The Missing Corpse: A Brittany Mystery, page 4
part #4 of Commissaire Dupin Series
“How did you know he was dead?”
“That was obvious.”
An indisputable fact, that much was clear. Jacqueline had set down the tea, the wine, and another glass of champagne as she went past.
“And the blood?”
“It was there. There was blood on the body!”
“Where on the body?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“A lot of blood?”
“No, I don’t think so. But not a small amount either.”
“How old was the man, would you say?”
“It was impossible to tell. But he definitely had hair. Short hair, I think.” She paused and suddenly looked astonished. “His hair was dark brown.” She screwed up her eyes. “Yes, dark brown. There, you’ve got a real clue after all.”
“Are you absolutely certain about this detail, the dark brown hair?”
“Absolutely, I think.”
“But not about the short hair?”
“No.”
“And you hadn’t told my colleague that earlier?”
“I didn’t remember it then. I assume I was still in some shock. Otherwise,” she raised her voice, “I would obviously have said so in my statement.”
“Can you remember his face? Or anything unusual?”
“Well, I really only saw the man from the side.”
“And you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary?” Dupin sighed quietly. “A particularly large nose, whatever it be?”
Madame Bandol looked surprised. “No.”
“Do you think that…” Dupin broke off.
“You ought to be concentrating with all your might on the details that are certain, Monsieur le Commissaire!”
“Do you remember what the man was wearing?”
A definite sulkiness had crept into her voice. “No. It wasn’t a situation that allowed for looking very carefully.”
“What else were you able to see? Anything next to the man, on the grass? In the parking lot?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did anything in the parking lot strike you as unusual?”
“No.”
“Did you see a car there?”
“No.”
“Another person on their way to or from the parking lot?”
“Oh, yes.”
Dupin pricked up his ears. “When did you see someone? Where?”
“No, I mean a car. There was a car there. A big car, I think.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not one of those newfangled little cars.”
“Do you remember the color?”
“No. Dark, maybe.”
“Black?”
“No. Possibly red. I don’t remember. It wasn’t visible.”
“It wasn’t visible?”
“The visibility wasn’t good. And Zizou and I were so preoccupied by the dead man, after all.”
“Where was the car?”
“If you’re coming from the road, on the left. Before the parking lot.”
“Far away from the corpse?”
“Some way away. But not far. No.”
“And that also slipped your mind just now, when you spoke to my colleagues?”
“Yes,” she answered nonchalantly.
“And it was just one car—there was only one car there? Can you say that with some certainty—there was no other car?”
“I suppose so.”
“Excuse me.” Jacqueline came to their table with a remarkably large plateau de fruits de mer, one of the legendary platters with huge mounds of seafood served on them.
“Do have some … Jacqueline, please lay a place for the commissaire.”
The kitchen had been generous to Madame Bandol; it was an impressive array. Various kinds of bivalves—praires, cockles, amandes, palourdes grises, and palourdes roses—large and small sea snails, large and small langoustines, pink prawns, half a large crab, a whole spider crab, and of course: Belon oysters. A few hours before, everything had still been splashing about in the sea, and in the intervening time they had been in one of the seawater tanks on the restaurant’s terrace. You could also buy everything very fresh from the tanks, to go, in the small shop next to the restaurant. Claire and Dupin loved to buy their seafood with lemons, a special vinaigrette, homemade mayonnaise, and brown bread.
Dupin’s mouth was watering, whether he liked it or not. And the platter was certainly big enough for two.
“Am I one of the suspects?” Madame Bandol’s voice was trembling now. “I’ve been a suspect before. Oh yes! In 1960, on the Côte d’Azur, there was a murder in my hotel, in the room right next door, a real murder, with a real gun, four shots at close range, the torso was riddled with bullets.” Madame Bandol cracked a pink prawn. “A very good-looking young chap I’d flirted with at the pool bar the evening before and whom nobody else knew, very mysterious.” She waited a moment and then said calmly, “Voilà—those were the days!”
