Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  “Erm. Yes… fine, Chief. I think we’ll be walking on eggshells… I had no trouble identifying the victim. Everyone here knows him. He’s a local bigwig, apparently. Jérôme Morval. A well-known ophthalmologist, with an office on Avenue Prudhon in Paris, in the sixteenth arrondissement. He lives in one of the nicest houses in the village, 71 Rue Claude Monet.”

  “He lived…” Sérénac corrects him.

  Sylvio takes it on the chin. He looks like someone who’s just been called up to the Russian front. A civil servant who’s been sent to the sticks—or a cop transferred to Normandy. The image makes Sérénac smile. He’s the one who ought to be sulking, not his deputy.

  “OK, Sylvio,” Sérénac says. “Good job. Not worth stressing about it for the time being. We’ll examine his CV later on.”

  Sérénac unhooks the orange tape.

  “Ludo, have you finished with the prints? Can we come on over now?”

  Ludovic Maury nods, then moves away, carrying various plaster molds. As he approaches, Inspector Sérénac’s feet sink into the mud. He clings with one hand to the branch of the nearest ash tree, and with the other, points at the inert body.

  “Come here, Sylvio. Take a look. Don’t you think it’s strange, the way this crime’s been committed?”

  Bénavides steps forward. Louvel and Maury turn around as well, as if this were their superior’s entrance exam. They are keen to see him in action.

  “Look at the wound, there. Whatever it was went straight through the jacket right to the heart, so clearly Morval was killed with a sharp weapon. A knife or something of the kind. Even without consulting forensics, we may hypothesize that this was the cause of death. Except that if we examine the tracks in the mud, we will notice that the body was dragged several yards to the edge of the water. Why take all that trouble? Why move a corpse? Then, the murderer picked up a rock, or another heavy object, and bashed in the top of his skull and his temple. Again, why would anyone do that?”

  Louvel almost raises a timid hand.

  “Perhaps Morval wasn’t dead?”

  “Perhaps,” says Sérénac. “But given the size of the wound to the heart, I don’t think so… And if Morval were still alive, why not simply stab him again where he lay? Why move him and then bash his skull in?”

  Sylvio Bénavides says nothing. Ludovic Maury studies the site. There is a rock at the edge of the brook the size of a large football, covered with blood. He has taken every possible sample from its surface. He attempts a reply.

  “Because there was a rock nearby? He grabbed the weapon closest to hand…”

  Sérénac’s eyes shine.

  “I don’t agree with you there, Ludo. Take a good look at the scene. There’s something even stranger. Look at the stream, for about fifty feet along. What do you see?”

  Inspector Bénavides and the two officers look along the banks. They haven’t the faintest idea what Sérénac is getting at.

  “There are no other rocks!” Sérénac says triumphantly. “There isn’t a single other rock along the whole length of the river. And if you study this one more closely, there is no doubt that it, too, has been moved here. There is no dry earth stuck to the rock, the crushed grass underneath it is fresh… What is it doing here, this providential rock? The murderer must have brought it here; it’s blindingly obvious.”

  Officer Louvel tries to drive the locals back toward the right bank of the brook, toward the village side, although having an audience doesn’t seem to bother Sérénac in the slightest.

  “If I may sum up what we know so far,” the inspector continues, “we can assume the following: Jérôme Morval is stabbed somewhere on the path, a blow that is probably fatal. Then his murderer drags him to the river. Six yards away. Then, as our man is a perfectionist, he digs up a rock from somewhere nearby, something that must weigh pretty close to forty pounds, and comes back to crush Morval’s skull… But it isn’t over yet. Observe the position of the body: the head is almost entirely submerged in the stream. Does that position look natural to you?”

  “You just said, Chief,” Maury replies, almost appalled, “the murderer struck Morval with the rock, beside the river. Then the victim slid into the stream—”

  “As if by chance,” Inspector Sérénac says ironically. “No, guys, I’m prepared to take a bet on this. Imagine picking up that rock and smashing Morval’s brain in, there, on the bank. And the corpse’s head would be found, beautifully submerged in the water at a depth of almost four inches? The chances are less than one in a thousand. Gentlemen, I think the situation is much simpler. We’re dealing with the triple murder of a single individual. One, I stab you. Two, I smash your head in. Three, I drown you in the stream…”

  A rictus grin appears on his lips.

