Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  Marine crossed her fingers for good luck and continued reading, but she couldn’t concentrate. A few minutes later, Verlaque came back into the living room. “A bus driver recognized her photograph,” he said quickly.

  “That’s a good start.”

  “That officer had the good sense to include a description of what she was wearing that day, including a big pink purse. The bus driver remembered the purse: A few months ago, he went into Longchamp on the Cours Mirabeau, looking for a present for his wife. He did a double take when he saw the prices and walked right out, but he remembered the pink purse.”

  “Thank goodness for elderly fashion victims,” Marine said, pouring herself a glass of water. “So where did Mme d’Arras go?”

  “Rognes.”

  “Really?” For a minute Marine couldn’t remember who had spoken of Rognes, but then remembered the bustling gray-haired Mme Joubert, arranging flowers in church.

  “Officer Schoelcher is sending out a team to ask the villagers if they’ve seen her, but since it’s Sunday that will be difficult—none of the shops will be open. The bus driver says that Mme d’Arras crossed the street and went into the cave cooperative, to buy wine for a friend. The bus driver remembered that the friend’s name is Philomène. I’ve only ever seen that name in nineteenth-century novels.”

  “Philomène? But it was my neighbor, Philomène Joubert, who spoke about Rognes yesterday. She grew up there.”

  “How old is she?”

  “My guess is between sixty-five and seventy-five.”

  “So they could be friends. Could you talk to Mme Joubert? This afternoon, even?”

  Marine set her glass down on the kitchen counter. “I’ll go right now.” She was happy to leave the apartment and try to walk off her anxiety. Why she hadn’t told Antoine about the lump—the “pea,” she secretly called it—she didn’t know. Over the telephone, Sylvie had suggested reasons for Marine’s silence: that Marine didn’t want to be weak, especially in front of Verlaque; that Marine was a martyr and preferred to suffer through this on her own; that Marine was avoiding facing her own angoisse by not telling Antoine…. But Marine didn’t agree with Sylvie’s ideas, except for the martyr one, which she didn’t dare admit to. She had learned to trust her instincts, and her instincts had told her to keep it a secret just a little longer.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” Marine said.

  “Oh, it was obvious that you have something on your mind,” Philomène Joubert said. “I’m good at reading faces.” She smiled kindly and poured Marine a cup of coffee. “What is it, dear?”

  “It’s Mme d’Arras,” Marine replied. “Pauline, your old friend.”

  “Ah bon?”

  “She’s been missing since Friday afternoon.”

  Mme Joubert made the sign of the cross.

  “She took the bus to Rognes….”

  “Rognes?” Mme Joubert said quickly. “That’s where we grew up!”

  “Yes, and she told the bus driver that she needed to buy wine for her friend…Philomène.”

  “Moi? But that’s crazy. We haven’t had a meal together in years. Decades, even. I do see her around Aix from time to time, naturally.”

  Marine nodded. She couldn’t step out of her front door without running into someone she knew from the university, or her childhood, or from other social contacts. “So you didn’t see each other on Friday?”

  “No, of course not.” Mme Joubert pushed her coffee cup toward the middle of the table and crossed her thick, muscular arms. “But where could she be? La pauvre!”

  “That’s what the police, and M. d’Arras, would like to know. Do you have any ideas? Does she have family in Rognes?”

  Mme Joubert shook her head. “No. Her sister Natalie lives here, in Aix, as does Natalie’s son, Christophe. The third Aubanel daughter—they were beauties, they were—is a nun near Narbonne. A Carmelite.”

  “M. d’Arras thinks that his wife has Alzheimer’s, but she refuses to be tested. Is there something from her past that would make her want to return to Rognes?” Marine asked.

  Mme Joubert stayed silent for a few seconds, looking at Marine. Then she leaned toward Marine and whispered, “Perhaps you should speak to her sister Natalie.”

  “Christophe’s mother?” Marine asked. “I know Christophe; in fact, I saw him on Friday night, at a party. He mentioned that Pauline d’Arras was phoning her sister—Christophe’s mother—and upsetting her.”

