Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 22
She wanted to tell him about the cave. But the knowledge, the secret of the wine, was a big responsibility. And who was he? He seemed too well-traveled, too educated to be a roofer. She hated being suspicious, but she had to be careful. She replaced the cork. “I’ll pour some more at dinner. If you’ll join me.”
He put a hand over his heart. “For Château Cheval-Blanc — and your company, madame, I am honored.”
She served the fish baked with a cream sauce. Pascal had gone home to wash and change his clothes. His father, he said sipping the wine, would have killed for this one. It was a rare Bordeaux from a small vineyard. Vintages during the war, or right after like this one were very rare because of the devastation of the vineyards from battles and neglect.
As they finished dinner, set outside in the warm evening air, a knock came at the front door. Merle could see the gendarme standing on the step, his hat in his hands. She put her plate in the sink and went to the door.
“I am here to talk to the boy. Your son,” Jean-Pierre said, looking around her.
“He’s not here.” She heard Pascal come into the room.
He reached around her and shook Jean-Pierre’s hand. “Come in, have a refreshment.” She caught Pascal’s eye: what the hell are you doing?
Pascal poured the last of the Cheval-Blanc for the gendarme. At the oak table he sniffed it, sipped, and nodded, licking his lips. “An old vintage? ”
She shrugged. “Was there something you needed from my son?”
“I need to speak to him about the fight. There were complaints we must address.”
“He’s gone home to America.”
“Without his passport?”
“He kept his passport. It’s mine you have.” She crossed her arms. “Why are you here?”
“The inspector wants to speak to him.”
“What about?”
“I just do my duty.” He drained his glass and saluted them. Was he drunk? “I will leave you two amoureux to your evening.”
After the door shut Merle turned to Pascal. “What did he say?” she asked in English.
“Which part, about the passport?” He shrugged, picking up his dishes again from the table then putting on espresso. “What do you think tomorrow? Paint the shutters?”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Pascal. You’re a roofer.”
“I’m not plastering. I must wait for that before I finish upstairs.”
“All right. I’ll buy paint in the morning.” They listened to the night birds circling high in the sky, catching insects. “Has there been talk about Justine Labelle around town?”
“Not since the first few days.”
“Do they think I did it? The people?”
“I don’t know what they think.” He set his cup on the patio table. “I have heard that the Inspector gets pressure from his superiors to make an arrest.”
“He’s been investigating long enough.” She looked up. “You mean me?”
“Are there other suspects?”
The night didn’t seem so lovely. “Do you have any theories?”
“I suppose someone who was her customer.”
“Here?”
“Or Bordeaux.”
“What about Jean-Pierre, our trusty gendarme? Does he know anything about her?”
“I only know him a little.”
“Was he drunk tonight?”
“Possibly.” Pascal looked serious. “Sometimes he plays cards. A little Jeu de Tarot. At lunch.”
“Do you think he would tell you Justine Labelle’s real name?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I did. He won’t tell me.”
He looked into his tiny espresso cup, as if reading the coffee grounds for an answer. “You want me to ask?”
* * *
The next morning Merle put on her jogging shoes, shoved her good shoes in a bag, and took off walking to the winery. She was early, but wanted to enjoy the morning in the countryside, the ducks on the pond at the bottom of the hill, the wood-cutters taking logs out of the thick forest, the solitary tourists on mopeds putt-putting along the country roads. On some far hill a church bell was ringing. The sky was white, promising heat again.
She took the long way around the city walls, going out the north entrance to the beginning of the path that led to the cliffs. Not so long ago she had climbed those stairs, and a woman had been pushed to her death. Who had done it? Any one of the people on those buses that day. What was the inspector up to? She’d seen him around town, always alone at a table outside the tabac or a café, smoking and ruminating. Pascal said he was getting pressure to arrest her, but he hadn’t been back to talk to her for days. This must be what denial feels like. Very nice. Pleasant.
