Champagne: The Farewell

by Janet Hubbard

  Olivier paused, wondering if he should reveal that Jacques’ brother was murdered, too. He was afraid that if he didn’t Jacques would find out from Girard, or worse, Philippe Douvier. “We heard from the forensic autopsy and Antoine’s death was not an accident.”

  Jacques’ eyes widened and he clutched his chest and doubled over. Olivier got up, alarmed, as Marie-Christine entered with Mimi behind her. Marie-Christine went to Jacques, who held her hand until he was able to compose himself. Then Olivier told them about the circumstances and how they had proven it. Max walked in, and gave Olivier an inquisitive look, then sat down.

  “There’s an element of cruelty here that is unimaginable,” Jacques said.

  Max told them the story of the blue vase, how Ted had learned it from the evening spent with Antoine, and then told her about it. They seemed spellbound, and Olivier thought of the healing power of story. “I remember that vase,” Jacques said. “We’ve listened to him so little over the years. Once my mother was gone, which was devastating to him, I realize, he simply couldn’t manage.”

  Mimi spoke, “He came to my house once a week on my day off and we talked, and often we fished.” They stared at her, obviously unaware that this had happened. “He was really brave to have managed to turn that vase knowing that he wasn’t going to survive but wanting to leave a clue behind. He was afraid of the killer but knew he had to try to prevent more deaths. He knew all along who it was, I’m sure.”

  “I want Hans Keller arrested,” Jacques said, “even if I have to call Philippe Douvier and the Minister of the Interior. Hans Keller held my brother hostage, forcing him to sign his shares in de Saint-Pern over to him. It’s all so obvious.”

  “Jacques, please don’t call the ministers yet. Wait until Max and I are back from Paris.”

  “Then guarantee me that we’re safe. And that you’ll be here for Antoine’s service tomorrow morning.”

  “We’ll be back as quickly as possible. As for your safety, I want us to continue as though today is just another day of a boring investigation. As long as everything seems calm, there won’t be anything for the murderer to react to.”

  He and Max exchanged glances, understanding that it was time to leave. Once in the car, he began to outline the day ahead. He picked up his cell and called a number and within minutes he had agreed with Yves to meet in a café near the Pompidou Museum, where Yves worked as a junior curator. Olivier had already established a time to meet with Geneviève at her apartment, and Léa’s therapist would give them time in the afternoon.

  Max reached into her bag and uttered an expletive. “I left my journal in my room,” she said. “I’ve been writing notes non-stop. Last night when I got home I drew up a map with the crime scene in the center, and had everything radiating from there—the tent, the house, the terrace, the inn, the kitchen, and then I tried to place everyone somewhere at the hour of death. Jacques in his room with the shutter open, Mimi stumbling across Léa and walking back up to find Marie-Christine, Chloé in the tent, Marc all over the place…”

  “And what about Yves.”

  Max had her eyes closed, visualizing. “I saw him with Marc when he came down to inquire about what was going on. Antoine blacked out, then awoke and went home.”

  “Hans’ alibi, for now, seems pretty solid.”

  “I wonder, though, if he bought that alibi. He could offer a lot of money to Delphine. I recall now that she told me that she passed Bernard Martin on the terrace when she was rushing back to the tent from the inn.

  “Dupuis was in the parking lot waiting for Martin to tell him what Hans Keller was offering for de Saint-Pern.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know about that.”

  “Those two are in collusion, and there’s a good chance I can have one of my colleagues go after them for bribery and other corruption. I also think Bernard is full of resentment and anger, even though he tries to keep it from showing, It’s possible that he could have killed Léa.”

  “But who forced Antoine to sign over his shares of de Saint-Pern to Hans? I think I should call Chloé and have her hide my journal.”

  “Your door is closed? Who knows about it?”

  “Only Chloé.”

  “I wouldn’t worry.” They were entering the city, and Olivier began to pay more attention to traffic. He swerved to miss a car and swore, forgetting to ask Max why she looked so worried. He had debated about bringing up last night, decided that they were in professional mode and to do so would interfere with their focus. He was impressed with Max’s easy manner after last night’s scene, and had the fleeting thought that she was now unavailable. He pulled into a parking garage and they both exited the car and headed for the street.

  “I hope that Abdel won’t think I’m taking his place today,” Max said.

  “He’s busy with forensics. The shoe prints are driving him crazy. There is a pair that can’t be matched. Dress shoes like all the groomsmen wore. But it could be a guest, too.”

  Yves waved from the café where he sat drinking a café au lait. He had sandy-colored hair and wore Rayban sunglasses. They shook hands and Max ordered what Yves was having and Olivier ordered an espresso. “God, this has been a nightmare,” he said. “Marc has been keeping me informed.”

  Olivier dove in. “I would imagine that you don’t recall much, as my detective said you were too drunk to answer a few questions the night of the murder.”

  “It’s true that I passed out near the tennis courts, but I remember everything before. And some after, though Delphine would say otherwise. She would probably even go so far as to say I didn’t know she had taken off with the tall German. I saw them dancing and I thought it better to get drunk than start a fight. She’ll be back once she realizes he has no intention of taking her on that exotic cruise he’s been promising her.”

