A Well-Timed Murder

by Tracee de Hahn

  Agnes shifted topics. “I read the interview with Gianfranco Giberti in yesterday’s Daily News. It must be difficult working for the same company now that you’re no longer a couple.”

  Christine stiffened. “We’re in separate divisions. He’s research and I’m design. We don’t see each other at work, ever.”

  “Did he and your father spend time together? Without you, I mean. It would be natural, they’re both watchmakers.”

  “My father wouldn’t have had anything to talk about with Gianfranco, certainly not work. He said he was nice looking, that’s all.”

  Agnes walked toward the more distant workstations. Here the veil of time descended. The tables were constructed of thick wood planks, and the tops glowed with a patina of age and use. It felt as if the workers had left off a moment ago; however, she suspected these desks had been empty for years, if not decades. She didn’t need to imagine the past; this was the past.

  “Could I see upstairs?”

  The walls of the owner’s office were paneled in wood carved in traditional scenes, and the desk and chair fit the décor. Large, heavy. Masculine. The rest of the room was less a part of the whole; particularly the bookcases filled with modern notebooks. Agnes removed one and found the usual array of company correspondence. Orders, invoices, bills paid. Letters of agreement and of dispute. Glancing through the material, she expected a sense of coming home. This was her expertise in Financial Crimes. Track the money. Today it felt hollow and she returned the notebook to the shelf. There wasn’t a computer, but she supposed that Marie Chavanon might use a laptop and keep it with her.

  Christine moved toward a carved wall panel. It concealed a cabinet and she pulled out a notebook very different from those on the exposed bookshelves.

  “Our design books.” She laid one on the desk. It was slightly larger than a traditional notebook, and the pages were not all the same texture or color. It was created to hold a collection of individual pages, not the other way around.

  “When I was little, my grandfather let me sit up here and look through the archives. I thought it was a treat. Later, I realized they were thankful I was so easily entertained.” She selected another book and laid it beside the first, glancing at the spine.

  “Gisele mentioned a collection of watches,” Agnes said.

  “Yes, about thirty examples of advances over the last few hundred years.” Christine crossed the room. “A few are our models, but most aren’t. We should lend them to a museum.” She whipped away a cloth covering a glass case. The shelves were empty.

  “That bitch.” She slammed her fist on top of the cabinet. Her hand crashed through the glass and she screamed. Her expression transformed from rage to shock to embarrassment. Blood ran down her arm.

  Agnes ran forward. “Don’t move.” She pulled a leather glove from her pocket and used it to break pieces of glass from the wood frame. Carefully Christine eased her hand from between the remaining shards. She was pale and shaky. The long slice across her forearm bled profusely. Agnes found a clean handkerchief and used it to stanch the flow, then she pulled a small chair near and urged Christine to sit while she examined the cut more thoroughly.

  “You need a doctor.” Agnes pressed her handkerchief back in place, holding it firmly.

  “Use my scarf.”

  The silk was perfect for binding a wound, and Agnes fixed a knot. Blood stained the blue patterned fabric, turning the flowers a grotesque violet. Christine propped her other arm against the wall and leaned her head against it. Her lips were white.

  “I didn’t mean to break the glass, it just fell away.”

  “An unlucky tap.” Agnes cast a doubtful look at the cabinet. The glass was thick and anchored firmly in the wood structure. Christine had been angry. Her blow was forceful.

  Five minutes passed. Christine breathed in and out slowly. When she finally opened her eyes and surveyed the empty cabinet, she sounded more angry than injured.

  “Typical. Marie probably took the collection to the house and boxed everything up. She doesn’t care about our heritage. She’s part of what’s wrong. That’s why father didn’t work here anymore.”

  Eight

  They stood beside Agnes’s car. The conversation had reached an impasse. Agnes insisted Christine go to the hospital for stitches. Christine resolutely refused.

  “You have to talk to Marie,” Christine said, blood leaching through the bandage on her arm. “I want to see her reaction when you show her the note and say my father was killed.”

