The Secrets of the Bastide Blanche

by M. L. Longworth

  “It must be hard seeing all these newcomers in the village,” Paulik said as he munched on crispy radishes dipped in fleur de sel that Gaston had poured in a small saucer. Since earlier that morning in Verlaque’s office, Paulik could think of nothing but their conversation about Agathe and Valère Barbier. He hoped to get some information from the old man that might put the idea of a still-alive Agathe out of his head.

  Gaston shrugged. “Le changement, c’est normal.” He put a small cast-iron frying pan on the gas stove and watched as it heated up. Unscrewing the lid of an old jam jar, he poured in a handful of pine nuts and gently stirred them in the dry, hot pan with a wooden spoon. Paulik stopped eating the radishes, saving his appetite for dinner.

  When the pine nuts were toasted a medium brown, Gaston took them off the heat and set the pan aside. Paulik asked, trying to sound casual, “Are there any unusual newcomers to the village?” Gaston turned around, frowning, and Paulik immediately regretted his transparent question.

  “What do you mean?” Gaston asked, still holding the wooden spoon in his hand. “Have you come here just to ask police questions?”

  “Non, je suis désolé, Gaston,” Paulik said. “Let me explain a bit.” Paulik told Gaston about the mystery of Agathe Barbier’s death, and the old man listened as he cooked.

  “Dinner soon,” Gaston said a few minutes later, as he drained the pasta and added several large tablespoons of crème fraîche to the leeks. He set the spoon down in the sink and turned to face Paulik. “I’ve seen the girl, Sandrine, in the village dozens of times,” Gaston began, “but a few days ago I saw her talking with one of the Pioger cousins. They saw me and quickly walked down an alleyway together, as if they didn’t want anyone noticing them.”

  Paulik asked, “Can you remember exactly when that was?”

  Gaston scratched his head. “That’s a little difficult for someone my age.”

  “Fair enough,” Paulik said.

  “But yesterday I saw something even odder.”

  “Really?”

  Gaston leaned down and turned off the burner. “It was late last night, and I couldn’t sleep, so I came downstairs and made some chamomile tea. It happens about once a week. I looked out the kitchen window, the one right beside you.”

  Paulik looked out the window and saw the backs of the maisons du village on the street parallel to Gaston’s. “And?”

  “The lights came on upstairs,” Gaston said, walking over to where Paulik was sitting. “In that one, up there,” he said, pointing.

  Paulik looked at Gaston, waiting for an explanation.

  “Don’t you think that odd, Commissioner? Why would a blind lady need to turn on the lights in the middle of the night?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Aix-en-Provence,

  Tuesday, July 13, 2010

  Despite the heat—already formidable at 9:00 a.m.—Florence Bonnet insisted on riding her bicycle to the archdiocese, which was located just north of the place Bellegarde on a nondescript street lined with postwar-era apartment buildings. From there it ruled over the combined Aix and Arles parishes, but only those with business to conduct would ever find it, for only the address, cours de la Trinité, hinted at the function of the pale-pink building at the end of the residential street. Professeur Bonnet had been coming here for almost fifty years, since she was an undergraduate, and almost always by bicycle. There was never an available parking spot.

  She, of course, knew the head archivist, who, unfortunately, had arrived at his position not thanks to talent and hard work, but via connections and politics. As she walked in, signed the guest registry, and continued down the hallway toward the archival rooms, she wondered how best to approach him. Tell him exactly what she was looking for? Tell him the bare minimum? She opened the door and a young woman—perhaps in her late twenties—looked up from the desk and smiled. Florence returned the smile, introduced herself, and asked for the head archivist. The woman shook her head. “He’s gone for two weeks,” she answered. “Vacation.” Florence pursed her lips, forgetting that many workers now chose to take vacation at any time instead of during the traditional mid-August break.

  “I see,” Florence said.

  “But I’d be happy to help you,” the young woman quickly added. “All I’ve done this week is catalog.”

  “Have I seen you at the university, in the theology department?” Florence asked. In fact, she wasn’t sure, as these days all the students looked the same to her and she was rarely on campus, unless she had a meeting to attend.

  “Perhaps,” the young woman answered, smiling. “I’m a graduate student. I’ve read some of your articles on Saint Augustine.”

  “Well, well,” Florence said, flustered. “What is your name?”

  “Elodie.”

  “Then let’s get going, Elodie,” Florence said. “We need the archives for the parish of Puyloubier.”

  “Easy.”

  “From 1688 to 1760.”

  Elodie’s face lit up. “I can get those.”

  Florence smiled and said, “Excellent. My area of specialty is centuries earlier, as you know. Actually, the man I’m looking for, Count Hugues de Besse, was born in 1688, but let’s begin with, say, twenty years after that date, until his death in 1760. The church in Puyloubier is Saint-Pons.”

  Elodie shook her head. “Not then. It was Sainte-Marie, which is still there, up behind the village. A few weeks ago I cataloged some old photographs of it. I’ll go and get the right books and then join you. We can work here. As you can see, it’s a quiet period of the year.”

