Love & Death in Burgundy

by Susan C. Shea

  “My dear husband has no idea if people are idly gossiping or plotting an overthrow of the European Union,” Katherine said to Yves and Penny as the car sound faded away. “He has no French, and hand signals don’t work in general conversation as well as they do when choosing croissants at the patisserie. Now, I must clean up and finish the ratatouille for lunch, so off with you both. Penny, I’ll see you at one.”

  “My plumber’s due in a few minutes, anyway,” Penny said. She stood up and shook out her elegant linen slacks. “I don’t know why he can’t fix things the first time, or even the third. It’s the same every summer, from the week I arrive until I close up the house. I’m beginning to think I’m his retirement fund.”

  “You probably are,” said Katherine, coming to kiss her American guest on both cheeks.

  “If you hear me scream, I’ve been attacked by Jean’s pack of wild animals.” Penny wafted off in a cloud of expensive perfume, picking her way down slate steps, through the tangle of roses and irises to the end of the garden and through the iron gate, which squealed as she opened it. Yves pulled his car keys out of his pocket and jingled them.

  “I must be going also. Tell me, are the Bellegardes coming to the fête, do you think? I don’t know if I will attend if they are.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything more in front of Penny,” Katherine said, putting her arm through his and leading him to his car. “But it was rather more than a couple of dates, Yves. You even talked about making her your partner in the bookshop once you were married. Poor Sophie has retreated to Paris and her father is furious.”

  “Jamais. I never said that, it is only the lies her mother tells. She is such a snob, and he, my god, he would like us all to believe his money makes him better than the rest of us.”

  “Well, it certainly makes him something,” Katherine said. “I have a feeling he could buy this whole town if he wanted to. Someone told me recently—Betty Lou’s husband, I think—that he’s a very rich man.”

  “He’s nouveau riche, which is not the same thing,” Yves said with an audible sniff. “And he is German.”

  “A naturalized French citizen, Yves, and you know it. He took her family name when they married forty years ago. Now, stop arguing and go back to daydreaming in your little cubby,” Katherine said, smiling up at him to take the sting out of her words.

  “Ah, but you have not told me if Adele and Albert Bellegarde will attend the big celebration. If they do, I will be forced to drink a great deal of punch and snub them completely.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t coming if they were. Never mind.” She raised her voice and laughed as he started to explain his changing position. “As long as you don’t run the old man through with a sword, I’m sure it will be fine. Sophie will probably stay holed up in her father’s office in Paris. You’ve spoiled the summer for her, you know.”

  “Hah,” Yves said with a snort. “She will be holed up, as you put it, counting her father’s ill-gotten gains. She is a sharp little capitalist, you know.” Yves folded himself into his battered car and in a moment was speeding down the narrow road.

  CHAPTER 2

  Katherine counted the forks again. She had been sure there were enough for the main courses, a salad, the cheeses, and the raspberry tart without her having to disappear into her cramped kitchen to wash them between courses. How annoying that she seemed a couple short.

  “Drat,” she said in a loud voice, which made the little white dog perk up its ears. “Drat” sounded at least a little like “dinner.” But everything sounded a little like “dinner” to Fideaux. The aroma of garlic and tomatoes, of slowly simmering veal and carrots, of fresh bread and cheeses set out to reach room temperature in a hot kitchen all signaled good things to come to a small dog. Seeing that his mistress was making no move toward the refrigerator, he flopped his head back down on his paws in the center of the room. He knew his time would come, when the plates needed licking or someone would feel his fixed gaze upon them and slip him something from the table.

  Katherine lifted her feet over the animal as she went back to the drawer in the armoire. Shuffling the contents back and forth, she finally found two more slightly tarnished utensils. “Eh, voilà,” she said, and pivoted out of the kitchen and into the yard. She had arranged a long table spread with a lace cloth that had begun life as two curtains before catching Katherine’s eye at a dusty antique store, a brocante, in Auxerre. Part of the adventure of moving to France had been the decision to sell their worldly goods in Los Angeles and start accumulating French everything. “At the vide-greniers,” Katherine had told Michael, “the village flea markets that are held in every town in Burgundy on some kind of rotating schedule. Nothing expensive.” The only exceptions to their extensive moving sale had been some clothing, a few books she couldn’t live without, and Michael’s sheet music and guitars.

