• • •
“That was quite a scene back there,” Clément Viale said, swirling his whiskey in a cut-crystal tumbler.
“She’ll be able to tell her grandchildren the story,” Marine said.
Viale smiled. “At any rate, that was nice of you to applaud her, Dough Boy. A younger Verlaque would not have taken that so well, if I’m remembering correctly.”
Verlaque rubbed his stomach, not seeming to care about his nickname. He crossed his legs and sipped a bit of the eighteen-year-old Lagavulin. “Stranger than fiction,” he said. “If you were to put that scene in a novel, no one would believe it. It made my day.”
“What was Clément like at that age?” Delphine Viale asked, leaning forward and resting her chin on her incredibly thin and bejeweled hands.
Verlaque laughed, sensing the tension between the couple. “Like the waitress,” he said. The group looked on, perplexed. “Full of bewilderment for what lies ahead in life, and naïve too,” he continued. “Not yet aware of all the crap.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Clément replied, straightening his back. “I think I knew quite well what I was doing back then.”
“Really?” Verlaque asked. “You were one hundred percent sure that law school was for you? And that you’d enjoy being a lawyer?”
“I think so . . .”
“And you were sure you’d marry, and have children? And you were confident in the fact that the earth was a safe place to be; that there’d never be anything like global warming, or tidal waves, or maniacs driving airplanes into the World Trade Center?” Verlaque began to remember the things that had frustrated him about Viale all those years ago: his smugness, the smugness that came from their elite backgrounds and schools.
“Nobody could have known those things,” Viale suggested.
“But I think that’s what Antoine means about naivety in the young,” Marine said. “We don’t know yet, and don’t even want to know, that evil exists. We all saw it in that young waitress this evening.”
“At that age I was just into getting drunk and laid,” Sylvie Grassi said. Verlaque laughed and the Viales looked on, Clément with a strained grin and Delphine with a look of disgust.
“Fancy Alain Denis being one of the guests this week,” Delphine Viale said in an awkward attempt to change the conversation.
“He was the only person not laughing this evening at dinner,” Marine said.
“Really?” Verlaque asked.
Marine nodded. “I think it’s because that waitress stole the show.”
“You’re right,” Sylvie said. “An aging actor, once having worked with the most famous Italian and French directors of his day, now selling eyeglasses and dog food. He shows up to a small exclusive resort and expects people to be fawning over him, and then at dinner no one gives him the time of day and the gaff of a young waitress steals our hearts.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Clément said, turning to his wife. “Delphine asked for his autograph this afternoon, didn’t you chérie?”
“It was for Mother,” Mme Viale replied, pursing her lips and glaring at her husband.
“Oh, my mother loved him too,” Marine said, smiling, in an attempt to lighten the strained atmosphere between the Viales.
“Poor guy; we should stop speaking of Denis in the past tense,” Sylvie said, finishing her whiskey. “Well, I’m off to bed; the boatman has promised to take me . . . um . . . rowing . . . tomorrow.” Verlaque and Clément Viale laughed, and Delphine glared at her husband. Sylvie stood up and pulled down her dress, which had risen up while she had been sitting.
“I’ll come too,” Marine said. “It’s been a long day.”
“Well, I’m not going to be the only woman here, listening to Antoine and Clément relive their glory days,” Delphine Viale said. She got up, taking with her a small Fendi clutch bag that Sylvie had been eyeing with interest.
“Sleep tight, ladies,” Viale said, saluting them with his right hand.
The men watched the women leave the bar and the minute they were out of the room Clément called over to Serge Canzano, ordering two more whiskies. Viale then sighed, leaning back in the armchair and closing his eyes for a few seconds.
“Going through a bad patch?” Verlaque asked.
“Only for about the last ten years,” Viale said. “No, six years. Things started going downhill after the birth of our third child.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve never married, have you?” Viale asked.
“No.”