“I don’t think that you … that you’re one of the suspects, Madame Bandol. But at the moment you’re playing the lead role nonetheless: you’re the only witness.”
Her face grew serious. She was silent for a little while.
“I know what people say about me. That I’m a senile old woman who makes things up sometimes. Telling tall tales, imagining things. But I don’t do that!” Madame Bandol was getting really angry. “A doctor has said I’m suffering from ‘early-stage dementia.’ Ridiculous, that is just nonsense. I’m old. That’s all. And that’s no joke! It makes you forgetful sometimes, so what? But the dead man, I saw him. Just like I see you here now!”
Madame Bandol was using one of the sharp, toothpick-sized skewers to pull the sea snails precisely and skillfully out of their shells.
“I believe you, Madame Bandol. I believe you.” This was true; Dupin did believe her. The details seemed unreliable, but her having imagined the whole thing—or made it up—seemed unlikely, in his opinion.
Madame Bandol’s features relaxed; the smile was back in a flash. She gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Then let’s eat together!”
Jacqueline had already brought the second place setting. It would be silly not to use it, Dupin thought. And Madame Bandol’s words made it clear that she had said enough about the whole “incident” for now. Dupin picked up a large langoustine.
“Langoustines from Loctudy. They’re the best.” Madame Bandol set about the crab with some pliers, the claw shattering noisily on her first attempt.
Dupin took some of the homemade mayonnaise. Along with half a lemon. And the fresh, white, nutty meat of the langoustines: yes, it didn’t get better than this.
* * *
They had eaten—Dupin dropping his guard further with every bite. Madame Bandol had begun to ask him personal questions, bluntly, without beating about the bush—about his profession, his background, his career with the police, and about why he had become a policeman. About any women in his life. They had spent a longer time talking about Paris. About how if you had to decide, you would choose Paris out of all of Europe’s most beautiful cities without hesitation—London, Barcelona, then Rome, classic—and about how there was that special sense of joy that you got in Paris. Only there. Dupin had drunk another glass of Anjou, and Madame Bandol another glass of champagne.
Dupin had—as bizarre as the situation was—enjoyed it. And what’s more, he was doing his duty as a policeman. Strictly in the interests of the investigation. What Madame Bandol had said constituted all of the information they had. Dupin needed to keep checking whether anything else would occur to her after all. And most importantly of all: he could keep testing his sense that he believed the core of her statement. After all, everything depended on this. He had to build up as accurate a picture of her as possible. And he was doing a very thorough job of that over langoustines, clams, spider crabs, and the Anjou.
“So, what are you thinking of doing about the missing corpse, Monsieur le Commissaire?” Madame Bandol had obviously decided it was time to get back to the “incident.”
“We’ll do everything we can to find it—or re-find it.”
“And how will you do that?”
A good question.
“Perhaps some other detail occurs to you?”
Madame Bandol leaned back slightly. “You may be from the police”—her gaze swept carefully over Dupin’s face as if she wanted to be certain before she continued speaking—“but I ought to tell you, I trust you.” She took the last oyster, having eaten all twelve by herself because Dupin didn’t eat oysters. She drizzled a spritz of lemon on it and swallowed it in an elegant way.
“I’m not Sophie Bandol.” She smiled briefly and took a mouthful of champagne as if to wash down the oyster.
“Excuse me?” Dupin started.
“I’m Armandine Bandol.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sophie’s twin sister,” she said, and smiled again. “Everyone mixes us up. They always have. Sophie lives in Paris. We bought the house here twenty-five years ago, right by the river. A gorgeous house. You simply must come and visit. But we didn’t come here often. At first, Sophie came more than I did. Now she only comes occasionally. And I live here. Permanently. I’ve lived here for many years now.”
She took another mouthful of champagne, slowly this time. She looked out the window, directly at the Belon.
“Why … I mean, how can this be?” Dupin rubbed the back of his head. He was confused.
