by ML Longworth
“I’ve heard that too,” Verlaque found himself saying. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was Marine who had told him, while clipping the olive tree on her terrace one sunny morning. There wasn’t a view of the mountain from her downtown apartment, but in the early twentieth century there had been glorious views, before the tall apartment buildings were built on the outskirts of Aix, and so the expression had stuck. Verlaque remembered seeing Cézanne’s many studies of the mountain, done from his studio located on a hill north of Aix. Today those views were hidden behind cube-shaped concrete apartment blocks. It seemed fitting to Verlaque that not only could Cézanne’s mountain not be seen from the painter’s studio but the town itself now possessed only two or three small paintings by its famous son—arguably one of the most important painters in the history of art. Verlaque thought about Aix’s small musée Granet, and tried to think if he remembered seeing a Cézanne painting there. The nineteenth-century Aixois had scoffed at the painter’s work, it being too modern for their provincial tastes. The twenty-first century Aixois still had the same conservative taste as their ancestors, Verlaque thought. Despite all the new, and old, money in Aix-en-Provence, today they still lacked the contemporary art galleries and modern restaurants that filled other cities, like Toulouse and Lille.
Verlaque looked out the window toward the château and suddenly asked, “Whose car is that with the Côte d’Azur plates?”
Auvieux leaned down so he could see out the small cottage window. He answered, “It’s an old car of François’s—François is Étienne’s brother—he lives in the Riviera. He and Étienne shared it now. They used the car for odd jobs or for driving into Aix.”
“All right,” Verlaque said. “Continue.” Seeing the bewildered expression on the caretaker’s face, Verlaque added, “You were in the olive grove.”
“Ah, merci. So after about fifteen minutes in the olive grove, I walked behind the château, intending to go up into the pine forest to the south of the house. But just before I headed up the hill, I looked to my left and saw Mr. Étienne’s body lying on the ground.”
“So it was between two fifteen and two thirty. And that’s when you called us?”
“Yes. I looked at the body, of course, but I didn’t touch it—him. I knew he was dead. I ran back to my house and called 18 right away.”
“What time did you leave Saint-Antonin on Friday?” Verlaque asked.
Auvieux sipped a bit of coffee before answering. “I left well before dinner, because my sister was making me a blanquette de veau. I left here at about five o’clock.”
“And you didn’t see anything unusual?”
The caretaker’s body twitched and his eyes widened as he asked, “What do you mean?”
Verlaque noticed Auvieux’s uneasiness. “Well,” he replied, “I know that the police have already asked you if anything was missing. But did you notice anything out of place either before you left for the Var or when you got back?”
“No,” the caretaker slowly replied.
“Have there been any break-ins at the château?”
The caretaker rubbed his hands together fretfully. “Only once, two years ago. Some kids from Marseille, three of them. They tried to break in through one of the shutters in the dining room. I heard the racket they were making and scared them off with my hunting rifle. I called Mr. Étienne the next day, and he had someone come out and repair the shutter.”
Verlaque did not ask Auvieux how he knew that the kids were from Marseille, but he could guess that the color of their skin had something to do with it.
As Verlaque got up to leave, he gestured toward the asparagus and strawberries. “Did you buy those at that roadside fruit stand on the route nationale?”
The guardian, wide eyed, looked at the table and then at Verlaque, and answered, “Yes, on the way home.”
“How is their produce?” Verlaque asked.
“Quite good!” the caretaker exclaimed. “And cheaper than at the market in downtown Aix.”
Verlaque rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “Yes, it’s funny how the price of an apple at the Aix market is double the price of one in Gardanne.” Gardanne was an old coal-mining town fifteen minutes south of Aix. The mine was closed, but the power plant’s imposing chimney, now fired with coal from China, could be seen south of the highway as one approached Aix. It was an ugly, sinister town, and the buildings, and even some of the inhabitants, looked as if they always had a fine layer of soot shrouding them. Verlaque wasn’t about to do his shopping there. In fact, he wasn’t even sure about the prices—it was just what everyone in Aix said.