  “Let’s see,” she said now. “Penny at the end of the table, Betty Lou across from that young woman who took over the farm at the other end of town, Adele next to me and across from Pippa, which will keep her as far from Penny as possible, although Pippa is likely to drive her crazy with nosy questions if she speaks at all. Such a strange strange young woman. Jeannette on my left so I can keep an eye on her. Oh dear, I hope she behaves herself. But honestly,” Katherine said to the yellow cat, which had materialized as it was wont to do, seemingly from nowhere, “someone has to help her learn how to be grown-up. Her mother is dead, she’s almost fifteen, for heaven’s sake, and can’t be climbing trees and scratching what itches her in public.” A woman’s voice called out her name from the road beyond the tall hedge. The party was beginning, and Katherine hurried into the house for the platters of ratatouille and the baguettes.

  Penny was chic in what Katherine recognized as an Armani outfit. Penny, Katherine had noted on several occasions to Michael, “has major money. That’s how she was able to tart up that lovely old house so it looks like a suburban Cleveland mansion.”

  Katherine wasn’t jealous, although Penny’s kitchen was large and had surfaces to cut bread and vegetables on without fear of upending the cutting board onto the floor. It also had a huge refrigerator-freezer and two—two!—dishwashers. “If I didn’t love Penny,” Katherine had said to Michael one night in bed after dinner at her friend’s house, “I might say it was a bit vulgar.” Fortunately, she acknowledged to herself, Michael had known better than to reply.

  Next to come in through the gates and up the garden path was Marie, the new woman in town, a quietly pretty thing in her thirties, married to an earnest young man with large ears that stuck straight out from the sides of his face. His appearance was so striking that people tended to overlook Marie. Her dark hair was covered by a scarf tied at the back of her neck and she carried a ceramic bowl that she handed to Katherine with a shy smile. “Fresh cheese, fromage frais, you know? From our cows.” Her smile broadened. “I made it myself.”

  Katherine was still exclaiming about the cheese when the gate clanged open again and a tentative voice wafted up. “Halloo, it’s only me.” First a nimbus of curly red hair, then the rest of a lanky young woman climbed into view. She was dressed in a voluminous skirt and an oversize sweater. Pippa—born Philippa—Hathaway was easily six feet tall, with pale porcelain skin, large gray eyes, and a generous mouth. She was British, and had moved to Reigny the previous year. Pippa was, she had explained to Katherine when they first met by chance at the café, a writer of murder mysteries. “Well, almost. I’m working on my first, but I intend to write for a living.” Katherine had a hunch she was lonely. Reigny was certainly no place for a young woman in the best of times. She was, Katherine had said to Penny, an odd duck to choose to bury herself here. But she spoke English, which would be nice for Penny and Betty Lou.

  As if on cue, Betty Lou Holliday rocketed into the driveway in her massive SUV and jerked to a halt, kicking up a cloud of dust that drifted slowly toward the pear tree. “Hope I’m not late,” she called out as she slammed the ca
r door behind her. “That damn husband of mine kept me rehearsing in that sweltering studio for hours. The man expects me to churn out albums every year. Hi, Kathy; hi, everyone.” A teenage boy slid out of the passenger side of the car, his face blank, his torso curled slightly. For an instant, Katherine worried that he was going to join the lunch party, but Betty Lou patted him on the shoulder as he rounded the hood of the car and said, “I’ll pick you up later, Brett. Try not to get killed on that damn thing.” The “thing” in question was a skateboard, the kind of public annoyance Katherine had, naively, hoped to escape by leaving Los Angeles. The boy didn’t respond, but turned back to leave by the driveway side of the property.

  “What’s for lunch?” Betty Lou was wearing what looked like a violently colored bedspread over her large form and at least twenty silver bangle bracelets on one arm. She billowed and jangled as she strode toward Katherine, manicured toenails in leather sandals peeking out from under her skirt.

