Bennett Sisters Mysteries Volume 5 & 6

by Lise McClendon

  Josephine’s tidy house was three blocks away. It was small, a dollhouse with old Tudor-style half-timbers. And closed up, shutters tight on windows and doors. The plants in the pots on her stoop were dead. Merle looked up and down the street. Did she know anyone who lived here? She hadn’t made many friends in Malcouziac. That was another bullet point on her list: meet the neighbors, make friends.

  She tried Josephine’s phone number but there was no answer. Merle didn’t have time to snoop around the village, looking for her friend. But she was worried now. Had something happened to her? Where was she? Had she moved? Had she died?

  No answers at present. She added ‘Find Josephine’ to her growing to-do list.

  In Paris, Pascal, Merle, and Tristan checked in to a small family-run hotel in the 14th Arrondisement. After wandering through the Tuilleries and doing next-to-nothing in the slow French manner, Pascal led them to a bistro that served Belgian food. It was noisy and lively and perfect. They ate sausages and drank beer.

  They had just stepped back out onto the sidewalk in the summer twilight when Pascal got the call. He frowned, looked away, and muttered something. He began to walk toward the Seine, phone on his ear. Tristan followed him. Pascal spun back at him, face stony, and held up his hand for him to stop. Merle joined her son and they watched Pascal stalk toward the corner.

  “What was that about?” Tristan asked.

  “Work probably.”

  He glanced at her and frowned, biting his lip.

  “What?” Merle asked.

  “I thought I heard a woman’s name.”

  “Well, he probably works with some women,” Merle said. Pascal was still walking, across the street, dodging cars, then down the next block that ended at the river quai. He seemed hell-bent on putting distance between them. Why did he need to go so far? She glanced at her watch. Their hotel was in the opposite direction. Where was the Metro stop? She dug around in her purse for her map. “Do you remember where the subway is?” she asked Tristan.

  “Not really. Hey!” He pointed in Pascal’s direction. “He’s waving— come on.”

  Ot the Pont Neuf, that graceful old bridge, looking down the Seine at the golden lights sparkling off the dark water, the dark outlines of the Louvre and other venerable buildings against the purple sky, Merle listened to her two favorite men discuss women, Paris, strange food, drinking, and university life. Then, Tristan asked Pascal who had called.

  “Was it top secret stuff? You can tell me. I can keep a secret,” Tristan said, grinning.

  Pascal glanced at Merle. “No, it was not secret stuff. It was a woman.”

  “Ah-ha. I told you, Mom.”

  “It was my ex-wife. She lives here in Paris.”

  A small pause as they all adjusted to that reality. Pascal had never discussed his ex with Merle. It was her assumption that they had no contact, that she had broken his heart by running off with her piano teacher, and he hated her. But, no. They spoke on the phone, perhaps even saw each other in Paris.

  “What’s her name?” Tristan asked cautiously. “You’ve been divorced a long time, right?”

  “Nearly ten years.” He raked his hand through his hair. Was he nervous about something? “Her name is Clarisse.”

  Merle cleared her throat, determined to be an adult. “It’s nice you can still be friendly after all this time.”

  “Friendly?” Pascal barked a laugh. “No.”

  Later that night, in their hotel room with Tristan sleeping next door, Pascal told Merle that Clarisse had been calling him recently. He didn’t know how she got his number. She was a little bit crazy, he said, dismissing her. He kissed Merle on the neck, and other places, and told her to forget Clarisse. She was ancient history.

  Two days later Merle took Tristan to the airport in a taxi, an extravagance Pascal thought was silly. But she wanted comfort for these last few hours together. Tristan gazed out the window, thoughtful. They talked a little about the house in Malcouziac. Merle promised to go to the gendarme and report the vandalism when she returned. Tristan reported that he had looked up how to remove spray paint from rock and sent her a link to some alternate solutions, mostly chemical. He told her to be careful on ladders this summer.