Serge Canzano set two more whiskies down on the table and cleared away the empty glasses. When Canzano was out of earshot, Viale went on. “I’m having financial problems too. That’s the one thing I never thought I’d have. So I guess you were right before; when I was a student I didn’t think unhappiness, or failure, was possible. Cheers,” he said, holding up his glass.
Verlaque lifted his glass and had a small sip; he didn’t feel like drinking anymore but wanted to keep Viale company.
“Do you have a course of action?” Verlaque asked. “I mean, is there any way to straighten out your financial problems?
Viale made a sweeping gesture around the room.
“Here?”
“I’m an investor in Sordou,” Viale said. “It’s the last of my family money. The rest I lost; who was to know that Alcatel-Lucent would take a dive in the stock market?”
Verlaque said, “It’s a good idea, Clément. This is a beautiful place, from what I’ve seen so far. You’ll make back your investment.” Verlaque took another sip of whiskey; he knew all too well how risky the hotel and restaurant business was. And this one was set on a remote island. “It must be a coup having Alain Denis here. Has someone called Paris Match and arranged for some paparazzi to come?”
“Niki Darcette is supposed to be working on that, and Denis himself promised to call some journalist contacts, but so far, nothing. He’s a prick, actually.” Viale finished his whiskey with one final big gulp and set his glass down.
Verlaque smiled; anyone who at sixtysomething tried to look as he did at twentysomething was sure to be a prick. “Speak of the devil,” Verlaque whispered. Viale turned around to see not Alain Denis but Emmanuelle, his wife, enter the room, wearing what looked like a long white silk housecoat but was actually a dress, split up the front to her midthigh.
“I’m glad to see there are still some men awake in this hotel,” she said to no one in particular as she walked to the bar and ordered a glass of champagne.
Verlaque couldn’t take his eyes off of her; not because she was beautiful, but because she was so odd looking. Emmanuelle Denis was of average height and had long blond hair piled in an elaborate bun on top of her head. She was outrageously thin but had very large breasts, a look that always seemed imbalanced to him. She was tanned, and well groomed, right down to the French manicured toenails. He smiled to himself, having overheard Marine trying to paint her own toenails, every second word a “merde!”
Mme Denis had obviously paid a lot of money, and taken much effort, to look the way she did, and yet she looked like a half human. He glanced across at Clément, who was also staring at her, but with a look, it seemed to Antoine, of admiration.
Emmanuelle Denis was used to receiving the attention of men and slunk off her bar stool, expertly maneuvering between the bar’s small tables in her evening gown and high heels, and carrying a full glass of champagne. “Do you mind if I join you?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Verlaque said, rising. “But I was just headed off to bed.”
Clément Viale also got up and pulled out an armchair, the same one Delphine Viale had been sitting in, and motioned for Emmanuelle to sit down. “I’ll have another whiskey, please,” he called over to Canzano. Serge Canzano grabbed the Lagavulin and gave the Parisian a double hit; maybe it would knock him out and Serge could close
the bar at least before 2 a.m.
“What a shame,” Mme Denis said to Verlaque. “Are you sure you can’t stay?” She liked his look and guessed that he was a powerful man. A surgeon, or politician . . .
“Quite sure,” Verlaque said. “Good night, madame. Good night, Clément. See you tomorrow.”
Verlaque walked through the quiet, marble-floored hallways, up a flight of stairs to their room. He quietly opened the door and walked through the room, looking at the sleeping figure of Marine, lit up by the moon. She lay still, on her back, with her hands clasped on her chest. She rarely moved in her sleep, unlike his thrashing. Was Clément right in suggesting that Verlaque, as a young man, had been short-tempered? Verlaque knew that over the years he had softened; 30 percent due to aging, and 70 percent due to the calming effects of the woman sleeping in the bed opposite him now.
