Death at the Château Bremont

by ML Longworth

  “If it was an accident, why was Antoine called? Isn’t that a job for the police?” Marine asked. She was annoyed that Verlaque had already called Jean-Marc. He wouldn’t bother to call her, but he would call Jean-Marc. Perhaps Verlaque didn’t know that Marine was an old friend of the Bremont family. She knew from Jean-Marc that Antoine has been back in Aix for two weeks now, his sabbatical in Paris over. But still he hadn’t called her.

  Jean-Marc didn’t let on that he noticed Marine’s voice crack when she said Antoine’s name aloud. “Eric and Charles Bley have asked for a formal investigation.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No. Procureur Roussel is in Scotland, golfing. He’s due back any day now. Procureur Levy came from Marseille and went to the château to inspect, but as soon as Antoine received the family’s request, he went up.”

  “Wait a minute! Fill me in a bit, would you? Why didn’t the prosecutor stay? And who are these Bley guys?” Sylvie asked, looking back and forth between Marine and Jean-Marc.

  “The Bleys are first cousins of Étienne,” Marine answered. “They’re both lawyers.”

  “The prosecutor is always the first official, with the commissioner, on the accident scene, but if an investigation request is made by the family, the examining magistrate immediately enters the picture,” Jean-Marc added.

  “Thanks,” Sylvie replied. “Next question: why did they name the château after the family? That’s completely bogus.”

  Marine sighed. “It’s just always been called that, Sylvie. It’s unusual, I’ll admit. But the château has been in the Bremont family since it was built, in the seventeenth century, I think.”

  “Still bogus.”

  “It’s awful, isn’t it, a sudden death?” Jean-Marc said, looking from Marine to Sylvie, hoping to distract Sylvie from one of her antinobility tirades. “I didn’t know Étienne, but I liked his work. Did you ever see the documentary he made on crime in Provence, the one where he interviewed Antoine?”

  Sylvie shot a worried look across to Marine, as if again the mention of Antoine Verlaque’s name would reduce Marine to tears. Marine returned her glance with a determined gaze: no tears, Sylvie, don’t worry.

  “Yes, I did see it, I showed it to my third-year class,” Marine answered, not mentioning that she had actually taped it and watched it alone about a dozen times, for it had been released just after Antoine ended their relationship. She and Sylvie had also watched it, together, and had picked the film to shreds, critiquing every aspect of Verlaque’s “performance,” with the help of a half bottle of whiskey. Marine looked across the table and saw the huge grin on Sylvie’s face and tried not to laugh. “It was a good film, and a realistic one,” she said. Sylvie snorted.

  Jean-Marc nodded sincerely, and Marine remembered how it had irked her to see her normally sensible female law students swoon over the bewitching new examining magistrate of Aix. No, Verlaque wasn’t classically handsome—he was short and thick, with a tummy that revealed his love of food and wine, but he had dark intense eyes and was fully aware of his power of seduction—and he was very young to be one of the most powerful judges in the south of France. Marine had answered her students’ questions about Verlaque as best she could, explaining to her criminal law class the responsibilities of the judge, who, according to French law, advises the commissioner of police regarding crimes and their examination. She tried to sound as indifferent as possible, not revealing the fact that they had been lovers. In fact, it was easy not to let on that she knew Verlaque intimately, because there wasn’t much to reveal—despite almost a year of dating, what did she really know about him? She often thought that the real Antoine could be found lurking around a certain villa in Normandy, where he used to spend all his vacations with his English-born grandmother. The real Verlaque certainly wasn’t in Aix.

  “Speak of the devil,” Jean-Marc whispered, as he looked up from his coffee. Marine froze, her hand trembling so much that she had to set down her café crème. She stared at the thick white porcelain cup and held it tightly, as if the cup itself could give her strength and keep her centered. She slowly lifted up her eyes and looked at Sylvie, who had a seat against the wall, with a full view of the café, but the look on Sylvie’s face revealed nothing. Marine then heard her name, and the speaker was not Antoine Verlaque. Her whole body relaxed, her shoulders falling. At that point Sylvie noticed her friend’s anxiety and reached out and quickly tapped her hand, smiling.

