“Provided I finish it in time,” Marine cut in, smiling. The crowd laughed; Marine knew how to charm a room. She had, in fact, quickly looked at the lectures offered at the previous year’s Paris meeting and threw together a synopsis, which she had emailed to the count the previous afternoon. There had been four lectures offered, all with almost exactly the same titles and themes: “The Role of the Nobility in the Evolution of Europe,” “Nobility in a Europe on the Move,” “The Role of the Nobility in European Civilization,” and “The Place of Europe in the World and the Nobility in Europe.” The count had replied to her email almost immediately, obviously thrilled to receive an offer of a lecture given by a professor who had been widely published. Marine had been confident that she could bluff her way through the meeting and that her lecture topic, “New European Laws and the French Nobility,” would be greeted with enthusiasm.
As the count began—citing two new families to have joined the association and questions regarding an upcoming rummage sale—Marine looked around the room. Judging from Antoine’s description, the Castelbajacs were not present. But that did not surprise her. She had been wrong; not all those present were over seventy. There were three couples in their forties, perhaps fifties. Their clothes—at least the women’s—were the same as their cars. Practical, inexpensive, and in dull colors. When one of the husbands smiled at her, raising his eyebrow then winking, she looked down, pretending to read an ANF pamphlet. She recognized him as a lawyer whose firm shared the same building at the top of the Cours Mirabeau as the firm of her friend Jean-Marc’s.
The tone of Count de Tressan’s voice then lowered, becoming somber. “Of course, the Count and Countess de Castelbajac couldn’t be with us this evening,” he began. “I would encourage you all to attend their son Grégory’s funeral tomorrow morning at eleven at Saint-Jean de Malte. They will need their noble friends now more than ever. Let us recite our Lady’s prayer.” Marine had spent enough time at Saint-Jean de Malte to know how important the Catholic Church was to France’s nobility, and when the group lowered their heads and began the Hail Mary, not mumbling but in loud, clear voices, she was moved.
The meeting ended fifteen minutes later, after a member—the man who had winked at her—recited a surprisingly long list of families who had recently been stripped of their falsely claimed nobility. Count de Tressan leaned over to her and whispered, “It can be quite traumatic, to find that your ancestors gave themselves noble-sounding names in the nineteenth century and then have the title taken away.”
Marine nodded, and as they got up and headed toward the food table, he continued. “Of course, to join us, one needs to offer historical proof that a French king or emperor bestowed a noble title on their family and that they are directly linked to that noble via male heirs.”
Marine was surprised that the ANF accepted nobles titled by Napoleon as nobility. In some circles, only those titled before the revolution were considered “true” nobles. “So a letter from the king would suffice as proof?” she asked, smiling.
The count laughed. “Absolutely,” he answered, leading her to a table laid out with sandwiches.
“When did the ANF begin?” she asked, taking a small ham-and-butter sandwich.
“In 1932,” he answered, pausing to swallow. “A group of nobles waiting for a train in Paris noticed that the porter carrying their baggage was a fellow aristocrat. They were shocked. That’s why it’s so important that we help families in need—”
Marine nodded, realizing that these “families” were nobles, not single-parent families who lived on the edge of Aix. “Hence the rummage sale you’re planning,” she said.
“Yes, that, with donations from members who are more financially comfortable. We also help low-income families with the school fees for promising children.” He paused and looked across the room, and Marine pretended not to notice. Two men had started to argue, their voices raised. The count coughed and wiped the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin. He continued. “Every year we offer around two hundred thousand euros to help those feeling the pinch.”
Marine wondered which branch he fit into—the helper or the helped—or the Castelbajacs, for that matter. “So sad about Grégory de Castelbajac,” she said, lowering her voice. “I live across the garden from their old house on the rue Cardinale. Did you know him?”
The count shook his head. “No, I never did meet him. His older brother Philippe is quite active in the ANF, Paris branch.”