Now that they’d had their chat about food, Verlaque asked, “Did you like Étienne de Bremont?”
The caretaker seemed surprised by the question. “He was my boss.”
“But,” the judge continued, “did you like him?”
Auvieux looked down at the floor. “No, sir, to be honest with you. Not very much.”
Verlaque saw that the caretaker was tired and overwhelmed. He finished his coffee and said good-bye, telling Auvieux that a team of policemen was still in the attic, inspecting, and when they had finished they would let him know so that he could lock up. “Should I come with you, Monsieur le Juge?” Auvieux offered.
“No, that won’t be necessary, but thank you.”
Auvieux asked the judge to make sure that his men didn’t leave a mess, and that they turn off all the lights. Verlaque reassured him, and thanked him for his time and the good strong coffee.
As Verlaque walked back to the château, he thought that despite the family’s obvious lack of funds the caretaker Auvieux took great pride in the estate and his work. He wished that some of the civil servants who worked at the Palais de Justice had the same attitude. He hadn’t been the examining magistrate long—less than two years. He had in fact jumped from prosecutor to head district judge in record time and at any extremely young age—he had been thirty-nine years old at the time of his appointment. He was known as being incorruptible and was extremely well spoken—both in French and in English—and outspoken as well. Verlaque made it clear that in his new position he would be taking a hands-on role in the investigations, something examining magistrates were entitled to do, though they seldom took advantage. In July of that year he had been interviewed by various newspapers, including Le Monde and Le Figaro, and his portrait had appeared on the cover of the Marseille edition of L’Express. The oddest piece of publicity had come in the form of a short article in Elle magazine. A black-and-white photograph of the judge had been taken by an extremely popular young Czech photographer living in Paris. The photograph, shot from below, exaggerated Verlaque’s already large shoulders and powerful chest, while disguising his paunch and the fact that he was only five foot eight. His dark brown eyes, almost black, stared directly at the camera; his hair, thick and black and streaked with gray, was—as it always was—disheveled. The photographer had said, “I love your nose, man.” Verlaque, while at law school, played rugby for a club team at Château de Vincennes, and his nose had been broken and was still very crooked. During that game, he had knocked heads with another player in a scrum; that night, while studying a law case, he had the frightening realization that he could only read the bottom half of the text—the upper was black. The impaired vision lasted only a few hours, but it marked the end of his rugby playing. The editors at Elle had obviously not minded the crooked nose. The eventual article ran with the headline “We Surrender!” The sudden fame didn’t suit him well, but the power given to examining magistrates did: the exclusive right to authorize searches and to issue subpoenas and wiretaps, the results of which could be used in criminal proceedings.
He pounded up the château’s stone stairs and could hear some police officers laughing and chatting in the attic. It was a routine job for them—it appeared that the young count had fallen from a window and broken his neck
. What Verlaque wanted to know was why Étienne de Bremont had been leaning out of the window in the first place—he had met Bremont a few times and had liked and respected him. He felt that he owed it to the count, and to his wife and children, to thoroughly inspect the place where he met his death. The judge had also detected Jean-Claude Auvieux’s anxiety under questioning: his slow, nervous pauses when asked if anything had been disturbed in the château.
The policemen’s chattering immediately stopped when Verlaque entered the attic. It was late afternoon, and the sunlight shining through the window was fading. “Why hasn’t anyone turned on the lights?” he asked no one in particular.
One of the policemen answered back, “They’re burnt out, sir.”