She’d left Pascal with two gallons of sky blue paint. He had started taking down the shutters to paint them in the garden. As she walked her cell phone rang — her mother, calling at some ungodly time of night in Connecticut.
There wasn’t much to say. There isn’t, when you’ve been lying for weeks. Your true life can never measure up to the picture you’ve painted for your relatives. Yes, she was happy Annie and Tristan would be here next week. Yes, the house was coming along. No, she wasn’t sure when she’d be home. Yes, everything was fine, just fine, having the time of her life. Vacation like no other. Perfect health.
She’d never lied to her mother. She never needed to. Her life had always been on the up-and-up. But now, as she stepped off the track into the weeds, both literally and figuratively, there was too much to say and too great a distance. Her mother wouldn’t understand. Merle would tell them all of it when it was over.
The vines of Château Gagillac trembled in the morning mist. She peeked under the leaves to see the clusters of grapes growing fatter in the summer sun. Something about grapevines was so ancient, so elemental, a link to Romans and Greeks and tribes who cultivated this soil for millennia. Had wine made from grapes planted right here on this hillside once gone down the throat of Caesar? Even the roses scenting the path knew their place in history.
The tour was an hour away. Merle took off her sweater, hung it in the closet in the tasting room, and changed her shoes. In the bathroom she brushed her hair, put on lipstick. She didn’t look too bad, except for the cast on her arm. Walking toward the house, she passed the aging room, its big doors closed and locked. What had those trucks been doing the other day, before her fall from the ladder? What was so secret in here?
She looked around. No one nearby. She stepped over to the side door and tried the knob. Locked. Was it lying, the first sin, that made her bold? She walked around the building and found a window unlocked. She reached inside and cranked it wider then peered into the gloom inside. Where was Gerard? She boosted herself onto the sill and slipped inside.
She was behind the rows of oak barrels at the back of the chai. Lying on their sides, two rows high, the top row on heavily supported wooden beams spanned the width of the building. They appeared to be all the same as before, none missing. In front of them was something new. Wooden wine cases, with bottles inside on their sides, two rows deep. So this was what the trucks were doing, loading or unloading these cases. She leaned closer to see the label, picked up a bottle and held it up to the light from the window. ‘Château du Saint Clar, Grand Cru Classe, 1992.’
Of course it wasn’t Château Gagillac. They didn’t bottle their own wine. There would be no Château Gagillac except in big plastic jugs, anytime soon. She looked at another case. ‘Château Buzet, Cru Bourgeois, 1988.’
She laid the bottle back in the wooden crate, running her fingers over its mates there, all alike. Similar crates with different wineries stamped on the sides were stacked in neat piles. Voices outside! She crept back to the window. Back over the sash she landed quietly on the grass then peeked around the corner of the chai. No one there, and the voices had gone too. Heart beating fast — what had she been thinking? — she walked slowly toward the house to get her instructions for the day.
The crunching of the stones under her shoes blotted out noises. She raised her left fist to knock on the door. There, again. Angry voices, from inside. She couldn’t follow the French, but it sounded like Gerard. Odile answered, equally fast and surprisingly loud, giving Gerard as good as he got. Unfortunately it seemed to set him off further. More yelling, then a bump. Had he hit her — or she him?
Before Merle could turn away from the door Gerard yanked it open, his face flushed with anger. He glared at her and slammed the door shut behind him, shoving past her then tramped up the path to the chai. He disappeared around the building.
Odile opened the door, her face placid and unreadable. Besides a little flush in the neck, you’d never know she’d just had a shouting match. A French thing, Merle supposed, being able to fume and shout then be sweet as pie.
The list of wine-tasters was long, fourteen people. Odile was her usual efficient self, and because of the language barrier, their conversation was over before it started. Odile sent her off as she stared out the window, worry creasing her face.