Marine took another tiny piece of sandwich; this one was filled with a bland pâté. “The Duke de Pradet is also my neighbor,” she said. “Is he a member?”
“Um, unfortunately, no,” the count answered. “But his late wife, Marguerite, was.” He gave a nervous laugh. “You might say she was a staunch royalist.”
Marine was about to question his comment when the men who were arguing—one of them was her winker—left the salon, still bickering. She excused herself to use the ladies’ room.
“Third door on the right,” the count instructed. He gave another nervous laugh and said, “You have to pull the chain twice to flush!”
Marine walked down a long, wide corridor that was lined with old coats and rain boots, following the sound of their voices. A musty odor filled the hallway; she wasn’t sure if it was the coats or the ancient wainscoting, but it was a smell that always reminded her of her maternal grandparents’ vacation home in the Dordogne. She stopped when she saw light coming from under a door that was slightly ajar, and leaning against a black wool coat, she listened.
“You’ve gone too far this time,” said one of the men. “I told you and Marguerite the same thing eight years ago.”
The other, in an excited, rushed voice, replied, “If it were up to you, Louis, we nobles would just slowly erode, along with our properties and traditions. I’m not going to fade away. Nor will I let my family.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Story of Judge Joisson
A ntoine Verlaque was usually one of the last members to arrive at the cigar club, but this evening he got to the rue Papassaudi thirty minutes early. The meetings were usually held at Jean-Marc’s apartment at number 6; he lived alone and didn’t mind a dozen cigar smokers in his home. But a plan was under way to find a clubhouse, where the members could meet once a month and use it as a place to relax and smoke when they were in downtown Aix. Both Jean-Marc and Antoine lived in the vieille ville, but most of the other members lived in the countryside around Aix or in villages close by. José and Georges drove up from Marseille for the monthly meetings. The potential clubhouse was to be one of the topics on tonight’s agenda, along with a proposed trip to Cuba.
Verlaque rang the buzzer on the street and Jean-Marc buzzed him up. He walked up one flight of stairs then stopped on the landing before going up to the next floor, pulling out his cell phone and dialing Bruno Paulik’s number. “Bruno, it’s Antoine. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, we haven’t sat down to eat yet. But shouldn’t you be getting ready for your first clients? What’s today’s special?”
Verlaque groaned. “So you’ve heard about Marine’s pop-up restaurant. That’s all I need, with the local press all over Kévin Malongo’s prison suicide.”
Paulik said, “The restaurant news has made its way around Aix fairly quickly. But I shouldn’t have teased you about it . . . Roussel told me that people in Marseille and Paris weren’t very happy about your wife offering her apartment to a chef whose restaurant has been closed by us. That, added to the suicide, has him beaming.”
Verlaque closed his eyes and nodded. Yves Roussel was Aix’s chief prosecutor and a thorn in his side. Ever since Verlaque had arrived in Aix, Roussel had made it clear that he regarded the judge as too cultured, too educated, and too rich for their little lot at the Palais de Justice. Verlaque brought with him rules, Parisian rules according to Roussel, whereas they had always gotten by in Aix by bending the
rules. And now the examining magistrate was doing just that, by letting Bear run his business in an apartment owned by his wife. “I’ll deal with Roussel,” he said. “But right now I need you to arrange a visit to Juliette de Castelbajac’s home in Avignon, tonight if possible. Sigisbert Valets has been receiving anonymous letters telling him to leave town. They may be harmless, but—”
“They were mailed from Avignon?” Paulik asked.
“Exactly. And I’m worried. Something’s frightening her. Even her students noticed it.”
“I’ll call the Avignon precinct right away,” Paulik said. “Have a good evening.”
“You, too, and thank you.” Verlaque put his cell phone back in his pocket and walked up the next flight of wide stone steps to Jean-Marc’s apartment. The door was open, as Jean-Marc had heard Verlaque on the phone and gone back into the kitchen to check on his coq au vin.
