Murder on the Ile Sordou

by M. L. Longworth

  “Ahoy, mates!” Verlaque cried.

  “Oh, Antoine!” Marine said, laughing.

  “Let’s get a ride back with them.”

  “Great idea,” Marine said. “Hugo doesn’t look too upset for someone who probably just lost his job.”

  “I agree,” Verlaque said. “But perhaps he wanted to go anyway? People in hospitality are changing jobs all the time.”

  They walked quickly down the rocky hill, careful not to slip, toward the cove and flat rocks. Different flowers appeared, these ones violet, growing in thick small bunches out of crevices in the rocks. Marine bent down to get a better look when she saw a bit of dark-blue fabric draped over a wild rosemary bush. She stood up and walked over to it.

  “What’s that?” Verlaque called out.

  She picked it up and held it in her hands, turning it around. She then held it in the air.

  “Mon dieu,” Verlaque said.

  “Brice’s New York Yankees cap,” Marine said, quickly looking around her. “Brice!” she called out. “Brice!”

  Verlaque said, “He could be hurt and can’t talk.” He waved to Sylvie and Hugo and gave them a “time out” signal while he and Marine checked behind bushes and rocks for more traces of the boy.

  “Nothing,” Marine said when they rejoined each other.

  By the time they got down to the flat rocks that jutted out into the sea, Sylvie and Hugo were adequately attired.

  “Thanks for waiting. Can we get a ride back with you?” Verlaque asked.

  “No problemo,” Sammut replied. “We can swim to the boat, or I can pull it up close to the rocks; you can follow that path that hugs the cliff and jump on from that low white rock.”

  “We’ll swim,” Marine said.

  Hugo said, “Fine, but let’s get going. The sea is getting rough.”

  “Really?” Sylvie asked, looking at the calm water.

  “Yep,” Hugo replied. “Believe me.”

  “We found this,” Marine said, passing Brice’s hat to Hugo.

  “Brice,” Hugo and Sylvie said in unison.

  Sylvie shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up at the cliffs for signs of humans; while she and Hugo had been making love she had had the funny feeling that they were being watched.

  “He’s probably back at the hotel by now,” Verlaque said as he put the cap on his head.

  “Nice,” Sylvie said.

  “I don’t want to get it wet,” Verlaque explained.

  Marine looked at her boyfriend, with his bathing trunks covered in tropical plants, and now a New York Yankees ball cap that seemed a little too small for his large head and thick hair. Sylvie and Hugo were laughing but Marine, however odd Antoine looked, couldn’t joke about it. For some inexplicable reason her stomach was taut. As she started swimming she tried to forget what kind of creatures were silently moving under her body. A bird flew overhead and made a piercing cry. She was the first to arrive at the boat; her fear had made her swim the fastest. She pulled herself up by the boat’s small rickety ladder and sat on the hot plastic bench, looking back at Sordou. As beautiful as the island was, she saw that its barren scrubland and jagged white cliffs could be sinister. There were few trees to provide shade, and it would be so easy to fall while walking along the limestone cliffs. Why had Brice gone out? She never would have ventured off on her own; she couldn’t even imagine Antoine doing it, late at night. But young men were fearless; centuries of wars and eighteen-year-olds signing up for battle proved that. They couldn’t imagine any harm ever coming to them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  About the Bartender

  Serge Canzano loved Bloody Marys. For him, it was the all-purpose drink. Great for curing a hangover, but equally fine as an aperitif, in the true meaning of the word: a drink that gives one an appetite. The tomato juice he made fresh, every day. If the hotel’s clients didn’t order a Bloody Mary then Serge would drink the tomato juice at the end of his shift.

  He knew the history of the drink—most drinks, and wine too—by heart and would gladly relay that information to anyone who cared to listen. With this first group at Sordou, he had already determined who those interested parties would be: the judge and the schoolteacher, both from Aix. Perhaps also the judge’s girlfriend, who might be interested in the drink from a purely historical standpoint.

