Murder on the Ile Sordou

by M. L. Longworth

  “What’s amazing to me is that we have the calanques and islands right here, just a few miles from one of the world’s biggest cesspools,” Verlaque said, smearing his scone, which had just appeared, with too much butter.

  “Are you in one of your anti-Marseille moods?” Marine asked.

  “I’ve never liked it,” Verlaque replied. “Just the restaurants are better than ours in Aix, that’s all.”

  Marine winked at Sylvie and asked, “Has everyone else already eaten breakfast?” she asked.

  “The Yanks were on the way out when I came,” Sylvie said. “Dressed for the golf course. The poet was here but left just before you came. Other than that, no one. Oh, here comes Alain Denis . . .”

  The actor, dressed in a pink linen shirt and white linen shorts, walked out onto the terrace and gazed through his Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses for a table. He made no attempt to say good morning to the only other people on the terrace and chose a table far away from them.

  Verlaque saw Marie-Thérèse waiting in the wings, playing with her apron strings. He saw her take a deep breath and walk across the terrace’s red terra-cotta surface and bend down to ask Denis what he would like for breakfast.

  “Of course I’m alone, what does it look like?” the actor cried loud enough for everyone to hear. Marine, Sylvie, and Antoine Verlaque tried not to wince.

  Marie-Thérèse straightened up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought that Mme Denis might be arriving any minute.”

  “Obviously not,” Denis said, sighing. “I’ll just start with an espresso, no food yet,” he added in a lower voice, as if he regretted his prior outburst. “No, I’ll have a bowl of fresh fruit with that.”

  Marie-Thérèse said a loud and firm “Coming right up!” and left. Verlaque had to look into his newspaper for fear of laughing. The young waitress was having a go at the aging actor, but like all self-possessed people, he had no idea.

  When Marine, Sylvie, and Antoine were finishing up breakfast Mme Denis appeared, wearing a beach sarong and high-heeled sandals. “I can’t believe it,” she said to her husband.

  “This is excellent,” Sylvie whispered, taking off her sunglasses to see well.

  “You’re sitting there, calmly having breakfast, when my son is missing!” Emmanuelle Denis yelled.

  Denis looked up at his wife, slowly setting aside his Paris Match. “Brice has gone swimming, or walking, or . . . I don’t know. . . . He’s gone off just to worry you. He’ll be back when he’s hungry.” He picked up the magazine again and Mme Denis swung around and saw Marine, Sylvie, and Antoine—who had been pretending to read the newspaper—all staring at her.

  Verlaque got up and said, “Maybe one of the staff have seen him,” he said quietly but firmly. “This is a wonderful place for a teenage boy to explore,” he added.

  “I’m sorry to disturb your breakfast,” Mme Denis said, reaching out her hand. Verlaque was so surprised at the offer of an introduction that his foot got caught on the table’s wrought iron leg and Sylvie snorted out a laugh. He hadn’t told Marine of Emmanuelle Denis’s late-night appearance in the bar the previous night.

  “Antoine Verlaque,” he said, shaking her hand. “And this is Marine Bonnet, and . . . our friend, Sylvie Grassi.”

  “Emmanuelle Denis,” she replied, and nodded in the direction of Marine and Sylvie. “It’s Brice, my son,” she continued. “I can’t find him, and it looks like he didn’t sleep in his bed last night.”

  “Perhaps he made it?” Verlaque asked. But before Mme Denis answered, Verlaque said, “Oh, he’s a teenage boy . . .”

  Mme Denis forced a smile. “Exactly.”

  “This is a small island, and it’s summer, but I can’t imagine someone sleeping outside,” Verlaque said.

  “He’s done this kind of thing before,” Mme Denis replied. She looked at her husband and he rolled his eyes. “As you say, this is an island, but Brice doesn’t know it. It’s not the same as Paris.”

  Marine looked at Mme Denis and remembered the boy’s absence at dinner last night. But his mother had been there, without him, and was now decked out for a bathing suit photo shoot, not frolicking in the waves with her son, or playing games with him, or whatever Marine supposed mothers should be doing on vacation with their children, even teenage ones.

