“Fifty thousand euros.”
Verlaque could hear the lawyer breathing. “That’s not much,” Matton finally said.
“No, it isn’t,” Verlaque replied.
“Amateur job?”
“Possibly. Has anything like this ever happened before to M Barbier?”
Matton replied, “No. I feel partly responsible. I encouraged Valère to buy that house, and I suppose it has left him rather . . . exposed. In a big city one is more easily hidden. At least I can be assured that my niece Sandrine is there with him.”
“She has been a big help to M Barbier,” Verlaque said.
“Excellent, as I’m the one who recommended her. At least I did that right. I was concerned about Sandrine going to work in Puyloubier, so I’m glad she’s been a help to Valère.”
“Concerned?” Verlaque asked. “Why?”
The lawyer paused again, then said, “An old flame of hers lives in Puyloubier—of all the villages in Provence.”
“Really?” Verlaque asked.
“I adore Sandrine,” Matton continued, “but she has always had bad taste in men and a hard time letting go.”
“What’s the ex’s name?” He picked up a pencil and poised it above a notepad, but he already knew what the name would be.
“Pioger,” Matton answered. “Hervé, I believe. Tell Sandrine to stay away from him. You’re a judge—she might listen to you. I may be an experienced lawyer, but to her I’m just a fancy city uncle who’s clueless.”
* * *
Sylvie, after much hemming and hawing, had agreed to meet Marine at Le Mazarin for lunch. As she walked down rue Fabrot, Marine realized she was ten minutes early. As a splurge—she rarely bought makeup but was a sucker for face creams and lipstick—she walked through the automated doors into the air-conditioned Sephora. The blast of cold forced her to hug her chest, but she knew that in a few minutes she’d be used to the artificial temperature. Looking up at the vaulted stone ceiling, Marine smiled. This particular branch of Sephora was special, and she had been coming here for years. The gothic vaults above her head dated from the fourteenth century; the shop, in a former life, had been a chapel in the couvent des Grands-Carmes. The soaring ceiling permitted it to have a mezzanine, where she had often played Lego at the children’s table with Charlotte, while Sylvie strolled around filling her metal shopping basket with creams and scents. The head of a carved angel, with a ghostlike face and hollowed-out eyes, watched the shoppers: A medieval security guard, thought Marine, and she selected a pale-pink lipstick. She thought of the histories and secrets—women’s—that these old walls hid and protected. Even now, the mostly female shoppers and employees each had their secrets, their joys and their pains. She was making her way to the caissier when a young employee, dressed in Sephora’s black-and-white uniform, tugged gently on Marine’s arm. “Excuse me, mademoiselle,” the girl said.
Marine swung around, agitated at first as she didn’t want or need assistance, but she saw that the girl was still in her teens, so she smiled. “Yes?” Marine asked.
“I just have to tell you that if your hair was redder, and you weren’t so tall, you’d be a twin for Isabelle Huppert.”
Marine beamed at the compliment and thanked the sales associate.
“And with your beautiful fair and freckled skin,” the girl continued, “don’t forget to wear sunscreen.”
Marine once more thanked the girl—knowing that it was not a sales pitch but instead kind advice. She paid for her lipstick and walked out into the midday heat. She turned right onto the cours Mirabeau and zigzagged through the hordes of locals and tourists to the Mazarin, just a few doors down.
“Salut, Marine,” Frédéric said as she walked through the café’s swinging front doors. It wasn’t air-conditioned in the café, but it was several degrees cooler inside than outside on the crowded terrace. “Sylvie’s upstairs already,” he continued, before shouting an order for three glasses of rosé to the barman.
“Thanks, Frédéric!” Marine said as she quickly walked up the carpeted steps.
Sylvie raised her left eyebrow when Marine sat down at their table. She saw the small black-and-red Sephora bag and asked, “Shopping?”
“Lipstick,” Marine said.
“Let’s see.”
Marine took out the lipstick and put some on.
