Provence - To Die For

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Oh, dear,” I said, resting my hand on the corner of the table.

  “Don’t be concerned. It’s a temporary malfunction. They do this from time to time. Someone must have switched on the dishwasher.”

  I turned to scan the room. There were three arches in the masonry walls. Those on the right and left had been fitted with heavy wooden doors; the open one behind us led back to the hallway. High on the walls were sets of shutters covering what might be storage cupboards. Peculiar places for storage, I thought. They’d be inaccessible without a ladder. On the other side of the table, up a step, was a multipaned glass window looking into another room.

  Guy picked up one of the large knives and idly tested its point with the pad of his thumb. “There is a mystery here, eh?”

  “Why are those storage cabinets so high?” I asked. “Can you reach them from another room?”

  “You have a keen eye,” he said, replacing the knife and aligning its blade so it matched the others. He was enjoying the game. “I give you a hint.” He tapped the floor with his foot. “This stone was laid in the thirteenth century.”

  “But you said the building was built in the fourteenth century,” I said, pointing to the wall.

  “Exactement. The floor is older because it isn’t a floor at all. We are right now in the middle of a medieval street. Do you see the outside of the houses?” He waved a long arm at the walls.

  I looked up and realized that we stood in what appeared to be a courtyard with buildings all around. Those possible storage cupboards were at one time windows overlooking this small square. The table was standing in the street. Perhaps the glass window on the other side had been the window of a shop. It was only the beamed wooden ceiling, high above our heads, that had transformed the spaces into an interior room.

  “Those arches,” I said. “Were they passageways leading to other streets?”

  “Oui! And, like our streets, they are narrow because there were no cars in those days, only mules.”

  “Yes, I can see the square,” I said slowly. “It’s obvious now that you point it out.”

  The knowledge of the room’s origins, however, did not lessen my uneasiness. I made a mental note to bring a warm sweater to the cooking class. Perhaps it was just the cold that was bothering me. Stone walls and floors, especially in a subterranean room, will hold a frosty temperature for a long time.

  “The room above this is the same,” Guy continued, oblivious to my discomfort. “It is the atrium, where we serve breakfast and tea.”

  “And what do you use this room for?” I asked.

  “This is where we consume the fruits of our labor. It’s the dining room for our kitchen over there.” He pointed at the room beyond the multipaned window. “When we have spent all morning cooking our meal, we sit down together here, and drink wine and eat up all we have made. Chef Bertrand always makes a complete meal, including dessert.”

  “I look forward to it,” I said, moving around the table and climbing the step to peer through the window into the darkened kitchen.

  Guy patted his jacket pockets and frowned. “I don’t have the keys to open the kitchen,” he said. “Emil must have them.”

  “Do you mean Chef Bertrand?” I said, cupping my hands on the glass to see inside.

  “Oui. He is always forgetting his keys and taking mine.”

  I looked back at him. “Have you worked for him for a long time?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” he replied with a wry smile.

  “He’s a demanding boss, I gather.”

  Guy’s eyes flew up to the ceiling. “The worst.”

  “But there must be some benefits or you wouldn’t stay, would you?”

  “He is a tyrant in the kitchen, but also a genius,” he said. “Not everyone gets a chance to work for a chef who has a Michelin star. I am very lucky, so he tells me. And he promises to make me a partner someday. I am hoping to take over his restaurant in Avignon when he opens one in Paris. But you cannot tell anyone that. It’s still a secret.”

  “I won’t say a word.”

  “Till then, I work for him at the restaurant and also here as his sous-chef when he teaches in the cooking school.”

  “Is Monsieur Bertrand the only chef to teach at the cooking school?”

  “Oh, no,” Guy said, shaking his head. “He is one of many. Daniel Aubertin, the head chef here at the hotel, invites all the maîtres de cuisiniers, master chefs, in Provence to teach, even the ones he doesn’t like. It is a matter of honor to make sure the school has only the top chefs in the region.”

