Murder à la Carte (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  She was right, of course. Smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation was no place for Nicole. The whole morning had been tense and tearful and awful. It was a wonder that her niece hadn’t protested more, Maggie thought, as she looked down at Nicole.

  “Please, Aunt Maggie?” Nicole brushed a lock of silky brown hair from her face and dropped Petit-Four gently onto the floor.

  Maggie touched Nicole’s hair. “What? You mean you’d rather spend the day in a pastry shop than stay here and keep out of everyone’s way?” she teased.

  Elspeth moved past the now disinterested policeman who was pouring his own pastis, and put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder.

  “Merci, Madame,” she said to Madame Renoir. “That would be so very kind of you. The day is hard for all of us.”

  Madame Renoir broke into a beam of pleasure.

  “Bon,” she said. “She may ride on the back of my bicyclette.” She smiled kindly at Nicole who was already climbing into her jacket.

  As the heavyset older woman and the child walked down the path and away from the house, Maggie could hear Madame Renoir chattering away to Nicole about the puppies still left at the boulangerie.

  God. I hope we don’t inherit another dog from all this, she thought.

  Laurent spooned into the crunchy topping of the cassoulet and served up Maggie’s plate. The four of them sat quietly around the dining room table. The remaining two detectives had finally left the house to find dinner in the village, but had left two policemen downstairs to sift and dust, bag and collect.

  “When in the world did you have time to make this?” Elspeth asked Laurent as she helped herself to a salad of three different kinds of lettuce sprinkled liberally with fennel and thyme.

  Laurent looked up, distracted, his brow furrowed in worry. “Pardon?”

  “The cassoulet,” Elspeth said, nodding at the steaming earthenware casserole. “It smells divine. When did you make it?”

  Laurent shook his head. “The Marceaus,” he said, pointing to the terrace as if the Marceaus could be found standing out there. “They sent it over.”

  “Really?” John looked up from his dish. “That was thoughtful.”

  “Because MacKenzie was American,” Laurent said, pouring each of them a large glass of Côtes-du-Rhône. “I think they feel as if it is like a death in our family.” He shrugged and looked at Maggie. “Je ne sais pas.” I don’t know.

  “I feel like it is too,” Maggie said. “I guess because it happened at our house. What a horrible Thanksgiving...”

  “We didn’t know him particularly well,” Laurent said. “But we are particularly...” he paused to search for the word, “...affected by him.”

  “Will the police finish with us soon?” Maggie took a bite of dinner, finding herself surprisingly hungry. “When will we get our house back?”

  Her father cleared his throat. “They’ve already given us the okay to leave when ever we want,” he said.

  “You’re kidding.” Maggie looked at Laurent to see if this was news to him. It didn’t appear to be.

  “They can see that our return flight out of Paris isn’t for another three weeks.” John said. “So they feel relatively safe letting us go, I think.”

  “They never looked at you as suspects, did they, Dad?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so.” John Newberry looked over at Laurent as if the two of them shared a secret of some kind. “They just wanted to make sure they’ve exhausted me as a possible source of information.” He cleared his throat. “Having discovered the body and all.”

  Maggie laid down her fork and took a sip of her wine. It was fruity and full. She could feel it going straight to her head. “How did you find the body?” she asked.

  “Maggie...” Laurent said and frowned.

  “Please don’t tell me this isn’t decent dinner table conversation, Laurent,” Maggie said. “Nicole’s not here. And besides, you weren’t the only one blithering away to French cops all day, you know. Connor’s dead and it was in our basement and I’d like the facts filled in, please. Besides, he was a friend of mine.”

  She noticed her mother leaning in to hear as well.

  “Well...” her father glanced at Laurent and then sighed. “When we went down and were sort of rummaging around among some of the shelves where Laurent keeps his private stash―”

  “Private from whom, darling?” Maggie spoke to Laurent.

