Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 21
The baby tires of squirming and wailing, nestling into her shoulder. He is quite big, not walking yet so she thinks maybe a year old. She doesn’t know much of babies but this one is not a newborn. He is heavy and uses his hands well, grabbing her hair, her earrings.
Virginia looked into her purse earlier and found a few francs. Weston was busy in the back as she slipped out and bought milk and a loaf of bread. The baby quieted as she walked across the square.
But that was hours ago. Now he has awakened again, though it appears another sip of milk has calmed his fears. He looks at her with wide, startled eyes, as if she means him harm. Then his body loses the tension and he melts into her shoulder, rubbing his face on her dress.
Soon his breathing slows and he is sleeping. The quiet of the room is deep. She rubs his little stiff back and he wiggles, sucking his thumb. Outside Weston is working. She knows better than to ask what he’s doing. She adores him but she knows the limit of his patience.
She strokes the baby’s cheek. Someone loved him, he is fat and adorable with black swirls of hair and big serious eyes that make love to her.
Weston is washing outside. She has never known him to be so industrious. He has sweated through his shirt, made his trousers filthy. She laughs at him, but he is in a black mood, angry about something. Probably having to work. He goes upstairs and comes down with a suitcase. He changes his shirt, brushes off his pants. He is ready to go.
Virginia bundles up the baby, finding a blanket, some diapers, the bottle of milk. Weston barks at her, what the hell? She insists, the baby must come. They can’t just leave him. No, he yells. Yes, she says again. He will be ours now. She holds him tight against her, perhaps too tight. He whimpers.
We’ll take him to the convent, Weston says. She holds him tighter. No, she says. We will call him Harold. My father’s name. He is ours now.
Chapter Thirty
In the morning the sun promised a hot day. Her wrist had ached all night and she scratched her forehead with the cast in her sleep. She was struggling with the espresso maker when Pascal arrived.
He brought cans of paint and bags of dry plaster along with plastic bags and a broom. She watched him mount the stairs with only a nod her direction. Could it be he was almost done? She’d gotten nothing done yesterday, the ache was so bad in her arm. Today work called out to her as if punishment for her stupidity.
Odile Langois called on the new cell phone. She’d gotten the number from Albert. Could she tour a group tomorrow? Oh, why not. She wouldn’t be painting. Merle wrote down the time with her left hand and hoped she could read it tomorrow.
The espresso wasn’t happening. She walked down to the square to buy a café au lait from a small bar where men stood even at nine in the morning and had a glass of wine or some eau de vie in their morning coffee. Merle hadn’t tried that unique concoction — a pear or plum liqueur, heavily alcoholic, that oldsters like Albert made at home. It looked like the white lightning of her youth.
She nursed her café au lait at a table on the sidewalk and made some phone calls. At least she could push buttons with the fingers on her bad arm. Arnaud Rancard was on vacation now. She called one of her colleagues at Legal Aid and tried to have a short conversation about getting a name of a homeless agency official in Bordeaux before she realized it was after midnight in New York and apologized. She dug out the phone number of the criminal lawyer in Bordeaux, and called. She explained to the secretary, at least she tried to explain, that she couldn’t come for an appointment, she had to stay in the village. Could Monsieur Lalouche call her on this number?
As she turned to signal for her check, she saw the old locksmith, Andre Saintson, at the bar. He leaned forward, barely upright, raising a cup to his lips. She gathered herself, bad arm and purse, and went inside.
“Bonjour, Monsieur. Comment allez-vous?” He frowned at her from under bushy eyebrows. “Merle Bennett,” she reminded him, and they shook hands. He did not comment on her cast, just shook the ends of her fingers.
“How is your house?” he asked.
“I tried to find you to open the garden gate. But I got it open. Someone gave me the key.” He nodded warily. “Remember the garden?”
The bartender, a round man with a three-day beard and black hair, wiped the bar and listened. She turned to him. “My garden is like the Tuileries. Justine Labelle took great care of it.”
The man flinched. She said, “Did you know Justine?”
“Non,” he answered quickly, eyes darting at the other man at the bar.
“Did you know Justine Labelle?” she asked the stranger, a farmer by his looks. He threw down some coins and stalked out. She turned back to Andre. “Et vous?”
He sneered, nodding. “Une putain, a whore.”
“Where did she live before she came to my house?”
He lit a cigarette, taking his time. “I don’t know where.”
“Bordeaux,” offered the bartender. “So says Jean-Pierre.”
“Why did she come here? Did she just like this town?” Neither man commented. “Or for business?” The bartender leered and muttered something.
“Qui sais?” Andre mumbled. Who knows.
What had happened to him after he changed her locks? Had he been threatened by the gendarme? Or had he just decided to hang out in bars all day, avoiding her? She didn’t think she’d get an answer.
“It must have been disgraceful, having a putain here.” The bartender squelched a smirk. “Are there others? My husband’s parents would not have liked her living in their house. You, monsieur,” she said to the bartender. “Do you know anyone of the Chevalier family?” He said no. “The family gave the house to my husband’s mother. She was a Chevalier. Someone must know them.”
