One Green Bottle

by Curtis Bausse

  ‘They mentioned me? To you?’

  ‘A little reluctantly, yes. I said I was thinking of hiring a private detective and I saw them look at each other, and after a little prompting, they told me.’

  Magali opened her hands as if to get a grip on the situation. ‘I’m not sure I understand. They told you I have no experience – that what I’m doing isn’t even legal – but you came to see me anyway?’

  Charlotte Perle sighed. ‘The police have experience and they’ve found nothing. Perhaps it isn’t experience that’s needed most. Perhaps it’s a matter of looking at it differently. Thinking outside the box. As for the legality of it, that’s not my concern. I’ll turn a blind eye to anything as long as it gets a result.’

  ‘I’ll have to tread carefully, though, won’t I? I’ll hardly be able to throw my weight around.’ Professionally speaking she had none to throw – the actual kilos, she thought ruefully, were a different matter altogether.

  Her visitor shrugged, ignoring the objection. ‘There’s another reason. When I saw your son… Well, he’s practically the same age as Enzo. An only child too, he said. I thought it might help, having someone who knows what that means. I don’t know but… To be frank, I’m clutching at straws.’ She bowed her head, clearly now having trouble to stop herself crying.

  Magali left a respectful pause. But she couldn’t go giving false hopes. ‘I’m rather afraid you are. A fresh outlook is all very well, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’m sorry. I never imagined the first person to come along would be… someone like you.’

  The woman nodded. ‘I see.’ She took a deep breath, then stood up. ‘You’re probably right. Forgive me for putting you in this position.’

  ‘You had every right to. It’s just that I didn’t… I’ll be taking down that sign straightaway.’

  Charlotte Perle gave her a quizzical look. ‘Both of them? The therapy one too?’

  ‘Well, I…’ Magali ran a hand through her hair. Had Sophie told her the truth about that as well? ‘I don’t know, to be honest.’

  ‘They told me you had a client.’

  ‘Yes. Starting this week. Nothing serious, I think. A form of depression.’ Shit! Unprofessional, you dolt! No one goes talking about their clients.

  The woman pressed her lips together. She knew plenty about depression, she must do. Or perhaps you don’t even go there – you’re plunged straight into a sort of madness and people call it grief. Magali had lost her father and she remembered the emptiness that followed, the meaninglessness of all that went on around her. But when the normal pattern is reversed and children are taken before their parents, you surely go to a different place altogether. What sort of landscape did Charlotte Perle see? Here she was in Sentabour, among the rocks and pines of Cézanne’s art, but how did they appear to her? Perhaps she wasn’t in Provence at all but in some private Hiroshima. Or else the pines were just the same but their very prettiness was obscene, the scent of the earth and the shimmering breeze a cruel affront to the senses.

  ‘Let me show you out,’ Magali said.

  At the door, Charlotte Perle dipped a hand into her bag and gave Magali her card. ‘I’ll be staying in Marseilles till Tuesday. If ever you change your mind.’

  ‘Well, I’m not…’ Magali faltered, then accepted the card, knowing she’d do nothing with it, but not wanting to appear unfeeling or harsh.

  ‘I’ll understand if you don’t. And if that’s the case, I’m sure there are plenty of others I could contact – real ones.’ She smiled as she said it, touching Magali’s hand affectionately, removing all hint of reproach from her words. Then the careworn expression returned. ‘And I will. I have to. I’m sure the police are doing what they can, but I’m not involved and I need to be.’ She left a slight pause. ‘You can think of it as a form of therapy if you like.’

  Magali stood on the doorstep, watching her leave. As she drove off, Charlotte Perle gave her a brief, businesslike nod. Magali raised a hand in acknowledgment, barely a couple of inches, a gesture meant to give her visitor strength. But to Magali it seemed she was conveying only helplessness and sorrow.

  Relieved that at least she’d been honest this time, Magali went to the garage to work on her painting. The easel now was clutching a half-finished bowl of fruit, and it was terrible. In a deliberate attempt to get away from Cézanne, all she’d managed to do was imitate Matisse. She stood for a few minutes, paintbrush in hand, trying to find some point to what she was doing.

  How could she stand here painting when that woman’s son had been murdered?

  She threw down the brush and reached for her phone. ‘Antoine? Are you busy? Can I come over?’

  Chapter 3

  When Magali arrived in Sentabour, one of the first things she did was join the Hikers’ Association. There were three advantages to this: you got fit, you discovered the surrounding countryside and you met other people. Not all the people you met were the sort you’d want to go on holiday with – nor even, to be honest, for a hike – but Antoine Pessini, the association treasurer, was an exception.

  It was on their second walk, discussing their lives on the way to the Roquefavour Aqueduct, that Magali said she’d been married to Xavier Borelly, and Antoine replied, ‘Really? The cosmetic surgeon? He operated on my wife.’

  The coincidence wasn’t extraordinary, given that if, like Anne Pessini, you resented the folds of flesh in your neck, you were likely to call on Xavier. But it set the two of them chatting so much that when they got back to Sentabour, they could hardly remember the view they’d trudged all that way to admire.