“Subtle,” Sylvie said. “Very you. Good choice.”
Another waiter came and took their order. Both women chose salads because of the heat. “How dull,” Marine said, smiling, to the waiter as she handed him back the menu, “to order a salad in a restaurant.”
The waiter nodded and left, and Sylvie said, “Is the Lego table still upstairs?”
“I didn’t go up there,” Marine said. “I hope so.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about when Charlotte was little,” Sylvie said, resting her elbows on the table and holding her chin in her hands.
“About Charlotte,” Marine said. “I’ve been concerned—”
Sylvie held up her hand. “I know, I know. I’ve been unfair, keeping you—and Antoine—in the dark, not explaining what’s going on.”
“You have been gone an awful lot,” Marine said. “But I want you to know that I love spending time with Charlotte, and that I trust you. I know you must have a good reason.”
Sylvie reached across the table and squeezed Marine’s hand. “I’m so lucky to have you,” she said. “I’m feeling very blessed right now.” The waiter came back and placed the salades niçoises before the women.
Marine picked up her fork. “Go on.”
“You see, at the Arles photo symposium—”
“I knew it,” Marine said. “You met someone.”
“Re-met.”
Marine stared at Sylvie. “You don’t mean to say . . .?”
“Yes,” Sylvie said. “And I’m over the moon—crazy, crazy, crazy in love. And so is he.”
“But Wolfgang is married.”
Sylvie shook her head. “Divorced, three years ago. When we had that affair, Wolfgang wasn’t happy with his wife, but their two kids were still small. Now, the kids are out of the house, one studying engineering at a university in Cologne and the younger studying to become a midwife in Copenhagen, so they amicably divorced. He said he worried for two years about contacting me, then told himself that he’d leave it to chance if we’d meet each other again.”
Marine smiled and didn’t say aloud that of course they’d meet again, as both were successful European photographers. Marine had seen Wolfgang’s work at exhibitions in Paris, and she thought it odd that they hadn’t “run into each other” sooner. “Does he know . . . ?”
“I’m going to tell him this afternoon.”
“Sylvie!”
“I promise!”
“And Charlotte?”
“I’d like you to be there with me,” Sylvie said, “when I tell her.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary . . .”
“Please, Marine. I’d be an emotional wreck. You know I would.”
Marine remembered one of the first times she had been invited to Sylvie’s, before Charlotte was born. Sylvie had answered her apartment door weeping. A cat was stuck at the top of one of the tall pine trees outside Sylvie’s balcony and was too far to reach. He had been crying for two days, keeping everyone who shared the courtyard awake and distressed. They paced around the terrace, Sylvie crying and Marine calling to the cat, and ended up calling the fire department.
“All right,” Marine said. “When?”
“Tonight?”
“I’ll come over before dinner,” Marine said.
Chapter Twenty-three
Aix-en-Provence,
Saturday, July 10, 2010
No matter how many times he drove his battered green Range Rover down the route nationale 7 toward Puyloubier, Bruno P
aulik never tired of the view. He loved it in every season, but especially now, in summer, when the neon-green vine leaves contrasted with the red earth so loved by Cézanne. In fall, the vines would turn color: first yellow, then orange, then red, but a darker, richer red than the soil. Mont Sainte-Victoire loomed ahead, with its bright-white limestone, getting bigger and bigger the farther Paulik drove from Aix. When they first visited their farm, before buying it, Léa had held her hands over her eyes and exclaimed, “The mountain is going to fall on us!”
Paulik parked in front of the narrow village house he knew to be Gaston’s. Its freshly painted green front door was shaded by a magnificent wisteria that bloomed for a few weeks in early spring, and the clean white lace curtains hanging in the front windows signaled that there was a woman in the house. He knocked, using the brass knocker, and a moment later the door opened, revealing Gaston wearing a cook’s apron. “Ah, monsieur le Commissaire,” Gaston said, stepping aside. “Entrez.”