  “Perhaps because no one knows that the building’s air-conditioned,” Florence said, setting her purse and carryall on a large wooden table. She reached into the fishnet bag and took out a light-blue cotton sweater, its lapels bordered by yellow embroidered daisies—a gift from Marine. Before putting it on, Florence glanced at the label and winced. She had often passed the boutique—one that specialized in fine knitwear—and she dreaded to guess what the sweater had cost her daughter. Shaking her head, she blamed it on Antoine Verlaque and his extravagant tastes. Marine had been raised to shop at Monoprix, and during the sales.

  Minutes later Elodie reappeared, carrying three large, dark-green ledgers. Florence noticed, as the young woman carefully set the books down, that she wore white gloves. Elodie reached into her pocket and gave a pair to Florence. “We’ll begin with these,” Elodie said. “The top ledger begins in 1710, when your count was twenty-two. Is that okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  Elodie sat down and opened the book. She looked at Professor Bonnet and softly asked, “Would you mind telling me a little bit about what we’re looking for?”

  A door opened and closed down a hallway, and Florence moved her chair closer to Elodie’s. Whispering, she told the girl what she knew, and the gossip about the count that circulated, thanks to people like Philomène and Léopold. Elodie listened intently, trying not to grimace at certain parts of the story. “Before going downstairs to get these books, I looked up the name of the archbishop during this time,” Elodie said, after Florence had finished.

  “Excellent,” Florence said. She looked at ledger’s first pages and the delicate cursive handwriting that filled its columns. “This is fascinating.”

  “These are birth records from Sainte-Marie,” Elodie said.

  “But of course the Bastide Blanche births we’re concerned with wouldn’t have been recorded.”

  “What about a doctor’s record?”

  “No,” Florence said, shaking her head. “They would have had a midwife.”

  “Oh, of course,” Elodie said. “Or they might have even helped one another with the births.”

  “The poor girls.”

  “Court records?” Elodie asked. “If someone complained about the count? Surely someone did?”

  “That would be my daught
er’s area of expertise,” Florence said. “But I doubt any of the girls felt they could reveal what was going on in that house. So,” she said, carefully turning a page, “I’m not sure what we are looking for, nor do I think that these record books will reveal anything.”

  “Letters? Diaries?”

  Florence sat up straight and looked at Elodie. “Do you have such things?”

  “Yes,” she answered, pulling her chair out from behind the table. “I wasn’t sure, at first, what you were looking for. The archbishop may have kept letters, and diaries, I can’t remember offhand. They’re downstairs. When I first started interning here, I was given the parishes of Sainte-Victoire to reorganize. That includes Puyloubier, of course. I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  Elodie closed the library between noon and two o’clock, and they ate their lunch together, in a small kitchen downstairs. Mercifully, it, too, was air-conditioned. “We aren’t supposed to let patrons stay during the lunch hour,” Elodie said. “But I think given that you are a retired theology professor—”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble!” Florence protested. But at the same time, she didn’t want to have to eat outside in the heat.

  “No, it will be fine. I’m usually the only person who uses this kitchen. Everyone seems to be away, or they eat in town at a restaurant.”

  After finishing her tuna sandwich, Florence took off her sandals and had a nap on an old leather sofa pushed against one of the kitchen walls, while Elodie read a novel. Florence envied Elodie’s youth, especially the ability to be able to read all day. Her own mind wandered too much now.

  * * *

  Florence looked up at the clock. It was almost four. They hadn’t found any diaries kept by the archbishop, Jean-Baptiste de Brancas, but they did find a stack of letters. “Anything?” she asked Elodie, who was reading, her head held in her hands.

  “Not yet, and I’m almost through my half,” she answered, yawning. “The handwriting is hard to read, and the letters are very official.”

  “You have the right to say that they’re boring,” Florence said.

  “They’re boring.”

  Florence laughed and bent her head back down and continued to read. Only letters addressed to the archbishop had been saved. His letters were now either lost or in another archives, perhaps in Paris or the Vatican. She certainly wasn’t willing to spend more time on this than she had today, and she regretted not having brought along a silk scarf to protect her neck and throat from the air-conditioning. Her head began to ache.

  “Bastide B.,” Elodie said aloud.

  “Pardon?”

  “This is a letter from a priest, Père Guy Bernard, from Sainte-Marie in Puyloubier,” Elodie continued. “It looks like Père Guy is complaining about ‘des problèmes’ at the Bastide B. It’s hard to read his writing.” With a gloved hand, Elodie passed the letter to Florence. “There’s more at the bottom. Can you read it?”

  Florence took the letter and leaned forward, trying to ignore her pulsating headache. “‘Avec les bonnes,’” Florence read aloud. “Servant girls. He calls them ‘les filles rondes.’”

  “Round?” Elodie asked. “Pregnant?”

  Florence nodded. “And as the parish priest, Père Guy would be frequently at the bastide.”

  Elodie began to read the next letter. “This is a letter from the cardinal,” she said. “He mentions, near the bottom, ‘Je regrette de ne pas pouvoir vous aider avec les problèmes à la Bastide B.’ The date is hard to read, but it looks like it says July of 1742.”

