Murder on the Ile Sordou

by M. L. Longworth

  “Come along, M. Buffa,” Maxime Le Bon repeated. “And you’re not supposed to be shooting in the late afternoon,” Le Bon hissed in Buffa’s ear.

  “Who was shooting?” Buffa asked. “Certainly not me.”

  “Come along,” Le Bon repeated.

  “Not so fast, I repeat, dear hotel proprietor,” Buffa said, now walking around the dining room, enjoying the spotlight. Stopping at the Hobbses’ table he picked up their bottle of white wine and peered at its label. Shirley and Bill Hobbs looked at each other, frozen. “Good choice,” Buffa said. “Oh, the many fine Burgundies I have had in my life. . . . Such memories of Montparnasse . . .”

  Monnier slapped his knee and laughed out loud. “He’s never been to Paris in his life!” he cried out. “At least I would bet on it,” he added.

  Buffa carefully set the bottle down and winked at Mrs. Hobbs before continuing his rounds. He slowed down at Clément and Delphine Viale’s table. He looked closely at Mme Viale—who still had her napkin up to her face—and then with a wave of his hand said, “You must be the Parisian. Not the person I’m looking for this evening. However, dear madame, if you get lonely, my lighthouse is just—”

  “M. Buffa!” exclaimed Max Le Bon. “That will be enough!”

  “I told you,” Buffa said, running his hands through his hair, his eyes suddenly looking wild. “I’m looking for someone.”

  He walked on, stopping before Mme Denis, and, smiling, placed his gnarled, freckled right hand on his heart. He bent down on one knee. “My dear and glorious madame,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it.

  Emmanuelle Denis closed her eyes, trying to block her nasal passages.

  “You would be Mme Denis, would you not?” Buffa asked.

  “Yes, how did you know?” she asked, looking down at him.

  “Because someone speaks very highly of you,” Buffa said. “Not of your dim-witted husband. Him, he hates. And with good reason, might I add . . .”

  Mme Denis’s eyes widened and she stood up, pulling Buffa to his feet. “Where is my son?”

  If Buffa was surprised by the woman’s sudden strength, he didn’t show it, but the other diners stared, open-mouthed. Antoine Verlaque put his napkin down and got up.

  “No need for a show of strength, dear gentleman,” Buffa said, holding his hand up toward Verlaque. “All right!” Buffa hollered in the direction of the French doors that led to the terrace. “You can show yourself now!”

  Brice Dortignac walked in slowly, looking tired and even thinner, if that was possible in one night and one day. Mme Denis ran across the dining room and hugged him, crying softly. “My boy, my boy . . .”

  “Je suis desolé, maman,” Brice said.

  “And now I’ll take that pastis!” Prosper Buffa yelled to Max Le Bon. “Delivery of rabbit, and teenager, done. Next: drinks.” He turned and gazed around Marine and Antoine’s table and stopped when he saw Sylvie. “Saw you out on the rocks today,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows up and down.

  • • •

  Antoine Verlaque leaned back, resting his head on the wrought iron chair’s cushion, and relishing the taste of his cigar, a Sir Winston. The summer night’s air, much cooler on the island than on his terrace in downtown Aix, blew across his face. He could hear his friends—Marine, Sylvie, and Clément (Mme Viale had gone to bed, professing a headache)—discussing Émile Villey’s deceptively simple meal, plate by plate. Every time Marine spoke Verlaque’s ears perked up; even after three years, he still loved to hear her voice.

  During the dessert course Bill Hobbs had sat down beside Brice, and Verlaque had watched them talking, Mr. Hobbs’s hand now and again touching the boy’s skinny shoulder. Brice hadn’t cringed in the way other teenagers would have; instead, his head was bent down, intently listening, and he now and again looked up at the American, smiling. His mother told them that Brice’s father lived in New York, and they had lived there when Brice was in grade school.

