“I saw them,” Max Le Bon began, walking toward the judge. “I was in the office, and I saw the policeman accompany them to their room. What on earth is going on?”
Verlaque gathered the group together, around the bar, and told them the long story of the amphoras, and the connection between Eric Monnier, Bill Hobbs, and Alain Denis. When he had finished, Marie-Thérèse said quietly, “That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard,” and she slowly sat down. Serge Canzano began wiping down the bar, and Émile Villey sighed and went into the kitchen.
Emmanuelle Denis was the first to approach Verlaque, and she said, “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. I think that Brice and I will go back to Paris early.”
“I understand,” Verlaque replied.
“If you’re ever in Paris . . . Neuilly, actually . . .”
“I don’t get up there often,” Verlaque replied, lying.
“Oh well,” she said, sighing. “Brice,” she called to her son.
Brice walked over to Verlaque and shook his hand. “Thanks,” he said.
Verlaque reached into his jacket pocket and gave Brice Eric Monnier’s copy of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. “Try some poetry for a change,” Verlaque said. “There’s a beautiful poem about Billie Holiday in there.”
“Sweet, thanks,” Brice replied, taking the book. “I like her singing.”
“So do I,” Verlaque said. “Goodbye then, Brice. Goodbye, Mme Denis.”
He turned around and was about to find Marine when Clément Viale tapped him on the shoulder. “Goodbye, old Dough Boy,” he said.
“Leaving early?” Verlaque asked. He hoped the Viales wouldn’t be on the TGV back to Paris with Emmanuelle and Brice.
“’Fraid so,” he replied. “Delphine misses the children, and frankly, so do I.”
Verlaque smiled and shook his old friend’s hand, hoping that the Viales would make a go of their marriage. “Good luck, Clément,” he said.
Marie-Thérèse sat in Eric Monnier’s usual spot, with Niki’s arm around her. Émile waved from one of the hublots; a chef’s work was never done, and he was busy preparing their dinner.
“Thank you for your help, Judge Verlaque,” Max Le Bon said. “By the way, Mme Denis’s emerald ring turned up; I don’t know if you noticed that she was wearing it. Serge found it in a bowl of lemons that he keeps on the bar.”
“Yes, I saw that she had it on. I’d almost forgotten about the ring until this morning,” Verlaque said. “Bill Hobbs told me that he took it; Mme Poux had left the door of the Denis’s room open when she ran back to the laundry room to get more towels. Bill said he could practically see it from the hallway, so he walked in, grabbed it, and immediately threw it in with the lemons.”
“What on earth for?”
“To buy Eric some time,” Verlaque answered. “To create a diversion. Bill hoped that we’d make more of a fuss about the ring than we did, and Eric could slip off the island.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Le Bon said, taking a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handing it to the judge. “We took this message for you earlier,” he said. “The officer said you’d understand.”
Verlaque read the note and smiled. It read: “I just spoke with Mme Navarre; her husband has been filming on location in Thailand the past fifteen days. Officer Flamant.”
“Can I get you a stiff drink?” Le Bon asked.
Verlaque paused before answering. “Perhaps later,” he said. “What I’d really like now is a swim, since we still don’t have water. A sea swim.”
“So would I,” Max Le Bon said. “I’ve only been in the sea once since we came to Sordou. Should we invite the others?”
“Good idea.”
“Dear guests and staff,” Max called out. “There will be an informal swim, followed by champagne on the terrace, in about”—Max looked at his watch—“thirty minutes.”
“May I come?!” Marie-Thérèse called out, then quickly covered her mouth.
“May she?” Verlaque asked.
“Of course,” Cat-Cat Le Bon said. “Who else wants to go for a swim?”
“I do,” Niki replied.
“I’ll stay here and keep Émile company,” Serge Canzano said, drying off a wineglass. He found his boss’s newly found enthusiasm a bit childish, embarrassing even. Besides, he hadn’t swum in thirty years.
“Mme Poux!” Marie-Thérèse said. “You should come!”