  “The cardinal cannot help with the problems,” Florence said. “Can’t or won’t?”

  Elodie read on, and once she finished the letter said, “The cardinal says, at the end, that he would like to remind the archbishop of the count’s generosity.”

  Florence slammed the wooden table with the palm of her right hand. “Now we need to look at those ledgers again.”

  “To look up the count’s donations?” Elodie asked.

  “Exactly. He bought himself out of les problèmes.”

  * * *

  Verlaque awoke that morning with the first chirping of birds and, mercifully, cool air coming in through the open window. He looked at Marine, still asleep, her arms straight at her sides, her expression serene. As he pulled up the white sheet, to cover her shoulders, he heard his cell phone ring in the kitchen. He jumped out of bed and ran and picked up the phone. He was about to turn it off when he saw that the caller was Bruno Paulik. It was just before seven.

  “Bruno, good morning,” Verlaque answered.

  “Sorry to call you so early,” Paulik said. “But something’s strange in Puyloubier.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “There’s a blind lady—a Parisian—who turns on the lights in her house every night.”

  Suddenly, the entryway of Ursule Genoux’s apartment came into Verlaque’s head. Happy yellow walls, with hats hanging on pegs. “And during the day, does she wear big sun hats?” he asked.

  “Come to think of it, yes. Léa and Hélène see her a lot. Léa commented on the hats, as around here it’s usually British women who wear them.”

  “Or women from northern France careful with their skin,” Verlaque offered. “Ursule Genoux, her sister, or—”

  “Agathe Barbier. I’ll order a squad car put in front of the woman’s house.”

  “Perfect. I have a day full of meetings in Marseille,” Verlaque said, looking at his watch. “Marine and I are eating dinner in Puyloubier tonight. Marine’s crazy about that place, especially the eccentric waitress. We’ll swing by your house after, for a nightcap.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  New York City,

  September 23, 2010

  The next day was one of the happiest and most terrifying of my life. First, for the good stuff. I can’t remember a time when I felt as happy as I did when I heard Tinker Bell coming up the drive. I ran outside as Sandrine was parking the car. “Where were you?” I yelled as she got out and opened the back hatch, pulling out various bags.

  “I told you!” she answered, walking over and giving me the bise.

  “You most certainly did not.”

  “I most certainly did, M Barbier famous la-di-da writer. Don’t you check your text messages?”

  “All the time,” I said. “And your uncle didn’t know where you were either.”

  She closed the trunk and looked at me. “I told him too.”

  “No, apparently not.”

  She put her huge blue purse on Clochette’s dented roof and dug around a bit, pulling out her cell phone. She turned it on and scrolled through her history. “Merde!”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t send,” she said. “I copied you both on the same message. I must have been out of range.”

  “So where were you?”

  “In the Cévennes,” she replied. “At a friend’s old cabanon. She lets me use it whenever . . . I need to get away.”

  She began walking toward the house, and I grabbed one of the bags from her to help. I said, “I’ve been worried sick.”

  She turned and looked at me like I had just said the nicest thing in the world. “You were?”

  “Of course.”

  As she walked into the house she stopped, looking around. “Do you remember that part in The Sound of Music when the mother superior tells Maria to go back to the captain’s house and face her demons?”

  “Vaguely,” I replied, still pissed off. “Let’s get a glass of wine and you can explain.”

  Sandrine marched on, ahead of me, toward the kitchen, her high-heeled sandals making an extraordinary amount of noise on the tile floors. All of a sudden I was thrilled to have her back in the house.

  “Do you think there are demons here?” I asked, getting a bottle of white wine out of the fridge.

 
“No,” she said, again looking around as if we were being overheard. “But there are ghosts. And . . . I just couldn’t face . . .”

  “The ghosts? And sad memories?”

  “You know about Josy?” Sandrine whispered.

  “Your uncle told me,” I answered. “I’m so sorry, Sandrine.”

  She slumped down in a chair. “It’s the only time when I’m down,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to deal with it . . . It’s been three years, but it doesn’t seem to get easier.”

  “It will,” I said. “I promise.”

  She looked at me and her eyes welled up with tears. “I’m sorry, M Barbier. You’ve been through it too.”

  I nodded. “You could get professional help. I did.”

  “Huh?”

  “A therapist,” I explained.

  She waved her hand in my face. “That’s for rich city people. A few days in the Cévennes did the trick. Besides, who would I go to?”

  I didn’t understand at first, but then I realized she meant a therapist. “We’ll find someone in Aix.” Her face got a funny look. “The sessions can be paid for by the government health plan,” I said. “Or if it’s been too long since the accident, I’ll pay. And I don’t want any arguments. There is one more thing, though. That night I called out in my sleep—”

  Sandrine began to whistle and look around the kitchen.

  “Sandrine. Where were you that night? Were you seeing Hervé Pioger?”

  She looked at me and began crying. “I sure know how to pick ’em, don’t I? He wouldn’t even see me. I kept knocking on his door . . . and the next day I bumped into him in the village, and he said such cruel things.”