  “It’s just a turn of phrase, Maggie,” her father reproved her. “And as he was finding the bottle he wanted to bring out, I happened to see what looked like the shape of...I don’t know...a strange shape hunched on top of the...” He looked at Laurent before finishing for himself, “...the small horizontal basket press. You know the one?” he asked Maggie.

  Maggie hadn’t a clue. She thought all the wine fermented away in big wooden barrels and then got siphoned off into bottles. Voila!

  “You put the skins in there,” her father continued. “It’s a cylinder and it crushes the skins and forces the juice, or wine, out the sides into a container of sorts. You crank it to run it.”

  Maggie tried not to look impatient. “And Connor was inside this basket press thing?” she asked.

  Laurent sighed. “No, Maggie,” he said. “Only grapes may fit into the press. She is too small.”

  “Okay, so where does this press thing fit in?”

  “Well, that’s what caught my eye, you see,” John said, glancing at Laurent as he told his story. “This shape was hunched under the press. I went to look at it and, my God, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A man’s body half-submerged in the storage vat of free-run wine―”

  “The wine made from the grape skins in the press,” Laurent added.

  “...shoved up under the basket press,” John said. “I thought it was a joke at first. You know, that maybe Laurent had set the whole thing up...a dummy positioned to look like a man, you know...”

  “My God,” Maggie said. “Poor Connor.”

  “Connor didn’t look very good,” Laurent agreed, spooning out another portion of the cassoulet.

  “Drowned in a butt of malmsey,” her father said, speaking to no one in particular.

  “Huh?” Maggie said.

  “The Duke of Clarence,” John said. “I seem to remember that’s how he died. Drowned in a butt of malmsey. Apparently it was his favorite wine and when he got too much in the way of his brother, King Richard, that was his chosen way to die.”

  “Reluctantly chosen way,” Elspeth added, smiling.

  “One might assume,” John agreed.

  “Great brotherly relations,” Maggie said.

  “At any rate,” her father continued, looking around the table at each of them, “we still have a very scary question.”

  “I know,” Maggie said with a shiver. “Who killed Connor? Well, I suppose, it had to be someone we invited to our house, right?” Maggie looked at Laurent.

  “You mean, a friend?” Laurent asked, frowning.

  “Oh, give me a break, Laurent.” Maggie laughed and tossed her napkin down. “You were handing out invitational-fliers in the parking lot at the Marseilles A&P for this dégustation.”

  Laurent looked at Elspeth. “Un peu plus?” he asked, spoon poised over the heavy casserole pot. She handed him her plate.

  Maggie took a long breath and closed her eyes. Through an open window in the living room she could hear Laurent’s hunting dogs barking at something in the fields. She looked under the table, spotted Petit-Four contentedly chewing on an old leather sneaker of hers, and gave the dog a gentle scratch behind its floppy ears. Instantly, it dropped the shoe and begged to be allowed into Maggie’s lap.

  “No dogs at the table,” Laurent said gruffly, pouring her father another glass of the heady wine.

  “If it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t here last night,” Maggie said, pulling the dog onto her lap, “I’d vote for Gaston Lasalle as the murderer.” She turned to Laurent. “Did you tell Mother and Dad about him?�
��

  Laurent gave her an exasperated look.

  “Who is Gaston Lasalle?” Elspeth asked, looking first at Maggie, then at Laurent.

  “He’s an unsavory slimebag that Laurent had help with the grape picking last month.” Maggie said. She settled back into her chair with Petit-Four curled comfortably on her lap. “He’s come around for a little mischief now and then.”

  “Mischief how?” John Newberry spoke directly to Laurent.

  Laurent waved his hand in a dismissing gesture. “It is nothing,” he said. “If Maggie has told me everything...” He glanced briefly at Maggie. “...he is merely a...what?...a nuisance.”

  “What will happen now?” Elspeth stood up and collected the plates. “I’ll get the coffee, darling,” she said. “You stay put.”

  “Thanks, Mother.” Maggie softly stroked Petit-Four’s silver curls. “I really don’t know. Laurent? Are the police going to move in and start telling me how to make my légumes farcis?”

