The Curse of La Fontaine

by M. L. Longworth

  “I once visited Sigmund Freud’s last home, in London. It was much like your home: stuffed with books, papers, paintings, and objects of every sort . . . anthropological curiosities. He, like Montaigne, thought that such busy surroundings stimulated the intellect.”

  “I remember that house,” the duke said, sitting down and crossing his long legs. “It’s in Hampstead. It was such a lovely day . . .” He stayed lost in thought, then after a few moments passed the cake plate to the young friar. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “You want me to stimulate my intellect. To be occupied. Hence the Sophocles quote.”

  “Is that a bad thing? Look around and lose yourself in the variety and sublimity of everything around you.”

  “You think me a spoiled old man.”

  The friar laughed. “We all go through moments of boredom and self-doubt, whether rich or poor, old or young. Montaigne said that salvation lies in paying close attention to nature.”

  “That I do . . . my garden—”

  “Yes, but the one natural phenomenon that lies closest at hand is not out in your garden but here”—Frère Joël tapped his chest with the flat of his palm—“yourself.”

  “What if I started writing? A journal? My memoirs?”

  “There you are,” Frère Joël said, smiling. He sat back to enjoy his well-deserved second piece of lemon cake.

  • • •

  Verlaque slept well and arrived at the Palais de Justice that morning before 8:00. Marine was already up and he drank some of the coffee she had made, forcing himself to eat a small bowl of muesli. He hated breakfast, but since getting married—and approaching forty-five—he decided to try to take better care of himself. His mother’s death, too, he realized, had had an effect on his decision, but it had been Marine who had pointed that out. He rinsed the bowl and placed it in the dishwasher, then kissed Marine goodbye. She had a tape measure in her hands, and he remembered that she had said something a few days earlier about new drapes or a new shower curtain or something like that.

  Once at his office he made himself another coffee; while drinking it he pictured the many gleaming stainless-steel espresso machines he could buy for Marine for Christmas. But was that necessary? Would they soon sell her apartment? The phone rang; he sat down and answered it. “Verlaque.”

  “Good morning,” Dr. Cohen said, pausing to sip water out of a recycled San Pellegrino bottle she always kept in her purse. “I have news.”

  Verlaque picked up a pen and grabbed his notepad. “Go ahead.”

  “The victim, a male as I suspected, died of a traumatic head injury, an epidural hematoma.”

  “A hemorrhage?”

  “Exactly. After a trauma, in most cases a fall. Pressure builds on the brain, causing a herniation.” She paused and Verlaque could hear her chewing. “The whole brain actually shifts, cutting off the blood supply to the brain—”

  “Would it be a quick death?” he asked.

  “It can take anywhere from minutes to hours,” the doctor answered. “The signs aren’t always clear, but the victim will develop a headache, then loss of consciousness, and if not quickly operated on, death.”

  “Was the skull fractured in any way?” Verlaque asked.

  “Not at all,” she answered. “But that can happen with an epidural hematoma. Sometimes there are no outward signs of damage to the head. Michel de Montaigne’s brother died that way.”

  “I vaguely remember the story. Captain Saint-Martin?”

  “Yes, he was twenty-three and had been playing tennis. The ball struck him on the side of the head. He felt fine at first, and there were no signs of injury. Hours later he complained of a headache and then fell down unconscious, later dying. All from a tennis ball.”

  “And our victim?” he asked. “Were you able to determine more about him?”

  “Mid to late twenties,” Dr. Cohen replied. “And judging by his bones, especially the femur, fibula, and tibia, we know he was short, less than five foot seven. And I was right about his broken left leg.”

  Verlaque wrote down the information. “Dental records?”

  “My intern is looking at his teeth right now. We’ll know more about that by the end of the day or tomorrow. Let’s hope he’s had some fancy dental work done.”

  “Thank you for this,” Verlaque said.