  “We’re dealing with someone highly motivated. Someone stubborn. And someone very, very angry with Jérôme Morval.”

  Laurenç Sérénac turns toward Sylvio Bénavides.

  “Wanting to kill him three times wasn’t pleasant for our ophthalmologist, but in the end it’s better than killing three different people once each, isn’t it?”

  Sérénac winks at an increasingly embarrassed Inspector Bénavides.

  “I don’t want to spread panic in the village,” he goes on, “but nothing about this crime scene seems to have been left to chance. I don’t know why, but it almost looks like a composition, staged. As if every detail has been chosen. This precise location, in Giverny. The sequence of events. The knife, the rock, the drowning…”

  “An act of vengeance?” Bénavides suggests. “A kind of ritual? Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Sérénac replies. “We’ll see… So far it doesn’t seem to make any sense, but I’m fairly certain that it makes sense to the murderer.”

  Louvel continues in his feeble attempt to herd the onlookers back toward the bridge. Sylvio Bénavides remains silent, concentrating, as if trying to sort Sérénac’s flood of words.

  Suddenly, a brown shadow emerges from the clump of poplars in the meadow, passes under the orange tape, and paddles through the mud.

  An German shepherd! Officer Maury tries unsuccessfully to hold it back.

  The dog merrily rubs itself against Sérénac’s jeans.

  “Hey,” the inspector says, “our first witness.”

  He turns back toward the locals on the bridge.

  “Does anyone know this dog?” he calls.

  “Yes,” an elderly man dressed as a painter, with velvet trousers and a tweed jacket, replies immediately. “It’s Neptune, the village dog. Everyone meets him sooner or later. He runs around after the kids in the village, the tourists. He’s part of the landscape, you might say.”

  “Come here, big fellow,” Sérénac says, crouching down to Neptune’s level. “So you’re our first witness? Tell me, did you see the murderer? Do you know him? Come and see me later, give me a statement. We still have a bit of work to do here.”

  The inspector breaks off a willow branch and throws it a few yards away. Neptune responds to the game. Runs off, comes back. Sylvio Bénavides watches his superior’s behavior with astonishment.

  At last Sérénac straightens up again. He takes a while to itemize his surroundings: the cob and brick washhouse overlooking the brook; the bridge over the stream; and, just behind that, a strange, crooked, half-timbered building, dominated by a kind of four-story tower. Engraved on the wall is its name: MOULIN DES CHENNEVIÈRES. Nothing must be neglected, he notes in a corner of his mind; we’ll have to question all potential witnesses, even if the murder was probably committed at around six o’clock in the morning.

  “Michel, make the public stand back. Ludo, pass me a pair of plastic gloves; we’ll go through the doctor’s pockets. We’re going to have to get our feet wet if we don’t want to move the body.”

  Sérénac throws aside his sneakers, his socks, rolls his jeans halfway up his calves, slips on the gloves that Officer Maury holds out to him, then walks into the stream barefoot. His left h
and holds Morval’s body steady while the other searches his jacket. He removes a leather wallet, which he holds out to Bénavides. His deputy opens it and checks through the papers.

  No doubt about it, the victim is Jérôme Morval.

  Sérénac continues to explore the corpse’s pockets. Handkerchiefs. Car keys. Everything passes from gloved hand to gloved hand and ends up in a transparent bag.

  “Hang on. What the—”

  Sérénac’s fingers extract a piece of crumpled card from the outside pocket of the corpse’s jacket. The inspector lowers his eyes. It is a simple postcard. The illustration depicts Monet’s Water Lilies, a study in blue: a reproduction of the kind sold by the million throughout the world. Sérénac turns the card over.

  The text is short, the letters typed: “ELEVEN YEARS OLD. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.”

  Just below those five words is a thin strip of paper that has been cut out and glued to the card. Nine words, this time: The crime of dreaming, I agree to its creation.

