The Fleur De Sel Murders

by Jean-Luc Bannalec

  “My brother would never have done anything to Lilou Breval, never. Céline Cordier was furious. They were going to suspend testing for the time being. She and my brother drove to the salt marshes on Wednesday evening. They were going to dispose of all the evidence, including the barrels at the pool. And drain the water out. Everything. Then,” he hesitated for a moment and turned back to Dupin, “then you arrived. Maxime didn’t even know that Céline Cordier had a gun. She just opened fire. He told me everything later that night.”

  “It was always that blind pool”—this was a practical inquiry from Rose—“the experiments were only ever carried out there?”

  “Yes. Only there.”

  Dupin wanted to return to the crux of the story.

  “Did—” He hesitated uncertainly. “Did your brother know that Céline Cordier was going to drive over to Lilou Breval’s?”

  “No. It never even crossed his mind. She told him she was going to a party. To have an alibi for the evening. And that he needed one too. He found out about Lilou’s death the next day, from the radio. And collapsed. When we met you that morning, we still didn’t know anything. We thought all that had happened was that shooting in the salt marshes.”

  This was plausible, of course. But it would all be difficult to reconstruct. They would listen to what Cordier had to say. If she said anything.

  “He called me late that night. After he had been to Lilou Breval’s house. He was out of his mind. He told her everything that night. And said that they had called off the experiment. That he was done with it. That he had made a terrible mistake.”

  “But Cordier didn’t know anything about that, did she? That he was at Lilou’s?”

  “She suspected it. Or at least that he was going to tell Lilou something.”

  “And you? What did you say that night? What needed to be done following the shooting? You were involved in the whole thing, after all.”

  Paul Daeron seemed close to a total breakdown. “Everything got out of hand, horrendously out of hand.”

  “Go on. Why did your brother not react when he heard about Lilou Breval’s death—why didn’t you? Why didn’t the two of you end it all there? Turn yourselves in? You must both have suspected that it was Céline Cordier.”

  Dupin was getting more and more enraged. Perhaps unfairly.

  “It was awful, you know.” Paul Daeron’s face hardened, his voice lost all its strength. “Our entire existence was suddenly at stake. Everything would have been destroyed. My life. Everything I’d worked for. My company. My wife and daughter’s lives would have been ruined too. The lives of people who had nothing to do with any of it. I thought…” He spoke flatly. “I … I was a coward. It was only this afternoon that I found the courage to do what I should have done on Wednesday night. Rather than waiting till after … after the … the death of my brother.”

  “What were you planning to do? Why did you want to meet Madame Cordier?”

  “I wanted to confront her and defend myself. I called her this afternoon. She threatened to blame it all on me because I donated the money. She said she had destroyed everything and that nobody would find anything at her home. She said she had an idea, and that we should have a quick chat before I did something I’d regret, that we should meet up. That it could all still work out okay.”

  “Didn’t you think that a meeting with her might be dangerous? In such a secluded place? You knew she was a murderer.”

  “I didn’t care. I had to speak to her. End everything face-to-face. Here, on my turf.”

  Dupin understood. Besides, on its face, it would be rather stupid of Cordier to commit another murder. The chances of there being some kind of clue leading to her would be even greater.

  “And here? What happened here?”

  “She was half an hour late. I almost drove off again. She tried to calm me down. She spoke about it as if we were having technical difficulties. She said that if neither of us talked, nobody would ever dream we were tangled up in it. Then at some point the police would hit a wall, and have to lay the blame for the algae project and the murder at Maxime’s door—and that due to my brother’s suicide they would file all of this away as a tragic love story at some point. And that, so long as we pulled ourselves together, we had every chance of getting away with it. She was as cold as ice. She said we should live as though none of it had happened.”

  It could all have worked out. It could have happened like that; Cordier’s plan could really have come off.