  “Need help?” a man’s voice called out across the lawn.

  Agnes turned. He was closer to Guy Chavanon’s generation than her own. Well dressed in casual clothing, his shirt collar was open underneath a moss-green V-necked sweater. Above it, his lightly lined face was handsome and confident. She noticed a flicker of anxiety disturb Christine’s already pained expression, but the man was upon them before Agnes could question her.

  “What happened?” the man said.

  “A little accident.” Christine grasped her arm as if shielding the injury from view. “Inspector Lüthi was kind enough to offer me a ride to the doctor.” Agnes noted the change in plan.

  A shadow passed over the man’s face, and Agnes wondered if it was caused by her title or Christine’s injuries.

  “I don’t think we’ve met. Stephan Dupré.”

  Agnes recognized the name. At least the man hadn’t lied to Vallotton about being a neighbor, although judging by Christine’s reaction he wasn’t a favorite one.

  “A police inspector?” Dupré said casually, explaining that he lived on the far side of the Chavanon property, past the cottages. He took Christine’s arm, gently lifting the knotted scarf to peek underneath. “I was trained for volunteer rescue, did it for years.” He frowned. “This is more than a little accident. Is this why you’re here, Inspector?”

  It was definitely her title that disturbed him, Agnes decided. No one would think that the police were called out because of a cut, especially someone who trained for volunteer rescue. “I happened to be there when Christine cut herself.”

  Dupré took another look at Christine’s injury. “You didn’t try to hurt yourself, did you?”

  Christine snatched her arm away, wincing at the movement. “I broke a piece of glass. It was an accident.”

  Dupré turned to Agnes. “Marie’s not here. She went into town.”

  Christine sucked air in between her teeth.

  “I happened to see her drive away,” Dupré added.

  “Do you know when she’ll return?” said Agnes. “She was expecting me. Late yesterday I spoke on the telephone to a man who promised to tell her I was coming.” Agnes paused. “Was that you?”

  Dupré ran a hand across his forehead. The elegant gesture managed to convey dismay and a confidence that all would be forgiven. “Caught. I answered the phone when I dropped the mail off at her house, and it seemed like the natural thing, to say Marie would see you, but—” He repeated the wiping gesture. “I forgot to tell her. Stupid, but we’ve been so upset about Guy. Not thinking clearly at all.”

  Agnes couldn’t pinpoint the nature of the lie. Did he forget, or did he change his mind about telling Madame Chavanon, or had she refused to receive her visitor and he was too polite to blame her?

  “I was going to look you up today, anyway,” she said.

  “A bit odd, the police being interested now, a week later,” said Dupré. “Did something change?”

  Christine opened the passenger door and sat in the car sideways with her feet on the ground. She motioned for Agnes to take her time.

  Agnes eyed the other woman through the windshield. Christine leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes. Her color had returned, which was a good sign, and the bleeding had stopped. A short delay wouldn’t cause any harm.

  Agnes turned to Dupré. “At the funeral you gave Julien Vallotton the impression that you weren’t surprised Monsieur Chavanon died.”

  Christine opened
her eyes, listening intently now.

  “You mentioned that he was nervous and acting unlike himself. Or did Monsieur Vallotton mislead me?” Faced with Dupré’s blank expression, she threw in that last bit, suspecting he wouldn’t lie about a conversation with one of the Vallottons.

  Dupré shrugged easily. “Yes, I said those things. I was upset. I overreacted. Guy died so suddenly it made me imagine he wasn’t himself. I think I preferred that to the explanation that he didn’t want to see me.”

  “How well did you know Monsieur Chavanon?”

  “We’ve been friends since childhood. Grew up here on the same street.”

  “And the part about him being followed?”

  Dupré glanced around as if an explanation would walk across the lawn. “Guy may have said that he saw a car he didn’t recognize. I—” Dupré rubbed his head. “Look, I know who Julien Vallotton is, and I’m ashamed to admit I was pleased to meet him. I said some things I shouldn’t have, made more of a story to keep his interest. I didn’t think he would tell the police. I didn’t think it mattered. Hell, we were at a reception following a funeral. People say things. Guy died from eating peanuts.”

