‘You should invite M. Rousseau, too,’ Contini says unexpectedly.
Marie-Ange’s gaze flickers in my direction, but she doesn’t say anything.
Footsteps deflect this uncomfortable line of conversation. Mme Tremblay comes into the room. The merciless brightness of the morning light makes me aware that in these last days time has swept over her with hurricane proportions. She has grown smaller - all fragile bones with a loose covering of parched skin. Her hair is askew, her eyes sunken.
The brightness can’t be kind to me either, for she stares at me in dismay.
‘You didn’t do this to him, Detective! I won’t believe it of you.’
‘No, no. Not me. Sit down Mme Tremblay. Get her a cup of tea, Rousseau.’
‘No I’ve had tea. Thank-you. What happened to you, Pierre? What have you come to tell me, Detective?’
Contini and I look at each other. He takes a deep breath. ‘Michel Dubois attacked Pierre, I’m afraid.’
‘Michel! It’s your doing Detective. I told you all these suspicions you were spreading, all these amateur theatricals would lead to no good. Poor Pierre. I’m sorry. Michel’s not the cleverest of men.’
Contini coughs. ‘Michel Dubois didn’t only attack Pierre. He murdered your granddaughter, Mme Tremblay.’
She stares at him, all colour drained from her face. ‘Did I hear you correctly, Detective? This isn’t just another of your games.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Pierre, you tell me.’
‘It seems to be true.’ My voice sounds hollow so I repeat, ‘He’s confessed.’
Mme Tremblay slumps back into her chair.
‘Get that tea, Rousseau. Plenty of sugar,’ Contini mutters.
Marie-Ange follows me into the kitchen. She hesitates for a moment as I fill the kettle, then she throws her arms around me.
‘Pierre, thank-God. That Contini put such ideas into my head. I was told not to talk to you.’ Her eyes are moist. ‘And there’s so much we need to talk about. Later. Quietly. Just the two of us.’
I don’t know why it hits me now, but suddenly like a small boy who has held back his tears for too long, I have a desire to go into a dark room and weep. To weep my grief to the stroke of an invisible woman’s fingers in my hair.
Mme Tremblay’s back has the rigidity of a poker as I place the tray on the table. It is as if her hold on life were all in the straightness of her back. Her eyes don’t move. They are focussed on some elsewhere we can’t see.
Contini grimaces at me and takes hold of the teapot with such force that I have the impression it will crumble in his fingers.
‘I’ve explained briefly,’ he mumbles.
I take a cup of sugary tea to her. ‘Drink this, Mme Tremblay. It’ll do you good.’
Her eyes flutter towards me. ‘It’s all my fault, Pierre. I should have sent him away. Years and years ago. I had no idea…’ Cup and saucer shake in her hand. She sets them down, spilling the liquid.
‘Everyone always feels guilty in these cases, Mme Tremblay,’ Contini interjects reasonably. ‘A great series of if only’s…’
‘You don’t understand.’ She cuts him off. ‘I was the one who took Michel in, who offered him a place when he was in trouble. He’d been expelled from school. A big lad. Too big for his years. Fifteen I think he was. Terrible family. Anyhow, I offered him a job, when no one would have him. Let him stay here until he found his own place. He was useful, good with his hands, good with the animals. He taught Madeleine to ride. She was just a child, friendly with him, friendly with everyone. And he was gentle with her.’
Her voice fades off. She is talking to herself, sifting through memories, trying to make sense of things.
‘Once, I think it was just after Madeleine and I had come back from Europe, ‘64 or ‘65 that must have been - Michel had taken good care of the place in our absence - I caught him looking at her in a particular way. The look was repeated. I took him aside and talked to him. I told him Madeleine would be going away to school soon and then probably away from Ste-Anne forever. She wasn’t for him. I was stern with him. Stern with her, too. She had learned to be flirtatious in France. She was always so jaunty with Michel. As if she was still a child.’
She sighs. The sound is so loud that it startles her from her reverie. She takes a gulp of tea. When she speaks again, her voice has changed. It is sharper, streaked with anger and self-recrimination.
