Death at the Château Bremont

by ML Longworth

  “We were covering for each other . . . She knew I was having an affair, but I’m fairly certain she was in the dark regarding Étienne. I did tell her we had been together that evening—at the movies. Isabelle has no interest in cinema.” She stayed silent for some time, looking down at the arm of the chair, as if deciding whether or not to go on. “We began our affair three years ago,” she finally said, choking slightly on her last words. “But we’ve known each other since we were in high school. Étienne and I had been great friends—we joked and laughed all the time. But I went away to university, and I met, and became quickly engaged to, Henri, my husband. He too is a judge, in Marseille.”

  Verlaque nodded and said nothing.

  “Henri and I married, and Isabelle and Étienne married, children followed for them but sadly not for us. Étienne and I always joked that we got on better with each other than with our respective spouses. Three years ago we ended up alone at my country house in the Tarn—my husband had been called back to Marseille for a trial, and Isabelle had stayed in Aix at the last minute because one of her children was sick. Étienne had been filming in Toulouse, and he came up to the Tarn house, and”—she paused, rubbing her hands along her thighs—“that was that. Isabelle has had a lover in Paris for some time. That’s where she was on Saturday night. Don’t think harshly of her, please. Isabelle had trouble controlling, or dealing with, Étienne’s mood swings. Étienne couldn’t understand Isabelle’s faith or her doting on the children. Since I have neither faith nor children, we were a better fit. And my marriage to Henri, well, it was practically an arranged marriage. All the same, you won’t tell Isabelle about our affair, will you?”

  “I don’t see any reason to,” Verlaque said. He had stirred only the slightest bit when Sophie Valoie had mentioned Isabelle de Bremont’s lover in Paris. He continued, “Count Bremont was moody?”

  “Oh yes, up and down all the time. He had a nasty temper.” Mme Valoie paused, and looking at the tulips, smiled and said, “But when he was up, oh, what fun we had.”

  “You must be very sad,” he added, seeing Sophie Valoie looking at him. She began crying, her face softening and slowly becoming every bit as beautiful as her red-haired sister.

  “Yes, it’s very difficult,” she said, wiping her nose on a tissue. “And I can’t show my grief, can I?”

  “No,” Verlaque answered in agreement. “Rather like a novel by Jane Austen, isn’t it? Have you read Sense and Sensibility?”

  Sophie Valoie smiled at the judge. “Ah, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. That was one of Étienne’s favorite books.” She wiped her eyes dry and asked, “What can I tell you about Étienne, besides his taste in books?”

  “The obvious questions. Was there anyone who would want to hurt M. de Bremont? Did he receive any threats of any kind?”

  “No,” she answered, shaking her head back and forth. “Étienne was a charming, interesting, passionate man. Everyone loved him.”

  Verlaque smiled at the obvious reference to her own love for Étienne. “But for his temper,” he reminded her.

  She went on, “Strong people could handle Étienne’s temper. My sister has never been strong, Judge. And the same with that caretaker at the château—he didn’t know how to deal with Étienne, either.” She continued, as if she wanted to build a better impression of her lover, “Even the Mafia liked him. He interviewed some of them for his Marseille documentary—of course he couldn’t film them. He was quite satisfied with himself after that. You were in that film, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Verlaque replied. “I was very impressed with M. Bremont.”

  “As was everyone who met him.” Verlaque had stopped listening—he was thinking of her comment, “Even the Mafia liked Étienne.”

  Verlaque got up, not wanting to keep Mme Valoie any longer and wanting to be gone before Judge Valoie de Saint-André returned home from Marseille. “Thank you so much, Madame,” Verlaque said sincerely. “If you think of anything else, can you call me?” he asked, passing her one of his business cards.

  She took the card without looking at it and set it on an expensive-looking antique credenza the entryway.

  “Thank you for your time,” Verlaque said sincerely. “I’ll let myself out the front gate.”

