A Noël Killing

by M. L. Longworth

  Verlaque and Paulik thanked the Italians and left. Verlaque turned around to look at their stand, one of the more elaborately decorated ones: flags of Italy and Perugia hung inside and out, as well as posters of Umbria’s many glorious sites, and outside stood three white plaster columns that were being used as tables by some Aixois with coffee cups. “The columns are a nice touch,” Paulik said. Verlaque peered at him, not sure if it was a joke or not, so he stayed silent.

  They wandered to the Tübingen stand a few tents down. A couple in their fifties or sixties worked quickly at setting up for lunch. “We’re not ready yet,” the woman said when she saw Verlaque and Paulik. “Could you come back in twenty minutes?” Her French was accented but very good.

  The men showed her their badges and her husband appeared quickly at her side. “What’s going on?” he asked. His French was more accented, less fluid. He held his hands up and shrugged in case they hadn’t understood his French.

  “We’d just like to ask you both a few questions about Sunday evening’s dinner at the cathedral,” Verlaque said. “It’s routine.”

  The German grunted and then held out his hand. “Gerhard Rösch,” he said. “This is my wife, Anna.”

  “That man died, didn’t he?” Anna Rösch asked in a quiet voice. “Is that what this is about?”

  “Yes,” Verlaque answered. “One of the dishes he ate was intentionally poisoned.”

  “And you think one of us did it?” Gerhard Rösch asked. “What would we possibly—”

  Paulik held up his hand, palm facing the Germans. “No, no,” he said, lowering his voice. “At this time, it’s difficult to ascertain which dish had the poison in it that night. We’d like to know if you noticed anything strange, or out of place, that evening. Especially while setting up for the dinner, or while serving.” He took the photo out of his coat packet and held it up. “This is the man who died. He was an American, Cole Hainsby.”

  Anna Rösch nodded. “He was the emcee at the carol sing. We were there. We went last year, too.”

  “He was annoying,” Gerhard Rösch said.

  “Gerhard!” Anna replied, making the sign of the cross.

  Gerhard Rösch sighed. “We got to the church early, because of the service.” Anna nodded in agreement. Gerhard continued, “That young girl met us at the green door . . .”

  “Mlle Dubois,” Anna said. “She’s a gentle soul. A wounded—”

  “Yah, yah, Anna. Let’s answer their questions. The cathedral’s priest was there, and some of the church people, and our fellow sister cities.”

  “Who, exactly?” Paulik asked. “Can you remember?”

  M Rösch guffawed and began to stir a pot of simmering broth.

  “I can try,” Anna said. “When we got there, at five o’clock, Mlle Dubois was there, of course, and Père Fernand, from the cathedral. He’s very nice. The Americans were there, weren’t they, Gerhard?” Her husband nodded. Anna went on, “The English women were there, setting up their stand. . . . The nice gentleman from Carthage came but then quickly left. And that man in the photograph, Cole, he was there. With his wife and some other Americans. They were setting up the chairs and putting paper tablecloths on the tables. Oh, and the Italians, they were there—”

  Her husband held up a finger. “Only one?” Anna asked.

  “Yah. One.” M Rösch noisily set down his wet ladle and began to rummage through a shoe box, pulling out a pen and a scrap piece of paper. “I draw,” he said. “Anna misses some things.”

  “Gerhard has a great visual memory,” Anna said, smiling awkwardly.

  While Gerhard Rösch drew, Verlaque asked, “Did anyone other than you touch your food, madame?”

  “No. Only the two of us.”

  “And nothing seemed odd?”

  Anna shook her head. “It didn’t take us long to set up, and we were told we would have time to reheat the food after the service, as the Protestant church was taking care of the aperitif; chips and things.”

  Gerhard pointed to his drawing. “Round table in middle is aperitif,” he said. Verlaque nodded, remembering. “This table next to it is wine.” Gerhard laid the drawing down on the counter and pointed with the end of his pen. “The teenagers and some others set up six long tables for guests, ten at each table. At the top of the room is green door and windows out onto the Place de l’Archevêché. Our dinner table was set up here, in front of the windows.”

  Anna pointed to the Sister City food table and said something in German.