Verlaque crossed the room and smiled when he saw le commissaire. Verlaque had been away for the past six months—a month in Luxembourg with the European Court, a month’s holiday in England, and a four-month research sabbatical in Paris—and although he had only worked with the commissioner once or twice, Bruno Paulik was one of his favorite colleagues, a no-nonsense man with a thick Midi accent. Paulik was full of contradictions—he was born to farming parents in a small village in the Luberon, was now one of Aix’s best detectives, and was an opera buff. His wife, Hélène, was the head winemaker for a prestigious, privately owned winery north of Aix. Paulik normally took a full-week’s holiday during the Aix opera festival, and his nine-year-old daughter was already an accomplished singer at Aix’s prestigious music conservatory. Paulik was also a former rugby player and, like Verlaque, had an undying love for the game. “Hello, Commissaire,” Verlaque said, holding out his hand.
“Welcome back, sir.” The commissioner’s smile then turned to a perplexed frown. “You haven’t already received the prosecutor’s dossier, have you? She only just left.”
“Simone Levy from Marseille? Is Roussel still away?”
“Yeah, he’s still on holiday, but he’s due back any day.”
Verlaque tried to hide his disappointment at missing the striking prosecutor Levy from Marseille, but also at the news that Roussel, Aix’s prosecutor, would be back soon. “An inquest was formally requested by the family about an hour ago, so here I am.”
“Ah,” Paulik replied. “The widow?”
“Actually, no. Charles and Eric Bley, the deceased’s first cousins.”
“The lawyers Bley? Ah, I didn’t realize they were related to the Bremonts. So did Bremont’s widow cosign the request?”
“No, she refused,” Verlaque answered, raising an eyebrow. He surveyed the room. “Anything?”
“Nothing, Juge,” Paulik answered. “The area in front of the window has recently been swept, the caretaker told me he sweeps and dusts up here often. In fact, we had trouble getting rid of him; he was following me around like a lost sheep.”
Verlaque noticed the broom propped in a corner. “Make sure you get that dusted for prints.”
“I’ve already told them to. So far we haven’t found any signs of a disturbance. The attic door was wide open, and the key to the door was sitting here on this suitcase. We’ve getting the fingerprints off it. The caretaker has given us one of his keys, and I’ve told him not to let anyone in.”
“Good,” said Verlaque, glancing down at the suitcase. It was a vintage Louis Vuitton, probably from the 1930s, with a label from the Ritz Hotel in London still attached to it and the name Comte Philippe de Bremont written in black ink across the tag. Philippe de Bremont would have been the dead man’s grandfather, Verlaque thought—the man the caretaker had spoken of.
“Quite a room isn’t it, sir? They have more stuff in here than I do in my whole house,” Paulik said, looking around the attic and rubbing his bald head at the same time.
“The French nobility aren’t so bad off as they want us to believe, hein?” Verlaque asked, trying to joke. He did not like the police officers to know that he came from money, although it was fairly obvious since not many judges, who were after all civil servants, could afford to drive an antique Porsche and eat out almost every night. But he didn’t come from nobility—far from it.
Paulik didn’t reply but was busy frowning and leaning out of the open window. The commissioner was humming what Verlaque believed to be an opera aria, but Verlaque’s knowledge of opera was embarrassingly nonexistent. Paulik stopped humming and told the other officers they could leave the attic. He then frowned and asked the judge, “Do you think that Bremont could have lost his footing and fallen through that opening?”
Verlaque shook his head back and forth. “Not very possible—he grew up here. He must have opened that window thousands of times. That’s what Eric Bley told me on the phone and why he and his brother asked for the inquest. What’s your theory?”
Paulik considered before answering. “He could have been pushed, but there are no signs of struggle. Or he was taken by surprise—it could have happened in seconds.” Then he added, “If there was a struggle, the mess may have been cleaned up. Suicide?”
“Suicide seems unlikely from what I know of the count, but we’ll need to ask those uncomfortable questions of his family members. Both of the Bleys thought it highly unlikely. Besides, Bremont’s glasses were found next to his body. Wouldn’t you take off your glasses if you were going to jump?” Verlaque asked, and he grabbed his reading glasses, which had been hanging permanently from his neck since he was in his early thirties.
