The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  The priest’s voice droned on and so did Marie’s moans. Maggie looked at Brigitte’s coffin and tried to remember the woman inside. Tried to remember her smile, her coy affection with Uncle August, her instant, comfortable connection with Maggie. And when René threw the first clod of dirt onto the coffin, Maggie felt without mistake, the first shock wave of the mistral’s advent.

  2

  Early the next week, Maggie paid a visit to the restaurateur in Aix recommended to her by Uncle August. She loved to spend time in Aix and had shopped there frequently with Grace during their two years together.

  Today, as Maggie drove the route alone and parked her car, she reminded herself that this was the way it was going to be from now on. Her, alone, without Grace. Further conversations with Grace on the subject had only proved frustrating to Maggie. Grace had been enigmatic about her feelings on leaving St-Buvard. Maggie knew that Grace wanted to go. Before it had always been Maggie unable to reconcile herself to this foreign land, Maggie resistant to try the new foods, adapt to the customs, learn the language, and Grace who was as comfortable in her castle in the French countryside as if she’d been born there. But now Grace was leaving all the foreignness for a tract mansion in a tract subdivision. With Designer Krogers down the street and perfectly-understandable television every night. She was leaving the life that made you work so hard for just a little for the life that put you to sleep.

  This last thought surprised Maggie. Up until now she would have believed that the better life was in America -- anywhere in America. But now that she was faced with watching her support system fly first-class back home to the States, she wasn’t so sure. Sure, it was comfortable and easy there. But, maybe, Maggie found herself thinking, I’m a little young yet for it to be so easy. Maybe I can reserve that for my old age and, for now, take my adventures a little on the complicated side.

  Buoyed with what, for her, was a totally new idea and feeling, Maggie swung into the restaurant, La Bonne Idee and, with a confidence she hadn’t felt in months, asked the måitre d for the owner and chef.

  3

  May God forgive me; have mercy on me. Finally, forgive me for the terrible crimes I have committed.

  Marie felt the pain shoot up into her hips from her knees but would not shift her position to relieve the agony. She had been kneeling in the empty church for a little under three hours, her head pressed against the prayer bench in front of her, her hands squeezed in a tight clasp at her chest.

  Have you left me, Lord? When I have defended this marriage to everyone, my own René, and you knew, my God, you allowed, the monstrosities to occur within that union. Why is this your answer to me, God? You are the hand that has murdered my daughter. You let her live in agony, you allowed her to die brutally. You still demand my love. Who are you? Who are you? And who have you helped me to become?

  The tears flowed again with Marie’s sobs echoing up to the top of the ancient rafters.

  4

  “So, you’re saying it’s all in the wrist?” Maggie scribbled down everything the man was saying to her and wished she’d brought a tape recorder.

  The great chef shrugged and said:

  “You must have the right ingredients, of course.”

  Of course, you idiot, Maggie smiled thinly at him.

  “But the secret to the perfect omelet,” she said, still writing. “After one has assembled the right ingredients, is to fold the eggs by using short, sharp jerks of the omelet pan.”

  “More or less,” the man said.

  I’ll wing it, Maggie thought, closing her notebook.

  “You’ve been a great help,” she said. “I must thank Monsieur Schworm so much for this introduction.”

  The restaurateur did not respond.

  “I will, of course, reference and source every contributor to my book,” Maggie said, trying to remember past which maze of tables was the exit. “And your restaurant, too.”

  The man shrugged.

  “Well,” Maggie said as she got to her feet and extended her hand, “Thanks again and you can kiss my ass, Monsieur.”

  The man stood too, his eyes startled.

  “It’s an American idiom,” Maggie explained, smiling. “I hope it translated okay. My French isn’t all that good.” Asshole.

  “Of course, of course,” the man said, watching Maggie with unsure eyes now. “I will show you out.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Once on the street outside, Maggie jammed her notebook into her bag and let out a loud sigh. The man had been cold and egotistical from the start, and totally convinced that Maggie would somehow winkle his precious recipes from him, thereby ensuring the collapse of his restaurant’s success.