Mme Poux, who had been sitting with Cat-Cat, unconsciously touched her carefully coiffed head. “Just to watch, my dear. And perhaps to sun a bit.”
“Then it’s decided,” Max said. “We’ll all meet at the ladder by the dock in thirty minutes.”
Verlaque gave Marine more detail into Hobbs’s story while they changed into their swimsuits. Once changed, Marine sat on the edge of the bed, her hands on her knees. She hunched over and began to cry, and Verlaque sat beside her and held her. “We didn’t have dinner with Eric Monnier,” she finally said, after blowing her nose. “I wanted to, that night we had the wine from Calabria and the puttanesca, but he declined. He didn’t want to get to close to anyone.”
“Yes. But you took the time to play cards with Eric.”
“I asked Eric to play cribbage so that I could observe him,” she said. “But by the end of the game I had forgotten that he was a murder suspect. We had such a good time. I was comfortable with Eric. I even thought of giving him my mother’s phone number, so that he could go to one of her book clubs; I think she belongs to three. But when my father told me that Eric had cancer, I knew that he was the murderer.”
“I was convinced it was Bill Hobbs,” Verlaque said. “I hope not to work on another murder for a long time.”
“You liked Eric too.”
Verlaque nodded.
“Perhaps the next murderer will be a horrible person,” Marine said, trying to smile.
“Yes, let’s hope,” Verlaque answered. “Someone we both detest.”
“You know, there were one or two times when Bill Hobbs understood the French,” Marine said. “I just thought he was picking it up . . . that same night, when we had the puttanseca, remember?”
“Yes, he knew how to translate supions into squid,” Verlaque said. “Up to that point I still had no idea he played a part in this. But there was something that early on in the week Sylvie said to Bruno, about le général and Shirley Hobbs not being able to recognize each other—if they had crossed paths in Vietnam—after all these years. I kept thinking what a good plan that would be; a man as self-obsessed as Denis wouldn’t recognize someone from his past, and we had all these people on the island who were born around the same time, and who lived at one time or another in Marseille. We change, I daresay, from eighteen to sixty years. Because of that I thought that Mme Poux had killed Denis. She didn’t have an alibi, either. And when we looked at Bill Hobbs’s passport last night, we both thought he shot Denis.”
“Wait,” Marine said. “What about their alibi? People saw Eric and Bill together, down at the dock.”
“Yes and no,” Verlaque said, getting up and taking their beach towels. “Think about it; there were all kinds of people who saw the two men together, at the dock, pretending that they didn’t understand each other. Bill and Eric were each other’s alibi, which should have rung alarm bells for me, since up until then they hadn’t spent much time together. But no one was really sure of the time; only that Eric and Bill were down there at some time. And when Hugo saw them from his cabin, he admitted that he could only see Bill Hobbs, not Eric.”
• • •
Marine sat on the flat rocks, letting the seawater wash up over the rocks and onto her lap. She could see Antoine and Sylvie, not far from the sea; they had been swimming lengths, along Sordou’s south coast, and were now treading water and chatting. It was Friday, their last full day on the island. Le Sunrise wo
uld be back for them tomorrow after breakfast, but minus a few guests. She closed her eyes, not wanting to think of the Hobbses, now in a Marseille hotel, having interviews with their lawyer, and certainly not of Eric Monnier. A coast guard boat had pulled up to Sordou’s dock the previous evening, and the captain had got off the boat and asked to speak with Judge Verlaque, holding his cap in his hand. Marine had been sitting on a bench with Sylvie and Hugo Sammut, and Hugo had said, “Looks like they found Eric’s body. The coast guard never comes around here.”
Marine waved to her friends and leaned back, knowing she should have put more sunblock on, but reveling in the warm water against her skin. It was so refreshing she could hardly feel the July sun beating down on her. In Aix during the two summer months she avoided the sun, walking on the shady side of the street. Here, the sun felt good.
“Hello there.”
Marine looked up and saw Émile Villey standing beside her. “Salut, Émile,” she said. “Ça va?”
