Death at the Château Bremont

by ML Longworth

  “You see! Who would want to kill a filmmaker? Besides, he just made documentaries, not even interesting films!” Roussel looked over at Paulik, hoping to get a laugh from the commissioner. Paulik was smiling, but not for the reasons that Roussel assumed.

  Verlaque stared at the prosecutor, suddenly realizing that he had not missed Yves Roussel at all and now wanted him out of his office.

  “You’re probably right, Yves.” Verlaque left it at that, not mentioning when he planned to close the investigation. He knew from experience that Roussel had a short attention span. Verlaque had just bought himself a day or two, max. “I’ll give the Bleys their report as soon as possible.”

  “Good. I’m off, boys! Time to take the Harley for a spin. She’s been sitting in the garage for too long! I’m still officially on vacation until next week, but I’ll be in and out!” Roussel turned on his slanted, raised turquoise heels and left, yelling a “Salut, Madame! Be good!” as he passed through Mme Girard’s cubicle.

  “Fancy a road trip tomorrow afternoon?” Verlaque asked Paulik, before switching off the office lights and closing the door behind them.

  Paulik looked pleased. “Why not? I have a free day tomorrow, now that the court case has been postponed. What’s the destination?”

  “Cotignac. I though that we could pay a visit to Jean-Claude Auvieux’s sister. Let’s walk out together and I’ll fill you in on my visit with the caretaker and my interview with Isabelle de Bremont.”

  Once the two men had compared notes, Verlaque left the precinct and headed north, walking up past the cathedral. He glanced at his watch—it was just after 8:00 p.m., and he was feeling hungry. The contents of his refrigerator—half a bottle of red, some bits of Roquefort cheese, lettuce, lemon, and Parmesan—would be his dinner. He then remembered that his cigar club was meeting tonight, at Fabrice’s house in the country. He turned left and began walking toward his garage to pick up his car when his cell phone rang and identified Marine as the caller.

  “Oui?” Verlaque said.

  “Hi, Antoine,” said Marine, sounding out of breath. “I’ve just been thinking, inside la Madeleine.”

  “La Madeleine the café or la Madeleine the church?” asked Verlaque.

  “The church,” said Marine. “Do you remember the Louis Vuitton suitcase in the Bremont attic?”

  “You mean, the one you made slide halfway across the attic?” Verlaque teased.

  “Yes,” Marine said, ignoring the jab. “It was empty.”

  “So?”

  “It was always full, and locked, when we were kids. We used to play travel games, and I always wanted to play with that suitcase, but it was so heavy that we had to drag it with two hands across the floor. Étienne and François were always weird about that case—they didn’t like to play with it like I did. Perhaps it was just because they were boys. Anyway, maybe it’s silly of me, but I have a funny feeling about it. Once Étienne’s mother came upstairs to check on us and saw that we had moved it, and she flipped out. It’s entirely possible that after all these years one of the family members may have opened it and took out whatever was in there, but—”

  “I’m planning to visit the caretaker tomorrow morning. I’ll definitely ask him about the suitcase. Perhaps there was money in it. He told me he knew the attic by heart. Can we talk about this more then?”

  “Sure, good night,” Marine said, a bit disappointed that Verlaque had not been more grateful or optimistic about her news. She started to move her thumb to end the call, and as she did, Verlaque said one more thing.

  “Marine?”

  “Yes?” she answered.

  “Would you like to . . . Ah, never mind . . . Thanks for this information.”

  He hung up the phone.

  Chapter Seven

  There were already six or seven cars parked in front of the restored stone farmhouse when Verlaque arrived just before 9:00 p.m. He turned off the jazz, and his car engine, and got out of the Porsche, and did his usual tour, looking to see who had a new car. A Lexus that he hadn’t seen before was parked off by itself, taking up what should have been two spaces, and causing him to frown. He moved on and smiled when he saw a pale blue Deux Chevaux, immaculate thanks to meticulous care by its owner, a petit, well-groomed bookstore clerk, every bit as neat as his car. A light came on above the front door, and a voice called from the lit-up doorway. “We heard your Porsche. Are you going to come in sometime?”

  “I’m just admiring Pierre’s Deux Chevaux. Tell him I’ll buy it whenever he’s ready.”