  He walked out of the Valoie house, and as he passed through the pebbled courtyard, he turned around to see Sophie Valoie watching him through the soaring French doors. She looked incredibly small.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Marine drew her arms tight around Charlotte’s waist, from time to time resting her head on the eight-year-old’s upper back. Charlotte was busy coloring a sketch that Marine had made for her; the fact that the drawing was of Antoine’s terrace drew raised eyebrows from Sylvie. “Big fluffy clouds in Aix?” asked Sylvie, turning her head to look at the drawing.

  “Well, you know,” Marine answered, “it makes the sky look so much more dramatic.”

  “A storm is brewing,” Sylvie said, smiling. Charlotte ignored her mother and godmother and continued coloring. She began to fill in the leaves of the olive tree with a light green pencil. “Does Antoine have an olive tree on his terrace?” Sylvie asked, looking at Marine.

  “No, I do.”

  Sylvie, worried that Marine had begun fantasizing about Antoine, turned to Charlotte and congratulated her on her choice of green. “Are olive leaves silvery green or dark green?” Sylvie asked her daughter.

  “Silvery green,” Charlotte seriously replied, and her plump little hand reached for a silver pencil. The two women smiled across the table at each other, both bursting with love for the eight-year-old. Seeing that her daughter was content, Sylvie poured Marine a glass of white wine and said, “I don’t see any connection between the”—she stopped herself before saying “death” and, looking at Charlotte, continued—“between the stories of Étienne and François.”

  “Nor do I,” Marine answered, swirling the wine around in the bowl of the wineglass. “François’s world was gambling, polo, and models.” She went on, “And Étienne seemed to be very rooted to Aix and dedicated to his craft.” Marine chose not to tell Sylvie about Étienne’s affair with Sophie Valoie de Saint-André. Marine loved Sylvie dearly, but she also knew that after a couple of glasses of wine her friend was capable of blurting out the most private of secrets. “One thing that did occur to us,” Marine continued, noting to herself her use of “us,” which seemed, strangely, so right, “is how much the brothers looked alike, and that François’s murderer may have mistaken Étienne for the Riviera gambler.”

  “Not bad. Have you figured out why Étienne was in the attic on a Saturday night?” asked Sylvie.

  “No. His wife mentioned something about him needing to look at some documents, and I’m sure that the documents were in that Louis Vuitton suitcase.” Marine felt silly—she had forgotten about the suitcase and now had a sense that its contents were paramount to Étienne’s death.

  “What suitcase?”

  “Oh, there has always been this old Vuitton suitcase up in the attic. It belonged to Étienne’s grandfather, and we were never allowed to touch it. Of course sometimes we needed to move it around, and it was quite heavy. Now it’s empty, and Jean-Claude told Antoine that on Friday night the suitcase still had its contents.”

  “So the papers are with the, the,” Sylvie paused, again conscious of the presence of a child in the room, “the person who was also in the attic with Étienne.”

  “Yes, it looks that way.”

  “So shouldn’t you be bugging the caretaker about those papers?” demanded Sylvie. Sylvie was in one of those moods that annoyed Marine—convinced that she, though an artist, knew the intricacies of everyone’s job whether they be doctor, lawyer, or waiter.

  “He told Antoine that he didn’t know what was in the suitcase,” answered Marine, trying to make light of Sylvie’s questions and shift
the direction of the conversation.

  “And you two believe that?” asked Sylvie, pouring more wine.

  “I would trust Jean-Claude with my life.”

  “Would you trust him with Charlotte’s life?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “It seems to me,” Sylvie said, licking her lips after a somewhat big sip of wine, “that while the three of you were gallivanting around the Côte, you might have been in Aix, trying to figure our what, and where, those papers are.”

  “We weren’t gallivanting, to use your word,” Marine replied, somewhat vexed. “Antoine does have the murder of François on his hands, and François lived and worked in Cannes.”

  Sylvie looked worriedly at Charlotte, but the young artist hadn’t, or pretended not to have, heard the word “murder.” “Oh come on. Verlaque just wanted you in Cannes with him to show off. Did he take you to a three-star restaurant?”

