The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Jean-Luc had not married, he had no children. There were some in the village who were not aware of his occasional trips to Marseille and would say he was un pédé. He was glad to let them say what they would. He had never cared, nor did he care now for the wagging tongues of village idiots. His solitary life had suited him well. No responsibilities, no time owed to any but himself. And when he died, his land would go to the state. His only living relative was his middle-aged niece who would have no use for it.

  His eyes followed the gently undulating rows of vines as they clung to his little hill. He thought of the years of work he and his family before him had put into this ground so that it would someday belong to a stranger. Perhaps, even, to a foreigner. A lifetime of working the vines, coaxing the grapes, praying for weather when he’d never even prayed for his mother’s life. Or his brother’s.

  Jean-Luc picked up a small square of cotton cloth and began buffing and polishing the leather. He remembered his father telling of the time at the end of the last century when the phylloxera insect had ravaged all the vineyards throughout France and Europe, resulting in the near-destruction of their centuries-old livelihood. He looked out across his land to where he could easily see the Dernier farmhouse, a thin curl of smoke seeping from its one chimney. And then, his father had said, a curious thing had happened. American vinestocks had been grafted onto the older European stocks. Resistant to pestilence, the American vines saved French wine, saved, in fact, the whole European wine industry. Jean-Luc’s hands were still for a moment as he gazed toward Domaine St-Buvard. The fragile, but higher quality French vines had been made invulnerable by the brash and sturdy American vine.

  He shook his head slowly, his hands steadily working the leather again, his eyes never leaving the wisps of blue-gray smoke as they emerged from his neighbor’s chimney, and escaped into the Provençal sky.

  2

  “They are finished with us for now.” Laurent pulled on his heavy Blackwatch jacket. He brushed his long hair from his face and scanned the living room as if searching for something. Maggie sat, curled up on the couch with Petit-Four nestled at her feet. It had been nearly four days since the murder. Four days of handing over their house, their private lives, to the probing, persistent Aix-en-Provence police. Maggie’s parents and niece had left the day before for a month’s visit in Paris with friends. Maggie had felt proud of herself for trading in her flannel nightgown for sweat clothes this morning. She’d been tempted not to get up at all.

  “Will he come back?” she asked.

  “He?” Laurent scooped up a packet of cigarettes from on top of the bookcase in the living room and stuffed them into his jacket side pocket.

  “The killer.”

  Laurent was standing with his hand on the handle of the French doors. Maggie could see the two frisky hounds just outside the door jumping higher and higher in anticipation of their daily morning walk. Laurent sighed and gave Maggie a look of disapproval as if seeing her outfit for the first time.

  “Why would he come back?” he asked, frowning.

  “They always come back,” she said. “They always return to the scene of the crime.”

  Laurent opened the door and petted the rambunctious dogs. He turned back to Maggie. “You will get the lamb at the charcuterie? Oui?” He smiled sympathetically at her and then blew her a kiss. “Not to worry, chérie,” he said as he stepped outside. “He will not come back.”

  Maggie watched his broad back as he headed off to the vineyard with that lumbering-yet-light walk of his, the dogs leaping and cavorting at his side. She watched him for a moment, the black and forest green of his jacket blending into the landscape, and imagined that his talent for stealth had served him well in his former life.

  She pulled Petit-Four up into her lap to better fondle its curly head and let the sadness and loneliness wash over her. She missed her mother, she missed Grace, she missed Connor. She looked out the wide living room window where the main sweep of the vineyard was visible and watched Laurent become smaller and smaller. She even missed Laurent. He’d been more than a little distant lately. And, as cool as Laurent normally was, one tended to notice small variances.

  Maggie stood up, depositing the poodle back onto the couch and padded into the kitchen. She poured a cup of coffee for herself, although Laurent had made it so strong it was as likely to cause epileptic seizures as wake her up. She poured a good measure of cream into the cup to soften the blow. Out the little kitchen window over the sink, she could see Danielle Marceau walking up the gravel pathway in the front of the house.