  Philomène Joubert sighed. “Poor Natalie. As if her life hasn’t been hard enough. Pauline was always such a pest. I now know, looking back, that I played with Pauline because she was rich, and pretty. I was honored to have such a fancy friend. But later, when we were in our early teens, I learned not to trust her. We stopped seeing each other when I met my husband; I was eighteen.”

  “What does Pauline say to Natalie that’s so upsetting?” Marine asked. “Why has Natalie’s life been difficult?”

  Mme Joubert sat back. “Clothilde and Pauline Aubanel were beauties. Their most striking features were their white-blond hair and clear blue eyes, just like their mother’s and father’s. They were petite, and graceful, and we all wanted to be like them. They were like little dolls.”

  “And Natalie?” Marine asked. “She wasn’t like them, I take it.”

  “Have you noticed your friend Christophe’s hair?”

  Marine nodded. “Jet black.”

  “As is his mother’s, and mine, before it went gray,” Philomène said, touching her head. “Natalie Chazeau has big brown eyes. And she’s tall, and strong. I’m not saying she was fat, but she was a big girl, not at all what you’d call petite.”

  “Mme Joubert, are you saying that Natalie had a different father?” Marine asked. “Siblings can look very different, even when born of the same mother and father.”

  Mme Joubert again made the sign of the cross. “But we all knew that wasn’t the case. Natalie was clearly her mother’s favorite. I always thought it was because Natalie was the oldest child, but one day when I was home in bed with the flu, I overheard my mother speaking with a neighbor in our kitchen. The neighbor had lived in Paris during the war, working as a maid, and Mme Aubanel—her name was Francine Lignon at the time—was at the Sorbonne in Paris. It was before she came back to Rognes and married M. Aubanel, who had been her childhood sweetheart. They were to be married when they finished lycée, but Francine got cold feet. She broke off the engagement and moved to Paris to study after high school. That was in 1939, and then the war began….”

  “And Paris was invaded,” Marine said.

  “Yes, and so Francine was stuck, so to speak, in Paris. But she came back to Rognes, in 1943…” Mme Joubert leaned in. “Enceinte.”

  “Pregnant, with Natalie,” Marine suggested.

  “Yes.” Mme Joubert sat back and allowed Marine to take in this fact that she so obviously thought was shocking.

  “But that happened all the time, didn’t it?” Marine said. “Francine had an affair with a soldier, and then perhaps he died.”

  “He died all right, and he was a soldier. But he wasn’t one of ours. Sale boche!”

  “A German? But the black hair…”

  Mme Joubert laughed. “I guess not all the Germans in Paris were blond and blue-eyed. Just last year, my husband and I took our first airplane ride, to Venice—it was a gift from our children, God bless them. And do you know what? The Italians there are blond and blue-eyed. Some are even redheads. Not with jet-black hair, as the Italian immigrants have here in Provence. I’d look more like an Italian than they would.”

  “And how do you know that Natalie’s father was a German?” Marine asked. She was careful not to use the word boche. The war was so long ago, and it bothered her to hear that expression.

  “Our neighbor, the one who was visiting that day, was a maid for one of the German headquarters, in a mansion that they took over near the Parc Monceau. This German officer was a bigwig, and she saw him with Francine all th
e time…. They were very cozy together, if you get my drift.”

  “And you’re sure it’s true?”

  “Confirmed by Pauline Aubanel when we were young girls. She told me everything. She had snooped around her mother’s wardrobe and found letters and a photograph.”

  “That’s when you knew not to trust her,” Marine offered.

  “Yes.”

  Marine closed her eyes. “That story is heartbreaking.”

  “Hmmph!” Mme Joubert said, banging the table with her fist.

  Marine didn’t try to argue with the elderly woman. “But why would Pauline bother her sister Natalie over something that happened to their mother?”

  Mme Joubert shrugged. “Pauline had a nasty streak. I have no idea why, but she was just like that.”

