’am. When in particular?”

  “Nineteen-fifty, fifty-one.”

  “I was in school then.” He looked over his teacup at her. “Sorry.”

  Merle told them the memorized fiction, that she wanted to find the woman her father married after leaving her mother. “They divorced after only a couple years, I never saw him again. But I think I might have half-brothers or sisters.”

  Gloria’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely? Is your father gone now?”

  “Sadly, yes. And Mother too.” The story of all the related parties being passed and gone had worked at the convent so why not here? But she could feel her mother’s fingernails on her neck.

  “Isn’t there somebody around here who knew everybody?” Gloria wondered aloud.

  They consulted the waitress who suggested the vicar. But Gloria knew he’d only arrived five years before, just as they moved back.

  The waitress slapped her cloth over her shoulder. “You should ask Tulliver.”

  William Tulliver owned the store across the street, and apparently knew everyone. Gloria and Gavin introduced her, telling the shopkeeper of the search for lost relatives. He scratched his head and said, “There’s the Westchesters, but I think the old man’s gone in the head. Or maybe Lloyd Acres down by Tinsley.”

  The names flowed out of him. Merle scribbled them down. There seemed to be something wrong with each of them, they were infirm, recently died, or had begun to forget their kin. Then he said, “What about Annabelle Gallagher? She doesn’t get out much, but I hear the old girl’s still with us.”

  Gloria had seen the woman several Christmases back — a tough old bird. Liked to talk. Probably knew everyone.

  The shopkeeper drew a map to the Gallagher place called Three Oaks, a reference to long-gone trees. The sun came out, scorching the green hills with color as she drove. The old manor house, down a narrow drive, looked neglected, with missing shingles, broken shutters, windblown tree limbs on the shaggy lawn, a tire-less car rusting next to the carriage house. A few decades back the owners of Three Oaks had thrown in the towel.

  The knocker was a huge brass lion. A middle-aged woman opened the door — thin, bad dye job, pale skin. “Miss Gallagher?”

  “She’s in the sunroom,” the woman said sullenly, opening the door wider before she remembered to ask, “And who may you be?”

  “Merle Bennett. Mr. Tulliver in Hockingdon told me Miss Gallagher was the person to talk to about relatives of mine.”

  The woman looked her up and down. “Wait here.”

  Merle looked around at the wide, empty yard, trying to imagine lawn parties and elegant sculpted boxwood and men in top hats. It looked like there hadn’t been parties for a long time.

  The door opened again. Merle was escorted through the dark house, echoing rooms empty of life and furniture, to a large glass Victorian conservatory with a two limp palms hanging onto life. Under a red tartan blanket sat a shrunken old woman, white-haired and wizened as an apple doll, with bright blue eyes. She wore a pilled green sweater buttoned up to her chin.

  Merle introduced herself as a dining chair was dragged in. Jenny dismissed herself to make lunch. Merle pulled the photographs out of her purse. “I’m looking for someone who might remember my father’s second wife, in case I might have half-sisters or brothers.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “That’s the problem. All I know is her first name, Emilie.”

  “You don’t know your father’s name?” Merle had a new facial expression, the Montrose deadpan, which she wore now. It was her favorite response to questions she preferred not to answer, something her new job was rife with. The woman squinted at her. “You have a photograph?”

  Merle put the photo in her hand, the small, blond Emilie with Weston against a brick cottage. Three Oaks was limestone, not brick, so this was probably the first of a hundred dead-ends. Annabelle Gallagher stared at the photograph, her hand trembling a little.

  She handed it back with a sneer. “An awful little man, but she loved him.”

  Somewhere a clock was ticking. Jenny banged pans in the scullery. Merle blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Never saw the appeal myself,” she sniffed.

  “You—you know them?”

  “I’ve forgotten his name.”

  “Weston.”

  “Ah. ‘My Wes,’ she called him.” Annabelle looked at her sharply. “He wasn’t your father. Who are you working for? Are you a collection agent?”

  Merle shook her head. “He was my father-in-law. He died a long time ago.”

  “Look around. This is all I have left, a few plants and my chair. There’s nothing to collect but these old bones, you know.”

  “Miss Gallagher, I only want information about Weston and Emilie.”

  “Emilie? Huh.” She waved a hand and looked out the greenhouse to the dry yard as if seeing into the past. “He took her away, against all our wishes except her batty mother, and we never heard from her again. End of story. Ran off to France, I suppose — he talked about his business there — or America. I often wondered what became of poor Virginia.”

  “Virginia?” Merle looked at the photograph. The tiny, yellow-haired woman: not Emilie but Virginia.

  “My mother’s name. Dear Virginia. Lovely really. An angelic little child, all golden hair and rosy cheeks
. My sister doted on her. Until the day she died she fretted about never hearing from her little Ginnie. Tiny, like a child, she was. My sister tried to find her in the States, even hired one of those men, those —”

  “Private detectives?”

  “Nothing came of it.” The old woman stared at her spotted hands. “Is she alive?”

  “Sorry, no. She died, a long time ago too.”

  “In childbirth? I always thought she was too small to have children.”

  “A car accident. They were together.”

  The old woman nodded, accepting the facts. “I told my sister it would come to no good. No one ever listened. She’s dead then.” Annabelle sucked in her lips as she blinked to keep her eyes dry. She tried to say something but covered her mouth with a gnarled hand. Merle waited, the way she did in depositions, for silence to build and emotions to settle. Finally the old woman gasped angrily, “All of them gone. It’s so unfair. Two of us left. Me in this wicked old house as good as a jail, and one in a real prison.”

  “Prison?”

  “Very sad the way he’s turned out, but after his father’s appalling life —” Annabelle looked sharp again, squinting at her visitor. “You want to hear it? Of course you do. It’s made the entire countryside squeal with glee. Me, buried alive in this tomb. Do you know we eat onion soup six days a week?”

  Merle bit her lip as the woman rambled on. “It started with my brother. Departed this earth these thirty years. A spoiled, thoughtless man. The heir to this grand estate. He thought he was a fancy chef, or at least could employ one. Bought a lovely old building in London, in the West End. He spent thousands of pounds and lost it all. Terrible business man. And his son is worse. Does something dodgy for a living.” She lifted her hands to the glass ceiling. “And that is the legacy of my grandfather, the wise and wonderful Armstrong Aloitius Rogers. Who built this house and had such dreams for all of us.”