  “When I heard her saying that, I knew I finally needed to act.” His voice broke again, but his next sentence sounded more certain and strong than any of his previous ones. “I knew I could never do that—that I could never live like that, as if it hadn’t happened. I told her it was over. That it was all over. Irrevocably so. And that I had wanted to tell her so to her face myself.” Paul Daeron balled his hands into fists. “I left her standing there, walked back to my car, and called you. Suddenly she was standing in front of me and wrenching the phone out of my hand. She was beside herself. We wrestled briefly but I was able to get away and throw myself into the undergrowth. I know every last stone around here. I ran down to the river. From my hiding place in the undergrowth I could see she had a gun. I managed to swim over to a boat up there by the thicket, I…” His voice failed. Paul Daeron stood frozen, silent tears running down his face.

  Rose took a step closer to him. She spoke softly. “Your brother’s death wasn’t suicide.”

  Paul Daeron didn’t react. It was as if he hadn’t even heard what she had said. It was a bizarre scene. He closed his eyes. Still motionless.

  So that was it. That was the story. The story as Paul Daeron had observed it. As distorted as that might be. There were still a lot of details missing—things that might never be known.

  But even if the story was incomplete and not everything corresponded to the truth, that was—broadly speaking—what had happened. Maxime Daeron might have told a different story. And he too would have been totally sincere. He might not have been able to stand the story they had just heard. And even Céline Cordier would—if she talked—express her own “truth.” It was always like this: the “complete” and “objective” story of a case was never told. Dupin was no stranger to this. During the reconstruction, the case became a ghost. As a reality, it disintegrated, falling apart into various subjective stories which, the more they were told, discussed, and even “confessed” to, had less and less to do with one another. But that didn’t matter. For a moment, Dupin had seen the crux of it. And crucially: they had arrested the perpetrators. What came after that was not his job. He could have an impact so long as there was something to be investigated, and make sure to restore order. Make sure that at least some people didn’t get away with their plan of just walking away.

  “Let’s go, Monsieur Daeron. I’m hereby arresting you for illegal business activity, several serious environmental offenses, and being an accessory to the murder of Lilou Breval. In the commissariat you will give your account again for the record, in chronological order, down to the last detail,” Rose said, and waited until Paul Daeron slowly turned away from the water. The sun hung low on the horizon, a yellow bar shimmered at them over the gleaming orange of the river. Around the sun, the horizon was a menacing fire, and only gradually, far up in the sky, did it drift into a blue that became more and more delicate. And there, faint and far away, the first stars were visible.

  * * *

  They had already passed the town boundaries of Guérande. Rose had driven only slightly more slowly than she had on the way there. Paul sat next to her, without handcuffs, while Dupin sat in the back. They hadn’t exchanged a word since they’d set off. Rose had made a few phone calls and barked various terse orders, including that the blind pool and the adjacent salt marshes would remain sealed off, that extensive biological and biochemical testing would now follow, in order to analyze the ramifications of the experiments very carefully. Dupin’s mobile rang and rang, forlornly. He hadn’t
even looked at the incoming numbers. He was—alone on the backseat—oddly absent; he couldn’t even have said that he was truly thinking. Or what about.

  They were just at the rotary on the main street, at the turnoff to the salt marshes. Rose was driving toward the commissariat building that Dupin hadn’t even been to once over the past two days. Céline Cordier would be in one of the interrogation rooms there by now. There were dozens of important things to be done. But not by him.

  “Commissaire Rose—could you let me out here, please? I…”

  Dupin didn’t finish the sentence. Rose tried to meet his gaze in the rearview mirror for a moment. And—he wasn’t sure if he was imagining this—she smiled briefly. As though she had been expecting this and was in complete agreement.

  Instead of answering, she eased off on the gas and pulled to the right-hand side.

  “Your car is parked at the Centre.” Dupin would have had to think hard about that. His car had been parked in so many different places during this case. “Should I ask someone to drive you there?”

  “I’ll call my inspectors.”