  Some men were so comfortable around children, Verlaque pondered, and if they weren’t, it was immediately obvious, especially to the child. Bill Hobbs had that gift, or genuine interest, in the young. Verlaque’s father did not, but his grandfather had. His commissioner back in Aix, Bruno Paulik, although from outward appearances looked like some hardened medieval warrior, was a kitten around children; Verlaque had seen Paulik on the job with distressed children, and with his own ten-year-old daughter, Léa. Paulik had sent Verlaque a text message a few hours before they arrived on Sordou. It had said, “Enjoy your much-deserved holiday. Think of me here in Aix with soaring temperatures and hordes of tourists. The grapes will be well on their way by the time you get back; Hélène has done miracles bringing them back to life, and Léa says they look like little green pearls. Bonnes vacances, Bruno.” Antoine Verlaque hadn’t erased the text message as he usually did, but kept it and read it again before coming down to dinner. As the inheritor of a flour fortune, Verlaque had more money than he knew what to do with and had recently bought a vineyard and crumbling farmhouse, giving it to Bruno Paulik and his wife, Hélène. Hélène Paulik was a rising star in the French wine world, but without a family fortune she was destined to make someone else’s wine. Verlaque had done enough research that he knew he might never make money on the vineyard, but it would be Hélène’s wine, not someone else’s, and he had been thrilled to give her that chance. The money was no good to anyone sitting in a Parisian bank, and the funny part of it was, there was still much more.

  He thought of Bruno, his father, grandfather, and men like Alain Denis. And where was Antoine Verlaque in this lineup of men? He had little experience with children, and they sometimes frightened him more than hardened criminals; but perhaps it wasn’t fear, but merely worry about his own inexperience? Why not learn from others? He could begin to treat children, whose ever they were, as he had been treated by Charles and Emmeline, his paternal grandparents: with attention, intelligence, and kindness. He looked over at Marine and she was staring at him, smiling. She winked and his heart melted.

  Serge Canzano came out onto the terrace with a bottle of champagne. “The champagne is on the house,” Canzano said, popping the cork. “In celebration of the boy’s return.” He gently set the bottle down—giving it a twist—into a silver bucket and walked away, looking forward to cleaning up the bar and getting into bed with volume three of his Napoleon biography.

  “The champagne is also in hopes that we keep our mouths shut about Prosper Buffa when we get off Sordou,” Verlaque said, leaning over and taking the bottle out of the champagne bucket and pouring, beginning with Marine’s and Sylvie’s flutes. He looked up at Clément Viale, remembering that his old friend had invested in Sordou’s hotel. “Sorry, mate. That came out wrong; I was completely amused by the island’s resident madman.”

  “As was I,” Viale said, a little unconvincingly.

  “Have you ever seen a kid eat so much?” Sylvie asked.

  “What’s going to become of him?” Marine asked. “His stepfather isn’t going to change. It’s only a matter of time before he runs off again.”

  “Where is M. Dortignac, Brice’s father?” Sylvie asked.

  “Emmanuelle told us that he lives in New York,” Marine replied. “He’s a commodities trader.”

  “Ah, that’s why the kid speaks such good English,” Clément said.

  Verlaque pictured Brice’s father, yelling down the phone in some Wall Street high-rise. Rotten with kids, he imagined. Alain Denis was obviously in competition with other men and had no interest in children. What made women like Emmanuelle Denis, obviously intelligent and strong—as she had proven this evening with Prosper Buffa—choose men like Denis?

  “Bill Hobbs has offered to take Brice fishing,” Marine continued. “I overheard them talking about it during dessert.”

  “Adorable,” Sylvie said. “Maybe Brice can give the Hobbses some fashion advice. So
, did Brice tell Prosper Buffa all about us? I certainly got that impression.” Sylvie closed her eyes for the briefest second; she didn’t care that old Prosper had seen her and Hugo making love, but she cringed at the thought that the young teen might have also been watching. She prayed not.

  “I did too,” Verlaque said, puffing on his cigar and looking up at the sky. “And no wonder. We’re a pretty odd lot.”

  “Speak for yourself, Dough Boy,” Clément said. The group laughed.

  “Was that your first meeting with Prosper Buffa?” Verlaque asked ClémentViale.

  “Yes,” Viale replied, sipping his champagne. “I knew that there was a former lighthouse keeper on the island, but had never seen him before. And what a name! Prosper! As if!”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Marine said. “Without wanting to sound corny, maybe M. Buffa is prosperous, in a nonmonetary way.”