  “Hallo, Marine. Hallo, Jean-Marc.” Marine turned around and saw Eric Bley. She had gone to primary and secondary school with the Bleys—all eleven of them—and Eric and Charles Bley had their law practice on, she was fairly certain, the rue Thiers. She quickly got up and embraced Eric Bley, whom Sylvie was just as quickly assessing: thick, premature gray hair; the wide shoulders of someone who worked out; designer clothes but with a touch of originality—a big red Paul Smith watch instead of the Rolex that other wealthy usually men wore. Condolences were made, and Sylvie was introduced.

  “You’ve heard that we requested an inquest?” Eric asked, looking at Marine. Marine nodded, and was about to speak, when Eric quickly went on, “There’s no way Étienne just fell out of that window!” He realized that he had spoken too loudly, and looked over his shoulder as if to apologize. But the other Mazarin patrons just went on quietly drinking their coffees and reading their papers. If they had heard, no one acknowledged it. He sighed, running his hands though his hair—the hair that Sylvie was still admiring—and then said, “I’m sorry about that. I’ve been going over and over it . . . The attic . . . Étienne. You remember it, don’t you Marine?” Again, before she could answer, he said, “How could Étienne have just fallen? No. No!”

  The espresso machine let out a piercing cry, as if a steam train had been parked next to their table, and Eric Bley looked at his giant watch and mumbled good-bye, walking so quickly out of the café that he almost ran into a waiter who was balancing a tray of coffees and orange juices.

  “Funny,” Marine said, wincing a bit, “that’s a sound we hear a dozen times a day, but today it seems too loud.”

  “Yes, today it’s annoying,” Jean-Marc replied, lifting his black judicial robe off of the chair beside him and throwing it over his shoulder. “Are you in court today?” asked Marine, seeing the robe.

  “All week,” Jean-Marc replied. “Well, time to go and start the day. Ciao, ciao.”

  “Good-bye,” said Marine, giving Jean-Marc a kiss on each cheek—the bises. Marine got up to go as well; she had a class in thirty minutes. “Here, tonight,” she whispered into Sylvie’s ear. Sylvie’s big smile was an affirmative response, and while lighting another cigarette, already poised in her mouth, with her free hand she gave Marine the universal “I’ll call you later” signal—her extended index and baby fingers held up to her left ear.

  Marine crossed Le Mazarin’s terrace and headed south on the rue du 4 Septembre toward the faculté, the same route she took every day. Only today Marine knew she wouldn’t see Isabelle de Bremont, on her way back from school or the market, with her children in tow. The Bremonts, like other good young Catholic families, seemed to have hordes of children, and Marine remembered at least four—one just school age, a set of three-year-old twins who were always running in opposite directions, and a baby. Although the two women moved in very different social circles, Isabelle always stopped when she saw Marine, and they would take the time to give each other the bises. Marine thought about the life of Isabelle and the children, and how from now on it would never be the same.

  A young girl walked around Marine, busily chatting on her cell phone while managing to navigate the cobblestone sidewalk in heels at least six inches high. Marine realized she hadn’t turned on her own phone yet this morning. When she pressed the on button, the phone began to ring at once with one recorded message: “It’s me. Call me as soon as you get this message.”


  Antoine Verlaque never bothered to say his name when he called Marine, or when he called other people for that matter. She wondered if he introduced himself when he called people on court business. Did he assume that he was the only male between the age of thirty and forty who would leave a message on Marine’s phone? But he had always been more polite to men than to women—at least, Marine had sensed, more comfortable with them. Sylvie had gone so far as to suggest that Verlaque was gay: her final proof, and one she loved to dwell on—as if she were the only one in the world to have thought of it—was the fact that Verlaque had been privately schooled au pension. Marine would then jump to Verlaque’s defense: she did not accept the theory that men who attended boarding schools grew up to be frustrated homosexuals; his unwillingness, or uneasiness, in sharing his emotions with a woman, Marine thought, must be due to his strict upbringing or perhaps some drama in his past—he had once hinted at a tragic incident, on the night after his grandmother died, but Marine had never been able to get him to tell her the details.

