Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 24
“You said you could handle the scrutiny.”
“Of course. But —” The mayor walked to the cold fireplace and placed a hand on the mantel. An ornate clock whirled behind its glass case. “I have both keys. One to the house, one to the gate. What will you pay for them?”
“She changed the locks, you said.”
“The new key, that is the one I have. The locksmith gave it to me in exchange for help with his taxes. There is always a way a mayor can help his populace.”
“Bloody patriotic of you. But this concerns me how?”
“You need the keys. You —”
“But there you’re laboring under a falsehood. I can get into that house any time I want, without your keys.”
The mayor glared at him under bushy white eyebrows, as if the force of his will could move mountains. “You cannot.”
“Oh yes. In fact I don’t need your help at all.”
“We have a deal, Mr. Rogers. On your honor, you will change nothing.” The mayor reddened, angry. “You know how we got the gate key? From her, from Justine! One of the men — he was rough, he frightened her but it had to be done. Now we are complicit.”
“Ah, the merry band of frog bunglers. Very subtle, tossing her off the cliff. And so now we have the inspector to deal with, complicating matters. If only you people had showed a little finesse.”
The mayor stomped over to him and stared down his nose. “Do not lecture me on finesse, Mr. Rogers. The French invented it. ”
Hugh couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “Yes, I see. And tact as well.”
“You were to be done a week ago. You must finish and go,” the mayor sputtered.
“Right. So the deal is 80/20, take it or leave it. I don’t need your filthy key. All I need is for you to keep the inspector out of the way. It’s taking a bit longer since you allowed the American to move in. I can’t very well barge in, now can I?”
“The inspector thought it was a fine idea. I had no choice.”
“Then give the inspector the name of your man who did the deed. That will clear the American and she will go home. Then we wouldn’t even need my little diversion, although God knows it’ll be a doozy.”
The mayor shook his head. “I cannot do that.”
“So we see where your loyalties lie. No doubt it’s your idiot nephew you’re shielding. Well, you’ve made your choice. Just don’t get in my way, old boy.” Rogers brushed imaginary lint from the mayor’s dressing gown, causing Redier to bat his hand away, horrified. Hugh stuck his finger at the man’s chest. “Do your part. Stay out of my way.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
In the morning over espresso in the kitchen Pascal turned to Merle. “North, south, east, west. Where shall we go?”
He had told her he would rent a car, a convertible, so they could feel the world go by. But she couldn’t. “I have to stay in the village.”
“Let me talk to the inspector. He will make an exception if you are with a Frenchman.” He put his arms around her. “I can very persuasive.”
She wanted to tell him about the wine. She hated that she had lost her trust in people since Harry died. As if his betrayal had soured her belief in goodness. She wanted to think Pascal was good, that he was who he said he was, that he wasn’t after that wine he liked so much. She could see goodness in his eyes, in his touch. But she was raw, needy, and that made her wary again.
“What if — we make our own little resort here. Less expensive, and very private.”
She kissed him and the regret of the decision balanced with the relief. It was too much responsibility. She couldn’t burden him with it.
They set to work transforming the garden. Pascal rallied, finding an umbrella and two fold-up lounge chairs somewhere. A keg from the basement was topped with a piece of wood for a table. She shopped for a special dinner and he shopped for wine and champagne. By noon they had locked the shutters to the house and declared a holiday. He gave her a foot massage. She gave him a one-handed shoulder massage and they filled the big washtub with warm water and bubble bath and soaked their feet and laughed at themselves.
“You have no swimsuit? No problem,” he said grinning. So she sunned herself in her black lace underpants and nothing else, after aligning the umbrella to shield the view from Yves and Suzette’s upstairs window. He wore a swimsuit the size of a slingshot. She liked it very much.
