by Kim Ekemar
THE PATRICIDE
A locked-room mystery
by
Kim Ekemar
THE PATRICIDE
Copyright © Kim Ekemar, 2016
All rights reserved.
Without the express permission in writing from the author,
no part of this work may be reproduced in any form by printing,
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Go to www.kimekemar.com
for more information about permission requests.
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patricide (n): the action of killing one's father
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A NOTE ABOUT THIS WORK:
The text in this novel has British English spelling.
Published by
Bradley & Brougham Publishing House
2016
THE ACTORS
The number in (parenthesis) indicates the person’s age when the murder was committed. Names in bold are the principal characters.
Patrice Lafarge, 1860 – 1935 (75)
Adèle Lafarge, Patrice’s wife, 1875 - 1907
Gaspard Lafarge, 1885 – (50)
Michel Lafarge, 1898 – (37)
Henri Lafarge, 1900 – (35)
Constance Lafarge, 1903 – (32)
Roland Lafarge, Patrice’s brother, 1865 – (70)
Claire Lafarge, Roland’s wife, 1870 – (65)
Serge Dupois, Michel’s father-in-law, 1872 – (63)
Sophie Dupois, Michel’s wife, 1895 – (40)
Juliette Sinclair, Michel’s lover, 1912 – (23)
Rolf Ravenegger, Henri’s older love interest, 1885 – (50)
Claude Bertrand, Henri´s most recent love interest, 1912 – (23)
Alphonse Charrière, Constance’s lover, 1909 – (26)
Justine, housemaid, 1905 – (30)
Marianne, Justine’s mother, 1886 – 1934
Jean-Claude Rimbaud, police inspector, 1898 – (37)
Nicolas Rimbaud, Jean-Claude Rimbaud’s father, 1878 – 1918
Brigitte Rimbaud, Jean-Claude Rimbaud’s mother, 1880 – 1898
Emilie Beauchamp, Jean-Claude Rimbaud’s aunt, 1865 – (70)
Jean Beauchamp, Emilie Beauchamp's husband, 1863 – 1915
Pierre Beauchamp. Emilie Beauchamp's son, 1890 – 1916
Constable Fernand Escoffier, Jean-Claude Rimbaud’s local colleague
Constable Paul Morgeau, Jean-Claude Rimbaud’s local colleague
Hervé Bonnard, Patrice Lafarge’s attorney and long-time friend
Père Cavalier, the village priest
Monsieur Ricard, owner of the hardware shop in Bercy
Florian Vaugirard, a thief
CONTENTS
Prologue
FIRST PART: Before the fire
1. A spring day in 1935, at Clos Saint-Jacques near Bercy
2. The death of Justine’s mother
3. Patrice Lafarge visits his attorney
4. The preparations for Patrice Lafarge’s seventy-fifth birthday
5. Henri Lafarge
6. Michel Lafarge
7. Constance Lafarge
8. The arrival of Henri and Constance at Clos Saint-Jacques
9. Michel’s arrival at Clos Saint-Jacques
10. Hunting in the woods
11. Saturday noon at l’Auberge le Cheval Blanc
12. Wine tasting in the cellar
13. Patrice Lafarge’s birthday feast
SECOND PART: After the fire
14. The fire downstairs
15. Sunday morning at l’Auberge le Cheval Blanc
16. The police investigation
17. Inspector Rimbaud’s interrogation of those present at Clos Saint-Jacques
18. In the aftermath of the fire
19. Smoked oysters and charcoal-grilled turbot
20. The murder victim in the locked bedroom
21. Inspector Rimbaud travels to Bordeaux
22. Mussels in white wine and coq au vin
23. Inspector Rimbaud travels to Paris
24. Salade Parisienne and oven-baked pheasant
25. Inspector Rimbaud travels to Lyon
26. Alphonse takes action
27. Mushroom soup and suckling pig
28. Inspector Rimbaud’s interview with Gaspard in Bercy
29. Snails in garlic butter, and hare with chanterelle and saffron sauce
30. Aunt Emilie’s visit to the murder scene
31. Patrice Lafarge’s last meal revisited
32. Patrice Lafarge’s funeral
33. Epilogue with five pâtés for lunch
Prologue
The phone rang five times before the elderly lady's voice came on the line.
“Emilie Beauchamp speaking.”
“Aunt Emilie, this is Jean-Claude calling. I’m so sorry, but I’ll be late for our luncheon today – and I still don’t know how late.”
“What? Are you cancelling our Sunday meal just like that? It’s not as if I haven’t been slaving away in the kitchen since yesterday and –”
“I’m not cancelling, Aunt Emilie; I'm only saying that I'm going to be late. Something out of the ordinary has come up, which means I’ll be on extra duty today. This morning a man died in a fire, and it’s my job to investigate it.”
“Of course you must, Jean-Claude! How selfish of me! I’m so sorry to have been so insensitive … but, tell me, who is the victim?”
“Patrice Lafarge. He lived on Clos Saint-Jacques, just outside town.”