‘And that was it. Or so I thought. Madeleine went off to school in Montréal. There wasn’t really enough work here to keep Michel fully occupied. He got other jobs, though I kept him on part-time.’
She gives me a sudden sharp look and I have a terrible feeling that she has found me out, that she has seen the hideous parallels between Michel and myself. But she hurries on.
‘When I told him that Madeleine and you were getting married, he wasn’t happy. He threw a spade with such force against a tree that the metal broke away from the wood. I was furious, I scolded him.’ She lets out a single sob, covers her mouth with her hand, so that we strain to hear her. ‘Yet a part of me felt sorry for him and I kept him on. I didn’t see the growing resentment. I didn’t understand that he was harbouring a secret passion… that in some mad way he felt entitled to her.’
She shivers and stands up abruptly. ‘I want to see him, Detective. See him now.’
The force of her determination is such that it transforms her back into the stubbornly resolute woman I have always held in awe.
Contini falters. ‘It’s not customary, Mme Tremblay.’
‘Murder isn’t customary either, Detective.’
In front of the police station there is more traffic, both on wheels and human, than I have ever seen. Mme Tremblay is stopped at every step and only Contini’s footballer’s shoulders manage to create a space for her through the fray.
‘Your mayor insisted on a press conference here, at one o’clock,’ he mutters. ‘Wouldn’t listen to me.’
Inside there is a warren of activity, but a hush spreads around us as Mme Tremblay’s presence is noted.
‘You two better wait out here,’ Contini motions to Marie-Ange and myself. ‘He’s a strong bugger and as we know he’s not over fond of you.’
Gagnon emerges from his office and after a brief word with Contini, the two of them lead Mme Tremblay down the corridor towards the cells.
Marie-Ange slips her hand through mine as we wait. We don’t wait long. After some five minutes, Mme Tremblay reappears followed by the two men. She doesn’t look at either of us. Her cheeks are flushed with two brightly pink spots as she makes for the front door.
I hold Contini back. ‘What happened?’
He shrugs and gives me a lopsided grin. ‘They eyeballed each other and she landed him two surprisingly hard smacks. Sounded a bit like a guillotine. I think he might have preferred that.’ He glances at her receeding back with open admiration.
‘So… Miron will drop you home now, unless you want to stay for the press conference?’
I shake my head.
‘No. The old lady doesn’t want to either. That’s it, then. I’m back to Montréal this afternoon. I’ll try and make it to the funeral, but if I don’t, offer my apologies. I’ll see you at the trial. Or if you feel like it, come and have lunch with me.’
He puts his arm round my shoulder, squeezes hard enough to make me wince, and winks. ‘And Rousseau, I’m glad it wasn’t you. The old school, even with all its changes, wouldn’t have been pleased. Je me souviens, eh?’
I find myself smiling. It makes my battered face ache.
Marie-Ange and I stroll along the stretch of river near Le Lion d’Or. The walk is her idea. She says the light is too beautiful to miss, but I suspect she is building herself up to an announcement about Madeleine’s will. She can’t know that Monique has already let slip.
I don’t mind. The cold air acts like an anaesthetic on my face and my stiff limbs need stretching.
Mme Tremblay refused to jo
in us for lunch. Instead with an air of defiance, she handed me a glittering parcel. ‘It’s your Christmas present from Madeleine. Open it, open it now.’ Under the two women’s watchful eyes, I steadied my trembling hands and tore open the paper. Inside, there was a handpainted box, bright with candy colours. When I unfastened the lid, a stage popped up, on it a beautifully crafted Colombine blowing a kiss at a Pierrot, his face a melancholy mask. Very Madeleine. For a moment, I felt she had forgiven me.
I gaze at the icy river, the snow encrusted trees, the distant huddled houses on the opposite shore. It all feels so civilised in Marie-Ange’s presence, like a landscape waiting for the hand of a talented painter. I can even see the frame. Last night’s forebidding trek seems to belong to another life. A dream life, perhaps. Maybe Michel Dubois’ pummelling gave me the punishment I needed to wake to an existence without Madeleine.
