Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  Three wicker baskets are positioned in the grass. Everyone is supposed to take a flower and throw it onto the coffin in the hole: hollyhocks, irises, pansies, lilacs, tulips, cornflowers… Only Patricia Morval could have devised such a morbid idea. Impression, dying sun… Even Monet wouldn’t have dared come up with that.

  They’ve gone as far as to sculpt a gray water lily on a vast granite plaque. Talk about bad taste…

  At least the light’s given out. The famous light of Giverny, one last time before the darkness of the hole. You can’t buy everything. It may even be a sign that God exists.

  The fresh earth of the grave at my feet is starting to slide in ochre runnels along the path between the graves… Of course, down below, not a single inhabitant of Giverny has a pair of boots. Inspector Sérénac must be chuckling to himself. We take our amusement where we can…

  I shake the black scarf that I have been using to cover my hair. It’s drenched too. The children are a little farther off. Some of them are standing with their parents, others aren’t. I recognize some of them. Fanette is crying. Vincent is behind her, but he clearly doesn’t dare comfort her. They are serious, like the incongruity of death when you’re eleven years old.

  The rain is easing off a little.

  As I observe this scene, a strange story comes back to me, one of those riddles that we used to ask each other when I was a child, at sleepovers. A man goes to the funeral of a member of his family. A few days later that same man, for no apparent reason, kills another cousin. All the interest in the riddle lies in finding the motive for the murder by asking questions. It could last for hours… No, the man didn’t know the cousin… No, it wasn’t about revenge. No, it had nothing to do with money. No, it wasn’t about a family secret either. We could go on like that for a whole night, asking questions in the dark, under the blankets.

  The rain has stopped.

  The three baskets of flowers are empty.

  The drops slide gently down the marble plaque marking my husband’s grave. Down below, the crowd finally disperses. Jacques Dupain is still gripping his wife’s waist. Water drips from her long hair, soaking the dark swell of her breasts. They pass in front of Laurenç Sérénac. The inspector hasn’t taken his eyes off Stéphanie Dupain for a moment.

  It’s that devouring look, I think, that reminded me of the riddle from my childhood. I found the answer in the small, battle-weary hours of the morning… At the funeral the man had fallen madly in love with a stranger. The woman had disappeared before he could speak to her. He had only one possible hope of seeing her again: killing another member of the family and hoping that the beautiful stranger would come to the next burial… Most people who had tried to find the solution to the riddle thought it was some kind of trick, that it wasn’t fair. Not me. The implacable logic of the story, of the crime, fascinated me. It’s strange how memories come back to you. I hadn’t given it a thought for years. Until my husband’s funeral.

  The last silhouettes move away.

  I can admit it now, because I know.

  It’s the ideal setting.

  DEATH IS GOING TO STRIKE ONCE MORE IN GIVERNY.

  A witch’s promise.

  I look at the loose soil around my husband’s grave. I’m more or less certain that I will never come here again. Not alive, at least. I no longer have anything to do, there isn’t another funeral to keep me company. Minutes pass, maybe hours.

  At last, I leave.

  Neptune is waiting patiently outside the cemetery. I walk along the Rue Claude Monet as the day gently fades. The flowers spill down the walls, beneath the streetlights. A gifted painter could doubtless make something of the gloom of this village.

  The lights are starting to go on in the windows of the cottages. I pass in front of the school. In the nearest house, the round skylight on the upper story glows. The bedroom of Stéphanie and Jacques Dupain. What could they be doing, saying, as they dry their sodden clothes?

  You, too, I should imagine, wish you could slip beneath the mansard roof and spy on them. But this time I’m sorry. However seriously I take my role as a black mouse, I can’t climb up drainpipes.

  I just slow down for a few seconds, then go on my way.

