by Kim Ekemar
“What set me on the road to solving the case was a comment that you, Henri, made to Inspector Rimbaud.”
Henri looked uncomfortable at the mention of his name.
“What you said – as noted down by my nephew when he took your statement mere hours after the fire – was as follows.”
After extracting a paper from her handbag and adjusting her reading glasses, Aunt Emilie started reading out loud:
“My father locked the door and then he was asphyxiated by the fire when we couldn’t get inside fast enough to save him. The one thing about this that I don’t understand is why on earth he wanted to lock the door in the first place. It’s been a few years since I last visited Clos Saint-Jacques, but when I arrived it struck me as very odd that he was griping about this key that didn’t work. I heard him order Justine to fetch Gaspard, as if he was in some way responsible for the malfunction.”
Looking up from the sheet, she allowed her glance to slowly pass over her audience.
“At first I couldn’t make heads or tails of the purpose of this little S-shaped metal object. Surely it could be something Gaspard would have plenty of in his workshop, so had he dropped it when he helped his father to bed? It wasn’t until I was cooking a goose for dinner that I realised how it had been used.”
“A goose?” Michel looked at her as if she were demented.
“After stuffing the goose, and before putting it inside the oven, you tie the bird with a string to prevent the stuffing from spilling out. That led me to imagine that a string could be tied to this S-shaped metal piece and carefully positioned in the oval aperture at the top of the key. With the other end of the string tied to the minute hand of the grandfather clock, at the point closest to the centre, it was a mere question of time before the clock’s movement had locked the door. You see, as the minutes passed, the string was slowly tightened until it began turning the key. By then, of course, the murderer had since long left the room.”
Incredulous, all present, including Rimbaud, looked at her as the possibility of her statement sank in. Nobody spoke.
“The circumstance that Patrice Lafarge’s testament is nowhere to be found indicates that the murderer had a special interest in destroying it. My guess is that it was fed to the fireplace.”
Once again, Aunt Emilie looked at them all, one at a time.
“Jean-Claude, can you please lend me the bedroom key?”
Rimbaud removed it from his pocket and handed it to her.
“As you can see the key has an aperture, which is called a bow. It's been designed to facilitate it to be fastened to a key ring”, Aunt Emilie continued. “It’s in this aperture where this little piece was inserted.”
She demonstrated it by placing the S-shaped metal into the aperture, before slowly rotating the key in the air.
“After leaving the room, the clock’s hands kept moving, pulling the string until the key was turned in the lock. Eventually this caused the piece of metal to fall to the floor. It’s quite heavy, so it must have caused some disturbance. The clock continued to wind the string. The candle flame reached the cotton and ignited it. Since the clock had also been covered with flammable material, the flames consumed the now wound-up string. The morning gown caught fire, and the humidity soon produced the heavy black smoke that eventually made Constance shout ‘fire’.”
“But who is the culprit?” Rimbaud ventured, impressed with his aunt. “What was the motive?”
“Those are questions far more complex. All those present that night had a motive, and I’ve also contemplated the possibility that several persons may have made a pact to jointly commit the murder. Michel wanted to convert the property to a successful vineyard like your uncle had done previously –”
“It’s never been a secret that I disagreed with my father about how to make this property more profitable”, Michel heatedly interrupted her.
“Henri has been living on the verge of bankruptcy for years”, Emilie continued unperturbed, “and is in debts up to his ears. He’s been counting desperately on his inheritance to keep up with his present lifestyle, …”
Henri’s face went red as the others turned to look at him. He chose not to make any comment.
“… while life in Paris is expensive, and – excuse me for putting it so bluntly, dear – Constance is no longer the attraction she was when she went there in her early twenties. It’s been far between the job opportunities lately, hasn’t it Constance? She, too, has been counting on the inheritance – in fact, one of her main motives for showing up for Patrice’s birthday was to make certain that she could get an advance payment on her share.”
Her brothers looked angrily at her. With cheeks blushing, Constance kept her stare fixed on Aunt Emilie.
“As I mentioned earlier, Gaspard’s motive is quite different. Born an unwanted child, he was treated as an unpaid worker by Patrice, no better than a slave, really. Being born out of wedlock has also meant that you, his siblings, born within your parents’ marriage, treated him with disdain.”
“It sounds to me as if you haven’t come any closer to the truth of who the murderer is”, Roland said, sounding bored. “All this rambling of yours sounds like you only want to show off, just like you used to at school.” He got up and stretched.
“Come, Claire”, he ordered his wife. “We should leave for Bordeaux before it gets dark.”
“On the contrary, Roland”, Aunt Emilie challenged him, “I’m not ‘showing off’, as you call it. Forgive me for saying it, but as in the past, it’s merely a question of some pupils being less lazy than others. You see, yesterday I made a short journey that allowed me to confirm my suspicions which of Patrice’s children killed your brother”, Aunt Emilie retorted.
They all waited expectantly. Roland reluctantly regained his seat. Fascinated, Rimbaud watched her with his mouth slightly ajar.
“Here’s Patrice’s killer”, Aunt Emilie said, raising her arm and dramatically pointing her finger, “and now I’ll explain to you the motive behind his death”.
