“You would have saved us a lot of time had you just told us outright,” Verlaque answered.
“Like I say, I forget.” Dottore Rocchia’s Italian accent was suddenly thicker, and his French worse, as if he were blaming his imprecision on the language barrier. “The manager at the Hôtel des Anglais knows me, so don’t you worry.”
“I’m not worried, Dottore. And are you sure you were in Perugia with your wife, and not your, um, companion, last Friday night?”
Rocchia laughed. “Yes, Judge, I was at home that night. Let me give you our home phone number…I’ve told my wife to expect your call.”
Verlaque took down the number, remembering what Florence Bonnet had told her daughter—that the Rocchia marriage was one of convenience. He would call anyway and get the answer he knew he would get. “Thank you, Dottore,” he said before hanging up.
“My pleasure.”
Verlaque was about to dial the Perugia number when his phone rang in his hand. “Oui,” he answered.
“Judge Verlaque?” a quiet but hoarse voice asked.
“Yes. Is this Maître Fabre?”
“Yes, Judge. As I was falling asleep last night, I remembered something that Georges told me about that town in Umbria. I’m not sure it will help, but…I don’t have much else to do these days.”
Verlaque got up and began walking around his office. “Go on, Maître.”
“Georges told me that the town had a wonderful medieval museum, housed in a palace right on the main square. He was most impressed with their collection, given the town isn’t well-known, so you can rule out Assisi, Todi, and Orvieto.” The old man held the phone away as he coughed.
“That’s a great help, Maître Fabre. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Verlaque hung up and dialed Marine’s number, hoping that she was between classes.
“Oui,” Marine answered on the third ring.
“Can you talk? It’s me.”
“Yes, I’m having a coffee between classes. What’s going on?”
“Could you ask your mother about towns in Umbria? We’re now looking for a town that has a quite good medieval museum—that was her specialty, no?—in an old palace on the town square. And it’s not a touristy town at all. You’ve been to Umbria too, with Sylvie, hunting down Annunciation paintings, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Marine answered, chewing a piece of croissant. “But we didn’t have much time, so we only went to Assisi. And we bought those cappuccino cups that you love, in Deruta. I’ll call my mom straightaway. And we still think the town begins with an ‘F,’ right?”
“Yes, let’s go with the maître’s hunch. Thanks!”
Verlaque hung up and sat back down at his desk and dialed the Rocchia residence. After speaking in very bad Italian to someone he assumed was a young maid, he was put on the phone with an older woman. He introduced himself and apologized for his Italian, and Signora Rocchia laughed. “It’s charming, Judge. My English is better than my French, so I’d prefer to speak in English if that’s all right with you.”
“English was my grandmother’s language, so that’s fine with me,” Verlaque answered in English. “I don’t get much of a chance to use it in Aix, except to give directions to lost tourists.”
“Ah! Same with me in Perugia! I studied at the London School of Economics many years ago. My student days are long over, but my English, thankfully, has stayed with me.” Signora Rocchia then paused before asking, “You’re calling to confirm my husband’s alibi, yes?”
“Yes, Signora. We need to confirm everyone’s whereabouts on Friday evening.” Judging by the conversation so far, Signora Rocchia was obviously more refined than her husband. If she was the same age as Giuseppe, that meant she would have attended LSE sometime in the 1960s, when few Italian women went to university, let alone a world-renowned one.
Signora Rocchia hesitated for the briefest of seconds before answering. “He was here, Judge.”
Verlaque closed his eyes in disappointment. He had hoped that Signora Rocchia would have had a sudden change of heart, that her husband’s well-known philandering would finally be acknowledged and challenged by her.
“He was here,” she repeated. “But I was not.”
Verlaque jumped up out of his chair just as Mme Girard knocked and came into his office. He shooed her away with his hand and pointed to the phone.
“I beg your pardon, Signora? Where were you?”
“I was at my family home on the Ligurian coast, near Lerici, closing it up for the winter. Last winter we had mudslides and the village road was closed for weeks.” Verlaque thought of Lerici’s orange and red buildings and its swaying palm trees. He had spent many vacations near Lerici, in a village just a few kilometers east.