  “He didn’t eat them,” Christine called from inside the car.

  “He died from the peanuts,” Dupré said loudly. “I always told him to be more careful. Don’t know if I could have lived with that hanging over me my whole life.”

  “I suppose people adjust to their own burdens,” said Agnes.

  Christine’s eyes were closed but she spoke again. “It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t eat a handful of nuts.”

  “He hadn’t been himself, that wasn’t entirely a fabrication,” Dupré said, angling closer to Agnes and away from the open car door and Christine. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with the way he died.”

  “Would it surprise you to learn that he left a note saying he was being watched?”

  “That’s absurd. Leave a note? Why not tell someone? He would tell me or Marie. The workshop is where he spent most of his time, and if he was worried, he’d tell me so I could keep an eye out.” Dupré turned to look toward the house. “He didn’t say anything to Marie.”

  Agnes wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement.

  “Have you been inside the workshop?” Dupré asked.

  “No, we were on our way when Christine was injured.”

  “Inspector,” Christine called out. “I realized we have to wait for Marie. My father changed the lock and I don’t have the new key.”

  “I have one,” said Dupré.

  “Father gave you a key?”

  Agnes glanced to Dupré to judge his reaction. Satisfaction?

  “About three months ago.” Dupré smiled broadly at them both. “I don’t keep it with me. It’ll only take five minutes to retrieve it from my house.”

  Christine nodded. “We’ll wait.”

  After Dupré left, Agnes slipped into the driver’s seat of her car. “You haven’t been inside your father’s workshop since he died?”

  “I haven’t gone in his workshop since I joined Omega. I couldn’t risk seeing anything they might want. Intellectual property and all that.”

  “Sounds like you thought your father might be inventing something important. What about the factory? We were just there.”

  Christine shot a disdainful look at the larger structure. “Omega doesn’t care about that work. There’s nothing innovative there. It’s all superficial design. And now that’s all the company will have. No, I wouldn’t have risked my father thinking I’d seen something in his workshop—even something he didn’t fully develop—in case it turned up later at Omega.”

  “Do you know if your stepmother has been in?”

  Christine made a disgusted noise. “Marie never went there when Father was alive. It can’t mean much to her now. It’s different for me. I used to work there with him. Nearly every day we had coffee together near his fireplace.” Christine smiled. “He had old-fashioned habits.”

  “Your father was an engineer, wasn’t he? He went to the EPFL?”

  “Yes. He knew how to build a watch, he knew about metals and balance, and so many other things. He taught me everything I know.” Christine fingered the scarf wrapping her arm. “I don’t use much of it anymore, the design part I studied at school, but the other, it’s part of my past now, I guess.”

  “Did your father keep a notebook like the ones you showed me upstairs?”

  “Stephan’s back.”

  “I’ll meet him. It will only take a few minutes,” said Agnes.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “What about Omega and intellectual property?”

  “I’ll have two witnesses to say that I only stepped inside, hardly time to steal design secrets. Not that I think there are any.”

  As they approached the cottage, Agnes noticed that the hedge created a pathway to the door. It should have been the entrance to a secret garden. She glimpsed the small porch and noted that the windows on either side were shuttered. It was a darker place than Christine’s cottage with its white curtains and gleaming windows.

  “I told Marie she’d need to come in and clear everything out,” said Dupré, jerking his head toward the path. “Offered to help, but she’s too upset. It’ll have to wait.”

  “It’s only been a week,” said Agnes. “Madame Chavanon may need more time before she disturbs the place her husband worked.”

  Dupré pulled a single key from his pocket. “I’ve never used it, but there’s no reason to think it won’t fit the lock. Guy always gave me one for emergencies. Guess he figured I’d rush over and put a fire out if I had to.” He handed it to Agnes. “We’ll let the police do the honors. That way Marie can’t get too angry. She’s protective of the place.”