“Just out foraging for our last dinner,” he said, kneeling down on the rock and tilting his basket toward her. “And the generator’s been fixed, by the way.”
Marine lifted out a bunch of dark-green leaves and held them in her hands. “It looks like a cross between spinach and Swiss chard.”
“Betterave maritime,” Émile said.
“Maritime beetroot?”
“Yep. It grows all over here, by seaside rocky or sandy coasts. I first discovered it when I worked in Arcachon.”
“It’s how our ancestors ate,” Marine said.
“Certainly Sordou’s first inhabitants,” Émile said. “I’m going to fry it in lemon and garlic and olive oil.”
“What else is on the menu?”
“Top secret,” Émile said. “There’s some meat for him,” he said, gesturing with his head toward Antoine Verlaque, who was now swimming toward the rocks with Sylvie.
“Antoine will appreciate it,” she said. “For someone who spent a lot of his youth near the ocean in Normandy, he’s a real meat and potatoes guy.”
“I’ll see you later then,” Émile said, picking up his basket. “Still one or two ingredients to hunt down, then into the kitchen I go.” He looked out at the sea and said, “I’m glad they found the body.”
“Me too.”
“I didn’t want to think of M. Monnier out there.”
“No,” she answered.
“I saw you playing cards with him,” Émile said, “from one of the hublots. It looked like you beat him.”
Marine smiled. “I did,” she said. “But he took it well.”
• • •
Max Le Bon banged the edge of a glass with a small spoon.
“Don’t break the glass,” Cat-Cat said.
“I’m being careful,” Max whispered, vexed. “Good evening everyone,” he called out. “Welcome to our last dinner on Sordou. Émile has prepared yet another stellar meal, and I hope you all enjoy it. Cat-Cat and I will be joining you for dinner, and we’ve taken the liberty of inviting the rest of our small staff to join us as well. We thought, that given the eventful week, they merited a gastronomic meal.”
“Plus there are no more guests left,” Sylvie whispered. They applauded, and Marie-Thérèse, Niki, Mme Poux, Hugo, Serge, and Émile stood up and bowed.
“Although they will be getting up periodically to help serve,” Max said, smiling. “I’d also like to welcome M. Buffa and Général Le Favre. You both look very regal this evening, gentlemen.”
Prosper Buffa beamed, fingering his bow tie. Le général straightened his back, as if that would allow the guests to better see his medals.
“Most of all, Cat-Cat and I would like to thank Judge Verlaque and Dr. Bonnet for their help this week,” Le Bon went on. The staff applauded. “You managed to keep us all calm, be discreet in your investigation, and you both retained your smiles and good humor throughout. Thank you.”
Cat-Cat stepped forward to speak. “Thank you all, from the bottom of our hearts. And on a business note, I’d like to congratulate Niki Darcette, whose hard marketing work has paid off; we’re now fully booked until the end of September.” She paused while the guests finished clapping. “Despite the fact that some of you seemed to think that Alain Denis’s death may bring clients to Sordou,” she said, avoiding looking at Verlaque and Bonnet. Marine kicked Antoine under the table. “It was Niki’s riveting press releases and gorgeous photographs that did the trick, and now six of the world’s best travel and architecture magazines will be publishing articles on Sordou, including Mme Hobbs’s favorite, Architectural Digest. And, thanks to Mlle Darcette’s persistent phone calls, Chef Émile will be interviewed and photographed next week for Le Figaro.”
Antoine Verlaque clapped, remembering that at the time of the murder Niki had been making phone calls. She had been trying to promote the hotel on its merits—its beauty, and Émile Villey’s talent—not using the murder to win clients, as he had accused her of.
“I’d also like to congratulate Marie-Thérèse,” Cat-Cat continued, “who just this afternoon found out that she has been accepted into the prestigious École hôtelière de Lausanne.”
Marie-Thérèse got up and did a quick curtsy, then shrugged and sat down, staring at the tablecloth.