  Paul Daeron didn’t even seem to be aware of their conversation.

  Dupin opened the door and got out.

  “Speak soon.” There was a definite smile on Rose’s face now.

  “Speak soon.”

  Dupin slammed the door shut. Commissaire Rose drove off moments later. He had no idea what she meant by “speak soon”—or what he’d meant when he said it back.

  Dupin walked back to the turnoff for the Route des Marais.

  He had arrived here around this time the evening before yesterday. Dupin took his mobile out of his pocket. Before the connection even established, he saw a sign. The same sign they had seen at the picnic area: LONG LOOP with the addition CENTRE DU SEL (20 MIN).

  Dupin only hesitated for a few seconds. Before putting his mobile away again.

  He followed the path that led to the “long loop.” At first he walked past a few houses, across a field. Then, strangely quickly, without warning, the path went straight into the salt marshes. Into that crazy, wonderful world, that bizarre shadowy kingdom with its dwarves, fairies, white virgins, and dragons. Where the whole story had begun. The sun had just disappeared beyond the horizon. For the first time in weeks, clouds appeared. Out of nowhere. Thick, sharp-edged, cotton-wool clouds were arranged at regular intervals like battalions marching past. The rays from the sun that had just gone down were still making their way toward them. Even in the west, the sky may now have been dark blue again and the orange stripes above the horizon very narrow, but around their edges, the clouds seemed to have absorbed every single shade of the spectacular phenomenon: lilac, pink, magenta, violet, orange. Their huge forms still shone bright white. They were eerily reflected in the salt marshes’ tangle of metallic blue pools, seeming to shine of their own accord. They looked like mystical mirrors of the sky. To the right, close to the path, there was a group of tall white pyramids of salt. Twelve or maybe fifteen of them in a row. Like strange monuments, illuminated signs. And suddenly the beguiling smell was there again too. Dupin felt the taste of rich clay, salt, iodine, and violet in his mouth.

  He didn’t walk particularly quickly. He wasn’t in any rush. Not anymore.

  His mobile rang. Reluctantly, he checked the number. He knew he couldn’t just go to ground; there were still a few things to do, and some of them would need to be done by him. When he saw the number he was glad. Very glad. Nolwenn.

  “Bravo, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

  It was wonderful to hear her voice. It felt like there had never been any other case during his career in Brittany so far when he had spoken to her so little.

  “Inspector Kadeg has brought me up to speed on everything.”

  Of course.

  “On the main things at least. You can tell me the details. Come back from your excursion first, in your own time. Come back home.” By her standards, Nolwenn was speaking with great emotion.

  “You were right from the beginning. You were obsessed with the blue barrels! And that was it! The point magique! You had an idée fixe that nothing in the world could distract you from, you were stubborn—a real Breton!”

  Dupin didn’t quite know what to say. But this was definitely a compliment.

  “And then you hunted them down!” The satisfaction in Nolwenn’s voice was almost macabre.

  “Commissaire Rose and I did. We did it together.”

  “I heard. Who would have thought it?!—However: a bep liv, marc’h mat—a bep bro, tud vat. There are good horses in every color, good people in every area. That’s how it is.”

  She had said this cheerfully. Dupin wouldn’t immediately have thought of a horse when he thought of Rose. But even this was meant as a huge compliment, he knew that.

  There was a mysterious pause, which wasn’t Nolwenn’s style at all. There was never anything like this between them.

  Then he realized what she wanted to say. “I’ve got to call him. I know.”

  “Whom do you have to call?” It was perfectly acted.

  “The prefect.”

  “Oh no. You won’t be able to speak to him. But he’s aware the case is over, don’t worry. And he has negotiated with Préfet Trottet that they won’t appear in front of the press officially until tomorrow. He and Trottet are doing it together. You’re aware of course: that big hundred-and-fifty-year celebration of the railway is on in Quimper this evening. He’s the president of the Amis des Chemins de Fer. The big speech this evening. I’ll be headed there myself soon.”