  “Even the ones he doesn’t like?” I said, teasing. “That’s certainly dedication.”

  “It is indeed,” Guy said, his smile back in place.

  The light in the sconces wavered and then went out, plunging us into total darkness. Disoriented, I turned so my back was to the window and stood absolutely still, trying to remember the layout of the room. “A temporary malfunction, I believe you said.”

  “Ah, madame. It’s just a momentary gap. Wait. I’m sure they will come back on.”

  We stood in the inky darkness waiting for the sconces to flicker to life again, but it soon became apparent that there was a problem with the electricity.

  “This never happens, I promise you,” Guy said. “I will see if I can find a flashlight in the kitchen.”

  I heard him shuffle his shoes across the stone toward the archway through which we’d entered. Then I heard a thump and a muffled curse as he stumbled on the step. His footsteps faded as he made his way down the hall toward the hotel kitchen, until I could hear nothing at all.

  Without the lights, the room seemed even colder. I waited, running my hands up and down my arms from shoulder to elbow, trying to counter the icy air. There was no sound of footsteps returning. The colder I grew, the less patient I became. I inched one foot forward, conscious of the narrow step I’d climbed to look through the window. My toe found the drop and I eased my foot down to the floor, twisting my shoe back and forth on the uneven footing till I felt secure. I patted the air with my hands, groping for the end of the table. I swung my other foot down and started to move forward, but my heel was wedged in the gap between two stones and I went flying sideways. One hand caught the end of the table, and in my efforts to gain purchase my fingers closed around the white towel and I fell, twisting around, landing on my bottom, and pulling along the kitchen knives that had rested on the linen. They jangled loudly as they hit the floor around me just as the dim light of the sconces came back on.

  I heard someone sprinting down the hall. Guy rounded the comer and ran to assist me as I climbed to my feet and surveyed the damage. He took my elbow and bent down to examine my face. The thick lenses of his glasses magnified his eyes.

  “Madame, how terrible. Are you hurt? It is very difficult, this floor, so rough. I have tripped myself sometimes.” He pulled out a chair and pressed me to sit down.

  “I seem to be fine,” I said, more embarrassed than injured. I brushed the dust off the legs of my pantsuit, and looked around for the shoe I’d lost in my tumble. The knives were scattered across the floor, but fortunately not one had landed on me, and except for some bruises I would be sure to feel later, I was unscathed.

  Guy knelt to retrieve my shoe, rotating it to free the heel from the grip of the boulders, and brought it to where I sat.

  “Guy. Oh, Guy,” a soft voice called from the hallway.

  I looked up to see Claire hurrying into the room.

  “Madame, I am so sorry about the lights,” she said, slightly out of breath. “The new dishwasher cut off the electricity. The whole hotel went out. You are all right, I hope. We are calling the electrician to have it repaired right away.”

  “Madame Fletcher tripped in the dark and fell down,” Guy said, as I pushed my foot into the shoe he held for me. He straightened up and stepped back, his foot knocking against one of the knives.

  Claire gasped. “Oh, madame. Are you hurt?” She rushed to my side and leaned ove
r me. “Would you like me to call the doctor? These old floors are just awful. May I bring you some coffee or tea?”

  “I’m really okay,” I said. “I was just clumsy, and, as you see, I’ve made a mess.”

  “Not at all, madame,” Guy said. “Don’t upset yourself. Let Claire take care of you. I will only be a moment. Stay where you are.” He bent his long body in half and moved around the room, bobbing up and down, picking up the knives and the linen towel. He reminded me of the birds I see at home on the shore, pecking at the sand.

  Claire hovered over me. “You’re certain I cannot get you anything? A glass of brandy? Perhaps you would like to lie down.”

  “No, no,” I said, chuckling. “Really, I’m fine.” I stood up, mentally inventoried my body—no real harm done—and slid the chair back into place at the table.