The bartender spoke rapidly to Andre who told her, “They all left town years ago, when he was a kid. Some kind of scandale. ”
“About what?”
Andre and the bartender talked so fast she hardly caught a word. Andre, who spoke slowly, said, “His mother was very upset. She was a friend of one of them and she never saw them again.”
“Does his mother still live here?”
“She died last winter.”
“Can you think of anyone who might remember the scandal?”
Andre smoked. The bartender had no ideas up his wine-stained sleeves.
“This town is full of old people. You must know someone who likes to wag his tongue.”
“Not many in this town.” Andre drained his cup. “How about your neighbor?”
“Madame Suchet? She’s not old enough to remember, is she?”
The bartender was glaring at the old man. “Perhaps not. You’re right. Too young.”
* * *
Merle held the small plum tart from the patisserie against her cast as she knocked on Madame Suchet’s door. The pear tart had broken the ice, she was hoping plums would continue the thaw.
Madame opened the door, smoothing down the front of her blouse. A full-breasted woman, she often left her blouse unbuttoned to her décolletage, probably because the buttons refused to hold. Today she burst from a white blouse with tiny blue flowers embroidered on the collar. Her skirt was pleated in green. Her hair was simple, bangs across her forehead and a platinum dye on her chin-length bob.
“Bonjour, madame,” she said. She presented the tart and smiled, and with hesitation, Mme. Suchet invited her inside. She was just having her morning coffee. She sliced the tart and served it on china plates. They tasted it in her small living room, a salon that had a formal air with doilies, old black-and-white framed photographs, and a bit of dust.
Madame asked how the house was coming. “Bien, bien, merci,” Merle smiled. A little accident with the ladder yesterday. She grimaced and held up her cast. You have a lovely home. Have you lived here long, she asked.
“All my life,” Madame said, smiling. “Except for the years I was married and lived in Paris.”
“Then perhaps you knew the owners of my house?”
“My parents knew them, the people who lived there during the war.”
“The Chevalier’s?”
“That was not the name.” Madame frowned, looking out the window at Merle’s house. “Sebastien? He was Italian. Sabatini, that was it.”
“And his wife, she was Italian?”
“No, she was from nearby. Perhaps here in the village. “
“Was she the aunt of Marie-Emilie Chevalier?”
Her finger flew to her chin as if this had not occurred to her. But yes, she said, that is how the house passed to Marie-Emilie and her husband. During the war the Sabatini’s left, abandoning the place. Things were very bad here then. The resistance fighters were everywhere, working against the Vichy government. That often brought retaliations, accusations of spying or hiding Jews or black-marketeering. People learned to keep to themselves, to lay low. Monsieur Sabatini had fought for the French and was gone for much of the war.
It didn’t take much to get Madame Suchet remembering the past. Mme Sabatini had asked the young Madame Suchet— she was only a girl then— to help in the garden, to pick fruit or hang laundry or help pluck chickens. Things children did in every house. The woman softened into the chair, cuddling her cup in both hands. Her face had lost that hostile air as she remembered the old days. Merle felt the wall fall away between them. They were just two women, alone, and not so very different.
“Where was your father during the war?”
“He had gone into the army early, drafted because he did not have a farm to maintain. He was a mason here but in the army he learned explosives. But after the surrender he was taken prisoner. He came home after the war a broken man.”
Madame went to the mantel and took down a faded photograph of a young man in uniform, so proud, so young. He was twenty-seven at the war’s start.
“Did the Sabatini’s have children?”
“No. They were young too, younger than my parents.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“For the first few years of the war she took in laundry, bartering for food. But as things got worse and he didn’t come home, she grew thin and sick. Finally she went to live with relatives somewhere. She came back for a little while after the war, but things were very bad here. No jobs, the farms abandoned, no animals or men to work the fields.”
The woman was talking slow enough that Merle could understand almost everything. Maybe her French was getting better. “But your parents kept their house.”
“And so did the Sabatini’s. But eating was another matter. Unless you had land, with animals to slaughter, chickens for eggs, a goat, room to grow vegetables, you didn’t have food. My mother and her older brother went to work for a dairy, and that kept us alive.”
“Did you know Marie-Emilie?”
“Non. After the war I went north to find work, and met my husband.”
Interesting but a dead end. She tried to think of anything else but there was only the squatter left to discuss. “Did you know Justine Labelle?”
Mme. Suchet grew very still, pursing her lips. “Non.”
“You saw her. Living there.” She didn’t answer. “I heard that there was a scandal attached to the house, from years ago.”
Madame cocked her head. “Je ne sais pas.” She didn't know.
She suddenly had to go run errands. The visit had been a good one, and they now had had a real conversation. She learned the name of the previous owner, before Weston and Marie. Maybe she and Mme Suchet would talk again.
In the garden the rug felt dry and looked clean enough. She rolled it badly with one hand and tried to pick it up. With a grunt she dropped it again. This busted-wing business was a pain in the ass.
Pascal leaned out of the second floor window into the sunshine. “Can I help?”
He came down and heaved the rolled rug over his shoulder. Staggering he lurched into the house and deposited it in the front room. “Here I hope?”
