Murder on the Ile Sordou

by M. L. Longworth

  “Ah yes, Isabella Piccolini,” Verlaque quickly said, smiling. “Now, she was my father’s favorite screen star.”

  Marine tried to be discreet as she looked at the actor; he did look a bit like his younger self: he still kept his fine straight hair slightly long, but it was now mostly gray. His long aquiline nose and full, almost girlish lips were still very striking, as were his high cheekbones. But his skin was wrinkle-free, which Marine thought was odd for someone who must be in his late sixties, like her parents. “What happened to his career, anyway?” she asked.

  Sylvie leaned forward. “It began with film-set problems between Denis and Isabella Piccolini,” she said, whispering and playing with her empty mojito glass, toying with the idea of having a third. Sylvie read Paris Match whenever she could; she was too proud to buy it, so picked up used copies when she saw them at the dentist’s or doctor’s office, or at her sister’s. “Not only was he lazy—he had problems remembering his lines.” Sylvie then touched the side of her nose and made a snorting noise. “But he used to sexually harass the female costars, including Piccolini, who was a happily married nice Italian girl with four children, Daniella, Dario, Davide . . . um, I can’t remember the last one . . .”

  “Go on,” Verlaque said.

  “He began making too many demands during filming, asking for more and more money, much of which was going straight to his coke dealer.”

  “What do you think he’s doing here?” Marine asked.

  “On vacation,” Sylvie answered.

  “I think Marine means here, on Sordou, and not in Saint-Tropez or Ibiza,” Verlaque suggested.

  “Good question,” Sylvie said. “Maybe he wanted to be out of the limelight?”

  “I thought movie stars craved that,” Marine said.

  Sylvie leaned back on her bar stool and gave Alain Denis a sideways glance. “He certainly looks like the type who would be happy with cameras flashing in his face,” she said. “Especially since he’s been reduced to making dog-food commercials. But who knows?”

  Marine and Antoine looked at Sylvie, surprised that she would end their discussion of Alain Denis on a pseudo-philosophical note.

  “Should I have another mojito or a nap?” Sylvie asked.

  “A nap,” Marine and Antoine said in unison.

  Chapter Three

  About the Chef

  Circles had been one of the decorative themes of the original Jacky Bar, and during the last two years of painstaking renovations Émile Villey had convinced the Le Bons to keep that iconoclastic 1960s shape. There were circles on the side of the long, curving, white bar, made from wood and painted black; discreet circles on the woolen and silk area rugs; and round bronze mirrors and picture frames adorned the walls. Villey believed that circles were relaxing; just the thing needed in a seaside hotel. But they also served as his window onto the bar, and its adjoining restaurant, as four of the bronze spheres had been turned into two-way mirrors, allowing the chef to observe his clients, and staff, from the kitchen.

  Émile Villey, a young chef at twenty-five years of age, was lucky, and he knew it. Running his own restaurant, even though it was small, was a dream job. Maxime and Cat-Cat Le Bon treated him as an equal—even consulting him during the kitchen and restaurant renovations—and gave Émile full control of the menu and the kitchen. He had fallen in love with the island the first time he saw it—he had been born and raised in landlocked Berry, in the middle of France, and had done his training, which began at the age of fifteen, in similar landlocked restaurants from Picardie to Paris. During his interview, while on a rare weekend off from his job at Le Meurice in Paris, Émile had cooked for the Le Bons, using plants he had foraged on Sordou’s rocky cliffs—rosemary, thyme, lavender, and wild arugula—and he had hired the island’s only full-time inhabitant, Prosper Buffa (paying him too much), to catch some fish to grill. The meal had been simple, but fresh, and the Le Bons had been wildly enthusiastic. They told Villey he would be welcome to arrive early that spring, to get the kitchen ready, and experiment with menus on the staff, until the first guests would arrive in July. Émile Villey and Maxime Le Bon had finished the evening of his interview drinking twenty-year-old Armagnac and dreaming of Michelin stars.