  Mme Denis went on, “Brice wouldn’t eat with us last night. . . . He was too upset.”

  “I really don’t think you should go telling strangers our family history,” Alain Denis hissed, now standing beside his wife.

  “What family?” she answered back.

  “Come have something to eat,” Denis said, taking her arm.

  “I’m not hungry,” she replied, shaking off his hold.

  “Emmanuelle, don’t be a daft cow,” he said.

  “Leave her,” Verlaque said. “She’s obviously upset.”

  “Mind your own business, asshole,” Denis said, grabbing his wife’s arm once again.

  “I said I’m not hungry,” she cried. “I’m going out, to look for my son!” She pulled herself away from Denis but he lunged toward her, pulling on her arm.

  Verlaque was about to reach out to help Mme Denis when Hugo Sammut’s body appeared out of nowhere, as if he had flown over the hedge. With one fast gesture he grabbed Alain Denis’s arms, forcing them behind his back with his hands in a locked position. Hugo threw Denis against the wall of the hotel, while Denis shouted protestations of having Hugo fired, and suing the hotel.

  “Hugo!” Max Le Bon shouted, now standing at the edge of the terrace, having heard the commotion. “Release M. Denis this instant!”

  The actor’s face was reddened, and his sunglasses had fallen and broken in the scrimmage. Verlaque quickly bent down and picked them up, hiding them under a napkin.

  “What kind of staff do you have here?” Denis cried, tucking his shirt back into the waist of his shorts. “That man will be fired, I assume!” Denis walked over to his table and picked up his iPhone and left the terrace.

  “Come, Hugo,” Max Le Bon said. “I’m terribly sorry for this,” he then said to the patrons.

  “He did nothing wrong,” Sylvie said. “He was defending—”

  “Thank you, mademoiselle,” Le Bon said, gently taking Hugo by the elbow and leading him away.

  “I hope he doesn’t get fired on my behalf,” Mme Denis said, slowly sitting down.

  “Hugo went too far,” Verlaque said. “Right or wrong, your husband is a guest.”

  • • •

  Maxime and Cat-Cat Le Bon had toyed with the idea of not putting in a swimming pool when they renovated Locanda Sordou. They thought the whole idea of it idiotic, with the sea surrounding them; budget was a concern too, and toward the end of the renovations they had started using up their money and had little left for a pool the size and quality a hotel like Sordou would need. In the end an investor—a colleague of Clément Viale’s—stepped in with 50,000 euros, which enabled them to add a pool, pool house, and bar, and buy the necessary lounge furniture from B&B Italia.

  The Le Bons had both grown up privileged, and their first swims had been at family vacation homes on the sea, in Deauville. And so one of the first things they had installed, before the renovations had even begun, was a small ladder that led from the flat rocks in the beach’s harbor down into the sea about five feet below. The flat rocks provided perfect, natural areas to recline, and the ladder made it feel like the Mediterranean was one big swimming pool, which, compared to the Atlantic, it was.

  Marine had climbed down the ladder and swam close in, where she could see down to the seafloor. But Antoine swam far out, and when she was tired she climbed out and stood on the rocks watching him, with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. She didn’t like the idea of his swimming alone, but she was too afraid of the sea, and its black depth, to venture out with him.

  They had
been out there all morning, alternating between reading, talking, and swimming when it got too hot. She waved to the Americans, who were sitting on the next cliff over, Mr. Hobbs fishing and Mrs. Hobbs sketching. She bent down and pulled her watch out of her beach bag; it was almost 1 p.m., and time to head back in for lunch. She waved out to Verlaque and he began swimming toward her.

  “If I got you some goggles,” he said as he swam up to the cliff’s edge, “I think you’d enjoy swimming in the sea more.” He swam over to the ladder and pulled himself out. Marine was always amazed that despite her boyfriend’s love of good food and wine, and his ample girth, he rarely seemed out of breath after swimming, or running. “When you do a lot of sports when you’re young, it stays with you,” he had explained. Marine’s sports had been walking to the library when she was a young girl, and then walking around Paris’s sixth arrondissement where she had studied law.

  “Perhaps,” Marine called out, as she sat on the rock’s edge and dipped her feet into the cold sea.