“You realize you are going against your husband’s word, Signora.”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, and then laughed. “And as Clark Gable once said, ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn.’”
Verlaque threw a clenched fist into the air. “And how do you know that your husband was at home, Signora?”
“Our maid…she was the one who answered the phone…told me.”
“Has your maid been with you a long time?” he asked.
“Do you mean to ask if I trust her?”
“Yes, Signora.”
“I’m not sure if I trust her, she hasn’t been working for us that long. My husband hired her, probably because of her breast size.” Signora Rocchia laughed but Verlaque could hear that it was forced. He looked out of the window at a rare gray Aix sky and imagined a young Italian woman in 1960s London, with books under her arm, laughing.
“Thank you for your honesty, Signora.”
Signora Rocchia stifled what he thought sounded like a sob, but continued talking. “Telling you the truth was easier than I imagined it would be,” she said, sniffing. “Speaking in English helps, somehow.”
“I may have to call you again, or the prosecutor here in Aix will. You understand that, don’t you, Signora?”
She breathed so deeply that Verlaque could hear it on the other end of the phone. “Yes, of course, but…I may not…be here. Let me give you my sister’s phone number in Rome…I may be there, or she’ll at least be able to tell you where I am. I’ve just realized that my future plans are somewhat…up in the air, as they say in English. Do you have a pen?”
Verlaque took down the number and thanked her once more. “I’ll keep you abreast of any developments or decisions we’ll be making in the case.”
“I’d appreciate that, Judge.”
“Signora? Good luck with everything.”
Verlaque walked out of his office, hungry for lunch but more desperate for a coffee. “I’m sorry about that, Mme Girard. I was on the phone with Dottore Rocchia’s wife.”
“My apologies, Judge, I walked in a bit too quickly. I just wanted to remind you that tomorrow is a holiday.”
“Ah! The eleventh of November. Thank you, Madame, I had forgotten. Would you care for an espresso? I’m about to make one for myself.”
Mme Girard stood up, straightening her tight skirt. “No thank you, Judge. I’m on my way to meet my husband for lunch.”
Verlaque smiled, thinking of himself and Marine, and now Jean-Marc and Pierre, and the Girards, who after thirty-plus years of marriage and three children still enjoyed regularly scheduled lunches together. “Pass my greetings on to M. Girard,” he said. There was hope in the world. Perhaps Signora Rocchia would discover love in Rome, or on Lerici’s Bay of Poets, under the bright pink and red bougainvillea flowers and near Byron and Shelley’s beloved green-blue sea. Perhaps she already had.
Chapter Thirty-two
The Bay of Poets
“The hotel manager in San Remo recognized Rocchia,” Paulik told Verlaque as they were eating their sandwiches.
“He could have been paid off,” Verlaque suggested.
“I thought that too, so I made a few more inquiries—well, Officer Cazal did, since she spea
ks a bit of Italian. The hotel’s barman recognized Rocchia from television too, as did the parking valet, who has all of Rocchia’s books.”
“Merde.” Verlaque looked over the counter at Fanny, the owner of one of his favorite restaurants in Aix, a small sandwich shop that served the best lunches in town and was a two-minute walk from his office. “Fanny, where do you buy your pan-bagnats?” he asked.
“Professional secret, but I’ve tried every baker in town and finally settled on this one.”
Verlaque was eating the New Yorker sandwich, made with diced hamburger and onions and drizzled with olive oil on a thick bun. “I love this kind of place,” he said to Paulik. “It’s small, clean, and she uses such great products. I could just do without the students and the ladies from the passport office up the street.”
“Hey, they need to eat too,” Paulik answered, looking around. He recognized a woman who had been particularly rude to Hélène when she had needed to renew her passport in a hurry to attend a wine conference in California. It was one of the only times he had ever used his commissioner badge when not working. “Okay, the students can stay, but you’re right about the passport ladies.”