  Of course. It had been a hot topic for weeks. Dupin had even received a VIP invitation. Along with every other commissaire in Finistère. And lots of emails, daily in the last week, always ending with the firm wording: “You are expected.” A hundred and fifty years ago this September, the railway line between the “metropolis” and the “province” had been launched with a fancy party. The very first train from Paris arrived into Quimper. At 8:20. After an endless seventeen-hour-and-twenty-minute journey. The newspapers had been full of articles and historic photographs for weeks. A dirty, small black steam engine was visible, a genuine art nouveau railway station: the perfect idyll of a model railway facility. But Dupin had learned that—unlike today—people hadn’t felt euphoria back then; on the contrary. The “karrigell an ankou,” the carriage of death, “a stupid black monster that gives off smoke”—an “intruder who purports to be a friend” the comments had read. Dupin had only understood it once he’d read what had been written by the then state secretary for the ministry of defense in a confidential memo about the project—which the papers were going to town on: “A railway line between France and Brittany will teach the Bretons French in ten years, it’s more sustainable than the most skilled teachers we could send out there. This alone justifies the cost in the millions!” That had been the declared state aim: make Breton disappear. And not just the language—their entire cultural identity. The railway was to communicate the “ideas of civilization,” or in other words: “civilize the barbarians.” That sounded almost funny today, but it had been deadly serious. Only people who knew stories like this had a chance of understanding the Breton soul, the issues with the “central government,” the deeply conflicted feelings toward Paris and toward what Paris represented. Of course it had turned out very differently from what the state secretary had anticipated. The Bretons had made the smoking black monster theirs and turned the tables. Dupin suspected that this was the secret reason for the scale of the celebrations today. That they had showed the world. Yet again.

  “I’m so glad you were able to close the case in time. This way there’s a better atmosphere. For the party.” Nolwenn sounded serious again and Dupin laughed out loud.

  “You’ve got to get going, Nolwenn. We’ll … talk soon.”

  “Oh yes. The prefect is expecting your call tomorrow morning at seven o’clock. He also asked me to pass on a message: ‘Well done, mon Commissaire.’”

  It did hi
m good to return to his everyday life with its rituals. Even the prefect’s sayings, which usually made Dupin feel a white-hot rage, almost felt soothing. But perhaps that was just because he didn’t need to speak to him in person today.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Dupin hung up.

  He took a deep breath.

  He dialed Riwal’s number.

  “Boss?”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re at the hotel. Inspector Kadeg and I. Commissaire Rose said we—”

  “Go home, Riwal. You and Kadeg. They’ve got everything under control.”

  “Are you sure, boss?”

  “I’m sure. That’s an order. See you on Monday.”

  “You don’t need us tomorrow either?”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday. You wanted to go to the Glénan with your wife to go fishing. The September sea bream. Your boat.”

  Riwal and his wife had been given a used Bénéteau by their parents and parents-in-law for their wedding last year (7.8 meters!), and it meant the world to Riwal. He had remarked at the beginning of the week that it was the last weekend of the summer; he greeted this forecast with the same offhanded certainty with which he might say the sun would rise in the west tomorrow morning. As a fact.

  “All right, boss. That was a tough case.”

  Riwal had phrased this second sentence in his typical fundamentally mysterious tone of voice. Dupin knew he wasn’t expecting a reply.

  * * *

  It was only the conspicuous signs for the nature trail that prevented Dupin getting lost in the twilight and the tangled labyrinth of the salt marshes. Ten minutes later he had reached the Centre du Sel. He approached it from the place where the “small” and “large” loops forked. Off to the side was the picturesque picnic spot where they had had their discussion that afternoon. That already felt like days ago, not hours.

  His car was in the parking lot. Right at the entrance. On Monday his dearly beloved XM would be back and—he was also pleased about this—it would be his last journey in the tiny Peugeot.