The Fleur de Sel Murders_A Brittany Mystery

by Jean-Luc Bannalec

  Dupin’s friend Henri, also a “Parisian in exile”—but who had at least married a Breton woman—owned a house on the Gulf of Morbihan, near the Port Saint-Goustan. Dupin had visited him there in June last year. He had stayed for seven days, his first days off in a long time, and he had loved it. And from there they had driven to Le Croisic too. The gulf was a world unto itself. Here, the Atlantic relinquished its terror, all of its roughness, tumultuousness, and violence, and became instead a tranquil still life. The gentle land that embraced it seemed to soothe it. But the sea was fully there. And determined everything. A particular climate dominated, which the Bretons proudly called “Mediterranean” or “subtropical.” A lot of sunshine, luxuriant flora and fauna, mild, fertile. Dupin had been especially taken by the fact that there was a large reservoir for seahorses (he worshiped them almost as much as he worshiped penguins); the seahorse was also the logo of the national parks and bioreserves, because the gulf seahorse had been a protected species for years.

  One of the first Breton lessons Nolwenn had taught Dupin went like this: “La Bretagne does not exist! There are many Bretagnes.” The Breton landscape was so diverse and the differences, contrasts, peculiarities, and contradictions so great. And Dupin had realized she was right. That phrase contained perhaps the last and greatest of Brittany’s secrets. And the gulf, for him, was the Brittany of summer sun, nonchalance, magnificent regattas, delightful bathing, and a leisure even the sea itself indulged in. The gulf was lovingly called the “kingdom of leisure.”

  During the drive, Dupin was reminded of the tragic legends about the birth of the gulf that Henri had regaled him with. The holy Forest of Rhuys had once stood on this spot—much like the rest of Brittany, it had been crisscrossed with holy forests—and this forest was home to the most wondrous fairy folk, from whom dozens of names and stories were still handed down to this day. Like villains, people began to clear the magical wood, to destroy the unique magical land, and thus drive away the fairies. They took off into the air. They cried bitterly. Their tears fell endlessly, drowning everything. In the depths of their grief, the fairies threw away their headdresses and from these, strewn with golden dust, came the beautiful islands. There were so many that there was one for every day of the year. The gulf was a sea of tears.

  Lilou Breval’s house—a remarkably narrow, old, beautifully renovated stone house—was in darkness, not a single light visible. It stood forlornly on a small promontory, the Pointe de l’Ours, the “Headland of the Bear.” The sandy path ended here and then a few meters farther along, at the edge of the garden, the “small sea” began. So close. Lilou Breval lived alone, or it looked that way at least. Dupin had heard from Nolwenn that she used to be married, but she had been separated for years. Dupin had never heard of any new man. But that didn’t mean anything, of course.

  Commissaire Rose stopped right in front of the house. Dupin had undone his seat belt and opened the car door before she had even turned off the engine. Despite his injured shoulder—and with stabbing pains—he got himself out of the Renault in one smooth movement.

  The first thing he was looking for was a car. He couldn’t see one. Coming here had probably been all for nothing; it didn’t look like Lilou was here.

  “Let’s ring the bell anyway. And: take this.”

  Commissaire Rose was standing directly behind him, he hadn’t even noticed her. He turned around. She was holding out a magazine for the SIG Sauer. “In case of emergency only.”

  Dupin hesitated for a moment. Then he reached for his gun, took the magazine, inserted it skillfully, and put the gun away again.

  The wooden gate was ajar. Dupin opened it, walked into the garden, and approached the front door.

  This was where he and Lilou Breval had sat when he came over. They had sat together long into the night. The garden was a paradise. At high tide it was bordered by water, a truly wild garden with trees growing in rampant chaos, shrubs, ferns. Magnolias, camellias, rhododendrons, laurel, sea buckthorn, and Dupin was particularly struck by the lemon tree and a tall orange tree. An enchanted garden. Not of this world.

  Dupin rang the bell.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone is in.”

  Commissaire Rose was again standing right behind him. Dupin rang one more time. The bell trilled through the night air.

  Nothing. Dupin moved off and started to walk around the house.

  “Hello? Lilou? It’s Georges Dupin!” he shouted very loudly. And shouted it again.

