The Secrets of the Bastide Blanche

by M. L. Longworth

  As we entered the village, my palms began to sweat, and I could sense that Verlaque was tensing up too, his hands tightening their grip around the steering wheel. I then realized that I might have been targeted by professional art thieves who knew the value of Agathe’s work. For all the police knew, this may have happened to me before, which is why they asked the examining magistrate to drive me home. They didn’t want me driving through the streets of Aix like a lunatic, endangering myself and others, in desperation to get back to my house. I assumed that was why I had been warned to brace myself: I had been robbed, and somehow not only did the thief or thieves know the value of Agathe’s work, but they had been organized enough to get the pots out of the house and into a truck kitted out with protective cases for them. If these guys were skilled enough to steal van Goghs from famous museums, my old house would be kids’ play. Could they have done all this with Michèle there, even if she was asleep? Yes. Michèle could sleep through anything. Anyway, it would have been easy work to tie her up and shove a napkin in her mouth. At this point, as we neared the house, I started quietly laughing. Verlaque gave me a quick, nonjudgmental look. He thought it was nervousness, but in fact I was laughing at the back talk I imagined Michèle would have given the young thugs, and I pictured them running around the house looking for something to shut her up with. The linen napkins would have been easy to find; Sandrine had been ironing them when I left for Aix.

  I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and blew my nose. Verlaque brought his little car to an abrupt stop, jerking me forward in my seat. I looked up and saw a police car, Thomas’s red pizza-delivery motorbike, and an ambulance with its lights flashing.

  Verlaque was quicker to get out of the car than I was, so by the time I reached the ambulance, the attendants were closing the back doors and getting ready to go. Paulik didn’t seem to be around. I heard one of the guys say to Verlaque, just before jumping into the driver’s seat, “The commissioner is with her.” Who? My mind raced, and just as I had imagined the theft scenario while driving home, I now had a dozen scenes flashing through my head. She must mean Michèle. Or had Sandrine stayed on late? Sandrine openly disliked Michèle and may have made some excuse to stick around, in order to keep an eye on her. Had there been a household accident, and Sandrine was hurt? Did Michèle have a stroke? She was no spring chicken: my age down to the month. I arrived at the back of the ambulance and looked at the closed doors. And then, starting in the pit of my stomach, I began burning up. The heat rose up through my lungs, my neck, and then my face burned with heat. I began sweating. Beads of perspiration dripped down my back. I felt nauseous. I looked up at the ambulance as it drove away. Paulik must be in the back, I thought, with Léa.

  * * *

  Jean-Marc quickly made himself useful, preparing coffee for everyone. I stood in the kitchen doorway in a daze, watching him set out cups and milk and sugar. I could hear Sandrine wailing in another room, arguing with the police officer who was speaking to her. “M Barbier!” she called out to me. “Tell this officer that I never would have done such a thing! Tell her!”

  Verlaque came to me and gently put his hand on my arm. “They are taking statements in the living room,” he said. “Come with me.”

  I followed like a lost puppy. “But how is she?” I asked.

  Verlaque turned around. “The ambulance attendant said that I should phone the hospital in an hour or so.”

  I nodded and followed him into the big salon. Sandrine saw us and jumped up and ran toward me. It was as if we had known each other for years and not just days. I guess that’s what tragedy does. She wrapped her arms around me and then quickly pulled back, apologizing. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying. “She said that I did it!” Sandrine cried out before falling back onto the sofa, exhausted.

  “Who says?” I asked, sitting down on a footstool near her. “The policewoman?”

  The policewoman—officer, I should say—looked at me and slowly closed her eyes, then opened them again. “Sandrine is my employee,” I offered. “She wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  “The victim said she was pushed,” the police officer quietly said, “just before she lost consciousness.”

  “She fell down the stairs,” Verlaque added. I had no idea how he knew this, but he must have been very quickly debriefed while I was watching Jean-Marc prepare coffee.

  “Poor little thing,” I whispered, burying my head in my hands. I could not bear the thought of Léa hurt.

  “Poor little thing?” Sandrine whimpered, her nose running and her voice catching. “She’s an old cow! But still, I didn’t push her!”

  I looked up, bewildered. Then Bruno Paulik came into the room, followed by Thomas, the pizza boy.

  “Bruno!” I called out, jumping up. “Where’s Léa?”

  “At home, asleep,” Paulik answered, looking around.

  “Then who . . .” I began to ask, then stopped. I realized that the ambulance attendant must have meant that Paulik was in the house, with Sandrine. “Was it Michèle who fell down the stairs?”

  “Yes,” Paulik answered. “Thomas was delivering pizza, and when no one answered the doorbell, he walked into the foyer, as the front door was wide open. That’s when he found Mme Baudouin, lying at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “I feel queasy again,” Thomas whispered. He sat down, and Jean-Marc came in with the tray, setting it quietly down on the coffee table. Sandrine sat there, staring at the coffee, so the policewoman began pouring it out.

  “Why didn’t you answer the doorbell?” Verlaque asked Sandrine.

  “I was going to,” she answered. She was beginning to sound angry. “But I was upstairs, with my hands full of folded laundry. I yelled down for him to come in, but he didn’t hear me.”