  “I’ve got first dibs, sorry.”

  The two men gave each other affectionate bises as Verlaque stepped into the low-ceilinged living room, warmed by a lit fire in the hearth—necessary even in April in the centuries-old stone house that stood in a clearing, wide open to the elements, surrounded by only vineyards. His host, Fabrice Gaussen, had grown up in Marseille and had made his fortune in the plumbing business, with stores that bore his name across southern France. He had purchased the farmhouse in Le Tholonet, Aix’s chicest neighborhood, in the early 1990s, before the TGV had arrived in Aix and real estate prices soared. Fabrice’s introduction to cigars had been simple—his brother, Rémy, had married a Cuban, and Maria Gaussen was responsible, much to the chagrin of Fabrice’s wife, for her brother-in-law’s love of Cuba, its music and history, and especially its tobacco.

  Verlaque smiled as he saw his friends and was immediately thankful that he had made the effort to come, despite his fatigue. It took about five minutes to make the rounds, each man kissing the judge on the cheek twice and warmly grabbing his shoulder or arm, except for Julien, who gave four kisses, two on each cheek, as was the tradition in his home town of Avignon. A box of cigars was thrust into Verlaque’s hands.

  “A little cigar for the aperitif,” said Fabrice, also the club’s president. “Get Monsieur le Juge a glass of champagne, would you, Gaspard? And no one is to ask Antoine about the Bremont case, all right? He’s here to relax.” Fabrice pointed to a flowered chintz chair obviously purchased by his wife—who tonight had escaped to her sister’s house in Marseille—and he fluffed up a small pillow that was embroidered with the face of a pug-nosed dog. “Sit down, Antoine.” Fabrice leaned in, his large belly looming over the judge. “So, what’s going on?” Fabrice asked, half whispering. “The Bleys have asked for an inquest, eh?”

  “Come off it, Fabrice!” Gaspard yelled, laughing, a bottle of champagne in his hand. Gaspard, just out of law school, and dressed in ripped jeans and handmade Italian shoes that he was still paying off, poured Verlaque some champagne. The young cigar aficionado grinned from ear to ear as he poured, thrilled to have been accepted into this group of bons vivants, most of them at least twenty years older than himself.

  Verlaque thanked Gaspard for the champagne and nodded, smiling, toward his good friend Jean-Marc, who was sitting in a matching armchair, smiling and smoking. “Fabrice, I smell something burning,” Jean-Marc said, motioning toward the kitchen.

  “Merde!” The club’s president jumped up and ran toward the kitchen, followed closely by Loïc, a journalist and amateur chef.

  Verlaque snipped off the end of his cigar and reached into his jacket pocket, realizing he had left his lighter in the car. He motioned with his thumb the act of igniting a lighter, and one was tossed across the room at him, the judge catching it in his right hand. Verlaque loved silent communications like this, especially with this group of friends, or with Marine, with whom they were as good as words. He was too tired to put on his glasses to look at the cigar band but was instantly impressed with the long, smooth taste that reminded him of freshly ground green peppercorns. “Petit Corona, Hoyo de Monterrey,” a voice rang out from across the coffee table in perfect Spanish.

  “Thanks, José,” Verlaque answered. He then looked down at the coffee table and saw about fifteen lit scented candles and lau
ghed.

  “Fabrice’s wife was hysterical before she left,” Jean-Marc explained. “I got here early, and Fabrice was following her around the house, pleading with her not to open every window.”

  “Still, it’s so much more pleasant meeting here, in a member’s home, than getting stared down in a restaurant,” José offered, in broken French. He knew, for one, that his wife would never have twelve cigar smokers in her home. He tried to make up for it by regularly supplying the club with cigars from Madrid, where they were cheaper.

  “I was just in New York, and you can’t smoke anywhere. It will soon happen here, mark my word,” another accented voice suggested.

  “No chance, Jacob. There would be a revolution in France before that!” Fabrice bellowed from the kitchen.