“Smells good!” Verlaque called as he stepped into Jean-Marc’s apartment.
“You’re early,” Jean-Marc replied, coming out of the kitchen and wiping his hands on a tea towel that was tucked into the waist of his pants. “What’s up? You’re usually the last to arrive.”
Marine had texted Verlaque about the argument she overheard at the ANF meeting, and Verlaque had arrived early in the hopes of asking Jean-Marc a few innocent questions. He wished he could talk to Jean-Marc about the Castelbajac case, but he knew that he couldn’t because of confidentiality laws. His friend was even more of a stickler for the rules of the court than he was. “Sorry, I lost track of the time,” Verlaque said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course it is,” Jean-Marc said. “You can help me set up a bit, if you don’t mind.” Verlaque took off his jacket and helped Jean-Marc set out ashtrays and wineglasses. “Here,” Jean-Marc said, handing Verlaque three slim objects. “I’m putting out three cigar cutters. Put these on the coffee table. And they’d better be there by the end of the evening.”
“I think you can count on losing one,” Verlaque said. He set them down on the table and then thought of a way to ask Jean-Marc a few questions. “Marine called me earlier, in a rage over some guy who snagged her table at the Mazarin this morning, even though she had left her coat there while she went to use the toilettes. He was really rude about it. She thinks he works in your building, in the law firm downstairs. He’s in his forties, blond.”
“Charles de Saint-Félix.”
Verlaque said, “That was fast.”
“He makes it clear that he’s better than everyone else, which irks everyone else.”
“I can imagine.”
“He gives nobles a bad name. My mother was a noble, from Perpignan, and her family was very sweet. The opposite of him. They were very old-fashioned, and always doing good work in the community. Poor as church mice, but rich in real estate.”
“A castle and land doesn’t necessarily feed you,” Verlaque said. “I knew you were well bred, but I had no idea you had such a posh background. No offense.”
Jean-Marc smiled. “I’m very posh. My mother’s name was Anne d’Estève de Bosch. Of course she lost the title when she married my father, a dentist from Aix.”
“How are your parents these days?”
“Very well, thanks,” Jean-Marc said. “They fill their time gardening, in the house I grew up in, on a little dead-end street off the avenue Philippe Solari.”
“So your mother has no contact with the local ANF—”
“No, not really,” Jean-Marc answered. “But although my mother may have left the nobility, she’s still an incorrigible gossip when it comes to that set.”
“Do you know Charles de Saint-Félix well?” Marine’s text messages had been short: the men were arguing about something that happened eight years ago. In the next text she typed, in caps, WITH MARGUERITE.
“Hardly,” Jean-Marc said. “He has nothing in common with a gay, cigar-smoking lawyer.”
“Except you’re both lawyers,” Verlaque replied, laughing.
“You know, one of my colleagues is quite impressed with all the noble trappings, and he’s been over to the Saint-Félix château a few times.”
“Where is it?”
“On the way to Jouques, just past Vauvenargues.”
“I know exactly the one,” Verlaque said. “I’ve driven past it a couple of times. It’s marvelous . . . that round medieval tower—”
The buzzer rang for the front door, and Jean-Marc walked into the front hall and lifted up the receiver. “Oui,” he said. There was silence at the other end. He repeated, “Oui, allo?”
Ten seconds later came the reply, three deep voices growling, in English, from down in the street, “Wassup?”
“Come on up,” Jean-Marc replied, rolling his eyes and buzzing them in. “Fabrice, Julien, and José. So immature.” He saw that Verlaque was laughing and he said, “I can’t believe you think they are funny. Fabrice is almost sixty!”
Verlaque rubbed his eyes, still laughing. “It’s good to be silly sometimes.”
“Well, I never . . . ,” Jean-Marc mumbled as he went back into the kitchen to start water boiling for the potatoes.
• • •
Just around the corner, on the terrace of Les Deux Garçons, the duke and Gaëlle Dreyfus sat, sipping champagne. “I could get used to this,” she said.