  I’m not up for this, Maggie thought wearily, as she smiled and waved to her neighbor through the window. She set her coffee cup down on the dining room table and went to open the door. Danielle’s hair looked like it had just sprung from a beauty salon’s wig room, her nails were lacquered pink to offset the lavender knit pantsuit she was wearing under a simple, off-white wool cape.

  Maggie began to feel even more of a shambles than before. Danielle must’ve started working on herself sometime last night, Maggie thought in amazement as she invited her neighbor in.

  “Entrez-vous, Danielle,” Maggie said, hoping she sounded cheerful and welcoming. “Veuillez, entrer.”

  The older woman stepped gingerly over the threshold. In her hands, she held a small wicker basket containing a glass casserole dish.

  “Couscous,” Danielle said, gesturing shyly with the casserole dish.

  “Oh, Danielle, merci, merci. C’est très gentil!” Maggie took the casserole dish and led the way inside to the living room. “Je vous en prie, asseyez-vous, please sit down.” Maggie motioned for Danielle to sit. Danielle Marceau unbuttoned her cape and draped it across the back of the chair. She looked around the room as if expecting to see corpses fall out of the closets.

  Maggie put the aromatic couscous in the kitchen, knowing Laurent would consider it a welcome addition to tonight’s lamb dinner. Quickly, she filled another cup with Laurent’s killer coffee, poured cream in a pitcher and placed these, the sugar bowl and a small plate of cookies on a large tray.

  “How is Eduard?” Maggie called from the kitchen, noticing that she was actually starting to feel the tiniest bit better.

  Danielle was still examining the walls for bloodstains as Maggie entered the room with the tray.

  “Oh, fine,” Danielle said, breathily. “He is very good, merci, Maggie.”

  Maggie handed her the coffee cup and wondered if Eduard put his timid wife up to these visits. Surely, she was too shy to initiate them herself?

  “Merci again for the couscous, Danielle,” Maggie said, sipping her coffee. “Laurent will be très happy. And the cassoulet you sent over day before yesterday was parfait. Really yummy.”

  Danielle smiled happily, even prettily, Maggie thought. She found herself feeling sorry for this country wife of a vigneron, whose role in life seemed to be to entertain and please, to dress well and always to act with propriety. Maggie had no doubt Danielle would have chosen a much more private, less social life for herself.

  “I am glad your family enjoys it,” Danielle said, her eyes flitting from the framed pictures to hanging tapestries on the living room walls.

  “It was terrible, n’est-ce pas?” Maggie said.

  Danielle looked quickly at Maggie. “Eduard is telling me very little about what happened.” She shook her head. “Rien,” she said. Nothing.

  God, Maggie thought suddenly, she thinks Connor bought it in our living room or something.

  “He was killed in the cave,” Maggie explained, pointing in the direction of the kitchen. “Hit on the head and drowned in a vat of wine.”

  “He is drowning to death?” Danielle stared toward the kitchen.

  “Well, no.” Maggie bit into an almond cookie. “The cops think the bash on the head is what finished him off.” She looked quickly at Danielle to see if this talk was upsetting her, but it didn’t seem to be.

  Danielle leaned back into her chair, her coffee in her hand
s. It was the most relaxed that Maggie had ever seen her.

  “They asked Eduard many questions,” Danielle said.

  “I’m not surprised.” Maggie snuggled back into the couch and Petit-Four immediately claimed her lap. “They questioned the whole village.”

  “They did not talk with me.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “Perhaps they only questioned people who they think have killed Monsieur MacKenzie?”

  “You mean only suspects?” Maggie shook her head. “They questioned my parents too and they certainly weren’t suspects.” She fed a cookie to the dog. “They questioned me for that matter,” she said, smiling at Danielle.

  Danielle smiled back.

  “Anyway,” Maggie said, brushing cookie crumbs from the wool lap rug on the couch, “it looks like the really invasive part of their investigation is over.”

  “Comment?”

  Maggie gestured once more in the direction of the kitchen. “They’ve finally left. They’ve been here for the last four days. Didn’t you know that?”

  Danielle smiled politely and shook her head.

  “Yeah, it’s been really nice.”

  “Yes?”

