A Noël Killing

by M. L. Longworth

  As he waited he examined some ornaments made from felt that were hanging from the tree. They were petits bonhommes with fat stomachs, little outstretched arms and legs, and high pointed felt hats. He took one in his hands and touched the hat, running his thumb and index finger from the top of the little man’s head to the point of his hat. He lifted one off the branch—he preferred the ones with green hats—and laid it on the counter. The shop owner wrapped it in a piece of tissue and added it to Verlaque’s other purchases, which at the last minute also included a bottle of Riesling. Another client came up to the counter and Verlaque thanked the owner and moved aside, taking the bonhomme out of the paper bag, removing the tissue, and putting the little man in his coat pocket. He left the shop, having no idea why he had just done such a thing. Did he not want Marine to see it? Was it to be a surprise for her? Or was he embarrassed by it? In fact, he realized as he walked, he had no idea why he bought it. Was it because it put a smile on his face? Or were there deeper reasons that a therapist would analyze—not enough toys or affection at home? Their mother hadn’t bought many toys for Verlaque or his brother, for fear they’d be spoiled. But she had no problem spending the Verlaque family money on herself, wearing the latest haute couture or redecorating their 1st arrondissement Parisian home every two or three years. Reaching a hand in his pocket, he touched the pointed hat again, stroking the soft felt, and ran into Père Fernand. Verlaque was relieved to see the priest and think of something else, not his mother, nor the reason why even now he was touching the pointed hat in his pocket.

  “Bonsoir, mon père,” he said, pulling his right hand out of his pocket and shaking the priest’s hand.

  “Bonsoir,” Père Fernand answered, smiling down at the bag. “You’ve been buying choucroute?”

  “I couldn’t help myself.” Verlaque realized he hadn’t spoken to, or questioned, the priest since Sunday evening’s grave event. “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked.

  Père Fernand turned and gestured with the back of his hand to the same bar next to the cathedral where Verlaque had taken Léo Vidal-Godard. They walked in, nodded to the two-woman bar staff, and took a table for two against the far wall. One of the women called across to them, and they both ordered half-pints of Leffe.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, setting down the beers on the Formica-topped table.

  “Merci, Pierrette,” Père Fernand said, reaching for his beer to toast Verlaque.

  Verlaque lifted his glass to the priest’s and said, “Santé,” taking a sip of the amber-colored Belgian beer. “You know her?” he asked, once she was back behind the bar. He knew the answer, as he had seen them arguing that night he was with Léo.

  “I’ve been coming here for years. It’s good to support local businesses, don’t you think?”

  Verlaque smiled and drank. “It’s a very old-fashioned name for such a modern woman,” he said quietly.

  “She hates it,” Père Fernand said, leaning across the table. “Her friends call her Pierrot but I prefer to maintain an owner-client relationship.”

  “She owns this bar?” Verlaque asked, looking around the bar that, while small, was sitting on prime Aix real estate.

  The priest nodded. “Inherited it from her grandfather. It’s a very good thing that Aix still has old bars like these.”

  “They are quickly disappearing, I’m afraid.”

  “They needn’t,” Père Fernand said.

  “On Sunday evening,” Verlaque said, putting his beer down, “we didn’t get a chance to talk after M Hainsby fell ill—”

  “And died.”

  “Yes. Did you notice anything peculiar that evening? Or even during the day?” The priest looked bewildered and Verlaque continued, “You see, Père Fernand, Cole Hainsby was poisoned that evening. Someone put enough crushed acetaminophen in one of the dishes to kill him.”

  Père Fernand folded his arms across his chest. “Someone murdered him? That’s unbelievable, and heartbreaking.”

  Verlaque nodded and waited for the priest to continue, which he did. “There were so many people in and out of the church and dining hall that day,” he said. “I don’t know how I can help. I’d say you’d get the most help from the young woman from the APCA. France is her name.”

  “France Dubois.”

  “I think that’s it,” Père Fernand said. “She organized the dinner so was the person who was most present. I kept bumping into her all afternoon.”

  Verlaque asked, “Anything else? Did you know Cole Hainsby?”

  “Never met him in my life, until that afternoon, of course, when he came early with his wife to rehearse a few things before the service began.”

  “And how was that?”

  “How did they do?” the priest asked. “If you ask me, they needn’t have repeated every song instruction in French and English. It took far too long, and I believe that almost everyone in the church understands the basics of one of the two languages.”

  Verlaque smiled. “I agree. But between the Hainsbys?”

  “Oh, I understand. How was it between them? Icy.”

  “Did anyone from the sister cities behave strangely?”

  The priest took a sip of beer and set it down, again crossing his arms and leaning back in the chair. “The Tunisian,” he said slowly. “I’m probably making a big deal of nothing, and I don’t want to sound . . .”

  “Racist?”

  “Precisely. But about an hour before the service, he was in the cathedral, taking photographs. I came up to him from behind, so I may have startled him. He jumped, and held on to his camera as if I would steal it. I had only wanted to tell him that we needed to clear the church as the service would soon be starting.”