  Neither woman finished her coffee, which had gone cold. They chatted for a few minutes about the weather and the new shopping complex at the bottom of the Cours Mirabeau that had just been built and that both women detested. On the way back to Verlaque’s apartment, Marine walked as if dazed. Since it was a Sunday, the streets were quiet, except for the odd person window-shopping, or tourists wandering with guidebooks in hand, looking at the fountains or oratory statues that were built into the corners of Aix’s medieval and Renaissance buildings. Marine thought of Sylvie, still away on holiday, and missed her. One night in July, she and Sylvie had stayed up late, after Sylvie had tucked Charlotte into bed, and watched a documentary—Les enfants d’amour—children born to French mothers and German fathers during World War II. Both women had cried during the program, Sylvie finally putting a box of Kleenex between them and pouring two generous tumblers of whiskey. The program’s host, a famous historian, explained that more than two hundred thousand children were born in France of these liaisons, most of them out of love, and that a million people now descended from them. “That would be Christophe,” Sophie whispered to herself as she went up the Rue Gaston Saporta.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Oh Voleur, Oh Voleur!

  Bruno Paulik held open the doors for Jules Schoelcher. “Is it an unwritten rule that there’s never enough parking at a hospital?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking the same thing, sir,” replied Schoelcher. “While my mom was upstairs giving birth to my youngest sister, my dad was cruising around the hospital parking lot, trying to find a parking spot. My mom was hopping mad. It’s become one of their favorite stories.”

  Paulik laughed. “How many are you?”

  “I’m the second oldest of six.”

  “So am I.”

  They approached a busy reception desk, and Paulik leaned over the counter to speak to the receptionist. “We’re here to meet with Dr. D’Almeida. I was told to report here first, since she wasn’t sure where she would be this morning.”

  Without looking up, the receptionist began talking. Paulik looked at Schoelcher and shrugged; he hadn’t noticed that she was wearing earphones and had someone on the phone. She arranged for the appointment and then took another call while the two policemen waited. After she took a third call, Paulik began to look around for another secretary. A woman came behind the reception area, carrying files and loudly chewing gum. “Excuse me, I’m Commissioner Bruno Paulik, and we were told to report here to find out where our interview room is,” he said to her. The woman looked at him, bored, said nothing, and, setting the files beside the phone receptionist, turned on her heel and walked away. The phone receptionist ended her call, and Paulik reached over and gently removed her headset.

  “Hey, what do you think you are doing?” she asked.

  “Surely someone who is physically present, less than a meter away from you, takes precedence over someone on the other side of town on the telephone. I’m Commissioner Paulik—”

  “And I’m Carla Bruni.”

  Paulik ignored her comment. “My colleague Officer Schoelcher and I were told to report here. We’re to meet with Dr. D’Almeida.”

  “And what am I supposed to do for you?” she asked, reaching for her headset.

  Paulik put his large hand on the headset. “You’re supposed to tell us where to go to meet the doctor. This is a big place.”

  “I wasn’t told about this.”

  “Could you please make a phone call to find out where the doctor is?”

  The receptionist sighed as the gum-chewing woman came back behind the reception desk with another stack of files.

  “Hey, Odile,” the telephone receptionist said. “Could you tell these guys where to go?” She smiled at her play on words and then answered the telephone.

  Odile rolled her eyes, but she did slowly pick up another telephone and walk away from the counter with it. In a few seconds, she was back. “She’s up on the third floor, geriatric wing.”

  One elevator was being repaired and the other had an orderly with a stretcher waiting for it, so the two policemen took the stairs. They followed the signs for the geriatric wing, zigzagging down halls and through doors.

  At the reception area, a duplicate of the one on the ground level, two similar-looking receptionists stood behind the counter, chatting.

  “Excuse me,” Paulik said, “we’re looking for Dr. D’Almeida.”

  “She’s not here,” the taller one answered, and then turned to her colleague and continued talking.

  An elderly man approached the counter. “Excuse me, I’m waiting in the waiting room for my wife to have an exam, and there’s a woman in a wheelchair who needs to visit the toilet.”