“There’s nothing complicated about it. There’s not much to tell.”
“Tell me what there is to tell.”
“I’m a dressmaker. I worked with Yves Saint Laurent for thirty years. When I retired, I gradually relocated my entire life here. Some reporter thought I was Sophie Bandol and wrote a long story about the famous actress who was retiring to the End of the World. With photographs and that kind of thing. That was almost ten years ago. At first neither of us really understood it. Then we found it funny. It became more and more entrenched. People thought I was Sophie and Sophie was me. Sophie was glad the tabloid reporters in Paris suddenly left her alone. And here—nobody is interested in celebrity here, Bretons aren’t impressed by that kind of thing. So the famous actress is left in peace.”
It was unbelievable. Dupin had never heard a story like it. He had indeed known that Sophie Bandol had a twin sister who was her mirror image, that was common knowledge. But nothing else.
“I’m always a little hungry still,” Madame Bandol said, and gestured discreetly to Jacqueline. “What about you?”
“I…” Dupin was still struggling with the elaborate story. “And here in Brittany you’ve never—for example you’ve never used your ID in an official context?”
“Yes?” Jacqueline was standing next to their table.
“A few more palourdes roses from the Glénan, please!” Madame Bandol said, and a moment later she turned back to Dupin. “In the supermarket, at the fishmonger, at the bakery, while buying a newspaper, nobody has asked me for ID yet. I live a somewhat reclusive life. I’ve got Zizou. I’ve got a good female friend and a male friend of many years. My walks. My workroom where I still tailor things for my friends and myself sometimes. Now and again I go to Paris. Or I have visitors. That’s it.”
She looked inquiringly at Dupin, perhaps a little reproachfully.
“I’ve never claimed to be Sophie Bandol. And nobody has ever asked me either.”
Dupin smiled. The more you thought about it, the more believable and plausible it became, oddly enough. Of course it was possible. And Madame Bandol wasn’t guilty of any crime. She hadn’t deliberately misled anybody. Not even him. Interestingly, he wasn’t disappointed, although he had to admit he would really have loved to meet Sophie Bandol.
“And your two friends know who you are?”
“Oh yes, of course. What do you think? That I’m putting on an act for them?” Her indignation was comical. But genuine.
“And what do they say about it?”
“They find it funny.”
“Who are these two?”
“Oh, just Monsieur Kolenc, one of the oyster farmers. He mainly produces the huîtres plates—those are the best of all!” She looked contentedly at her plate. “In size two or three, so the smaller ones! My girlfriend is Maëlle Gilot. She makes marmalade and jams. She lives on the outskirts of Riec.”
“And your doctor, for example?”
“His practice is in Paris. I’ve been there twice in the last twenty years. A quack, just like all doctors. I have a room in Sophie’s Paris house.”
“I think—” Dupin was interrupted by the beeping of his mobile.
Riwal.
“Excuse me a moment, Madame Bandol.” Dupin stood up and walked toward the door to the terrace.
“Yes, Riwal?”
“Reglas. He just left. He has given us a preliminary report. Nothing. He has found absolutely nothing so far. He has also taken various soil samples from the spot where the corpse is supposed to have been lying. To test them for blood, scraps of material, and so on.”
“It was raining cats and dogs,” said Dupin.
“What is Madame Bandol saying? Have you been able to find out anything else?”
“She…” Dupin paused. If he told the story about the sisters being mistaken for each other, it was bound to cast more doubt on Madame Bandol’s credibility in the eyes of his colleagues. “Madame Bandol saw a car parked a little way outside the parking lot. Our colleagues from Riec didn’t see a car when they arrived, did they?”
“No. What did it look like?”
“Dark.”
“Black?”
“Dark.” Dupin hesitated. “Or red, she says.”
“Or red? Has anything else come to her?”
“The man potentially had short hair, definitely dark brown.”
“That’s new too.”
