A Noël Killing

by M. L. Longworth

  “It was chaotic, but so was last year,” she said. “So I’m not sure how to answer that. I was worried that M Abdelhak from Carthage was late, but Père Fernand found him in the church and showed him to the dining hall. There were the usual last-minute crises, as there always seem to be, but on the whole it was nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “The American from Philadelphia,” Paulik began. “We saw you watching him.”

  She flinched but then waved her hand through the air. “Oh, him,” she said. “He’d complained about his stand at the fair so I was watching him work, to see if his claims were valid. He said he didn’t have enough space, or electricity.”

  Verlaque rubbed his hands along his thighs, thankful that he had chosen to wear woolen pants that morning. Her apartment really was very cold. Paulik took it as a sign for them to leave. “Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle,” Paulik said, getting up and shaking her hand. “Get well soon.”

  “Merci,” France Dubois said, her voice now quiet, as it had been when they had first arrived.

  Verlaque said, “We’ll see ourselves out.” He took one last look at the Picasso print. It was a view from a window, onto the Mediterranean, the type of scene made famous by Picasso’s friend and rival Matisse. There were colorful pigeons sitting on the windowsill and balcony, not going anywhere, pleased to be there; did Picasso’s father have some kind of connection with pigeons? Verlaque tried to remember; he’d check when he got home. The sea was a dark blue with white caps, and a bit of rocky peninsula jutted out into the water, framed by swaying palms. The predominant colors inside Picasso’s seaside room were orange and yellow; outside, blue and green. Warm and cold. Verlaque looked back at Mlle Dubois, who was now sitting in the armchair Paulik had used, staring straight ahead at the pigeons and the palms and the Mediterranean.

  * * *

  Mme Girard put her hand up, commanding them to stop, when they got back to the Palais de Justice after lunch. “Officer Flamant has called twice,” she said. “He’d like you to go downstairs to his office.”

  “Thank you,” Verlaque said, smiling. She sighed and turned back to her computer screen, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the green background of a solitaire game. He wondered how old she really was, and why she still worked when he knew her husband was wealthy. “Shall we?” he said to Paulik, and they turned back the way they had come.

  As they descended the wide stone staircase Paulik said, “Mlle Dubois doesn’t seem like a killer.”

  Verlaque observed that the stairway’s walls, like those at France Dubois’s, were pale blue and needed painting. “No, I agree. Even with crushed Doliprane, however easy that would seem.”

  “Does anyone of the group seem like a murderer? I mean, half of them are church people, and the other half are visiting from Italy or Germany or wherever, and are generously cooking dinner for everyone. It just doesn’t make sense.” He held the door open for Verlaque when they got to the first floor.

  “The fact that they go to church doesn’t make them automatically innocent,” Verlaque said as they set off down one of the many mazelike hallways of the Palais de Justice.

  “I know,” Paulik said. “I’m just thinking out loud.” He looked at Verlaque and asked, “Do you often go to church?”

  “Pardon me?” Verlaque asked. “Oh. You mean because I was at that Christmas service?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, that was the first time in years I’ve been to any kind of religious service, except for weddings and funerals. Marine wanted to go . . . you know, with her mother’s choir and all . . .”

  “Right. Right.”

  Verlaque looked at Paulik. “Do you and Hélène?”

  “Nope,” Paulik answered. “We didn’t even baptize Léa. Hélène’s parents wouldn’t speak to us for weeks.”

  “I take it your parents weren’t equally upset by the nonbaptism?”

  Paulik laughed. “No. They were farmers and Communists. The church didn’t play a big role at our place.”

  Flamant was staring at his computer screen when they got to his desk. “You called?” Paulik asked.

  Flamant jumped up. “Scram,” he said to a young cadet who was working beside him, yawning and filling out a form. The young man ran off and Paulik filled Flamant in on their visit to France Dubois.

  “I’ve dug up some stuff on the deceased, Cole Hainsby,” Flamant said, fanning out a computer printout for them to look at. “Most of the info I was able to find over the internet, and someone at the Ann Arbor police precinct speaks pretty good French.”