  “She isn’t here,” said Commissaire Rose firmly.

  She came round the corner of the house now too; Dupin could see her clearly. The moon was out. Full moon had been three days ago and it was waning again already, but it was still quite bright.

  “We ought—”

  Dupin’s phone rang. He whipped it out of his jeans pocket straightaway. It might be Lilou. Or Riwal with some news.

  It was Claire. In the car earlier he had seen that she had tried to call him twice while he was being treated in the hospital. Two calls had also come through from private numbers during this time. If Dupin didn’t answer, calls were forwarded to Nolwenn’s office line. He really ought to answer. Claire would definitely be annoyed that he hadn’t called back. She still didn’t know that he was now on an investigation, of course. She would think that he might not want to come tomorrow and was afraid of admitting it to her. But what should he say now?

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s from a withheld number.”

  The ringing stopped.

  Dupin took a few steps to one side. Ostentatiously. And dialed.

  “Hello, Riwal?” he said in a strained voice.

  “Boss?”

  “Have you found out anything? Have you got through to anyone?”

  “Yes, I have. Were you able to speak to Lilou Breval? Is she at home?”

  “No. Tell me what you know.”

  “There was an editor on call. He couldn’t help; he didn’t have much to do with Lilou Breval. But I’ve got numbers for two of the Vannes colleagues Lilou Breval seems to have been friends with and who might know where she is right now. And the editor in chief from Vannes. I’ve just spoken to him. He thinks she’s crazy.”

  “He thinks she’s crazy?”

  “He said she works on, quote, ‘insane projects’ all the time and hunts down phantoms. Apparently it’s getting worse and worse. He thinks she is, and I quote, ‘paranoid.’ He didn’t know of anything specific, or anything that might have to do with barrels or the salt marshes. But he says, and I’m quoting again, ‘nothing would surprise’ him. He only became the editor in chief nine months ago, and sees her at most once a week. In fact he never knows what she’s working on at any given time.”

  There was anger bubbling up inside Dupin. This was absolutely ludicrous.

  “He sounds like a complete idiot. It’s remarkable that she puts up with him even once a week. And he has no idea where she might be?”

  “No. He hasn’t seen or spoken to her since last week. He just knew where she lived. He didn’t know anything about her private life.”

  “And her other two colleagues?” Dupin had been wandering around the garden during their conversation.

  “They weren’t answering, it’s the middle of the night. I left messages on their answering machines.”

  “Fine. Keep trying. We need information.”

  Dupin hung up and turned around. “My colleague…” He stopped. Commissaire Rose was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. She was probably back at the car already. She was right. There was nothing they could do here.

  Dupin had just decided to head back to the car too when a light suddenly went on inside the house. The light from the ground-floor window cast clean, bright stripes across the garden.

  “Hello? Lilou?”

  Dupin hurried back to the front door. It was wide open. A moment later Dupin was in the large space that took up almost the entirety of the ground floor—a liv
ing room, dining room, and kitchen rolled into one. Commissaire Rose was standing by a wooden table piled high with books and journals, foreign magazines, the latest editions of Time and The New Yorker.

  No sign of the house’s inhabitant.

  “Damn it, what are you doing?” Dupin said.

  “I’m seeing if we can find any clues about where the journalist might be and what she’s working on right now.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “The door wasn’t locked.”

  Of course. Dupin didn’t know anyone in Brittany who locked their doors, apart from in the cities and at holiday resorts.

  “This is trespassing, unauthorized entry to—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He was aware it was strange that he of all people should be referring to regulations and laws today. Still, this was Lilou’s private space. They needed to speak to her urgently, but they couldn’t just walk into her house.

  “We have no choice. Aren’t you worried about your friend?”

  For the first time this evening, there was no sarcastic undertone or any edge to what Commissaire Rose was saying. She sounded deadly serious.

  “A journalist, by her own account, is working on an explosive story. She gives a police officer a tip and he is then almost shot dead during his preliminary investigations—and the journalist suddenly vanishes.”

  It sounded grim. Dupin had felt a certain unease, but he hadn’t thought of it this way before. Or perhaps he just hadn’t wanted to think of it this way, if he were honest. He realized that Commissaire Rose’s words had had a significant impact.