He opened the doors to the terrace and stepped out; the wind had stopped and he could see the hotel’s garden, lit up by well-placed spotlights, and beyond that, the still black sea. What had he wanted when he was in his early twenties? Probably a bit of Sylvie’s getting laid; he had also wanted, and received, love and affection from his grandparents; he wanted to get good marks; and had loved running fast, alone with the ball, during his rugby games. He must have had fantasies of being a famous courtroom lawyer, but these memories were fuzzier. He breathed in the night air, which smelled of pine trees and the sea.
Did he dream of marriage, and children? No, probably not. Half of French marriages ended in divorce; the Viales were a perfect advertisement for staying single. But there were successful marriages too. His commissioner, Bruno Paulik, was happily married to a winemaker, and at this moment they were watching their first crop of grapes ripen in the July sun; their funny, chatty little daughter, Léa, most likely dancing and singing among the vines. If he had children, he wanted girls. What in the world would he do with a boy?
Chapter Six
About the Manager
The village of Néoules was in the middle of Provence, a region that some enterprising local mayors had coined La Provence Verte to try to entice tourists. It was south of the A8—a highway that stretched from the Riviera all the way to, as the signs proclaimed, Barcelona. There were few reasons to go to Néoules, unless you knew someone there: no sea or mountains; the roads were windy; and there were no cultural sites or Michelin-starred restaurants. The economy was thinly spread: chickpeas were the local specialty crop; there was a sprinkling of winemakers making good to mediocre wines; a bottled-water company was one of the bigger employers with a staff of fifty-five; an enterprising Dutch woman made soaps and cosmetics out of donkey’s milk; and the rest of the inhabitants appeared to be either retired or unemployed. And it had never been green—verte—to Nicola; for her it would always be orange, the color of rust.
Rusting farm equipment was her parents’ idea of garden decorating. They had been unemployed as long as Nicola could remember; when she was very young her father had worked part-time fixing motors, but he grew so unreliable that farmers began taking their work to a mechanic in neighboring Rocbaron. But M. Darcette loved the motors, and instead of taking broken, useless motors to the dump, he arranged them around their half-finished terrace, as if they were art objects. Her mother found a broken cherub fountain behind an abandoned hotel in Garéoult and had made her husband put it in the middle of the terrace, surrounded by the rusty engines. He had given up trying to rig water up to it—they couldn’t afford a pump—so every now and then, when Mme Darcette was feeling energetic, she filled the basin with old dishwater.
Nicola and her older sister Aude went through the first half of their childhood thinking the Darcettes’ way of life was normal. They didn’t think it odd that their parents went almost everywhere, even into the village, wearing their slippers—with cigarettes hanging from their mouths—as the other villagers weren’t much better dressed. But Nicola knew that at least some of the other men in the village met at the bar des sports and laughed a bit. Not her father; he and Mme Darcette kept to themselves, nourished by a constant supply of bulk wine they got from the cave cooperative. Mme Darcette had inherited two acres of vineyard outside of Néoules, and she rented the grapes out to a local farmer, who took them, along with his own harvest, every September to the co-op. The farmer offered to pay them in cash or wine; the Darcettes chose wine.
The Darcettes had, surprisingly, enough money to live on. The girls needed next to nothing; school was free, and the state paid for their books and most of their clothes. Mme Darcette made endless pasta (with no sauce) and cucumber salads (with white vinegar and salt). As soon as Aude was ten, she began doing the cooking, sometimes adding ketchup, which she stole from the school cafeteria, into the pasta. The girls ate better at school than at home and soon learned to take extra servings when they were offered by the canteen ladies and gladly finished the tossed-aside food on their friends’ plates.