  “Seriously?” Verlaque asked.

  “Well,” Flamant said, “better than my English. He was a French major before becoming a police officer. In fact, he went to the same university as the Hainsbys . . . University of Michigan.”

  “That’s where they met, right?” Paulik asked.

  “Yes, they graduated the same year,” Flamant said. “Cole was a history major, and his wife, theater.” He showed them a photocopied photograph. “I found this on the university’s website from their graduating year. It looks like Debra . . . her last name was Collins then . . . won a prize for a play.” He looked closely at the photograph’s fine print and read them the play’s title, which neither man could understand in Flamant’s butchered English.

  “Oh!” Verlaque said. “Un Tramway. It’s a Tennessee Williams play.” He tried translating A Streetcar Named Desire into French, but knew he didn’t have it quite right.

  “To continue,” Flamant said, making Paulik grin, “they stayed in Ann Arbor for two years after university, then moved to Italy.”

  “This is getting more and more interesting,” Verlaque said.

  “Not Perugia,” Flamant said. “Alba.”

  “In Piedmont? Where the white truffles come from?” Paulik asked.

  Flamant nodded and showed him one of the papers. “They weren’t there long,” he said. “Eight months. Cole ran a tour company for Yanks . . . I mean Americans. Then they went back to the US. Three years in Michigan, where M Hainsby worked in a bicycle shop, and then here, to Aix.”

  “And his tour company here?” Verlaque asked.

  “That will take more time, nosing around on the internet,” Flamant said. “I did find their website. People who took the tour gave good reviews, four or five stars. Only one person didn’t seem to like it; a Frenchie. He gave one star.”

  “Call the disgruntled customer. You’ll be able to speak in French,” Verlaque said. “Does it have their name listed?”

  Flamant looked down at the paper. “Cédric Farou. From Lyon.”

  “But it probably doesn’t have his phone number there.”

  Flamant smiled. “That’ll be easy to find.”

  “And Mme Hainsby’s job?” Paulik asked. “At the bilingual school.”

  “All I found was their website. They have a swimming pool and tennis courts!” He whistled. “But I can’t find anything on the school’s finances, or the director. I’m usually pretty good at hacking . . . I mean digging . . . but all roads were blocked. I’ll try again.”

  “The Sister City participants?” Verlaque asked. “None of them are, by chance, ex-criminals out on parole?”

  “No such luck,” Flamant said. “One of the women from England worked as a nurse, though.”

  Verlaque and Paulik looked at each other, perplexed. Flamant said, “The poison.”

  “It was acetaminophen,” Verlaque said. “A kid could have done it.”

  “I just thought that perhaps a nurse would have the nerve,” Flamant explained.

  “Pas mal,” Paulik said.

  “No, not the English grannies. And the other participants?” Verlaque asked.

  “Nothing so far, but I’ve just started. I only had time to research Bath and Tübingen.”

  “You’ve done a great job,” Verlaque said. �
��Thanks.”

  “We’ll leave you to it,” Paulik said. “Make sure to stretch after all that computer time.” He could stand only thirty minutes at most on computers before his back started complaining.

  Flamant said, “One last thing. Once I saw the swimming pool at the Four Seasons school I looked up the tuition costs, which aren’t so easy to find on the website—”

  Verlaque laughed. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “I ended up phoning and asking the secretary. And what I’m wondering,” Flamant said, “is if Mme Hainsby was just a secretary, and Cole Hainsby’s business partner told you they weren’t making much money, then how could they afford to send their two kids to that school?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It had been easy to find the Four Seasons bilingual school. Verlaque began seeing signs for the school on the road heading into Lambesc from Saint-Cannat, and he soon found himself on a départemental road north of the town numbered 66. He laughed and sang to himself “Route 66”—his grandparents had played it often, in Paris, at parties—all the way up to the school’s gates. He drove in and managed to squeeze his car into the very last parking spot, half on grass and half on gravel.