  “But, madame, you must rest and—”

  “Now then,” I said, interrupting her, “you were looking for Guy when you came downstairs, weren’t you?”

  “Actually, I was looking for you,” she said. Her hands flew to her cheeks. “Oh, my goodness. I almost forgot. You car, it is here.”

  I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock, exactly when the car was originally scheduled to come. An unexpected wave of relief came over me.

  Guy dumped the knives on the table and took my arm as we walked back to the hall and rang for the elevator.

  “Marcel, he arrives on time after all,” Claire said apologetically, “but I have your bill prepared, and the man has brought your luggage to the front. Marcel puts it in the car, even now.”

  “I am so sorry for your fall, madame,” Guy said.

  “Not your fault,” I said, patting his arm. “It was an accident. I’ll wear my sneakers next time.”

  He shook his head. “I have been a poor host,” he said. “You haven’t even seen our wonderful kitchen.”

  “You’ll show it to me when I come for the class.”

  “Yes, Guy,” Claire added. “Madame Fletcher will be back.”

  He smiled at Claire, reached out, and touched her cheek with one finger. To me he said, “Our Claire will take good care of you. I look forward to seeing you again. Au revoir.”

  He turned and loped back through the arch toward the table. The knives would need washing again.

  “Too bad you have not had the opportunity to see the school kitchen. It is very old and charming.”

  “Yes, too bad,” I echoed.

  The elevator came and we stepped inside. I turned around and watched the door close on the ancient courtyard. I wasn’t at all sorry my car had come early. I was ready to leave.

  Chapter Three

  Marcel was a very confident driver, but I was not his equal as a passenger. As his little car hurtled down the country road, I held tight to the side of the seat near the door, and tried not to close my eyes. The combination of crooked streets and traffic had kept his driving to a crawl in Avignon, but once outside the city’s crenellated walls—a legacy from the later years of the papal occupation—he was liberated. He stomped the accelerator to the floor with his right foot, and I doubt he ever lifted it the entire trip to Martine’s.

  An unlit, unfiltered cigarette hung from the comer of his mouth, and as he talked, it bounced up and down. He was a carpenter by trade, but it was winter. The summer tenants had gone back to their homes in Paris, London, and New York, and things were slow. He filled in by providing transportation to those who lacked it.

  He pulled a card from his shirt pocket, letting go of the steering wheel and inspiring what I was certain was a stream of colorful language from the driver of a truck he nearly sideswiped. “This is the number of Madame Roulandet,” he said. “She runs the village bakery.” He handed me the card and pulled the car back into the lane ahead of the truck to an accompaniment of blaring horns. “When you need a ride, you call her the day before, and she will find me. Est-ce compris? Understand?”

  I took the card but vowed I would find another way to get to Avignon for my cooking class. I didn’t think I’d live through a repeat of this harrowing ride. Even if I arrived alive—which was up for debate—my nerves couldn’t take it again.

  “You look worried,” he charged, his bushy black brows rising over his tinted glasses. “I am a very safe driver. I never have accidents. Martine, she didn’t tell you?”

  “I think she forgot to mention it.”

  “Everyone drives like this in France. It’s normal.”

  The car flew past a cluster of yellow stone buildings up a hill that Marcel indicated was the village of St. Marc, careened around a corner, and jounced off the pavement onto a dirt road. Fortunately, no human or animal was nearby. The plume of dust in our wake would surely have choked any living thing engulfed by it. As we aimed for a building on a rise just ahead—I prayed it was Martine’s farmhouse—I saw olive trees whizzing by my window.

  Marcel skidded to a halt before a graceful two-story building nestled among bare-branched shrubs and trees. Its facade appeared to have been stucco at one time, but over the years chunks had fallen off, and patches of brown showed through the dingy white paint. Martine had ignored the aging walls, but had painted the wooden shutters a bright turquoise and the front door a deep red. The effect was eccentric, like an elegant dowager wearing vivid makeup.