  “Would she take money from him for providing an alibi?”

  He paused. “Probably.”

  This is a betrayed man talking, Olivier thought.

  Olivier said, “I saw you with Marc when you came down to the crime scene immediately after the police arrived. Where were you coming from?”

  “We’d been dancing like crazy. You probably saw us spinning Marc around earlier in the night.” He laughed. “It was a wild night. Marc went to check on his mom, he said, and after a bit returned with news that the police were arriving. I jumped up and we went to find out what was going on.”

  Olivier interjected, “Marc changed into jeans.Why?”

  “A group of us had brought casual clothes as we had some notion of having breakfast at sunrise. Marc had already changed when he came to find me, and I decided to change too.”

  “Where did you go to change?”

  “In the woods.”

  “Why not in the house?”

  “We were avoiding his father-in-law. You know, everything had felt a little out of control all day. Marc and his mother were snapping at each other, then they had an argument at the inn, and Marc was furious when he left there. He also knew his new bride was upset with him for getting drunk.”

  “Did he want to marry?”

  Yves looked caught in a trap. He shifted his position in the chair, and waved his hand for another coffee. Olivier glanced over at Max, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Yves. He wondered how much she had understood. “No.”

  “Was he in love with someone else?”

  Yves’ eyes dropped. “Oui.”

  “Can you tell me who?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me her name. I think it’s irrelevant, for he also said that it could never be. He was doing what his mother and Léa wanted.”

  “Léa?”

  “That’s what he told me, but he was bitter about it. I didn’t get it. I thought Chloé was great. I’ve been friends with Marc since elementary school, but he’s unpredictable. Very
hard to read.”

  Olivier pushed his cup away. “Is there anything else that you can say that would help me, Yves?” When he didn’t reply, Olivier said, “You know that Antoine was also murdered.”

  Yves gasped. “No! Marc didn’t tell me that!”

  “He doesn’t know. We just learned yesterday.”

  “I liked Antoine very much. He was so friendly that night. And drunker than we were, I think.”

  “He and Marc got along well?”

  “Okay, I guess. Antoine said whatever he thought, and he told Marc that he thought he was faking it with Chloé and that made Marc really mad. But he got over it.”

  Olivier paid, and they walked together through the big square behind the museum. Olivier gave him his card in case anything else came to mind. He and Max went back to the car and drove to the narrow street in front of Geneviève’s apartment. Olivier filled Max in on the conversation with Yves.

  “Something has been bugging me since Chloé told me about the wedding,” she said. “Her emails didn’t have the joie de vivre that I would have expected. We talked a couple of nights ago, though, and even when she is upset with Marc, she defends him.”

  Olivier sighed, “People marry for all kinds of reasons. Certainly not always for love.”

  “I think Chloé’s in love with Marc, but she has felt some disappointment and doesn’t know what to do with that. She’s been protected and isn’t used to things going awry.”

  Olivier tapped in the code on Geneviève’s apartment building as before and they walked through the courtyard and on to the small elevator. Geneviève was in trousers and a man’s shirt and her hair was whipped up into a careless chignon. She gave them a warm smile, and said that she had coffee ready. Or champagne if they preferred. They said they preferred coffee, and went to the salon.

  “You always have a fresh rose blooming,” Olivier said. “It’s a wonderful touch.”

  Geneviève had the tray of coffee ready and began to pour as they arranged themselves on the sofas. There wasn’t a hint of anything unusual except that her hand shook when she poured the coffee. Olivier got up and handed a cup to Max and took one for himself.

  “Max,” she said, “What a vacation this has been for you. I’m sorry that I haven’t had the opportunity to entertain you properly. I hope you’ll stay long enough for that to happen.”

  Olivier said, “You won’t be surprised that I’m curious about how Ted Clay came to blog about his story of Hans’ background and then the story of a woman who some presume to be you.”

  “I had told him my story a couple of years ago, never thinking he would write about it. Marc thinks he was being vindictive, but I’m not so sure.”

  “People see it as a rags-to-riches story.”

  “They still have no idea what it’s like to be poor, and to have a child out of wedlock and try to raise him. It’s more common today, but I struggled.”

  “But you had money fromTristan de Saint-Pern.”

  She couldn’t hide her shock. “How do you know that?”

  “Your contract was among a stack of documents handed over to the police.”

  “The bastard hangs on to me from the grave. It was enough money for me to go to seamstress school and helped for a few years. I went back to him to ask for more when Marc was two and he threatened to have me jailed. He had the influence to do that, and to have my son taken away.”

  “Did Marc ever meet his father?”

  “Once. At a big airshow. Charles was receiving a big award. Marc was four. Charles was shocked, and furious. He told me I must never show up again.”

  “Does Marc know who his father is?”

  “I had always said I’d tell him before he married. And I did.”

  “How did he react?”

  “I know now it was too much of a shock. He had idolized Charles, as did so many of his friends. I took him to many air shows as he was growing up and he wanted to become a pilot. I thought he’d be happy with the news, but it was the opposite. We fought at the inn. He told me that he was calling the wedding off, that he didn’t love Chloé. I thought it was wedding jitters.”