  Agnes took the key and walked the narrow path to the porch. Upon closer inspection, the shrubs were large but well maintained, with the tops gently rounded. They created a path directly to the steps. Dupré followed her closely. When she reached the porch, she stopped, blocking his view. “When was the last time someone was here?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Not since Guy died,” Dupré said. “Why?”

  “Stay back.” The door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even closed. There was a slight gap between it and the frame. She placed her toe at the bottom of the door and nudged it open. It barely moved.

  “What the devil?” Dupré said behind her.

  Agnes motioned for him to back away. “Is anyone here?” she said as a final warning, not expecting a reply. She pushed the door again, this time more forcefully, and it swung open.

  What she saw stunned her.

  Nine

  Guy Chavanon’s workshop had been ransacked. Agnes stepped inside, moving cautiously. Paper was scattered on the floor. Boxes were overturned, the contents heaped in piles. Tools, clocks, scraps of metal, and miscellany lay in tumbled heaps. She flipped a light switch on. The walls of the original living room were covered with large pieces of paper. The exterior shutters were closed, and the interiors of the windows were also papered over. Every centimeter was covered with scribbles. Equations. Diagrams. Notes. Agnes hadn’t seen anything like it since her last mathematics lecture in university. In the center of the room, four long tables were shoved together and covered with paper and boxes of mechanical parts.

  Fresh air shifted. Agnes crossed to the back wall where a windowpane had shattered on the floor. The opening was large enough for a person to crawl through. Leaving it, she quickly moved to the next room. Originally the bedroom, it was lined by tables. Piles of unbound sheets of paper lay scattered on the floor. The bathroom was next. There, the empty cabinets were open. That left the kitchen. She called out again, although she knew the cottage was empty. There was something palpable about an empty building.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Christine Chavanon said from the front porch.

  She looked ill, whereas Dupré looked dazed. “My God, everything I told Vallotton was true.”
He started forward and Agnes motioned for him to stay outside.

  She knelt to study the area around the shattered glass. There was no moisture on the floor or wall, and the glass was dry. It had rained the day before in Basel, but not at her home near Lausanne. She would have to check the local weather to establish a timeline for when the break-in occurred.

  “It looks like the studio of a madman.” Dupré gestured to the covered walls and mounds of paper.

  Agnes didn’t disagree.

  “My father was a genius,” Christine objected. “He had a genius’s way of working. That’s why he wanted a room apart from the main factory. People didn’t understand how his mind operated. He needed the freedom to process ideas and—” She started to cry.

  Dupré ignored her. “It wasn’t like this the last time I was here.”

  “When was that?” Agnes asked, wanting to comfort Christine, but needing information first.

  “Maybe a year ago?”

  “Why did you stop visiting?”

  “There wasn’t a reason.” Dupré peered in through the open doorway. “Or at least I didn’t think there was.”

  “Christine, when were you here last?” Agnes stepped closer to the door.

  “When I left the family business. Nearly three years ago.”

  “Your arm is bleeding again,” said Agnes.

  Christine placed a hand firmly on the bandage, not seeming to care. She stared in disbelief at the heavily marked paper covering the walls.

  Agnes stood in the doorway of the former living room, examining the kitchen. It had been transformed into a cross between a lab and a metal shop. Dupré kept talking, his anxiety palpable.

  “I write travel books. I’m often gone for weeks, even months, at a time, and I spent a lot of time in Asia recently. When I returned, I figured Guy had fallen into other habits. I knew that once he’d finished whatever was occupying him, he’d be anxious to sit with me again.”

  “That had happened before?” Agnes studied the formulas on the walls. Some elements were familiar to her. Those looked accurate. Messy, but correct. Others were beyond her base of knowledge, straying from pure math into chemistry. This looked beyond the mechanics of watchmaking, even beyond the calculations needed for metallurgy. On the porch, Christine was bent over at the waist, as if she was going to be sick. Agnes tried to decide, were these the writings of a well-educated yet unstable mind or the calculations of a genius?