  Before Katherine could introduce her to the others, a black Mercedes sedan pulled into the driveway. The skateboarder was walking slowly down the center of the path, and the new car had to wait, its engine idling. The car’s horn blared twice, then once more. “Brett, move your ass,” Betty Lou said, and laughed.

  The car edged forward and stopped. An elderly man opened the driver’s-side door and began to berate the boy in a querulous voice with a trace of a German accent. “Where are your manners? Can’t you see I needed to turn in off the street?” His voice was high-pitched and strained. “You’re that American boy who came to the last château tour the other day. Well, young man, you’re in France now, and you’d best develop some French manners.”

  To which Brett merely looked at the driver as if he were speaking Urdu, Katherine thought. Brett turned out of the driveway and immediately the loud racketing sound of the skateboard on asphalt signaled his departure.

  “Kids,” said Betty Lou, seemingly unperturbed. “I’d lend him the car, but lord knows when he’d remember to pick me up. He’s probably off to find that cute girl who hangs around town.”

  “Jeannette? Not today. She’s coming to lunch. But he’s not old enough to drive, is he?” Katherine said. Even though he looked eighteen or nineteen, she thought Michael had mentioned he was younger.

  “Here, no, but in Tennessee he had a learner’s permit when he was fifteen, and now that he’s seventeen, he already has his license and, God help us, a secondhand car my foolish husband bought him.”

  The teenager disappeared and the guests turned their attention to the woman who exited the passenger side of the car. She was large-boned, white-haired, and handsome. Although she, like the driver, must have been in her eighties, she carried herself like a soldier. Katherine, who prided herself on her own posture, admired the woman for not giving in an inch to advancing years. Adele Bellegarde was the hereditary owner of the medieval Château de Bellegarde, descended from centuries of Bellegardes who had inhabited and defended their castle. This day, she was dressed for lunch in a bourgeois neighborhood on the Right Bank in Paris rather than for a country meal under a tree in Burgundy in the middle of the summer. Her pumps were already a bit dusty, she had on opaque stockings, and she was wearing a navy blue suit with a pink silk scarf at the neck.

  She patted the old man’s forearm and said something to him, and he subsided slowly into the car. “Darling,” she said in a high voice as she met her hostess and presented a bottle of chilled Chablis, “you are so kind.” She bestowed two sedate kisses in the air near her hostess’s cheeks as graciously as if she were knighting Katherine.

  The Mercedes backed out of the driveway at a glacial pace. Everyone but the new arrival glanced over as it exited gingerly onto the roadway and saw the driver, Monsieur Bellegarde, lean out of the open window to watch his wife’s progress onto the lawn. He appeared to disapprove of something. Katherine cringed slightly, feeling, as she always did, that he was criticizing her bohemian ways. He probably blamed her for Brett’s sullenness since they were both Americans. It didn’t help that if she had enough wine she sometimes ventured tap-dancing routines at the family dinner parties Adele occasionally invited the Goffs to join. Albert Bellegarde made her feel ridiculous, and she resented him for that. Perversely, she liked Adele, perhaps in part because Adele soldiered on in the face of what Katherine thought must be great and ongoing disappointment in her choice of a husband.

  “This is Adele Bellegarde,” Katherine said to Marie, the young cheese maker. “And this is Betty Lou Holliday, the American singer,” she said to everyone, raising her voice. “She and Michael will be performing together at Reigny’s festival.” Adele inclined her head in Marie’s direction. Pippa lifted a long arm and waved a greeting. Betty Lou jangled her bracelets. Katherine poured wine for everyone to get the conversation started, but kept an eye on Penny and Adele.

  After a few minutes, she realized she needn’t have worried. Adele Bellegarde had spent her youth in Swiss boarding schools, learning how to behave in every situation. The set of her chin and the straightness of her spine made it clear she had no intention of speaking more than was necessary to the American with the horrible French accent who had the bad taste to be friendly with the shabby bookseller who had deceived her daughter.

