Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 10
“Can I see it?” He handed her the Xeroxed page. There was no mention of Justine LaBelle. It was meaningless, legally. “Where did this come from?”
“I assumed from Justine, but now reading it, I wonder. It doesn’t mention her and is addressed to the prioress. The Mother Superior.”
“Why would Marie-Emilie use her maiden name? She was married before she came to the village,” Merle said. “I have some other letters, ones my husband kept. To Marie-Emilie from someone. They’re in French. Do you think you could take a look at them?”
“If you wish.”
She pulled the small packet from the manila envelope in her backpack. “They’re hard to read, they’re so faded.” He took them, peering closely at the old, brittle envelopes. “Take your time. I think I’ll knock on her garden door.”
They stood in the alley. Merle was determined to speak for herself this time, woman to woman. She rapped on the solid wood with peeling blue paint. “Madame LaBelle?”
No answer. She put her ear to the gate. “Je m’appelle Merle Bennett. Je suis Americaine.” In French she continued: “I want to help you find a new home.”
“Allez! Fiche le camp!”
“S’il vous plait, madame. Can we talk?”
The first rock sailed over the wall and hit Albert’s wall with a thud. They turned, startled, watched it roll down the alley. The second caused them to duck then dropped onto the mossy alley floor.
Albert called out, “Madame! Arretez!”
Merle backed away from the gate. This wasn’t going well, she was thinking, as the third stone hit her square on the forehead. She staggered, stunned.
“Oooh la la, you bleed, Madame!” Albert cried as two more rocks arced over the wall, one barely missing him. He yelled again at Madame LaBelle to stop then insisted they take cover behind his wall. He made Merle come into the house for examination, where, it was true, she was bleeding a little. The goose egg would be a fascinating addition to her forehead.
She held ice in a dishcloth to her forehead. Things were going badly. Maybe she should just wait for the lawyer to get back. She closed her eyes and was back at her desk at Legal Aid, filling out a Section 8 form for an illiterate client. It seemed so safe, so orderly, so normal. She opened her eyes. This was the new normal: strange country, strange people, strange laws. For a moment she wished herself back in the dark, rainy suburbs, changing light bulbs.
Ice water tricked down her nose. On Albert’s dark wood table was an open bottle of wine, a bouquet of pink wildflowers in a cracked crystal vase, a small dish of black olives. The sun shone through his lace curtain at the front of the house, landing on a purple orchid. On the breeze, the smell of lavender.
The odor of France went into her brain. Was she crazy? Did it take a hard knock to the skull to make her wake up? Did she want to be back in the shadows of Connecticut, or in a windowless cubicle in Manhattan? Here she had sunshine, fresh fruit, warmth.
This is France, stupid. Here, now.
When Albert stepped into the room with his first aid kit she stood up. “I’ll go lie down at my hotel.”
“I have medicines, no?” Albert’s face creased with concern. “Perhaps we should tell the gendarme that she is dangerous?”
“He doesn’t care, Albert.”
“They like to know, these gendarmes,” he said. “Leave it to me.”
Chapter Fourteen
1950
Stefan whispers, “Leave it to me.”
How has it come to this — hiding, whispering, touching, like some common peasant who doesn’t know the meaning of time, of commitment, of consequence. Marie-Emilie doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. He brings her food, for her mind and her body, that is all she knows.
Maybe she is careless now that Weston has gone. Maybe she doesn’t care what her husband feels or thinks, what any of them thinks. The village turned its back on her and it isn’t in her to fight any more. Yes, she is careless. She knows it is wrong, this thing, whatever it is, with Stefan. But there it is and she can’t fight it. He is her friend, her only friend. When she so needs a friend.
“Leave it to me and all will be well.” He kisses her hand, like a gentleman, looking into her eyes. That is as far as she lets him go; she is no whore. She has felt his lips on hers, just once. She closes the door and watches him run with his long legs and floppy blond hair, around the corner. A Dutchman by birth, he moved here as a boy. Who would think, a Dutchman?