  He acted, she thought, very much like a husband. Light scolding about safety, suggestions for future action, silence in the face of leave-taking. He was growing up. He would be on his own while she was in France this fall.

  “I’ll be back in September,” she reminded him.

  “You don’t need to come back, you know.” He glanced at her guiltily. “I can move into the dorm myself. You already bought me all that crap, the sheets and the mini fridge.”

  “But how would you get there? Besides, I want to get you settled. Make sure you have everything. Give your roommate the once-over. It will make me feel better about— everything.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it for a second.

  “Aunt Stasia and Uncle Rick said they’d take me,” he said. He’d already discussed it with her sister, Merle realized. “Willow goes back to school the same time and my college is on the way.”

  “I’ll be back,” she said, hoping to end this talk of her sister taking over. Tristan looked at her. She saw relief in his eyes and realized he was testing her. Making her choose between him and Pascal in a way. “I’ll always be there for you, Tris.”

  At the sprawling Charles deGaulle Airport, they stood in the various lines together, until it was time for him to go through security. He turned to her, serious now.

  “Mom. Are you and Pascal going to get married? Like this fall?”

  Merle startled. “What? No. What gave you that idea?”

  “I wish you would,” he said quietly, hanging his head.

  “Tristan. Honey. I will discuss anything like that with you. We’re not getting married but if we talk about it I will tell you right away. I will never do anything without you.” She hugged him to her. “Never.” She held his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “You are going to do great in college, you know. Your dad would be so proud of you. Make tons of new friends and study like mad. Now, go. Don’t miss your flight. Either Stasia or Rick are picking you up. I’ll see you in September.”

  “That’s a song, right?”

  He began humming as he walked backwards, waving goodbye as he disappeared into the crowd.

  Eight

  Paris

  Pascal sipped his café at the sidewalk bistro and watched Merle eat a big English breakfast of eggs and sausage. How did she find the energy? It was too early for such a large meal, he thought. She caught him staring and offered him some toast.

  “Non merci, blackbird. So, what is on the agenda today? I am at your service.”

  She explained a complicated tour of various historical sites she wished to see. Something about this book she was writing. She appeared to be obsessed with it, talking constantly about the history of France, the revolution, and various devastating side channels such as famine and beheading. It was a tumultuous time, no doubt fascinating to an American. But so long ago, Pascal could not get excited by history so far back.

  His own family was involved in the revolution. He had heard the stories for years as a child. How many grand-pères back was it? He could count them if he cared. He knew about each generation of d’Onscon, at least back to the 1750s. Branches went this way and that, died off, remarried, changed names when females carried the line. Merle was much more interested in genealogy than he was. He knew that from her snooping around at the church in Malcouziac. Finding the true nature of her husband’s birth. That, he supposed, could get someone interested in musty old dead people. He, Pascal, however, was alive now.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked, pushing her plate away. She’d cleaned it well. He liked a woman with a good appetite even if it was a gigantic breakfast. So many French women were concerned about their looks a bit too much.

  “Your excellent appetite.” He smiled.

  “No, something else. Tell me.
Was it Tristan?”

  He blinked. “Sure. I was wondering if he had a safe journey.”

  “No, you weren’t. Come on.”

  “You are a mind reader now, chérie? All right.” He sighed. “I was thinking of my grand-père, many generations back, who lived here in Paris during the revolution.”

  Her eyes sparked. He must try to make her eyes spark more often. It was charming.

  “Really? Where did he live? What did he do? What happened to him?”

  And so the day began with a visit to the city archives to track down the address of his grand-père, Guy d’Onscon, from the 1790 records. It was tiresome work but Merle did most of it, head down, reading endless computer screens. She shrieked when she found old Guy. They were scolded in the archives and ran out into the summer morning with the address in hand.

  It was in an alley in the Marais where they found the spot where la famille d’Onscon resided above their shop. A small, dirty building with paper over the windows and a faded blue door, it was impossible that anyone lived here today. It looked like a storehouse for the restaurant next door.