  During one of his too-short breaks, and during a rare time at Sordou when there were three bars of Interent connection, he had googled Marine Bonnet: history of law professor at Aix’s esteemed law school, graduated from law school in Paris second in her class, just after Renaud de Montille, and Serge did not need the Internet to tell him that Montille was now minister of the interior. Marine Bonnet also seemed to write, or coauthor, historical papers on law. He skimmed over these titles, lost on the jargon that he could not understand. But it sounded good: “All that Glitters: Sumptuary Laws in Sixteenth-Century France,” “Beyond Paris: French Law in Provence During the Middle Ages,” and “Shedding New Light on Andrea Alciato’s Emblems.” He smiled to himself, glad that some of these pampered civil servants were actually working over their long summer break. For the patrimoine of France had always been important to Serge Canzano. And he sometimes thought of bartending this way: protecting and teaching la patrimoine de la France, his beloved country’s cultural heritage.

  Canzano looked up from his post behind the marble-topped bar, where he had been daydreaming of Mlle Bonnet, to see Alain Denis take his usual seat, in a vintage wicker armchair in the farthest corner of the bar. Serge got out a champagne glass, ready for what would be the actor’s usual predinner drink: an overpriced glass of champagne. Hey, if the Le Bons could make money on that, all the more power to them. Denis glanced over in Canzano’s direction as if to say, “I’ll have the usual” and Canzano nodded as if to say, “Coming right up.” He stifled a yawn.

  Much to his delight the retired schoolteacher came in and took a seat at the bar, directly across from Canzano. “Good afternoon, Serge,” Eric Monnier said. “Quiet around here in the afternoons.”

  Canzano watched as the sixtysomething, slightly overweight ex-teacher struggled to make himself comfortable on the narrow bar stool. “What will it be, M. Monnier?” he asked.

  “I’ll leave that up to you,” Monnier replied, taking out of his pocket a Montecristo limited-edition cigar and rolling it around in his hands. “What do you suggest on this warm and breezy beautiful day on Sordou?”

  “A Bloody Mary,” Canzano answererd. “The tomato juice is fresh, using our tomatoes. Unless you want a rum with your cigar.”

  “No, a Bloody Mary sounds good. I haven’t had one in years. Gotta love a drink named after an English queen, even if she did only reign for five years, and even if she was in fact less bloody than her sister Elizabeth.”

  “Coming right up,” Canzano answered, smiling. He poured Alain Denis a glass of chilled champagne and delivered it to the actor, who couldn’t be bothered looking up or saying thank you.

  Canzano returned to the bar and got out his favorite French-made vodka and shaker and began preparing the drink.

  “I hope you add Tabasco to that,” Monnier said.

  “Of course,” Canzano replied, seizing the opportunity to show off his skills. “Tabasco became one of the all-important Bloody Mary ingredients in 1952, in America.”

  Monnier leaned forward. “Is that so? Does the drink date from the fifties?”

  Canzano smiled as he got a sprig of celery out of the fridge, thrilled to have an eager student. “No, 1917.”

  “Really? Right in the middle of the Great War?”

  “Yup. A hotel in Indiana ran out of orange juice during breakfast service. The chef, a Frenchman I believe, replaced the oranges with fresh-squeezed tomatoes, with sugar and a special sauce he had concocted.”

  “So who was the genius who added the vodka?”

&nb
sp; “An actor, George Jessel. In 1927. He also added lemon and Worcestershire sauce. He made the drink in Florida for a bunch of his friends, and it became an instant hit.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “I think the horseradish and celery salt around the rim came later, and they’re equally important ingredients, as is the lime juice.” Canzano finished making his concoction and shook the cocktail shaker in his hands.

  “Ah, what a lovely sound,” Monnier said.

  The barman put the finishing touches—the sprig of celery and a twist of lime—into the bright-red drink and passed it carefully over the bar to Eric Monnier. “I’m not sure it’s the best match with a cigar.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Monnier answered. “I can have the cigar later.”