  What a waste of time, she thought. Not eager to drive back to St-Buvard so soon, Maggie settled in at a nearby café and ordered up a café creme. She pulled out her notebook and scanned her notes. It was around 4 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and the café and the street in front of it were busy. Maggie enjoyed the noise and the movement. When her coffee came, she sank back into her chair and just let the hum of her surroundings engulf her.

  She thought of Laurent and how loving he had been last night. They still hadn’t had a fight and it had been over a week now. He continued to cook and spend most of his time in the vineyard, and she refrained from observing him too closely in the kitchen or complaining about his spending most of his time in the vineyard.

  Suddenly, Maggie saw someone she knew in the crowd. Madeleine Dupre wore a pale lavender jogging suit with little gold slippers. She was definitely not jogging. A large black patent leather shopping bag hung from one shoulder as she sauntered past.

  Without thinking, Maggie threw down the money for her coffee, gathered up her purse and notes, and followed her.

  Surprised at how easy it was to keep Madeleine in view without being detected, Maggie kept a good distance between them. Madeleine stopped briefly to look at a strawberry vendor’s selection but turned away without buying. She walked to the end of the street, then turned up a tree-lined avenue with elegant apartments fronting both sides.

  Maggie paused at a kiosk selling original watercolors of Provençal street life and watched Madeleine hurry up the first set of stone steps and disappear behind the glossy double doors of the nearest apartment building.

  Bedard never said I couldn’t talk to people, she reasoned. She looked up at the street-facing balcony and saw the slim set of French doors open and Madeleine emerge onto the balcony. She was smoking a cigarette and seemed to be talking to someone.

  Cautiously, Maggie crossed the street and entered the apartment building. Inside, the foyer was lined with highly-polished paneling and a line of brass mailboxes with glittering name plates affixed to each one. There was only one listed as “Docteur.” Before she could lose her nerve, Maggie climbed the stairs to the first landing and rapped on the door. Within seconds, it was opened to reveal the homely, kind-faced man that had been with Madeleine at the funeral. He smiled at Maggie.

  “Oui?”

  Oh, God, she had forgotten about the language-thing. What if he didn’t speak English?

  “Docteur Dupre?” Maggie said. Over the man’s shoulder, she could see Madeleine, still on the balcony. “My name is Maggie Dernier. I don’t...I don’t suppose you speak English?”

  The man grinned outright and Maggie felt herself relax.

  “A little, yes,” he said. “But my wife, she is very much better, I think, Madame Dernier. Won’t you...?” He opened the door and invited her inside the little apartment.

  “Oh, thank you,” Maggie said, stepping inside onto a hand-made Aubusson Chinese rug. She caught her image in a large gilt-framed oval mirror hanging in the foyer. “I am...was a friend of Brigitte’s and I saw you and Madame Dupre at the funeral on Saturday...”

  “Qui est-ce, Richard?” Madeleine stepped in off the balcony and Maggie was able to see her clearly for the first time. She looked like a cross between Grace Kelley and a younger Cybil Shepherd, Magg
ie thought. Gorgeous in a pale, wispy blonde sort of way. Maggie thought she could almost see the blue veins underneath the alabaster skin stretched tautly across her cheeks. I’d need Grace here to confirm it, Maggie thought, but I think Madame Madeleine has had a little cosmetic surgery.

  “A friend of Brigitte’s, chérie,” her husband responded, ushering Maggie into the comfortable and sunny salon.

  “Brigitte?” Madeleine frowned prettily and extended her hand to Maggie. “You are Americaine, yes?” she said.

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “I know you must think this is strange but I just needed to talk to someone who knew Brigitte really well, and her folks, her mother and father, I mean, are still just so upset...” God, Maggie thought. Am I prattling?