  “Okay,” Gerhard said as he began to write on the drawing. They watched as he labeled who was where. “Finished,” he said. “On the right, closest to kitchen and at the end of the table, is me and Anna. Then USA. Then Italy. Then Tunisia. Then, closest to green door, the old English ladies.”

  “Gerhard!” Anna said.

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled slightly at Verlaque and Paulik.

  “You said there was only one of the Italians,” Verlaque reminded M Rösch.

  “Yah, only her,” he answered.

  “Gerhard’s right,” Anna said. “The Italian man came after about a half hour. And like I said, the man from Tunisia came and set up but then left. You know,” she lowered her voice, “perhaps because he’s Muslim. The carol sing may not have been of interest to him.”

  Paulik glanced at Verlaque, both of them remembering that Mehdi Abdelhak had been to the service and seen the Germans there. “Something else you said, M Rösch,” he said. “That Cole Hainsby was annoying.”

  “He asks questions about Tübingen and doesn’t listen to answers.”

  “What kinds of questions?” Verlaque asked.

  “How much does house cost. How many people live there. Do I know anyone in chamber of commerce.”

  Anna said, “We do know one person in the chamber of—”

  Gerhard slapped his hand down. “I tell him nothing!”

  “Thank you both for your time,” Verlaque said. “May we keep this drawing, M Rösch?”

  “Of course.”

  Paulik thanked them as well and pointed to a small color photograph of two handsome young men, both in their twenties, taped to the side of the refrigerator. “Your sons?”

  “Edmund and Clovis,” Gerhard said, pointing to the brothers from right to left. “Will be dentists, not cooks like us.”

  Anna tilted her head down and stared at the countertop.

  “They’re obviously very smart,” Paulik said. “You must be proud.”

  Now looking up, her gaze solemn and steady, Anna said, “We’d do anything for them.”

  * * *

  By the time they left the fair, queues of hungry customers had formed at most of the stalls, especially those selling hot food. As they walked, Paulik listened to messages on his cell phone. “Debra Hainsby is available this afternoon at her house,” he said to Verlaque after hanging up. “The school’s director, Alain Sorba, might be available on Thursday. He’s away on a field trip tomorrow.”

  “Another one?” Verlaque asked. “They just went skiing. Is it a school or a country club? Do you know what the price of that place is?”

  “More than fifteen thousand a year,” Paulik answered. “We considered it for Léa, in case she didn’t get into the music program at Mignet.”

  Léa Paulik, an accomplished singer, had just turned twelve. “Of course Léa would get into Mignet. Are you nuts?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  Verlaque opened his mouth to protest further but then considered the options for the Pauliks: the integrated music program at Mignet, the city’s highly rated public-funded junior high school, where gifted music students split their day between the school and the conservatory, or a mediocre junior high on the north side of town. At least the Four Seasons offered a bilingual education; perhaps he and Marine would do the same in their shoes. At
any rate, he couldn’t judge nor did he have to make that kind of decision, as they were child free. “We’re not missing lunch today, that’s for sure,” he finally said as they crossed through the flower market being held in front of the town hall. He looked at his watch; it was half past twelve and he picked up his pace, now very hungry. They stopped as a tourist took a photo of his wife, standing with her back to bouquets of bright yellow fragrant flowers.

  “Flowers in winter?” Verlaque asked. “I had no idea.”

  “Winter jasmine,” Paulik said, waiting for the tourist to retake his photo, as he wasn’t satisfied with the first.

  “It never ceases to amaze me that people choose to come here,” Verlaque said, sighing. His stomach growled. “It’s just a small town.”