  Dr. Cohen held the phone between her ear and shoulder as she tore her pain au chocolat in half. “My intern wants to know if the water has come back on.”

  “Quoi?” he asked, not understanding what she meant. “Oh! The fountain . . . I have no idea. Why?”

  “No reason,” she answered. “He’s superstitious, that’s all.”

  As Verlaque hung up, Bruno Paulik walked in, turning on the espresso machine and then crossing the room to shake Verlaque’s hand. They had been working together for more than six years, and Paulik wondered if the judge would ever be able to give him the bise as a greeting. He knew that it took guys from the north longer to get used to the idea of giving another man a peck on either cheek and to add to that Verlaque had that weird mixed-Anglo heritage. “Do you want another one?” he asked, pointing to the espresso maker.

  “Why not,” Verlaque answered. “I just got off the phone with Dr. Cohen,” he continued. “Our victim, male, in his mid-twenties, died from a head injury. A fall. The outer skull appears untouched, but the damage was all done internally. The murderer, or whoever was there, must have watched him die.”

  Paulik handed Verlaque an espresso. “And then buried him?”

  “Yes, and somehow the murderer got his body into that garden in downtown Aix. Wouldn’t you take the body somewhere else? A forest? A lake?”

  “There aren’t any lakes around here.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What if the murder took place in one of the properties along that garden? Then it wouldn’t be far to carry the body.”

  Verlaque sipped his coffee and said, “You’re right. And the guy was short, too. Easier to carry.” He looked at Paulik and tried to imagine anyone carrying the dead weight of the commissioner, who played rugby on the weekends and, at six foot two, was solid muscle. “Or, the death took place right there, beside the fountain.”

  “I like that scenario best.”

  “So do I.”

  Verlaque finished his coffee and leaned back. “Why a shallow grave?”

  “The murderer ran out of time?” Paulik suggested. “They got freaked out and left in a hurry?”

  “Or ran out of energy,” Verlaque said. “It takes hours, and lots of muscle, to dig a deep grave. What does that suggest to you?”

  “Someone out of shape. Or elderly.”

  “Or a woman,” Verlaque added.

  Paulik grimaced. “I just spoke to Schoelcher and he and another officer are starting to look at missing persons reports going back ten years. We’ll begin in the Aix area, then if nothing pans out go larger. I’ll tell him that we’re looking for a young adult male.”

  “Dr. Cohen is forwarding you her report,” Verlaque said. “She’s probably already sent it, given how efficient she is.”

  “A shallow grave . . .,” Paulik mused as he finished his coffee. He leaned back and Verlaque guessed that he was in for another Paulik family story. The commissioner had been raised on a farm near Ansouis in the Luberon, a farm that his parents, now in their early seventies, still worked. “My grandparents used to talk about a guy a few farms over who disappeared before the war. Everyone thought his young wife did him in and that she buried him somewhere in the back forty. Anyway, I don’t know if you read it in La Provence last week, but some hikers just found what looks like his skeleton on their old property, buried in a shallow grave. The widow is long dead, and the farm has switched hands twice since then—”

  “Nice thing to tell a newly married man.”

  Paulik
laughed and went on. “He had been cheating on her, and he was heavy-handed.” He made a slapping gesture with his right hand, waving it back and forth in the air. “Twice the local doctor had to be called in to give her stitches, and once at a village fête my grandmother had to pull him off her.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Yeah, you didn’t fool around with her,” Paulik said.

  “Was the woman questioned when her husband disappeared?”

  Paulik shrugged. “Yes, but she told the police that he had been threatening to leave her and emigrate to Quebec. The neighbors stayed quiet, or lied, as my mother thinks my grandmother did, confirming the woman’s emigration story. In those days people handled that kind of thing on their own and helped one another. Everyone was glad to be rid of him. He was a terrible husband and neighbor. But when I was a kid, I had a hard time believing the gossip—that she could kill, and bury, her husband. My brothers were all into it, and they used to make halfhearted efforts to sneak back there and snoop around for bones. But I thought that he just went to Canada, end of story.”