  “Non, non,” Madeleine said, still holding Maggie’s hand. “Please sit down. I am so glad you have come. So glad to meet another friend of Brigitte’s.” Maggie saw tears glittering in Madeleine’s eyes.

  “And I am very happy to be leaving my wife in your care,” Richard said as he picked up his lab coat. “She is needing to talk, I think, and your visit is...right away the good thing.” He looked at Madeleine with a have I got that right? sort of look and both women burst out laughing in spite of themselves. “My English is being very bad,” he admitted sheepishly.

  “No, it’s great,” Maggie said, noticing that the manner of the man’s love and attention to his wife was reminding her of how Laurent used to respond to her. “You should get an earful of my French!” she said.

  Richard kissed his wife and gave her a loving squeeze on the arm. He murmured an endearment to her and said his good-byes to Maggie.

  “I must be at the hospital,” he said. “I am hoping to see you again.”

  “I hope so, too,” Maggie thought. Something about him made her think he’d get along wonderfully with her own great bear of a Frenchman.

  After he’d gone, Maggie turned to Madeleine.

  “I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this,” she said. “But I got your address from Pijou...” big lie “...and since I was in the area...”

  “I’m glad you did,” Madeleine said. “There is no one who knew Brigitte as I did. Not her ratty little sister---I’m sorry, are you friends with Pijou?”

  Maggie laughed.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Good.” Madeleine grinned. “It would definitely stand in the way of our being very close!”

  “Tell me about Brigitte,” Maggie said. “I didn’t really get to know her. And now that she’s gone, I’m missing her more than makes sense.”

  Madeleine nodded and the tears were back.

  “It makes sense to me,” she said. “Brigitte had a wonderful way about her. She could make you love her and trust her, almost immediately. It worked better with women, strangely enough. Even though Brigitte was, of course, quite beautiful. Her vital connections, if I can call them that, were always stronger and more immediate with women.”

  “Except her own sister.”

  Madeleine made a face.

  “Pijou is a pig,” she said. “Maybe it was just bad jealousy, you know? Brigitte had such magnetism...and Pijou...” Madeleine rolled her eyes. “...well, magnetism is not something she has.”

  “How did you come to know Brigitte?” Maggie asked.

  “Through Richard...well, really through Richard’s association with Yves. They worked together. Sooner or later, we all started going out.”

  Maggie tried to detect any special sort of nuance or inflection when Madeleine mentioned Yves’ name. She couldn’t.

  “Was Brigitte happy, do you think?”

  For the first time, Madeleine gave Maggie a mildly suspicious look. I’m going too fast, Maggie thought.

  “Happy, when?” Madeleine asked. She leaned over and offered Maggie a cigarette.

  Maggie shook her head.

  “You know, in her life. Generally. In her marriage. I know nothing about Yves.”

  Madeleine lit her cigarette and regarded Maggie.

  “What is it you want to know, exactly, Madame Dernier?”

  Shit.

  “Please. Call me ‘Maggie.’”

  “Okay.”

  “I want to help the police find out who did this to Brigitte.”

  “You are working with the police?”

  “No. They asked me to butt out.”

  Madeleine frowned.

  “‘Butt--’?”

  “They don’t want me to do what I am now doing,” Maggie said. “I think I can do something. And I need your help.”

  Madeleine exhaled a thin trail of blue smoke.

  “We can still be friends,” she said, finally.

  “I hope so,” Maggie said. “We’re both grieving her, Madeleine. It just helps me to do this.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can,” Madeleine said, still not smiling.

  “Merci, Madeleine. First, have you talked to the police yet?”

  Madeleine’s frown increased. It looked unnatural, Maggie thought. Like Saran Wrap stretched across a too-large bowl. Either the face lift was still relatively recent, she decided, or the surgeon had tried to take a few too many years off and ended up with a compromise.

  “Richard talked to them a little on my behalf,” she said. “I was too upset in the early days and they haven’t been back.”