Paulik nodded and replied, “Yeah, I see what you mean. It’s like those suicides on the Mediterranean. The distressed will carefully fold their clothes and leave everything in a neat pile on the shore, and then quietly walk into the sea.”
Both men stayed silent for a few seconds, each one lost in thought. Verlaque then finally said, “As for theft, the caretaker did a thorough check of the château and everything seems to be in place. Talk to him tomorrow and get a second report, just in case. I’ve already talked to him. We’ll need to go visit his sister in the Var. As I understand it, they both grew up here.”
“And the count’s brother?” Paulik asked. Verlaque silently noted that Paulik, as usual, had done his homework before visiting the accident scene.
“François de Bremont is expected tomorrow,” answered the judge. “Let me know as soon as he arrives—he was sailing off the coast of Corsica and will be driving here from Toulon.”
“What about Count de Bremont’s work? Could he have made an enemy during the filming of one of his documentaries?”
Étienne de Bremont had made his name as a filmmaker. He’d shown several documentaries at festivals over the past five years, including one that focused on organized crime in Provence. It was during the production of that film that Verlaque first made his acquaintance.
Verlaque thought of the film and the earnest young man behind the camera. He remembered Étienne de Bremont, from their interviews together, as tall and thin, with jet black hair that always seemed a little greasy. For each of the interviews, Bremont had been wearing one of those safari-type vests that National Geographic photographers seem to prefer. Verlaque thought it was a little curieux, until the interview began and Bremont’s sincere gray eyes didn’t, for a second, leave Verlaque’s face. Bremont had delicately posed his questions to Verlaque, who in turn answered as truthfully as he could without pointing fingers. The director and the judge both knew that high crime in the Marseille area had its origins in Corsica, but there was little either of them could, or was willing, to say. Verlaque had liked the film very much. It was stunningly photographed, in a light so bright that it made the viewer uncomfortable, which Verlaque thought suited the Corsican Mafia and the criminal world in general. The judge’s prejudices about noble gentlemen with no serious professions, only titles, had lessened after his three interviews with Bremont, and especially after seeing the documentary, which had just won an award earlier that year.
He answered Paulik’s question: “It’s poss
ible. Send one of the other officers, perhaps Flamant, to talk to the CEO of the film production company he worked for, Souleiado Films. They’re in a renovated factory in the Belle de Mai neighborhood in Marseille. On second thought, why don’t you head down there yourself tomorrow morning?”
Paulik shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I can’t. I’m testifying in court tomorrow and Tuesday.”
“Merde. All right. Well, it’s not urgent. Later in the week will be fine.”
The two men were jolted out of their respective thoughts when they heard a pair of hurried footsteps on the stairs leading to the attic, and a young officer rushed into the room. Verlaque had seen the red-haired, freckle-faced youth around police headquarters, but his name escaped him.
The young officer let out a long and weary “Putain!” as he mopped his brow with the back of his hand. He then, to his horror, saw his superior officer and the juge d’instruction, and apologized for his six-letter word. “Sorry, Judge, but there’s a bunch of reporters gathering outside the front door.”
“Tell them I’ll be right down to give my statement,” Verlaque told the youngster.
On his way out, the young officer dropped his notebook and pen on the stairs, swearing again as he picked them up. Paulik, trying unsuccessfully to hide his smile, coughed and asked the judge, “What is our statement, sir?”
Verlaque shrugged. “Death from an accidental fall. That’s what the coroner has said, and until I can talk to Bremont’s wife and find out why he was up here on a Saturday night, that’s all we can say.” He then added, “If you’re through in here, we can leave and lock the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two men locked the attic door and headed downstairs, passing bedrooms that had already been inspected by Paulik and his team. On the ground floor, Verlaque turned to the commissioner before opening the front door and asked, “Are there any rooms in this place that have been used in the past decade?”