Bennett Sisters Mysteries Volume 5 & 6

by Lise McClendon

  “Please allow us to do our jobs in the most thoughtful way, madame,” he said. He was a middle-aged man, no longer thin but trying hard. It appeared he was dyeing his hair black.

  “Would you like to speak to Madame Suchet? She lives there, across the street.”

  “In good time, madame.”

  The gendarme marched smartly out of her house and down the cobblestone street without a look at her neighbor’s house. It was disappointing but maybe speaking to Merle was his only duty that day. Things moved at a glacial pace in France sometimes.

  She stood in front of her house, arms crossed. In the back, she heard the clanking of the plumber, working on the water lines. The electrical hook-up was delayed again. She stared at Madame Suchet’s house, glanced at the ugly paint on her house again, and marched across to knock on her neighbor’s door. It opened instantly.

  Madame S had a worried look. She must have been watching the policeman come and go.

  “What do they say? What about Thierry?” she asked Merle, wringing her hands.

  “I was wondering, Madame Suchet, if you could introduce me to your sister. And maybe Thierry, too, if he’s at home?”

  Madame Suchet, her hair and makeup immaculate, pinched her lips together and gave a curt nod. They stepped onto her stoop and she locked up. Merle followed the older woman down the steps and they walked silently down the short street, stopping in front of the weathered stucco townhouse with burgundy shutters. The door was unshuttered, the top half of the Dutch door open, the lace curtain blowing in the breeze. From within, the sound of tinny music, something old and lively like a big band orchestra, emerged from the darkened room.

  Madame Suchet paused as if gathering her courage then knocked on the lower half of the door. When no one arrived she leaned in and called, “Coucou! Anyone home? It’s Paulette.”

  Madame S opened the half door and stepped inside. Merle waited outside for an invitation while her neighbor disappeared into a back room, calling the funny little ‘yoo-hoo’ that the French say as ‘coucou.’

  In a moment she heard the two women’s voices and her own name mentioned. She wondered if there would be more shouting. Madame Suchet reappeared, waved her inside, and led her to a sunny parlor off a kitchen where the sister sat folded into an oversized upholstered chair, her gray hair coming loose and a scowl on her wrinkled face. She looked like she’d been napping.

  “Excuse the intrusion,” Merle said.

  “You haven’t met, have you?” Madame S said, introducing her. “This is my sister, Ninon.”

  The sister pushed herself up and they did the French air kiss, just twice. That seemed to indicate the gesture was strictly a formality, nothing personal. The scowl did not change.

  “I should have brought you something, I’m sorry,” Merle said, embarrassed to be empty-handed. “Next time.” She smiled and hoped it looked sincere.

  Ninon waved a bony hand. “Too many sweets. I never bake anymore. It’s not good for us.”

  “I love a good jam,” Madame S said, eyes twinkling.

  “Which of you is the eldest?” Merle asked after a pause in conversation.

  “Moi. Bien sûr.” Ninon had sat again, flicking her icy glare at her sister. “Paulette is five years younger. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. I have four sisters myself.”

  “Ooh-la-la.” Ninon examined Merle then, head to toe.

  “Is your son at home, madame?” Merle asked, eager to get on with this and out of here.

  Ninon glanced at her sister. “No. He is gone.”

  “Oh, I had hoped to speak to him,” Merle explained. “I’m not upset about the vandalism—” not strictly true— “but I wanted to see if there was some way we could work things out. Maybe there is some way I can help Thierry, and he can help me.”

  Ninon frowned as if not comprehending what she was saying. Her French must have let her down again. Paulette gave a quick translation/recap.

  Ninon sat forward. “What are you speaking of? He had nothing to do with the graffiti on your house. I told Paulette—” She was glaring at both of them.

  “He was home with you then, on Saturday night last week, when my sister and I were attacked with paint?”

  The elder sister squinted, as if thinking back to that night. “He left on Wednesday. He has moved to Bordeaux and will not be back for some months.”