  The man she had been recently dating, an intern eight years her junior, who worked at the hospital with her father, was unusually kind and considerate, at times annoyingly so. Arthur was the opposite of Verlaque in every way. Where Verlaque commanded, Arthur questioned, unable to decide, as if he had no preferences. “Wet” is how Sylvie had described him. Marine tried to remember if Sylvie had ever liked anyone she had dated, and yet Sylvie’s own track record with men was dismal. Marine defended Arthur in the same way that she had defended Verlaque: they had a good time together; she enjoyed Arthur’s stories of working at the hospital, which were so different from her work as a university professor. She was physically attracted to Arthur as well, but it was not the same wild lust that she’d had for Verlaque: she was embarrassed by how much she had enjoyed sex with the judge, and how often, even now, she thought about it—she had always assumed that intellectually she was above such basic emotions. She had recently read an article, in a copy of Paris Match at her dentist’s office, about an aged film star who described his on-again, off-again, long-term relationship with his girlfriend as “an obsession” and said that even after thirty years of dating they still “went at it like twenty-year-olds.” She had felt herself blushing and quickly put the magazine down, thankful when the dentist’s white-jacketed assistant poked her head around the door and called her name.

  She walked on toward the university, preparing herself for the call. She dialed his number, and he answered immediately.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  No “hello, how are you?” she thought. Her hands began to shake.

  “I’m just in front of the law school,” Marine answered.

  “I need to see you,” Verlaque demanded, sounding out of breath.

  “I have a class until eleven thirty,” Marine answered, trying to be as curt as he was. She thought she was doing a good job. She was pleased.

  “Come out to the Bremont château after that.”

  Marine was shocked. “Why?”

  “Didn’t you hear about Étienne de Bremont?” Verlaque asked. The tone of his voice made it clear that Verlaque thought only an idiot wouldn’t have heard about the death. What if she hadn’t gone to Le Mazarin and instead had gone straight to the university?

  “Well, yes, this morning at the office,” Marine answered. Her friends used to joke that her office was at the Mazarin café—the university had very little funding, and only very ancient professors had their own offices. But even just mentioning the café, and referring to it by its pet name, made her feel better. She went on, “Jean-Marc told me that Étienne fell from one of the attic windows.”

  “I want you to come and look around the place,” Verlaque interrupted. “You played up here, didn’t you, as kids? I saw a photograph of you and the two sons in the château’s library.”

  Marine wasn’t sure if this was another of Antoine’s slight jabs pointed at her privileged, very conservative Catholic upbringing. His was a very different enfance, a childhood that despite lots of, loads of, family money would never have included an invitation to play at the Bremont’s château.

  “Yes, I was friends with the boys, mostly Étienne though. I do remember parts of the house, and the attic,” she answered. “But why should I come up?” Marine did not want to see the château again, especially now, a day after her friend had died there. And did she want to see Verlaque? She wasn’t sure.

  “I’ll explain more when you come up. See you at noon.” He hung up.

  The law school bells rang out, and Marine felt overcome by noises—bells, espresso machines, chattering students. She walked into the doors of the faculté, through a cloud of student cigarette smoke, feeling dazed but thankful that she had only one class, a first-year course on French legal history that she could probably teach with her eyes shut. But she would keep them open and force herself to concentrate on the twenty or so pairs of eyes that would be looking up at her—some fascinated, some bored, some wondering where they would eat lunch. Because if she closed her eyes, even for a moment, she would start thinking of Étienne and the Bremont family, and of her childhood, and Antoine Verlaque—whom she would be seeing in two hours, after an absence of six months.