The tour group arrived in a small white bus, all British. They were a jolly, rosy-cheeked, limp-haired clan, and as they paid their money they joked with her. “How’d you break your arm, dearie? Stayin' clear from Frenchmen, was it?” “If it was you, Jack, it’d be from lifting drinks glasses.” “You seem to keep up, Terry. Not that there’s a contest.” “Lovely having a driver, isn’t it?” “A bit too lovely, if you ask me.”
Merle took the last man’s money, and opened the cash box to look for change. “There you are, sir.” She blinked at him. Anthony Simms again, with his bad hair — definitely a toupee — and doggy brown eyes.
He smiled sheepishly. “Hello, Merle. How are you?”
“Another tour?”
He shrugged, opened his mouth to answer. Merle straightened her shoulders as she saw the rest of the group was staring at them silently as if expecting a little entertainment.
“Ready? Let’s go to the vinification room and see how the grapes begin their journey into wine.”
Tours were shorter now, with the chai — where wine was aged — off-limits. She gave a little speech outside the locked doors to describe the oak barrels, explaining the process of selecting new and old barrels and why that was important, the special oak used to build them, the special coopers who did the work. The tourists didn’t seem to mind. The morning sun burned off the mist quickly and all felt the contentment of vacation in its rays. One couple kissed at the edge of the vines, much to their friends’ amusement.
In the tasting room they admonished each other to taste and spit and not drink too much and to ‘bottoms up.’ Anthony Simms stood alone, solemnly sipping and swirling his wine. As the tour ended, the Englishmen including Anthony digging in their wallets for sizable and very welcome tips, she ignored him. He walked out of the tasting room with the group. She was glad but not convinced she’d seen the end of him.
Back at the office, Odile didn’t answer the knock. The door was unlocked so she’d let herself in, piling half the money at the edge of Odile’s desk and scribbling a note.
Outside neither of the Langois was visible, nor the field crew who pruned and watered the vines. The bottles in the chai were a puzzle. Maybe Gerard wholesaled other wines on the side to make money. She changed her shoes in the tasting room, tied her sweater around her waist, and put on her sunglasses. It would be a hot walk back.
Simms waited by his car again, the only one in the gravel lot. He hadn’t gotten more attractive with time. In fact, just the opposite.
“Hello, Merle. Very nice tour, as usual.”
She stopped, crossing her arms. “Did you learn anything new?”
“You probably wonder why I’m here again. I can see you do. And,” he laughed at himself and stepped toward her, “I should explain. I wanted to see you again. But I couldn’t get up the nerve to just knock on your door.”
“And you, who know where I live.”
“And me a grown man, you can say it. It’s what you meant. I know. It’s silly. I get so — oh, you know. It’s crazy. I was hoping I could give you a ride home again? Please. I would like that.”
She felt the heat on the top of her head and wished she had a hat. The sweat was already collecting on her back. Yet she really didn’t want to ride with him again.
“Oh, come on. I’m not stalking you, is that what you think?”
She squinted at him. “It crossed my mind.”
He threw up both hands, palms out. “All right, I confess. I did walk by your house, twice, but I lost my nerve.” He looked concerned suddenly. “What did you do to your arm?”
“Fell off a ladder.” She sighed. “Look, Anthony. You’re a nice man and I would enjoy a cool ride back into town. But as I told you, I recently lost my husband. It probably doesn’t look like it but inside I am still mourning. It would be wrong for me to let you spend your money on me when nothing can come of it.”
A pretty speech. Being a cranky widow had to be good for something.
His smile frozen, he opened the car door. “A ride then, and nothing more.”
She straightened and closed the door. “Have a lovely afternoon.”
There was no way she was getting into that car again. He backed up and turned around, glaring at her. The walk home was very hot and her arm ached. A few cars passed going in the other direction. She kept an eye out for Anthony but he didn’t show. She didn’t have to jump into the ditch — this time.