Yet with Marie-Ange at my side, Madeleine’s death takes on the aura of an absence. Its finality is kept oddly at bay. As if there were still that residue of hope, whose embers I have fanned for so long.
I cut off the cloying fingers of wish which have proved so disastrous and ask her whether Madeleine and she had spoken much of late.
She nods. ‘I was just thinking of that.’ She brushes at her face and I notice there are tears in her eyes. ‘We spoke almost daily. She was upset. Upset at everything. That’s why at first, when I heard, I thought it was suicide. Reaching a certain age as an actress isn’t easy. There are hurdles to cross. Then, too, the play was going badly and there was that dreadful event at the university. She was scared. I’ve never known Madeleine to be frightened of anything. She had an intuition - an accurate one as it turns out.’
‘Her intuitions were always good. We should have listened to her. I should have listened to her.’
Marie-Ange is silent for a moment. She wraps her fur more closely round her to hide a shiver.
‘Shall we go in?’
She nods and drapes her arm through mine for the climb.
‘She was angry at you, too, that last week. The week before Christmas. Had you had a row?’
‘Not exactly.’ I prevaricate and then find myself stammering and telling her. ‘I’d been writing her letters. Anonymously. Stupidly. They were meant to be fan letters, love letters, I guess, but they somehow got out of hand. Madeleine guessed they were mine. They didn’t feel like love letters to her. Nor a joke. Or maybe she just didn’t want anything like that from me. I curse myself for it. There was never a chance to explain.’
It is a long, halting speech and I wait for her response, but again she doesn’t say anything. I am not about to be blessed with second-hand forgiveness.
At last she murmurs, ‘It was foolish of you.’
‘The trouble was I could never come to terms with the fact that she had stopped loving me.’
She flashes me a queer look.
‘Madeleine made a will a few years back. You and I were named as joint executors.’
‘At least she trusted me.’ An idea leaps into my mind, spurred by something in Marie-Ange’s tone. ‘Or…Did she decide to change it that last week?’
‘She toyed with the idea. She was very angry with you. Then she cooled down and said, no. About some things you were responsible. She wanted to talk to you about it.’
‘I see,’ I murmur, but in fact I don’t see. ‘Why didn’t she talk to me before? When she first made the will?’
We have reached the restaurant and Marie Ange slips off her gloves and makes a sweeping gesture with her ringed hand. ‘Madeleine talk about death if she could avoid it? Don’t be silly. The will was altogether my idea.’
Only Marie-Ange’s aplomb and haughty Parisian voice see us past the disapproval of the maitre d’ as he looks at my less than clean jeans and bruised face.
‘A window table,’ she commands. ‘And bring us the wine list immediately. We need a drink, don’t we, Pierre?’
She gives me an imperceptible wink as the man rushes away with a ‘tout de suite, Madame’.
We drink. Marie-Ange works her way through salad and steak, while I sip soup and try to make my swollen face behave appropriately over morsels of soft fish pie. We talk about Madeleine, randomly at first, exchanging slivers of memory. Gradually it comes to me that the randomness is not simply that. Marie-Ange’s questions are probing. They suggest that although in fact we are virtually strangers she knows a good deal about me. It comes to me that in some obscure way I am being tested.
By the time coffee comes, I seem to have arrived at a subliminal decision.
‘Look Marie-Ange, it might be more appropriate if I withdrew as the second of Madeleine’s executors and you named another. I imagine most of the estate will be handled in France and it would be simpler if…’
She cuts me off, her face severe. ‘It was Madeleine’s wish.’
‘Though not on your advice,’ I say softly.
She gives me a hard, assessing look, the look of a woman who is used to making quick judgements and fighting her corner.
‘Not against my advice either.’ She fingers the gold chains round her neck. A wry smile moves up from her lips to her eyes. ‘You haven’t asked me what’s in the will yet.’
I shrug. ‘I imagine Madeleine’s been reasonably fair. Mme Tremblay…’
Her expression stops me.
‘Oh, I see. You mean there’s a Madeleine flourish. Some theatre school or prize for young Québec actors for us to administer?’
