Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 25
He tented his fingers, concentrating hard on her choppy accent. Could she trust him with the knowledge of the wine? She shivered involuntarily.
Annie said, “Have you identified the remains?”
“Without a missing person report, some idea who she might be, it is very difficult. After the war, records were lax. So many people died or disappeared, or left the country in those years.”
“My sister is making progress on this case. Not necessarily more progress than you, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.” Annie smiled and by God he smiled back. “But please let her work. Let her leave the village for day trips to gather more information. We have been very open with you, Inspector.”
“Where would you go?” he asked.
“To a convent,” Merle said. He didn’t need to know why. Annie shook his hand and turned away but Merle stayed. He asked, “When?”
“Today. Sister Evangeline wasn’t a nun. But we will find out today for sure. I think she was hired to get into that house.”
“To kill Justine LaBelle?”
“Possibly. But why would she give me the key?”
As serious and solid as he looked, he also appeared adrift, as clueless today as he’d been on day one, the stains on his shirt accumulating. “I do not think you are a murderer, madame, but I cannot afford to take chances. You will not make me sorry.”
Outside, Annie waited for her. “What is all this about Harry? He was adopted?”
Merle put her arm through her sister’s and pulled her toward the plaza. “Super-genealogy sleuth, here. His birth mother was the woman who was killed. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Annie. It’s embarrassing. But she was a prostitute, that’s what everyone says. An ugly old whore from Bordeaux.”
“So those people in the car accident on Long Island weren’t his parents?”
“Adoptive. I don’t even think he knew he was adopted. Guess where we’re going now that you got me a day-pass?”
“Lascaux?”
“Equally as thrilling. Right after I give Tristan his duties as guardian-in-chief.”
* * *
The hills to the south of Malcouziac rose and fell with each stream and valley, turning at small towns perched on hilltops. The sky was an infallible blue. She drove Annie’s rental, a little Peugeot. Annie sat with her knees curled under her, reading her guidebook. A fundamental differences between sisters: Merle had not brought one guidebook with her; she’d had to buy one here. Annie brought three.
“It says here that the Carmelites came to France after the death of St. Teresa. She was that super-nun in the Holy Land who reformed the order. They were wild and she made them all calm down and look inward. Made it contemplative and cloistered.”
“I’ve heard of her,” Merle said. “Teresa of Avila.”
“Right. That was in the 1500s. The first Carmelite convent was founded in 1604. Now there are almost a hundred in France. No wonder Frenchmen are such horny bastards. Present boyfriends included.”
“You have a French boyfriend?”
Annie smirked. “The Carmelites were suppressed during the French Revolution. Oh, this is good. Right before the revolution was King Louis the fifteenth. His daughter Louise became a famous nun. He — au contraire — was famous for his godless debauchery. You remember Madame de Pompadour? And Madame du Barry. His lady friends.”
“So Louise — his namesake — was the shining example of virtue? Princess and nun?”
“Something like that. This convent we’re going to was founded in the twelfth century. That was men — monks. They died out, or something, about the fourteenth century. There were soldiers occupying the place during the revolution and most of the good stuff was stripped out of it.”
“So when did the nuns come?”
“After the revolution. They went off to England, most of them, to save their necks — although some of them went to the guillotine to save France — then they came back to France around the 1850s.” Annie looked up. “Turn here, left, left. It’s only a mile.”
A small sign on the lane read: Monastère du Carmel. The buildings looked like a well-kept farmhouse, two stories high and large, with numerous stone outbuildings and an ornate iron gate where Merle stopped the car. “Is there a bell or something?”
Annie looked through the windshield. “They might not even talk. You know, vow of silence.”
Merle shut off the car. “We’ve come this far.”
A shield with crosses decorated each side of the tall, padlocked gate. “Should we shout?” Annie whispered. A nun stepped out of a building, her long habit, white wimple, and black veil recognizable from the distance. They waited, neither Catholic but sharing a glance of anxiety as the nun approached. This was another world, inside these gates, where virtue and purity ruled.
The nun was young, and surprisingly, wearing sandals. Her scrubbed face was dusted with freckles under the tight wimple. Merle asked her in French if it was possible to research birth records here. That she believed a relative may have spent time here. Not a nun, a lay person.
“Birth records?” The young nun, her hands hidden inside her sleeves, frowned.
“Nineteen-fifty.”
“We moved to this location in 1962,” she said. “There have been no births here.”
“Can we speak to Mother Superior?”
The nun frowned and walked back to the house. The sun was hot, and they had only brought water and fruit and a little bread for lunch. Across the fields they could see women working in the rows, hoeing, harvesting, watering. They wore blue shifts and straw hats. Merle and Annie drank the rest of the water, sitting in the car with the doors open, taking advantage of the shade the vehicle gave them.
A half-hour later two nuns came out of the main house. A tall, older nun unlocked the gate and waved them inside. They passed several buildings then, moving through a large, hand-carved door into a dark interior of a tile-roofed, windowless building. Merle blinked in the dim light. The air was cool, heavy with candle wax and incense. A barn-like space with a soaring roof of rough wooden beams, stone walls, and wooden pews, in the front sat a small altar with a white statue of a woman on it.
