Murder on the Ile Sordou

by M. L. Longworth

  “Maybe he knows Shirley Hobbs from Vietnam,” Sylvie whispered.

  “They wouldn’t recognize each other after all these years,” Paulik pointed out.

  “I was joking, Bruno,” she replied.

  “The baskets,” Marine said, setting down her fork.

  “Yes,” replied Verlaque. “Isnard’s cousin hid his camera in the baskets.”

  “If it’s even his cousin,” Marine replied.

  “After lunch I’ll go and tell Émile and the Le Bons that they’ll have to find another way to get food here,” Verlaque said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t be too upset if I were you,” Sylvie said, looking down at the front page of La Provence. “You look quite good in the photo . . . ’cause cameras add about ten pounds, right? You look genuinely svelte.”

  Marine broke into laughter and Verlaque put on his reading glasses. “Let me look at that again,” he said.

  • • •

  The remainder of the lunch was uneventful, except for the dessert that Émile had managed to make: raspberry sorbet, ginger cookies, and chantilly.

  After lunch, Verlaque reported the missing ring to the Le Bons and showed them the newspaper. Max and Cat-Cat seemed to Verlaque to be surprised, and as angered by the article—and photo—as he was.

  “This certainly wasn’t the kind of press we were hoping for,” Max said, folding the paper in half and handing it back to Verlaque.

  “Any publicity is good publicity,” Velaque said. “No?”

  “I hope you aren’t suggesting that we set this up,” Cat-Cat said.

  Verlaque hesitated before answering. “No. If you had wanted this kind of thing, I assume you would have approached a larger newspaper.”

  The Le Bons laughed.

  “I’ll arrange for provisions to be brought to Sordou by a police boat, for now,” Verlaque said. “Until you find another deliverer.”

  “Thank you,” Cat-Cat said. “I’ll have Émile give you a list of what he needs food-wise for the next few days.”

  “About Mme Denis’s ring,” Max Le Bon said. “Did she accuse any of our staff?”

  “No,” Verlaque replied truthfully. “But she claims to have thoroughly searched her room too.”

  “I suppose you know about Niki’s past?” Cat-Cat asked in a hushed voice.

  “Yes,” Verlaque replied. “Does she have keys to the room?”

  “Yes, we all have access to the keys,” Cat-Cat said. “But only four of us really ever use them: Niki, Marie-Thérèse, Mme Poux, and myself. And I trust all of them, as much as I trust my own husband.”

  “Well, if you could talk to them about it and have them keep an eye out,” Verlaque said, “as the ring isn’t our chief concern at the moment. When you ask Émile for his list,” he went on, “maybe you could . . .”

  “Yes?” Cat-Cat asked.

  “I was going to suggest that Émile vary the menu a bit, with some meat.”

  “I’ll second that,” Max quickly added.

  “Oh really?” Cat-Cat asked, looking at both men with a perplexed expression.

  “The food on Sordou is fantastic,” Verlaque said. “It’s just to change it a bit.”

  “Émile does do this great thing with chorizo,” Cat-Cat said.

  “Chorizo?” Verlaque asked. “That would be great.”

  “Good,” Cat-Cat replied. “I’ll tell Émile that you’d like to try it. Of course, it all depends if he can get his hands on some good monkfish to go with it.”

  “Oh,” Verlaque said. “It’s a fish dish. I have to continue the interviews; I’ll see you both later.”

  After Verlaque had left, Cat-Cat said to her husband, “The judge could use more fish in his diet, if you ask me.”

  Max Le Bon, married to his wife for over twenty years, didn’t argue. Besides, whenever he got off the island, to visit their bank, or do other business in Marseille, he went to La Côte de Boeuf, a restaurant specializing in grilled meats.

  • • •

  “Hello, Mrs. Hobbs,” Verlaque said in English as he saw Shirley Hobbs sitting on a chair in the hallway. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “My husband’s in there now,” she replied.

  “Oh,” Verlaque said, perplexed. Mr. Hobbs didn’t speak French, and Bruno Paulik spoke very little English. He opened the door and went in; Hobbs and Paulik were laughing, bent over Mr. Hobbs’s iPhone.

