Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 27
He hadn’t. In fact all the things she had requested he do before her appointment hadn’t been done. He was smooth and apologetic; he had a big trial coming up. But she had wasted her time. “Why didn’t you call and tell me not to come?”
“Because there is one thing we should discuss.” He sat down in his chair. “The new political climate of the area. Because of the recent violence there is more pressure from above to maintain order. Montrose is incompetent. There is little chance he can make a case against you without witnesses. And has he found any?”
“He says not.”
“But still the pressure is building. He will have to produce a warrant against someone soon or lose his job.”
She squinted. “And that someone will be me?”
A Gallic shrug. “I spoke to someone I know in the courts in Bergerac. One murder of an old putain isn’t too much to get excited about. But now, with arson and riots, things must stop. The provincial government will not allow disorder. There is too much at stake with the tourist monies.”
“What are you saying?”
“I will try to get your passport back, Madame. And when I do, I suggest you leave the country as soon as possible.”
* * *
They returned home in late afternoon, hot and tired. At a small bistro, the one opposite the locksmith on the derelict block, they ate an early dinner. Merle felt strange, cramped, having left the village and returned. She wished she’d never seen Lalouche. As they walked home Annie peeked into the abandoned townhouses, talking about renovating this one, remodeling that one, but Merle watched passersby, suspicious of every look. Were they all Redier’s? Had they all decided to sacrifice her for the public good? She needed her passport, and she needed it now. But how could she run out on Justine? She was Harry’s mother. No one cared about her, not even the police. But maybe it was time. There were no more secrets. She knew who Harry’s real parents were, and what his father had done. That was plenty.
In the evening Merle carried the trash to the can in the alley. An old woman stood in the alley nearby, sweeping up shards of glass. She wore a gray skirt and blue blouse, with a red and orange scarf on her head. Pumps even though she was cleaning. She bent down to pick up the dust pan, then met Merle’s gaze.
Merle smiled, holding open the lid of her can. Was this the woman pointing at them at the café? “Beaucoup de verre, oui?” Lots of glass.
Her earlobes hung with rhinestone clusters below the colorful scarf covering her steely gray hair. She looked brightly past Merle, into the garden.
“Voulez-vous entrez?” Would you like to come in? She stood still as a statue for a moment, then stepped into the garden. Immediately she walked to the new bush, the Reine de Violette rose, cupping a mauve blossom in her hand. “Vous? You planted it?” Merle asked.
She nodded, her eyes filling as she began to mumble in French. She was upset, rambling. Merle couldn’t understand her. “Lentement, madame,” she pleaded: slowly. But the woman sat down on the low terrace wall and let the story spill out of her. She sputtered, her face animated, joyful, sad, reminiscing, angry.
Annie stepped out. “Who’s this?”
“That woman on the plaza. I can’t understand her. I think she’s using patois. Get Albert.”
Merle held the woman’s gnarled hand. She kept up her tale like she’d been waiting her whole life to tell the story. What was she saying — the house? Dominique?
Pascal came through the kitchen door. Seconds later Albert arrived through the garden gate with Annie.
Pascal looked like he’d been up all night, hair greasy and clothes sweated through with stains now dried. “I can’t understand her.” He sat down next to the woman and asked her name. “Josephine Azamar,” she whispered then launched again into her story.
Albert whispered to Annie as she talked. Finally Pascal touched the woman’s knee, making her stop. “She is the aunt of someone named Marie-Emilie. Madame Azamar owned this house, inherited from her mother, and lived here during the war. Then she went to live with her husband’s family. Her husband has died, so she moved back to the village. She says she gave the house to Marie-Emilie when she married the American.”
“Weston.” Merle turned to the woman. “Madame Sabatini?”
“C’est moi,” the woman whispered, eyes wide.
“Lorenzo Sabatini was her first husband," Merle said. "He died in the war or right after.”
Josephine said something then jumped up, scurrying out the gate. “She’s coming back,” Pascal said.