  18

  Laurenç Sérénac walks carefully in the darkness, trusting simply to the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel. He had no trouble finding his deputy’s house—he simply followed Sylvio Bénavides’s directions to the letter: go along the Eure Valley to Cocherel, then left up the hill after the bridge toward the church, the only landmark in the hamlet that was illuminated after 10 p.m. Sérénac had parked his motorbike, a Tiger Triumph T100, between two monumental pots of flowers, after spotting his deputy’s name on the letterbox in the beam of the headlights. It was only then that things got complicated: no doorbell, no light, just a gravel path and the shadow of the building fifty yards ahead. He steps forward again, trusting to fate…

  “Bugger!”

  Sérénac’s knee has just bashed into a brick wall. A couple of feet tall, and just in front of him. His hand gropes its way along some cold stones, an iron grill, dust. Just as he works out that he’s bumped into a barbecue, a light flickers in the distance and then, a moment later, a huge veranda lights up. At least his shout has roused the neighborhood. The outline of Sylvio Bénavides appears at the glass door.

  “Straight ahead, Chief, follow the gravel path, just watch out for the barbecues.”

  “OK, OK,” grumbles Sérénac, thinking that his advice has come a little too late.

  He walks along the dark gravel, again trusting his ears, his feet, and his deputy’s directions. Less than ten feet farther on, his leg crashes into yet another wall. The inspector, bent double, pitches forward and his elbows crash into a kind of iron cube. Sérénac cries out with pain again.

  “Are you all right, Chief?” asks Sylvio’s confused voice. “I told you to watch out for the barbecues…”

  “Bugger,” Sérénac growls as he gets back up. “I didn’t realize there was more than one of them. How many barbecues have you got? Do you collect them?”

  “Seventeen!” Sylvio replies proudly. “You’re right, I do collect them. Me and my father.”

  The darkness hides Sérénac’s stunned reaction. As he approaches the veranda, he is still swearing.

  “Are you fooling with me, Sylvio?”

  “What?”

  “You really want me to believe that you collect barbecues?”

  “I don’t see what the problem is. You’d see them, in the daylight. There must be several thousand fugicarnophiles in the world…”

  Laurenç Sérénac bends down and rubs his knee.

  “Fugi-whatsit means ‘collector of barbecues,’ I suppose?”

  “Well, I’m not absolutely sure it’s in the dictionary. I’m just an amateur, but there’s a man in Argentina who has almost three hundred barbecues from a hundred and forty-three different countries, the oldest of which dates back to twelve hundred years BC.”

  Sérénac is rubbing his painful elbows.

  “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “You’re getting to know me, Chief; do you think I’d make up something like that? You know, everywhere in the world, since fire was discovered, men have eaten cooked meat. There is no practice more universal, or that provides a greater link to our ancestors, than the barbecue.”

  “And sure enough, you’ve got seventeen of them in your garden… Perfectly normal. I suppose they’re better than garden gnomes.”

  “Original, cultural, decorative… also, at the end of the day, they’re good when it comes to inviting the neighbors over.”

  Sérénac runs his hand through his hair. “I’ve been transferred to a land of lunatics…”

  Sylvio smiles.

  “Not really. Another time I can tell you about Occitan traditions and the difference between Cathar and Cévenol barbecues…”

  He climbs the three steps up to the veranda.

  “Come in, Chief… Did you find
the place all right?”

  “Apart from those last fifty feet, yes! Apart from your barbecues, it’s quite nice around here. The mills, the cottages…”

  “Yes, I like it, especially the view from up here. You can’t see much at this time of night, of course, but during the day the view is superb. And Cocherel is quite a strange place.”

  “Stranger than a club of fugicophiles?”

  “Fugicarnophiles. Well, there have been a great many deaths here. A huge battle in the Hundred Years’ War was fought on the slopes opposite, with thousands killed, and then it happened again during the Second World War. And do you know who’s buried in the churchyard just behind?”

  “Joan of Arc?”

  Bénavides smiles. “Aristide Briand.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I bet you haven’t the faintest idea who he is?”

  “A singer?”