  Canzano got to cleaning his shaker and cutting board. He was a bartender of the old school: he didn’t chat with clients unless they wanted to. And he never gave anything away about himself, no matter how gritty the information and divulging got on the other side of the bar. He had bartended for over thirty years in various hotels and bars around Marseille’s old port, from sleazy holes-in-the-wall that barely fit ten people to the elegant Sofitel high-rise, its rooftop restaurant boasting some of the best views of the city and the sea. It was at the Sofitel that Canzano realized that Marseille was best seen from up above, with the double-paned picture windows firmly closed.

  Over the years on the job he had seen one shooting (drug related), one stabbing (drug related as well), and a dozen or so fistfights—between couples, between best friends, between opposing soccer fans. He had listened to clients as they told him of their failing marriages, their affairs, their jobs, their children, their parents, and the most common topics of all: politics, and how much they either loved or despised Marseille. There were good times too and that was probably one of the reasons why he kept at it. Behind the bar he was competent, and left to himself. He didn’t have a boss hovering over him. And he had made friends with some clients and coworkers. They weren’t all a complete mess. He had helped celebrate job promotions, anniversaries, first dates, soccer victories, and general Friday-night glee. He had poured beer, pastis, martinis (mostly for foreigners or the more well-traveled enlightened French), cheap rosé wines that the bosses bought in bulk, and had opened bottles of red wine from Bordeaux and Burgundy that cost his month’s salary.

  But the more promotions Canzano had earned the further away from the client he became. At his last job at the Sofitel his job consisted of managing the bar and assisting the sommelier, a kid fresh out of the wine school in Orange who could barely work a corkscrew. Canzano missed the chitchat at the bar, and the people watching, that he had done years back. Once, when he had run the bar at a tiny place on the Cours Julien, every night for six straight years one man had come into the bar on his way home from work. He was nicely dressed: polished shoes, pressed pants, and expensive jacket. Every night he ordered a pastis, and every night he’d pull out his wallet—just before his last sip—and ask how much the drink was. And every night Serge had answered, slowly and carefully, “Deux euros vingt, monsieur.” Serge never knew the man’s name; he drank his pastis quickly and didn’t talk to Canzano or the other clients. When Serge got a job at a nicer bar down the street he wondered about the man. Did he still go, every night? Did he still ask how much it cost, even though he knew it was two euros twenty? Canzano had admired the man—for both his ability to stick to a routine, and for his politeness. “How much will that be, please?” Every night. Did the man have a wife and family at home? Serge got glimpses into peoples’ lives, but no more. And that was enough for him. He had left his family in the north when he was seventeen and never gone back.

  He glanced at the schoolteacher, who was taking his time with the drink and now writing in a black notebook. Serge noticed that it wasn’t prose that he was writing, but stanzas. He must be trying his hand at some poetry, for he had overheard the teacher say that he was now retired. Canzano guessed that the teacher had never married; perhaps he had been heartbroken when he was younger. Canzano was good at guessing people’s histories, if they didn’t tell him their life story after the third pastis.

  The actor was almost finished with his champagne and would soon be nodding in Canzano’s direction for another. After spending three days observing and overhearing the actor on Sordou, Canzano knew that what all the gossip magazines said about Alain Denis was true: that he had been a beautiful young man—which accounted for 70 percent of his film jobs—and that he had been good at acting, not brilliant, but good, but that his egomania and bad temper had permanently damaged not only his career but every relationship he had ever had. It didn’t take a psychiatrist, nor an observant barman, to see that the actor’s marriage was doomed, and that his wife’s son was suffering.

  As if on cue, Denis looked over toward the bar and tapped three times on the edge of his empty champagne flute. Canzano filled another flute with chilled Ruinart, put some olives in a small bowl, and took both over to Denis, removing his empty glass at the same time. The actor huffed and mumbled a merci and the schoolteacher turned around and grinned.