  Merle glanced at Madame S who nodded. “Yes, I saw him off on the bus.”

  Thierry was gone before the attack then. “And he didn’t return?”

  Both sisters agreed that he had not been back to the village. So, who had sprayed paint all over Elise and Merle?

  Paulette turned solemnly to Merle. “He has been very depressed. Barely getting out of bed. He is not well.” In English she whispered, “I am wrong. The person who saw Thierry was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  On the way back up the street Madame Suchet turned to Merle and stopped, anxiety in her eyes. “I have made a mess of this. My sister is so angry with me. Thierry is a sweet boy. He has his ups and downs, like I said. But today she tells me he tried to kill himself a month ago. She only just found out and sent him to the clinic in Bordeaux for treatment.”

  Her voice ached with grief. Merle touched her arm. “I’m so sorry. I should never have made you go there with me.”

  “Oh, no. If not for you she would never have told me how bad things were with Thierry. It is better to know, yes? So one can truly help. Sometimes a little good can come from a terrible thing.”

  They said their goodbyes quickly, a flick of the hand. Merle paused in front of her house, frowning again at the graffiti, musing over the heartbreak of Thierry, and suddenly seeing something new. Four letters, far apart but in the same paint color, partially over-painted by the second night’s work. PCRF, in dark red. And then, over there, a primitive half moon or sickle, barely recognizable. How had she not seen that before?

  Inside the house she put ‘PCRF’ into her search engine on her laptop and confirmed her suspicion. The PCRF was a congregation of older Communist parties, the Parti Communiste Revolutionaire de France. If there was anything they disliked more than the ‘imperialists’ it was the European Union, NATO, and anybody who said something nasty about Stalin.

  It appeared she was a victim of anti-imperialist, anti-American fervor. Somehow that made her feel a little better.

  Who were these rural Communists? The case for finding them seemed hopeless. If only she’d got a better look at the man that night, the laughing painter. She closed her eyes and tried to remember his laugh, his eyes, his walk, his smell; something that would help the police find the little bastard. All she could remember was his blue eyes.

  She searched the Internet for news stories about vandalism with Communist leanings. There had recently been two incidents in the Acquitaine, the large southwestern department that included the Dordogne. One had been in Villefranche, near where Pascal and Irene Fayette lived in their hilltop hamlet. She jotted down the street name from a newspaper article. Maybe next time she was in that vicinity she’d check it out. And it might be worth pointing out to the lazy gendarmes.

  Oh, she didn’t mean that! She apologized silently, with an eye-roll, to Pascal. The gendarmes had more to do than find her vandal. They weren’t lazy, they just had priorities. Merle checked her phone for a reply from Pascal. She’d texted him four days before but nothing had come back. It wasn’t unusual. She was getting used to it actually. But she sent him another quick text about the PCRF find, thinking he might know something about the group.

  She sighed, wondering if she should call him. Maybe tomorrow. Instead she composed a cheerful email to her boss at Legal Aid, Lillian Warshowski. She expressed her desire to know more about the job, what it entailed, what the salary would be, when she would start. She made overtures to Lillian who might still be annoyed with her for going on leave for so long. With a quick review she hit ‘send’ and hoped to catch Lillian on a good day.

  There was no no
ise from the back garden. She went through the kitchen door into the sunshine. All the work had stopped for the day. For the week, no doubt. No plumber in sight. But as she investigated she found the water line was in, the dirt trench filled, and pipes going up inside the stone laundry. When would she be able to get the washer in here? Someday she’d be able to stop hauling her dirty clothes to the laundromat behind the pharmacy.

  She glanced at her watch and realized she only had a few minutes to get ready for her French lesson. She hadn’t done any of the homework either. She was getting pretty lax here in France, and something about it appealed to her. The rebel in her, small as that side of her was, approved.

  She would run off and do her best, and endure the disapproval of her tutor. Then it would be time for a little writing.

