Michael only grunted as he backed the car up against a stone wall that barely held a wildly overgrown shrubbery garden at bay. Katherine flung her door open and headed to the entrance before he turned off the engine. When the policeman saw her coming, he tossed his cigarette to the gravel, ground it out, and held up one arm.
“I am Mme Goff. Mme Bellegarde called and implored me to come,” she said in French. “She said she needs me.”
“Sorry, Madame, but there is police business here.”
“Michael,” she said, drawing herself up to an imposing five-foot-three inches and speaking in the most imperious tone she could muster as he came up behind her, “tell him we’re expected.”
Michael gave her an odd look, perhaps a reminder that his French was not up to much, but tried anyhow. “Nous sommes amies, friends, okay?”
The policeman looked pained but pulled a radio from his shoulder harness and spoke into it rapidly. Katherine couldn’t catch more than a few words. She was afraid he would turn them away, but after getting some staticky message back, he waved them in. She pushed her hat, which had slid to one side, down on her small head firmly. “Adele, darling, we’re here, we’re here,” she sang out as she stepped into the chilly darkness beyond the door.
CHAPTER 5
Had the door to the courtyard not been open, she would have had to stop and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. At that point, had she looked up, she would have barely made out a huge tapestry on the far wall beyond a stairway that split in two at a landing. She didn’t, having been given the grand tour and an excruciatingly detailed interpretation of the tapestry the first time she and Michael had visited the château. Everyone who took the tour knew the tapestry was a Gobelins, albeit shredded and faded by centuries of neglect, and that the staircase was not original to the château although the cavernous hall was. Parts of the cluster of structures predated the Hundred Years’ War, but others had been added when that conflict left the original duke’s property partially in ruins. The Bellegardes had researched every inch of the building and every season of its history as the stronghold of a Burgundian fiefdom. It was one of Albert’s chief pleasures, she recalled, to personally conduct tours most summer Saturdays, expounding on the glories of his wife’s family. Their portraits sat on easels or were mounted on the walls in almost every room, uniformly prim and severe in their expressions. Poor Albert, he would miss this.
Katherine entered the sitting room with its ridiculously high ceilings and perpetual chill, and saw Adele sitting on a sofa near the monumental fireplace. A handkerchief covered her face. Abandoning her bag and hat on a chair, she raced over to the new widow. Tears stung her eyes. She reached for her neighbor and hugged her as best she could. Adele was taller and wider than Katherine and was sitting ramrod straight, so it was a little like hugging a tree, and after an awkward moment, she loosened her grip and sat forward on the edge of the sofa.
“How could this have happened to my poor Albert?” Adele said from behind her handkerchief, choking off a sob. She lowered the covering and Katherine saw that her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Oh, my dear, we are so sorry.” Katherine turned to include Michael, who was standing in the center of the room, rolling an unlit cigarillo around in his mouth. He did look miserable, but she suspected it had nothing to do with Albert’s death. He was a Montana cowboy and had no clue how he was supposed to act in a French castle where no one spoke English and women were crying.
The duties of Henri Soral, Reigny’s sheriff, were usually of a minor nature, mostly telling drunken pétanque players to be quiet when their late-night arguments wafted over Reigny, or suggesting in an offhand way to Jean that someone’s new gardening tools might be slipped back into their shed, from which they had disappeared a day or so before. Now Henri was frowning deeply, talking fast on his cell phone, while making little chopping gestures with his free hand. In the doorway, another uniformed policeman appeared, stared at them briefly, then marched toward the outer door, his hard soles clacking on the stone floor.
Katherine heard a car slide to a halt on the gravel, a car door slam, and more footsteps. Before the noise could resolve itself into a person, another car arrived, more doors slammed, and more steps came purposefully toward the sitting room. Henri snapped his phone shut, Michael took the cigarillo from his mouth and turned, and Adele clutched Katherine’s hand.