  “My kids gave me this gadget,” Bill Hobbs said to Verlaque, holding up his phone. “I use it mainly for photos. The commissioner and I were having a little bit of a communication problem, so I thought I’d regale him with some family photos.”

  “Their dog is hilarious,” Paulik told Verlaque in French.

  “J’imagine,” Verlaque replied. He was already hungry, and they had just eaten lunch. There was also a murder that needed solving, but they seemed no closer to an answer than they had been yesterday morning, down at the cove. Verlaque sat down, and Hobbs took his cue, putting his phone away.

  “The Le Bons both saw you down on the dock on the afternoon of the murder,” Verlaque began. “Do you remember anything odd, anything at all?”

  “No,” Hobbs replied. “I mean not in the sense that there was nothing odd out there, but I could see that the water was churning up a bit.”

  “No boats?”

  “Not a one.”

  Verlaque translated for Paulik, who replied that he had understood most of it.

  “You’ve been around the sea a lot,” Verlaque said. “Bellingham is on the coast, no?”

  “Yes,” Hobbs said. “Although the Pacific Ocean is quite different from this big swimming pool you call the Med.”

  “In your opinion,” Verlaque went on, “could someone have swum to shore early that evening, coming by boat from the other direction?”

  Hobbs reflected for a moment before replying. “It would be a risk; they’d have to be a strong swimmer. Very strong. But I guess anything is possible, if you want something bad enough. That’s what we used to tell our sons, anyway.”

  “And only Eric Monnier was on the dock with you?” Verlaque asked.

  “Yes,” Hobbs replied, holding still his shaking right hand. “Sorry, the Parkinson’s flares up when I’m nervous,” he explained. “Eric and I were trying to communicate, and then he went over to the bench opposite and smoked his cigar.”

  “Did you leave first?”

  “No, he did. About five minutes before I did. . . . I got back to our room at six-forty-five p.m.”

  “Did you hear the gunshot?” Paulik asked in passable English.

  “Yes,” Hobbs answered. “When I was on the beach. Um, has it occurred to you that this beachcomber . . .”

  “Prosper?”

  “Yes, Prosper. Is it possible that he may have been hunting, and accidently . . .”

  “Shot a man at close range, on a beach?” Verlaque asked. “While hunting rabbits?”

  “Well, it sounds stupid when you put it like that. But there are lots of birds there.”

  “And your wife?” Verlaque asked. “Was she in your room when you got back?”

  “Yes, she was painting,” Hobbs answered. “She touches up her watercolors in our room, at the desk.”

  “What time did you get up the next morning, for fishing?” Verlaque asked. “It must have been early.”

  “Six a.m.,” Hobbs replied. “Brice and I had agreed to meet in the Jacky Bar at six-twenty a.m. He was waiting for me when I got there.”

  Paulik nodded, so Verlaque knew that he was following the English.

  “And you didn’t go near the cove, obviously,” Verlaque said.

  “No, we walked down the steps and turned left at the harbor, so to speak, and made for the cliffs on the north side of the island.”

  “What did you talk a
bout?”

  “We did talk a little about Alain Denis, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Hobbs said.

  “That is what I’m getting at.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, I think our conversation is private.”

  “Please,” Paulik said, and then stopped, as he couldn’t find the English words to continue.

  “The boy’s stepfather was murdered,” Verlaque said. “You’d be helping Brice by telling us what you talked about; you wouldn’t be accusing him.”

  Bill Hobbs bit his bottom lip. “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Oh?”

  “I can’t, and won’t, tell you,” Hobbs said. “I’m sorry.”

  • • •

  Mrs. Hobbs’s interview went quickly. She confirmed that Bill Hobbs had come back to their room just after 6:45 p.m., and then they had dressed for dinner and played a game of gin rummy on their terrace. No, she and her husband hadn’t discussed his fishing expedition, as that was “Bill’s business.” Just before she got up to leave, Verlaque asked her about Vietnam. She explained that she had been fresh out of nursing school, and had lost a brother in the war, and because of that, she signed up to volunteer. She wanted to help other soldiers who needed medical care (her brother had died not in the jungle, but on a hospital bed in an army base, of an infection). She stayed in Vietnam on and off for five years, and then worked in a hospital in Seattle, where she met Bill, who worked across the street at one of his family’s hardware stores. They married late, for those days, she said: she was thirty-two and Bill was thirty-four.