  Katherine held up the first course as long as she could, hoping Jeannette would arrive, but the flying bugs were beginning to sniff out the platters, and she gave up, disappointed in her protégée but unwilling to sacrifice the occasion. No sooner had the first dish been passed around than the teenager did arrive, bounding up the garden steps while shouting out a combined greeting and apology. She stopped at the top of the stairs, panting and pushing long, golden curls off her face with one hand while dropping the shoes she was holding in the other on the slate so she could hop into them. She wore a gauzy dress of some cheap fabric. It puffed and fluttered around her slender form when she moved. She looked delicious, as she did in Katherine’s paintings.

  “This,” said Katherine, with a touch of steel in her voice, “is Jeannette. I thought it would be right to include her in our luncheon, now that she is a young woman.”

  Jeannette, the daughter of Reigny’s disreputable family of thieves, smiled broadly and looked around at the faces, which reflected varying degrees of welcome. If not everyone was delighted to see her, she appeared not to notice, but circled the table to bestow the obligatory kisses a girl gives to her elders, then took her seat like the hungry schoolgirl she was and immediately reached for a fork.

  The party proceeded from there as Katherine had hoped it would. The women drank the chilled Petit Chablis that a small vineyard sold locally and Jeannette even had a watered-down version. The group nibbled happily through several courses, and talked about everyone—well, nearly everyone, since Yves and Sophie were by tacit arrangement out of bounds—with relish. Betty Lou asked if it was true that Pippa wrote something or other.

  “I’m working on a murder mystery set in an English seaside town, you know. Well, that is, I have been, although it’s not going terribly well. I might write one set here in Reigny if I could think of something really awful.”

  “Awful?” Adele said, distracted from her plate, fixing the young woman with a stare. “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Murder, you know, like a garroting, or someone being beaten to death. Only for my story, of course. Not for real. But I need inspiration, don’t I?”

  “Well, murder mysteries, that’s cool,” Betty Lou said, but no one else seemed interested.

  To keep the silence from becoming awkward, because she already knew none of the French guests cared what the foreigners did and Penny didn’t read if she could help it, Katherine chimed in, “You must love cats. I see several when I walk past your driveway.”

  “Mademoiselle has five,” Jeannette announced to the table, her mouth full of veal. “Four black and one all colors. They don’t like to be petted. My brothers tried to catch them once.”

  Pippa looked unhappy, and Katherine, who
had seen the cats sunning themselves in the sloping driveway that ran down to the house, had no trouble imagining Jeannette’s younger brothers running at them and yelling at the top of their lungs. More than once during her winter walks, she had thought she might venture down the driveway and knock. But somehow it never seemed like the right moment. Perhaps it was the way the cottage seemed to lean back into the trees, sheltered from prying eyes. And Pippa was so much younger that Katherine wondered how much they’d have to talk about after cats and weather.

  “Well, yes,” Katherine said, and turned the conversation to the newcomer in Reigny. Soon, Marie was being bombarded with questions designed to help the others place her in her proper socioeconomic class as quickly as possible. Luckily for her, she was a graduate of the Sorbonne, even if she did milk cows at the moment, and her mother and father were a university professor and an attorney, respectively. She and her husband had bought the farm from a distant cousin whose family had owned it for at least a century. The project, a romantic, back-to-nature adventure paid for with her husband’s inheritance, centered on making prize-winning cheese from their small herd of Jersey cattle.

  Penny wondered, politely, why cheese as a career? Marie explained she and her husband were vegetarians. Wasn’t that unhealthy, Adele asked. Betty Lou said America was full of vegetarians these days, so much so that the beef industry was “in the dumps.” Jeannette said she loved “le hamburger” more than anything in the world. Katherine, on her third glass of wine, felt her feet twitch in a tap rhythm.

  As she came out of the kitchen with the tart, she almost bumped into Michael, back from the Hollidays’ studio, carrying his Gibson guitar in its case. He ignored Betty Lou’s invitation to join them. “I promise, I’m not here,” he whispered as he squeezed Katherine’s arm and slipped inside. “See if you can save me a piece of that great-looking dessert, though.”