  “I’ve taken Thomas’s statement,” Paulik said. “And Officer Goulin has taken Mlle Matton’s. But, Thomas, I’d like you to repeat to Judge Verlaque what Mme Baudouin said to you when you found her.”

  Thomas nodded and began: “She was bleeding, and her face was an awful color.” He stopped to swallow, and then continued. “But she managed to open her eyes and whisper, ‘She pushed me.’ Then . . . um . . . she passed out. Blood started coming out . . .” He closed his eyes, taking a breath. “I started yelling.”

  “That’s when I heard you,” Paulik said. He turned to Verlaque and explained. “I was outside checking a leak in our garden’s automatic drip system. Hélène kept bugging me about it, and it was only in the evening that I remembered to check it. I ran to the bastide, and by the time I got here Mlle Matton was on the phone to the emergency services. Thomas told me what Mme Baudouin had told him, and I called the police station.”

  “This is a serious accusation,” Verlaque said to Sandrine.

  At that point a young male police officer walked into the house. “I’ve finished checking the grounds,” he said.

  “Anything, Officer Schoelcher?” asked Paulik.

  “No, nothing. No sign of a disturbance outside or upstairs.”

  Sandrine began weeping and repeating over and over that she hadn’t pushed Michèle, and I believed her. But it looked bad, and as my new cigar friend suggested, Michèle was accusing Sandrine of attempted murder. Very serious indeed. At that point a loud thump sounded and each of us turned around. It was Thomas, who had fainted and fallen off his chair and onto the floor.

  * * *

  In less than an hour everyone was gone. One of the police officers parked Thomas’s moped in one of the outbuildings, called his boss explaining Thomas’s absence, and drove Thomas home. Sandrine was to stay with me at La Bastide Blanche. She was in no shape to drive, and that way I could keep an eye on her. In fact, I thought we could keep an eye on each other, as I suddenly felt very lonely. I offered to call her sister, Josy, but Sandrine refuted that idea with a wave of her hand. Verlaque nodded, approving the idea. I believe I saved him from launching into one of those
“you must not leave the country” speeches they make in the cop shows. Neither Sandrine nor I offered any information about the night visitors: Sandrine’s scare in the cellar and my nightly tug-of-war with the person in my bed. We were too tired, I think, and I suppose we had both quietly decided that things were looking bad enough for Sandrine without mentioning ghosts. Or whatever they might be. Verlaque and Jean-Marc left together, the former promising to visit me the next day and keep me updated on Michèle’s condition. I gave Sandrine a sleeping pill and closed her bedroom door. I lit the hall light and was halfway down the hall when I heard her snoring, almost as loudly as Michèle had. I was almost at my room when the light went off, and I ran the remaining three or so feet to my room, charging in like a bull, fumbling for the light switch, panting. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, but with everything else in the house, it had hardly seemed worth getting upset about. But that night it did.

  I dressed for bed, dropping my cigar-scented clothes in a heap on the floor. I thought about Michèle saying, “She pushed me.” If the person was behind Michèle, she might not have seen them. She would have assumed it was Sandrine, the only other person, to her knowledge, in the house. It could have been a woman or a man. I went back to my original thief idea: they had been in the house, getting ready to steal, and saw Michèle at the top of the stairs. It may have been an accident; the thief, in a hurry to leave, rushed past her, causing her to fall. But Thomas would have seen them leaving, and he had said nothing.

  I looked around the room and somehow had a premonition that it would never be changed. The ocher-colored walls were decorated with plaster carvings painted dark gold. At first I had found this gypserie hideous but after a short time I had come to like it. My wrought-iron bed was now in the middle of the room—Sandrine’s solution, to help with my sleep— but I wasn’t convinced about the bed’s new position, as the room was so big. I felt like I was on a raft drifting in the middle of the sea. I watched the shadows cast by the pine trees dance around the walls. Then something on the floor, beside the fireplace, caught my eye. I sighed, too tired to go pick it up, not caring if I would be chastised by Sandrine for laziness or slovenliness. I tried ignoring it but felt myself drawn in. Each time I closed my eyes they would open within seconds, fixed on what I now believed to be a piece of fabric. I finally got up and walked over to it, my heart pounding. Bending down, I lifted it by a corner, as if it were hot or poisonous. Holding it up, I saw that it was indeed fabric: a linen handkerchief, embroidered with the initials AF. I recognized it immediately and held it to my chest. It was Agathe’s favorite.

  The wind suddenly stopped, and the night became still. Not a sound outside, not a frog, nor cricket, nor passing car. I went back to bed and put the handkerchief under my pillow, too tired to ask why or how it had shown up in my bedroom. It had probably fallen out of a box or suitcase when I unpacked, although I didn’t remember packing it in Paris.