Chapter XXXIII
Epilogue with five pâtés for lunch
THE MENU
Champagne: 1923 Dom Perignon
*
Vegetable pâté with gherkins and Cumberland sauce
Goose liver pâté with champagne gelatine
Salmon pâté with sea urchin
Wild boar pâté with morels
Hare pâté with green pepper sauce
*
Coffee served with Cointreau liqueur
“It’s such a pretty day, so I thought we’d have our luncheon in the garden today”, Aunt Emilie called out gaily as her nephew entered her cottage. “Why don’t you help me by carrying the champagne cooler and serving us a couple of flutes?”
“Champagne? Well, solving the Lafarge murder certainly calls for celebration, but it should be the police that send you a bottle –“
“Nonsense, Jean-Claude, and anyway, I’ve saved this bottle for a special occasion. In another year or so it won’t be drinkable any longer, so we might as well enjoy it now. I think it goes very well with the five pâtés I’ve been preparing for the last couple of days.”
“You’re an indefatigable marvel, Aunt Emilie!”
Rimbaud carried the wine cooler with its ice and bottle outside, followed by Aunt Emilie with a tray containing the pâtés. It was a warm day, and she had mounted the table in the shade of the large elm tree.
“Before I give you the big news”, Rimbaud challenged her as he sat down to serve himself of the delicacies, “do explain to me how you solved the riddle of Patrice Lafarge’s murder.”
“Obviously, there was an abundance of clues, which, as you are well aware, have a tendency to muddle the mind”, Aunt Emilie replied. “There was, however, one clue in particular that intrigued me. Once I understood this simple detail, it wasn’t too difficult to unravel the rest. You should start with the goose liver pâté, Jean-Claude.”
“You’re speaking in riddles, dear aunt
. Please explain yourself.”
“About the clue or the pâté?” she smiled jokingly. “As for the clue, I’m referring to the strange circumstance that the key Monsieur Ricard made worked when Gaspard reinstalled the lock, and by the time Henri arrived, no longer did. And then, a few hours later, it worked again.”
“I don’t understand how this allowed you to figure out who the killer was.”
“I tested different hypotheses, and one of these was that someone on purpose switched the key for a similar one. If that was the case, then why was it done? Because that person needed access to Patrice’s bedroom. Who or what entered into the room during the time the key didn’t work? After that, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out that the grandfather clock played a role in the murder.”
“You make it sound so easy, Aunt Emilie”, Rimbaud sighed, taking a long appreciative sip from his champagne flute. “Now to the news I promised you. This morning, Justine finally came clean. She confirmed her motive for killing Monsieur Lafarge.”
“I can guess some of it, but I’d be more than interested in hearing the full version.”
“I knew you’d say that, so I took the precaution of making an extra copy when I typed the confession she then signed. See for yourself, Aunt Emilie”, Rimbaud beamed as he handed over a sheaf of papers to her.
After putting on her glasses, she began reading.
*
I was born in a convent in 1905. This was often the case when unmarried women became pregnant, as in my mother's case. She always refused to tell me who my father was. The only thing she would admit to was that there was too much shame involved.
For need of food and shelter, my mother, whose name was Marianne, accepted a job as housekeeper for Patrice Lafarge when I was two years old. His wife had recently died of tuberculosis, and he wasn’t very good at housekeeping. He also needed help with keeping his younger children clothed and fed and on their way to school. When we arrived Michel was nine, Henri seven and Constance four. Gaspard, an adult at twenty-two and like myself born out of wedlock, was working as a farmhand – or should I say as a serf, because as far as I know he has never been paid anything beyond room and board.
I started going to school when I was six years old. Being born by an unmarried mother made other children tease and bully me. I guess this made me shut myself up in my own secluded world.
By then, I knew that my mother was secretly seeing someone, but I never learnt who the man was. She was afraid of losing her place with her employer for my sake, so she never told me or anyone else who he was. But I did notice that she looked very happy every time she went out to meet with him.
Then, in 1914, the Great War began. One day when I came home from school, I found my mother crying in the kitchen. She didn’t tell me in so many words, but I understood that the man she was in love with had been drafted to fight at the front.
Over the next three years, she walked almost daily to the post office after performing her other errands in the village, often posting a letter and sometimes receiving one. She never showed the letters to me, but she often cried after having read them. One day, six months before the war ended, she opened a letter and this time there was no end to her tears. Whatever news there was in that letter, she took it so much to her heart that she gradually lost her mind.
This was a difficult time for me. Monsieur Patrice soon realised he couldn’t keep my mother on as his employee and arranged with the authorities to have her placed in an institution “for the feebleminded”, as he called it. The truth, which I learnt much later, was that her heart broke when she learnt that the man she loved had been killed in the trenches in northern France.
The institution she was sent to was run by nuns. With Monsieur Patrice’s grumpy permission, I visited her there twice a month. I think he allowed this as part of my compensation for – at age thirteen, having finished my six years of schooling – taking over the chores that my mother had performed. Nevertheless, it became less work now than it had been for my mother, with all his children except Gaspard gone in pursuit of their different careers.