They finished up, paid for their lunch, and walked back to the Palais de Justice. Mme Girard was already at her desk, and she motioned with a tilt of her head at Thierry Marchive, Yann Falquerho, and Annie Leonetti, who were sitting in the small waiting area between her office and Verlaque’s.
“Dr. Leonetti is waiting to see you, sir,” Mme Girard said. Verlaque nodded and waved Dr. Leonetti to come into the office with him. He held out his hand and thanked her for coming.
“What’s this all about?” she asked, more curious than aggressive. “I had to cancel a class to come here, and the students are already worried and shaken up over the two deaths at their faculty.”
“I’ll get right to the point then, Dr. Leonetti. I’d like to know what you were doing at the crime scene on Saturday morning. The maid told us during our interviews that she saw you go into Dr. Moutte’s office before the ambulance arrived.”
“I didn’t know then that it was a crime scene, Judge. I was at school to get some work done. My husband was at home with the kids, and my youngest was in bed with a cold, so he couldn’t take them to the park as he usually does. I can’t read or write when they’re in the apartment. So I went to school.”
Verlaque and Paulik stayed silent, and so Dr. Leonetti flushed and sat down. “I heard the commotion…the maid screaming…from the hallway and went on in. You need to understand that I didn’t know at that point that Georges had been murdered. I thought he had had a heart attack or something.”
Verlaque stared at Dr. Leonetti. “Why did you go into his office?”
“To see if he really was…dead.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this during the interviews? Did you take something from the office?”
Annie Leonetti rubbed her hands together. “I’ve never been a good liar, so I thought if I said nothing it would be better. I needed to get something before anyone else got it, or it would be lost in that chaos of the ambulance guys coming in.”
“I’ll need more of an explanation, Dr. Leonetti.”
“All right,” she answered, sighing. “Just the day before, Georges had been showing off the Dumas folder to me, waving it around in my face but not showing me the contents. He said that it contained the name of the fellowship’s recipient, and after we talked for a few minutes I saw him put it on his desk. That Saturday morning, with Georges dead and the maid hysterical, I thought I could slip in and fetch the folder before the ambulance attendants showed up.”
“And did you find what you were looking for?”
Dr. Leonetti looked down. “Yes, on the floor of his office. I have the file in my briefcase, right here.” She opened her briefcase, a battered satchel of worn light brown leather, and pulled out a manila folder. She handed it to Verlaque. “I didn’t want Bernard to get ahold of it. He was fiercely competitive, and I don’t trust his assistant, Claude. I was worried he, or Bernard, would change the recipient’s name.” Verlaque made a mental note of Annie Leonetti’s mistrust of Bernard and Claude. It was easy, in times like this, to try to pin the guilt on someone else.
“Would Dr. Moutte have typed this?” Paulik asked, looking at a page with Verlaque.
Annie Leonetti laughed. “Georges! He couldn’t type to save his life.” Dr. Leonetti realized her faux pas immediately. “Sorry…Mlle Zacharie typed everything for him.”
“And winning the Dumas is really that important?” Verlaque asked. “The boys broke into a building to try to find this, and you were desperate to get it as well.”
“I wouldn’t say I was desperate, cher Juge. But winning this fellowship is, yes, a big deal. It’s a rare thing at a French university. The recipient has their postdoctorate funded and they get a free apartment in the same building as Georges. Employment afterward is almost guaranteed, and with the unemployment rates in France, not to mention for theologians, you can imagine the importance of this in a young person’s life.” Her speech, and pride in the fellowship, was almost word for word the same as Florence Bonnet’s.
“And you didn’t change the name when you found the file?” Verlaque asked.
“No. You can see Georges’s signature right there,” she said, pointing to the doyen’s shaky signature, done with a fountain pen. And then she smiled, wide and fullmouthed. “I didn’t have to change the name, Judge Verlaque. The Dumas goes to my assistant, fair and square, the quiet and steady Garrigue.”