  The school was in a low, long building, one of its walls still dressed in rough fieldstone, giving away its origins: it would have been a farmer’s house, or a rural outbuilding, or a sheepfold. The windows and doors were new and cheap, replaced ten to fifteen years ago, he guessed. There were no signs of Flamant’s cherished swimming pool and tennis courts; they were probably on the other side of the building, the south side. So far the north side, with its dusty parking lot, did not give a good impression. He got out of his car, locked the door, and headed for a glass door marked with a slightly crooked sign that read OFFICES/BUREAUX.

  “May I help you?” a middle-aged woman with a thick Provençal accent asked him when he walked in. She sat behind a desk in an office so small he had almost walked right by her.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said. “I have an appointment with M Sorba. Antoine Verlaque, examining magistrate.”

  She looked at him but said nothing. She picked up the telephone and told whoever answered—Verlaque assumed it was Sorba—that his visitor had arrived. She hung up and said, “He’ll be right here.”

  Verlaque again thanked her and stood in the small hallway, waiting. She hadn’t offered him a chair, or told him where he could wait. He wondered what expats thought of her when they arrived, far from their old lives and worried about their children, and if they even understood her thick Midi accent. She was one of the most unwelcoming people he had ever met, and he was a civil servant. The women in the passport office in Aix had more personality, and they were notoriously rude. He tried to amuse himself in the narrow hallway by looking at photographs that had been taped to the wall; students, happy and smiling, at events and on trips. He scanned the wall looking for a shot of kids in class, with books. He found only one.

  “M Verlaque?” a young woman called out in French, but with an Anglo accent.

  “Verlaque. Yes.”

  She approached him and offered her hand. “I’m Colleen Fairchild. Please follow me.”

  He greeted the woman, who looked to be in her late twenties and was wearing a remarkably short skirt. He heard a huff from the other secretary. He followed her to the first floor, deliberately looking at his feet.

  They entered a room with a low, wood-beamed ceiling and she offered him a seat in a black leather chair. “M Sorba will be right with you,” she said, sitting down behind a white modern desk.

  “You’re his secretary?” Verlaque asked, crossing his legs.

  “Only temporarily. M Sorba’s assistant is on leave. She—”

  A wooden door opened beside her desk and a big, barrel-chested man strode out. “Thank you, Colleen,” he said, cutting her off. “Alain Sorba. Please, come into my office.” Verlaque turned to thank Mlle Fairchild and saw her watching Sorba, blushing.

  Verlaque followed Sorba and was ushered into another leather chair, also black. The office had a window that faced south, and he saw the infamous swimming pool. Sorba noticed Verlaque looking and said, “It’s heated in the summer.”

  “You do summer school?” Verlaque asked.

  “It’s a big business for us,” Sorba replied. “Mostly Parisians sending their kids down from Neuilly or Versailles to learn English. The kids love it. But I assume you’re not here to talk about school. Unless you have kids . . .” He smiled and pushed a colored pamphlet along his desk toward Verlaque.

  “No kids,” Verlaque replied, returning the smile. He studied Sorba and tried to see the female attraction to him. He was big, and seemed to keep himself in shape for someone approaching fifty, and had a wide smile. “You’re right, I’m not here to talk about school, but about Cole and Debra Hainsby.”

  “Terrible, terrible.”

  “You were there Sunday evening,” Verlaque said.

  “Yes, so many of our students and their families go to that carol service,” Sorba replied. “I go every year, as do most of my teachers and staff.”

  “Do your teachers and staff know about your affair with Debra Hainsby?” Sorba looked toward the door, as if the young Mlle Fairchild could hear them. “Mme Hainsby told me,” Verlaque said.

  “That’s over,” Sorba said, his weight on his thick arms that were resting on the edge of his desk, his head slightly tilted and with a furrowed brow, as if he were in penance.

  “It’s over now that her husband is dead?”

  “Before that. Listen, Judge, I don’t know why you’re here, but I don’t appreciate your questions.” Sorba got up and gestured toward the door. Verlaque imagined Colleen Fairchild on the other side, trying to listen.

  “Cole Hainsby was poisoned,” Verlaque said, getting to his feet, “as I’m sure you know. And we will find out by whom.”