  “Looks like your brothers were right.”

  “Yeah, for once.”

  “What happened to the widow?” Veralque asked.

  “The priest in Ansious annulled the marriage after two years, and she went on to marry a really nice guy from Lourmarin and they had a bunch of kids, and each one did really well in school. You know, one of those kinds of families where there’s a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, and I think one of the sons even became a cardinal. Not a bad one in the bunch.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Wayward Son

  O fficer Sophie Goulin ran through the Palais de Justice carrying a yellowed folder. Jules Schoelcher had been called away on another case and she had continued going through the missing persons reports, eating her packed lunch at her desk, comparing the reports with the pathologist’s findings. Many of the missing were female—runaways?—and she deleted those. Many, too, were over fifty, and some were elderly when they had gone missing—Alzheimer’s? And then she found one: Grégory de Castelbajac. At first it was his name that caught her eye—posh—she even had to say it aloud a few times in order to figure out how it was pronounced. Her heart raced when she read that he was five foot six and had been twenty-six when he was first reported missing by his parents, the Comte and Comtesse de Castelbajac. The parents stated in the report that Grégory “had traveled the world” and returned home briefly, eight years ago, for his grandmother’s funeral, and then disappeared again.

  Sophie put her sandwich down and turned a page, reading through the paragraph listing “distinguishing physical characteristics”: a pear-shaped birthmark on his right hand. There was no way they would be able to see that now. Left leg: broken in skiing accident when twelve years old. “Bingo,” she said as she sprung out of her chair and jogged on the spot, then reached down and quickly touched her toes. “Where are you, Jules?” She sat down again and finished reading the document. The count and countess’s address had been crossed out with a pencil. (Who was the dork who did that? Sophie sighed, embarrassed by the nonchalance of some of her colleagues.) A new address had been messily written in, the name of the house, La Belle Vue, with a street address in Sanary-sur-Mer. She knew that Sanary was a seaside town about forty-five minutes south of Aix, but she had never been there. They usually took the kids swimming in La Ciotat—there were lots of sandy beaches and, if you got there early enough, parking close to the beach. She lowered her head to try to read their old address and then let out a yell.

  After a few phone calls, she made her way to the commissioner’s office. “You missed all the excitement, Jules,” she muttered. Paulik’s office door was closed, and she could see through the frosted glass that the lights were off, so she kept running. She passed through a large communal office space, where police officers worked in relative silence due to the sobering presence of Mme Girard, Judge Verlaque’s formidable secretary. She saw that the judge’s door was open and that Mme Girard wasn’t at her desk. It was then that Sophie remembered it was lunchtime and her stomach growled as she had eaten only a few bites of her ham sandwich. She saw the commissioner and the judge sitting around the judge’s big glass desk and she slowed down, hesitating at the door. Antoine Veralque put his sandwich down and looked at her, recognizing her from the rue Esquicho-Coude and the defaced black Madonna. “Come in,” he said, waving her in.

  Paulik turned around and quickly wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Hello. Any news?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing to their paper bags and sandwiches.

  “That’s okay,” Verlaque said. “There’s nothing more depressing than eating sandwiches at your desk. You can cheer us up.” In fact, he and Paulik had been having a good time talking of Hélène Paulik’s new wines and the interview that had taken place with the American journalist. A photographer had even been along and had taken dozens of photographs of Hélène, which included two costume changes, inside their ramshackle eighteenth-century farmhouse, in the wine storehouse, and in the vines.

  Sophie held up her prize, the yellowed folder. It was then that she saw the two small wineglasses, the kinds used in wine tastings, on the judge’s desk, both full of red wine. She quickly looked away, but Verlaque caught her eye and held up a wine bottle. “The commissioner’s wife’s new Syrah. Would you like to try it?”