As she turned onto rue de Poitiers, there he was. The white Peugeot sat in front of her house. The idiot. What did he think he was doing? She walked right up the sidewalk to her door and unlocked the padlock. He was out of his car in a flash.
“Merle, I want to apologize. I just thought we —”
She spun to face him. “No. I can see you are a gentleman. You have to respect that I am saying no.”
She fumbled with her key, her hands shaking a little as she shut the door behind her. He sat in his car, looking straight ahead out the windshield, fingers tight on the steering wheel. Drive away. He turned to look at the door and she jumped to the side. With a roar the Peugeot, and Anthony Simms, were gone.
For good, she hoped, pulling out some cheese for lunch. In the garden she could see eight shutters propped against the table, freshly painted. She shook out her shoulders, trying to dispel the unpleasantness of Anthony Simms. Had she seen the last of him? She fixed a plate of grapes and cheese and bread, poured two glasses of wine, and took the tray into the garden.
Pascal was under the cistern, washing his face and hands. “After lunch I turn them and paint the other side. Then take the others down.” She showed him the food. “I have to go play some cards today.”
“Ah, right. Use your charm and guile.”
“Charm? Moi? ”
She drank Pascal’s glass of wine as well as her own, then went upstairs to lie down. She gulped a couple aspirin for the ache in her arm. An old person’s siesta, for the widowed and the maimed.
She woke up groggy in the afternoon heat. The second-floor bedroom collected it, especially with the shutters off. A ceiling fan over the bed is what she needed. Another job for the electrician.
Pascal was lathering blue paint on the old wood shutters, some of which really should be replaced. Rebuilding a house, making it livable again, could become a mission. This house had become hers as much as it ever was Weston and Marie’s. It was Tristan’s birthright, his heritage. Maybe she wouldn’t have to sell it at all. The wine would be worth a few thousand dollars, maybe more. Maybe enough to keep the house until he went to college.
The rug warmed the room with its faded colors, despite the worn spots. Tristan’s little bed made a decent sofa, although she still wanted a gold chenille one, there in front of the fireplace. And an armchair, a big fat one to curl up in and read long novels on wintry days. She couldn’t imagine winter in the house, not when the weather was so hot. Would the house be drafty and cold? Did it get cold here, did it snow? She would come for Christmas, someday.
Someday.
* * *
On the way to the church the Bordeaux lawyer called her back. He promised to look into her case, to speak with the inspector and find out what progress was being made. She told him about her confiscated passport and demanded it back. He was polite, if not reassuring. He would call her back again with news, if he had any.
Madame Beaumount didn’t seem surprised to see her. Merle stuffed another bank note into the wooden box in the refectory and was led into the basement of the church again. Madame slapped the white gloves against her skirt to clean them and stared at Merle’s cast. The gloves were thin, stretching awkwardly over the cast on her right hand. When Madame saw that they would work she left her alone.
She found more names she recognized this time. Redier, Saintson, Tailliard. An Yves Estephene Redier was baptized in Sept-ember, 1923. Another boy, born 1925 to the same parents. She found the marriage of the Sabatini’s. How had she missed it before? Josephine Chevalier had married the Italian in 1938. No sign of them after that.
According to the bartender the Chevaliers had moved away after the scandal. If Laurent Chevalier was Marie-Emilie’s father, he would be over ninety if he was still alive. Merle kept looking, searching for something she knew had to be here, if she just looked hard enough.
The hours passed quickly in the windowless basement. She went over the same pages, again and again. The routine was like preparing for a trial, looking for precedents, researching back and then back again, farther into history. Finally, when her back hurt and her eyes had begun to burn, there it was. Two names she knew, ‘Dominique’ and ‘Redier.’ She had looked at every ‘Dominique’ in the book. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
“Dominique Eloise Redier, baptized April 5, 1936.”
Her parents were listed as Andre Thomas Redier and Catherine-Juliet (nee de Neuvic). Backtracking she found the mother’s and father’s baptism, in 1918 and 1915. Marriage in 1935, and the father’s death in late 1936, just a month after his daughter’s birth. Dominique’s confirmation in 1946.