“Did she say anything about Dominique?”
“She says Dominque was the American's … mistress. He flaunted her, took her places with him. Shocked the village.” He looked at each of them, ending on Merle. “She had his child. Did you know?”
Merle nodded.
“He turned the village against her relatives. They had to move away.”
“But the mayor, and the gendarme? They are —“
“It was the Chevalier relatives who moved away. Marie-Emilie’s relatives. The Redier family closed ranks, burying the scandal. She says Weston came to her later to borrow money to go to America.”
“Did she say anything more about the child?”
“No. How did you find her?”
“She was sweeping in the alley. She had the grocer point me out. I think she’s had a key to the gate all these years too. She planted that little rose bush, after Justine was killed. The whole village must have known she was Dominique.”
Josephine rushed back through the gate, pausing to catch her breath. She thrust a small black-and-white photograph into Merle’s hands. The background was the garden, and the back wall of the house with a climbing rose blooming by their heads. The kitchen window was in the picture. Weston was a handsome man, with wavy dark hair, bushy eyebrows and a mustache like Clark Gable. A brunette woman stood next to him.
“Qui est la?” she asked Josephine. Who is that?
“Marie-Emilie,” she answered.
She stared at the photo, the dark hair. Marie-Emilie was blonde. “I’ll be right back.”
In the front room Merle pulled out the stack of photographs from the cupboard.The old photograph, from the safe deposit box, showed Weston and Marie-Emilie in front of a brick house. A very blonde Marie-Emilie.
In the garden she put the two photographs beside each other. “Regardez.” They all squinted at the images.
Josephine said, “Cette femme n’est pas Marie.” Marie-Emilie was dark, like a gypsy, with black eyes and nearly black hair and a big bosom, she said. She was taller than Weston. He was very short, like Albert. This woman, this blonde, must be very small, her eyes are light, her nose is wrong. She is yellow-haired and not Marie-Emilie, Josephine said emphatically.
Merle turned the photograph over: ‘Wes and Emilie.’ She pointed to Josephine’s photo. “This is Marie-Emilie Chevalier? Married to Weston Strachie?”
“Absolument.”
So who was the blonde? Merle asked to borrow the photograph. Josephine said she had memories in her heart and some of them weren’t very good ones. She shook hands with Pascal and Merle, Albert and Annie, then walked her dignified walk, broom in hand, out the garden gate.
Pascal stared at the photographs. “He must have been very short for Madame to mention it.”
“You don’t think it’s possible she just dyed her hair blond when she got to America?” Merle said.
“It is not the same woman,” he said. The sisters stared at the photographs. Annie shook her head. Albert shrugged.
“Where do you suppose the real Marie-Emilie ended up?” Pascal said.
Annie followed his gaze. “In the pissoir?”
A man comes to the countryside in France, as Pascal told the story, because his wife has a free house, because he cannot make a living, for a variety of reasons. His wife is not as pretty or young as the young girls who talk to him on the street. So he takes one as his lover, makes her pregnant. And dumps her at the convent, Annie added.
But his dark, gypsy wife wants a child, Merle said. So she fetches the girl at the convent, cares for her, and the girl gives them the child.
“So far only morally repugnant,” Pascal said. “But the American decides he likes blondes better, permanently. He finds one, somewhere. He kills his wife, burying her in the backyard, takes the boy and the new blonde off to America, where no one has met Marie-Emilie. They pretend the blonde is the old wife. Marie-Emilie, the gypsy, becomes Emilie, the blonde.”
“They didn’t believe in divorce back then?” Annie asked, sipping wine as they spun it out. “And who was this blonde?”
“Divorce was complicated then,” Pascal said. “France is a Catholic country. But the bones will tell the real story. For now, I only have my hunches.”
He would try to get information about Marie-Emilie into the system. He knew a man in forensics in Paris.
“The blonde was definitely not Dominique — because she was Justine. Right?” Annie shook her head. “Would you like to come for dinner tomorrow, Pascal? At eight. Earlier if there’s a riot.”