  Marine answered in the affirmative by not replying. Sylvie slapped her hand down, causing a few of Charlotte’s pencils to roll off the table. “I knew it!”

  Marine sighed, as she usually did when Sylvie was in one of her know-it-all moods. Her cell phone rang with a text message from Jean-Marc, inviting them to Le Mazarin for a drink. “Tell him no thanks,” Sylvie said. “I have to get Charlotte fed and to bed.” She would accompany Marine down into the street so that she could smoke a cigarette.

  “I think I’ll go. I could use the diversion,” Marine answered, draining the last of her wine and setting the glass on the table.

  Charlotte turned around to look at Marine and said, “Do you really have to go to Le Mazarin?” Sylvie, who was taking the wineglasses to the sink, laughed and said to Charlotte, “Were you listening?”

  “I heard everything,” Charlotte said smugly.

  Sylvie put the glasses on the kitchen counter and said, “Charlotte, what we were talking about sort of has to do with Marine’s work, so you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  “No,” replied the third grader, looking puzzled by the question. “It was way too boring.”

  Marine gently slid Charlotte down off of her lap and picked up her purse, which had been hanging on the back of the chair.

  When Marine got to Le Mazarin, she saw Jean-Marc and one of his colleagues sitting on the café’s terrace. She asked Frédéric for a glass of white Château Revelette, and the three friends chatted about the weather and a new restaurant that had opened in an old calisson factory. They spoke of Étienne’s funeral, and how moving it had been, and of François’s murder. Marine didn’t tell them about her two days in Cannes. Jean-Marc was in fine form and made them laugh with stories of his crazy elderly neighbor, who accused Jean-Marc of stealing his slippers from outside his apartment door. “That was the perfect end to my day! Then just as I was leaving the office I had to deal with a nutcase from Cotignac with a very bad henna job!” he said, draining his beer. Marine tried to hide her curiosity. She laughed and asked, “Who was she?”

  “I have no idea. She had been waiting to see me, and had clearly been drinking. I told her I only had a few minutes available. She wanted to know about inheritance laws and birthrights but didn’t want to give me any specific details. She said that she had papers from the 1950s but didn’t have them with her.” Marine got goose bumps on her forearms. She tried to look uninterested. Jean-Marc continued: “It was all very mysterious. I told her to come back next week with the papers, and she said that she would and took off. I could still smell the alcohol five minutes after she had gone. In fact, it was so strong that I actually made sure she wasn’t driving all the way back to Cotignac tonight.”

  Marine quickly got up, bumping into the table as she did and almost knocking over Jean-Marc’s beer glass.

  “What’s up?” Jean-Marc asked.

  Marine feigned fatigue and said good-bye, mumbling that she was late to meet someone.

  “Now?” Jean-Marc demanded.

  “Yes! I promised him I’d stop by, and I totally forgot!”

  She made her way around the café’s chairs and tables as quickly as she could without knocking anyone’s drink off of the table at the same time. It had been Cosette in Jean-Marc’s office, Marine was sure of it. Inheritance papers from the 1950s—could that be what was in the suitcase, mixed up with a bill for two brioches from the same period? Birthrights? 1950s? Étienne and François were born in the 1960s. Inheritance laws?

  She ran to her parking garage on the cours Gambetta and thought of calling Verlaque, then at the last minute decided against it. After all, she was the one who knew the Bremonts, and Jean-Claude remembered, and liked, her. She imagined Verlaque had probably intimidated the caretaker, and so she was better off talking to Jean-Claude alone. If Cosette was there too, Marine could look at the papers and find out what the connection was.

  Antoine Verlaque had gone back to his office to check messages and go through some paperwork. He was just about to close his office door when he received a text message from Paulik. He read it: Still no word from Pellegrino, and he walked out of the Palais de Justice, through the passage Agard and down the cours Mirabeau to number sixteen. He rang and waited. A young boy answered the intercom. “Hello, Judge Verlaque here. May I please come in? I’d like to speak to your mother.” The boy said nothing, but Verlaque could hear shuffling, and Isabelle de Bremont then spoke: “Come on up, Monsieur le Juge.”