He put a hand over his heart. “For Château Cheval-Blanc — and your company, madame, I am honored.”
She served the fish baked with a cream sauce. Pascal had gone home to wash and change his clothes. His father, he said sipping the wine, would have killed for this one. It was a rare Bordeaux from a small vineyard. Vintages during the war, or right after like this one were very rare because of the devastation of the vineyards from battles and neglect.
As they finished dinner, set outside in the warm evening air, a knock came at the front door. Merle could see the gendarme standing on the step, his hat in his hands. She put her plate in the sink and went to the door.
“I am here to talk to the boy. Your son,” Jean-Pierre said, looking around her.
“He’s not here.” She heard Pascal come into the room.
He reached around her and shook Jean-Pierre’s hand. “Come in, have a refreshment.” She caught Pascal’s eye: what the hell are you doing?
Pascal poured the last of the Cheval-Blanc for the gendarme. At the oak table he sniffed it, sipped, and nodded, licking his lips. “An old vintage? ”
She shrugged. “Was there something you needed from my son?”
“I need to speak to him about the fight. There were complaints we must address.”
“He’s gone home to America.”
“Without his passport?”
“He kept his passport. It’s mine you have.” She crossed her arms. “Why are you here?”
“The inspector wants to speak to him.”
“What about?”
“I just do my duty.” He drained his glass and saluted them. Was he drunk? “I will leave you two amoureux to your evening.”
After the door shut Merle turned to Pascal. “What did he say?” she asked in English.
“Which part, about the passport?” He shrugged, picking up his dishes again from the table then putting on espresso. “What do you think tomorrow? Paint the shutters?”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Pascal. You’re a roofer.”
“I’m not plastering. I must wait for that before I finish upstairs.”
“All right. I’ll buy paint in the morning.” They listened to the night birds circling high in the sky, catching insects. “Has there been talk about Justine Labelle around town?”
“Not since the first few days.”
“Do they think I did it? The people?”
“I don’t know what they think.” He set his cup on the patio table. “I have heard that the Inspector gets pressure from his superiors to make an arrest.”
“He’s been investigating long enough.” She looked up. “You mean me?”
“Are there other suspects?”
The night didn’t seem so lovely. “Do you have any theories?”
“I suppose someone who was her customer.”
“Here?”
“Or Bordeaux.”
“What about Jean-Pierre, our trusty gendarme? Does he know anything about her?”
“I only know him a little.”
“Was he drunk tonight?”
“Possibly.” Pascal looked serious. “Sometimes he plays cards. A little Jeu de Tarot. At lunch.”
“Do you think he would tell you Justine Labelle’s real name?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I did. He won’t tell me.”
He looked into his tiny espresso cup, as if reading the coffee grounds for an answer. “You want me to ask?”
* * *
The next morning Merle put on her jogging shoes, shoved her good shoes in a bag, and took off walking to the winery. She was early, but wanted to enjoy the morning in the countryside, the ducks on the pond at the bottom of the hill, the wood-cutters taking logs out of the thick forest, the solitary tourists on mopeds putt-putting along the country roads. On some far hill a church bell was ringing. The sky was white, promising heat again.
She took the long way around the city walls, going out the north entrance to the beginning of the path that led to the cliffs. Not so long ago she had climbed those stairs, and a woman had been pushed to her death. Who had done it? Any one of the people on those buses that day. What was the inspector up to? She’d seen him around town, always alone at a table outside the tabac or a café, smoking and ruminating. Pascal said he was getting pressure to arrest her, but he hadn’t been back to talk to her for days. This must be what denial feels like. Very nice. Pleasant.
She’d left Pascal with two gallons of sky blue paint. He had started taking down the shutters to paint them in the garden. As she walked her cell phone rang — her mother, calling at some ungodly time of night in Connecticut.