  Jacob shrugged. “You think so? We tend to like following the Americans.” Jacob, an Egyptian Jew, was a financial trader who commuted from Aix to London and had already heard his British colleagues talking of smoking bans that would soon hit the UK. “Anyway, meeting like this at a member’s home is considerably cheaper than a restaurant, and the wine’s better,” he continued, motioning to the champagne. Jacob, a self-made millionaire, was extremely sensitive to the disparity of wealth amongst his fellow cigar club members. He knew that some—Pierre, for instance, whom he was fairly certain worked at one of the many Aix bookstores, and Loïc, a journalist for La Provence—made sacrifices to buy their cigars.

  Swearing was then heard from the kitchen, and Verlaque got up and went in, where Fabrice, now sporting a flowered apron, was removing burnt pastries from a cookie sheet. “We salvaged quite a few,” he said. “Loïc is now in charge of the oven. I quit!” Loïc and Verlaque exchanged smiles. Fabrice started for the living room, carrying the hot baking sheet with flowered oven mitts that matched his apron. “Fabrice!” Loïc called after him. “Put those on a serving dish!”

  “Merde!” he said, turning around. “You’re right.” Verlaque chose an oval porcelain plate from on top of the refrigerator and helped Fabrice remove the savory pastries from the baking sheet, happy to be doing a simple task, instead of thinking about the Bremont death, as his club members assumed he was doing. He had, in fact, been thinking about Marine. “Are these gougères?” Verlaque asked, picking one up and tossing it into his mouth. Fabrice straightened his back and replied, “Of course! They’re simple once you get the hang of it!” Fabrice took the platter and walked into the living room, where oohs and aahs could be heard. “One at a time!” Fabrice bellowed. “I saw that, Julien! Put one back!”

  “What kind of cheese did you put in these?” Pierre asked the beaming chef.

  “Cantal, with a bit of Parmesan.”

  “Cantal? And not Gruyère? Wow. What a good idea—it’s salty and sharp. Perfect!” Pierre saluted Fabrice with his glass of champagne. He closed his eyes and sipped, as if he was enjoying every bubble, and in fact he was. Bookstores didn’t—couldn’t—pay well, and being in the cigar club was his sole luxury. He repeatedly told himself that he would happily eat beans and rice all week in order to smoke hand-rolled Cuban cigars once a month with his group of friends.

  “Pierre, what’s the latest trend in books?” Jacob asked, he himself the owner of an impressive library.

  “Gardening,” Pierre answered, leaning toward the coffee table and taking another gougère.

  Jacob looked puzzled “Really?”

  “It’s April,” Pierre replied. “Springtime.”

  Jacob smiled. “Ah, right! Fabrice, these are wonderful gougères, by the way.”

  Fabrice now shrugged, as if making gougères was child’s play. “Just wait until you guys taste the T-bones. Hey, Loïc, is the barbecue ready?”

  Loïc popped his head around the kitchen door. “Yes! The coals are perfect!”

  “Okay! Who wants rare, medium, or blue?” Fabrice asked, looking at his friends. “Hands up for blue.”

  Pierre raised his hand. “You don’t even have to heat it up that much for me.”

  “Okay. Now, rare?”

  The majority of the club then raised its hands. “Good. José? You’re the only one that didn’t raise your hand. Do you want medium rare?”

  José slumped down in his seat. “Actually, well done, please.”

  “That’s not even an option!”

  “Come on, Fabrice,” Verlaque said. “Give our Castilian friend what he wants.”

  “Fine!” Fabrice huffed. “Excuse me, gentlemen, while I attend to the barbecue. Oh, sorry, Virginie!”

  “It’s all right, you made up for any faux pas with those gougères!” the club’s sole female member said, laughing. A pharmacist, she had recently relocated to the Aix region after having sold her father’s prosperous pharmacy near the Sorbonne in Paris.

  “How’s your pharmacy in Lambesc working out?” Julien asked, taking a gougère that he had hid in a paper napkin and putting it into his mouth.

  “Great! Most of my clients are retired farmers, and half of them just come in to chat. I love it. Compared to Paris, it’s zero stress.” Virginie didn’t have to add that with the proceeds from the sale of her two-bedroom apartment in the fifth arrondissement she had purchased a five-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot, seventeenth-century mansion in the village of Lambesc.

