Champagne: The Farewell

by Janet Hubbard

  “Here? Get real.”

  Someone peered out from behind a curtain. They exited the car and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. It opened before they had a chance to knock. “Oh, Delphine, I’m Chloé’s friend, Max Maguire. We met at the wedding and I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk…you remember Detective Abdel Zeroual?”

  “Bonjour. Hello.”

  She wasn’t a beauty. The features on her face were asymmetrical, but Max thought that like many French women Delphine had a certain allure. She thought some of it was attitude, how they didn’t care what others thought of them the way Americans did.

  “Is it okay to talk here? Is Yves around?” Max asked.

  “This is okay. He’s in Paris today. With Marc, I think.”

  They sat on a sofa in the living room, and she asked if they wanted coffee or a beer. They said no, then Max waited for Abdel to start asking questions, but he didn’t say anything. It felt awkward to bring up Delphine’s betrayal of Yves, but it had to be done. Maybe this is going to take longer than five minutes, Max thought. When the silence became unbearable, Max said, “Delphine, is it okay to speak in English?”

  She nodded, then picked up a cigarette off the table and lit it.

  “You are Hans Keller’s alibi, you know,” Max started. Delphine’s eyes widened.

  “This is no one’s business.”

  Abdel found his voice, “I’m afraid it is. Monsieur Keller said that you both saw Madame de Saint-Pern on the way to the inn. Is that much true?”

  Delphine’s hand shook. “Yes. And that is all.” Seeing Abdel’s notebook, she asked, “Are you writing all this down?”

  “I must.”

  Max decided to take a different tactic. “Delphine, look, no one’s judging you morally.”

  “Wouldn’t you think Hans would have let me know before he dropped this little bomb and had you rushing over here?”

  I do, thought Max.

  “Chloé and Marc will be furious,” she said. “Marc and Yves are close friends, and Marc will judge me harshly.”

  “Chloé won’t judge. I know her.” Max stood up, “Look, the truth is I’m worried that someone else will die before the murderer is found.”

  “Antoine’s was an accident.”

  “That’s being questioned.”

  “Oh, god.” Delphine lit another cigarette and began to talk. “It was impulsive on my part. Yves and Marc had been behaving like teenagers. Drinking too much and being rowdy. Antoine was part of it for a while. He…”

  “Gave them cocaine. We know that.”

  “I had danced with Yves twice all evening. That’s all. And Hans was relentless in his pursuit of me. I went to find Yves and he was passed out near the tennis court and it made me furious to see him like that. I went back and said yes to Hans. We went to the inn.”

  “You came back to the party alone?”

  Her eyes were downcast. “It was frightening. I saw the lights where the earlier reception was held and wondered what had happened. Bernard Martin was standing on the terrace and told me that someone was injured and the police were there. I was worried that it was Yves. I ran to the tennis courts, and he wasn’t there. A gendarme told me to go to the salon, and Yves came rushing in. He and Marc had run down to the lighted area, and he told me there had been an accident. We learned later that Léa was dead.”

  Abdel spoke in a gentle voice, “Mademoiselle, please try to think if you saw anything unusual on the way to the inn. On the way back you noticed the lights. Anything else? Did you find Chloé immediately?”

  “She came into the salon, and was horribly upset, of course. I stayed away from the family.”

  “Anything else?”

  “This is going to sound weird. I was with Hans the night Antoine drowned.”

  “I thought he was with Marc at Le Bar that night.”

  “Earlier perhaps. I’m superstitious now about ever seeing him again.”

  Abdel said, “Anything about the night Antoine died? Did you drive from this house to the inn? What hour?”

  “It was around eleven when I left the inn. Yves was in the city and so I didn’t have any need to hurry, but I also didn’t want to stay the night at the inn. The moon was out. There was a woman…a large woman…almost running down the street. I thought something was wrong, but she was out of sight before I could say anything to her. She had on a hat, which I thought odd.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “A dark dress. That’s how I knew it was a woman, but she ran like an athlete.”

  Max thought that like many people who were being scrutinized, Delphine was beginning to enjoy the attention. The confession hadn’t been as bad as she thought. She at least had sympathetic listeners, and now she could bask a little under the attention. Max glanced at her watch. She and Abdel had their cell phones turned off. She wondered if Olivier had called, and if he’d tell her if Véronique was coming to see him.

  She had become so distracted with her own thoughts that at first what Delphine was now talking about barely registered. But she could see Abdel listening intently. “That’s it,” Delphine said. “I cracked the door open to peer out before I stepped into the hallway and made my dash back to the Marceau house and that’s when I saw him.”

  Who, who? Max wondered.

  Abdel and Delphine had segued somehow back to Lea’s murder. “He knocked lightly at the room a few doors down, and it opened and I saw it was Marc’s mother standing at the door. I noticed he was carrying a plastic bag. I couldn’t hear what he said but his mom opened the door and he went in. I stood there, not knowing whether to make the dash to the house or wait to see if Marc was coming back out.”

  “Where was Hans?” Max asked.

  “I’m embarrassed to say, sleeping. I seem to have that effect on men.”