  “What was he taking pictures of?” Verlaque asked.

  “The chapel of Saint-Roch.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  At 9:00 a.m. the next day, Antoine Verlaque was already seated at his desk, looking at the telephone, willing it to ring. He felt like nothing had been uncovered in the Cole Hainsby case. Marine had gone to bed early; she was unusually tired, and he hoped it was just the winter blues and the upcoming holidays. She was planning various dinner parties that they would host, and an elaborate Christmas Eve dinner. He kept finding scraps of paper scattered around the apartment, with menus or grocery lists scrawled on them.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Verlaque thought he recognized the three steady knocks of Bruno Paulik. “Entrez,” he said.

  Paulik slipped through the door and closed it behind him. He carried a file in his left hand, and with his right he shook the judge’s hand. He held up the file and said, “There’s gold in here.”

  “Ah, bon?” Verlaque asked, sitting back down and motioning for the commissioner to sit across from him. “Have you come to save me from eternal boredom? Is there something in that file that proves that Debra Hainsby, or Alain Sorba, killed Cole Hainsby?”

  Paulik pulled his chair closer to the desk and laid the file down on the glass-topped surface. “It’s exciting news, yes, but it has nothing to do with the wife or her lover.”

  “Or the cook or the thief?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry,” Verlaque said. “It was an English film from the 1980s that I really liked. Go on.”

  A slightly irritated Paulik opened the file and said, “This file contains a report of a car accident. It was six years ago, on that route départemental north of Aix, after Célony and before the big roundabout toward Éguilles.”

  “Where the antique stores are?”

  “Exactly, and the rows of plane trees on either side of the road,” Paulik said. “It was a head-on collision between a Twingo and a bigger car . . .” He looked down the first page, read, and said, “A Volvo station wagon.”

  “Did the people in the Twingo make it?” Verlaque asked, relieved that Marine had long ago sold her Twingo, a car s
o small and cheaply made it always made him nervous.

  “No,” Paulik said. “Husband and wife, declared dead at the scene. No other passengers.”

  “And the people in the Volvo walked away?”

  “Yes,” Paulik said. “The driver of the Volvo was at fault. He was trying to pass a little Citroën and hit the Twingo, which was coming south from Éguilles . . .”

  “Why is this gold, Bruno? Was the Volvo driver Cole Hainsby?”

  Paulik nodded.

  “And the Twingo driver and passenger? Where do they fit in? Who were they?”

  “Pascal and Myriam Dubois.”

  “France’s parents?”

  “Si, señor,” Paulik replied, folding his arms and sitting back.

  Verlaque ran his hands through his graying hair. “The poor girl,” he finally said. “So that’s where her sadness comes from. And why I thought she was holding something back . . .”

  “Do you think it’s enough of a motive?”

  Verlaque considered the question. “Could you hate someone enough for killing your parents to seek revenge? Probably. But why wait six years to do it?”

  “Building up your nerve?”

  “And France Dubois was everywhere on Sunday,” Verlaque cut in. “Her name keeps coming up.”

  “It would be easy to crush a handful of Doliprane and put it in someone’s food. I’m surprised that method isn’t used more often.”

  “The dinner on Sunday was the perfect occasion,” Verlaque said. “Perhaps France rarely saw Cole Hainsby. At the cathedral she’d be with him all day.”

  “Do you think she got the job at the APCA because of him?” Paulik asked. “An American church in the center of Aix . . .”

  “And what in the world was she doing at that fair yesterday? Staring down the guy from Philadelphia?”

  “She might hate all American men now,” Paulik suggested. “He and M Hainsby are kind of the same age.”

  “Don’t tell me you think France Dubois is going to go on some kind of killing spree, Bruno. Poisoning all the American men between the ages of thirty and fifty.”

  Paulik shrugged.

  Verlaque picked up a pen. “We don’t have anything else, do we? Our two principle suspects are now women. The unhappy wife, and the wallflower. I’d much rather it point to someone like Alain Sorba.”

  “Because he has a Corsican name?”

  “No, because he charges unsuspecting expats fifteen thousand a year for his posh school, when our public ones are free and rated better.”

  * * *

  The address they’d been given was 18 rue Cardinale. France Dubois had called in sick that day—a cold, Reverend Dave had reported. “She usually gets them around this time of year,” he had said. “I hope it’s nothing serious you want her for.”

  “No, no,” Verlaque lied. “Just more boring routine questions.”

  Paulik looked up at the street numbers as they walked while Verlaque looked ahead at Saint-Jean-de-Malte, hoping they didn’t run into Florence Bonnet or her sidekick, Philomène Joubert. “Voilà,” Paulik said, stopping to read the brass name plate at number 18.

  “Joubert,” Verlaque said, sighing. “Second floor.”

  “You know them?”

  “A crony of Marine’s mother,” Verlaque answered.

  Paulik laughed, sensing perfectly well what kind of woman Mme Joubert must be. “F Dubois,” he said. “First floor.” He rang the buzzer beside her name.