  Jean-Marc, noticing Verlaque grow quiet, as he usually did when people spoke of Paris, left his coveted armchair, and in no time Julien had sprinted out of his hard-backed dining room chair and taken it over. Jean-Marc turned around and said, “I’m coming back, Julien. First come, first serve.” He pulled a foot stool up beside Verlaque’s chair and asked, whispering, “Did you see Marine at the château?”

  Verlaque took a drag of his cigar, letting the aroma pass around his mouth before blowing out. “Yes, she came up this morning.”

  “How did it go?”

  Verlaque looked at his friend, so silent when it came to his own love life, but somehow that had never bothered the judge. He trusted Jean-Marc with his life. “I was stunned, actually. Utterly unprepared.”

  “You had forgotten Marine’s beauty?” Jean-Marc asked, smiling.

  “Oh, her beauty I remembered. It was her grace and naturalness that I had forgotten.” Verlaque looked up the ceiling and turned to his friend. “I’m sure I pissed her off, as usual.”

  Jean-Marc easily imagined the scenario, and smiled. “Go easy on her, Antoine.”

  Verlaque put his hand on Jean-Marc’s shoulder. “I’m determined to change my ways. Don’t worry.”

  “To the table!” hollered Fabrice, arriving with a platter layered high with T-bone steaks. “Come on, Antoine and Jean-Marc! You can continue your lovers’ symposium later!” He had guessed that they were talking of Marine Bonnet. Perhaps Jean-Marc was in love with her too, he thought to himself.

  The club members almost ran to the table, as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Verlaque looked at them and smiled, knowing that each and every one of them, despite where they were born or how much money they made, loved food and wine and cigars and laughter. He sometimes fantasized about bringing Philip Larkin with him to a meeting or Winston Churchill or JFK.

  When they had finished eating their first course—a slice of foie gras made by Fabrice’s wife and served on a bed of salad—Loïc came into the dining room with a baking dish of scalloped potatoes. “Cooked on low heat for four hours, with a tub of crème fraîche,” he said, second-guessing the members’ questions. “No cheese, lads, so it’s low fat.” The club members laughed, and Loïc, remembering his manners, served Virginie first, who happily scooped two ladles of steaming potatoes onto her plate. Fabrice walked the opposite way around the table, serving the steaks. “Julien!” he hollered. “Wait until everyone is served before diving in!”

  “It will get cold!” Julien answered. “It’s an insult to the chefs, eating your food cold.”

 
“Nice excuse!” Verlaque shouted. Fabrice then sat down at the head of the table and raised his fork and knife in the air. “Bon appétit!”

  Verlaque cut a bit of steak and was immediately struck by its tenderness. He put it into his mouth and chewed, staring at Fabrice. “This is amazing.”

  Fabrice beamed. “Tell them, Loïc.”

  Loïc leaned forward, as if sharing a national secret. “Since we already had the oven on, we put the steaks in there as soon as they came off the grill, for about fifteen minutes on super low heat,” he explained.

  “I’ve never heard of that,” Jean-Marc said.

  “A chef that I interviewed told me about it,” Loïc replied, cutting his steak.

  “How long were they on the grill for?” Julien asked, not looking up, his steak already half gone.

  “For the rare ones,” Fabrice said, glaring at José, “four minutes per side. They’re pretty thick.”

  “It’s like butter,” Virginie added. She held up her glass, full of a Côte Rôtie red wine, and said, “To the chefs!”

  After some discussion about the mayor’s plans to change Aix, the dinner plates were whisked away by Gaspard and Jacob, Gaspard feeling that as the youngest member it was his duty to pitch in. Jacob, who had always had full-time staff at his home, enjoyed this kind of work and missed it.

  “Should we take a pause before dessert?” Fabrice asked, folding his napkin and setting it on the table.

  “You needn’t ask that,” Verlaque replied. “I think we’re all anxious to smoke the Edmundos that are in that box on the coffee table.”

  “Great! Let’s retire to the salon, shall we?” Fabrice suggested, with an exaggeratedly posh voice that barely hid the Marseillais accent he had grown up with.

  “Julien! That’s my chair!” Jean-Marc yelled as he left the table. Verlaque looked at his friend in surprise, and laughed. He had never heard Jean-Marc raise his voice before.

  Chapter Eight