“I’m perfectly aware of who he is … was. We used to be in primary school together. I’m not one who likes to speak ill of the dead, but I didn’t like him then, and I never have since.”
First Part
BEFORE THE FIRE
Chapter I
A spring day in 1935, at Clos Saint-Jacques near Bercy
To visit the old stone house that was the main building on Clos Saint-Jacques, a traveller needed to turn off the main road and take a dirt one leading up to it. Surrounded by large elm trees on both sides, the entranceway wound through the hilly meadows that made it impossible to see the edifice before arriving at the end of the avenue. The owner, Patrice Lafarge, was jealous about his privacy and had on repeated occasions praised this solution that his great-grandfather had come up with a century earlier.
The fifty-five-hectare property consisted of two hectares of vineyards, three hectares of pasture for the animals, less than one hectare for the buildings, and forty-nine hectares of forest. Year round, there were two brooks running through the woods. Besides the main house, where Patrice lived with his housekeeper, there were three other structures. In one of these he kept his livestock: eight cows, one bull, and two horses. A second one was where the wine was processed and stocked. The last one was a small, wooden, two-room cottage some distance away in a glen. In this house his eldest son, fifty-year-old Gaspard, lived alone.
By this time Patrice Lafarge was in his mid-seventies. He was a large, physical man who felt cramped when obliged to remain too long indoors. His greatest pleasure was roaming through his woods, watching the birds and the hares, and occasionally shooting some of the game that abounded in the region. Yet, for a man who rarely had left Bercy and was so whole-heartedly dedicated to outdoor sports, he had a seemingly contradictory interest: a passion for literature. Patrice Lafarge could get lost for hours reading books about faraway places and adventures in the jungles and dangerous safaris and treacherous people who wanted to bring down societies. In this he considered himself a fortunate man, because he felt he could travel the world through his books without the disadvantage of having to leave his beloved property in
Bercy.
Patrice had inherited his property when his father died, and since that day he had constantly cursed the fact that his younger brother Roland had been the recipient of the other half of the estate. After a bitter feud over how to divide the property between them, they had eventually come to an agreement. The way Patrice saw it, before the ink had dried on the document they had signed at the notary's office, Roland had set out to convert his share of the inheritance into an industrialised vineyard. He had sold his share of the forest to a lumber company that, in a blink of an eye, had cut down the woods. Five years later, after investing the proceeds from the sale of the timber and with the help of some loans, Roland had harvested his first grapes to be processed for wine. That this made Roland successful from an economic perspective meant nothing to Patrice.
Now, four decades later, the brothers were still not on speaking terms, because their opinion of what was worthwhile in life was diametrically opposite. Roland, who lived in Bordeaux where it suited his interests to ship his and other spirits to buyers abroad, viewed the province as a place for boors. “The provincials”, as he referred to people like his brother, had no interest in the sophistications found in higher culture such as those he pursued himself with a stress on those that could be turned into profitable investments: theatre performances, trips abroad to Venice or London, occasional visits to the Paris opera house, modern art, architecture and haute cuisine. As a result, Roland owned a fair amount of paintings by renowned artists, had investments in real estate and was a shareholder in various prominent restaurants whose sommeliers was under instructions to make favourable comments about his the wine he produced.
Patrice shared nothing of his brother's interests in city life sophistication, cultural snobbery or money-hoarding. Year after year, with the shifting seasons, he found pleasure from his daily walks through the woods accompanied by his dogs while inhaling the clear country air on his half of the inherited estate. He acknowledged the birdsong he’d heard a thousand times before, delighted in the scurrying squirrels, and never stopped discovering new treasures among the giant trees and the delicate flowers he knew by heart since childhood.
The brothers had seldom got along as children. Patrice had always been the strong-willed boy bordering on the abusive when it came to getting his way, which a younger and smaller Roland simply had no way to counter unless he complained about it to their father. If he did, he was sure to later be punished by Patrice for having done so. Roland learnt that his best defence was to steer clear from his brother. When they had grown into adults, they maintained a cold distance on the rare occasions they met at some family affair.
Apart from their inflexible opinions concerning how life should best be enjoyed, their physical appearance was even more at odds. Whereas Roland was thin, wiry and angular with a proud bearing and a receding hairline, Patrice was large, walked like a bear and had thick, unkempt hair that looked impossible to tame with a comb.
However, it was their characters that marked their profoundest difference. Whereas Roland was cold and calculating, Patrice was spontaneous in his opinion. Roland had set his mind on making himself a commercial empire, and he had achieved his goal before turning forty. By his side was Claire, a woman as manipulative as her husband, who with bravura and patience had successfully orchestrated their entrance into the Bordeaux society. Patrice despised the entire social climbing that ruled Roland and Claire's lives.
In spite of all, if studied closely, there were a few traits that the brothers shared. Both were stubborn to the point of ignoring even the most carefully prepared and supported argument. They were indifferent to other people’s plights and couldn't care less about the misfortunes of persons below their own stations in life. And more than anything, if there was one thing the brothers shared, it was their obsession with an idea once it had entered their heads. Neither listened to reason nor were they willing to contemplate some alternative. The view each had formed was the final word on the matter, and then it had to be executed exactly as they wanted it done.