  “No, that was Aristide Bruant. People always get them mixed up. Aristide Briand was a politician. A pacifist. The only French person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize.”

  “It’s very kind of you, Sylvio, to educate me about Normandy like this…”

  He looks at the timbered cottage.

  “For a simple police inspector on a wretched salary, your official residence is pretty grand.”

  Touched by the compliment, Sylvio’s chest swells. He raises his eyes toward the roof of the veranda and its framework of natural beams. Some wires have been stretched between the timbers so that the vine planted there can twirl its tendrils around them.

  “You know, Chief, when I bought this place more than five years ago, it was a ruin. Since then I’ve done a bit of DIY…”

  “What did you do?”

  “Just about everything.”

  “No!”

  “Yes… It’s in the genes, Chief, you know, a Portuguese thing. The great North–South divide…”

  Sérénac bursts out laughing. He takes off his leather jacket.

  “You’re drenched, Chief.”

  “Yep, bloody Norman funeral.”

  On the veranda, Laurenç Sérénac puts his jacket over the back of a plastic chair that nearly topples backward under its weight. He sits down on the one next to it. Bénavides apologizes.

  “It’s true that plastic garden chairs aren’t very comfortable. I got them from a cousin and they’re fine for the time being. Maybe in a few years’ time, I’ll have a look at the antique shops of the Eure Valley, when I’ve made detective chief inspector…”

  He smiles and sits down as well. “So, this funeral?”

  “Nothing special. A lot of rain. A crowd of people. The whole of Giverny was there, from the oldest to the youngest. I asked Maury to take some pictures; we’ll see what we can get out of them. You should have come, Sylvio; there was a granite water lily, flowers in baskets, even the bishop of Évreux. And I can assure you, not a single Givernois was wearing boots! It was a classy affair.”

  “Talking about boots, Chief, I saw at the station that Louvel was coordinating that line of inquiry. We should get some idea by tomorrow.”

  “Let’s hope that it reduces the list of suspects,” Sérénac says, rubbing his hands as if to warm himself up. “At least, one advantage of that interminable funeral was that it has given me the opportunity to do some overtime at the home of my favorite deputy.”

  “Well, that’s lucky, given that you only have the one! I’m sorry, Chief, for asking you to come here, but I’m not too fond of leaving Béatrice alone here in the evenings.”

  “Don’t worry, I understand. Anyway, I hadn’t finished telling you about the funeral. Patricia, the widow, was in tears from start to finish. Honestly, if she’s putting it on then she deserves an Oscar. As far as the mistresses go, however, there wasn’t a single one crying by Morval’s graveside.”

  “Apart from the schoolmistress, Stéphanie Dupain.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “Not on purpose, I swear.” He lowered his eyes and gave a discreet smile. “I know very well that’s it’s a touchy subject.”

  “My God, but he really loosens up, my favorite deputy, when he’s playing at home! To reply to your comment, Sylvio, yes, Stéphanie Dupain was at the funeral and I would even go as far as to say that she was more beautiful than ever, she even made the rain seem more pleasant, but she did not leave the arms of her jealous husband for a single second.”

  “All the same, boss, just watch out.”

  “Thank you for your advice, but I am a grown-up, you know.”

  Slightly annoyed, Laurenç Sérénac looks around at the veranda. The salmon-colored brickwork is impeccable, the roofbeams have been sanded down, and the sandstone edging has been polished and bleached.

  “Did you really do all this yourself?”

  “I spend all my weekends and my holidays doing DIY with my father. We do it together. It’s great!”

  “You stagger me, Sylvio, really you do. The only reason I can tolerate your shitty climate is because it puts five hundred miles between me and my family.”

  They both laugh. Sylvio looks a little worried, no doubt because of the noise they are making.

  “Right, shall we get down to it?”

  Laurenç spreads out on the plastic table the three photographs he has of Jérôme Morval’s mistresses. Sylvio does the same with his two.

