Death at the Château Bremont

by ML Longworth

  Verlaque saw that Marine was fading and lost in thought. “There is some good news in all this,” he offered.

  “I think we could use some of that,” Sylvie said.

  Verlaque gave Marine some water. “Since François’s death, Maria Pogorovski said she couldn’t get the hotel out of her head—that’s one of the reasons why she drove to Aix this morning. She’s touring the château grounds with Jean-Claude tomorrow. If she likes what she sees, and I think she will—Jean-Claude has kept that place in great shape despite the lack of money—she’ll invest in it. She is wealthy in her own right, apparently. She’s also taking in her dead brother’s children, who are in their midtwenties. The amazing thing in all this is that her niece trained in the hotel business and speaks five languages, and the son, apparently he’s a big guy, and guess what his passion is?”

  Marine closed her eyes and whispered, “Plants.”

  Sylvie’s eyes began to water.

  “Right. Incredible, isn’t it?” Verlaque replied. He tried to ignore the women’s emotions and continued: “Maria Pogorovski was exhausted when I saw her but ecstatic at the same time. She’d like to sell the agency and retire to the country—Saint-Antonin, that is—and help run the hotel. She’ll be able to be with her nephew and niece. They’re her only family. Once all this dies down, she’s taking her nephew and niece to New York, to visit luxury hotels and restaurants, and she’s meeting up with some American guy who’s writing a book about Natassja Duvanov.”

  Verlaque saw that Marine hadn’t been listening.

  She then asked, frowning, “Did Maria also come to Aix to plea-bargain with you?”

  “Well done,” Verlaque answered, staring at Marine. He glanced over at Sylvie, who had the smile of a proud mother on her face. “She came to us with information about her husband in exchange for police protection and immunity from prosecution. Paulik and Roussel are with her now.”

  “I’m so sorry, François,” Marine whispered, and she slid back down on the pillow.

  “Yes,” Verlaque said. “It seems that we mixed up the brothers. One brother received all the good, and the other all the bad. They both had wild tempers, that’s for sure, but François’s intentions were honorable.”

  “François’s funeral?” Marine asked, her voice barely audible.

  “The doctor said you’ll be able to go. It’s on Monday. It’s being held in the church in Le Tholonet, since there isn’t a church in Saint-Antonin. Most of the polo players are coming, and Maria Pogorovski has arranged for the models and François’s acquaintances from the Côte to come. It will be a packed little church.”

  Marine nodded and smiled. “Good,” she said, and she closed her eyes. Verlaque pulled the sheet up under her chin and kissed her forehead and signaled to Sylvie to leave the room with him. As they were at the door Marine murmured, “He was an honorable man after all.”

  “Yes,” Verlaque answered. “Flawed but honorable.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  April 23 began with much promise—a bright blue sky with no wind. At 8:30 in the morning it was warm enough that Verlaque could open his living room windows. Little martinets, with their pointed wings, were circling in the sky high above his windows, on their way to and fro and in and out of the cathedral’s octagonal-shaped steeple. He tried to think of their name in English—swifts, perhaps. The doorbell for the building’s front door rang, and he buzzed in his visitor, saying “Last floor” into the intercom.

  He had a few minutes while his visitor walked up the five flights of stairs to his apartment, and he used those to check on Marine. She was still sleeping and hadn’t seemed to change position all night, her hands above her head. She had always slept like that. He had set up a bed for himself on the living room sofa and had fallen asleep immediately, but after Olivier Madani’s phone call his sleep had been a troubled one.

  Paulik walked into the apartment, shook hands with Verlaque, who was closing the bedroom door, and handed the judge a bag. “I come with information and brioches,” he said.

  “Great, thanks for these, and thanks for coming on a Saturday,” Verlaque said, taking the bag and looking at it. “Where did you pick these up?”

  “Michaud was too far out of my way. They’re from the boulangerie around the corner,” Paulik answered. “By the way, I finally heard from Pellegrino just this morning.”

  “Ah! Let me make us some coffee and you can tell me what the polo player had to say,” Verlaque said, turning toward the shiny red Gaggia espresso machine and smiling to himself, happy that the commissioner was comfortable in his apartment: Paulik was touring the living and the dining rooms that opened onto the kitchen, his hands in his pockets, humming an aria. He paused now and then to look at a book title or pick up an object. He walked over to look at a small oil painting of Venice—the city and Grand Canal bathed in a mauve and golden light—that hung above the dining room table. He leaned in to get a closer look, and then turned to Verlaque and asked, “Hey, this isn’t a . . . ,” he paused, unable to remember the Venetian’s name.