  Verlaque walked purposely into the salon while Mme Bremont whispered for her son to leave. She smiled. “Yes, Judge?”

  “You took the 10:42 to Paris on Saturday. Why did you lie?”

  Isabelle de Bremont went over to the salon’s tall double doors and shut them firmly. She motioned for Verlaque to sit down; then she sat opposite him, moving her chair close to his. “What could I do? Tell you about my lover?”

  “Yes, you could have. Should have.”

  “I am a religious woman. It is hard enough for me to have this secret life in Paris. There was no way I could tell you.”

  “You said that your husband told you he was going to the château late Saturday night. You do realize that you were withholding information? Your husband died that night, and his brother four days later on the same grounds.”

  “I was protecting my sister. They were together. Sophie said that they were at the movies together.” Isabelle de Bremont let out a small laugh. “She’s always thought me daft and weak.”

  “So you knew about her relationship with your husband?”

  “Yes, for a few months now. But that didn’t give me reason to kill him, Judge Verlaque. My parents had the children for the weekend, and I had just got back here when you arrived, with the news of Étienne’s death.”

  “Where were you on Wednesday morning between eight and nine?”

  Isabelle de Bremont looked at the judge in wonderment. “I was selecting which black clothes I would wear for my husband’s funeral.” When Verlaque said nothing she added, “My maid can confirm that—she stayed overnight.”

  “Thank you. Could I have your friend’s name and phone number in Paris, please?”

  Mme de Bremont got up and walked over to a gilded mirror, then looked at herself, playing with the gold crucifix she wore around her neck. She looked back at Verlaque through the glass and said, “Must I?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so, if you want a clean alibi. We can’t go on the train ticket alone.”

  “Serges Tourtin, he lives in the first arrondissement,” she whispered. She went over to her desk and wrote the name and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Verlaque, who took it and said, “One last question. You and François de Bremont were overheard arguing about money on the cours the other day—it was reported that you wanted to sell Château Bremont and he wanted to keep it.”

  She got up and went to the marble fireplace and stood before two antique Chinese pots of dri
ed heather. Resting her hand on the mantelpiece, she turned around and said, “My God! Nothing is sacred in Aix, is it? It really isn’t any of your business.”

  Verlaque looked at her and replied, “Madame, François died shortly after that argument. You must see the importance of my question.”

  “Fine,” she sighed. “We . . . myself and the children . . . need the money. We are, as they say, cash poor. The properties we own won’t send my children to college or give them seaside vacations.”

  Verlaque nodded and silently thought of the separate bank account, with the statements that went to Saint-Antonin. Either Isabelle de Bremont still didn’t know about that account or she was lying. He got up and walked toward the doors. “Good-bye, Madame. Please stay in Aix, where we can reach you, until you hear otherwise.” Isabelle opened her mouth to protest but Verlaque raised his hand and turned his back, walking out of the salon and through the apartment’s front door. Isabelle de Bremont took the opportunity to throw a small silk pillow at the door, the thud unheard by Verlaque.

  On the cours Verlaque tucked his body into a doorway and called Paulik. He relayed to the commissioner the information that Isabelle de Bremont had given him.

  “I’ll call the police station in the first arrondissement and have them send someone over to question M. Tourtin,” Paulik replied.

  “She also lied about that separate bank account that I told you about—or she doesn’t yet know of its existence—but you would think that the bank would have informed her already.”

  “Not necessarily,” the commissioner replied. “When Hélène and I moved our retirement plans around at our bank, it took months to clear. Hélène was so frustrated by the end of it that she said she was going to start keeping her money in a cookie tin, the way her grandparents did.”

  “My grandmother kept cash in an old watercolor paint box,” Verlaque replied. “Have you heard how Jean-Claude Auvieux is doing? We questioned him pretty hard.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing. Flamant should be around the police station—you could ask him. He spent most of Thursday at Saint-Antonin, keeping watch.”