Several times she felt herself getting up to do “something.” This relaxation state, especially in her home environment where the tasks glared at her — FIX ME! — was difficult. Pascal began to massage her palm, which was not only incredibly sensual but made her forget everything practical, all her lists. He made her close her eyes so he could describe where they might be. Biarritz, he said, with miles of white sand and blue ocean, waves breaking against the beach. Fish frying at little shops, the coconut of suntan oil, hairy Spaniards flexing their muscles, buxom Frenchwomen bouncing along and little naked children playing in the surf. The fresh tang of salt and seaweed. The sea wind, raw and wild. Sailboats off the coast, fresh mussels.
“Are we drinking wine?” she asked drowsily.
“White wine. So much we can barely stand up. But we don’t need to — we aren’t going anywhere. This is where we want to be.”
As the sun lowered they made love in the afternoon heat, his hands warm against her body. Making love again, as good as it was, made her feel suddenly sad. For Harry, for all the nights they — or at least she — had spent alone, for the nights she didn’t care that he spent in the city, for the relief she’d often felt at his absence. For the time — there it was again, that dirty word — for the time they’d wasted.
After dinner Pascal lay naked beside her on the bed as the sky turned purple. “What was he like, your husband?” He rolled over on his side. “If it is okay to talk about him. Harry?”
“Yes, Harry. Harold. He was older than me, by five years. Short, in a French way. His mother was French. He lost his parents when he was four. I think it made it hard for him to love. Or maybe I just — ” Was it her fault? Was she to blame? She couldn’t shake it.
“What?”
“He was a good father, a good enough husband. But something was missing. ”
“He had lovers?”
She glanced at him. “At least one. He had a child with her.”
“It happens,” he said.
“Not so much in the U.S. I didn’t find out about it until he was gone. His little girl, the one we never had — I couldn’t have any more children — I don’t know if it was that or I wasn’t — oh, shit.” She wiped the tears angrily with the back of her hand. Pascal rubbed her cheek with his thumb and waited for her to speak again. She loved that, just the patience of a man.
She looked away from the ceiling, into his eyes. “You know what? I didn’t love him either. Oh, at first, but not for a long time. I made myself believe that I did. All those years. I didn’t even realize it until he was gone.”
“How did he die?”
“A heart attack, at his desk. He worked a lot.”
“So maybe his heart was finished. Maybe he was not lovable.”
“But I did love him once — at least I think I did. Then something happened. I stopped. Sometime, somewhere. I don’t know why. Maybe I never loved him. Maybe I don’t even know what love is.”
He licked her neck, slowly, and sucked on her ear lobe. As she held her breath, he whispered into her ear, “Do you want me to show you, chèrie?”
* * *
The next morning they slept late, waking only when room overheated from the sun. The make-believe beach didn’t seem big enough for conversation. She felt raw and alive in a way she hadn’t felt for so long she wondered if she was still practical, rational Merle Bennett. She held Pascal's muscular hand across the gap that separated their chairs. She went topless again, safe in her walled beach. How many summers would it take to go comfortably topless at a real French beach — five? Ten? What would she be doing in ten years?
She shut her eyes, blotting out the future, while Pascal went to a bistro, bringing back goat cheese country salads they ate with more white wine. They did nothing. The word ‘NOTHING’ careened in her head until she understood. You could do nothing for one day. The world would not slap you down. You did not become a nothing if you did nothing for a day.
Early Tuesday morning Pascal sat in the garden, drinking his coffee, quiet. They were dressed now, back to their old selves. Was he regretting this nothing-weekend, wondering how to extricate himself? Better not to know, to accept this little gift, this sunburn on her stomach, this aliveness, mental and physical, for what it was and nothing more.
Albert came over to introduce his niece. His sister’s grand-daughter, Valerie from Paris, was dark-haired and adorable, just fifteen. Tristan arrives tonight, she told them, promising a dinner. Pascal went back to work on the ceiling, nailing up the last of the lath.
