Douvier got right to the point. “Reynard told me that Hans Keller is among the suspects. He’s in France partly doing business for me. Any idea if he and Léa de Saint-Pern signed a contract?” Olivier was stunned by his audacity. Before he could respond to his boss, Douvier said, “Why do you happen to be there? Your parents?”
Olivier made himself sound bored, though he was anything but as he tried to figure out the game they were playing. “Oui, oui. They had this wedding to attend, and wanted me to join them. You know how it is.”
“No conflict of interest?”
“Non.”
“Good.” Pause. “Keep me informed about Keller. He’s not a murderer.”
The language was so veiled that Olivier spent a few minutes interpreting the message between the lines after they hung up, then thought the exchange easy to decipher—it was the old “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Douvier wanted protection for Keller in exchange for making sure Olivier got the case, which would surely bring him international attention. Olivier grew morose after they hung up. Not only am I lying about the conflict of interest, he thought, but I’m also lying to myself by not admitting that there’s an additional conflict of interest that’s even more personal—my interest in Max Maguire vying with my burning need to solve this case.
Chapter Nine
Antoine caught Max’s eye and she went to stand with him. “I told you you were entering hell.”
Jacques was at her side before she could respond. “Max, let’s go into my study. Excuse us,” he said to his brother. Max got up and followed him into the office, and took a chair across from his desk. Before she could speak, he said, “The less discussion with my brother, the better. I don’t think I have to explain.”
“I find him to be quite honest.”
Jacques gave her a strange look. “We have a different word for it. His behavior at dinner was inexcusable and he still owes my wife an apology.”
Max thought that some of the problem was that Antoine was treated as a naughty boy, a persona he had created and seemed to enjoy. Antoine had nothing to lose, and she found that often created a blunt honesty that could be refreshing.“I’m going to say what I have to say in English, but I know I don’t speak correctly,” Jacques said.
The language game was becoming tiresome, yet she reminded herself of the information she had gleaned from overhearing Bernard Martin and Baptise Dupuis. She would share it with Jacques when he was done with his diatribe in English.
He led her into his office from which she could see the mist rising across the fields. She stood for a moment, in awe of the light and the setting. “I’m glad you’re here because you can help Chloé through this tragedy. She has never known such heartache.”
“I will try.”
He smiled at her, “You wield a big influence on her, but you probably know that. She sees you as brave and confident, qualities she wishes to have.”
“If I have those qualities they crept up on me. I was paralyzed with fear after my brother died. I felt it threatening to take over again when I saw Léa on the ground.”
“Which brings up the investigation. Olivier. He is the best of the examining magistrates in France, but he will have the triple challenge of working with a prosecutor who wants to be in charge, being objective with suspects he knows, and making sure that no one perceives a conflict of interest.”
“But there is a conflict of interest, isn’t there?”
Jacques scowled. “Everything is relative, Max. I mentioned to him that you were interested in working on the case and he was resistant.”
“Maybe I’m too intimidating. My mother tells me this all the time.”
“Olivier isn’t easily intimidated. You’ll have to be accepted on your own merit. I’ve done my part. My only advice is to stop being your father’s son.”
Had she misunderstood? Their eyes interlocked and she knew she hadn’t.
“Be Max. Not your brother. Or who you think he would have been. And whatever you do, be discreet. The French admire discretion, and the Americans don’t know the meaning of the word.” He smiled at his own joke.
“I’ll ease my way in by asking Olivier if I can listen to the interrogations.”
“But your French…”
“I understand a lot more than you know. Don’t forget my mother is French.”
“Chloé said you resist your French heritage.”
“I was angry at my mother’s family, but I’m over that.”
“You want to keep this information from Olivier?”
She nodded. “It’s my only leverage at the moment.”
He began to speak in French. Léa’s…murder…well…I will never be the same. I was depressed the night of the wedding over all her news. The baby. Selling her company. Going to America.”
Max wondered if he was going to confess.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, and Max realized she was barely breathing. “We grew very close after her husband died.” He waved his hand in the air. “That was a long time ago.”
Five years isn’t so long, Max thought. She wondered if Marie-Christine knew. She recalled how hurt she had been when she learned Joe was fooling around. And she hadn’t been married to him.
“The thought of her selling her company, though, made me angrier than anything has in a long time. And to a German! I know I am prejudiced against them, but my father was in the Résistance, and I hold them responsible for his death. It was awful here during the war years. You can’t imagine. When Léa told us about Hans Keller wanting to buy de Saint-Pern, I really hoped that something would happen to prevent it. I prayed for divine intervention. I didn’t go to a church and get on my knees, but still, I appealed to all the saints I remembered. And I cursed Léa for selling out.”
And for not loving you, Max thought.
“And then she died.”