“The national police have arrived. No more riots,” he promised.
Merle followed him to the door. “Has Gerard been arrested for the fire?”
“I’ll tell you about it at dinner.”
“And Odile too?”
He tasted of salt, cigarettes, and coffee. “Later.”
* * *
But Pascal didn't show for dinner. They were eating custard Annie made in the afternoon, creme sans caramel, she called it, when a policeman in camouflage came to the door with a note. His eyes flicked around the room as if searching for arsonists.
“Is it from Pascal?” Tristan asked. “Read it out loud.”
Merle took a sip of wine. “Cher Merle. I am sorry to miss your fine dinner. There is pressing business regarding Anthony Simms. Gerard Langois — yes he is arrested — named Simms his accomplice in the fraud of the cases of wine you saw at the winery, which were bottles filled with ordinary vin du table. Simms's work was in the news recently — selling so-called 20-year whisky which is, in reality, crapola. His stalking of you brings to mind the wine you said was in your cave. If you were not joking, this could be a dangerous time for it. It would be prudent to move the bottles out of the house. Perhaps Albert has space in his cave. Pascal.”
“You have a stalker?” Annie frowned.
“He came to the winery tour twice, and took an unwelcome interest.” Merle looked at Tristan. “Did you ever see him, the Englishman with the funny hair?”
He looked up from his second helping of custard. “You mean Tony?” The sisters exchanged a look. “I told you. He came by the house when you were gone. Didn’t I?”
“No. What did he say?”
“He heard we were selling the house. Wanted to take a look around.”
“And did you — did he look around?”
“I didn’t think it would hurt.” Tristan squirmed. “What?! He was just a guy.”
Merle tried to calm herself. “Did you show him the wine cave, Tris?”
“You told me not to. So I didn’t.” He set down his spoon. “He did ask if there was a basement.”
“And you told him —?”
“That we had one.”
Annie stood up. “I’ll go ask Albert.”
“No! I don’t want to put him in danger. The wine is safest right where it is. Someone might see us moving it.”
“Someone like Anthony Simms?”
“Exactly. So far only we three know where the wine is. We’ll just be on our guards.”
“Plus Pascal apparently. Can you tell the gendarme about this stalker? Or the inspector?” Annie asked. Merle bit her lip. That time had passed. “At least tell Pascal.”
Tristan jumped up. “I’ll go get him.”
* * *
Tristan came home at midnight, slightly drunk, without having found Pascal. He had found some boys from the fencing club though, and let them buy him a beer or two.
“Great, just great,” Merle said, tucking him into bed.
“At least he has friends here,” Annie said. “Is he going back to Blackwood?”
His eyes were shut and his mouth open, asleep and snoring. Was anyone going home? She had no fricking clue what happened next. She threw her arm around Annie’s neck.
“No plans tonight. I’m going zen on you, sister.”
* * *
Yves and Suzette closed up their house and drove away without a word. It was market day but camaraderie was absent. The farmers who sold at market were friends of the grape-growers, brothers, cousins, uncles, wives, sisters, and aunts. Whispers of the arrests were everywhere.
In the garden Annie put a fresh tablecloth on the patio table and they ate lunch al fresco, trying to keep their eyes off the crime scene tape, the strips of barren dirt through the lawn where the water line had gone, and the fading roses dropping their last petals. Merle closed her eyes, holding the wine on her tongue to taste all the flavors of France in the essence of grape.
Tristan went inside with the plates. “Somebody’s at the door.”
It was a policeman, one Merle had never seen before, young and spruce and serious under his cap. Behind him were Josephine Azamar and Albert. The policeman held a small white box like Chinese take-out.
Albert stepped closer. “These are the ashes of Dominique Redier.”
Merle held her breath, staring at the box. She hoped the policeman wasn’t going to hand it to her. Albert said, “We thought, Josephine thought, that you might be agreeable to burying the ashes in the garden.”