Verlaque, although happy for Garrigue, thought of the two students who were sitting outside his office, unaware that neither of them would win the Dumas. How pointless all the trouble they were in had been. He thanked Annie Leonetti for coming, still angry at her dishonesty. She left without her large smile, but quickly and quietly.
“Come in,” Verlaque said to the young men as he stood at the door to his office.
Paulik brought in another chair from the waiting room and motioned for the students to sit down.
“I’ll stand, if that’s okay with you,” Yann Falquerho said. “I’m too nervous to sit, and this entire thing is all my fault.”
“Go ahead then,” Verlaque said. “I’ll sit and digest my lunch while you explain yourself.”
Yann looked at his friend and then the judge. “I should have told you about Brittany, I’m so sorry. It’s just that since my dad’s friend didn’t press charges…”
“You thought we might not find out about it,” Paulik finished his sentence.
“Yes, basically. But what that policeman didn’t tell your prosecutor dude…”
Verlaque cut in. “Prosecutor Roussel.”
“Yeah, him, was that that night, which was many years ago, I was with the toughies of the town, you know, the townies, the guys who live there all year round, and I was trying to be cool. They showed me how to hot-wire the car, but I was hardly paying attention, I was so scared, and I’m sure I couldn’t do it now, even if desperate.”
“Thierry?” Verlaque asked.
“We found Dr. Moutte together, as we said. He was already dead, and the night that Mlle Zacharie was hit by a car we were at home together, studying. It’s only November, and we have a whole year ahead of us. Despite the fact that two people have been killed, we still have to study.”
Verlaque nodded and thought to himself that this was the first time anyone was speaking some sense since the death of Dr. Moutte. Thierry and Signora Rocchia spoke sense, and he believed them.
“And I thought of something else,” Thierry continued. “Another friend called us that night, really late, wanting to know if we would meet him at a pub. We didn’t go, we were too tired, but he spoke to both of us, if that helps.”
“Give us his name and number. What time was it, Thierry?”
Thierry looked at Yann, who shrugged. “I think it was around 1:00 a.m., because we both jumped when the phone rang and commented on how it was after midnight,
” Thierry answered. “Listen, Judge, I know how serious all this is, I’ve even spoken to a priest about it…”
“You did? Which one?” Yann asked.
“Père Jean-Luc.”
“Boys? Could we stay on topic?” Paulik asked.
“Sorry. I spoke to Père Jean-Luc because I feel so terrible. I know what we did was wrong, breaking into the school, but that’s all we did. I swear,” Thierry said. Yann finally sat down, exhausted.
The office door opened and Yves Roussel walked in. “Well. Did you two confess yet? It would save us all a lot of time.”
“We didn’t kill anyone!” Yann said, and then fell back in his chair.
“You both can leave now,” Verlaque said, looking at Thierry and Yann. “Leave your friend’s name and number with Commissioner Paulik.” His cell phone buzzed with a text message and he glanced down at it, seeing it was from Marine. “Foligno, Umbria.” He looked at the time, 2:30.
Paulik left with the two students and Roussel sat down across from Verlaque. “What if they kill someone else? The little Marseillais was shaking in his boots.”
“Yves, come off it.” Verlaque stood up and grabbed his jacket off of the coatrack. “I saw no such thing. I’m going to Umbria. Now.”
“What? On a Thursday night?” Roussel asked as Verlaque gently led him out of the office.
“Tomorrow’s November the eleventh. It’s a long weekend for us, but not for the Italians. I’ve done the drive before; it’s nine hours, including quick stops. Here…” Before Roussel could argue, Verlaque had handed the prosecutor the bags of mushrooms and locked the door to his office. Yves Roussel walked down the hall, his footsteps getting quicker as he looked through each bag. It wasn’t too late—he still had time to call his wife before she began making their Thursday night dinner. Later in the afternoon he could slip out to his butcher’s shop on the place des Prêcheurs and buy two poires, his favorite cut of beef. He had a Saint-Émilion Grand Cru in the cellar he had been saving; but what was the occasion?
Murder in the Rue Dumas : A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (9781101603185) Page 19