Merle walked slowly out to the winery for the afternoon tour. In the tasting room she reapplied lipstick and brushed her hair. Did she look different? A little sunburnt, that’s all. When she was young she imagined everyone could tell when she’d had sex, that she smelled different, looked different. But this was France. It was safe to assume everyone made love before breakfast. Even you, Merle Bennett.
The group bought nine jugs of wine, pleasing Odile — if that thin smile could be called pleasure. Merle didn’t mind the walk home. A group of workers in a tiny pickup truck passed her, standing in the back, chanting, fists waving. Was there going to be a farm strike? What would that mean to Château Gagillac? She walked on, finally used to French drivers who intentionally passed so close her skirt blew up. She wore scarlet underpants just for them.
The setting sun turned the sky purple, the oaks on the hillside lit through from an inner fire. In front of the house, a little blue car. Annie was here! She saw Tristan’s head over the roof and began to run.
Chapter Thirty-Four
After wine from Château Gagillac, a dinner of pork roast and potatoes with Albert, Valerie, and Pascal, and a tour of the house and garden, the company went home. Annie and Tristan were tired from their travels. In the garden, under the acacia tree, the expected talk of trips around the surrounding countryside came up. Annie was excited to visit old castles, museums, wineries, and babbled about Lascaux Two, the re-creation of the stone-age cave with the incredible animal paintings.
They sat in the garden as dusk fell. Tristan claimed fatigue and went inside to listen to music. “So where have you been?” Annie said, leafing through her guidebook.
“I haven’t been anywhere,” Merle said. “Tristan didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Annie had braided her hair and wore a peasant blouse with wide, turquoise trousers and Birkenstocks, full vacation mode. “You fell off another ladder?”
Merle told her about the squatter’s death and the compromise her lawyer had made to get her the house. “I can’t leave the village without the inspector’s permission.”
“That’s bullshit. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.” Like Pascal Annie had full faith in her skills at persuasion.
“There’s another reason I can’t go. Come on, I’ll show you. We have a secret room,” she said, pulling her sister inside and getting Tristan to push the cupboard back. In the basement Merle unlocked the wine cave. Annie’s eyes were wide as she descended through the trap door. “Go on, step in,” Merle said, pointing the flashlight down at the step, then at the racks of dusty bottles.
“Oh my God,” Annie said. “Have these been here for hundreds of years?”
“Just fifty or sixty. But in wine years, that’s better than a hundred.”
“Really?” She was examining the bottles, holding them up to the flashlight.
“I searched around on the internet. There are three labels, three different years. The Pétrus could be worth a thousand dollars a bottle, maybe more. The others a little less.” The search had actually placed their value much higher but Merle didn’t want to count on that. Unlike Harry she preferred to low-ball.
They locked up the cave and pushed the cupboard back into place. Outside, they brushed the spider webs off their clothes. “What are you going to do with it?” Annie asked.
“Sell it, I hope.” Merle sat down again on the iron chair. “Someone else knows about the wine. The woman who was living here with Justine LaBelle gave me the key to that gate. She told me ‘they’ would kill for it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“It could be the mayor for all I know. He hates my guts for some reason.” The mayor had been hostile from the beginning. Why didn’t he want her in the house — because he knew about the wine? Or was it because Justine LaBelle was a Redier, one of his black-sheep relatives? “Look, it’s important that nobody knows about the wine downstairs. I haven’t told anyone except Tristan. It’s like sitting on buried treasure. It makes me a little crazy.”
“Why don’t you just get it out of there?”
“How? I haven’t even told you about all the stuff that’s going on. I’m working at this winery — touring English-speakers around — and there’s something funny going on there. There might be a farm strike. And then there’s the outhouse.” Merle waved her sister over to the latrine. “We were demolishing a wall inside and guess what we found — a skeleton. Somebody had put this woman, dead or alive we don’t know — rocked her in behind this stone wall.”
“Christ. Have you got any ghosts with chains rattling in the night?”
“Just mice. But I’m on the lookout.”