  “Well, it’s a bit sad,” he said, staring at the narrow, two-story stone building.

  “Do you want to go in?” Merle asked, rattling the handle.

  “Not necessary.”

  Merle looked at him. “Is this interesting at all?”

  “Un peu. But how does seeing this little place make any difference now? You know what happened to him? It happened to everyone. He lost his business, went broke, his son became a partisan and fought with the revolutionaries. It went nowhere, chérie.”

  “How can you say that?” She glared at him, hands on her hips. “The revolution may not have lasted. The First Republic, I mean, but it had lasting effects. All over the world. It was the beginning of the end of kings, of divine rights. The beginning of the rights of man.”

  “Of course. I have read my history.” He didn’t want to argue about his country. “But it is the history of real people. Certain persons related to me, not an abstract philosophy. That is what the revolutionaries didn’t understand. They got their heads so far up their asses that they ended up killing each other.”

  “Well,” she said. “Yes. They did.” She shrugged. “What happened to grand-père exactly? What did he do here?”

  “He was a wine merchant. A successful one so the story goes. Isn’t everyone in the past successful?”

  “He was into wine, just like you?” She took his arm and led him toward the Place de Vosges, an open plaza with orange gravel and sparse trees, surrounded by arcades of shops and restaurants. “Is everyone into wine in France?”

  “It is rather popular. You may have noticed.”

  They found a bench in the shade. The day had begun to heat up. Paris in the summer could be a cooker. Quel soleil, as the ladies would say. What sunshine.

  “What happened to him? He had a son? A wife?”

  So, Pascal told her the family stories. He knew them by heart and to stop telling Merle would only make this whole topic endless. Get them over and done, he thought.

  The violence of the revolution was pervasive, on nearly every street in Paris, then spreading into the countryside. Guy d’Onscon was a merchant of wine and spirits, cheese, and other sweet meats, with contracts with nobles and therefore vulnerable to the partisans. He was forced from his home with his wife, his business looted. His whereabouts after the revolution are unknown. His son, however, joined the partisans. He was injured in violence in the following year.

  “He was a hero of the Revolution!” Merle squeezed Pascal’s arm, delighted. “Keep going.”

  The son, named Pascal—

  “You’re named after a Revolutionary hero!”

  Pascal the elder was injured badly. He was sent by someone, relatives perhaps, who knows, to the south of France to recuperate. He married his nursemaid and stayed in the South. For his health, obviously.

  “Where?”

  “I believe it was the Luberon but I am not certain.”

  Old Pascal had a son who joined Napoleon’s Army and was killed at just sixteen. Pascal and his wife had two more sons. The third son was very clever, got back into the wine business in some way, and made a lot of money. Probably as a distributor or merchant like his grand-père. But as these things go, that man’s son was a stock speculator, a gambler and wastrel, and lost all his inheritance speculating on railroad stocks.

  “Bummer.”

  “Oui. We could all be massively rich by now. Shall I go on? We are up to the late 1800s.”

  “I am all ears.”

  “What? All right. I will continue.”

  When the gambler’s son is born— there are many sons in this story— he goes back to Paris as there is nothing for him in the South with total bankruptcy. He ends up selling tickets at the Eiffel Tower. Then his son is Pascal’s grand-père, who fought in World War I, barely old enough so luckily joined the war effort late. Then Pascal’s father is born in 1930 in the Alsace, then—

  “Voilà. Moi. So, a happy ending after all.”

  Merle set her head on his shoulder. “Thank you. It’s wonderful that you know so much about your ancestors. I only know a little about mine. What did your parents do? Are they still alive— I never asked. I’m sorry.”

  “My father was also in the wine business. He was a distributor and a collector of fine wines. I learned everything from him. He was a friend of Père Albert. They knew each other from their youths somewhere.” He paused. “He has been gone ten years. And my mother five years.”