The tall sister, a wrinkled, haggard woman, pointed to the back pew. “You may pray.” Their light footsteps faded, the door closed. The only light in the chapel was from two small round windows, one at each end in the upper point of the wall, under the roof.
What did a cloistered nun pray for day in and day out — world peace, a calm heart, rain? “I am not going to be a nun,” Annie whispered. “Just so you know. And I’ll hold you back.”
“You could be a Buddhist, wear pink and shave your head.”
“Not going to happen. If you become a nun Pascal can’t give you hickies anymore.”
Merle snorted as the big door opened with a loud crack. They jumped to their feet. The silhouette of a nun, short and wide, her girth accentuated by voluminous garments, blinded them for a second.
The nun with the keys, obviously her consigliere, walked beside her. The round nun was old, they saw as she walked toward them, with triple chins and jowls. Her eyes were bright but her skin had the pallor of failing health. Her name was Madame Françoise. The tall nun helped Madame Françoise into a pew. Merle made her request to the Mother Superior, to look at birth records for information about a relative who may have had a child here.
The tall nun answered first. “We were located in the village until 1962. We have some records from the early years.” She looked at Madame Françoise.
“You are American?” the old woman asked.
“Yes, but my husband was born in France. I think he was born in your monastery.”
“Where is your husband now?”
“He died. In April.” Merle felt her sister’s hand on her knee. “But for my son, for his legacy, I want to know who his true parents were. My husband, I believe, was adopted.”
Madame Françoise’s eyes were not gentle. “The records are very sensitive. These girls came to us for sanctuary when they had nowhere else to turn. We cannot break the trust they showed in us.”
“But she’s dead — ” Merle blurted, then bit her tongue. Madame Françoise and the nun exchanged glances. “All of them are dead now. My husband, his mother, his adopted father and mother. There’s no one to ask.”
The nun said, “You know who is his mother?”
“I did some digging in the church records. Her name was Dominique Redier,” Merle said. “Better known now as Justine Labelle.”
Madame Françoise sat very still. The other nun let out a long breath that seemed to echo off the walls of the chapel.
“Do you know her?”
“Dominique came to us many times over the years. Here and in the village.” The old woman wet her lips. “She was a troubled girl. We heard about her passing. We prayed for her soul that night as we have many nights before, that she found peace and love in Jesus.”
“She was an excellent gardener,” Merle heard herself saying. “She must have learned that from you.”
“She was excellent in many ways,” the tall nun said sharply, “just not in the ways of the world.”
“Was she a nun?” Annie asked.
“She could not live a contemplative life.”
“Not after what happened to her,” Madame Françoise added. “She tried, many times. We prayed together for her salvation, for her acceptance of His will, but there are sins of the world that even God cannot make right. We trust that she made peace with the Lord, as He has forgiven her as he forgives all sinners. We remember her in our prayers.”
“But, what happened to her?” Merle asked.
“A man,” the nun spat.
“A man brought her to us the first time. She was with child, desperate. So very young,” Madame Anne said softly. “He said her family had sent her to live in the street, so ashamed were they.”
“A man came with her?” Annie asked. “Do you know his name?”
“He was a stranger to us. A foreigner.”
Merle bit her lip and asked, “An American?”
Madame Françoise closed her eyes. “I knew Americans from the war, the ones who came down in parachutes. Yes, he was an American.”
“A soldier?”
“In the past, he said. His French was good.”
“Do you remember his name?” A long pause. “Was it Weston — Weston Strachie?”
Madame Françoise took her time, searching her memory, as if wanting to be sure she was right. “Perhaps. It has been many years.”
Outside the chapel a shuffle of feet began, suddenly, then the chatter of women’s voices. The nun’s eyes flickered toward the door as if eager to join whatever was going on out there. Merle said, “She had her baby at the convent?”
“No. She was with us for awhile, a month or two, then the woman came to take her home. We didn’t see her again for some years.”
“The woman?” Annie asked.
“She said she was the American’s wife, that it was proper and Christian that Dominique have her baby at the home of the father of her child. That she wanted to take care of the girl, to make amends.”
The echoes in the chapel swallowed up the old nun’s voice. Had she said the American was the father of her child? Weston was Harry’s father after all? But that would mean he had —
“This woman,” Annie asked. “She was Weston’s wife?”
“So she said.”
Merle said, “M-Madame, encore, s’il vous plait. The American’s wife came here, took Dominique away, because he, the American, was the father of her child?”
“Dominique went with her willingly. She had received letters. From the woman, I think.” Madame Françoise folded her hands. “I prayed we had made the right decision, that God had sent Dominique to us, and the woman as well. I was a novice then and these decisions were not mine. Dominique was a young girl, so naïve about the ways of the world. She returned to us years later when life was so hard for her.”
“It was always hard,” the nun said.