  “Was Yves bashing Brigitte around? I mean, that’s what I hear and you’d know if it were true.”

  Madeleine ground out her cigarette.

  “Yes, of course, it’s true. He beat her.”

  “She must have talked to you about it.”

  “Not really.”

  “No? She didn’t talk about it? I mean, she’d come to lunch or something and have all these bruises, maybe a black eye or something and y’all wouldn’t mention it?”

  Madeleine stared outside as if remembering, visualizing the scene Maggie had painted.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”

  “Okay.” Maggie followed Madeleine’s gaze out onto the balcony. A starling was perched on the black wrought-iron rim. “So she didn’t talk about it.”

  “No.”

  “Did she ever talk about Yves?”

  “In what way?”

  “You know, Madeleine...in a bad way...in a I’m unhappy and he’s a jerk kind of way. You know, the kind of thing a battered wife might say about the bastard who’s hurting her.”

  “She didn’t usually talk about Yves at all.”

  “Really? That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?”

  Madeleine looked at her. Then, she reached into her purse and withdrew a gold tube of lipstick to replace what she’d smoked off. Maggie noticed the brand: Clarins. Expensive. So very French.

  “Is it?”

  “Well, yeah, think about it...I mean, think about your own husband...you talk about him, don’t you?”

  Finally, Madeleine smiled briefly.

  “That’s different,” she said.

  “In the way that....?”

  “I love my husband and, like many women, I enjoy trading comments or stories about him with other women, but Brigitte hated Yves. What was there to say? ‘Oh, he smacked me a good one this morning!’”

  “It must have killed you to see her treated so,” Maggie said.

  Madeleine let out a terrible sigh.

  “She was my friend,” she said. “And I loved her.”

  Sometimes, it’s all very simple, Maggie thought. She leaned over to put her hand on top of Madeleine’s and was surprised when the Frenchwomen responded by putting her arms around her. The two women sat quietly for a moment before Madeleine gently pulled away.

  “You know I have slept with him, I suppose. I cannot imagine that merde Pijou keeping the information to herself.”

  “I guess I was hoping it was lie,” Maggie said.

  “How I wish I could say it were,” Madeleine said. “Don’t try to imagine how I could do such a thing to Brigitte...to Richard.” She shook her head. “I’ve lived with t
he guilt, the self-loathing...”

  “Did the affair last very long?”

  “Affair? There was no affair! It was a, how do you Americans call it? A quickie?” She laughed roughly. “A very much quickie. One time, never again.”

  “Does Richard know?”

  “Thank God, no. It would hurt him terribly.” She smiled faintly. “Although the idiot would forgive us both a hundred times over. He actually likes Yves!” She shook her head. “What a mess. And what a stupid bitch I am.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Madeleine looked at Maggie.

  “We are destined to be friends, you know?”

  “I hope so.”

  “No, really. She was taken from us both and now we have each other. I believe it.”

  “I’d like that,” Maggie said. “I really would.”

  “Now. Let me get us a glass each of very cold, very excellent rosé, and I will tell you who murdered our dear Brigitte and how stupid the police are not to have even questioned the man yet.”

  Chapter Seven

  1

  “As simple as rubbing cut garlic on toasted pieces of day-old French bread...as rudimentary, yet essential, as tossing green olives with a little olive oil and hot pasta. Simple, good farmhouse cooking in France remains the keystone to the country’s cuisine and culinary pride.”

  “Is that really true?”

  Grace tossed down the fashion magazine she had been flipping through and looked at Maggie who was reading from her notes. The two were seated across from each other at Le Canard. For the first time in many months, both women were in light sweaters, and more and more leaves carpeted the broken flagstones on the terrace of the café. The scent of autumn hung in the air as distinctly as wood smoke.

  Maggie shrugged.

  “It doesn’t have to be true,” she said. “I can just put it forward as true, being the author and all.”