  “I hope you do,” Sorba said, picking up the phone.

  Mlle Fairchild jumped up when Verlaque emerged. “I’ll see myself out,” he said. He walked quickly and purposefully down the narrow winding stairs, and instead of turning left, to the parking lot entrance, he turned right and walked outside onto the terrace. The covered swimming pool was off to his right, and in front of him were three tennis courts. Beside them were about ten small white portable buildings with dusty paths connecting them. He imagined they were classrooms, as the building he had just left would be too small to house the offices, the cafeteria, and other necessary rooms.

  He began walking toward the portables when the doors to each suddenly opened and children of various ages—around twelve to about eighteen, he guessed—charged out, running in all directions. A teacher walked out of the nearest one and lit a cigarette.

  Verlaque smiled as he approached her. “Break time?” he asked.

  “Ten minutes,” she replied, looking at her watch. She had an accent when she spoke French, but he couldn’t tell if she was American or British. “Are you a parent?” she asked. “We haven’t met.”

  Verlaque extended his hand. “Antoine Bonnet,” he said. She introduced herself as a math teacher, but he didn’t catch her name. He went on, “I’m getting transferred from Paris and looking around the school for my kids. My wife taught English in Paris and might apply for a job here.”

  The teacher—in her midforties, he guessed, nice looking, with large blue eyes but badly dyed blond hair—laughed. “I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “For my kids or my wife?”

  She looked around her and lowered her voice. “Oh, the kids love it here. They’re lucky to have us. We’re good teachers and we love them. But I wouldn’t recommend teaching here, especially if your wife is French and has passed the CAPES for teaching in France.”

  “She’s from London,” Verlaque said. “So, no.”

  “I didn’t, either, sadly,” she said. “When my husband and I first got here from Glasg
ow, I kept saying I would sit the exams, but when I got the job here, at a private school, I was over the moon. I could teach without doing the dreaded CAPES . . .”

  “But you don’t like it here?”

  “Like I said, the kids are great,” she said. “They are international, and most have smart, caring parents who’ve been sent here for a year or two for work. Most of the kids don’t speak French when they arrive, so it’s a logical solution for parents to send them here, and the companies pay the tuition.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “But it’s run as a business,” she continued, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “For example, this ten-minute break? We get paid hourly but don’t get paid for the ten minutes between classes. So I stopped speaking to the students between classes, and stopped prepping between classes, and now smoke a cigarette or two.”

  “Ten minutes between how many classes per day?” Verlaque asked.

  “Eight or nine,” she said. “So the lost salary adds up.”

  “Yes, it certainly would.”

  She again looked around the portables and said, “I’m telling you this for your wife’s sake, so please keep it between us. We don’t get paid for meetings, or for the dozen or so times a year when we’re expected to be here all day Saturday for parent-teacher meetings, for fêtes, or for sporting events. The teachers’ morale is pretty low. But for your kids, it’s great. They must speak French, right?”

  “Yes, they do,” he said. He consoled himself that he wasn’t really lying to the Scottish math teacher; if he and Marine did have children, they would certainly speak French. And possibly English. He had never thought about it before. “Well, thank you very much,” he said. “Your ten minutes is almost up.” He smiled a wide smile, knowing it could match M Sorba’s.

  “It’s barely even time for one cigarette,” she said, laughing. “Good luck with the move. You’ll love Provence!”

  He pointed to the bright blue sky and raised his hands in the air, and she laughed. As a Glaswegian she would understand a Parisian’s love of the south and its blue skies and warmth. He walked away, continuing around the far end of the building in case Sorba was looking out his office windows. As he passed by the last portable, he heard adult giggles and stopped to look in the window. Two teachers—he assumed they were teachers—were locked in an embrace. Maps hung on the wall, and he saw a globe on a desk. Is that all they did at the Four Seasons? Sleep around with one another? He ducked away and walked quickly and quietly until he got to the parking lot. He was about to open the door of his Porsche when a soccer ball landed at his feet. He picked it up as two teenagers came running up to him.