“But why? Why would Weston’s wife take in the girl that he — you know, debauched?” Annie asked.
“I questioned that,” the Mother Superior said. “But she was a very pious woman, kind and gentle. She said this was penance for what her husband had done. To try to make it right. The girl had no one. Her family would not help her. They had disowned her. We prayed that the woman was as full of the light of Jesus Christ as she appeared.”
She must have been a saint. Merle tried to picture herself taking in Courtney while she carried Harry’s child. As much as she felt sorry for Courtney, it was very unlikely.
“One more question. Did you ever have a Sister Evangeline here?”
The nuns looked at each other. “We don’t know that name.” Madame Françoise took a rattling breath. “Then Dominique had a boy? She told us of trips back to the village, but not about the child. He was your husband? Was he a good man?”
The sky through the tiny window ached with blue purity, the vast loveliness of ether. Merle thought of Harry, the way he was years ago, when she’d married him. Full of mischief and love. The day Tristan was born, the flowers he’d bought, dozens of roses in every color. It all came back to her now, the good memories. The dark house in the suburbs he’d bought for her, the one he hated. Oh, Harry. She looked out the high window above the altar, where the sky was as bright and new as a robin’s egg. Are you there, Harry?
“Yes, Madame,” she said. “He was a good man.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
When they returned from the convent Tristan announced that Albert had invited them all over for dinner. He had roasted a chicken, and they sat around his table, drank wine, and ate chicken and small potatoes and haricots verts. Tristan sat next to Albert’s niece, Valerie, who was much more socially advanced than he was. The little vixen flirted and pouted, making everyone laugh and Tristan turn red. Merle sat next to Pascal and tried not to flirt. Annie and Albert got to talk more tonight and were soon swapping stories. Tristan told the story of discovering the skeleton dramatically, with flourishes.
Valerie’s eyes glowed with excitement. “But who was eet?”
“That is the question, mademoiselle,” Annie said. “We’ll have to wait to find out.”
“Can they tell exactly who it was from the bones?”
Annie explained. “They might, if they had a clue who it was. But as it is, probably not. Just general stuff, like a man or a woman, how old they were when they died. Unless they have dental records. They’ll have to check for missing persons.”
Pascal said, “During the war — both wars — it was chaos. It could have happened during the war, perhaps. After the last war things were not —”
“Organized. You think fifty years ago then, not a hundred?”
“Hard to say. But no one has lived in the house since, what?”
“Since 1952,” Merle said. “That’s when Weston and Marie-Emilie went to the States.” She looked at her plate, deep in thought. The scandal of Dominique’s pregnancy had driven her family from the village. Did the village also drive Weston and his wife away?
Albert told them of seeing a truck full of farmers that afternoon. “I’m afraid there may be a strike.”
“The grape-growers?” Annie asked. “What would happen?”
“Nothing much,” Pascal said. “At least for the grapes it will be just talk until after the harvest. They aren’t doing much now anyway, just worrying about what the prices will be in the fall.”
Albert said, “There was a rally last year near here. Some of the growers were very angry. They broke into a large cave and stole bottles of wine in protest.”
“Were they caught?” Tristan asked.
“Yes,” Albert said. “But they received very light sentences because they were just making a point.”
“A mistake,” Pascal growled.
Merle squeezed his arm. “You are such a political roofer.”
Albert laughed. “Everyone is all opinion in France.”
* * *
“This sofa is horrible.”
“As comfortable as I am French. No wonder Albert wanted to get rid of it.”
It was nearly midnight. Merle opened the third bottle in the stash in her suitcase, the Château L’Église-Clinet, after dinner at Albert’s. They sipped and proclaimed it unspoiled and amazing. The Victorian settee, horsehair stuffed and tattered, found by Albert that morning at the local brocante, was lumpy and unattractive even with the shawl thrown over the holes. They arranged pillows from Tristan’s bed under themselves, improving comfort slightly, as he ran in from the back.
“Where’re Pascal’s binoculars?” He clambered up the stairs. “Where are they, Mom?”
“What makes you think Pascal has binoculars?”
“Because I saw him looking out the window. Up there.”
Annie asked, “It’s dark out. What do you need binoculars for?”
“There’s a huge fire, about a mile outside of town. Valerie and I saw people going out there with hoses and buckets, like an old-time fire brigade.”
They followed him upstairs. He was rummaging through the toolbox left in the loft room. Merle pushed open the window and scanned the dark countryside for the glow of flames. “It must be out already,” she said.
What was Pascal looking at with binoculars up here? Was he suddenly a birdwatcher? Or had he been using his job as a roofer and handyman to spy on her neighbors? A prickle of suspicion rose up her spine.
Tristan pointed over her shoulder. “There it is, on top of the hill.”
The clump of trees on top of the far hill surrounded the large manor house turned into a winery by the conglomerate. As they watched a pine tree exploded in flames. “The house is made of stone. It won’t burn, will it?” Annie asked. Another tree went up.
From the garden came Valerie’s voice. “Tristan! Allons-y! We must go! They need every person to help with the fire!”