  • • •

  Sylvie Grassi kept so serious throughout her interview that Verlaque almost thanked her. As funny as she was, he found her constant wisecracks draining. Her bit of revealing news was that she had overheard the Le Bons arguing; she had been using the guest toilets beside their office and had overheard—either through the vents, or the thin walls—their conversation. “Max accused Cat-Cat of being heartless,” Sylvie told Verlaque and Paulik. “She said that the murder would bring the hotel some publicity, and clients. He seemed disgusted by the thought, and she sounded nonplussed. Very practical and matter-of-fact. And then Cat-Cat reminded Max that the hotel was his idea, and that the investors were getting edgy. And then the weird thing was, after their argument I could hear them talking to Marie-Thérèse, who must have overheard but who was pretending not to, and after she left the Le Bons commented that she had most likely overheard every word they said.”

  After Sylvie had left, Verlaque doodled on a scrap piece of paper, listing the hotel’s employees’ and guests’ names, and at the top of the page wrote “motives.” Paulik leaned over and looked at the page as Verlaque wrote. Beside Mme Denis’s name he wrote “inheritance, and hatred.” Paulik nodded in approval. Next to Brice’s name, “hatred.”

  “Niki?” Verlaque asked.

  “Hatred of men?” Paulik suggested. Verlaque wrote it down.

  “Serge, the bartender?” Verlaque asked.

  “They’re both from Marseille,” Paulik said. “Perhaps some old vendetta. Seems far-fetched, doesn’t it?”

  Verlaque put a question mark after Canzano’s name.

  “Marie-Thérèse has no motive,” Verlaque said. “But she was protecting her bosses from us. . . . She didn’t tell us about their argument.”

  “Well, the Hobbses are definitely out of the picture,” Paulik said. “And Eric Monnier, as he was with Bill Hobbs.”

  Verlaque said, “I know what you’re saying. . . . The Hobbses can’t possibly have any reason for killing a French film star whom they’ve probably never heard of, Eric neither, for that matter. I can’t imagine him ever going to the cinema. But they’re here for a reason. They are here to shed some kind of light on the story.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Le Buzz

  “I may not seem very friendly at times,” Cat-Cat Le Bon began her interview. “But I’d like to say how thankful I am that you are both here, on Sordou, right now.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Verlaque said. “Is it easy for one to phone the hotel, for example, and find out who will be staying here during a certain week?”

  “Certainly not,” Cat-Cat said, frowning.

  “Let’s say I was to call and pretend I was a cousin,” Verlaque said, thinking of Isnard. “And I wanted to double-check when my cousin was booked in here.”

  “Well, we’d have to be pretty thick to fall for that,” Cat-Cat replied.

  Bruno Paulik smiled.

  “Do you think that whoever murdered M. Denis would have wanted an examining magistrate here? For kicks?” Cat-Cat asked.

  “Something like that,” Verlaque said.

  “That just seems . . . stupid.”

  “Was it kept fairly quiet that Alain Denis would be on vacation?” Paulik asked.

  “Oh no!” Cat-Cat laughed. “Didn’t you know? Now I understand why you keep asking these questions. Alain Denis announced it on Le Buzz sometime in late spring.”

  Verlaque looked at Paulik, who was busy writing. They would check the date that the television show aired against the dates of bookings.

  “I would have told you,” Cat-Cat went on, “but I thought you knew.”

  “I’ve never seen that show,” Verlaque said. He hated French television; he had only recently figured out how to watch his favorite television show—where an English architect visits couples who are building or renovating homes in the English countryside—on his computer.

  “I haven’t seen it either,” Paulik added.

  “That must have helped your bookings,” Verlaque said.