On the table are the books. This is how it began, at church, over a discussion of a book. She had not read the one he mentioned although she was quick to tell him she could read, that she had passed all her tests. He didn’t make her feel stupid; he listened. This book is just a story, nothing particular, about a young man in the first war who meets a woman, fights and kills, then comes back to her. She knows the type, she had read them. Fantasies of what war meant, as if every man came back to love again, as if nothing had changed. As if hearts didn’t need to be mended, as if men were not shattered and children starved, as if the land hadn’t gone to rot.
That Stefan had liked the story was what mattered. That he had given her the book mattered.
Weston has been gone for months. She hasn’t heard from him. She is glad. Things have been very bad in town. No one will sell her even an egg at market, not a potato. She rides a farmer’s cart to outlying villages where no one knows her and spends what little money she earns helping at harvest and at planting. The farmers use her then, they have no choice. Men with strong backs are scarce, women too. She was the youngest woman bent over the grapevines last fall, the youngest to plant seeds in rows this spring.
For the first weeks he was gone she worried, keeping the house the way he liked it, making sure she looked decent. He might come home unexpectedly, just waltz in the way he’d done. But when he doesn’t write or return, something changes in her. She feels loose from him, as if a terrible burden has been lifted. As if he had died in the war and she was a widow who was destitute but could go on without worry now. She crossed herself and begged forgiveness for her evil thoughts.
But he is dead to her. Now she could see he used her, for this house, his carnal ways, whatever he wanted. He no longer cares for her, if ever he had. From the moment Stefan walked her home from church and she told him her name was Marie-Emilie Chevalier, she was free. Her mother’s name, the good knight, the avenger of sins.
Now to right the wrongs. She has no illusions about changing the villagers’ minds. They will always hate her for Weston. Doors will always slam. Children will be sent indoors to avoid contamination. It doesn’t matter. She has a plan and Stefan, who has a bicycle and a job at the boulangerie, will help her.
She walks out into the garden and feels the sun heal her spirit. She will not live like this forever, hungry and alone. Things will change. With all her power she will erase his wrongs from this earth. Then she will be a free woman.
Chapter Fifteen
As she unlocked the hotel room Merle smelled the air change of someone strange, their sweat. Every dresser drawer was pulled and dumped, the closet thrown, suitcase upended. She stood in the doorway, stunned, grateful she’d taken her wallet, passport, documents with her. There was very little else she cared about. The mattress had been searched, lying at an angle on the frame. She backed out of the room and went to find the manager.
“A thief, madame? Zut alors.” Guy Framboise was young, a tall man who spoke several languages. Together they walked up the stairs to the second floor rear guest room. “Oh, madame!” The manager apologized, mortified. He insisted she return with him while he called the police.
As he sat her down in the empty dining room, he noticed the bump on her forehead. “Did he hurt you?”
Her hand flew to her head. “No. Un petit accident. Could I get some ice for it?”
In a moment the chef brought out a glass of red wine and a bowl of ice, pausing to listen to the commotion in the lobby as the gendarme arrived. Monsieur Framboise cleared his throat as he approached. Merle pulled the ice off her face.
“Monsieur le Gendarme would like you to accompany us back to the room so you can identify any things that may be missing.”
Jean-Pierre Redier, the gendarme, seemed a lot friendlier to the hotel manager than he had this morning, although his manner was still a mixture of arrogance, laziness, and too much wine with lunch. The manager translated, so she didn’t have to actually speak to the policeman.
“He would like you to carefully enter the room,” the manager said, “and see what is missing.”
As she stepped inside, moving around a mound of underpants in their perpetually frayed state, she vowed to buy French lingerie for the next viewing. All the undies were unfortunately accounted for, as well as the stretched-out bras.
“He asks if you left your passport in the room,” Framboise called from the hall.
“No, I had everything with me. In here.” She patted her backpack. She pointed to a pile of clothes. “Can I fold these?”