  “Personally I don’t understand why anyone would cheat on their wife. I just don’t get it.”

  “How long have you known your Béatrice?”

  “Seven years.”

  “And you’ve never been unfaithful?”

  “No.”

  “She sleeps up there, just above us, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t change a thing.”

  “Why have you never cheated on her? Your wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, is that it? You have no reason to desire any other?”

  Sylvio’s hands fiddle with the photographs. He is already regretting having brought his superior here.

  “Stop it, boss, I didn’t invite you here to—”

  “What’s she like, this Béatrice of yours?” Sérénac cuts in. “She isn’t pretty, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  Sylvio suddenly puts both hands flat on the table.

  “Pretty or not pretty, that isn’t the question! That’s not how it works. It’s silly to expect your wife to be the most beautiful woman in the world. What would that mean? It’s not a competition. There will always be women more beautiful than the one you live with somewhere. And even if you manage to pull Miss World, even Miss World, at the end of the day, is going to grow old. You’d have to get a new Miss World into your bed every year.”

  In response to his deputy’s tirade, a strange smile spreads across Laurenç’s face, which Sylvio finds odd, particularly since he seems to be looking over Sylvio’s shoulder.

  “So you’re saying I’m not the most beautiful woman in the world?”

  Sylvio’s head snaps around as if the spring that attaches it to his neck has come loose and it might go on spinning. His face is scarlet.

  Béatrice, behind him, seems to glide across the tiles of the veranda. Laurenç thinks she’s ravishing, even if that’s not exactly the right word. Stunning, perhaps. Tall and dark, with her long black hair and dark eyelashes forming a curtain in front of her hazy eyes, protecting the last vestiges of sleep. Béatrice’s round belly is draped in a large cream-colored shawl, the folds recalling the curves of a classical statue. Her eyes sparkle with amusement. Sérénac wonders if Béatrice is always as beautiful as this, or whether it’s because she’s pregnant, a few days away from becoming a mother. The plenitude of pregnancy; some kind of internal joy that blossoms on the surface. The kind of thing you read about in magazines. Sérénac reflects that he must be getting older, to be having ideas like that about women. Would he have found a pregnant woman sexy a few years ago?

  “Sylvio,” Béatrice says, taking a chair, “will you fetch me a glass of fruit juice?
It doesn’t matter which flavor.”

  Sylvio stands up and goes to the kitchen. He seems to have shrunk, like a stool that’s been spun down too many times. Béatrice pulls the shawl tighter around her shoulders.

  “So you’re the famous Laurenç Sérénac?”

  “Why ‘famous’?”

  “Sylvio talks about you a lot. You astonish him. You shake him up. Your predecessor was more… more old-school.”

  Sylvio’s voice calls from the kitchen: “Is pineapple all right?”

  “Yes!” Then, two seconds later: “Has the bottle been opened?”

  “Yes, yesterday.”

  “Then no.”

  A silence.

  “Fine, I’ll go and see what we have in the cellar…”

  So a pregnant woman can be sexy, but annoying too. The shawl has slipped from her right shoulder. A young person’s thought, Laurenç thinks, would be to wonder whether Béatrice’s figure is usually so voluptuous. She turns toward Sérénac.

  “He’s adorable, don’t you think? He’s the very best kind of man. You know, Laurenç, I spotted him a long time ago, and I thought, ‘He’s the one for me’…”

  “He can’t have resisted you for long, you’re gorgeous…”

  “Thank you.”

  The shawl slips, then is pulled back up again.

  “I’m touched by the compliment, particularly from someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?”

  “Yes. You’re a man who knows how to look at a woman.”

  She says that with a playful gleam in her eye. The shawl slips again, of course, and Laurenç averts his gaze to admire the manual labor of Sylvio and his father. Beams, bricks, and glass.

  “I like Sylvio too,” Sérénac replies. “And not just because of his brownies and his collection of barbecues.”