  The freezing water of the stream suddenly feels like two steel fetters around the inspector’s ankles. Sérénac shouts at the onlookers who are crowding around the Norman washhouse as if they were waiting for the bus:

  “Did Morval have any kids? An eleven-year-old, for example?”

  Once again the painter is the quickest to reply:

  “No, Inspector. Certainly not!”

  Damn…

  The birthday card passes into Inspector Bénavides’s hand. Sérénac raises his head, looks around. The washhouse. The bridge. The mill. The village of Giverny waking up. Monet’s gardens, a little farther off. The meadow and the poplars.

  The mist clinging to the wooded riverbanks.

  The crime of dreaming, I agree to its creation.

  He is suddenly convinced that something is out of place in this postcard landscape.

  3

  High up in the tower of the Moulin des Chennevières, I watch the police. The one wearing a pair of jeans, the boss, still has his feet in the water; the other three are standing on the bank, surrounded by that stupid crowd, nearly thirty people now, who don’t want to miss a thing, as if this were a scene in the theater. Street theater. Stream theater, in fact.

  I smile to myself. It’s stupid, don’t you think, making puns to yourself? And am I any less stupid than those rubberneckers just because I’m up here on the balcony? It’s the best seat, believe me. I can see without being seen.

  I hesitate. I laugh nervously.

  What should I do?

  The police are taking a large plastic bag from the white van—something to stuff the corpse into, no doubt. The question keeps scurrying around in my head. What should I do? Should I go to the police? Go to the station at Vernon and tell them everything I know?

  Are they capable of believing the delirium of a mad, old woman? Is the solution not to simply shut up and wait? Just for a few days. To observe, play the quiet little mouse, and see how things develop? I’ll also have to talk to Jérôme Morval’s widow, Patricia. Yes, of course, that’s what I must do.

  But talking to the police, on the other hand…

  Down by the stream, the three policemen are dragging Jérôme Morval’s corpse, like a large piece of thawed meat dripping with blood and water, over toward the bag. They’re struggling, poor things. They look like amateur fishermen who have harpooned a fish that’s too big for them. The fourth policeman, still in the water, is watching them. From where I’m standing, you might even say that he’s enjoying himself. Yes, as far as I can tell, he’s smiling.

  I may be torturing myself for nothing. If I talk to Patricia Morval, there’s a risk that everyone might find out, that much is certain. Especially the police. That widow, she’s a chatty one… although I’m not a widow yet, not completely.

  I close my eyes for a minute.

  I’ve made up my mind.

  No, I’m not going to talk to the police! I’m going to turn myself into a little black mouse, be invisible. For a few days at least. After all, if the police want to find me they can; at my age I can’t run very fast. All they need to do is follow Neptune… I open my eyes and look at my dog. He is lying about a hundred feet away from the police, in the bracken. He doesn’t miss a thing.

  Yes, I’ll wait awhile, at least until I’m a widow. That’s the norm, isn’t it? The minimum standard of decency. After that, there will always be time to improvise, to act, when the right moment comes. A long time ago, I read a fairly incredible detective story. It was set in an English stately home or something of the kind. The whole plot was explained through the eyes of a cat. Yes, you heard me correctly, a cat! The cat saw everything, but no one paid it any attention. It was the cat who, in a sense, led the investigation. It listened, observed, nosed about. The novel was even clever enough to make you think that, in the end, the cat itself was the murderer. I won’t spoil it for you, I won’t reveal the ending, you might want to read the book if you get the opportunity… Anyway, that is exactly what I plan to do: to be a witness to this business, as beyond suspicion as the cat in my stately home.

  I turn my head toward the river again.

  Morval’s corpse has almost disappeared, swallowed up by the plastic bag; it looks like a sated anaconda. Only a glimpse of the head peeps out between the two serrated jaws of a zipper that hasn’t quite been pulled shut. The three policemen on the bank seem to be taking a break. From up here it looks as if they’re just waiting to have a smoke.