She picked up her slacks and t-shirts, folding them onto the top of the dresser. She looked around, poked her head inside the lavatory. “My watch is missing. I left it in the bathroom.” Not like her to forget her watch but she’d had that quick shower. “And a pair of gold earrings worth about fifty dollars American.”
“How much is the watch?” Framboise asked.
Harry had given it to her years ago. Time has run out, King Harold. A birthday, or something. Had they even celebrated her birthday together last year? No, she’d gone into the city and had dinner with her sisters.
“Maybe five-hundred dollars. It had a few little diamonds on it.”
The room seemed even smaller with the mess. The thief had ignored a pair of earrings worth more and amazingly had left a packet of traveler’s checks she’d stuck in the desk drawer. The manager sighed dramatically.
Redier shrugged. The thief had been careless, that was all. Or maybe disturbed before finishing. He turned his dark gaze on her. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” What is that, he asked, pointing to his own forehead.
“Rien,” she said. Nothing. He asked her something else and she waited for the manager’s translation.
“He asks if that is from Madame LaBelle’s garden.”
Albert wasted no time calling him about crazy Justine. “Oui. Un pierre à la tête.” A stone to the head. She mimed an overhand toss.
“He says, are you going to press charges against her.”
“No. Non. C’est okay.”
Redier looked at her for a long, silent minute. He was just creepy, she decided, giving him an equal stare. He left with the manager to question the housekeeping staff. Merle straightened the mattress back on the bed and lay down. The smell of the room’s violation made her uneasy, and her head hurt from the rock. She got up to find her aspirin, scattered on the cracked tile of the bathroom floor. She picked up two, blew them off, and washed them down with water.
Just a quick nap.
* * *
At five in the morning the birdsong woke her. She’d slept through dinner and somewhere around midnight managed to get under the covers. Behind the hotel the sun hadn’t yet risen over the chateau on the hill. She put on running shorts and shoes, pulled back her hair. In the bathroom she examined the bump over her eye: purple but not too terrible, she dabbed a little makeup on it and went downstairs. In the kitchen the chef slumped sleepily over a cup of coffee. Now that they were friends he waved her on to help herself. She drank a glass of orange juice then walked outside.
The cobblestone streets were silent. A rooster crowed somewhere on the edge of town. Yesterday had been a disaster. Maybe she had been too aggressive with Justine. And not enough with the gendarme. Step back, make some new calculations. Turning right she decided to make a pass by the house in case someone was up early. Albert said Evangeline often went out first thing in the morning, possibly to church.
A block away from Rue de Poitiers Merle saw them. Orange hair, short skirt, and baggy pants, hiking boots. Evangeline and Justine walked arm-in-arm out the alley onto the street. Merle jumped into a doorway. Where to hide? She crouched into a ball behind a large flowerpot, tucking her head down. Their shoes squeaked against the cobbles as they passed, quickly, silently.
When they were well past Merle peeked out. Hiding behind a flower pot, really. Why hadn’t she just spoken to them? If she could just talk to Justine, get her to understand she meant no harm. But she needed a new strategy, something to break down the defenses, get them to listen. Hopefully the old woman wasn’t armed with rocks today.
They turned at the city gate as Evangeline had done yesterday, so they weren’t going to church. The medieval cathedral was in the other direction, in the middle of the village. At the corner Merle peered around the stone wall of a house.
The bus to the shrine, squat and blue, stood idling in the parking lot, loading passengers. As Merle hugged herself in the morning chill, tourists materialized on the streets, each holding a sprig of green leaves. Was it some sort of ritual? She’d forgotten to read up on the site. The old women smiled politely as they passed. Old men ogled her bare legs. Groups of middle-aged women huddled together, talking, laughing quietly, all clutching the branches as they passed under the gate and boarded the bus.
She’d lost sight of the two women. Had they gotten on the bus? She waited until the bus started moving, turning laboriously in the parking lot. As it pulled out onto the deserted road Merle walked to the gate. Justine and Evangeline were nowhere to be seen.