Paulik nodded and walked in, not at all surprised that Gaston knew his occupation. The news that Paulik was a police officer had probably been known throughout the village before he and Hélène had even signed the deed to their property. That, too, explained why the Pioger cousins had lain low and why Paulik had not known of their existence before Thomas told him about them.
“Something smells good,” Paulik said, making his way down the narrow hallway to the back of the house, where he imagined the kitchen was. Village houses like these normally had similar floor plans.
“Lapin,” Gaston replied, gesturing for Paulik to sit at the polished wooden table.
Paulik thought he might find Gaston’s wife in the spotless kitchen, but then remembered that Gaston was wearing the apron. “Are you cooking the rabbit with white wine?” Paulik asked.
“And olives. It was the way my dear Mathilde cooked it.”
“You’re a widower?”
Gaston nodded. “Mathilde died four years ago. But does that mean I should live in filth and not eat properly?”
“I should say not,” Paulik agreed.
“Not like old Marcel,” Gaston went on, walking toward an antique hutch. Paulik smiled; he loved the way some elderly people, like his parents, referred to others the same age as “old.” “He lives like a pig.”
“Is that your buddy down at the bar?”
Gaston nodded, opening the cupboard. “Un petit verre?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” Paulik replied. He looked around at the kitchen, every bit as clean and tidy as the front of the house had been, and he realized that Gaston frequented the Bar des Sports not because he was depressed, or an alcoholic, but for companionship.
With trembling but big hands, Gaston took out an unlabeled bottle and two small liquor glasses. He walked over to the table and set them down, winking. “A little elixir.”
“Perfect,” Paulik said, picking up the bottle and looking at the clear liquid. “You made it.”
“Of course,” Gaston replied. “Mathilde used to, but now that she’s—” He stopped himself and poured out the alcohol.
“What did you do before retirement?”
“I worked on the rails.”
“And how long have you been retired?” Paulik asked.
“Since 1979.”
Paulik coughed, surprised that the still virile man in front of him was much older than he thought. “Are you serious? I was in middle school then!”
“In those days, if you worked for the SNCF you retired at fifty-five. I’m now eighty-six.”
“Congratulations,” Paulik said, holding up the dainty crystal glass, toasting Gaston partly on his long retirement but also because the old man looked like he was in his early seventies. Paulik took a sip and then looked at Gaston. “This is delicious.” He took another and said, smelling the liquor, “I can’t place the flavor. There’s a bit of cinnamon in it . . .”
“Angélique,” Gaston replied.
“Ah,” Paulik said, setting the fragile glass down carefully. “My daughter loves that flower. She said to me the other day that all flowers should be white.”
“There’s lots of it around here, but Mathilde came from Haute-Provence, where there’s even more. She called this the monks’ liquor.”
“And you’re from Puyloubier?”
Gaston nodded. “Born in this house.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about Puyloubier.”
“Ah, I thought so.”
Paulik went on, “Specifically regarding La Bastide Blanche.”
Gaston whistled. “When we were kids at the village school we used to sing a song about the bastide. Le fou qui va à la Bastide Blanche, va avoir une vie de turbulence!”
“Was the house already closed up back then?”
“Oh yes. Once, when I was about six or seven, I decided I’d go up there and see the place for myself,” Gaston said. “I got halfway up the lane to the bastide when my mother caught up with me. It was the only time she ever laid a hand on me.” He rubbed his behind for effect. “I can still feel it.”
“What exactly happened at the bastide?” Paulik asked.
Gaston grimaced and twisted the cork back into the bottle. “Not for me to say . . .”
Trying a different tack, Paulik said, “I could go and ask Marcel . . .”
“That old fart?” Gaston cried out, pulling the cork out of the bottle and refilling their glasses. “I’d trust him as much as the plague.”
Paulik smiled; it had been years since he heard that expression. He sipped his angelica liquor and waited. Gaston took a sip and began, “The bastide was built in 1660, by a nobleman by the name of de Besse. He died just a few years after it was completed, and it was passed on to his son, who raised his own family there, two sons and three daughters, I believe. His oldest son in turn inherited the estate in the early 1700s—Hugues de Besse. Le Monstre Hugues.”