  “Only marginally, from what we can tell,” Cat-Cat replied. “M. Denis was fairly vague when asked about his vacations, so you’d have to know Sordou, or do some research, to figure out where he was talking about. There are dozens of islands between here and Nice.”

  “What exactly did he say?” Paulik asked, pen ready.

  “That he was going home,” Cat-Cat said. “To the sun and sea, to an enchanted, unvisited island.”

  “And he didn’t mention Sordou?” Verlaque asked.

  “No, unfortunately for us,” Cat-Cat said. “If one didn’t know Provence very well, they would probably mistake his hint for another island. We’d only just opened the hotel: there hasn’t been a hotel running here since 1966. Speaking of bookings . . .”

  Verlaque braced himself; he knew that the Le Bons were anxious to reopen the hotel. “I’m afraid it’s impossible until we solve this crime,” he said.

  “And we’re just supposed to sit here and lose clients, and lose money?”

  “We’re working as fast as we can,” Paulik offered.

  “When are your next bookings?” Verlaque asked. “Saturday?”

  “Yes,” Cat-Cat said.

  “That gives us three more days,” Verlaque said. “If we aren’t done by then, perhaps we can move the investigation to the mainland, in Marseille.”

  Cat-Cat drew in a big breath and then sighed with relief.

  “The afternoon of the murder,” Verlaque said. “Were you in your office, or room?”

  “Room,” Cat-Cat replied. “We have a small apartment at the back of the hotel, next to Mme Poux’s. I was lying on the bed reading when I heard the shot, and Max was in the shower, so he didn’t hear it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” she replied, “since I assumed it was Prosper. But I was angry, because our clients could have gotten hurt. I had seen Mme Hobbs earlier in the day, painting by the sea, and her husband and M. Monnier sitting together down by the dock.”

  “What time?”

  “Well, it would have been before five-thirty p.m., because that was when I came up to our apartment to rest.”

  “Were you worried when you hired someone who had spent time in jail?” Ver
laque asked.

  Mme Le Bon smirked. “It was Max’s idea, not mine,” she said. “He’s the more benevolent of the two of us.” Verlaque thought of their argument, as described by Sylvie. “He had read a newspaper article about how well ex-convicts can do in the restaurant and hotel business, if given a chance and properly trained,” she continued. “That young chef in England started it.”

  “Jamie Oliver,” Verlaque offered.

  “Yes, that’s him. But I’m glad, now, that we hired Niki.”

  “She seems very dedicated,” Verlaque said. “And efficient. How did she get on with M. Denis?”

  “I was afraid you would ask that,” Cat-Cat replied.

  “Oh?”

  “Niki didn’t like him, let’s just put it that way.”

  “I’m afraid, Mme Le Bon,” Paulik said, “that you’ll have to be more specific.”

  “He . . . made a pass at Niki,” she said.

  “Just once?” Verlaque asked. “Mlle Darcette didn’t tell us.”

  “More than once,” Cat-Cat said flatly.

  “She told you, then?”

  “Yes, she was livid,” Cat-Cat said. “I’ve never seen her so upset.”

  “Upset-sad, or upset-angry?” Verlaque asked.

  “The latter.”

  • • •

  Max Le Bon seemed more nervous than his wife. In fact, Velaque had commented to Paulik at the end of the day that Cat-Cat Le Bon hadn’t seemed the slightest bit nervous, which they both knew was rare. “I’ve seen even police get nervous under police questioning,” Bruno Paulik had said.

  Max Le Bon had confirmed that both he and his wife were in their apartment when the gun went off, and when pressed admitted that Niki Darcette had been furious over Denis’s unwelcome flirtations. What he was able to add had to do with the hotel, as if he wanted to release some of the tension: “We weren’t able to book all of the rooms, even this week, even with Alain Denis here,” M. Le Bon said. “It’s that single that you are in, commissioner.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Verlaque asked.

  “Any number of things, none of which we thought of when we naively bought this hotel,” Le Bon said. “Proximity to Marseille . . . or is fifteen miles too far out? Too expensive, or not expensive enough? Too quiet? Who knows . . .” His voice fell off.