  ‘But then we don’t need to,’ she said. ‘We’ve got Cézanne.’

  ‘Well, reproductions,’ he reminded her. ‘Besides, he was more into viaducts.’

  She wondered if, for all his charm, he might not be a little bit pedantic.

  Antoine had nothing but praise for Xavier, or at least for his skill with the scalpel, which had delighted his wife no end. A dozen years later, though, she’d gone under the knife again, with a different surgeon and for a different reason, and though the result was initially promising, the cancer eventually returned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Magali lamely. It sounded so much better when they said it in films.

  ‘It crushes you,’ said Antoine. ‘I thought I’d never get over it at first, and of course there’s a sense in which you don’t. Never. Such a large part of your life suddenly gone. But time does its work, and you have no choice but to move on. At first I just worked to fill the void, but then I thought it could happen to me too, any time. I’d reached retiring age, so why was I still working? Might as well make the most of whatever time is left.’

  He said this with the resigned air of someone about to be executed, but given, as she later learnt, that both his parents were spritely ninety-somethings, their only concession to old age having been to cut down to ten cigarettes a day, Magali was confident that Antoine would be around for many years to come. His level of fitness confirmed it. He indulged in none of the vices himself and in spite of their difference in age, only gallantry prevented him from easily outpacing her up the steep slopes of the Hikers’ Association’s outings. Once at the top, he would stand, hands on hips, his breath barely audible, while she sat panting on a stone.

  She was sure that to Antoine, as to anyone in fact, it must have seemed odd that she had been married to a specialist in body parts who took no care of his wife’s. Not that any had actually fallen off, but her figure, she felt, had become a law of gravity unto itself. Heaven forbid, though, that she should go down the path, which Xavier did indeed suggest a few times, of silicone and Botox. No, she just had to work out daily and lose about twenty pounds. All right, thirty. The municipal sports ground being ten minutes’ walk from her house, she applied herself to this immediately: five laps every morning before a low-calorie lunch. She’d never thought that the day would come when she would of her own accord submit herself to torture.

  Whether the two were linked
she had no idea, but her body began to acquire a shape, and Antoine invited her to dinner. The prospect filled her with more than a little alarm: her first date since the divorce. First since her marriage, come to that. Do couples date once they’re married, she wondered. Special occasions to keep the flame of romance alive? Xavier didn’t do romance, he did peremptory judgements. And his name, she’d decided, wasn’t Xavier any more, it was Dickhead.

  She didn’t know what to expect. What are the rules when a widower woos a divorcee? How long before their fingers touch in the candlelight? And what do they do with their past, each one lugging a trunk full of memories, curios gathered and stuffed unsorted inside. Oh, do come in. Shall I take your coat? And we’ll just put that trunk under the stairs.

  As it turned out, Antoine had no intention other than talk. He was good at this because, like her, he listened. Put two listeners together and you get an actual conversation. What’s more, their opinions overlapped on the weighty issues of the day and they took a similar interest in all things cultural. Yes, he could be pedantic, but he was good-natured and knowledgeable, and if she needed help with anything, always eager to give it. Can you fix my boiler, Antoine? Can you give me a hand with this wasps’ nest? After a while, then, it seemed quite natural to wonder if this was not the man with whom to start a new life.

  There was perhaps an issue of age, but in many ways, that could be seen as a bonus. Sixteen years isn’t that great a difference and far from unsightly, his white hair and wrinkles came across as kindly and wise. As for sex, she simply assumed it would be as scarce as with Dickhead. Unless he did Viagra, of course, but she didn’t think that particular topic would be cropping up for a while.

  She was righter there than she’d imagined. The dinner date was six months ago now, she’d lost eighteen of the thirty pounds and her lungs no longer screamed for air when she did her rounds of the pitch. Slowly, curves were coming back that she’d thought for ever lost, but they seemed to have not the slightest effect on Antoine, who remained as courteously distant, for all their affinity, as he had been the first day they met. Eventually, she realised he was after nothing more than friendship. There was, for a while, a slight disappointment, as she imagined a future that might have been. Then she decided she didn’t actually need a man in her life, and besides, a friend you relied on, to whom you could come for advice, was a far more valuable boon.

  ***

  ‘Murder?’ he said, eyes popping. Much of his career had been spent as a school inspector. The most serious case he’d dealt with was that of a teacher who’d posted salacious pictures of his daughter on the Internet. ‘You’re not actually thinking of taking it on?’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything for the moment. I’m simply asking your opinion.’ Magali gave a mischievous smile. ‘Asking, in other words, for a good reason why I shouldn’t.’

  Antoine was happy to comply. ‘Well, if that’s all you want, I can give you several. First, as you’ve said yourself, you have no experience. Which means you don’t know where to begin and no one will take you seriously. Second, you have no idea where it will land you. Murderers tend to be dangerous. And finally, you aren’t, in any case, a private detective. So it’s illegal. It’s as if I put up a sign saying I’m a doctor and started prescribing medicine to whoever came my way.’