  “No, no,” she stammered. How could they be sitting there drinking wine when she had made such an important discovery? “But thank you.”

  “What’s in the folder?” Paulik asked.

  What do you think? she almost answered, but instead said, “Grégory de Castelbajac.”

  “Take a chair, please,” Verlaque said, quickly moving aside the paper bag and wine bottle. “This sounds interesting.”

  “He’s been missing for eight years,” Sophie began, trying to keep her voice steady. “His parents, a count and countess, only reported him missing four years ago because he used to travel a lot, all around the world, apparently. They claimed in their statement that it was usual for Grégory to disappear for years at a time with no word. He would come back for money, which he spent on his travels and on drugs. He was the youngest of four boys. He was referred to by the parents as their, and I quote, ‘wayward son.’”

  Verlaque and Paulik exchanged looks, nodding to each other for a reason Sophie couldn’t understand.

  She continued, “He is—or was—five foot six and broke his left leg skiing when he was twelve.”

  “Sounds like we’ve found him,” Paulik said.

  “Yes, I’m sure of it,” Sophie said, opening the folder and passing the last page to the men. “Because the count and countess now live in Sanary-sur-Mer, but when they filed this search they still lived here in Aix. On the rue Cardinale.”

  Paulik whistled.

  “Which number?” Verlaque asked.

  “Number 18,” Paulik answered, reading the report.

  “I’ve just checked with city records,” Sophie added. “They owned the whole house and sold it three years ago. It was bought by a developer and has been split up into offices and apartments now, except for the top floor, where one of the brothers lives.”

  “I assume their old house gives onto the garden where the body was found?” Verlaque asked.

  “Yes,” Sophie answered. “It’s next to the antiques store.”

  Paulik ate the last bit of his sandwich, washing it down with a large gulp of wine. “Here we go,” he said.

  “Interview everyone on that entire garden,” Verlaque said.

  “Thank you, Officer—”

  “Goulin,” Sophie replied.

  Paulik said, looking at Sophie, “Great research. You can help with the interviews.” He got up, brushing bread crumbs off his pants. “Sorry,” he mumbled, looking down at the now-spotted blue carpet and then over at Verlaque.

 
; “No problem,” Verlaque said. “Mme Girard will magically appear in a few moments with her DustBuster. I’ll call the pathologist right away to see if she has any dental findings we can use to verify, one hundred percent, that the skeleton is in fact Grégory de Castelbajac, before his parents are told.”

  “His dentist is here in Aix, and still in practice,” Sophie offered. “Rue Mistral. His phone number is in the report.”

  Verlaque almost smiled, noting how his fellow Aixois tended to stay close to home when shopping or going about their business. Heaven forbid that the Castelbajacs had a dentist on the wrong side of the Cours Mirabeau.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sanary-sur-Mer

  V erlaque parked his Porsche at Portissol, a small beach to the west of Sanary’s downtown. He had once had drinks at Portissol’s restaurant, long ago, with a former girlfriend. She had liked the bar’s sleek pseudo-contemporary interior—lots of black and gray and too-loud house music pumped in—and he had winced. But the harbor had magnificent sunsets—that he remembered fondly—and he had returned with Marine a couple of times.

  “We need to move to Sanary,” he said into his cell phone as he looked at the sparkling sea.

  “We already have two apartments,” Marine answered. “I’m going into class. I’ll phone you when I’m through.”

  “No, it’s better if I call you before I head back to Aix,” Verlaque said. “I’m just about to tell two people that a skeleton found in a garden is their son, and I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  Marine held her phone against her chest and closed her eyes. “Are you sure?” she asked a few seconds later.

  “Yes, just confirmed by his dentist, whose office is on the rue Mistral.”

  “Victim found; now find the murderer.”

  Verlaque sighed. “This is an amazing place, and only forty-five minutes from Aix. I’ll take some photographs for you.” He looked at the sea, framed by pine trees, and continued walking along the narrow sea-cliff road.