  Verlaque laughed. “No, it isn’t a Canaletto. But it was done by a student of his. It was my grandmother’s favorite painting.” Paulik whistled and looked at the painting again, and then turned to Verlaque and said, “Pellegrino wasn’t at the morning computer session.”

  Verlaque handed him his coffee. “I was afraid of that,” he replied. “Where was he?”

  “Testing a horse.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, riding a horse to evaluate it for professional polo matches. He says he does it from time to time, and gets paid a thousand euro cash for it. The horse’s owner was only available Wednesday morning, and since Pellegrino wasn’t on beat duty, he rode the horse and then slipped into the computer class after lunch.”

  “Alibis?”

  “Yes, I called both the horse’s owner, and a stable hand at the polo club. He was there.”

  “Good for him. I’m relieved,” Verlaque said. “Was he of further use? Since he’s been forgetting to tell us stuff?”

  “Ha! Yes. He told me who the Cannes polo team was playing on the afternoon that François de Bremont tried to rig the game. The game was against Monaco, archrivals of the Cannes club. They are unofficially owned by the owner of the Monte Carlo Casino, who hates Pogorovski.”

  “Why didn’t Pellegrino tell us that when we were at the polo club?”

  “He claims he didn’t connect the fact that they were playing Monaco. It’s only in the past few days that rumors have been swimming around the polo club, and in Cannes, that François, in payment for throwing the game and having the Cannes team lose, would have had his debts, or a big part of them, cleared at the casino.” Paulik paused to sip some of his coffee, and then asked Verlaque, “What do we do about Pellegrino? He lied and was moonlighting.”

  Verlaque said nothing and only stared at Paulik over his reading glasses. He then asked, “What did you say to him?”

  “I gave him hell.”

  Verlaque laughed. He was so relieved that Marine was safe, he was having a hard time caring about Eric Pellegrino. “Good! Maybe we can come up with some creative punishment. He could teach orphans polo; or he could come to Aix and clean the police stables.”

  Paulik’s cell phone rang, and Verlaque took the opportunity to check on Marine. She was still sleeping in the same position, with the white linen sheets tucked up under her chin and her auburn hair spread out over the pillow. He closed the bedroom door and walked back to the living room, where Paulik had just got off of the phone.

  “That was Monsieur le Procureur. He said that the models were interviewed yesterday, and the interviews will continue today. They’re giving us more information about François de Bremont than anyone else has. Roussel says that the escorting and sleeping with clients began slowly and was initially discreet.”

 
; “Did François go along with all this?”

  “The models claim that François wasn’t happy about it but didn’t object, either—he needed the money and Pogorovski loved having a count on board—it gave him prestige and legitimacy. But when the sex was made mandatory, and one of the girls was roughed up by a Russian client, François hit the roof. One of the house staff apparently told Inès that he overheard the last argument between François and Lever Pogorovski during which François threatened to go to the police and expose the prostitution ring.”

  “Bon. Then the account is consistent with Maria Pogorovski’s story. Listen, would you mind hanging out here for a half an hour, until Marine’s friend Sylvie gets here? I just have one last visit to make.”

  “Fine. I’ll start on some paperwork,” Paulik replied.

  Verlaque opened the bag and offered a brioche to the commissioner.

  Both men took a bite, saying nothing. Paulik chewed for a bit, took another bite, and then frowned. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I should have gone to Michaud.”

  Verlaque smiled. “Yeah, these are pretty bad.”

  Jean-Claude Auvieux hadn’t been able to sleep after they took Cosette away; he kept rehearsing the evening’s events in his head: the race through the olive grove and forest, the professor’s bloodied hair, his sister handcuffed.

  No, he hadn’t seen the green Twingo parked under the pine trees, for a fat cypress tree hid it from view for those coming from the east. That wasn’t his fault, surely? He remembered that he had opened the gates with his key and then left them open, too tired to get out of his car again and lock them. Besides, he rarely locked the gates when he was on the premises. He had parked his car in front of his cottage and looked up at the bastide, as he did every evening, but it was dark and quiet—that’s why he didn’t know that the professor was in the attic with Cosette. Or perhaps they were already at the cabanon? He didn’t want to judge to be angry with him, like Étienne had so often been.