Nicola realized that her family was abnormal when she was ten, and Aude was in her first year of high school, being bused to Brignoles. A Parisian family moved to Néoules; the father commuted to his job as a lawyer in Toulon, and the mother stayed at home with the three children and restored their two-hundred-year-old farmhouse. M. and Mme Masurel bought the house on a whim; they loved Provence and had long wanted to get out of their cramped eight-hundred-square-foot apartment in Paris. They moved in the summer, when Néoules was looking its best, and enrolled their three young children in the village school. Claire Masurel, their oldest, and Nicola Darcette became fast friends; Claire, being a secure, loved child, didn’t know that the other students left the Darcettes alone. Nicola was bright, and athletic, and, thanks to an energetic first-year gym teacher, the girls were encouraged to play soccer and run track together.
Nicola would always remember her first visit, after school, to the Masurels’ house. She had seen other old houses, but never one like this. The garden certainly didn’t look like hers, nor did it look like “rich peoples’” gardens, as her references were the manicured gardens of Americans, as seen on 1970s reruns poorly dubbed into French. Mme Masurel had left the olive trees in front of the house, and the Masurels had planted the cypress trees that lined the driveway. A wrought iron table and four chairs sat under an umbrella pine. Ivy grew up the sides of the stone walls, but even Nicola could see that it was neat, and clipped.
But it was the smell inside the house that Nicola remembered most acutely, more than the furnishings, for at that age she didn’t really know what was beautiful, or tasteful; she just knew that it all looked good, and comfortable. The house smelled like cooking—Mme Masurel liked to bake—mixed with Mme Masurel’s perfume. It took Nicola years to find that smell again, and she found it when robbing a department store in Nice. It was Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche.
Nicola experienced many firsts chez les Masurel. Her first lasagna, her first bubble bath, and her first games and puzzles. She had never seen an activity book before, and Mme Masurel began buying them for her, slipping the books into her backpack. Nicola and Claire would walk through Néoules together, hand in hand. They’d make up stories about the people and choose their favorite houses. Nicola would have pink roses growing up beside her front door; Claire, jasmine. They began, along with some of the other, brighter, students, to put on elaborate spectacles for the end-of-the-year party. M. Masurel filmed them; the Darcettes never came. Both girls were voracious readers, lying on Claire’s frilly bedspread, locking the door on Claire’s two younger siblings, whom they referred to as Pest No. 1 and Pest No. 2.
It all came crashing down on Nicola a week in May when she turned thirteen. Claire came into school one spring day looking gloomy and had a hard time meeting Nicola’s stare. At recess they sat together with their backs against the chain-link fence and Claire gave her the news: they were selling their house and moving back to Paris. Living in Néoules was too hard on Claire’s mother: she hadn’t met any friends; the villagers shie
d away from her. And M. Masurel had been offered a much better job in Paris; he’d be a partner in a law firm, which meant that they would be able to buy a big apartment in a fancy neighborhood. A German couple had seen their farmhouse from the road and had offered them a lot of money for it.
Nicola was stunned. The rest of the day she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t believe that she would lose Claire, and that there would be strangers living, and only on vacations, in the Masurels’ beautiful house. The Masurels moved that August, and Nicola knew that she would never see Claire again. There was no way that she could ever invite Claire to her house. She now knew that her family was awful. Aude, at nineteen, had escaped; she was already married, with a toddler, but Nicola hated her husband. Aude was going to have another baby at Christmas.
Nicola saw her future: either end up like Aude or get out of Néoules. But it would be five years before she would even graduate from high school. She found solace, as one would expect, in new friends. They met every day after school in the bus shelter (it had a bench, a roof to protect it from the sun, and three walls to protect it from the wind). Boys would pull up to the shelter on their mopeds, resting their feet on the shelter’s low front wall, while the girls sat side by side on the bench, facing the boys. By the time she was fifteen Nicola had become one of the ringleaders; she was brighter than the rest of them and had more reasons than the others to stay away from her house as much as possible. Teachers at the school, remembering her enthusiasm for reading and theatre, tried to get Nicola to participate in the annual concerts and plays, as she had done with Claire, but she refused. Her new friends would have seen this as childish, and she desperately needed her new friends, thick as they were.
Murder on the Ile Sordou Page 5