“It was a great honor for Marie-Thérèse to have been selected out of the thousands of applicants the school gets every year,” Cat-Cat said. “And although she won’t be able to accept their invitation, we’re all so very proud of her all the same.”
“Time for dinner,” Max said, taking his wife’s arm. “Chef Émile’s appetizer has been made using a local plant found here on Sordou, isn’t that right, Émile?”
Émile stood up. “Yes,” he answered. “Marie-Thérèse and I will go and get it. I’ve made butter biscuits that incorporate little pieces of Serrano dried cured ham, topped with slices of powdered black currant and Sordou’s own delicate pourpier.”
“Pourpier?” Sylvie called out.
“It’s a seaside lettuce,” Émile said.
“Emmeline picked that in Normandy,” Verlaque whispered to Marine. “Purslane, she called it.”
“Bon appétit, tout le monde,” Max said, raising a glass of champagne in the air.
• • •
Later that evening, Marine and Verlaque sat out on their private terrace, drinking herbal tea. Sylvie was spending what she called “a last hurrah” with Hugo, in his cabin. “How do you feel about leaving tomorrow morning?” Verlaque asked.
“I leave Sordou with mixed feelings,” Marine said.
“Me too.”
“I love it here,” she continued. “But I somehow think if we were to come again it wouldn’t be as good.”
“Well, at least there wouldn’t be a murder,” joked Verlaque.
“It’s more about the people,” Marine said, as if she hadn’t heard his comment. “I’d miss Eric, and the Hobbses.”
“Even Mme Denis and Brice added something special to our little gang,” Verlaque suggested. “It’s only the Viales I don’t miss.”
“I agree,” Marine said. “Some people mark you more than others, don’t they?”
“I love the silence here, and the breezes.”
“And the smells,” Marine said. “Part sea and part plant. I’m not looking forward to the summer’s heat and lack of air in downtown Aix.”
“Perhaps it’s time we buy a seaside apartment,” Verlaque suggested. “In Provence, or Italy. Remind me to call my banker on Monday afternoon.”
Marine turned toward Verlaque. “You’re not serious?”
“It’s about something else,” he said, his voice slightly quieter. “Mme Médéric, my bank manager, gets anxious if I don’t check in every week.”
“Oh, I see,” Marine said, nodding. “You’re going to pay Marie-Thérèse’s tuition, aren’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Marine answered. “I would.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “You know,” she continued. “Our personalities were reflected in the way we—each one of us—entered the sea yesterday afternoon.” They laughed, remembering the impromptu group swim: Marie-Thérèse had run the length of the pier and jumped in, plugging her nose. She resurfaced yelping for joy. Niki Darcette carefully dove in, after testing the water with her toes, her hands and feet perfectly parallel. Cat-Cat’s dive was almost as faultless as Mlle Darcette’s, and Max tried, with not much success, to do a cannonball. Mme Poux sat down, her slim legs dangling over the pier’s edge. She wore a brightly colored silk kimono, a stark contrast to her usual black-and-white uniform. Marine jumped in, although with less childlike glee than Marie-Thérèse, and Sylvie did a backflip, followed by the aahs of the swimmers, who were now all treading water. “Come on, judge!” Marie-Thérèse yelled.
“Cannonball coming up,” Verlaque called out. “And this one will soak Mme Poux.”
Antoine Verlaque ran the length of the pier, trying to blot out the faces of Élodie, and Cécile-Marie Hobbs, and Eric, and Bill, and Alain Denis. As his body soared over the sea, he brought his legs to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and preparing his body for the shock of hitting the water. It hurt more than he had remembered. As he surfaced he heard everyone laughing. Mme Poux was now standing, and thoroughly soaked.
“I’m sorry,” he called. “I wasn’t expecting it to have been that powerful.”
“Just come in, Mme Poux!” Marie-Thérèse cried. “It’s beautiful!”
Mme Poux smiled and slipped off her kimono, revealing her modest one-piece suit and toned body that a thirty-year-old would have been proud of.
Murder on the Ile Sordou Page 27