Katherine recognized the mayor, a prosperous man who gave off an aura of having been happy with his last meal. The other man, narrow-shouldered in a black suit, was a stranger to her, and apparently to them all, as the men, except for Michael, exchanged names and handshakes before turning away as a group to confer.
“Who are these people, and what are they doing in my house?” Adele said to no one in particular. Katherine was sure Adele knew who Henri was. He had twice been called to the château when beer-bottle-throwing young men from out of town had decided to celebrate someone’s upcoming marriage in Reigny’s run-down café, probably so their womenfolk would not see them in such a disgraceful condition. “You”—Adele raised her voice enough that everyone in the room turned, as if individually tapped on the shoulder with a strong finger—“introduce yourselves, s’il vous plait. I am the widow and the owner of this château.”
Adele also knew the mayor, Katherine understood, even if she chose to pretend otherwise. He hurried over, an oily mask of concern on his face, to pay his respects and refer to the unfortunate business in one rushed sentence. The château and the attention that Reigny-sur-Canne received in guidebooks for having such a venerable site would have been enough, but there was also the wealth of the inhabitants, people who might be persuaded to invest in one of the mayor’s land-purchasing schemes or agricultural projects, Katherine thought as she watched him pay his exaggerated respects. He was explaining to Adele that Henri had called the gendarmes from Auxerre, who had requested the aid of the gendarme brigade de recherche, but that it was a formality only, and he begged her not to concern herself.
He swung an arm toward the thin man in the black suit, who came over to the sofa, bowed to Adele and Katherine, and introduced himself as Lieutenant Decoste of the brigade, the head of the investigation. A formality, he said in a soft tenor voice. Madame would understand. A few questions. At that point, he looked at Katherine, who chided herself for feeling slightly defensive. After all, she had not intruded, she had been sent for. Surely, Adele would make that clear to the policeman. Adele wasn’t looking at her but up at this new authority figure in some confusion.
“But my husband’s death is a simple thing. He was old, you know, and I expect he lost his balance and set foot on those wretched old steps by mistake.”
Katherine knew about the steps, back stairs that wound down to the old kitchen wing of the château. She had almost fallen herself on the tour, since there were no handrails to help, and the steps were steep and twisted and had uneven depressions in them from at least six hundred years of booted use. They were part of the usual tour, mainly because there were wood and glass cases set in the alcoves that displayed the Bellegarde armory of old guns and swords, and Albert loved talking about them. Katherine started to say something in support of Adele’s protest, but the policeman held up one hand in a “stop” gesture. Really, she thought, one would think the police wanted relevant information. Adele had let go of her hand and Katherine edged off the sofa and over to where Michael stood, chewing on his cigarillo.
“Ready to go, Kay?” he said in a low voice. “Doesn’t seem like anyone wants us right now, and I got to check out one of my guitars before I head over to Betty Lou’s.”
“She might want us in a minute. Adele looks ready to collapse.” She smoothed her hair, which she had pulled into a little bun, pushing stray strands back under the rubber band, unsure of her position in this drama, only that she surely had one. After all, she was Adele’s dear friend, or at least thought so. Adele’s coolness at this hour of crisis disappointed her, although she would never say a word about it.
“Just ask her, honey, does she need you or not?”
Katherine wasn’t sure she wanted to put it that directly. What if Adele brushed her off? She crept back toward the men standing over Adele. “Darling,” she said hesitantly at their backs, peering around the mayor, “is there something I can do? Coffee, perhaps a tisane? Have you eaten?”
Lieutenant Decoste’s shoulders moved and his sigh was audible. Henri and the mayor ignored her. Adele peered at Katherine blankly for a moment before reaching out her hands. “What shall I do? I am alone? Where is my dear Sophie? Is she coming?” And she began to weep.
Katherine circled the mayor, pulled the packet of tissues from her pocket for her friend, and, ignoring the silent watchers, put her arm around Adele again. “You’ve called Sophie already? Is she on her way?”
Adele nodded. “Oui, by the first train, but she won’t get here for hours. And poor Albert is left lying on the stairs.” This brought on a loud wail and more weeping.