  The two receptionists looked at each other and said nothing.

  “Um,” the man continued, “do you think you could help her?”

  “Us? You need a nurse.”

  “Oh, I’m very sorry. Of course.”

  Paulik looked at the woman in disbelief and was about to speak when a tall black woman wearing white approached them.

  “Mme Fournier in the waiting room needs to go pee-pee,” one of the secretaries yelled.

  “Then call a nurse right away,” the handsome black woman answered shortly. “And in future, Marie-Pierre, please say that the patient needs to use the toilet, and in a quieter voice.” She turned to Paulik and Schoelcher. “I’m sorry about that. I assume you’re the police. I’m Dr. D’Almeida.” They shook hands, and she said, “Please come this way.”

  “The receptionists here are a far cry from professional,” Paulik said as they walked down the hall. “At least the four we’ve just had to deal with.”

  “I know,” the doctor answered. “And they’re planning to go on strike, so it’s been even worse. I’m afraid that the brunt of the workload will fall on the shoulders of the underpaid nurses, as usual.” She opened the door to a small office with a desk and four chairs, and a small potted plant in the corner. The room’s drabness was balanced by the view through the window: downtown Aix and the steeple of the Cathedral.

  “Please sit down,” she said. “We were devastated by the death of Mlle Montmory. We did everything we could.”

  “I’m sure you did,” Paulik answered. “Officer Schoelcher was here, guarding her room, and he said as much.”

  “I thought I recognized you,” Dr. D’Almeida said, smiling for the first time. “You’re out of uniform today. I’m sorry I didn’t notice.”

  “It’s no problem,” Schoelcher replied.

  “I can only assume that you are both here because you want to ask about the possibility of foul play,” Dr. D’Almeida said.

  Paulik nodded. “Mlle Montmory’s attacker is still out there somewhere. If she had lived, she could have identified him. We’re fairly certain that the attacker was someone she knew.”

  “As Officer Schoelcher can verify, only authorized hospital staff were in and out of Mlle Montmory’s room,” the doctor said. “We’re in the business of saving lives here, not killing people.”

  “I understand. Call it professional paranoia if you will, but I need to cover all the angles. Was there anyone present in the room when the young woman went into cardi
ac arrest?” Paulik asked.

  Both the doctor and Schoelcher shook their heads.

  “We all came running,” Dr. D’Almeida said, “when we heard the alarm of her life-support machine go off.”

  “Who was there?” Paulik asked.

  “Well,” Dr. D’Almeida replied, “myself, the head nurse, an intern…and…”

  “Dr. Franck Charnay,” Schoelcher said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Dr. D’Almeida said.

  Paulik looked over and saw that Schoelcher had read the name from a little orange spiral-bound notebook. He silently noted the young officer’s thoroughness. He said, “We’ll speak to Dr. Charnay today.” He hoped that Verlaque would have had time to visit the doctor at his office in downtown Aix.

  “You’ll find him cooperative, I’m sure,” Dr. D’Almeida replied.

  “As you’ve all been,” Paulik said. “And if there was foul play…”

  “How would it have been done, do you mean?” the doctor asked. “A murder?”

  Paulik nodded.

  “Smothering the patient with a pillow would be the quickest and quietest way, but her life-support machine would have alerted us immediately, thus trapping the murderer.”

  “And by drugging her?” Paulik asked.

  “Yes,” answered Dr. D’Almeida. “By putting any number of drugs into her IV, such as potassium. That would be almost an instant death.”

  “And a not-so-instant method?” Paulik asked.

  “Air.”

  “Excusez-moi?”

  “Air injected into the veins with an empty syringe. It stops the heart from pumping. That could take ten minutes or so.”

  “Long enough for the murderer to get into his car and drive away…” Paulik said.

  “But we checked…” Schoelcher said.

  “As did we,” Dr. D’Almeida agreed.

  “And those drugs could be traced in an autopsy?” Paulik asked.