“Ah bon?”
“You’ve no doubt heard all about the Marquis de Sade, and the goings-on in his château up in Lacoste?”
Paulik nodded. “I grew up on a farm in Ansouis.”
“That’s just down the road from Lacoste,” Gaston said. “Hugues was worse than Sade. Or so they say.”
“But he’s long dead,” Paulik said. “Why was the house locked up, and everyone afraid of it, even your mother?”
“Ghosts,” Gaston replied frankly. “The crying ghosts of the poor girls—servants from Aix and around here—who were Hugues’s sex slaves, their unwanted babies buried in the basement.”
Paulik grimaced. “Does everyone around here know about the ghosts?” He thought of the Pioger cousins, and anyone else who might have wanted to frighten Valère.
“Oh, sure, everyone knows. At least, everyone over twenty years of age and locally born. But now Puyloubier is what they’re calling a bedroom community for Aix. There are a lot of foreigners.” He looked at Paulik and raised an eyebrow. Paulik knew that he, too, even though Provençal by birth, was being included in that group.
“Not everyone’s afraid of the house,” Paulik went on. “The new owner told me that when he bought it, the rooms had been tagged by local teens.”
Gaston shrugged. “They’re young and silly.”
Paulik took his last sip, enjoying the sensation of the alcohol’s warmth passing through his body. “You know, my daughter, Léa, who’s eleven, definitely felt something in the house, but it wasn’t fear.”
Gaston nodded. “There are some locals who have said the same thing. When I was in high school, a gang of my classmates used to go up to the bastide and try to scare each other. There was this sweet girl, Jeanne, who later became a nun—I haven’t seen her in years. She used to go with them. They broke in one night and ran from room to room for about ten minutes, then left, having worked themselves into a frenzy. But once outside, they noticed Jeanne wasn’
t with them. Two of the guys volunteered to go back in—they bragged about this for weeks after, they did—to look for Jeanne. They found her in the attic, sitting on the floor, motionless. They claimed it took them a good ten minutes to get her to hear them and stand up. Afterward, she told everyone that she wasn’t frightened but warm, more like, and secure. That’s the way she described it. Warm.”
“You never went up there?”
“No, sir,” Gaston replied. “Not after the licking I got. I had more sense than that.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Aix-en-Provence,
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Officers Goulin and Schoelcher parked an unmarked car in front of the boarded-up hardware store in Puyloubier. The store, once one of the hubs of the village, along with the boulangerie, boucherie, and cave coopérative, looked like it had been closed for some time. It still had its wood storefront, including peeling wooden shutters that would have been closed when it wasn’t open. Verlaque had briefed the officers on the Pioger cousins, but since they didn’t have a warrant, they were to simply watch the apartment’s front door and wait for signs of either Didier or Hervé. Photographs of the cousins had been easy to obtain, since both had criminal records.
“We can’t stay here too long,” Sophie said to her partner, Jules. “It’s one thing to stake out an apartment in Aix, where people are always coming and going, but here . . . we’re in a village. Everyone must know each other.”
Jules shrugged, keeping his eyes on the sidewalk on either side of their car. “Maybe not,” he answered. “Villages like Puyloubier have a lot of tourists in the summer and newcomers who commute into Aix every day.” He spread out a map on the dash, to make it look like they, too, were tourists.
“Some local will probably ask us if we need help finding something,” Sophie said.
“I doubt it,” Jules replied. “We’re not in Alsace.”
Sophie smiled but didn’t reply. Jules Schoelcher was Alsatian, and when he first arrived on the force, fellow officers had teased him over his ironed jeans and meticulousness. “Look,” Sophie said. “That old guy on the other side of the street. He’s slowing down in front of the apartment’s front door.”
The Secrets of the Bastide Blanche Page 20