  Odette and the Great Fear

  part six

  The skies were dark with rain, pressing low into the hillsides. Another summer had ended, another that didn’t live up to the usual heat. A third bleak harvest, more rumors of famine, illness, and degradation. The villagers were on edge, sharp-tongued toward each other. Odette tiptoed through them most days, hoping not to cause notice or aggravation.

  The small gathering in the place du village made her hesitant to move past. She put her head down and skirted the people in the town square. What were they doing? She could hear a voice above the others, chastising someone. At the edge of the crowd, holding her can of goat milk close to her chest, she stopped.

  A young woman stood in front of the crowd next to a large, angry man in a dark coat. Odette craned her neck to see better. The woman looked close to her own age, maybe a few years younger. The girl’s beautiful face was ashen but her large, blue eyes flashed defiantly. What had she done? The villagers were prone to citizen justice in these parts.

  Neither the young woman or the large man were known to Odette. He wore dusty working man’s clothes, plain and sturdy, with heavy boots. He stood behind the girl and yanked on her hair, pulling it out of its pins. She had thick hair, glossy and brown. But the man grabbed it, tugging her from side to side. He sneered menacingly. “A traitor, that’s what she is. Any tramp that comes through she sleeps with him for the money. For the food. And now she sleeps with soldiers for the revolution. Men who killed the King, who chopped off his head, who paraded his head around Paris! The worst sort of Frenchman.”

  Odette dropped her chin to hide her expression of disbelief. She knew that royalists abounded in the countryside, even here in the Dordogne, yet she hadn’t known they were so brazen, so open about their beliefs. Surely someone in the crowd will set this bastard right. Someone will tell him that the King had to go so that the people could rule themselves in the new republic. So that rights and laws were for men, not for royals.

  But the crowd was silent on that point. They jeered at the girl, calling her a putain and an enchantresse. Someone pulled on her dress hem, tearing off a section and waving it over his head. Even the women spit on the girl. What was wrong with them?

  Odette stepped backwards, away from the crowd. It was an ugly scene she wanted nothing to do with. And yet, that girl. Was she guilty of something? Had she betrayed France by sleeping with a soldier? Odette’s dreams flashed through her mind, of Ghislain. Was he the one the girl had been with?

  The big man with the awful voice brought out a large pair of sheep-shearing shears, holding the big scissors above his head. “What do we do with traitors?”

  Odette set down her milk can on a doorstep. They would chop off her hair, just like that. This was too much. She moved into the crowd, watching as they egged on the big man, telling him to cut off the traitor’s hair. The clamor grew louder as she reached the front of the crowd. The girl’s head was pulled sideways, the man pulling on her long hair and dramatically displaying the shears as he cackled with delight.

  “Stop!” Odette said, stepping into the clearing. “This is wrong. You must stop.”

  A gasp and a pause quieted the crowd. Then the big man snipped off a long hank of hair and threw it toward the people. They cheered for more.

  Odette spun toward the villagers. “You must see that this girl does not deserve this! How do you know that she is a traitor? Let the officials deal with her, if she is guilty. It is not your place to condemn her.”

  An old man in front of the crowd began to laugh. “If it isn’t the Queen herself!”

  This was a bad development. Marie-Antoinette was soundly disliked by all. She sat in prison in Paris awaiting her beheading.

  “I am not— I am just like you. A paysanne. A goat herder. But I know mistreatment when I see it. This girl has not been found guilty by anyone but a bully with a pair of shears! I demand you let her go!”

  Another section of brown hair flew over the crowd. Odette turned to the odious man with the scissors and told him again to stop what he was doing.

  Suddenly the hands were on her. The crowd pushed Odette toward the young woman and the bully, chanting that she was a traitor, too. “Cut off her hair,” they demanded.

  With a few last slashes, the bully finished with the young woman, leaving her on her knees with her hair nearly gone. The last few inches of it stuck out awkwardly from her scalp and she put her face in her hands and cried.