  “Time for lunch?” Verlaque asked once he was out and was toweling off his hair.

  “Yes,” Marine replied. “And I predict that Sylvie will be a no-show, and that boy, Brice, will be there, and starving.”

  “I think you’re right,” Verlaque said. “It would be hard to have a son, wouldn’t it?”

  Marine looked over at Verlaque, surprised. “You mean instead of a daughter, or just a child in general?”

  “No, I think as opposed to a daughter.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I was easy to get along with at fifteen.”

  “Easier than I was, or any other boy,” Verlaque said, picking up his newspapers, which he had held down with a rock. “I’d be terrified to have a son, actually. My parents did such a botched job on Sébastien and me.”

  “But that’s just it,” Marine said. “It wasn’t your fault, being a boy. It was your parents’ botched job, as you call it, at raising you, and your brother.”

  Verlaque laughed. “Now there’s a piece of work, eh? My brother, Parisian real estate mogul who dines every night alone.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Yes, I do,” Verlaque said. “Reports from acquaintances tell me that Séb has pissed off so many colleagues in Paris that he’s usually alone these days.”

  Marine said nothing; what could she say? She’d only met Sébastien Verlaque twice and hadn’t enjoyed either meeting.

  The Hobbses, having seen Marine and Antoine packing up, realized that they had lost track of time. They had caught up to the Frenchies on the path that led back to the hotel. “Hungry!” Shirley Hobbs called, rubbing her stomach.

  “I hope lunch is as good as last night’s dinner,” Verlaque said in English.

  “Wasn’t that a treat?” Shirley Hobbs said.

  “I’m hoping to make my own contribution,” Bill Hobbs said, lifting his blue bucket up. The four of them stopped and looked at the dozen or so small reddish fish. “What are they?” Hobbs asked.

  “They’re little rock-clinging fish called rougets,” Verlaque answered. “They’re one of the ingredients of a bouillabaisse in Marseille.”

  “Oh, we ate that last time we were in Provence,” Shirley Hobbs said. “I’m surprised you’d forget their name, Bill.”

  Hobbs shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going to show them to the chef,” he said. “Have to earn my keep.”

  Marine smiled and she pointed to Shirley Hobbs’s sketchbook.

  “Would you like to see?” Mrs. Hobbs asked. She stopped and opened her sketchbook to the first page. It was a watercolor of the sea and Sordou’s westerly cliffs.

  “You’ve made the water sparkle,” Marine said, amazed at the painting’s effervescent quality. Verlaque translated for Shirley Hobbs, who smiled.

  “I’ve been taking art classes since retirement,” Mrs. Hobbs said.

  “She really keeps at it,” Bill Hobbs said, beaming. Marine understood the gist of what he said and smiled.

  They walked into the hotel, through the lobby, then through the dining room, out onto the same terrace where they had had breakfast, but it was now shaded by parasols and by white awnings that were suspended from the hotel’s walls. Verlaque gave Marine a quick look as if to ask, “Do we join them for lunch?” and Marine nodded in the affirmative. Verlaque posed the question aloud and the Hobbses said that they would be delighted. Bill Hobbs went into the dining room and knocked at the kitchen door, wanting to give his offering to Émile Villey. Verlaque, Marine, and Shirley Hobbs were shown to their seats by Niki Darcette.

  “How did you find out about Sordou?” Verlaque asked after helping Mrs. Hobbs into her chair.

  “It was Bill’s idea,” she replied.

  “Where are you from?” Marine asked in slow, careful English.

  “Bellingham.”

  “Where’s Bellingham?” Verlaque asked.

  “Washington,” Mrs. Hobbs answered. “Washington State, not the capital.”

  “Washington, mais pas D.C.,” Verlaque said to Marine.

  “J’ai tout compris,” Marine said.

  “Marine speaks beautiful Italian,” Verlaque said. “She’s shy about her English, but she just understood our conversation.”

  “Please tell Marine that she looks like a movie star,” Shirley Hobbs said. “But a proper one, not a made-up one.”