There wasn’t much to say. There isn’t, when you’ve been lying for weeks. Your true life can never measure up to the picture you’ve painted for your relatives. Yes, she was happy Annie and Tristan would be here next week. Yes, the house was coming along. No, she wasn’t sure when she’d be home. Yes, everything was fine, just fine, having the time of her life. Vacation like no other. Perfect health.
She’d never lied to her mother. She never needed to. Her life had always been on the up-and-up. But now, as she stepped off the track into the weeds, both literally and figuratively, there was too much to say and too great a distance. Her mother wouldn’t understand. Merle would tell them all of it when it was over.
The vines of Château Gagillac trembled in the morning mist. She peeked under the leaves to see the clusters of grapes growing fatter in the summer sun. Something about grapevines was so ancient, so elemental, a link to Romans and Greeks and tribes who cultivated this soil for millennia. Had wine made from grapes planted right here on this hillside once gone down the throat of Caesar? Even the roses scenting the path knew their place in history.
The tour was an hour away. Merle took off her sweater, hung it in the closet in the tasting room, and changed her shoes. In the bathroom she brushed her hair, put on lipstick. She didn’t look too bad, except for the cast on her arm. Walking toward the house, she passed the aging room, its big doors closed and locked. What had those trucks been doing the other day, before her fall from the ladder? What was so secret in here?
She looked around. No one nearby. She stepped over to the side door and tried the knob. Locked. Was it lying, the first sin, that made her bold? She walked around the building and found a window unlocked. She reached inside and cranked it wider then peered into the gloom inside. Where was Gerard? She boosted herself onto the sill and slipped inside.
She was behind the rows of oak barrels at the back of the chai. Lying on their sides, two rows high, the top row on heavily supported wooden beams spanned the width of the building. They appeared to be all the same as before, none missing. In front of them was something new. Wooden wine cases, with bottles inside on their sides, two rows deep. So this was what the trucks were doing, loading or unloading these cases. She leaned closer to see the label, picked up a bottle and held it up to the light from the window. ‘Château du Saint Clar, Grand Cru Classe, 1992.’
Of course it wasn’t Château Gagillac. They didn’t bottle their own wine. There would be no Château Gagillac except in big plastic jugs, anytime soon. She looked at another case. ‘Château Buzet, Cru Bourgeois, 1988.’
She laid the bottle back in the wooden crate, running her fingers over its mates there, all alike. Similar crates with different wineries stamped on the sides were stacked in neat piles. Voices outside! She crept back to the window. Back over the sash she landed quietly on the grass then peeked around the corner of the chai. No one there, and the voices had gone too. Heart beating fast — what had she been thinking? — she walked slowly toward the house to get her instructions for the day.
The crunching of the stones under her shoes blotted out noises. She raised her left fist to knock on the door. There, again. Angry voices, from inside. She couldn’t follow the French, but it sounded like Gerard. Odile answered, equally fast and surprisingly loud, giving Gerard as good as he got. Unfortunately it seemed to set him off further. More yelling, then a bump. Had he hit her — or she him?
Before Merle could turn away from the door Gerard yanked it open, his face flushed with anger. He glared at her and slammed the door shut behind him, shoving past her then tramped up the path to the chai. He disappeared around the building.
Odile opened the door, her face placid and unreadable. Besides a little flush in the neck, you’d never know she’d just had a shouting match. A French thing, Merle supposed, being able to fume and shout then be sweet as pie.
The list of wine-tasters was long, fourteen people. Odile was her usual efficient self, and because of the language barrier, their conversation was over before it started. Odile sent her off as she stared out the window, worry creasing her face.
The tour group arrived in a small white bus, all British. They were a jolly, rosy-cheeked, limp-haired clan, and as they paid their money they joked with her. “How’d you break your arm, dearie? Stayin' clear from Frenchmen, was it?” “If it was you, Jack, it’d be from lifting drinks glasses.” “You seem to keep up, Terry. Not that there’s a contest.” “Lovely having a driver, isn’t it?” “A bit too lovely, if you ask me.”