Annie leaned back in her chair and let her head drop back. “I suppose we can’t drink that wine. It’s too expensive. It’d be like drinking gold.”
“We drank two of them. We had to find out if they’d gone bad. We have one more vintage to examine.”
Annie’s eyes lit up. “You know how to make a girl feel welcome.” She looked around the garden, at the crime tape on the pissoir, at the roof, and laughed. “I brought twelve books. I thought I could get all caught up on my reading.”
* * *
Merle lay awake next to her sister, listening to the village go to bed. The sweeping of steps, a rug beaten against a wall, a cat howling, a shutter latched. She made a list in her head for tomorrow. The caulking needed work. The rock pile needed to be moved. Annie might help paint the bathroom ceiling. She’d wanted excruciating detail about how her klutz of a sister had broken her wrist. The stupid thing was hot and dirty and it itched. The grate for the chimney — Pascal, perhaps.
Annie’s shoulder was silhouetted against the window. Merle hadn’t told her yet about the discoveries in the parish registry. If Merle could have avoided it now, she would. But she owed it to the woman to uncover the truth. Dominique, a blond child playing in Malcouziac’s streets, grew up to be a Bordeaux whore named Justine LaBelle.
A sad story but a familiar one. Was it because of her fourteenth year? Who had made her pregnant, debauched her, sent her on a long and winding path ending at the bottom of the cliffs of Lucrezia? Who could be so cruel?
* * *
The next day was sunny again; it had been weeks since rain had fallen. The stones felt warm to the touch as the sisters passed the houses. Merle opened the door to the gendarmerie where Madame Cluzet pointed them to the inspector’s hotel where he had gone for lunch.
The hotel sat on a back street, definitely the economy place. The paint was peeling on the shutters and the carpet in the lobby was worn and dirty. They walked through to a darkened bar where a small group of tables and chairs formed a smoky lounge. The inspector sat in a corner, papers spread over his table, contributing to the fog.
“Capitan Montrose, that’s his name,” Merle whispered. “We have to speak French with him.”
He stood up as they approached through the tables, taking off heavy black-rimmed glasses. He wore a rumpled gray suit and white shirt, more bureaucratic than fashionable. His tie was blue, his fingers tobacco stained. Merle introduced her sister and they shook hands.
“Sit down, please.” He waited as they settled into chairs. He discreetly turned his paperwork over.
“We need to speak about the passport, and confining my sister to the village.” Annie leaned forward, engaging him with her eyes. “This can’t continue. You must return her passport to her or we will have to protest through the U.S. Embassy.”
“I am sorry, madame. Your sister is a suspect in a murder investigation.”
“And what’s happening? Is there progress?” Merle asked. “Have you found Sister Evangeline or any other witnesses to the murder?”
He stared at her silently.
“You haven’t found her dead, I hope.”
“Non.”
“Are you going to charge my sister with a crime?” Annie asked.
“We shall see,” he said.
“She has a job in New York City. You can’t keep her here indefinitely. She has a family at home.”
“I’m retaining a lawyer. Antoine Lalouche in Bordeaux,” Merle said. “Do you know him?”
“Non, madame.”
“Monsieur l’Inspecteur,” Merle began, sitting forward now, “I have some new information about Justine LaBelle. Maybe you already know it.” He nodded for her to continue. “She was born here in Malcouziac, and her real name was Dominique Redier. Did you know that? Redier. She gave birth to an infant when she was fourteen years old. My husband was that child. The couple who adopted him owned the house on rue de Poitiers.”
“What?” Annie whispered.
Merle stared at the policeman. His stony expression never changed. “That is why, as Justine LaBelle, she returned to live in the house. That was her connection.”
He smoked and thought about that. She continued. “Her name was Redier. Both the mayor and the gendarme share that name. Are they perhaps the ones that Sister Evangeline warned me about? The ones who would kill to get into the garden? Was it the bones in the latrine that they wanted to conceal?”