  Paulik said nothing as he looked around the square: two sides were lined with medieval apartment buildings painted in ocher, orange, or pale rose; the west side held the golden-stone town hall with its elaborately carved wooden doors and pebbled interior courtyard; and the eighteenth-century grain hall stood on the south end, its façade topped by a sculpture of two allegorical figures representing two rivers, the male the Rhône and the female the Durance. Or was it the other way around? Paulik looked up at the female figure’s giant foot dangling over the stone enclosure that had supported and protected them for more than three centuries. She was the Durance, as it was famous for its flooding; hence her dangling foot. He thought of childhood excursions into Aix, piled into his parents’ car. His sisters would shop for clothes and school supplies; he and his two brothers would go to a rugby game at the stadium just outside Aix. When their Renault station wagon crossed the Durance, they’d yell that they were halfway from the Luberon to Aix. On the way back they’d be too tired to notice the river, usually asleep, one or two of them sprawled out in the back of the wagon, when such things were still legal. For years Paulik and Hélène lived in Pertuis, just to the north of the Durance. They would joke that the river had only two states: completely dried up, with only a dry rock bed visible, or overflowing, water pouring onto its banks. He smiled, remembering a young Hélène, just graduated from enology school, and he a young police cadet. Before Léa, their pride and joy. “Pardon me?” he asked when he realized that Verlaque was speaking.

  “I asked if you would come here as a tourist.”

  “Absolutely,” Paulik answered.

  * * *

  Well fed on Fanny’s daily special, Verlaque and Paulik walked to the parking garage to pick up Verlaque’s car, and ten minutes later they were on the narrow road that swerves and bends toward the hamlet of Saint-Marc-Jaumegarde to the northeast of Aix. Paulik ran his hand along the 1963 Porsche’s dashboard and said, “I love this car, but is maintenance a nightmare?”

  “No, partly because I don’t drive it far or often, and I get it serviced once a year. The clutches and brake pads every fifty thousand kilometers, and I change the tires often; a new set of fronts with every other set of rears.”

  Paulik looked behind the front seats. “It’s hardly a four-seater, is it?”

  “No, more like two people and two cases of wine,” Verlaque said.

  Paulik turned back around and, to Verlaque’s relief, stopped asking disparaging questions about his car, which he affectionately referred to as Ferdinand, after Ferdinand Porsche, who started the company in 1931. Verlaque used the remainder of the drive to fill Paulik in on Debra and Cole Hainsby’s rocky relationship, including her affair with the director of the Four Seasons bilingual school.

  “It’s this lane on the right,” Paulik said, consulting his cell phone. “There should be a sign on a tree. Voilà. LES CHÊNES.”

  Verlaque slowed the car and began to drive up the steep dirt road that was littered with potholes. He gripped the steering wheel and tensed up every time they drove over one. “Do you mind if we park here and walk up?” he asked, now wishing they had brought a police vehicle. But his parking garage was close to Fanny’s, and he hadn’t felt like waiting for someone at the Palais de Justice to find them an available car.

  “Not at all,” Paulik said. He pointed to a vineyard track where they could turn around and park in the right direction for pulling out later.

  “This isn’t how I imagined it,” Verlaque explained as they walked up to the house. “I thought they’d be in one of Saint-Marc’s fancy subdivisions.”

  Paulik said nothing, as he hadn’t met the Hainsbys, nor did he care much about where people lived, or which neighborhoods of Aix had cachet or were now unfashionable. Past an ancient, spread-out oak tree they were able to see the house: small and charming, two stories, in stone with white shutters. More ancient oaks surrounded the house, protecting it. “Les chênes,” Paulik said.

  The front door opened and Debra Hainsby stood on its threshold, looking very small and old. Verlaque had no idea if she had loved her husband or what she might be feeling. Would she be grieving if she had poisoned him? he wondered. But as they got closer, he thought that this was a woman who certainly looked like she was miserable.

  “Mme Hainsby,” Verlaque said, shaking her hand. “Thank you for being available to meet with us. This is the police commissioner, Bruno Paulik.”

  Paulik shook her hand and she mumbled for them to enter. Inside was not what Verlaque had expected, having heard that Cole Hainsby was “annoying,” “silly,” “reckless,” “naïve,” and, especially, “broke.” It was like being in the pages of a glossy English magazine. Country Life, he recalled, which Emmeline had delivered to their house in Normandy weekly. The walls were painted a pale yellow, sunny without being sickly or vulgar. The curtains were of a thick, good-quality cotton in a floral print. The antiques were polished, and expensive. Table lamps lit the room, and real art—watercolors and oils, mostly landscapes—hung on the walls. One or two of the better ones were lit from above with brass lights. The ceiling was beamed, and the floor a rustic brick.