  DAY TWO

  May 14, 2010

  (Moulin des Chennevières)

  Familiarity

  4

  They’re getting on my nerves, the people at the hospital, with all these papers. On the table I stack up the sheets of different-colored paper as best I can. Prescriptions, medical insurance certificates, marriage certificates, residence certificates, examination certificates. I slip them all into brown envelopes. Some for the hospital. But not all. I’ll weigh them and send them from the post office in Vernon. I put the pointless papers in a white folder. I haven’t filled in everything, I haven’t understood everything, I’ll ask the nurses. They know me now. I spent yesterday afternoon and a good part of the evening there.

  In Room 126, playing the widow-to-be, worried about her husband who’s about to leave this world; listening to the soothing words of the doctors and nurses. Their lies.

  He’s done for, my husband is! I’m well aware of it. If they knew how little I cared.

  Let’s just get it over with. That’s all I want.

  Before leaving the house, I walk over to the flaking gilded mirror to the left of the front door. I look at my creased, wrinkled, cold face. Dead. I wrap a big black scarf around my braided hair. It almost looks like a chador. In this place, the old women are condemned to the veil, no one wants to see them. That’s how it is. Even in Giverny. Especially in Giverny, the village of light and colors. Old women are condemned to the shadows, to darkness, to the night. They pass, forgotten.

  Well, that suits me.

  I turn around one last time before going down the stairs of my keep. That’s what people usually call the tower of the Moulin des Chennevières. The keep. I automatically check that there’s nothing lying about, and at the same moment curse myself for being stupid. No one comes here anymore. No one will ever come, ever, and yet seeing the slightest object out of place makes me chew my nails. It’s a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a tic, that doesn’t bother anyone else but me.

  In the darkest corner one detail alarms me. I have a sense that the painting has slipped slightly in relation to the rafter. I slowly cross the room. I press down on the right-hand bottom corner of the frame, to straighten it slightly.

  My Water Lilies.

  Black water lilies.

  I hung the painting at the precise point where it could not be seen from any of the windows—as if anyone could see through the fourth-floor windows of a Norman tower built in the middle of a mill.

  My lair…

  The painting hangs in the
corner that is least well lit; in a blind spot, you might say. The gloom makes the dark patches floating on gray water look even more sinister.

  Flowers in mourning.

  The saddest ever painted.

  I struggle down the stairs. I go outside. Neptune is waiting in the courtyard. I push him out of the way with my cane before he can jump up on my dress: the dog hasn’t worked out that I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep my balance. I spend several long minutes locking the three heavy locks, slipping my key ring into my bag, then checking once again that each lock is properly secure.

  In the courtyard of the mill, the big cherry tree is losing its last blossoms. It’s a hundred years old, apparently. They say it might have known Monet! They’re lovely, in Giverny, the cherry trees. A whole series of them has been planted in the parking lot of the Museum of American Art, which became the Museum of Impressionisms a year ago. They’re Japanese cherry trees, from what I’ve heard, and they’re smaller, like dwarf trees. I find them a bit strange, these exotic new trees, as if there weren’t already enough trees in the village. But what do you expect, that’s just how it is. Apparently the tourists love the pink of the cherry trees in spring. If anyone asked my advice, I would say that with the surface of the parking lot and the cars all covered in pink petals, it all looks a bit too Barbie. But no one does ask my advice.

  I clutch the envelopes against my chest so that Neptune can’t damage them and I hobble up the Rue du Colombier. I take my time, I catch my breath in the porch of an ivy-covered guesthouse. The bus for Vernon won’t be here for two hours. I have time, all the time in the world to play being a little black mouse.

  On the Rue Claude Monet hollyhocks and orange irises pierce the tarmac like grass along the stone façades. That’s the charm of Giverny. I continue at my octogenarian pace. As usual, Neptune is already far ahead. Eventually I reach the Hôtel Baudy. The windows of the most famous restaurant in Giverny are hidden behind posters advertising exhibitions, galleries, or festivals. The glass panes are exactly the same size as the posters. It’s odd, if you think about it; I’ve always wondered if it was a coincidence, if the dimensions of all those posters were specifically designed to fit the windows or, on the contrary, if the architect of the Hôtel Baudy was a visionary who, when he designed those windows in the nineteenth century, had somehow managed to predict the standard size of future advertisements.