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and cursed under his breath. It was Clarisse again. He considered not answering it but that wouldn’t stop her from pestering him. He apologized to Merle and stood up.

  “You must stop this nonsense now, Clarisse,” he said in rapid French.

  Clarisse purred: “Ah, where are you? I will come by and give you many bisous.”

  “No. Please do not call me again.”

  “Wait, Pascal, I am in trouble. Please, I need your help. It is Yves.”

  He paused. Her amour, the piano teacher, the one she ran off with. Had they ever married? He thought not. Pascal never liked the man, for obvious reasons. Was he hurting her?

  “What about him?”

  She began crying noisily. This was a common tactic with Clarisse and unfortunately Pascal was not immune to it, even after all these years.

  “Stop crying, Clarisse. What has he done?”

  She sniffed. “He is so cruel. You would not believe it. He has told me to move out and he gives me only until the end of the month to find somewhere to live. I have nothing, Pascal, nothing.” Her voice broke and there was more crying.

  “Do you have money?”

  “I have nothing, Pascal.”

  He swore again. “I can help you with some money then. That’s all. Come by the Hôtel Paris on Rivoli, tonight at six. Wait for me in the lobby.” The crying stopped and the thanking began.

  He turned back to Merle. Had she heard, or understood, what was said? “I am sorry, chérie. It is my ex-wife again. I must give her a little money to find a new place to live. Her piano teacher is throwing her onto the street.”

  She stood up and smoothed her skirt carefully. Was she angry? Didn’t she smooth some piece of clothing when she was trying not to be upset? He tried to decode her expression. He wasn’t getting any message. Women— as hard as he tried he would never understand them.

  “It’s all right, Pascal. What else could you do? Was she crying?”

  “Could you hear that?”

  “You said: Arrête de pleurer. I understand a little French.” She put her arms around his neck. “And you, my revolutionary hero, are just an old softie.”

  She kissed him then, out in the open, like a French woman. She tasted a little like sausages. He guessed she wasn’t angry after all.

  Merle sat in the small reading room off the lobby of their hotel, her notebook open, staring at the words. It
was a small room with dark wood paneling, sunken velvet chair cushions and a worn carpet. It smelled like cigars and old dogs. But Merle wasn’t really there. She was time-traveling.

  Odette had found her goats, wet and nasty, but also the stranger, the owner of the chateau. It didn’t seem quite right though. Gothic romances were supposed to be like this— castles, rainstorms, threatening older men, young innocent girls. But something was off. She just wasn’t getting into the story the way she hoped. Maybe because there was absolutely no way Odette was going to fall for that old codger.

  Sitting back she sighed, letting her head fall against the seat back. Pascal was upstairs, curled into a ball, curtains drawn, napping. She had dragged him all over Paris today and he claimed he was tired. Strangely she felt energized, alive, despite all the walking. She loved hearing Pascal’s history and imagining the events that fictional Odette or his ancient grandfather, Guy, might have seen. Pascal was much more accommodating to her demands than Tristan. They’d had a long lunch with wine before heading back here mid-afternoon.

  The day had warmed dangerously, as August in Paris can. Merle sipped the remnants of her café au lait. The sun moved across the notebook in her lap. Out on the sidewalk an elegant older woman walked her small dog, pausing at every post and pillar for a sniff. In old France, the entire afternoon would be spent eating a midday meal with family and taking a siesta, then back to open the shops for awhile in the cool of early evening. She’d run into that in some areas of southern France. It annoyed tourists though and was mostly abandoned. Tourism reigned supreme, along with wine.

  Wine. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine Pascal’s ancestor’s little shop. Wine in racks, cheese in the cellar where it was cooler, some jam and tins of meat on shelves, a little man in a blue apron. He had Pascal’s black, curly hair and intense eyes. Then the picture fractured. Partisans entered, stole wine, beat him with sticks.