‘You’re right. There is a flourish.’ Marie-Ange pats her lips with her napkin and reaches for her bag, then changes her mind and puts it aside. ‘A very real flourish. I wish she’d told you herself. She half intended to.’ She pauses. ‘Madeleine had a child, Pierre.’
The words, uttered with Marie-Ange’s authority hit me with the force of an inescapable tidal wave. For a moment, I am submerged, struggling. When I surface, I hear myself saying, ‘So Contini was right… I thought… It doesn’t matter. Where is the child?’
‘She lives in France. Just outside Aix.’
‘A girl, then.’ My words sound inane. ‘She lives with her father?’
‘Madeleine had her adopted.’ She scans my face searching for a reaction and I try to adjust my features into a semblance of sense.
‘Adopted. I see.’
‘I don’t think you do. When Madeleine found out she was pregnant - it’s some years back now - she considered abortion and then realised she couldn’t go through with it. She just skipped her appointment, put it off and off again. But nor did she really want a baby. A kind of visceral fear came over her when we talked about it - maybe because of her own troubled infancy. In any case, she was in a state of considerable confusion. What she was certain of was that the kind of life she led wasn’t right for a child. Her movie career was in full swing…’
I listen. I don’t dare speak. I am there with Madeleine trapped in her agitation, as tangible as if it were my own.
‘In the latter stages of her pregnancy, I suggested to her that she might consider adoption. She was more or less holed up in the house in Neuilly then. We were very close, saw each other almost daily and I told her about a cousin of mine who couldn’t conceive and was desperate to adopt a child. To make a long story short, they met and liked each other. Liked each other very much. They came to an understanding. If, once the child was born, Madeleine still wanted to give it up, then my cousin and her husband who is a lawyer and could arrange the papers with minimal fuss, would adopt.
‘Madeleine made up her mind within days of the birth. She wasn’t easy with the child. She treated her like some precious bowl, it was too hazardous to touch.’
She hesitates, then presses on. ‘It was, I am convinced, the right thing to do. Caroline and Jean-Jacques have been good parents. And they were happy to make all kinds of accomodations. Madeleine became a kind of informal godparent - eventually, that is. At first she didn’t want anything to do with Louise, Lulu, as she called her.
‘But then,
when the girl was about four, she started to take an interest in her, was fascinated by her. She’s a pretty child, vivacious. Madeleine would visit when time allowed - birthdays, holidays, spend a few days sometimes. And you know Madeleine, she always came with lavish presents.
‘It all went swimmingly until a few years ago, when Madeleine suddenly felt hemmed in by the arrangement. She wanted to come clean. I told her that would be destructive. Destructive and unfair to everyone concerned. Lulu, of course, knows she’s adopted. But suddenly acquiring a second mother, let alone a mother who is the famous Madeleine Blais, wouldn’t be a simple matter for any child to come to terms with. I insisted that only when Louise was eighteen, and only then if she wanted to know who her parents were, could anything be revealed. I quoted the law at Madeleine.
‘Madeleine saw sense, of course. Though she wasn’t altogether happy about it. And now…’ Her voice drifts off.
Around us the restaurant has grown empty. We sit in a pool of dying light and gaze out the window.
‘Poor Madeleine,’ I murmur. ‘She never told me. I never suspected…’
‘No. She said to me she was considering telling you soon. She wanted, well I think she wanted to be able to talk about the fact of Lulu to someone here.’
The last line of Madeleine’s letter unfurls before me like an emblazoned medieval banner rich in mysterious insignia and defiance. ‘There is only one part of me you have been unable to touch. You will never know about it now. It is too late.’
It comes to me again with a terrible force how my very love for the glittering, seductive Madeleine - that Madeleine of the screen who had become my familiar - had blinded me to the living woman’s real needs. I had prided myself on knowing her. Yet what had I known but the fantasy she engendered? And all the time the drama of her real life had passed me by.
I scrabble for some reassurance and tell myself that it hadn’t always been thus, not in the beginning, not when we lived together.
‘You don’t look well, Pierre.’ Marie-Ange breaks into my thoughts. ‘I think we should go. Take me to your place. I’d like to see it.’
The Dead of Winter Page 39