  “That’s when you told him he was nothing and would have nothing. It would been the decent thing to do to let Chloé and her family know about Charles being Marc’s father.”

  “I owed them nothing, Olivier. I know these people. Marie-Christine would have assumed Marc was after her sister’s fortune. He and Chloé will be fine, and I think Marc will come to be a great asset to the company.”

  Max asked, “How would you say Marc got along with Léa?”

  “They had a hard time establishing boundaries at first, but once they did, he came to adore her.”

  “Ted said that you were upset when he told you he and Léa were going to have a baby.”

  “Ted lies. He also said that he stayed with me for a half hour or so when he walked me to the inn that night. He was using me for an alibi.”

  Olivier said, “Curiously, we don’t have an alibi for Marc either.”

  “He was with Chloé when I left the reception.”

  “There’s a gap. A wedding guest saw him run through the hall of the inn and knock on your door. That was at two-thirty a.m. You answered and he handed you a plastic bag. What was in it?”

  “I never saw a bag. Nor did he come to my door.”

  “Sorry,” Max interrupted. “May I use les toilettes?”

  Geneviève didn’t hide her annoyance. “You know where it is.”

  Max left the room, and Geneviève said, obviously irritated, “Hasn’t she learned that it’s impolite to do that?”

  Olivier shrugged. “You are content here, now, Geneviève?”

  “Content? I have never been content. When you are an orphan, and I was essentially, you can never feel that everything is okay. Before all this, I was close to being content, though. I was glad for Marc, that he would have a good family, and a good wife, and that he would have a place to shine, for he’s very smart.”

  “Hans claims that quite a large sum of cash is missing that he brought into the country, and he mentioned that you knew about it.”

  Her lips turned up ever so slightly. “Did he? I have a terrible memory.”

  Olivier knew it would be fruitless to pursue that now. “And did you hope to find a place for yourself at the de Saint-Pern Company?”

  She broke into a smile, but it wasn’t pleasant to see.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  They were in the courtyard when Max said, “All the photos of Charles de Saint-Pern were ripped off the walls and taken off the shelves in Marc’s bedroom. And the model planes were gone.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, “But this was still there.” Olivier took it and looked at it. “It’s a receipt for the wedding clothes that were rented. I should have remembered. There was a problem with Marc’s shoes. The company sent two pair. Here’s the receipt for two pair of shoes.”

  Their eyes interlocked.

  “One pair might match the mystery shoe print?”

  Max nodded. “Think about it. He went down there in his wedding attire, including the shoes. He carried a rose to her. His mother’s trademark. They argued and he killed her. He had the presence of mind to rush to his room and change into jeans, and shove his clothes into a plastic bag. He waited to see Ted returning to Léa, then ran to his mother’s with the bag of clothes. Geneviève knew in that moment what her son had done, and she decided to try to protect him. He ran back to the table and threw the full bottle of champagne into the woods. I’m torn between excitement at having solved the puzzle and resistance over accepting who the murderer likely is. And, this is crazy, but his was the last name I wrote in my journal.”

  “You make it sound like a fait accompli when all you have is an extra pair of shoes. Earlier you told me th
at you thought Delphine Lacroix would take money from Hans Keller for giving an alibi for him and Yves.”

  “I’m just thinking out loud. Nothing is fait accompli, so don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “What would Marc’s motive be? You know, Max, you get lucky and sometimes I think you’re really quite clever with what you turn up, but other times your quick assessments border on the irresponsible.”

  “I agree with everything you’re saying, except I’m only saying these things to you. Let’s say Marc went to tell Léa about his father. Who knows if she knew or didn’t know about her husband’s child. About the skeletons in the closet. Though I think if she knew she would have prevented Chloé from marrying him.”

  “Or pushed him into it.”

  “What if she blew up at him? Geneviève said he adored her. Yves said he was in love with someone else. Even Léa thought he was in love with her.”

  “It’s another scenario. Most of it made up.”

  “Okay. We’ll stick to the shoes. I think we’ll find a match.”

  “We don’t have the shoes. There are two pair somewhere, according to this receipt. His fingerprints weren’t on the bottle, nor have they turned up anywhere else.”

  “He wore gloves at the wedding.”

  “Now we have the shoes and wedding gloves, all missing. No doubt in the plastic bag as witnessed by a woman who admitted to being drunk, and who might be lying to protect the man she was sleeping with.”

  “Marc’s groomsman’s clothes are in there, too. The clothes he was wearing when he killed her. I don’t think Geneviève would tell you the whereabouts of that bag if you put her in a torture chamber.”

  “We haven’t found her place of vulnerability yet. Nor Marc’s.”

  “I don’t think he has one.”

  They were in front the therapist’s office. Adèle Lausanne rose when they entered her office and greeted them warmly. A stack of newspapers was on her desk, and she said, “I’m trying to catch up on the case. This is a great tragedy, and I can only imagine how you must be feeling. Both of you.”