Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 14
“A sad story.”
“These happened long ago?”
“In the early fifties. Were things bad here then?”
“The war hit this area very hard. It took much time to recover, to get the farms going, to rebuild. There were few men here to work.”
Merle finished her tea and shook her head at more. “Albert, do you think the inspector will find out who killed Justine?”
He shrugged. “He is a good man, I think. Honest.”
“But — ?”
“He does not know these people and they are not, well, open with him.”
“Do you hear any talk about the murder?”
“Very little. They say it is bad for tourist monies.”
“I bet they wish I would go home.”
Albert blinked. “Oh, no.”
“You’re too kind, Albert.” No, they wished the whole thing — crazy prostitute, greedy American, ugly murder — vanished. Then they — whoever they were — could get into the house, according to Evangeline. And do what? Steal pears from the tree? There was nothing there but dry rot and cockroaches. Even the grim, dirt-floored cellar revealed only sodden carpet, spider webs, and moldy kegs.
The telephone rang in the other room. Albert returned, smiling. “Good news. We find a roofer.”
Chapter Twenty
The next morning, while his mother and Albert went out to a winery, Tristan broke rocks. He stepped inside the outhouse, sweat dripping down his forehead. Luc and Fernand were attacking the ground like wild men, almost to the house with the trench. Swinging the sledgehammer would probably help build up his right arm which had been sore from fencing.
It was strange, fencing, an antique sport, useless but fun. Sometimes you felt a little gay with one hand behind your back — like any minute you’d be pulling on a codpiece and puff pants — but a few swishes of the foil made you forget about it. It was hard work. Albert had given him an old fencing foil. After this chain-gang project his mother had given him he had plans to make a cardboard opponent to hang on the back wall. He was going to call him Billy.
The wall was coming down, rock by miserable rock. A space about a foot high across the top had been liberated. He took a break to put his head under the tank. The rain from yesterday had left the yard steamy. Stripping off his t-shirt he wiped his chest and face. Across the garden the roses were pink and red, perfect buds opening toward the sun. He couldn’t remember working in the yard like this, ever. He didn’t hate it either. Which was really weird. Maybe he’d be a carpenter or a builder when he grew up. He liked working with his hands. He’d always thought he’d be like his dad, a wheeler-dealer, a Wall Street suit. But maybe not.
He was chewing on some bread when the refrigerator and the electric range arrived. The stove was basic, and the fridge was a quarter size of theirs at home. Now they could have cold drinks, at home. There was a concept. He plugged the refrigerator into the new outlet the electrician had installed and lo, and behold — zilch. No electricity. Not hooked up yet.
He was closing the door after the delivery man when he saw another man on the street, looking up at the house. He held out his hand. “Bonjour. You are the man of the house?”
“You speak English.”
“Oh, yeah.” The guy was kind of cool. He had a crooked smile and long, curly hair. He was taller than his dad, almost as tall as Tristan, but had bigger muscles under his black t-shirt. “I hitchhiked around the U.S. Six months and voila!” He snapped his fingers.
The guy was staring at the front of the house. “Are you here to do something?”
“Sorry. I am Pascal d’Onson. I heard you need a roofer.”
“Oh, yeah. We have an attic full of flying crappers.” Tristan ran through the garden to Albert’s to borrow the ladder. He watched Pascal climb up to the high roof and examine the hole. The roof was too wet so he climbed down again.
“First, the pigeons. We must send them bye-bye. Otherwise, you have a stink like no tomorrow.” Pascal said he would be back the next day with a smoke bomb. “You have a very old roof. Perhaps some water damage inside?”
They tramped upstairs, leaving their muddy shoes at the door. Pascal discussed the hole in the ceiling for a long time, staring at the bucket of sudsy water his mother had left and the limp sheet of leaky plastic she had nailed over the hole to keep the birds out of the house. This talking was the French way. No quick decisions. Much talk must take place first, a few cigarettes, maybe a glass of wine or a coffee. Pascal jawed about joists, plaster, tiles, a possible skylight, a possible dormer window.
“A big job, will take time,” Pascal said as he left. “But we will get it licked. See you in the morning.”
In the garden the heat rose from the damp earth. The man from the water department smoked a cigarette under the acacia tree. He had decided to watch today, it seemed. The plumber and his son were throwing mud like demons. Fernand’s wife was complaining about his dirty clothes so they were determined to be done soon. Luc made a scary face describing his mother’s wrath. He was a short like his father, but young and strong, and his enthusiastic digging encouraged Tristan to keep swinging the sledgehammer.
An hour later he put down the hammer and sat on the plywood covering the pissoir’s hole. His arms burned with fatigue and his back had a cramp. He stepped carefully over the piles of mud and found the flashlight in the kitchen. He had peered over the false wall several times, once when he sent a rock flying over the top, but it was too dark and full of dust to see anything. Curiosity was a good excuse for a break.
“Terminé, Tristan?” Fernand said, his muddy hands on his hips. “You are finish?”
“Just want to see what was so secret behind the wall. Maybe a million bucks.” He twirled the big flashlight as Luc stepped out of the trench, handing his father the shovel. “Want a look?” Tristan asked.