  It was only after Villey had signed a three-year contract with the Le Bons that news was passed down to him via the extensive and rapid French chefs’ network: the Le Bons had been so enthusiastic because Villey had been the only applicant. After a few more visits to the island, Villey figured out why he had been the only one to apply for the job: given the remoteness of the island it would be almost impossible to produce a varied menu. There would be no exotic ingredients; even the basics would have to be delivered by boat from Marseille. And Marseille was still rough-and-tumble Marseille; it would never be, even with investments like the ones the Le Bons had made, Saint-Tropez, Capri, or even Aix-en-Provence. Apprehensive, the young chef had been ready to break his contract, disappearing into some restaurant in New York, or Italy, until he went back to the island in August for yet another meeting with the Le Bons, who were virtually camping out, overseeing the hotel’s renovations. After their brainstorming session, Villey went swimming along the cliffs and, floating weightlessly on his back, looked at the blue sky above. There was silence all around him, except for the splashing noise he made with his hands, and the far-off noise of the cigales who hung out in Sordou’s few trees. Putting his goggles on—a gift from his parents, who themselves had only once been to the sea—he swam along the underwater cliffs and marveled at the sea life, each tiny colorful fish swimming in the same direction as he did, each one living in a group, but alone at the same time.

  As Villey heaved himself up onto a flat rock and dried off in the sun, he reminded himself of his apprenticeship years: the rude awakenings at 6 a.m. in freezing-cold Berry, when it was still dark out and frost covered the ground and every other surface; working solidly in a large restaurant kitchen, long after midnight, six days a week, until his hands ached and were covered in cuts and sores. Saturday night was the apprentices’ only solace, which they shared with the nursing students at the opposite end of town, drinking beers and playing foosball. He soon became a saucier, then rose to the post as sous-chef for a manic-depressive two-starred chef near Lille who thought it funny to play practical jokes on his kitchen staff in the middle of a busy Sunday lunch. And then came his coup: a position as the fish chef at Le Meurice in Paris, where working conditions, despite the glamorous hotel and three-starred restaurant, were no better than his first apprentisage at the Auberge des Oiseaux in Berry. At night he would fall into his small bed in a studio in the twentieth arrondissement, exhausted. And the studio, where his neighbors didn’t seem to work and listened to rap all day and night, cost him 850 euros a month; half of his salary.

  Sordou would be his challenge, Émile decided as he toweled off that hot August day. Were there not other great restaurants in remote places? Iceland, for example? Or some South Seas islands? He almost ran back to the hotel, and sat down and drew up a plan, which included a kitchen garden and pots for herbs. If he planted in early spring of the opening season, then he could have Provençal summer vegetables to plan the menu around. If Villey would tend to the garden, the Le Bons promised they would set aside a plot of land. The architect even planned a six-foot-high stone wall that would protect le potager from the sea’s winds.

  Villey continued to make notes on the train back to Paris that evening; he would buy fruit in season and preserve it, as his grandmother had done. He’d make liqueurs from thyme and lavender. Fish would feature highly on the menu; he’d arrange with local fishermen to stop by the island on their way back to Marseille: Prosper wasn’t reliable enough and made it clear that he hated the Le Bons’ presence on what he claimed was his island. Émile knew he’d have to get up at some godforsaken hour to meet the fishermen, but at least he wouldn’t be breaking the snow off of the inner windowpane as he had do
ne in Le Berry. Buying meat would be difficult, but he’d arrange to have Provençal lamb delivered, or send Hugo Sammut out to pick it up. Pasta would be his saving grace; he loved making it, and everyone liked eating it. Le Bon also agreed to invest in an Italian meat-carving machine that cost the same price as a small Citroën or Renault, but it was the most beautiful machine Villey had ever seen; brilliant red, its chrome glistening. Its mechanics were as precise as a telescope’s, and with a gentle turning of its wheel, a leg of Bellota or Pata Negra ham from Andalusia could be carved down to one-tenth of a millimeter. Extra legs could be hung from the rafters in the kitchen, Villey thought, or even in the bar.