  Canzano was thankful that he wasn’t busy; Marie-Thérèse was having a break before dinner, and he hoped that she was resting somewhere with her feet up. It pained him to see someone so young already working so hard in the hotel business, but he had started even younger. None of the women on Sordou would be any good for Serge Canzano, he had seen during their first meeting back in May: Marie-Thérèse was too young; Niki Darcette too accomplished and sure of herself, although he suspected she came from an even humbler background than he did; Mme Le Bon was married—happily, he thought; and Mme Poux far too old. But Canzano hadn’t come to Sordou to get lucky—Hugo Sammut would be fulfilling that part of the job, as he probably was this very minute, with the mojito-swilling artist. And Canzano was, as appearances go, the opposite of the tanned muscular Sammut: the bartender was tall and too thin, had blond hair that was receding, a long, thin nose and thin lips, and a handlebar mustache that he kept carefully trimmed.

  Canzano had come to Sordou because he was tired of Marseille; on the island he was offered the same salary that he had been earning at the Sofitel but with room and board included. On the mainland he would have been paying rent for a dive studio apartment for the rest of his life. Why not live for free? And why live in France’s second-largest city if you didn’t need to? He didn’t go to the opera or plays, nor the cinema. Despite his love of good food, he had never made enough money to go to Marseille’s fine restaurants. On Sordou he ate extremely well, more than he ever had in his life. He hadn’t been sure of Chef Émile when he first met him: he looked too young, and the long hair in a ponytail had put Canzano off. He thought that Villey should be surfing somewhere near Biarritz, not cooking. But he had been happily proved wrong.

  What Canzano would miss of city life were museums and libraries, but perhaps he could do that on his time off. The city wasn’t that far away, after all. Dirty and noisy Marseille; it was now almost impossible to get anywhere except by motorcycle, and Serge had broken his leg in a motorcycle accident fifteen years ago and had vowed never to ride one again. So when he had overheard two colleagues at the Sofitel talking about the new hotel opening up on Sordou, Canzano used some of his thirty years’ worth of connections to find out who the new owners were. For his job interview he made the Le Bons each a Bloody Mary.

  The teacher closed his notebook and Canzano looked at him, putting down his tea towel. “Would you like another drink?” he asked.

  Monnier looked at his watch. “It’s not long until dinner. I think I’ll wait,” he said.

  “D’accord, monsieur,” Canzano replied, taking Monnier’s empty glass and putting it in the dishwasher. He hid his surprise, as he had guessed that the teacher was a two-drink-before-dinner man, and last night he had three.

  “That kid’s not back yet.” Monnier turned around and looked out of
the Jacky Bar’s windows as if he was looking for Brice.

  “He’ll be at dinner,” Canzano said.

  Monnier stared at Alain Denis, who was cursing at his iPhone because there wasn’t Internet. Monnier turned back toward Canzano and said, loudly, “Sordou is the perfect place to come to read. A book.”

  Canzano smiled as he dried and checked a wineglass for spots. “Mme Le Bon is working on starting a small library. We’ll have the books here, in the Jacky Bar. She’s buying some special editions; books that have to do with the Mediterranean. You know, like Camus’s L’étranger. The books will be a nice addition to my bar. I think I’ll put them over there”—Canzano gestured with his head—“on the rosewood credenza.”

  Monnier smiled. He liked that the barman spoke of his bar; Monnier placed much importance on people who had pride in their work, no matter what their job. He was also impressed that the barman knew of such books; all was not lost in the French education system, at least for people of their generation. “Maybe I will have another,” he said. “Please.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ode to the Rouget and Saint-Pierre

  The saint-pierre, with its large, flat oval body and spiky top fin, was one of the ugliest fish Émile Villey had ever seen. He didn’t know why the Anglo-Saxons called it a John Dory; Mr. Dory, whoever he was, had nothing to do with Saint Peter. The fish was a bottom-feeder; its large eyes had binocular vision and excellent depth perception. When the fisherman had shown up at the dock that morning with a slew of saint-pierres, Villey was over the moon, for despite its unglamorous appearance, it was one of his favorite fish to cook, and to eat.

  The chef whispered to the fish, “You’re so ugly.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Marie-Thérèse asked as she came into the kitchen. Villey stepped aside so that the girl could see the saint-pierres lined up on his work surface.