“Don’t you come here very often?” the duke asked as his eyes followed two female twenty-somethings who were walking up the Cours, wearing short skirts and high heels, their arms linked and their heads thrown back in laughter. The taller one looked vaguely like Marguerite had at that age. Marguerite had also been carefree; in fact, she had been happy well into her fifties. But at some point she had become cynical, obsessed with how people should and shouldn’t behave.
“No, I mean the champagne,” Gaëlle replied, lifting her glass.
The duke raised his glass and touched hers. “We should make a habit of this,” he said. “It’s a cliché, but—”
“Life’s too short?”
“Voilà.” He looked at Gaëlle, admiring her dark blue—almost violet—eyes and her perfectly coiffed thick white hair. Marguerite had dyed her hair up until the week before her death. Why was it that men his age didn’t bother to dye their hair but the majority of his female acquaintances did? Well, he supposed it didn’t matter, as long as their hair was clean. Why in this day and age did some people still walk around with greasy hair?
He realized that he must have been frowning, because Gaëlle was looking at him, her head tilted. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “You sometimes look worried.”
“It seems that the older I get, the more questions I ask. From the profound to the silly. My head is swimming with questions.”
“Oh, so it’s nothing serious,” she said, taking a sip of her champagne. “I’m glad.”
There were some serious questions that he had, but he didn’t want to bother her with those. Besides, they were, for the moment, just questions. His doctor promised that he would have some answers at the end of the week. But since the discovery of Grégory de Castelbajac’s skeleton, more questions had come into the duke’s head. “Did you receive a visit from the police?” he asked.
Gaëlle nodded. “I think the whole neighborhood did. I was quite hoping to get the handsome judge—”
“You think he’s handsome?”
“Oh yes, in a rough kind of way. Or maybe it’s just his charisma. But my interview was carried out by a very serious young female officer and the commissioner. She was in the restaurant last night, at the table next to us.”
“They came in late,” the duke offered. “Trouble with the babysitter.”
“Eavesdropper.”
The duke laughed, grateful for her company.
She asked, “Did you happen to read La Provence this morning?”
“Yes, I did. That crook who han
ged himself in jail didn’t sound like the holiest of men, but I somehow believed his story. The family and their lawyer sound quite determined to have a retrial and clear his name. Your handsome judge sounds like he’s in a bit of trouble. And did that article remind you of a similar incident that happened here in the sixteenth century?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, no.”
“It did me, straightaway, especially given that they share the same name, Antoine,” the duke explained. “The fountain stopped then, too. The judge in this case was Antoine Joisson. The condemned farmer’s family insisted he was innocent, as did all his acquaintances. Joisson had rushed it through the courts. Judges have always had to be careful who they condemned to prison, even in the sixteenth century. He was hacked to death by an angry grieving brother on a quiet street in Aix, in the middle of the night—”
Gaëlle shuddered.
“I’d like to think we’ve progressed since then,” he said, finishing his champagne. “But sadly not much has changed in five hundred years.”
“It has; we have. I just read a review of an American book whose author states just that,” Gaëlle said. “He claims, backed by statistics, that compared to past eras the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been relatively nonviolent.”
“Well, that’s something to celebrate,” the duke said. He turned around until he caught the attention of Les Deux G’s black-uniformed waiters and, pointing to their empty coupes, ordered more champagne.
• • •
Verlaque was the first to arrive and the last to leave. He enjoyed helping Jean-Marc clean up. They washed the wineglasses by hand, as they were too big to put in the dishwasher. After smoking two large cigars in the same evening he was rarely tired, even if it was after midnight. Marine called it his “cigar buzz.”
Jean-Marc poured his friend a small whiskey, setting it on the kitchen counter. “That apartment on rue Célony sounds promising,” he said, pouring himself a whiskey as well.
The Curse of La Fontaine Page 16