“Surely not,” Katherine said, turning to the circle of men and forcing herself to speak in the clearest French she possessed. “You have moved him to his bed, have you not?”
“He will be moved, Madame,” Decoste said stiffly. “In an instant, bien sûr.” He switched to English. “But I ask you please to absent yourself from this interview so I can collect the facts without delay, yes? If you wish to stay to tend to Madame, you can sit in the room across the hall until police business is done.”
Adele looked up at Katherine and nodded, then blew her nose. “The sooner the better.” She sniffed. “And we can deal with things in a more dignified manner, as Albert would wish.” She straightened her shoulders, wiped her nose one more time, and waved Katherine away, but with a small smile this time.
“We can go?” Michael said.
“Not exactly.” She wasn’t ready to leave and for once Michael’s lack of French allowed her to skate over the policeman’s dismissal. “We can wait across the hall. I’ll explain.”
“I can’t figure out what’s going on with everyone jabbering away like that.”
She was about to remind him that this was, after all, the jabber of the host country, when a loud voice from the reception hall boomed, and in English.
“What the hell. Of course I’m going in. Mike, what’s going on here?” A heavy man, whose excess fat seemed to move independently of his frame, hurried into the room. He was somewhat taller than he was wide, and he was dressed for someplace other than rural France in a loud, short-sleeved print shirt that drooped halfway to his knees. The design appeared to be a picture, repeated over and over, of a water scene in which a white motorboat rode high on neon blue seas under a nightmare orange sky. The shirt was paired with wide-legged tan shorts and brown boat shoes with no socks. Michael was used to Betty Lou’s husband and his idea of a vacation wardrobe, but the shirt, or possibly the man himself, momentarily paralyzed the group clustered around Adele. They stared at him wordlessly.
He rolled toward them and stuck out his hand. “J. B. Holliday,” he said to the policeman. “Record producer, visiting your fine country. Hey, Mike; hey, Kathy. Everything okay?” The last after a double take and a hard look at Adele’s face.
Before anyone could answer, Decoste raised a hand, palm out, in a stop sign. “Monsieur, might I ask why you are here?”
“I have an appointment with Albert. What’s going on?”
“Monsieur,” he said, bowing slightly toward Holliday. “I will speak with you, but,” he said, lifting his hand again as J.B. opened his mouth, “in a few moments and in the other room, if you please. I am busy at the moment. Merci, Monsieur,” he added in a louder voice when it appeared Holliday might not go quietly.
With Katherine’s not quite audible explanations leading the little parade, the three of them filed out and across the hall to the anteroom where tourist groups normally waited on wooden benches. An amateurish painting of a French Renaissance woman hung prominently on one wall. It never failed to set Katherine’s teeth on edge when she spied it coming into the château. Done in the late nineteenth century, she had explained to Albert, not medieval at all, doubtless copied from a costume book, and yet the artist had managed to screw up the perspective so badly that the woman’s feet looked as though they’d been grafted on from a giantess.
There was no sound from upstairs, which wasn’t surprising given that the floors were separated by a foot or more of solid stone. J.B. sank onto a hard wooden bench. If he was uncomfortable, it didn’t show. “Talkative lot, aren’t they?” he said with a wheeze. “I dropped by to see old Albert for a few minutes. Business. What’s going on anyway? Someone rob the family jewels?”
“Albert’s dead,” Michael said. “Not sure why the cops didn’t just say so.”
“You’re kidding me,” J.B. said explosively. “Goddamn, that’s bad news. He and I were about to do a deal.”
The young uniformed policeman they had first seen in the doorway of the sitting room came clattering down the formal staircase and into the anteroom, stopping abruptly and putting his hands behind his back. “We wait for the lieutenant,” he said in hesitant English, gesturing for Katherine and Michael to sit on the benches.
“We wait for a few minutes and that’s it,” Michael said, walking over to the slit window in the wall and peering out at a shaft of sunlight. “Kay, honey, I know you want to help, but if your friend’s got to focus on all these people”—he waved an arm to include everyone seen and unseen within Château de Bellegarde’s walls—“we should leave. You can come back later.”