  “English people own it,” Debra Hainsby explained. She didn’t seem to mind that the examining magistrate had been looking over, and admiring, her house. “We move every year or so, depending on who’s got a cheap furnished house for us to rent,” she said, motioning for them to sit down. “This is by far the best. The owners are Londoners who used this house for vacations, but they’ve moved to Hong Kong.”

  “How are your children doing?” Verlaque asked. He thought he remembered that they had two.

  “Devastated,” she replied. “They’re out for a long walk now, with my sister and brother-in-law. I’m keeping them out of school this week. I’m not going in either, maybe ever.” She looked at Verlaque and raised an eyebrow, which he took to mean she was cooling her relationship with Alain Sorba. What happened? Just yesterday she was bragging about him. Or was she just being more careful this time? Acting the wounded widow?

  “Given the nature of your husband’s death, which is now being treated as a homicide,” Verlaque began, “we need to ask you more detailed questions, and look into your finances, and search the house as soon as possible. I wanted to tell you that in person.”

  “Am I a suspect?” she sputtered, losing her cool for the first time.

  “Yes,” Verlaque said flatly. “You were seen feeding your husband while in the queue at the dinner.”

  She looked stunned. “I can’t remember a thing about that. And if I did feed Cole something, so what? He was my husband.”

  “He was poisoned, Mme Hainsby.”

  “Our marriage wasn’t perfect,” she said, looking out the window with a puckered brow, as if worried that the children would come in at any minute. She lowered her voice. “Yes, I was having an affair with Alain Sorba. But I did not poison my husband.”

  “Did M Hainsby tell you about his business?” Paulik asked.

  “Rarely,” she replied. “I should have asked more, especially about the finances. But I knew from experience that if the business was in trouble, there was no a
rguing with Cole.”

  “Did your husband seem worried lately?”

  “Yes. But just before the carol sing Cole seemed relieved. He told me he had a solution.”

  “But you don’t know what?”

  “No,” she answered after hesitating a split second.

  “Really?”

  She got up and began to pace around the room.

  “We will need to look at your husband’s life insurance plans,” Paulik said. “If you could have them ready by tomorrow, when I’ll be back with a few officers to look over your husband’s personal possessions.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “One of the policies is with our bank on the Cours Mirabeau, the Crédit Lyonnais. The other is back home, in the States.”

  Verlaque got up and shook her hand. “Where did you live before coming to France?”

  “Michigan. Ann Arbor. It’s where we’re both from. We met at the university there.”

  He knew Paulik would contact their American colleagues in Ann Arbor once he got back to the Palais de Justice. Or an officer who spoke English would. But he doubted that their time spent there had anything to do with Cole Hainsby’s murder. It was very much something, or someone, to do with Aix-en-Provence, and that service at the cathedral.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Verlaque walked down rue Jean de la Roque thinking of the Hainsby family, and the children out walking over the dry garrigue with their aunt and uncle. Did the elders have words of wisdom? Or did they just walk, and let the children speak if and when they desired? Paulik had hurried on ahead, in a rush to get back to the Palais de Justice for a meeting and then to make the telephone calls to Michigan. The Porsche had made one or two funny sounds—like coughs—as they drove back to Aix, but Paulik hadn’t made a comment about it. Perhaps Bruno thought old cars always made noises.

  Verlaque walked slowly, looking in shop windows. The Alsatian delicatessen was decorated for a Christmas in Strasbourg, not Aix. Brightly lit stars illuminated the interior, hanging from the ceiling. Through the window he could see a Christmas tree, every branch full of decorations. Red-and-white-checked cloth seemed prominent, as did gingerbread in all sizes and forms. He texted Marine to see if he should buy something for dinner and she replied immediately with a smiley face. He walked in and said hello, shaking hands with the owner, whom he knew from sight. As the owner prepared Verlaque’s order of sausage and sauerkraut he looked around, daring to touch some of the ornaments. He texted Marine again, asking if they were going to have a Christmas tree that year. She answered, “Ouuuuuui!” He wondered if the Christmas tree would be in town or in their country house and then put the thought out of his mind. He didn’t want to let the two residences complicate life.