They buried her at the foot of the elegant, espaliered pear tree. After Tristan patted down the soil with the back of the shovel, Albert pulled a cross on a chain from his pocket and recited some Latin. Annie and Merle bowed their heads while the gendarme fingered his cap. They shook hands then Annie saw them out.
Merle stood with Tristan by the tiny grave, thinking about meeting Justine up at the Shrine of Lucrezia. Did she see Harry in that face? Or Tristan — her grandson? Should she tell him? She hadn’t even told him about Sophie yet.
“Hey, don’t worry, Dominique or Justine or whoever you are,” he said quietly. “We’ll water your garden. You just rest now.”
* * *
They went to dinner at Les Saveurs that night, a last splurge before Annie flew home. The meal was exquisite, grilled lamb, truffle omelet again for Merle who couldn’t get enough of it, and for the newly adventurous Tristan, who once proclaimed anything but pepperoni pizza ‘weird,’ a rabbit dish that tasted ‘just like chicken.’ In the morning Annie drove her rental car to Bergerac to the train station.
Merle and Tristan spent the rest of the day rearranging furniture. She put up a lace curtain in her bedroom. They moved the single bed up the stairs into the finished loft and put wallpaper on the shelves of the old armoire.
She had trouble sleeping that night without Annie. The lawyer’s words careened her head. When would they arrest her? Where was her passport? Where was Anthony Simms — had he been arrested? The moonlight shone on her bed again, just like it had months before. Now it seemed like the natural glow of France, just something that was there. No longer soothing, now it seemed cold and calculating like looking for its chance to illuminate the inevitable.
* * *
“Mom, wake up. Mom!”
She bolted upright. “What?”
“Something’s going on at Albert’s. Look.”
“What time is it?”
They pushed up the garden window and leaned out into the night. Tristan said it was past three. Lights blazed at Albert’s, then, suddenly the house went dark again. Tristan whispered, “I thought I heard glass breaking.”
“Get some clothes on.”
Hastily dressed they went out the back door, through the gate, and down the alley. Merle had a strange urge to hold Tristan’s hand but instead held his sleeve at the elbow. The night was still and lit only by stars. They knocked on Albert’s door. The shutters were closed so it was impossible to tell what was going on inside. Tristan pounded on the door shutters and called the old man’s name.
No answer. On her cell phone she dialed the emergency number, 1-8. Where did it go? She tried in broken French, to describe a break-in, an old man alone, Malcouziac. She read his address off his door. The operator, an efficient woman who seemed to understand, said the message would be forwarded to the local police.
Tristan ran back from the corner. “I saw somebody — in the backyard.”
“Oh, hell,” she muttered, following him to the mouth of the alley. Her heart pounded in her chest. Tristan was at Albert’s gate, pounding. “The police should be here soon.”
“Damn it, Albert! Open up!” He rattled the wooden gate. “Hey, old man!” To his mother he said, “I was going to go over the wall but it might have that broken glass on top like ours.”
“Let’s go back to the front and wait for the cops.”
On Albert’s street, after they knocked on his door again, lights went on across the street, a man’s head came out the upstairs window, scolding. “Taisez-vous! Nous dormons!”
“Pardon, monsieur,” Merle called. “Peut-être un cambrioleur.” A burglar, perhaps.
The man disappeared then opened his door with a younger version of himself. The two joined them in the street. The boy looked familiar — was he one of the tabac gang? His name was Henri, his father was Louis.
“Vous êtes les Americaines,” Louis said, nodding, as if he knew all about them. “Les flics, they are very slow in the night,” Louis said in heavily-accent English. Merle was happy for the company, especially after the two boys ran off to check the alley again. In a moment there was a shout from the cross street. She looked at Louis, with his baggy eyes and disheveled hair.
“Come, madame.” They jogged to the corner. The street was empty. They walked around the houses to the alley, also deserted. “Where did they go?”