Merle took the last man’s money, and opened the cash box to look for change. “There you are, sir.” She blinked at him. Anthony Simms again, with his bad hair — definitely a toupee — and doggy brown eyes.
He smiled sheepishly. “Hello, Merle. How are you?”
“Another tour?”
He shrugged, opened his mouth to answer. Merle straightened her shoulders as she saw the rest of the group was staring at them silently as if expecting a little entertainment.
“Ready? Let’s go to the vinification room and see how the grapes begin their journey into wine.”
Tours were shorter now, with the chai — where wine was aged — off-limits. She gave a little speech outside the locked doors to describe the oak barrels, explaining the process of selecting new and old barrels and why that was important, the special oak used to build them, the special coopers who did the work. The tourists didn’t seem to mind. The morning sun burned off the mist quickly and all felt the contentment of vacation in its rays. One couple kissed at the edge of the vines, much to their friends’ amusement.
In the tasting room they admonished each other to taste and spit and not drink too much and to ‘bottoms up.’ Anthony Simms stood alone, solemnly sipping and swirling his wine. As the tour ended, the Englishmen including Anthony digging in their wallets for sizable and very welcome tips, she ignored him. He walked out of the tasting room with the group. She was glad but not convinced she’d seen the end of him.
Back at the office, Odile didn’t answer the knock. The door was unlocked so she’d let herself in, piling half the money at the edge of Odile’s desk and scribbling a note.
Outside neither of the Langois was visible, nor the field crew who pruned and watered the vines. The bottles in the chai were a puzzle. Maybe Gerard wholesaled other wines on the side to make money. She changed her shoes in the tasting room, tied her sweater around her waist, and put on her sunglasses. It would be a hot walk back.
Simms waited by his car again, the only one in the gravel lot. He hadn’t gotten more attractive with time. In fact, just the opposite.
“Hello, Merle. Very nice tour, as usual.”
She stopped, crossing her arms. “Did you learn anything new?”
“You probably wonder why I’m here again. I can see you do. And,” he laughed at himself and stepped toward her, “I should explain. I wanted to see you again. But I couldn’t get up the nerve to just knock on your door.”
“And you, who know where I live.”
“And me a grown man, you can say it. It’s what you meant. I know. It’s silly. I get so — oh, you know. It’s crazy. I was hoping I could give you a ride home again? Please. I would like that.”
She felt the heat on the top of her head and wished she had a hat. The sweat was already collecting on her back. Yet she really didn’t want to ride with him again.
“Oh, come on. I’m not stalking you, is that what you think?”
She squinted at him. “It crossed my mind.”
He threw up both hands, palms out. “All right, I confess. I did walk by your house, twice, but I lost my nerve.” He looked concerned suddenly. “What did you do to your arm?”
“Fell off a ladder.” She sighed. “Look, Anthony. You’re a nice man and I would enjoy a cool ride back into town. But as I told you, I recently lost my husband. It probably doesn’t look like it but inside I am still mourning. It would be wrong for me to let you spend your money on me when nothing can come of it.”
A pretty speech. Being a cranky widow had to be good for something.
His smile frozen, he opened the car door. “A ride then, and nothing more.”
She straightened and closed the door. “Have a lovely afternoon.”
There was no way she was getting into that car again. He backed up and turned around, glaring at her. The walk home was very hot and her arm ached. A few cars passed going in the other direction. She kept an eye out for Anthony but he didn’t show. She didn’t have to jump into the ditch — this time.
As she turned onto rue de Poitiers, there he was. The white Peugeot sat in front of her house. The idiot. What did he think he was doing? She walked right up the sidewalk to her door and unlocked the padlock. He was out of his car in a flash.