  “You are going to start making légumes farcis?” Laurent said with a smile. Maggie gave him a mock scowl. “I would only be making guesses,” he said, folding his napkin and surveying the bleak remains of the table.

  Laurent looked at John as if to gauge how much to say to his daughter. The muted sounds of the two policemen in the cellar drifted up to them through the closed stairway door in the kitchen.

  “I am thinking they will leave soon,” Laurent said, accepting a cup of coffee from Elspeth. “Merci, Elspeth. “

  Maggie was always amused with the way her mother’s name sounded in Laurent’s mouth: El-spess.

  “Really? You think they’re nearly finished?” Elspeth asked, surprised, handing Maggie a steaming cup.

  Laurent screwed up his face in a tight frown as if all this talk of police were making him highly uncomfortable. Maggie wondered, thinking of his private conversations with today’s gendarmerie on the terrace, if he had had to reveal very much of his own past to them. She wondered if Laurent’s older, other life had included a police record.

  “The police will be here for the funeral, yes?” he said.

  The thought of Connor’s funeral hadn’t occurred to Maggie until Laurent had spoken the word.

  “And then, they will make an arrest,” Laurent said. He stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and spoke as if he were finishing the last instructions of a recipe for sugar glaze or marinated olives. Something simple.

  Elspeth returned with two more coffees, handed one to her husband and then sat down. “Do they suspect you, my dear?” she asked Laurent.

  Laurent shook his head. “I do not think so,” he said. “Or peut-être, they do, but...” he noticed Maggie’s suddenly worried face, “...it is only temporary.”

  “My God, Laurent,” Maggie said, her voice tense and surprised.

  “Zut!” Laurent clucked at her, and took Maggie’s hand in his.

  “I don’t feel altogether comfortable leaving you―” John began.

  “Don’t be ridicule!” Laurent said, a look of real surprise on his handsome face. “Everything will work out. The police will discover that Laurent did not murder Maggie’s American friend―”

  “Wait a minute,” Maggie said. “What do you mean my American friend?”

  Laurent shrugged. “He is more your friend than mine.”

  “So the police think you’ve got a motive...as in jealousy?” Maggie asked. She looked unhappily at her parents. “That’s why they suspect you?”

  “Maggie,” Laurent said carefully. “They will find who did this awful thing. Our gendarmerie are very good.” He laughed. “I can tell you how good they are!”

  “You’re not making me feel better,” Maggie said, frowning.

  “You know the French,” Laurent continued, his good humor evident again. “They will always suspect the love angle first. Not like the Americans, I’m afraid.”

  Maggie sighed. “I guess even the cops can’t get too attached to the idea that you would invite him to your party so you could bump him off in the comfort of your own living room,” she said.

  Laurent released her hand and gave Petit-Four a quick nuzzle behind the ears. “There, you see?” he said and smiled. “Not to worry.”

  3

  “I just couldn’t believe it, you know? I still can’t.” Grace’s voice sounded thready and hesitant.

  Maggie was lying on her bed. She placed a bed pillow on her stomach and rested the telephone on it. Her father was taking a late nap in the guest room. Her mother and Laurent had gone to retrieve Nicole from Madame Renoir’s―and perhaps a beignet or two as well for breakfast tomorrow.

  “I mean, I do not handle death well, you know? I hate this business of one minute drinking and having a laugh and the next minute―permanent checkout. I hate it.”

  “I know, Grace,” Maggie murmured. “And the fact that it happened while the children were here.”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Well, it’s not like they knew it was happening,” Grace said. “I mean, as deaths go, it was pretty subtle, Maggie.”

  “Oh, yeah? Did the police describe to you how Connor was killed?”

  “Maggie!”

  “I’m sorry, Grace!” God, that was insensitive, Maggie thought, although she found herself a little surprised at Grace’s extreme reaction.

  “No, they did not. They told us nothing. All they did was ask questions. ‘Where were you, how long did you know...’” She took a deep breath, “Did you know they asked me if Connor was my lover, for God’s sake?”

  “Well, I guess they had to.”