They rolled it out and Merle swept it awkwardly with a clean broom. Straightening it so that it defined a sitting area around Tristan’s bed they stood back and admired its frayed splendor. Shabby, faded and worn, the rug was far from elegant but the bed with its open springs was not exactly the height of interior design either.
“Lovely,” Pascal said. “Merveilleux.”
She laughed and took a swing at him with the broom. He said, “Ow. You want both of us to be cripples?”
“I am not a cripple!” She would be happy with Pascal as a friend, someone to share a laugh. “Only half a cripple.”
“You should rest. Wait for your arm to heal.” He rubbed his hair, causing plaster dust to fly. “I can help you. If you can’t find anyone else.”
“Are you offering your services?”
“At your pleasure, madame.”
Despite her fresh pledge of friendship she felt the heat rise in her, warming her neck and face. Why did he keep grinning at her and offering her pleasure? He looked quite serious now, as if he didn’t have a sexy grin at all.
“Let’s see what you’ve been doing upstairs.”
The loft was a picture of demolition with very little construction apparent. A three-foot high pile of plaster, lath, pigeon feathers, sticks, string, and mud from nests, and unrecognizable crap sat in the middle of the room. The stepladder stood under the hole in the ceiling. The rafters were visible, and above them a piece of plywood sealed off the attic space.
“All this was up there?”
“I left some for the next hole.” Pascal handed her a bandanna and pulled his over his mouth and nose. “You hold the bags, I fill.”
Eight trash bags later the loft floor was mostly clean. Pascal carried the bags down the stairs and set them on the curb. He had arranged for a man with a truck to take them to the dump. Merle tried to sweep with one arm and did a poor job of it. She held the dustpan instead and they filled one last bag.
“What now?” Merle pulled the scarf off her face, admiring the semi-clean space. It would have to be mopped again, later.
“Now I put up new lath —“ He pointed to strips of wood piled in the corner. “And do the plaster.” He frowned at the now large hole.
“You’ve done plaster before?”
“Oh, yes,” he said confidently then hung his head. “Once.”
“Did you do it well?”
“Formidable, bien sûr.” He smirked then looked out from under his eyebrows. “Do you want to see if I can find someone who really knows how to do plaster? I am not good. In truth, I suck at plaster.”
She laughed. “You ‘suck?’ Where did you learn that word?”
“It is not right, ‘I suck?’”
“It’s just not something I expected to ever hear a Frenchman say.”
“Well, they say it all the time on MTV.”
Pascal made a few phone calls. A small job, he explained, one, maybe two days. He could finish it off, sanding and texturing, and paint would be last.
“What other jobs?”
Merle looked up from the table. “I’m making a list. I’ll help you if I can. Until my arm heals, or —“ She handed him the piece of paper.
“Or you get tired of me hanging around?”
He had dimples. Dear God. “First, the gutter. You didn’t reattach it when you did the roof.”
“Back up the killer ladder?”
“Back up the killer ladder.”
“But first, lunch? Can I buy you some lunch? It’s very late.” It was one o’clock. Tragically late.
“I have too much to do. I have my own list.” She held it up for him to see how long it was, full of important must-do stuff.
He squinted at it. “Your handwriting sucks.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Merle ate her lunch in the garden, reading the bad novel and eating cheese. She felt a bit safer knowing someone else was going to do the hard work. She was definitely a danger to herself. And with the treasure in the basement, the wine felt safer too. She stared at her list. Had she learned nothing from France? She pushed it away and turned her face to the sun. It warmed her tired bones, her sore muscles, and her cast, until she moved her chair to the shade, propping her feet on the low wall.
Another heavenly day in the garden. The roses needed dead-heading but the climbing pink one on the far wall was busting its guts to please her. Even the new one, the Reine de Violette, had opened a mauve blossom.
She awoke with a start at the sound of the aluminum extension ladder going up. Pascal leaned it against the house, checked the legs for a firm footing, set rocks on either side of them, and climbed. Merle turned back to the book in her lap. Maybe she did need some rest. She tried to stand using her right arm. Ouch. Gathering her dishes and book, she nodded to Pascal on her way into the kitchen.
In the bathroom she took a couple more aspirin then tried to rinse her dishes in the kitchen sink. How in hell was she going to keep this cast dry?
Pascal came to the back door and knocked. He poked his head into the kitchen. “I must find new boulons for the gutter.” He held up a bent screw.
“And I need to buy something for dinner. Walk together?”
He had a long stride and she had to step lively to keep up, holding her cast against her stomach. Out on the streets she relaxed, thinking about the menu for dinner instead of crimes past and present. The lavender was blooming in pots around the plaza, scenting the air. In the grocery she bought a small piece of fish with a strange name, some green beans, and a baguette. More than enough for one person.
He was up on the ladder when she returned home. An hour later he appeared again at the door. She offered him a glass of wine. They sat outside on the patio. He sipped his wine, and said, “Something new?”
“Château Cheval-Blanc.” She handed him the bottle. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
He held the glass up to the sunlight. The thick liquid was as dense as milk and tasted a lot better. “Incroyable. Where did you get it?”