“Of course,” Katherine said, sinking down, realizing she was beyond tired, aching with tension. There was too much happening and yet nothing happening, and no one cared what she thought. She felt useless and invisible, two of the worst states she could imagine.
J.B. wanted to talk. “The guy was a little rigid, and Betty Lou told me about him breaking a plate on the head of that arty-farty bookseller the other day, but still, dead is dead, you know what I mean? Hey, you don’t think the guy he argued with—”
“No,” Katherine jumped in, alarmed. No good stirring up gossip.
“What’d he die of?”
“Adele said she found him on the stone stairs that go down toward the back side of the building from the bedrooms. They’re quite uneven, and they circle down at a steep pitch. More for atmosphere than everyday use, I would have thought, although they must be a quick route to the kitchen. I don’t know why they even include them in the tour except that they’re original to the château and Albert gets to show off his collection of antique guns.”
J.B. shook his head. “I didn’t even know there was another set of stairs. The main ones are damned impressive, though.”
The young cop had been looking back and forth with increasing unhappiness, and tried out his English again. “No talking. Silence, s’il vous plait.”
“Whatever you say.” J.B. looked up at him, chuckled when the cop said nothing, and took a copy of the International New York Times out of the satchel-style briefcase he carried. “Young man, why don’t you set yourself down? I’m not going anywhere and neither are you, apparently, until your boss says so. What’s your name anyway?”
The policeman said nothing and appeared to be studying a small oil painting that hung next to the door. It was a faithful representation of some earlier generation of Bellegarde cows lounging in a field. Katherine had a hunch the policeman might not have much English and was choosing not to start a conversation in which he would be at a disadvantage. J.B. looked at the gendarme for a moment before shrugging, winking at Katherine, and burying his head in the newspaper.
Her husband, she knew, was itching to leave. He got impatient waiting in line at the butcher’s shop in Avallon while customers chatted happily with the white-aproned man behind the counter, seeming to make their choices of roasts and chops into epic stories to be told in shrill, high voices while each cut was carefully and slowly wrapped in white paper and tied with string. And whi
le she loved the feeling of sharing common space at a restaurant, Michael wondered how anyone could spend three hours on a plate of beans and sausage.
Sure enough, he straightened up from the wall he had been leaning on and flicked his hand in farewell to J.B. “I’ll come over later for rehearsals. I want to play with a different guitar for one of the songs. Betty Lou’s sounding good.”
“So she is,” the producer said, looking up again and beaming, “especially with you doing harmony and lead guitar on that fine Stratocaster of yours. I like the material you’re trying out. This could be a big deal for all of us, Mike.”
Katherine felt a flutter in her chest. Wouldn’t it be the most wonderful thing if Michael became a star at last, if he had a concert tour? He could thumb his nose at that sneak Eric and the others who had let Michael think he was going to be part of the band right up to the week of signing their contract.
“We’re thrilled, J.B., really we are,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried to catch up to Michael, who had already opened the door. Of course, he didn’t feel comfortable talking about music deals and would fight against his own hopes. It would be her job now to smooth over his apparent lack of gratitude and be happy enough for both of them until success was a sure thing.
J.B. pointed at her and barked, “Barbecue. Soon. Betty Lou will call you.”
“Did you introduce J.B. to Albert?” Katherine said, standing next to their car. “I didn’t realize they knew each other. One doesn’t, somehow, think of them as the kind of people who would be drawn to each other by mutual interests. And they’re from different generations.”
“He dropped by the studio one day to see what we were doing. J.B. seemed to know who he was. I got the idea J.B. was hoping he could convince the old man to invest in one of his projects, but we didn’t talk about it.”
“I’m confused. Albert had an arms business of some kind.”
“Decades ago. J.B. said he sold that and is now a private investor, pretty successful too. Has shares in all kinds of businesses and in a lot of countries.”
Love & Death in Burgundy Page 5