  My eyelids burned with fatigue. I closed them and must have immediately fallen asleep, because when I next opened them the bright sun was shining through the windows, and the cigales were just beginning to make the noise that would go on for the next twelve hours. It was nine o’clock, and I had slept through the night for the first time in months, perhaps years. I stretched, then remembered Agathe’s handkerchief. I reached under the pillow and took it out, holding it to my cheek.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aix-en-Provence,

  Thursday, July 7, 2010

  Antoine Verlaque spent the morning going over the Yvette Tamain case with two associates, breaking at eleven thirty. They agreed they would meet again the day after Bastille Day—the fifteenth of July—to finalize their line of questioning before they called in the mayor, her campaign manager, and the CEO of AixCom. As soon as his colleagues left, he picked up the phone and called the hospital; Michèle Baudouin was still in a coma. After lunch he would go to Puyloubier and pay a visit to Valère Barbier and his housekeeper. He had some questions concerning Mme Baudouin’s accident: blanks in the evening’s events that had been bothering him all morning.

  No sooner had he finished his call to the hospital than his phone rang again; it was Mme Girard, in the next room, telling him he had a call from Judge Sennat in Cannes. He thanked his secretary and took a deep breath before accepting the call. It had been years since they had spoken.

  “Verlaque here,” he said, realizing he sounded colder than he had intended.

  “Hello, Antoine,” the magistrate said. “How are you?”

  He sat back and tried to calm himself. “I’m fine, Chantal. How are you?”

  “Busier than the devil,” she answered.

  “Any news on Mme Blechman’s kidnapping?” He had recently seen Chantal Sennat on M6, being interviewed by journalists. She hadn’t aged, not like he had. Her long, jet-black hair was as thick and wavy as it had ever been; it was the kind of hair that shampoo companies hired models for. Verlaque watched her as a journalist asked a repetitive question, holding his microphone too close to her face; her dark blue eyes focused on the unfortunate young man, at once intimidating and seducing him.

  “Nothing, nada, zilch,” she answered, not disguising her frustration. “It’s been three days now. . . . I’m getting pressure on all sides, including Paris.”

  He nodded, knowing that Paris meant the Élysée. He realized there might be a positive side to only having to deal with a crooked mayor and not having to explain to the president of France why you haven’t yet caught kidnappers. He asked, “I assume you’re calling about the information concerning Agathe Barbier that Daniel de Rudder requested be sent to me.”

  “Yes, although Rudder has pissed me off royally. If he has concerns or worries, he should ask me to go through that stuff.”

  “But with the kidnapping . . .”

  She sighed. “Yes, I’m passing the affair on to you, but only because I’m too busy. A car driven by two of our slower officers left here two hours ago with the Agathe Barbier report. They should be there any minute, unless they stop in Saint-Tropez for lunch, in which case their next assignment will be at a school crossing.”

  He laughed, remembering her humor and her impatience.

  She went on: “You’ll have to send the papers back here in a police car. Or you could bring them yourself.”

  “I’m too busy.”

  “As you wish,” she replied. “I have no idea why Rudder is all of a sudden interested in reopening that case. He must be senile. Agathe Barbier died in 1988. That’s when we were . . .”

  Verlaque cleared his throat. “Yes, it was a long time ago. You must be married with teenage kids by now.”

  “Divorced, no children. And you?”

  “Married, no children.” He didn’t think it any of her business to know that he was only recently married.

  “My sister says that having children is the only important job one can do while on earth.”

  “Well, then, we both seem to be failures,” he said, playing with his pen. Chantal could have easily asked an underling to call him about the delivery, but here she was, making the call herself. She probably had the président de la République on hold on the other line. Chantal Sennat hadn’t changed a bit. She did as she pleased, not caring who she offended or kept waiting. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her when they were studying in Bordeaux together. That, and . . .

  “So it seems,” she said, sounding amused. “My sister may have six children, but she’s an unhappy wretch. Plus, when she and her good-for-nothing husband decided to have kids, they forgot that three would be in university at the same time. Guess who’s working her ass off to pay for their studies, as none of them got into a grande école?”

  “I’m sure they’ll remember that when you’re old,” Verlaque said, laughing.

  “Yeah, right. Well, you sound good, Antoine. I’ve got to go. Rudder is wasting your time, but, still, you’
ll contact me if you discover any overlooked evidence when you go through the boxes?”

  “Certainly,” he answered.

  “You’re such a liar.” He could hear her breathing, and she waited a few seconds before adding, “Listen, think again about coming to Cannes . . .”

  “I don’t think so, Chantal.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say,” she answered. “But when it comes to women, you always change your mind—don’t you?” She hung up.

  “Merde!” Verlaque hissed as he hung up his phone. He got up and paced the room. He walked over to his bookshelf and opened his small mahogany humidor, pulled out a short but thick Partagás D4, snipped off the end, and, fumbling with his lighter, lit it. He opened the windows of his office and sat on the ledge, smoking. Memories appeared before him like color postcards: weekends with Chantal in Prague or Rome. Wine-filled evenings with friends, in garret apartments that overlooked the gray city, before Bordeaux had been cleaned up and gentrified. Verlaque had money, even as a student, and she had energy and drive in spades. In that way they were a good match and the envy of their fellow students: he was a posh Parisian who excelled at debate and rugby; Chantal was a fiery beauty who was raised in the remote region of Corrèze by a mechanic and a beautician, and had worked her way up from a mediocre village school to one of France’s most elite law schools.