Luc followed him inside the cramped space. Tristan mimed for him to stand on the plywood toilet top and lean over the now five foot high wall. Luc stepped up and flipped on the flashlight.
“Is it pirate booty? Gold coins?” Tristan crossed his arms and grinned. Luc stood still, pointing the light down into the dust. He stepped slowly down from the wood, solemn as he handed Tristan the flashlight. “Vous vous regardez,” he whispered.
“All right. I’ll look for myself.” Tristan hopped up on the toilet and draped his long arms over the wall. Outside Luc was calling to his father. Fernand and the water department man came to the door.
An odd, musty smell wafted up. Moving the spot of light from one end of the space to the other, Tristan felt a charge of excitement. The space wasn’t bare, nor was it just full of dirt, rocks, and mortar dust as he guessed. No money. But there were bones. A lot of bones. He looked up at Luc and his father in the doorway.
“Holy shit.” He steadied the yellow beam of the flashlight on the empty eye sockets of a human skull. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
* * *
The owners of the local winery were a middle-aged woman and her brother. Tanned, well-muscled, in a flowered dress washed to the point of limpness, Odile Langois had been pretty once but years of labor in the sun had lined her face and bent her back. She was fierce-looking, serious, but gave Merle a courteous shake of the hand. Albert asked for a tasting demonstration for his American friend. “She has only ten minutes,” Albert told Merle. “But one glass?”
“Formidable. Merci.”
Odile winced at Merle’s French then demonstrated how to swirl the wine, to taste, to swish on the tongue, to hold it there. All this had to be told to Albert and translated, but Odile was fast. In ten minutes on the dot, they had swirled, swished, and spit. Albert ordered two jugs of wine, Merle one, and Odile left to find her brother to help them load.
“What was I supposed to be tasting?”
“The delicate flavors of the wine,” Albert said, pinching his fingers as if plucking flavors from the air. “Oak, lavender, mint, lemon, blackberry. Did you taste any of them?”
“Is burnt leather a flavor?”
He chuckled. “Highly prized.”
“I’ve never been to a wine tasting. It would be fun to help people educate their tongues.”
Albert cocked his head. “You could do it?”
“If I knew anything about wine. Which I don’t.”
“Odile told me she was looking for someone to give English tours but she can’t afford one. There is a school for tour guides. It is très cher to get graduates as not many pass.” He looked at her, smiling in his toothy way.
“What?”
“I could put in a word with Odile.”
“For what? A tour guide? I’m not a graduate of tour-guide school.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “The French enjoy bending the rules. I will ask her.”
“But I’m only here a week or so — ”
He slipped out the open door as she began to protest. She didn’t know anything about the making of wine. And then there were her personal issues, as in being under village arrest, renovating a dilapidated house, fleeing the country as soon as possible.
The tall silent brother they had seen earlier in the fields picked up three jugs of wine from the storeroom next to the tasting room. He wore khaki field clothes and a straw hat. The backs of his hands were red and leathery. Merle followed him out to the car where he set the jugs on the back seat. He strode off to the stucco building, one of two large warehouse wings. It seemed newer, with a nice clean roof. That reminded her, was the new roofer at the house? One could wish.
The house was a perfect distraction. Thinking about paint, flowers, even a laundry room, kept her mind occupied. It filled her with tasks, duties, and she was a dutiful person if anything. At night reality came crashing back on her and menace floated in her dreams. She didn’t dream about Harry much. He seemed to have slipped away from her, and that made her sad. She should have fought for him. Or at least cared. Then there was guilt of getting the house from a murdered woman. All day though, things were good, domestic and containable, under control. With Tristan here there was no one to worry about. The harder she worked during the day, the easier she slept without dreams of Harry or Justine or home.
Albert was waving at her from the line of cypress. Odile stood on the porch of the house with him, chatting in the shade.
“You can lead a tour on Monday?” Albert asked Merle. “She just had a telephone call from the Maison du Vin.”
Merle smiled at Odile while she whispered to Albert: “What have you gotten me into? ”
“It will be fine. Just once. You’ll see.” Albert turned to Odile and spoke in soothing tones about who-knows-what. They kissed again as they left. Albert took Merle’s arm as they stepped onto the gravel parking lot. “You have a date in two days to come back and tour the place with Gerard, the brother.”
“Does he speak English?”
Albert opened the car door for her. “Not to worry, we will think of something.”
* * *
Merle stood on the back step overlooking the garden now ruined by mud, boot prints, cigarette butts, and trenches. A crowd stood huddled around the outhouse: the plumber and the water department man, Fernand’s son, the gendarme, and the inspector. And Tristan by the pile of rocks, waving his hands.
“Mom! You won’t believe it!” He ran over to her, dragged her by the hand.
Albert trotted behind her. He had come in to talk to Tristan about the fencing tournament. Fernand spoke rapidly to the old priest. Albert turned to her. “There is a discovery, Merle. They called Jean-Pierre.”
Tristan was excited. “You won’t believe it. We’ve got a skeleton in the pissoir.”
"What?" Merle elbowed her way into the outhouse and demanded the flashlight.