  Marcel climbed out of the car and went around to the trunk to haul out my suitcase, while I groped around the floor of the car to retrieve my handbag, which had fallen off my lap during the wild ride. I paid him, nodded as he repeated his instructions to call the baker if I needed him again, and watched as he steered the car around a large tree and drove back toward the village in a cloud of his own making. In a few moments the growl of his engine faded away, and silence descended.

  I stood still, listening to the whoosh of the wind and the skitter of dried leaves across the dusty driveway. I’d been waiting a long time for this trip, relishing the anticipated peace in the hectic months that preceded it, and eager to put the planes and trains and cars behind me so I could begin my “vacation.” You’d think that someone who traveled quite a bit for business would just as soon stay put when the opportunity arose. But my natural curiosity about other cultures, and the opportunity to live in a foreign country—even for so short a time as two months—was an exciting prospect. Combined with ample time to walk and read and cook and sharpen my French skills, away from the hustle-bustle of small-town Maine life and the technological intrusions I’d allowed to take up residence in my home, this was going to be a wonderful new experience. Chef Bertrand had said Provence was marvelous all the time, and I believed him. I would not be deterred by a little rain or cold. After all, Cabot Cove was probably wetter and colder, and I fared very well there.

  I walked across the concrete patio that led to an entrance flanked by a pair of empty urns. Faint stem prints from long-removed vines had left a delicate tracery on the wall around the door. Martine had sent me a key. I inserted it into the keyhole and followed her written instructions on how to jiggle it in the lock. The lock cooperated and the door swung inward with a soft groan. I pulled my suitcase into the house behind me and turned on a light. Yesterday’s rain in Avignon had skipped St. Marc—if the state of the dusty drive was any indication—but the solid bank of dark clouds in the sky above Martine’s house promised wet weather to come, and permitted only a pale light to pass through the windows. I parked my suitcase next to the door, threw my coat and handbag over the back of a chair, and took in my new accommodations.

  The downstairs of the farmhouse consisted of a single long space. The kitchen stood to the right of the front door and the living room to its left, separated only by a deep beam that seemed to indicate where one room stopped and the other began. The low ceiling was made up of alternating stripes of wooden beams with some kind of mud or stucco filling the gaps between them. The walls were painted a light mustard, the perfect backdrop for Martine’s large, colorful canvases, which filled most of the wall space that wasn’t occupied by the
fireplace or windows. The floor was an expanse of dark square tiles, although in the living room they had been covered with a profusion of colorful rugs, Oriental, shag, and broad-loom. Facing sofas on either side of a massive stone hearth were covered in the same small blue-and-yellow-print fabric and strewn with an assortment of pillows, no two alike. None of it matched but somehow it all worked together. The artist’s eye, I thought. What other decorating surprises did Martine have in store for me?

  A flight of wooden stairs off the kitchen gave access to the second floor, which was a mirror of the first except for the steeply sloping ceilings. The same dark tiles ran from one end of the room to the other. Martine had covered the walls with smaller paintings here; most appeared to be hers, but there was a smattering of work by other artists as well. The upstairs consisted of two small bedrooms, each. with a double bed under a pile of quilts; a good-sized bathroom stood between them. The first room was obviously Martine’s; I took the other down the hall. I turned on the bedside lamp and nearly tripped over the duffel bag I’d sent ahead. It had arrived—thank goodness—and someone had lugged it upstairs for me. I hoped it hadn’t been Martine. I could barely lift the thing, and she was a small woman.

  I hung up my suit jacket in the empty wardrobe and went downstairs to find the key to the duffel. At the base of the stairs, next to the back door, were a series of hooks about eye level that I hadn’t noticed on my way up. Hanging from one was what we used to call a “barn jacket” in my youth. I had a similar boxy, flannel-lined jacket pegged up by my kitchen door at home, and had left it there for Martine. Apparently she’d done the same for me.