  He looked out one of the hublots at the clients, drinking their celebratory glass of champagne, and he liked the look of them. This would be a good group to start off on; for the Le Bons had reported that they were a bit of everything: a rich film star, Parisians, an American couple, and some middle-class Aixois. Villey was especially intrigued by the mojito-drinking artist, or he thought she was an artist, with her punky clothes and multicolored bracelets up and down her thin but muscular arms. He liked her laugh and could hear her laughing with her friends—a man and a woman—who had just arrived. The movie star was there too, looking sullen, pretending to be busy with his iPhone even though there was no reception, and there was an unkempt elderly man sitting at a corner table busily writing in a notebook. A diary? Villey watched him carefully and decided that the stained Cuban shirt and shaggy beard might be a ruse and that he could be a restaurant critic. Or hotel critic. But so soon? He’d have Serge and Marie-Thérèse keep an eye on him.

  Émile Villey had decided to be a professional cook when he was twelve. He had helped his mother and aunt cook and serve for a party—his grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary—and had rejoiced at the sounds of the happy diners while he worked away in the kitchen with a lazy, older cousin. Had he known just how difficult his years of training would be, he might have chosen a different field, but what were the choices for a nonbookish boy in the middle of France, whose father was a farmer? He had two older brothers who would split the family farm. The lazy cousin was now the worst electrician in France, and Émile was here, on a sun-soaked Mediterranean island, where the rich came to de-stress.

  And this morning had been a blessing; after his daily swim he had walked around the south side of the island and up over a rocky hill, through a small pine forest, where he came across a small, wild orchard. Someone years ago—when the hotel had been at its climax, no doubt—had planted fruit trees. The trees were in terrible shape; as a farmer’s son he knew that. But two of them were still laden with apricots, although it was late in the season, and Émile took one off the tree and, splitting it apart, ate its warm, juicy, sweet fruit. He put as many in his backpack as he could and rushed back to tell Maxime Le Bon the good news. There was also a huge, umbrella-shaped fig tree, covered in hard little figs. They would be ripe in late summer. He had been making both apricot and fig tarts since he was an apprentice, using a deceptively simple shortbread crust that he laced with almond extract, an elixir unknown in France that an English sous-chef had once introduced him to. He carried the tiny glass bottles, as he did his knives, from kitchen to kitchen, and had friends who were going to London pick some up for him, along with sharp cheddar and oat cakes.

  This week had also brought another gift, that of Isnard Guyon, a friendly fisherman from Pointe Rouge in Marseille, who had not only been bringing Émile excellent fish throughout the spring, but had recently offered to bring the chef meat and other products—at a small commission, naturally—via a cousin who was a butcher, known for his fresh lamb from the hills of Provence and the dairy products he ordered from a farm in the Alps. Guyon had delivered the first batch the previous morning, as promised, pulling up to Sordou’s dock at 5 a.m. Villey tasted some of the cream as soon as he got back to the kitchen; it was richer and thicker than any cream he had ever tasted.

  Émile Villey turned away from watching the guests, put his thick, curly blond hair in a ponytail, adjusted his apron, and washed his hands. It was time to get to work on the evening’s menu: the guests could choose between cold zucchini soup with a dollop of Alpine crème fraîche, or a stacked vegetable terrine made with layers of phyllo dough and anchored down with a sprig of rosemary; for the main dish Isnard’s freshly caught sea bream braised in olive oil with cherry tomatoes, black olives, and artichokes, or lamb chops cooked over an open fire served with a wet polenta; and apricot tart for dessert, with the vanilla ice cream he had made before he went to bed. Villey had picked lavender and used it to make cookies, which he planned on serving with a delicate sweet wine from Beaumes-de-Venise in the Luberon.

  He didn’t mind not having kitchen help; the Le Bons had spared no cost in buying him the best appliances, and he had been taught to clean as he cooked. He almost preferred it that way, enjoying the silence and calm. If pressed, Serge had promised—or rather, Maxime had promised—Serge’s services in tidying up or helping chop vegetables. Marie-Thérèse had offered to help in the kitchen, and so far her enthusiasm outweighed her inexperience. Tonight would be their first dinner with clients, and Émile knew that how well it went off could predict the rest of the summer’s success, and even the future of Sordou.