  Despite herself, Marine’s hands trembled as she turned to the first page of her notes. She began to write the date of the court case on the blackboard and stopped, looking at her shaky, spindly scrawl. She erased the letters and turned around to face the students. “Close your books. There will be no need to take notes today.” She sat on the edge of her desk, facing the students, who now looked wide awake and eager. Some even smiled. “This is the fascinating case of Marie-Pierre Bessone, found stabbed to death meters away from her barge on the canal du Midi in July 1882. The murder was never solved.”

  Chapter Three

  Marine had considered calling Verlaque back and canceling, but her natural curiosity had gotten the better of her. She also felt that she owed it to Étienne. Her eyes filled with tears, and she tried to keep them on the winding road, but she couldn’t stop thinking of her childhood friend. In her head they were always twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old and never adults, a law professor and filmmaker. They had been inseparable during those years. They loved to argue, and discussed anything—food preferences, the best soccer teams, current politics—politics as their young minds understood it. While many of their classmates, including Étienne’s brother, François, were already experimenting with smoking and sex, she and Étienne still climbed trees and played war games. If they were aware of their slow, innocent development, neither of them mentioned it to the other. They knew only one other youth who was not trying to race on to adulthood—Jean-Claude—and he would sometimes join their games. He did, because of his size, make a good prison-camp guard, and he could be convinced at times, with promises of stolen food, to play this role. Marine remembered sticking up for Jean-Claude—not specific scenes, just a general impression that now, for some reason, in the car on an April morning, stuck in her mind. Étienne had always treated Jean-Claude as though he was hired help. Marine had never felt that way toward Jean-Claude, nor his mother, and although Mme Auvieux cooked and ran the household, it was obvious to Marine, even as a child, that the Auvieux were treated as part of the Bremont family. Jean-Claude and his sister even attended their school, La Nativité, instead of the free village school down the hill in Beaurecueil. She realized now that it must have been the Bremonts who paid the fees for Cosette’s and Jean-Claude’s text books and uniforms.

  Étienne, whose German was quite good, taught Jean-Claude some keys phrases and insisted he yell orders in that language, while Marine and Étienne spoke French with broken Anglo accents, pretending to be American or English or Australian. After a few months of being instructed about what to say and do, and being bossed around by Étienne, Jean-Claude abandoned the games and returned to the garden.

  Étienne had o
nly once made a pass at her—when they were eighteen and celebrating their high school graduation, with the aid of cans of cider. She did not return his kiss but had been gentle with him: Étienne had been more like a brother to her, never a love interest. She knew that Étienne was disappointed and embarrassed. From that day on they gradually drifted apart, as if the magic innocence of childhood was officially over.

  Her grief for Étienne combined with the fear and excitement of seeing Verlaque caused Marine to feel ill. Arrête-toi, she said to herself, and she rubbed her tummy the way she did the first day of classes or before she entered a room full of people she didn’t know. She would go to the château. She was curious, as she always was about events like this—she had even once, long ago, considered the police force as an occupation, but her love of research combined with her love of regular hours and long vacations helped her to choose academia.

  It was normally a pleasant drive for Marine, the route Cézanne. The road gently twists its way out of Aix toward mont Sainte-Victoire, Cézanne’s obsession. The earth is red, a brick red that contrasts naturally with the dark green foliage and azure blue sky. “Somebody was designing brilliantly when they combined these colors,” Verlaque used to say when they’d go for a walk or a drive around the mountain. It was one of the few times that he ever got remotely religious.

  She drove past some of Aix’s most prestigious properties, most of them hidden from view behind pine trees and iron gates. She slowed the car down as it maneuvered two hairpin turns that led uphill to Saint-Antonin, a tiny hamlet that stood at the foot of the craggy white mountain. Like other hamlets in France, Saint-Antonin was too small to have a boulangerie or a café but big enough to have a World War II memorial with thirteen names on it. She made a habit of reading the names to herself when she saw such monuments—the turn-of-the-century names were beautiful: Gaspard, Arsène, Isidore.