  “Did Marc come back?”

  “Yes, after a few minutes he went sailing past Han’s door again.” She smiled, “This sounds so ridiculous. He probably came by to check on his mother, who hadn’t been feeling well. He had complained about it to us, saying that he’d roped Ted Clay into walking her to the inn. He may have been feeling guilty.”

  “How long did you wait before you decided to go back?”

  “Another fifteen minutes, perhaps.”

  Abdel thanked her, then put away his notebook, and said that he needed to go out and check for messages. Delphine and Max sat in comfortable silence for a moment. “The plastic bag,” Max said. “Was it big?”

  “Not so big. But not small either.”

  “Was he holding the bag when he passed by on his way out?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about how I was going to get back to the house unobserved.”

  “What do you think of Hans now?”

  “I don’t really know him, but I think he’s okay. He’s much more obstreperous in public. Almost shy and insecure in private. I like being with someone older.”

  “May I ask you a question between us?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you like Marc? I worry a little about Chloé.”

  “Chloé has to get him away from his mother. She has no chance as long as that woman is around.”

  “I know he and his mother fight, but he wouldn’t be a wife beater or anything, right? I ask because I deal with that kind of shit all the time in New York.”

  “Yves has known Marc a long time. He doesn’t like his arrogance, but thinks he’ll change once he’s settled in with his new life. I wonder if he will, with all the prestige he’ll have now being associated with de Saint-Pern.”

  Abdel re-entered the room and stood waiting for Max. “Thank you again, mademoiselle.”

  “Pas de quoi. I wish you would assure me that Yves will never know.”

  “It’s
private information, but if there’s a big trial then you may be called.”

  She sighed. “I guess I’ll have time by then to figure out what I want.”

  “Okay,” Max said. “We have to go.”

  They said good-bye and Max asked Abdel if Olivier had called. “He and Chloé were together at Léa’s château and he has two wills and has sent them to the notary. He said that it’s possible for us to come to his parents’ house later this evening to go through the rest of the papers.”

  He must have told Véronique not to come, Max thought. She felt a quiver in her heart region.

  “It was a good thing, to send us to work together,” Abdel said.

  She smiled at him. “I agree.” They were in the car, heading back to the Marceaus. “It must be strange for you to hear women talk so freely about men and sex.”

  “You mean because I’m a Muslim? A little. Our cultures are so different. Mainly, I don’t think women do too well in this westernized life. Our women are thought of as prisoners of their men, and many are, but women here get used. I doubt that Monsieur Keller will stay in touch with mademoiselle once he returns to Germany, for example, and that must affect her heart.”

  It does, Max agreed silently. It absolutely does.

  “It’s a lot of risk-taking. But then we have so much more freedom than women in your culture, and that seems to balance it out.” They both seemed to drift into their own thoughts. After a while, she spoke, “So, the plastic bag. I asked Delphine about it when you left to go to the car. What do you make of that?”

  He shrugged. “Not much. If it were me, I’d have been taking my laundry to my mother too.”

  Max punched his arm playfully. “Dégueulasse! You men are disgusting!”

  ***

  Max stood at her bedroom window gazing at the vineyards in the distance in the late-afternoon sunlight. For the first time since her arrival she missed the beat of New York. She found the landscape here enchanting, but wondered if she could stand the quiet nights. She could see developing a passion for growing a vineyard, but she had also observed enough to understand that the glamour happened when the champagne was being poured from the bottle. Leading up to that were a lot of people digging and plowing and baking in the hot sun. She sat down and opened her journal, and wrote: Two people saw a woman walking fast or running through the village around eleven the night of Antoine’s death. Will talk to Chief Petit. Like the bottle that turned out to be the murder weapon, and the rose in Léa’s hand, the plastic bag is starting to haunt me.

  Chloé stuck her head in the door. “Am I interrupting?”

  “Only the journal writing and that can wait.”

  “Ted called and we invited him to come here for dinner.”

  “Ted?”

  “I spoke with my parents, and we realized that he has been a scapegoat for everyone. Maman felt badly for you, and wants to make it up to you. Can you join us?”

  “There’s a tentative plan to go with Abdel to Olivier’s, but I can go after dinner. Pull up the other chair.” Max put her feet up on the windowsill. “Is Marc back?”

  “He came in a while ago and apologized. He’s confessed to me that he and Yves and some others were using cocaine the night of the wedding. My parents would die, but with luck they won’t find out.”

  “Abdel and I spoke with your friend Delphine today and she corroborated that they were using cocaine.”

  “Did she say anything else? I don’t think she likes Marc very much. She blames him for Yves behaving like a teenager.”

  “She was mad that Yves only danced with her twice. I’ve been thinking about the ubiquitous Marc. He was everywhere the night of the wedding, it seems. He checked in on his mother after Ted left her, and he and Yves and the guys were off sniffing cocaine, and then he was in the kitchen…”

  “Out with it! You’re wondering why Marc wasn’t with me? Is it too belittling to say he and his friends were behaving like schoolboys? If no one had been murdered, no one would have cared that Marc and his friends were running around.”