  “She hasn’t disappeared. We just haven’t gotten hold of her yet. She could be anywhere, at a friend or family member’s house—at a boyfriend’s house. Just because she can’t be contacted between ten P.M. and two A.M. and isn’t at home on a weeknight, it’s by no means clear she’s disappeared.”

  Dupin was trying to sound as convincing as possible and drown out his own unease. He wasn’t doing very well.

  “Weigh the facts as you see fit. As long as we haven’t found her, she is, from a police perspective, missing. I can’t take responsibility for any other view. In the interests of the person herself,” Commissaire Rose said, walking through the room, looking carefully around her, and taking a slightly closer look at things here and there. She turned abruptly toward the stairs to the second floor.

  “What are you planning?” Dupin asked.

  “I’m going to search her study.”

  An absurd thought occurred to Dupin: Might Commissaire Rose suspect Lilou Breval? Perhaps this wasn’t about Lilou’s disappearance at all? That would be—objectively—a possible interpretation: that for some reason a trap had been laid for him and Lilou had been involved in it. Although it might be possible theoretically, it was, objectively speaking, still complete nonsense.

  Uncertain, Dupin followed Commissaire Rose upstairs.

  To the right of the stairs was a bedroom with the door open. A fairly neatly made bed with a large, colorful bedspread and a narrow door in the wall behind it. Commissaire Rose was coming toward him through this door.

  “A small bathroom. None of her things are there. Toothbrush, makeup, moisturizer. See, she’s gone away for a few days.”

  Lilou hadn’t mentioned anything to Dupin about wanting to go away. And if he were honest, it hadn’t sounded that way either. She had actually said she was going to drop by straightaway once he had gone to the salt marshes.

  “Maybe she’s got a second home?” he suggested.

  “A second home, but not a second toothbrush?”

  “Maybe she’s just visiting someone.”

  Commissaire Rose rolled her eyes.

  She marched past Dupin and into the room on the other side of the staircase.

  It was a study with large recessed windows on either wall. The room was dominated by an imposing old wooden table, an exact replica of the one on the ground floor. It was ludicrously laden down too. But here there were countless newspapers, papers, and documents piled into precarious towers. The only free space was a relatively large area directly in front of the contemporary desk chair.

  “Her laptop is missing too.”

  “Astonishing—a portable device.” It sounded more sarcastic than he had intended.

  Without responding to Dupin—even he was embarrassed by his childish retort—Commissaire Rose lost no time starting to work her way through the first pile of papers. Dupin stood next to her and, after a brief hesitation, began to go through the documents too.

  They were standing almost shoulder to shoulder in silence. Old copies of the Ouest-France, or sometimes just single pages; other newspapers, Le Télégramme, Libération; printouts of online articles, printouts of her own articles. By and large it seemed like a kind of chronological filing system, within each pile, and pile by pile. Not strictly chronological, but largely so. In fact, the most recent documents were in the smallest pile, which Dupin was going through now. The filing system ended six weeks ago, however, with just a few unread-looking current editions of the Ouest-France lying on top. Scattered among the piles were empty cups in garish colors, at least half a dozen of them. And three used wineglasses. It looked like hard work. Like all-nighters.

  Dupin took a look at Lilou’s own articles. They were on the most eclectic topics, a jumbled chaos, on issues major and minor. An angry objection to the deregulation of commercial fishing of praires—clams—in Concarneau from the beginning of March, which Dupin already knew about; he liked them even more than he liked any other clams, so he was inwardly torn between the understandably vital ecological consciousness and his gastronomic passion, because the deregulation meant for a start that you got to eat the mussels more often. Next he found an article from July about the Breton food industry’s resistance in the face of an “invasion” by large brands. Dupin found quite a few notes from conversations about this. And the second large article on this topic: about the “cola war.” The whole world drank Coke … The whole world? No. Those obstinate Gauls, the Bretons, created their own cola, “Breizh cola,” in 2002, and by now a significant proportion of Brittany’s 4.5 million people happily drank the caffeinated Gallic fizzy drink, even Dupin. Because it tasted better, of course, but also because it was a protest, a symbol. So many people drank it that a historic event took place: Coca-Cola, the empire, felt threatened and designed a special regional campaign with its own logo to break the wayward Gallic region’s resistance. It had the opposite effect, of course, and solidarity with “Breizh cola” grew and grew. Dupin couldn’t help laughing. It was a typically Breton story that was taken very seriously. And it was also a typical Lilou story.