  “You’re right, Marine,” Sylvie said. “You do sound corny.”

  The group laughed again. “Imagine,” Verlaque said. “Vincent van Gogh really did look like that. And nobody spoke to him . . . or very few people. The poor soul. I think of that every time I go to Arles . . . expecting him to appear from around a corner, muttering to himself.”

  “And to think that he only sold one painting, to Theo, his brother,” Sylvie added. She looked down into her champagne glass and reflected on her successful career as an art photographer. Thanks to her representative galleries in Berlin and London she made enough money to have paid for her apartment in Aix and secure her daughter Charlotte’s future.

  “Surely you don’t mean we should befriend our island recluse?” Clément asked, laughing nervously.

  “Brice obviously did,” Marine said. She picked up the bottle and refilled everyone’s glasses. “To recluses, and eccentrics, everywhere,” she said, lifting her glass in the air.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Champion Swimmer

  A seagull’s scream pierced the morning clear sky, waking Verlaque and Bonnet up at 9:10 a.m. Verlaque moaned. “Oiseau de merde,” he said. “What is the seagull’s purpose on earth?” He sighed and rolled over.

  “Antoine, it’s after nine a.m.!” Marine said, looking at her watch and then putting it back on the nightstand. She hugged Verlaque and then got out of bed, putting on the housecoat supplied by the hotel. “We’ll be the last ones downstairs for breakfast.”

  “All right, all right,” Verlaque said. “I hate breakfast, anyway.” He threw back the linen sheet and then quickly put it back in place, forgetting that he was naked. “You naughty girl,” he said, looking at Marine, who was standing at the foot of the bed.

  “Great night last night,” she said, smiling. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you too,” he said, once again throwing back the sheet and this time getting out of bed.

  Marine walked over and hugged him. “I love your smell,” she said.

  Verlaque buried his head in her curly auburn hair and was about to kiss her when another call rang out. “That was a woman, not a seagull,” Marine said, pulling away from the judge and looking toward the terrace.

  “Someone doesn’t like the coffee here?” Verlaque said.

  Marine opened the French doors and stood outside, leaning against the balcony’s railing. She couldn’t see anything, but she could hear the banging of doors and rushing footsteps.

  The scream now sounded like sobbing, and loud voices wafted up to their room, coming from the hotel’s terrace. “Let’s go,” Verlaque said, opening a drawer, pulling out the first clothes within reach, and quickly getting dressed.

  Marine did the same, throwing on a beach dress over her head, and jumping into a pair of clean underwear. “We smell like sex, I’m sure,” she said. “We’ll have to shower later.”

  “Either no one will smell it,” Verlaque said, opening the room’s door and letting Marine pass through, “or everyone will.”

  Coming down the hall was Eric Monnier, holding his black notebook in his hand. “Did you hear those screams?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Verlaque said.

  “They were coming from outside,” Marine added.

  “It doesn’t sound good,” Monnier said. “Stupidly obvious thing to say. Sorry.”

  On the stairway down to the lobby they ran into Clément Viale, who was still in the process of buttoning up his shirt. “Horrible sounds!” he said. “What’s going on?”

  The lobby was deserted, and through the dining room they could see that the Jacky Bar was as well. The glass doors leading to the terrace had been propped wide open, and the foursome made their out.

  “What on earth?” Verlaque asked. He did a quick take, and it seemed that almost the entire staff, and guests, were present, standing or sitting on the terrace. The tables had been set for breakfast and were strewn with croissant crumbs and spots of jam and unfinished cups of coffee.

  Marie-Thérèse was sitting in a chair, sobbing. Émile Villey was kneeling before her, quietly speaking. An older woman, wearing a crisply ironed old-fashioned maid’s uniform, and whom Marine had said hello to in the halls, was sitting beside Marie-Thérèse, with her arm around the girl.

  Max Le Bon, along with Hugo Sammut and Serge Canzano, was standing off to the side. Max quickly walked over to Verlaque and said, “Marie-Thérèse has just had the fright of her life, I’m afraid.”

  “What happened? Verlaque asked.