  How come they didn’t ask me if I had been Connor’s lover? Maggie tried to catch her reflection in the bedroom mirror. “Do they suspect Windsor, then?” She found herself feeling unforgivably hopeful that the police would switch their attentions away from Laurent and to Windsor Van Sant. After all, Windsor had known Connor longer―he had more time to build up a reason and a motive.

  “I don’t know what they suspect,” Grace said in a voice that closely resembled a whine from Taylor. “They want to talk with us again, is all I know.”

  “Well, who do you think did it?”

  There was another pause on the line and then a long sigh. “I don’t know. My God, Maggie, half of St-Buvard was there last night.”

  “No kidding, you should see my kitchen.”

  “And Windsor said this morning that that in itself would look bad for Laurent.”

  Maggie felt a wave of annoyance with Grace. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, you know, that he would have invited so many people. It makes a great cover, you know? I mean, that’s what the police might think.”

  “Windsor said that?”

  “Oh, come on, Maggie, Windsor isn’t saying he thinks Laurent killed Connor, for heaven’s sakes!” Grace’s voice regained some of its body. “I mean, what’s his motive? Why in the world would Laurent want Connor dead?”

  “You mean, it’s understandable that Windsor’s motive is unbridled jealousy over Connor maybe being your lover, but Laurent could only have opportunity―but no reason?”

  Grace burst out laughing and Maggie found herself joining in.

  “Your feelings are hurt because the cops don’t think Laurent could’ve killed Connor because of you?” Grace asked, still laughing.

  “It’s been a hard day,” Maggie said weakly, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. “At lunch I was terrified that the cops thought Laurent might have done it. Now, my pride is hurt that Windsor has more motive than Laurent does!”

  “Oh, God, I needed this,” Grace said.

  “Okay, let’s eliminate loved ones from the who-dunnit list.” Maggie took a sip from l’eau gazeuse she had brought up to the bedroom with her. “Now who?”

  “Jealous female lovers?”

  “Babette!”

  “It fits for me.”

  “Did I tell you how she was coming on to Laurent all night?”

  “I witnessed some of
it.”

  “We actually had a facedown.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, she had contrived a way to spend the night.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Incredible, isn’t it? Yeah, Babette’s definitely my number one suspect.”

  “I imagine she is the police’s too.”

  “Who else?” Maggie found herself feeling better. It was the predictable result of a conversation with Grace. Laurent must have known. He had encouraged her to call Grace before he left.

  “Well, there’s Lydie,” said Grace.

  “Yeah, what ever happened to her?”

  “She did the dance of the Marseille rubbish.”

  “Huh?”

  “She got dumped.”

  Together they crowed: “Motive!”

  “God,” Grace said, when she regained her breath. “Is it bad to be this giddy only twenty-four hours after poor Connor’s death?”

  “I think so,” Maggie said, sending them both back into rising rifts of laughter.

  4

  Typically, the dinner hour in St-Buvard was marked only by the increased activity on the terrace of Le Canard Café. The rest of the village appeared as lifeless as usual, hiding easily behind its cracked and ancient walls the bustle and energy of dishes being put on the table, pots being stirred, prayers sent heavenward in thanks. The small café faced a small fountain, long without any actual cascading font of water, but still important for what it once was and now represented: the center of the village. Formed into three simple, dark stone tiers, the basin of each scalloped by a rough, unpracticed hand, the fountain was encrusted with lichen, stained dark with years of dirt and pounding water. The uneven cobblestones that encircled it ran in a concentric pattern to the terrace of Le Canard, where two policemen sat, sober and grim, a bottle of marc between them.

  Eduard Marceau sat with them. His face was a jagged mask of tension and obsequiousness. He smoked and drank continuously. One of the policemen―the skinny young man who had questioned Maggie and her parents―leaned back in his chair to survey the patrons of the restaurant. He knew it helped to make the customers believe they were being watched. He knew it helped in enticing them to come forward with information. He knew it felt good to intimidate them with just a casual glance, an enigmatic smile. He looked around the café often.