  ‘Well, yes. I’ve thought of all that. They’re common-sense arguments.’

  ‘So what sort of arguments do you want? Nonsensical?’

  ‘No, it’s just when you think of it… Enzo Perle murdered. Twenty-four years old. Where’s the common sense in that? His mother’s desperate.’

  ‘I dare say she is. But murders don’t get solved by abandoning common sense. Haven’t you read your Sherlock?’

  Magali nodded. She hadn’t expected anything different from this eminently sensible man. But to hear the words spoken and see his worried, earnest expression brought it home to her how silly it would be. ‘I suppose you’re right. That’s why I came here. To have you talk sense into me.’

  ‘You’ve already set yourself up as a therapist. What next? A hedge fund manager? I don’t want to have to be visiting you in prison.’ Antoine placed a hand on her arm. ‘And one more piece of advice, if I may.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Take that plaque down today. Before you get into trouble.’

  When she got home, she prised the private detective plaque away from the plank with a screwdriver, then removed the nails with a pair of pincers. She put the plaque in the drawer of an old chest in the garage. Then she had a cup of tea before returning to the still life she’d been battling with for days. She worked for twenty minutes, Matisse an imaginary presence at her shoulder, sniggering. Nice apple, that. Just like the ones I did myself. The bowl could be a bit brighter, though.

  She gave a sigh of exasperation and fetched the business card from her desk. She picked up her phone. ‘Madame Perle? This is Magali Rousseau. I wanted to let you know I’ve decided to take on your case.’

  There was a momentary pause. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And please. Call me Charlotte.’

  ***

  All in all, listening to Paul Daveney wasn’t much different from the Job Centre, except easier. Daveney didn’t expect her to find him a job and never called her incompetent or useless. She didn’t actually use the couch, but installed him in an armchair, and she sat slightly behind him to his right, so he could turn to look at her if he wanted, but most of the time he’d be looking at the wall in front, at one of her pictures in fact, of a bright orange flower set against a lush green background.

  Sophie had said there was something sexual about it, which was why Magali put it there: eventually it would work into Paul’s unconscious and all his Freudian hang-ups would spill out. Beneath the picture, she put a heavy wooden statue from Borneo, primitive and phallic.

  The first session didn’t quite work out the way she’d planned because he spent most of the time looking at his hands, which were clean and white and soft. Useless hands now, he said. He used to be a municipal gardener, but they were cutting costs, and he was the first to go. He played with bits of string that he twisted round his fingers. ‘I gave up smoking,’ he said. ‘They help.’ He dropped them on the floor, then he’d take out another from his pocket. At the end of the session, there were half a dozen or more, scattered at his feet.

  His father, she learnt, had died six years ago, and the woman who was briefly his wife couldn’t cope with his moods and his dithering. So he moved back in with his mother. ‘To look after her,’ he said, apparently with no sense of irony.

  He didn’t say much else in those first forty minutes, and she chose not to prompt him. It was bound to take time, of course, but at the end of the session she felt a twinge of guilt at the only Freudian bit that happened, the handing over of twenty-five euros in cash. For the therapy to work, she’d read, the patient had to feel the cost, realise that it couldn’t go on for ever. Except that the cost, she suspected, came out of his mother’s savings, and Magali only managed to accept it by pledging to herself to hand it all back if the therapy failed. But even that was unsatisfactory, because how could she set a deadline? And how would she know if the therapy had failed or not?

  ‘Thank you,’ said Daveney, shaking her hand as he left. ‘I feel a lot better now.’

  Magali wondered why she’d never stumbled on such an effortless source of income before.

  ***

  ‘Here are the keys. The big one for the front door, the small one for the back. It’s a nice place, you’ll see, or would have been if it had been finished. I’ll be putting it on the market, of course, I mean, I should be. I just can’t seem to… I’ve cleared out some things, but I haven’t… A lot of his stuff is still there.’ As she passed the keys over, Charlotte Perle briefly clasped Magali’s hand in her own. ‘You can barely imagine how pleased I was to get your call. Thank you.’

  ‘I promise nothing.’

  ‘Of course. And we’ve agreed that if nothi
ng is what you deliver, nothing is what you get. Except expenses.’

  Magali put the keys in her bag. ‘Is there a time limit?’

  ‘However long it takes. Months, I imagine. Even years, who knows? I just don’t want to ever give up.’ She took out a chequebook. ‘I’ll need a regular account of what you’ve been doing and I’ll pay you accordingly. A thousand euros advance to start with – is that all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ She waited for the cheque to be passed over before saying, ‘Charlotte. I’m sorry – I need to know how he died.’

  Chapter 4

  ‘I should have known it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s happening now. That you’d take this on and drag me into it and I’d be too feeble to resist.’

  He hadn’t tried to talk her out of it, but he hadn’t shown any enthusiasm either. He was far too serious for that, not the sort to go leaping into the unknown. Did he ever leap anywhere, she wondered? Not into bed, at any rate.