  “It’s Alain Denis,” Max said, whispering. “Marie-Thérèse went for a walk this morning, along the cliffs on the south side of the island, and found him . . . his body, I mean . . .”

  “What?” Verlaque hissed. “Dead?”

  Max nodded, and looked in the direction of Marie-Thérèse.

  “What exactly happened?” Verlaque asked.

  “We don’t know,” Le Bon answered. “Cat-Cat and Niki have gone to tell Mme Denis, who’s still in her room.”

  “And Brice?” Verlaque asked.

  “Fishing,” Max replied. “With M. Hobbs. On the other side of the island.”

  Hugo Sammut came over and said good morning to Verlaque and Marine. “I heard Marie-Thérèse screaming from my cabin. We should go,” he said. “To . . . the body.”

  “Of course,” Verlaque answered. Eric Monnier and Clément Viale came and offered their help. “Thank you,” Verlaque said. “We may as well all go, since we don’t know what we’re going to see when we get there. What did Marie-Thérèse say, exactly?”

  “I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it,” Max replied. “She can’t stop crying. I only know that he’s on the south shore . . . where the steep cliffs are, on a small beach . . . dead. Mme Poux,” he continued, looking over in the direction of Marie-Thérèse. “Could you please . . .”

  “Certainly,” Mme Poux said. “We’ll take care of her.”

  “I’ll stay here too,” Serge Canzano said. “I’ll clear up the breakfast terrace.”

  “Come, Marie-Thérèse,” Émile said, gently lifting the girl out of the chair with Mme Poux’s help. “Let’s get you into a comfortable armchair with a cup of tea.” Émile nodded in the direction of the judge.

  “Very well,” Verlaque said. “Let’s go, then.”

  • • •

  As they walked, Marine thought to herself that if anyone had been watching their group they would have looked very odd as they walked in single file, even though the cliff path was at times wide enough for two or even three people. Hugo Sammut was in the lead, being the most familiar with the walk, with Max behind him, then Verlaque, Marine, Clément Viale, and finally—coughing as he stumbled along the path—Eric Monnier.

  Hugo stopped after they had been walking for fifteen minutes and turned around to speak. “In just a few minutes, we’ll veer left and descend, on a rough, steep path, toward the south shore and a little cove. I’m fairly certain that’s where Marie-Thérèse was. There�
��s a small stone beach there, and some flat rocks that are nice for sitting on. I go there often myself. Oh, Mme Hobbs . . .”

  The group turned around to see Shirley Hobbs walking quickly toward them. “I heard the commotion on the terrace,” she said. “The bartender told me what happened; his English is quite good!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hobbs,” Verlaque replied in English. He didn’t like the excitement in her voice. “But this is really not—”

  Mrs. Hobbs waved her hand in the air. “I insist on coming,” she said. “I’m a trained nurse. That young waitress was in hysterics. . . . I heard her wailing. . . . Perhaps the actor’s not dead and needs medical attention?”

  “Very well,” Verlaque said. “Elle est infirmière,” he told the rest of the group.

  “A nurse could be useful,” Hugo said.

  They continued walking and Marine took the opportunity to speak to Verlaque while the path was still wide enough. “Someone will have to go and find Bill and Brice,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Verlaque said. “But since they left so early this morning, I think they’ll be back at the hotel at the same time we will . . . around noon. Where is Sylvie?”

  “She could sleep through an earthquake,” Marine said. “In fact, she once did, when she was in China for a photo conference.”

  “My question is,” Verlaque whispered, “what was Marie-Thérèse doing down here in the early morning?”

  The walk down the path, although steep, took less than five minutes. The stone beach that Hugo had told them about was tiny—about twenty feet across—and to the right and left of it were limestone rocks jutting out into the sea. And there in the middle of the beach was Alain Denis, lying facedown, wearing his usual bright-pink linen shirt and white linen shorts. The group instinctively rushed toward the body, stopping short about a yard away, for the gray and white stones surrounding the body were stained dark red. Hugo leaned down on one knee, as did Verlaque.

  Eric Monnier stood beside Marine and said, under his breath, “Dogs the world over will be in mourning.” He walked around the body and looked out at the sea, his hands held behind his back.