I had worked at Clos Saint-Jacques for seventeen years when the village priest came to visit. He told me my mother had died. I went to see the nuns who had cared for her. The mother superior handed over the few possessions my mother had left behind after her death at forty-eight. Among them, there was a letter she had prepared for me. Reading it, I finally learnt the truth about who my father was … my mother had been raped by Patrice Lafarge. Monsieur Patrice was my father!
Her death and the shock of learning the truth about my origins made me very depressed. I kept thinking how I could get back at this monster who had kept me and my mother and Gaspard as no better than slaves for so many years. It occurred to me that his seventy-fifth birthday, with all his children present, would be the ideal occasion to celebrate his own passing from this world. I knew he had prepared a new testament that would keep the property intact after his death, and that all those expecting to inherit him would be opposed to the idea. Still, I wanted it to look like an accident. I would burn the testament and no one would be the wiser. At the right moment, I would step forward as one more of his children and demand my share of the inheritance, as is my right.
The old man’s birthday was looming, and he wanted to see his so-called legitimate children back home to celebrate him. He knew he was getting on in years, and at the same time it tickled his mean soul to announce to them that the inheritance they were counting on would then forever be out of their reach. All this got my imagination working. I knew that, should I have confronted him about his fatherhood while he was still alive, I would immediately have been shunned forever from Clos Saint-Jacques. Instead, I conjured up a way of putting an end to the life of that … that miserable rapist, while rightfully adding my own name to those who would inherit from him!
I had recently finished reading a novel that I’d found in his library. It was about a murder in a room locked from the inside. The idea fascinated me. If you could make it convincing that the victim – alone in his room – had locked it, then it couldn’t be murder, could it? If I could make his death look like an accident, I would have both my revenge and my rightful inheritance.
Day and night my mind worked at finding a way to kill the old man while avoiding it to look like murder. One night I heard the grandfather clock chime, and it occurred to me that the only thing constantly moving forward in our house, even when we were asleep, was the hands of that clock. Could I use those hands to strangle him, suffocate him … perhaps with a fire as a diversion? If so, I needed to get the clock into the old man’s bedroom. How could I start a fire at the right time? Well, that was the easy part. The difficult task was making it appear as if Monsieur Patrice himself had locked his bedroom from the inside.
Eventually I had puzzled all the pieces together, and I was ready just in time when his – that is, his other – children arrived at Clos Saint-Jacques to celebrate his birthday. They all arrived with the gifts I had suggested with the intention to benefit my plan.
On the evening of May 4, after Gaspard had helped Monsieur Patrice to bed, I entered his bedroom with a carafe of water, as was my custom every night. I closed the door behind me and locked it. Monsieur Patrice, still dressed, was lying on his back with his feet on the pillow, snoring hard. I found the morning gown that Constance had given him and doused it with water from the carafe. Then I built a blazing fire in the fireplace using plenty of wood.
After this I was faced the hardest part. I pulled the pillow from under his feet, and with all my strength I pressed it over Monsieur Patrice’s face. While it lasted, I hated him, hated him, hated him for all the misery he had caused my mother. Considering a man of his size, he fought surprisingly feebly for air. After a couple of minutes, he stopped resisting and his body went limp. I touched his neck. There was no pulse.
I had brought four things in the pocket of my apron: a package of cotton, a candle, a ball of string and a small piece of meta
l I had found outside Gaspard’s forge. After lighting the candle near the morning gown doused in water, I arranged the cotton around it so that it would catch fire later when the flame had consumed the candle. I spread the cotton across the floor all the way to the clock to make sure I wouldn’t leave any evidence.
The preparations for my plan were made difficult because of the little time left before the weekend guests arrived. Two days earlier, after Gaspard had reinstalled the lock in the door with its new key, I had made several trials while Monsieur Patrice was out for a walk. I tied a string between the clock and the key and watched it being wound by the minute hand. I had to work under pressure, and I was nervous that Monsieur Patrice would return suddenly. However, within an hour or so I knew that it would work as well as the perfect length of string needed.
After putting Monsieur Patrice to death with the pillow, I searched his desk until I found the manila envelope with his attorney’s name on it. When I had confirmed that it contained the testament, I fed it to the flames in the fireplace. Next, I tied one end of the string I had brought near the base of the minute hand and the other end around the piece of metal that I had shaped into an “S” with the help of a pair of pliers. I had dented the upper part of this piece of metal in such a way that the string remained fixed, and when pulled at, would turn the key. I wound the clock, set the time and started the pendulum that Monsieur Patrice had stopped the previous night in order to sleep. It would keep swinging until the fire consumed its vital parts, I knew. After unlocking the bedroom door, I fitted the piece of metal into the bow of the key still in the lock and for a minute watched how the movement of the clock’s hand tensed the string and slowly began to turn the key. This was the cue for me to leave. I opened and gently closed the door to return to my quarters. Gaspard had by then retired, but in loud voices and completely absorbed with themselves, the others were still discussing how their father had tricked them out of their patrimony. I don’t think they noticed me as I left the bedroom and crossed the hallway to reach the kitchen.