  The crowd kept pushing Odette forward until the man grabbed her around the waist and pulled her off the ground. He crowed that she was his, a captive, and would receive the correct punishment of all traitors. Two women came from the crowd and began to pull the pins from Odette’s hair. She was frantic, pushing their hands away while trying to kick the man in the shins as he held her against him.

  The roar of the crowd grew as more villagers joined the show. The stores emptied, barn doors opened, horses stopped. Odette thrashed wildly, trying to free herself, getting more angry and desperate with every second. “Let me go!” she repeated as the man holding her laughed in her ears.

  “She’s a fine little rebel, eh? Do you hate the King, too? Do you sleep with the soldiers for the revolution?” He taunted her, building the crowd’s ire.

  She was tiring. The man was too strong, too tall. He could hold her off the ground for hours. She balled her fists and tried to smash his face behind her but he kept laughing. The crowd laughed with him, enjoying it all.

  Her hair was loose now, a ready target for his shears. But he couldn’t grab it without putting her down as his shears were in his other hand. She kept kicking and screaming and kicking and screaming. Would no one help her? She pleaded with the crowd of toothless men and scrawny women.

  “That’s enough.” The voice carried over the crowd. Finally, Odette thought, someone has come to their senses.

  Everyone turned to the south, the direction of the voice. The black hat was apparent before the rest of him: le Comte had arrived.

  The crowd parted, suddenly silent. The Count walked forward, dour in a dark coat and riding boots. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. Everyone bowed slightly at his presence.

  The man holding Odette dropped her unceremoniously. She fell into the other girl and sat down next to her in the dirt. Odette took her hand and whispered that it was all right now. She pulled her hand away and glared at Odette. Her face was streaked with tears but still her eyes were hard. She stood up and ran quickly away from the crowd, down the street. Everyone watched her go then turned back to the Count.

  “Help her up,” the Count demanded of the man. The bully sneered at the Count, swaggering for a moment, then dropped his shears. He leaned down and put his hands under Odette’s arms and popped her up to her feet. She straightened, pushed back her hair and realized a foot-long section of it had been cut. It came off in her hand.

  “Look what you’ve done, Toussaint,” the Count said, shaking his head. “I have told you how many times now— I am the law here. Not you, not your vigilante justice. You are just a man, not the law.”

  Toussaint clenched his jaw and said nothing. An old woman in the crowd whispered something and the Count turned toward
her.

  “You wish to speak, madame?”

  “Oui! You haven’t the King to stand behind you anymore, Monsieur le Comte. Be careful.”

  The people shifted uncomfortably, eyeing the noble with distaste. His scar was highlighted as the sun sliced through the clouds, hitting his face. A few more gasps in the crowd.

  “Thank you for the advice, madame. And I will remember your words when it is time to allocate the harvest from my lands.” More gasps and murmurs. Odette frowned. That seemed excessively cruel, threatening the woman with starvation.

  He turned to Odette. “You will come to tea this afternoon, mademoiselle.” It was not a request. “Four o’clock.” He turned back to the villagers and told them to go home and to try to behave as good citizens in the future. He watched Toussaint shuffle off. Then he tipped his hat to Odette and turned on his heel.

  Twenty-Two

  Merle stood on the tiny, sagging porch of Pascal’s cottage, examining the overgrown yard for signs of life. The weeds had grown tall and lush, thistles had gone to seed, the grasses had burnt in the late summer sun. The fruit trees across the dirt road leading to Irene’s goat farm had lost their spring glory and were now without any fruit at all except a few rotting apples and cherries in the dust. A pair of old leather boots she didn’t recognize sat beside the door, covered with more dust.

  It was obvious he wasn’t here. She’d waited nearly a week since her last text to come here, to confront him if necessary, although she didn’t think he was at fault. No, something was wrong. Well, maybe he was at fault. Maybe he was off with his ex-wife, or somebody else, doing what men do. Having his midlife crisis fling. It was a theory. Merle had trouble believing it, not when he was so— so himself, so sweet and kind and loving, the last time she saw him.