“I told you I heard a woman’s shout while sitting at my window. A woman’s voice yelled Arrête! I know now it was Léa and she was fighting for her life. Instead of rushing to her aid, I poured another brandy.”
“Are you certain it was Ted?”
“No. A few minutes earlier I had heard that Kraut trying to persuade Chloé’s friend Delphine to go back to the inn with him. It could have been he arguing with Léa.”
Max exhaled. “Are you thinking that you could have saved Léa’s life?”
He nodded. “I think I might have prevented…what happened. Oui.”
Max thought about her brother, and how she still believed fervently that had she picked him up at school on the day he was killed by a car, as was her habit, that he would be a drop-dead handsome and happy twenty-two year old today and her parents would not carry an air of sadness about them that permeated everything in their lives. And in hers.
“But you didn’t seem surprised that she was dead when I entered your room.”
“I knew when I heard the tap on the door.”
“You will tell all of this to Olivier?”
“I don’t know. Olivier is a good friend, and I have shared many things with him, but I don’t like Reynard, and so I will see when I am called what I want to divulge. No matter what I do, these old secrets have a way of coming to the surface.”
The door opened and Marie-Christine stuck her head in the door, then started back, but Jacques called to her. “What is it?”
“Chloé has disappeared. She said she was going to change her clothes, but someone saw her run out of the house.”
“I’ll find her,” Max said, jumping up. She jogged down the hall and stairs and came to a halt when she saw Olivier standing on the stoop in the back. She went up to him. “I’m going to look for Chloé.”
He gazed at her with impenetrable eyes. “She’s there, down at the gate. I watched her go. Your friend Ted is being quest
ioned now by Girard.”
“Ted’s way too garrulous.”
Olivier’s eyes grew large, and she knew they were both back in her room when Ted barged in.
“Which means he’ll be indiscreet?”
“Olivier, he’ll probably tell the truth. That he walked in on us and saw me undressed. To be honest, I don’t care. I have nothing to hide.”
“I don’t want it in the record that I was there, and I don’t understand why you don’t care. This information could be leaked and put me in a compromising position.”
So that was it. “Is this about you not wanting la Véronique, as Madame Durand referred to her with the highest admiration, to hear about this?”
“Non. She has nothing to do with anything.”
Max had brought the personal into the professional. Damn. “I apologize for bringing her into the discussion. I was about to ask if I could sit in on your interrogations.”
“I have Monsieur Zeroual working with me, but I will speak to him and see if he has any objections.”
Maybe a touch of light-heartedness would help, she thought. “That’s in my favor. He likes Americans.”
“He doesn’t seem to be alone in that sentiment from what I’ve observed.”
“I hope that includes you.”
She bounded off and could sense his eyes following her. The same way she had felt them on her as they stood by the river and she thought he was going to kiss her and then decided she was being ridiculous. And when she saw him watching her from Marceau’s garden, the night of the dinner though he had no idea she knew he was there. She recalled the way their eyes interlocked when he entered the salon just before the dinner. She had seen the desire in his eyes only a few hours ago when they were in her room, and a little drunk, and she hoped he didn’t hold that against her or think her a slut, though she had to ask herself why she cared, and pretended she didn’t.
Chloé was waiting for her at the gate. “Are you okay?”
“No. Not in the least. But my problems are minor compared to everyone else’s.”
“Neither am I.” Max saw that her eyes were swollen from crying.
“We can’t go far. All of us will have to go through some initial questioning. We don’t want to be missing in action.”
They opened and closed the gate behind them, and entered the worn path that led through a small forest. “I can’t bear the thought of all these people who are family and friends being questioned,”Chloé said. “I wish Olivier and his men would try to find a real criminal. What if someone came from a barge on the river and attacked Léa?”
“It’s possible, and that will be checked out for sure.” Max had forgotten how innocent people were whose lives didn’t revolve around crime. They arrived at the gate on the other side of the forest, and exited. They passed small houses, each with window boxes overflowing with geraniums and tiny vegetable plots in the yard.
“Oh, there’s Mimi in the window!” Chloé ran toward the woman who had been a constant presence in her life. Mimi came to the door and invited them in. “She doesn’t speak a word of English,” Chloé reminded Max.
“Finally, someone who refuses to speak to me in English. Shouldn’t she be at your parents’ house?”
“She had to come down for her medication. A policeman will come for her.”
They entered a small living room that was neat in appearance, and contained a little wood stove, a shabby sofa, and rocking chair. An ancient television sat on a table in the corner, and a crocheted rug occupied the center of the room. A framed photograph of two boys holding up fish and smiling at the photographer caught Max’s eye and she walked over to have a closer look.
“That’s papa and Antoine,” Chloé said, then turned back to her conversation with her jeune fille, the French term for nanny. An eight-by-ten photograph of Chloé in a silver frame must have been a gift, Max thought. She was half listening to the conversation between the old woman and Chloé, but came to full attention when she heard Mimi describing seeing Antoine.