  “She certainly didn’t endear herself to powerful people. One or two people would have cursed her to hell. Bravo, I say. Hats off to her,” Commissaire Rose said casually as she sifted through more papers. But the words resonated with profound admiration.

  “Everything from the last six weeks is missing.” Dupin had double-checked very carefully.

  “Odd.” Commissaire Rose looked up for a moment, then set to work systematically on the next pile. A gesture that seemed like an order to be disciplined and keep working. For the first time ever, Dupin felt like he was twenty years old again and a rookie with the Paris police, assisting the senior inspectors and commissaires. His brow furrowed as he thought about it, shook his head—and then concentrated on the papers.

  “The thirty-six dead wild boar,” murmured Commissaire Rose.

  The sentence sounded so odd and out of context that Dupin almost laughed. He recalled that the story had caused waves last year in the middle of his case on the Glénan islands, a case he had inwardly been preoccupied with for a long time. It wasn’t as odd as it sounded, on the contrary: thirty-six wild boar—deemed sacred by Bretons—died from poisonous gases released during the decomposition of masses of green algae that had washed up on the shore. For Lilou, and this was the serious background to the article, it was about the causes of the marées vertes or t
he “green tides.” Too many nitrates from overly intensive conventional farming found their way into the sea and stimulated the growth there of green algae and became a dangerous problem. The algae was harmless in itself, even edible, but on land, in the sun and in enormous quantities, it gave off toxic gases. A huge issue, with enormous economic consequences, and not just in Brittany.

  “Here. An article about salt. From last year,” Rose said.

  The newspaper was extremely yellowed, covered in several places with wavy, round stains. Commissaire Rose positioned the newspaper so that she and Dupin could read it at the same time. The hook for the piece was that “fleur de sel” had finally become a protected designation. In future, only the handmade “flower of salt” from the Atlantic salt marshes could claim the name—salt from the Guérande, the Île Noirmoutier, and the Île de Ré. For centuries, the Atlantic’s salt farmers had neglected this issue and fleur de sel from India and China had sprung up, one of the countless ridiculous consequences of globalization. The article was about the impressive comeback by the Guérande in the preceding decades, and by the Breton salt marshes, which had been teetering on the brink of collapse in the late sixties. And about the 270 paludiers who were back again too, and the twelve thousand tons of salt harvested there each year. And about the three different kinds of salt producers—the “independents,” the cooperatives, and the French and European large manufacturers specializing in salt. A whole paragraph was devoted to a manufacturer originally based in the South of France, Le Sel, which even Dupin had heard of. Everyone knew it.

  Dupin read the paragraph about the “Salt War” particularly closely—the war was between Atlantic and Mediterranean salt, and the Mediterranean had long since won by streamlining manufacturing and continually lowering prices. Although Atlantic salt had always had the larger share of the market up until the end of the nineteenth century, this sel artisinal now made up just 5 percent of French salt production. From a global standpoint, the competition around salt was fierce: fully industrialized table salt production from other European countries and from Algeria, Russia, and South America meant that the salt from the White Land was becoming a rare luxury. Apparently the outlook was tough, the passionate Breton paludiers were not starving—thanks in part to certain subsidies—but they weren’t in an easy profession. There were some typical Lilou Breval–style barbs aimed at the large manufacturers from the South of France. Overall it was a very emotional article, however, that proudly celebrated the “marvelous ancient art of creating white gold” and demanded people banish all other kinds of salt from truly Breton kitchens. Two paludiers were quoted, the head of the largest cooperative, and the manager of the Centre du Sel. It occurred to Dupin that his notebook was still in his car—the replacement car—in the glove compartment (along with quite a lot of other stuff). It was one of the little red Clairefontaine notebooks that he had used since his training days for his extremely idiosyncratic “scribbles.” The notebook and the notes were indispensable to him during cases. It wasn’t just because of his sometimes terrible, or, rather, “selective” memory; this was his method. Or at least a sort of method. He would never have used that word. Commissaire Rose, on the other hand, didn’t seem to need to make any notes.