“Merle, I want to apologize. I just thought we —”
She spun to face him. “No. I can see you are a gentleman. You have to respect that I am saying no.”
She fumbled with her key, her hands shaking a little as she shut the door behind her. He sat in his car, looking straight ahead out the windshield, fingers tight on the steering wheel. Drive away. He turned to look at the door and she jumped to the side. With a roar the Peugeot, and Anthony Simms, were gone.
For good, she hoped, pulling out some cheese for lunch. In the garden she could see eight shutters propped against the table, freshly painted. She shook out her shoulders, trying to dispel the unpleasantness of Anthony Simms. Had she seen the last of him? She fixed a plate of grapes and cheese and bread, poured two glasses of wine, and took the tray into the garden.
Pascal was under the cistern, washing his face and hands. “After lunch I turn them and paint the other side. Then take the others down.” She showed him the food. “I have to go play some cards today.”
“Ah, right. Use your charm and guile.”
“Charm? Moi? ”
She drank Pascal’s glass of wine as well as her own, then went upstairs to lie down. She gulped a couple aspirin for the ache in her arm. An old person’s siesta, for the widowed and the maimed.
She woke up groggy in the afternoon heat. The second-floor bedroom collected it, especially with the shutters off. A ceiling fan over the bed is what she needed. Another job for the electrician.
Pascal was lathering blue paint on the old wood shutters, some of which really should be replaced. Rebuilding a house, making it livable again, could become a mission. This house had become hers as much as it ever was Weston and Marie’s. It was Tristan’s birthright, his heritage. Maybe she wouldn’t have to sell it at all. The wine would be worth a few thousand dollars, maybe more. Maybe enough to keep the house until he went to college.
The rug warmed the room with its faded colors, despite the worn spots. Tristan’s little bed made a decent sofa, although she still wanted a gold chenille one, there in front of the fireplace. And an armchair, a big fat one to curl up in and read long novels on wintry days. She couldn’t imagine winter in the house, not when the weather was so hot. Would the house be drafty and cold? Did it get cold here, did it snow? She would come for Christmas, someday.
Someday.
* * *
On the way to the church the Bordeaux lawyer called her back. He promised to look into her case, to speak with the inspector and find out what progress was being made. She told him about her confiscated passport and demanded it back. He was polite, if not reassuring. He would call her back again with news, if he had any.
Madame Beaumount didn’t seem surprised to see her. Merle stuffed another bank note into the wooden box in the refectory and was led into the basement of the church again. Madame slapped the white gloves against her skirt to clean them and stared at Merle’s cast. The gloves were thin, stretching awkwardly over the cast on her right hand. When Madame saw that they would work she left her alone.
She found more names she recognized this time. Redier, Saintson, Tailliard. An Yves Estephene Redier was baptized in Sept-ember, 1923. Another boy, born 1925 to the same parents. She found the marriage of the Sabatini’s. How had she missed it before? Josephine Chevalier had married the Italian in 1938. No sign of them after that.
According to the bartender the Chevaliers had moved away after the scandal. If Laurent Chevalier was Marie-Emilie’s father, he would be over ninety if he was still alive. Merle kept looking, searching for something she knew had to be here, if she just looked hard enough.
The hours passed quickly in the windowless basement. She went over the same pages, again and again. The routine was like preparing for a trial, looking for precedents, researching back and then back again, farther into history. Finally, when her back hurt and her eyes had begun to burn, there it was. Two names she knew, ‘Dominique’ and ‘Redier.’ She had looked at every ‘Dominique’ in the book. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
“Dominique Eloise Redier, baptized April 5, 1936.”
Her parents were listed as Andre Thomas Redier and Catherine-Juliet (nee de Neuvic). Backtracking she found the mother’s and father’s baptism, in 1918 and 1915. Marriage in 1935, and the father’s death in late 1936, just a month after his daughter’s birth. Dominique’s confirmation in 1946.