With the exception of his irrepressible lust for women, Patrice had wanted nothing more in life than to live his days quietly on Clos Saint-Jacques and roaming its delightful woods. He had never seen the point in turning a beautiful patch of land into vineyards to make more money, which in turn would enable him to live in some expensive city: this was contradictory to his nature and beliefs in every way. That Roland was now five times richer than himself didn't interest him in the least; Patrice wouldn't have changed his lot for all the wine in France. In his opinion, Roland had sold out to the devil at a bargain price for not understanding that a virgin forest with brooks and game were the riches worth working for.
Patrice had experienced both disappointment and a blow to his self-esteem when the children, borne by his late wife Adèle, had one by one drifted away to live in different cities. Patrice didn’t realise that it was his imposing ways that had made his three children look for a future elsewhere. They all perceived him as an overbearing, irrational man who wouldn’t even listen to a differing opinion before making a decision. Despite all the books he had read, Patrice was a man who had never received more than basic schooling, nor had he travelled enough to understand that life can be appreciated from the angles of a very large prism.
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Patrice had lived in Bercy all his life, with few changes since he inherited his half of the estate – and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He possessed everything he needed. In addition to the sale of some of the milk, his little vineyard produced enough money for his needs and the upkeep of the property. Besides the winemaking, more than anything he enjoyed hunting small game in his woods: hares, pheasants, an occasional boar and other game. Most of the time he just walked through the virgin forest accompanied by his four dogs, enjoying the tranquil atmosphere, observing the animals and perceiving the gentle breeze rustle the leaves on the trees.
With some regularity he drove into Bercy, the closest village, for supplies. Occasionally he found himself obliged to travel to Bordeaux on business concerning his wine harvest, a journey he always undertook with much reluctance. Patrice simply couldn't abide city life. His existence revolved around the abundance his property offered. When it was his turn to meet his maker, he was determined that it should remain exactly as it had been through countless generations before him. With the mounting years this had become of great concern to him, because he was convinced – Gaspard being the exception – that none of his children had any interest in maintaining the property in its present state.
Patrice had three children from his only marriage: Michel, Henri and Constance. Twenty-eight years had gone by since his wife Adèle had died from tuberculosis. He had raised the children with the help of his then housekeeper, Marianne. Michel had left home for Bordeaux at the time Marianne had been overcome with a mental illness so severe that she had to be taken into a permanent care in a convent. A few years later, both Henri and Constance would follow Michel’s example. Patrice now found himself alone with his retarded son, Gaspard, and Justine, the daughter of the housekeeper who had gone mad for reasons unknown.
At the age of thirteen, Justine had taken over her mother’s duties in the household. She cooked and cleaned, preserved and washed, milked the cows, fed the geese for the liver, ran errands in Bercy and supervised the mentally handicapped Gaspard. Without her, the household wouldn’t have functioned, although this was something Patrice – if he ever noticed it – never mentioned.
Gaspard was the result of a temporary liaison that Patrice had had when he was twenty-five. The mother was one of the maids working for a family in Bercy. Her slow wits had in Patrice’s eyes been well compensated with her ample charms and pretty countenance. However, once Gaspard had been born, she had wit enough to make Patrice recognise he was the child’s father. Patrice’s own father, then still alive, had reluctantly allowed her to move into the little cottage in the glen with the newborn.
Gaspard had left school when he wa
s twelve. No one disagreed when his teacher said that Gaspard’s intelligence was limited and that studies were not for him. Instead, Patrice put him to work by showing him the chores of pruning the vines and caring for the animals. When Gaspard was sixteen, his mother died. After the funeral Patrice told Gaspard that, as long as he kept working the vineyard and tending the animals, he could remain in the little house.
Now, nearing his seventy-fifth birthday, Patrice lived with Justine and Gaspard as his only help. Only when the grape harvest began in September, did he hire more hands. Patrice was perfectly happy with his life as it was. Nevertheless, he knew that, before he died, he had to do something to prevent his little corner of paradise from becoming gutted by the greed of future generations.
Chapter II
The death of Justine’s mother
The village priest turned his bicycle onto the dirt road that led to Patrice Lafarge’s house. The geese by the dam nearby made a scandal as he parked near the main entrance. The door opened and Justine came outside.
“Oh, good day, Père Cavalier!” she exclaimed as she recognised him. “I heard the geese announcing the arrival of someone, but I couldn’t imagine that it was you. Shall I fetch Monsieur Patrice?”
“No, my child”, the priest replied gravelly. “I came here to see you.”
“To see me? What on earth for?”
“Perhaps you will allow me to sit down before I broach the subject?”
“Yes, of course! I completely forgot my manners.” She turned and led the way inside to the kitchen. “Would you like a little glass of wine?”
“I wouldn’t mind if I do, my child.”
She fetched a bottle from last year’s harvest and poured the priest a glass before sitting down opposite him.