  “No, Danielle,” Maggie laughed. “It’s been the pits.” Maggie’s eye was caught by a movement outside. She saw the diminished figure of Laurent conferring in the distance with another figure she assumed must be Jean-Luc. She frowned as she watched them, their dogs bounding and leaping around them.

  “...then who it will be?” Danielle was asking.

  “I’m sorry, Danielle.” Maggie turned back to her guest. “What were you saying?”

  “If the police know who is killing Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I think they’ve got some ideas, probably,” she said. “And maybe even some leads. Who knows?” Maggie’s eyes darted back outside to the two figures in the vineyard. “Maybe they even have some evidence that they aren’t telling us about.”

  “Evidence?” Danielle looked decidedly nervous all of a sudden, Maggie thought.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure,” Maggie said, watching the woman slowly lose the relaxation and calm she seemed to have had earlier.

  Danielle placed her coffee cup on the flat, square table between them and perched on the edge of her chair.

  “Maggie,” she said earnestly, licking her lips and looking around the room as if to confirm that they were truly alone. “I have information for the police about Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  “You do?” Maggie raised an eyebrow.

  Danielle nodded, and a silver crescent wave of hair escaped her perfect coif and grazed her cheek. She replaced the hair deftly with her hand.

  “They did not ask me,” she said, by way of explanation. “I would have told them, yes?” She looked down at her cooling coffee. “But they did not ask me.”

  Maggie placed her own coffee cup down on the table and leaned forward. “Danielle, didn’t you tell Eduard?”

  “Bien sûr!” The woman’s head jerked up. She looked at Maggie for one naked second and then looked away. “Of course,” she said more calmly.

  “But he didn’t think it a very good theory,” Maggie said.

  “Comment?”

  “Eduard didn’t like your idea.”

  Danielle nodded. “I know some things,” she said, her hands beginning to tremble.

  Maggie frowned. She knows things that Eduard doesn’t know? That seems highly unlikely.

  But she smiled encouragingly at the woman.“What is it, Danielle?” she asked. “What do you know?”

  Danielle waved a hand in the air and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was smiling bravely.

  “Celà ne fait rien,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. What matters...” She took in a long, steady breath, “...is that I know who killed Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  “Who?” Maggie asked in an affect of earnestness, leaning toward Danielle conspiratorially. “Who did it, do you think?”

  Danielle gripped her coffee cup and stared into it. “Gaston Lasalle,” she said in clear, solemn tones.

  Maggie blinked, then relaxed and leaned back into the couch.

  “I know,” she said to Danielle. “He’s my first guess too. You know him, do you?”

  “He is an evil man,” Danielle said, her eyes once again straying around the room. “A man of much hate and...” She hunted for the word. She looked apologetically at Maggie. “...vengeance.”

  “His father was the one they hung on our property, wasn’t he?”

  Danielle looked as if she had been slapped. “You know this?” she asked.

  “Well, I...they told us when we first came here.”

  “C’était horrible,” she said, her eyes staring off over Maggie’s head. “C’était un meurtre horrible.” It was a horrible murder.

  “How old were you when it happened?” Maggie asked gently.

  “Ten,” she said. “I was a girl of ten.”

  “Yeah, well, in any case, it can’t be Gaston, you know?” Maggie said. “I mean, as much as we’d both like it. And I agree with you, je suis d’accord, he fits the motive criterion perfectly.”

  Danielle frowned. “I am not understanding you,” she said. “He is the killer.”

  “Well, no, Danielle,” Maggie said, reaching for another cookie. “He can’t be. He wasn’t even here that night. Ironic, huh? Everyone in St-Buvard, practically, was here, except for the one person who’s the most likely to have done it.” Maggie offered another crumb to the dog.

  “Maggie, you are wrong.” Danielle shook her head, nearly spilling the coffee she held in her hand. “Lasalle was here that night. I saw him. Everyone saw him. Your husband threw him out of the house.” Her eyes widened for emphasis. “Gaston Lasalle was here.”