  Verlaque tilted his head up to inspect the classic four-story building. The ground floors in Aix usually held offices or shops. This one housed an apartment; the owner’s name was engraved on the plaque. He now remembered the garden in the back; Marine’s old apartment, one street north, had a view of it. The garden was big, with a fountain and mature trees. France’s apartment had the tallest windows in the building, so the ceiling must be high. Then the Joubert second-floor apartment, always desirable, he thought, as the ceilings would still be a good height, but the apartment was that much higher up—quieter, with better views. Another name he didn’t recognize on the third floor, and then two names on the least-expensive fourth floor, with its usual slanting low ceiling that leaked. Probably a young couple, thought Verlaque, or even two students.

  “Oui?” France Dubois’s voice sounded over the scratchy intercom.

  “Antoine Verlaque,” Verlaque said. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m here with the commissioner. May we come up?”

  “Of course.” The buzzer sounded and the heavy red door opened with a thud.

  The entryway looked much like other seventeenth- or eighteenth-century foyers in Aix, including his own: a black-and-white-checkered marble floor; an old wooden chair in the corner that somebody no longer wanted in their apartment; pale blue walls, the paint chipping in many places; and, where the top of the wall met the ceiling, gypseries, white plaster moldings common in Provence. They walked up the red tiled stairs to the first floor, where France was waiting for them, standing in her doorway, a woolen shawl wrapped around her tiny shoulders. She blew her nose and stepped aside so that they could enter.

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked, closing the door.

  Both men refused, and asked how she was feeling. “Better than this morning,” she said. “But these old apartments never warm up.”

  Verlaque quickly looked around as he took a seat opposite her. Paulik sat in another armchair to his right, and France sat on the sofa. The room had once been elegant, but the tomettes on the floor needed polishing and the walls repainting. The two large windows that he had admired from the outside didn’t let in as much light as he would have thought. Another look revealed why; they were dirty and dusty. But while the apartment needed some cleaning and upkeep, it was homey and tastefully decorated. An enormous framed print of a Picasso exhibition in the Côte d’Azur hung above the sofa and brightened the room. Some interesting throw pillows and a few vintage lamps and vases added a quirkiness and color that he enjoyed.

  Verlaque leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. France looked at him, and her eyes watered. He couldn’t tell if it was from her illness or from sadness. “You know, don’t you?” she asked, sniffling.

  “What about?” Verlaque said.

  “The car accident.”

  Verlaque looked at Paulik, who nodded. “Yes,” Paulik said. “Six years ago on the route de Célony. Cole Hainsby was driving the car that killed your parents.”

  She dabbed her eyes with a fresh tissue and said, “I think of it every day.”

  “I can imagine,” Verlaque said. “Is that why you took the job at the APCA?”

  She shook her head. “You probably won’t believe me when I tell you that getting the job there was a coincidence. When I heard about . . . the accident . . . I was living in Paris. I immediately quit my job and came back to Aix to live.”

  “Wasn’t that difficult?” Verlaque asked. “The memories?”

  “The memories were all I had, Judge.” She straightened her posture, a move that touched Verlaque. “I had a degree in English,” she said. “There weren’t many jobs in Aix. I was so lucky to get the job at the Anglo church. At first it was part time, but I didn’t need the money, because my parents left me . . .” She choked and stopped speaking, catching her breath.

  “Please, take your time,” Paulik said.

  “They left me money,” she went on. “I bought this place very quickly, too quickly, perhaps, as it still needs a lot of work, and I just don’t have the energy on my own.” She sighed. “When I took the job, I didn’t know that the man who was responsible for my parents’ deaths was involved in that church.”

  “Until very recently,” Verlaque suggested.

  “Yes. Because of the carol sing, it was the first time I met him. He of course had no idea who I was. I’m not even sure if he remembered the name Dubois.” />
  “Did you wish him dead?” Verlaque asked.

  “Of course,” she answered flatly. “Many times over. But that was six years ago. Last week, when I sat beside him at the café, I could barely hold my fork. But when I finally met him, I felt nothing. Even that bothered me; that I didn’t feel anything. Don’t you think?”

  Verlaque thought about his own ambivalence when his mother died, and nodded.

  France said, “I didn’t kill him. I know that’s why you’re here.”

  “Did you watch him at the dinner?” Verlaque asked.

  “How could I not?” she said. “It was like a train wreck. I despised him, yet I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.”

  “Did you notice anything odd?” Paulik asked. “Did anyone mess about with the food, especially on M Hainsby’s plate?”

  “M Hainsby was moving around so much, it’s hard to say. I saw him go up to the food table at least three times, the last time with Père Fernand. Oh, and once with Alain Sorba, who owns the Four Seasons bilingual school.”

  “He’s the director of the school, I believe,” Verlaque said.

  “He owns it as well,” France confirmed.

  “And during the dinner’s setup?” Paulik pressed on. “Did everything happen in a calm and orderly manner?”