“I was making my way down to the reception area with my little flashlight when I saw Monsieur Antoine standing stock-still like a statue, and I put the light on his face, and could tell that he was drunk. I told him that I had some dinner for him, and I asked if he was okay. He mumbled something about running into an animal, it made no sense. I told him to wait, that I would walk with him home. He was frightened of everything when he was a boy. Then I almost fell over Léa. He stood there in horror, and fled.”
Could Antoine have killed Léa, Max wondered.
“That was the right thing to do,” Chloé reassured her nanny. “I’m so glad you didn’t hang around because the killer could have attacked you!”
A knock at the door interrupted them, and a young gendarme said he had come for the jeune fille. Max and Chloé followed her out, and said they’d meet them at the house. Max’s thoughts were tumbling around like the balls in a lotto machine. From what she had heard so far, people had been passing each other in the night around the hour Léa was murdered. Mimi must have missed Ted by minutes, or maybe seconds. Mimi went to the kitchen to tell Marie-Christine and Ted ran to her room. Jacques had heard Léa shout and done nothing, he said. He also could have killed her and had time to return to his room.
She and Chloé hurried back through the gate, stopping when they heard voices in the distance shrieking and laughing. “Let’s get out of here,” Chloé said.
“No, wait here. I want to see what’s going on.”
“You’re still fouine, Max. What’s the word in English?”
“Nosey. Be right back.” She ducked to avoid a branch and moved quickly toward the sounds. Four boys no older than twelve were smoking cigarettes and talking loudly, and knocking each other around. They appeared to be drunk. When they saw Max, they took off running. Max wanted to check them out, but hesitated when she heard Chloé call. The boys were none of her business.
Chapter Ten
Olivier watched Max walk at a brisk pace across the lawn to where Chloé was standing and put an arm around her. A thin mist was rising, making the panorama before him seem a little out of focus. He had hoped that Véronique’s name wouldn’t come up, but Max had made sure that it did. He supposed that Véronique would consider them to be in relationship, but though they spent quite a lot of time together when she was in Paris, he didn’t feel committed to her, or to them as a couple. Max had been right, though. He would go to great lengths to prevent Véronique from learning of his attraction to the detective. He had thought that moving to Bordeaux would create the space and time he needed to sort out his feelings. Véronique had already asked if she could use his apartment when she was in Paris, and he had said yes. He decided to go to his parents’ house and shower and change clothes, then return for lunch at one. Marie-Christine had announced that Mimi was preparing a dish she was known for, a white pudding tart with aiguillette sauce vigneronne, a mushroom and beef gravy, made with a local pinot noir.
Abdel emerged from Jacques’ office, where Girard had set up an interrogation room, and said as he passed Olivier, “Sir, I must speak with you as soon as possible.” Olivier felt a sense of foreboding. He followed Abdel outside.
Abdel was all business. “I’m to get a statement from Baptiste Dupuis, which means I have to go to his office. Someone said he was in the parking lot when the murder occurred.”
“I saw his car. What was he doing there at that hour?”
Abdel shrugged.
“Why don’t you drop me off at my parents’ place on your way and we can talk?”
“Let me clear it with Girard.” He loped across the terrace, and disappeared into the house and returned in a few minutes. They got into Abdel’s Citroën and as they headed out onto the narrow country road, Abdel said, “It’s strange. Most of these people don’t have good alibis. They were wandering h
ere or there, or were on their way to the inn or to their room, but they all seem vague, as though they had been sleepwalking.”
Olivier thought his description on the mark, especially with the amount of alcohol consumed. “What’s bothering you?”
“Monsieur Clay is a blabber-mouth.”
“Did he mention that I was in Detective Maguire’s room when he came to report finding the body?”
Abdel lit a cigarette, and Olivier thought about complaining about the smoke, but decided not to when Abdel lowered his window. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you.”
Merde.
“Could you tell Girard’s reaction?”
“Non. But my boss is getting pressure already from the press and from the top, and I think he’d like to accuse Monsieur Clay.”
“Because he’s the most obvious? A scapegoat who will appease the prosecutor?”
Abdel nodded.
“Do you agree by any chance?”
“Somewhat. He found the body, and he’s very emotional. Maybe too much. It turns out he borrowed a large sum of money from Madame de Saint-Pern. And there is the Madame Durand issue.”
“Which is?”
“It seems that the two women were rivals for Monsieur Clay. Before he was due to meet Madame de Saint-Pern in the garden, he helped put Madame Durand to bed, as she claimed she was having a problem with dizziness.” It was obvious to Olivier that the conversation was embarrassing for Abdel, who, he was certain, had been shocked by the social behaviors of the bourgeoisie. “He claimed she tried to seduce him.”
“None of this is cause for arrest.”
Champagne: The Farewell Page 8