  3

  Maggie let out the clutch slowly and felt the engine shudder and die. She hadn’t been thrilled with the used Renault but they couldn’t afford to keep shelling out three hundred dollars a week to rent a nicer vehicle. She turned the key again and this time the engine engaged and roared to life. She still hated this car, she told herself, as she pushed the stick shift into reverse and eased out the clutch until she had backed out of their driveway. She couldn’t help but think of Grace’s beautiful, sleek Mercedes as it had looked in her drive on Thanksgiving Day. Regal, superior, luxurious―with no funky clutch.

  Laurent had not returned from the fields after Danielle Marceau had left. Maggie guessed that he had been persuaded by Jean-Luc to go into town for a quick, before-dîner nip or two.

  Maggie settled back into the cracked upholstery of the old Renault and concentrated on driving to the village without a mechanical incident. When Danielle had told her the news about Lasalle being in her house on Thanksgiving, she had wanted to race right out to the fields and confront Laurent. Why hadn’t he told her? But, in the end, she knew it didn’t matter. She knew what Laurent would say: that he hadn’t wanted to worry her, that he thought he had taken care of it...and none of it would help to soften or cool her anger. The fact was, Gaston had been there that night after all.

  Carefully, Maggie negotiated one of the first of three switchbacks on the road to the village. She remembered the shouting she’d heard when she was upstairs talking with Madame Renoir. Obviously, the commotion had been Laurent escorting Lasalle out the door on his ear. Doesn’t this change things? she wondered. Isn’t Gaston Lasalle the police’s number one suspect?

  Maggie drove slowly into the center of town, her eyes searching the outdoor tables of Le Canard for a familiar Blackwatch jacket. Perhaps she should talk to the police herself? She hadn’t mentioned Lasalle’s aggressive behavior to them before because, of course, she hadn’t thought he could be involved in Connor’s death.

  This would change everything. Danielle was right. Of course, Lasalle was their man.

  There were no parking spots in front of the Dulcie’s charcuterie so Maggie parked on the opposite side of the fountain in the village square. She wasn�
�t sure it was a real parking spot, but she wasn’t worried about meter maids.

  As she opened the shop door of the charcuterie, her mind was a jumble of questions and murder scenarios. Normally, she shrank back from the inevitable rows of hanging pigs, their dainty feet pointing upwards, their large, nasty snouts visible from any direction in the shop. But this time, she pushed past them as if they were no more offensive than a beaded curtain in a gypsy’s parlor.

  The shop was crowded this afternoon, and Maggie found herself idly inspecting fat snakes of sausages coiled into speckled pyramids as she waited her turn: Toulouse, Cumberland, and Andouille. The five women customers in the store chattered away, with Maggie able to pick out the words “Connor Mackenzie” and “les américains.” It occurred to Maggie that they probably grouped Laurent under this label too, although, of course, they knew he was French. Aware that they hadn’t noticed her arrival, and intending to keep it that way for as long as possible, Maggie made herself unobtrusive next to a particularly unpleasant brace of plucked pheasants that swung conveniently at face height.

  She recognized none of the women in the shop except Madame Dulcie, who was cheerfully and efficiently waiting on her customers, wrapping up one bloody purchase while listening to the order from the next in line. Maggie couldn’t help but note how differently this shop was run from Madame Renoir’s boulangerie, which was friendly and warm but always disorganized, as if the baker had just opened up shop and wasn’t quite in control of things. Maggie smiled. It was one of the things she liked best about Madame Renoir, she decided.

  “Ah! Madame Dernier!” Madame Dulcie spoke sharply, but not unpleasantly. Several heads swiveled toward Maggie and all conversation ceased.

  Maggie smiled. Madame Dulcie’s flint-sharp eyes examined her intently.

  “Bonjour,” Maggie said, more to the whole shop than Madame Dulcie.

  A few of the women nodded to her, (perhaps a little curtly? Maggie wondered.) Madame Dulcie pushed a wrapped parcel across the counter to one of the women. The butcher’s thin arms looked skeletal to Maggie, but hard and strong, too. With her lean, angular face and high cheekbones, she looked like an unkempt Duchess of Windsor dispensing pork ribs and lamb brisket to the poor.