“Step up on the toilet, ” Tristan called from outside. The gendarme spoke rapidly, in a commanding tone. Too bad she didn’t understand a word.
It took a minute for her eyes to adjust. Then, there it was. A human skull, with tufts of hair still attached. The hands, tiny bones collapsed in piles. The ribcage, half-intact. Leg bones, crushed by a rock. She stepped down, bowing her head over the flashlight as she tried to slow her heartbeat.
The inspector’s face was implacable as always. He held a stub of brown cigarette in his stained fingers. His eyes, a curious brownish green, watched her. She stepped outside and asked, “What will you do?”
Another investigation file would be opened, but since the inspector was already here his superiors had ordered him to also take this case. He had called for a forensics team to shoot photographs and take the bones to a laboratory for analysis. The gendarme, shunted to one side yet again, left the garden through the back gate. The inspector took Merle to the table, with Albert to translate, and asked her about the house and its history. She told him that the last legal occupants had been her late husband’s parents some fifty years before.
The house stood empty for fifty years? Except for the occasional long-term squatter, she said, giving her best Gallic shrug. Madame LaBelle, Albert explained. The inspector asked to look around. He walked away. Albert sat down in the chair he vacated, without his usual smile.
“If I believed in curses I would say this house has one,” he said dejectedly.
“Maybe we could use an exorcism,” Merle said, trying to cheer him. The skeleton was shocking, yes, but not more so than the recent death of Justine.
Albert sighed. “Too late, I think. When did your husband’s parents live here?”
“Nineteen forty-eight to fifty-two, from what I can figure. They were given this house by an aunt, then moved back to the United States when Harry was two. They died in a car accident when he was four.”
“Did anyone else live with them?”
“We know very little of their life here. Just the obituary, and those letters.” Merle remembered the other things in the safe deposit box. “Wait here.”
She returned with the envelope and spread the items out on the tablecloth. “Here is a photograph of them. Not here though, I don’t think. See the brick wall?” The old priest picked up the black-and-white photograph and squinted at it, pushing his glasses onto his forehead.
“And look at these.” She unclipped the fragile paper labels and spread them in front of the old man. “Do you know these wineries?”
“All famous vintages. Rare too, right after the war. Château Pétrus is very fine, I hear. I myself have never tasted.”
“This menu — it looks English. Shepherd’s pie, spotted dick.” She looked at the front where the tiny bird was imprinted in red on the gray boards. Round Robin Inn, it said faintly. She’d never been able to make it out before, but here in the afternoon sun, it was just readable.
The inspector stepped out the back door. He rounded the outhouse several times, examining the rock work, the mortar, the roof. He went inside again. Tristan said, “What’s he looking for, a murder weapon? Pick a rock, Capitan, any rock.”
“I have a feeling my laundry room is doomed,” Merle said.
“Just when I was starting to love the chain gang,” Tristan said, smirking. The skeleton had if anything made him cheerier. “Hey, did I tell you the roofer was here? He went up on the roof with Albert’s ladder.” He turned to priest. “He’s your friend, right?”
“His father was in my parish once, many years ago.”
The inspector appeared outside the outhouse and punched a number on his cell phone. A few minutes later Jean-Pierre returned, with a roll of crime-scene tape. The bright orange tape had ‘Entré Interdit’ on it: Entrance Forbidden. Together they strung it around the outhouse several times and tied the ends together. The inspector gave Merle and Tristan instructions on not touching the pissoir. The forensics team would be here in the morning.
* * *
After midnight Merle lay on her rollaway in the parlor, staring at the spider webs she’d missed on the ceiling. The evening was warm, promising a hot day tomorrow. Tristan had tossed and turned for fifteen minutes but now lay at the other end of the room, snoring. He had a snore very like his father’s.
Albert had invited them to dinner. It seemed better to stick together after the day's events. They discussed the skeleton in the pissoir so long that there had been nothing more to say. The old man speculated it was the Dominique of the letters. Now, in bed, Merle had a sour taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with the wine from Château Gagillac at dinner. It was Weston Strachie, and his French bride, Marie-Emilie. What were they like? Were they kind and friendly? Were they mean and unhappy? Why had they left? Had they killed someone here? She shivered and pulled up the sheet. She struggled to picture the house with them in it, with Harry as a baby, squalling, toddling, laughing.
Time erased their presence. That was the quixotic thing about old houses. Maybe the reason Harry mocked her renovation efforts. You put so much of yourself into them, your handiwork, your time, your tastes, as if to make time stand still. And still everything that was you is gone in time, everything you touched, everything you made. Like Weston and Marie-Emilie, who had disappeared into time.
Time. She had been here for eleven days. Or was it ten? The calendar in her head wasn’t working. She concentrated, tried to remember what she’d done each day, what day she’d arrived, what day Justine had died — poor thing — how many days the plumber had been here.
Unbelievable! Calendar Girl was no more.
Chapter Twenty-One
1950
It is not Stephan at the door. No, the door stands open and a man occupies the parlor space, heaving breaths, a bear panting.
Weston.
Marie-Emilie stands on the stair landing, hoping for invisibility. Too late. He sees her, blinks, and grunts.