“Yes. Otherwise she confirmed all of her statements in detail. You’ve always got to bear in mind: Madame Bandol was standing maybe five meters away—with not much light and heavy rain, so visibility was poor, and with a panicked Zizou into the bargain.”
“The dog?”
“The dog.”
“All right, boss. Our Riec colleagues will make inquiries in the area. About whether anyone noticed anything unusual in the late afternoon. Or happened to be near the parking lot. Kadeg and I are thinking of driving back to Concarneau now.”
“No problem.” A rare sentence for him, Dupin knew. He put his mobile back in his trouser pocket.
Although all of Port Belon was enchantingly beautiful, the terrace at La Coquille, built directly on the river, was perhaps the most enchanting place. You sat on barstools along a counter made of wooden planks, with a real ship’s mast soaring into the air at one end with the Breton flag flying proudly from it; the two seawater tanks had been installed in the roofed section of the terrace. You had a view of the Belon, the very last stretch of it before the open Atlantic. No painter could have dreamed up a more picturesque view: on either side, densely wooded hills fell gently away to the river, regular, practically symmetrical. Every single treetop stood out clearly against the sky. A perfect display of nature. And beyond that, the vast sea began. Dupin looked toward the west. The sun was still quite far above the horizon, but it had already started to change the color of the sky around it. The orange hour had begun.
The commissaire sighed. He wished this was a different evening. And that he was here with Claire. He turned around and went back into the restaurant. To Armandine Bandol.
* * *
Madame Bandol was holding a fork in one hand, a piece of tarte tatin on it. She smiled frankly.
“I’ve ordered you a slice too,” she said, and gestured with her head toward his place, where there was a particularly large slice of the apple cake on a prettily decorated porcelain plate. “Yes, Jacqueline definitely likes you!”
Dupin had just remembered what else he’d wanted to ask. He had circled it in his notebook when he was making notes. “Kiki. Who’s Kiki?”
Armandine Bandol looked amused at first and then, when she realized he’d meant this question seriously, aghast.
“Impossible, Monsieur le Commissaire! You must know Kiki. How long have you been here, did you say? In Concarneau, in Brittany?”
“Five years.”
“Don’t you read any papers?”
“Ouest-France, Le Télégramme, every morning, every article.”
“The ten-meter-long shark that comes to our coastline every April. He likes this bay, the Aven, the Belon. Sometimes he even swims into the Belon at high tide.”
Of course. Dupin had read about it. A few times, in fact. With very mixed feelings.
“The name had just slipped my mind.” It sounded absurd.
“Have you never seen him then?”
Dupin had indeed never seen him. And he was in fact rather pleased about this.
“A basking shark! After the whale shark, the second largest fish on earth, you see. It belongs to the same family as the great white shark,” Madame Bandol said triumphantly.
“But it only eats plankton,” Dupin hastened to add, having once looked it up himself on a specialist zoological website as a precaution, even though Nolwenn had assured him of it many times before. “It is, even if it wanted to, anatomically incapable of consuming other food. Meat, for example.”
The basking shark was indeed from the same family as the great white shark. And Dupin had admittedly found it an alarming idea, to be swimming and then suddenly see the fin of a ten- or twelve-meter-long shark next to you; the animals liked to come close to the coast, and Dupin personally loved swimming far out into the large bays. As much as he hated being on the sea—in boats, for example—he loved being in the sea; he went swimming before work in the summer. He loved it and didn’t want to have to think about sharks while doing it. And yet he knew that they were not that rare; quite a few basking shark videos had been collected on the Ouest-France website.
“We call him Kiki, like the preserved specimen on display in the Concarneau aquarium. An extraordinarily loyal creature. Zizou and I saw him just last week, in the estuary. The Belon carries so much delicious plankton. The oysters are crazy about it too. But let’s stop talking about Kiki. There are more pressing matters. How shall we proceed with the case, Commissaire? Count me in. The only witness!” She paused and then intoned pensively, “A difficult witness who can’t say much because she didn’t see much. And whose memory plays strange tricks on her now and again.”