  Chapter Four

  Dinner for Ten

  Marine sat on their room’s private terrace, her bare feet resting on the wrought iron balcony. She wore a short, pink fitted cotton dress, and a large floppy beige sun hat trimmed in light blue. A cool wind was beginning to blow, and the sun would soon set, but she relished these few moments—outside, away from her computer and research. She looked out at the sparkling sea and wriggled her toes, which had just been subject to a poor pedicure. She inspected the spots where she had missed, and the red nail polish had leaked out onto her toes. She told herself that no one would notice, and if they did, they surely must be bored.

  “Did you put sunscreen on your legs?” Antoine Verlaque asked as he came out on the terrace to join her.

  Marine looked at her legs and then up at her boyfriend. “Not yet, but I will tomorrow, I promise,” she answered. “It’s just been so long since these white, freckled legs have seen any sun.” She turned her legs from right to left and frowned.

  Verlaque reached down and tapped on the brim of her hat. “I love your white, freckled legs,” he said. “They match all the polka dots in the bar downstairs.”

  “Thanks,” Marine said, rolling her eyes.

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  Marine laughed. “No, but you are, I take it. Aren’t there any snacks in the minibar?”

  “There was a small bag of peanuts, but I already ate them.”

  “Thanks for sharing!” Marine said.

  “It really was minuscule,” Verlaque replied. “About this big,” he added, putting his thumb and pointer finger about an inch apart.

  Marine looked at her watch, made of white gold and encrusted with very discreet diamonds. It had been a birthday present from Verlaque, and she dreaded to even think of how much it cost, probably as much as a down payment on a smallish apartment in Aix.

  “Let’s go down to the dining room,” Verlaque said, rubbing his hands together. “It’s almost eight-thirty.”

  “All right, don’t rush me,” Marine said as she slowly got up from the very comfortable deck chair she had been sitting on and took one last look at the sea.

  “Come on, slowpoke,” Verlaque said, already heading for the door. “Let’s get a good table.”

  “Wait a minute, Antoine,” Marine said, catching up to him and gently grabbing his shoulder. “I don’t want to be rushed, or stressed, this week. There are other guests here, and so what if they get the dining table with the best view. Okay? Look at the view out of this bedroom window.”

  “I’m just hungry.”

  “I believe that you’re hungry,” Marine said, laughing. “But I also know th
at as an examining magistrate, and an independently wealthy one at that, that you’re used to getting your own way. But there are other wealthy, even famous, people here, and they too are used to getting what they want. So let’s let them have their . . . way.”

  Verlaque took Marine in his arms and kissed her. He then drew away and said, “Do I have the right to send the wineglasses back if I don’t like them?”

  Marine laughed and looked up at the ceiling, knowing that Antoine would be restless the entire dinner if the wineglasses were too small or their rims too thick. “Yes!”

  He took her once again in his arms and kissed her, lifting up the back of her dress and running his hand up her leg toward her buttocks.

  “Antoine,” Marine said, reaching behind and taking his hand in hers. “We already made love, twice, after we got here. Remember?”

  “Yes,” Verlaque replied, kissing her. “That’s the problem. I remember.”

  “Besides—”

  A knock at the door interrupted their embrace.

  “Who could that be?” Verlaque asked.

  “Sylvie,” Marine whispered.

  “Why?” Verlaque asked, adopting Marine’s hushed tones. “Can’t we just meet her downstairs?”

  Marine shook her head back and forth. “No, she doesn’t like going into dining room, or even to parties, alone. Shhh . . .”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Verlaque whispered when the caller knocked again, this time harder.

  “It’s just a phobia she has,” Marine whispered, moving toward the door. “She sees herself as a loser if she enters a place alone.”

  Verlaque tapped the side of his head, putting his hand down just in time as Marine had opened the door and Sylvie rushed into their room. “Didn’t you hear me knock?” she asked. “Nice dress, Marine.” She looked over at Verlaque, who earlier had changed into a short-sleeved blue linen shirt and clean khakis, his bare feet in a new pair of Tod’s. “And you, Antoine, look very . . .”