  He continued his tour of the olive grove, inspecting the trees. The wind had begun to pick up, and it was suddenly bitterly cold—strange when the morning had been so mild. He left the orchard and went into his cottage, turning on the lights and putting the kettle on to make a tisane. A little herbal tea would be good; he’d drink it while looking at the fancy gardening book that Monsieur François had given him for Christmas. He closed his eyes as he thought of François de Bremont, who had been so easy to talk to, much like the old count, Philippe. “Mon père,” he said aloud, and smiled.

  A car honked its horn, and the caretaker jumped. He quickly walked out, around the cottage to the pebbled drive, where he saw the judge getting out of his old-fashioned car. Auvieux smiled nervously and held out his hand. “Hello, Monsieur le Juge. How is Professeur Bonnet today?”

  “She’s fine, Jean-Claude, thank you. I have never seen anyone sleep so much.”

  The caretaker stood still, unsure of why the judge had come. Verlaque broke the silence by saying, “Ever since last Sunday, there’s been something bothering me. I felt that you weren’t being entirely truthful, as if you were leaving something out. I now know that you had seen the contents of the suitcase, but even the other night at dinner I felt there was more to it than your birth certificate. Is there? You specifically said, ‘I didn’t take anything!’ Was there money in the suitcase?”

  Auvieux swallowed and replied, “Not money. There were other papers in the suitcase, and I took them. They were old . . . and I couldn’t read them. I just wanted to look at them, here in my kitchen where the light is better.”

  “Aha. Should we go inside and talk about it?”

  “All right,” Auvieux replied. As they walked to the cottage he said over his shoulder, “I meant to put them back! Really I did!”

  The two men walked into the kitchen. Auvieux pulled out a chair for Verlaque. “I’ll go and get them. I’ve been so careful with them. You’ll see! They’re fragile, that I know for sure.”

  In no time Auvieux was back, holding white cotton gloves for Verlaque. “I’ve seen them wear these in the movies,” Auvieux explained. “I bought them in town.”

  Verlaque nodded and put the gloves on. Auvieux opened a small folder and pushed the contents toward Verlaque, who put on his reading glasses and looked, without touching, the first page. “It’s a letter,” Verlaque said.

  “Yes, sir. Look at the date.”

  Verlaque leaned in and saw the date: 1776. “Ma chère Sophie,” he read aloud and went on to read the first paragraph to himself. Verlaque quickly but carefully turned the page to find the end of the letter and the sender’s name. “Mirabeau!” Verlaque exclaimed, whistling and looking over at Auvieux, who was now smiling. “This in one of Mirabeau’s love letters to Marie Thérèse de Monnier! He called her Sophie! I’ve only heard about these letters. Is it erotic?”

  The caretaker blushed. “Oui, Monsieur.”

  “Jean-Claude, this belongs in a museum.”

  “The Louvre?”

  “Perhaps not the Louvre,” Verlaque said, smiling. “I believe that Mirabeau’s affairs are kept in the musée Carnavalet in Paris. You should take it to them.”

  “I was going to put it back in the suitcase, but then we went up to the attic together and found the suitcase empty, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been so careful with the pages.”

  “I’m sure you have. Mirabeau . . . Wow! . . . The great statesman, diplomat, and lover.”

  “Oh, yes! But funny they should name our famous street in Aix after a traitor!” Auvieux said, and then quickly added, “I was a good history student in school, and so I remember our teacher said that about him! A traitor to the revolution!”

  “That was your teacher’s opinion, but it’s not mine. After the revolution, Mirabeau wanted a constitutional monarchy like they have in England.” Verlaque saw the look of puzzlement on the caretaker’s face. “That’s a king and queen with a parliament. Too bad they didn’t listen. I’ve always thought it a good system. If this letter is part of that series of love letters to Sophie, it’s very precious.”

  Auvieux shuffled and looked at the floor. “I have to give it up, don’t I?”

  “It’s up to you. But you can be proud to do so. The museum may even put a label beside the letter, saying something like ‘A generous gift of Jean-Claude Auvieux.’”

  “That’s all right, then! I’d be happy to see that.”

  “Think about it. I’ll call you later next week. I could go up to Paris with you if you like. I’ll leave you in peace now.” Verlaque stood up and put his hand on the caretaker’s shoulder and smiled. “Take it easy, Jean-Claude. Get some rest.”

  Verlaque left, taking one more look at the mountain, a dazzling white so pure against the blue sky that it almost looked two-dimensional, a backdrop. In the cottage Auvieux sang to himself and got a tea bag out of the earthenware jar where he kept them. He realized that he hadn’t been to the count’s grave, nor his mother’s, in months. In the afternoon he would go to the small Saint-Antonin cemetery, which stood at the foot of the mountain, and tidy up the plants.