  As if on cue, Emmanuelle Denis walked into the room, now wearing tennis shorts and sneakers, which emphasized just how skinny her legs were. She saw Marine and Verlaque and walked over to their table, raising her hands in the air. “Still no sign of him!” she cried.

  Marine, Shirley Hobbs, and Verlaque saw the panic in the woman’s eyes. Verlaque quickly got up and put his hand on her shoulder. “He’s lost track of time,” he said.

  Emmanuelle Denis wiped her eyes dry with a much-used tissue. “But he could have fallen . . .”

  Verlaque pulled out a chair and motioned for Mme Denis to sit down. She said, “He fights with Alain . . . my husband, and his stepfather, and this April Brice walked out on us. The mother of a friend called us the next day, telling us he was at their place. He stayed the week. . . . It was the longest we’ve ever been apart.”

  Marine looked at Mme Denis with more sympathy than she would have imagined herself capable of. It surprised her that a woman who looked like such a bimbo would be so attached to her son. She wasn’t putting it on, either. Her eyes were red and her hands trembling.

  “I have two boys,” Shirley Hobbs said in English, reaching across to Emmanuelle Denis and taking her hand. She had understood that the woman’s son was missing, and she was pleased that after so many vacations in France, she was finally able to understand the language; she vowed to take a French class once they got back to Bellingham. “They caused us grief in their teenage years, each one in his own way. But they grow up, and if you love them as much as you obviously love your son, they get on with things and end up doing fine. You’ll see.”

  Verlaque was about to translate when Mme Denis caressed the American’s hand and said in flawless English, “Thank you, madame. I know that you’re right, but it seems as if I’m still learning this . . . parenting. I’ve made so many mistakes.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Shirley Hobbs said, smiling.

  “What happened last night?” Verlaque asked. He realized as soon as he said it that it sounded as if he was challenging Mme Denis, but she seemed to take no notice of it.

  Mme Denis replied, “They fought again, and I brought Brice up some food from the kitchen. Alain wants Brice to go to a boarding school next year, since his grades slipped this semester.”

  To Verlaque, Marine, and Shirley Hobbs, the choice was easy: get rid of Alain Denis. But they remained silent.

  “I brought the food up just before we ate, around eight p.m.,” she said. “And this morning saw his unmade bed.”
r />   “Well, Brice can’t go far on Sordou,” Verlaque finally said. “We’ll look for him if he doesn’t show up by three p.m., okay?”

  Marine nodded in affirmation. “Please eat lunch with us,” Marine said. “You’ll feel better with some food.”

  “Thank you,” Mme Denis replied. “I think I’ll have a glass of rosé too. I normally don’t drink at lunch.”

  “I’ll order us a bottle of Bandol,” Verlaque said.

  Bills Hobbs came back and seemed nonplussed that there was a guest at their table. He pulled out a chair from a neighboring table and introduced himself to Mme Denis. His wife leaned over and quickly explained about Brice.

  “Well, I saw the boy last night,” Bill Hobbs said in English.

  “Where?” everyone asked in unison.

  “I was here, on the terrace, after dinner. Shirley had gone to bed, and I was . . . having a little after-dinner whiskey,” he replied. “It was late . . . about eleven p.m. He had shorts on and headed out behind the hotel, away from the harbor.”

  “Bill,” Shirley exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Well, I’m telling you all now, aren’t I? Besides, the boy wasn’t carrying anything, so I thought he was mad about something and was just going for a walk, to let off some steam.”

  “Steam?” Marine asked.

  “Vapeur,” Verlaque said.

  “Our Jason used to do that,” Bill reminded his wife.

  “You’re right,” Shirley said, turning to Emmanuelle Denis. “Our oldest son, Jason, had a hot temper, and whenever he was angry with us he’d go for a walk down to the harbor. So you see, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Housekeeping

  “If he ogles me one more time . . .” Niki Darcette whispered to Cat-Cat Le Bon as they were checking their bookings for August. She drew her hand across her throat and made a sawing gesture.

  “I told Max there’s a problem with Alain Denis and women,” Cat-Cat said, taking off her reading glasses and turning toward Niki. “I remember it from the press long ago. And after what happened this morning at breakfast, we’ll all have to be careful around Denis. But you have to understand, he’s . . .”