The sun popped up over the eastern hillside, sending a beam of light directly on the Shrine of Lucrezia on the cliff above. It was beautiful in this light. No wonder the faithful wanted to see it at dawn. The steps in the rock were also illuminated.
“It’s a sign,” she muttered, jogging down the path toward the creek at the bottom of the cliff.
Tall grass, a cloud of gnats, and a riffle of fog made the going tough until she came into a small grove of trees. Under them she could see the path, worn in the leaves and pine needles, leading to the cliff and the stairs. She paused at the bottom of the limestone wall and looked up. The treads were worn, slick with dew. No railing — and quite a lot of steps.
The things I do for you, Harry Strachie.
No, make that Tristan Strachie. She was doing it for the future, Tristan’s future, not for anyone’s memory.
It was a whole new world. The past was done.
When Merle reached the top of the stairs, out of breath, legs screaming, the bus was already parked in the gravel lot behind the building. She let herself look down finally, now that she was safe. The view was dizzying. The village looked toy-like from here, the morning sun glancing off its honey walls.
The Shrine of Lucrezia was a classical building with block walls and a carved portico and columns. It was small and windowless like a crypt. People were lined up outside waiting their turn to enter. Merle watched from behind a pine tree. A car pulled into the lot, then another. More faithful emerged, clutching sprigs, milling with the others. The crowd grew outside the Shrine, quiet and reverential. Mostly women, the crowd increased when another bus arrived, this one full of nuns in long brown habits, complete with blinding white wimples.
Tearing a small branch from a tree to simulate their devotional sprigs she walked around the buses to emerge from the parking lot. As one person left the shrine another was admitted. Merle skirted the edge of the crowd, looking for Justine.
There she was, her orange hair glowing, third in line to enter the shrine. She was tall in platform shoes. There were three other orange-haired women, all short. In front of her was Sister Evangeline. A woman in a red crocheted hat opened the door to the shrine and walked to her right, away from the crowd. To intercept Justine Merle would have to be on the other side of the crowd.
Back around the bus she bumped into a middle-aged man with a bad toupee climbing down its steps. “Pardon,” he said with a British accent. Merle picked up the sprig she’d dropped and went around the other end of the bus. Evangeline was leaving the shrine in her uniform of gray pants and hiking shirt.
Justine disappeared into the shrine only to burst out again almost immediately. Jerking slightly she held the door for the next woman, then stepped away and stopped, her head down. Merle moved closer.
“Justine? Madame LaBelle?” She asked softly if they could talk.
The old woman’s head jerked up. Her eyes were unfocused. She seemed older today, more fragile. Up close Merle could see the lines of age on her face, the heavy eye makeup that gave her a clown-like appearance, especially with the orange hair that stuck out in all directions.
Merle tried to catch her eye. She smiled, trying to look friendly, and told her that she was the American, that she meant no harm. That she wanted to help. Justine’s eyes grew wide.
“Vous!” You!
Her shrieks attracted the attention of the crowd. Merle put her hands up and backed away. Another blunder. The woman was not sane. Sister Evangeline trotted to Justine’s side and joined in the harangue. Several of the nuns walked over and tried to ask Merle — well, something, but she could only shrug and say, “Je ne parle pas Francais.” She thought she spoke French, but not like this, thank you very much. “Pardon, pardon, je suis desolé,” she apologized as she backed away.
Evangeline put her arm around Justine’s narrow shoulders. The old woman wore what looked like a dress from the ‘50s, yellow and tight against her bony chest and short enough to expose her sagging knees, bare of stockings. Albert’s version of odd dress. A habited nun approached Justine, stroking her narrow shoulder as she began to cry. Poor, crazy old woman. How could she expect anyone to help her evict the woman?
* * *
At lunch in the hotel dining room, Merle sipped a glass of white wine between courses and read about the Shrine. Lucrezia was an Italian nun in the Renaissance era. She suffered at the hands of local authorities who believed she practiced witchcraft. She was banished to France where her following grew. She established a convent and set up her own order of nuns.