  Marie-Christine called for Chloé from the stairs. She jumped up and headed for the door. “Dinner’s at nine. I’m off to help maman.”

  “I’ll come down to help in a minute.” Max glanced down at her notes again, then out at the vineyards. She picked up her pen, and looked at her original list: Ted, Hans, Jacques, Marc, Bernard. Antoine. She scratched Antoine out. Then she wrote, “I think I know who killed Léa and Antoine, but I’m going to have a hell of a time proving it.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The Peugeot in Olivier’s parents’ driveway didn’t belong to anyone he knew. Probably a friend unaware that they were in Australia. He pulled into the circular drive behind it, and went directly to the garden to make sure that the gardener had watered the container plants. Abdel was due to come by later to discuss his notes about Delphine Lacroix. Max would join them after dinner to go through the de Saint-Pern documents and discuss the next course of action. He was starting to see the merits of having three with various levels of expertise work together. It had also been a pleasant surprise when Abdel had expressed nothing but praise for Max when he asked about her.

  He hoped Max would stay over. She traveled light, with only a toothbrush, yet her presence permeated everything, even the garden, where he had watched her through the window with her face up to the morning light as though in meditation. He removed a box of papers from his car and walked to the door, balancing the box in order to open the door, when it opened and he was face to face with Véronique.

  “Olivier,” she said in her breathless voice, “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming home. I’ve already opened a bottle of bubbly.” Why was a French woman using the appellation for champagne that reminded him of an American cheerleader at a football game, he wondered.

  She leaned over to plant a kiss on his lips and he pulled away slightly. “What brought you here?” was all he could think to ask. She frowned, but stepped back in order to allow him to enter. He put the box on the countertop in the kitchen and then turned to her, still not knowing what to say. She sat in the same chair that Max had occupied the night before and explained that she had called but didn’t reach him and had decided to be bold and rent a car and drive out.

  “I also tried to call you several times to tell you not to come,” he managed to get out, “but you weren’t picking up.”

  “I had a shoot this afternoon, chéri, and don’t like to answer unless it’s urgent.”

  He had been with her to a shoot and seen her answer every phone call, but he felt petty thinking it. “It’s good to see you, but I’m in the middle of this case…”

  “It’s on the front page of every paper,” she said. “I saw on television that the blogger Ted Clay was released today. I went to his blog and he’s pretty good. He writes wine reviews and just did one on the 2009 Marceau Hortense that had people in my circle buzzing. But what’s really capturing everybody’s attention is his blog about this crime.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “His blog is about his life, Olivier, and he puts in lots of details. In the latest one he wrote about what it’s like to be in a French regional jail. Before that he wrote about the German entrepreneur Hans Keller and his background, which teems with angst and revenge and all that good stuff. Hans’ grandfather was one of many Germans who came to the Champagne area to create their fortunes in the almighty grapes. But of course he was German and became the Weinführer of the region and was eventually sent packing back to Germany. Run out of France. Another installment followed that reads like a soap opera. His fans are numbering in the thousands, I understand.”

  “What’s the latest installment?”

  “He’s not mentioning her name. Yet. But it’s about someone distantly related to Hans Keller. A woman. Her grandmother
was French and collaborated with the Germans during the war and was one of those women whose head got shaved and was marched out to the streets to be hissed at and scorned. She was pregnant, she claimed, by Hans Keller’s grandfather. She had a baby girl. And that girl grew up and married an abusive alcoholic, and had kids. I forget how many.”

  “This sounds like fiction.” His phone vibrated in his pocket. He snuck a look at the screen and saw that the call was from the Marceau residence.

  “Clay claims it’s all true and people are lapping it up. The point I’m making is that a few of Clay’s fans—and I’m a big fan now—are speculating that one of the offspring of the woman who married the drunk might be Geneviève Durand. Clay drops hints, like she’s a designer who sews a rose into everything she creates, or she has a weekly salon that certain politicians attend.”

  “This is scandalous. She could sue him.”

  “Au contraire. Madame Durand was interviewed by a newspaper reporter and my friends and I thought she was quite coy. The point is that she’s a hot topic because of her son marrying into the Marceau family. It triggers the imagination: her being the granddaughter of a shamed French woman. Her mother was an illegitimate child—perhaps the child of Hans’ grandfather—who grew up to marry an impoverished drunk and have a couple of daughters. And now the woman everyone knows as Geneviève Durand is related to one of the wealthiest families in Germany. The Kellers. Then to have her son marry into the Marceau family with ties to the de Saint-Pern family! What a turn of fortune.”

  “But people are assuming that the woman mentioned in Monsieur Clay’s blog is Madame Durand. What if it isn’t?”

  “Then the readers made a mistake. Clay will be writing another installment in a day or two and will clarify who she is.”

  People were insatiable for gossip and scandal. He blurted, “Has Monsieur Clay written about the murder of Léa de Saint-Pern? The absolute tragedy of a pregnant woman killed at her niece’s wedding by some deranged person who might strike again? Who happened to be his fiancée?”