Trousseau returned to his typing and Anne Marie opened the file. She glanced through several pages. Twice she nodded. Looking up, she was surprised to see the door open.
“Lafitte’s outside, madame le juge.”
She took a fifty-franc note from her handbag, “I’d like to have a better look at the dossier before seeing Lafitte. Perhaps you could get some sandwiches—and something to drink.”
Trousseau stood up.
“And see if you can get something from the chemists—something to stop this itching.”
4
Lafitte
“Why was he sent to French Guyana?”
“He murdered his wife.”
“Why?”
“He thought she was a soucougnan.”
“A what?”
“A voodoo witch.”
“So he killed her?”
Lafitte nodded. He was a few years older than her. His skin had taken a slightly yellow tint, with the wrinkles of years spent in the tropics. Yet he remained boyish in appearance. The sandy hair was short and brushed back. He spoke with the hint of a northern accent—from Roubaix or Lille. He had entered the police after a brief career as a professional cyclist. In his spare time, he captained a cycling team.
“How old is Bray now?” she asked.
“Nearly eighty-three.” He pointed to the desk. “Madame le juge, it’s all there in the dossier.”
“I’d rather you tell me,” Anne Marie said honestly; it was always a good policy to flatter a man’s professional pride.
“There hasn’t been time to check through all the archives. The trial was in Basse-Terre in 1940, and most of the records were destroyed in the fire of ’55. Yesterday I saw his half sister—she wasn’t too helpful.”
“Where did Bray grow up?”
“He was illegitimate.” Lafitte leaned forward and opened the file. “Never knew his father. His mother worked on the Calais estate—first in the fields and then later in the main house. She was a Carib and that is where he got his looks from.”
“What looks?”
“The thin nose and those high cheekbones—they’re Carib rather than African features.”
“Who is this sister you mention, Monsieur Lafitte?”
“Half sister,” he corrected. “A retired school teacher. Twelve years younger than him. She says it was Bray who helped toward her education. She passed her certificat d’études, and she got to be headmistress in a school at Pointe-Noire.”
Anne Marie nodded and looked at her hand.
“Now lives in Morne-à-l’Eau with her son. They were responsible for getting the old man back from South America.”
“How did they know he was still alive?”
“When he was deported, she sent letters but never got a reply. Then later she made enquiries and wrote to the Ministry of Justice in Paris. This was after the war, about the time they were shipping home the last of the convicts, and she wanted to know for certain Hégésippe Bray was dead.”
“Well?”
“Paris replied that he’d died of malaria in 1946.”
The lace curtain danced with the wind; somewhere along the docks a car hooted angrily.
Lafitte continued, “Salvation Army found him. They thought he had syphilis—it was endemic among the convicts. They picked him up, lying on the banks of one of the canals in Cayenne. Local people’d seen him around for some time, scavenging in the dustbins, hanging around the restaurants and the bars near the Place Grenoble. Probably came in from the country—there are still ex-convicts living among the Indians in the rain forest. Bray would beg for a few coins from the children on their way to school. A few francs to buy tafia.”
Anne Marie raised an eyebrow.
“Cheap rum—made from molasses. Should have killed him years ago. But once the Salvation Army got him to the hospital where they could wash and clean him up and give him regular meals—food and not just alcohol—his memory came back. The Salvation Army’s used to these cases. Arabs, West Indians as well as the Europeans—dross from all over the French Empire, ex-convicts who’d landed up Guyana. Deportation effectively destroyed most of them. Even once they’d done their time, they had to stay on and do an equal number of years in French Guyana. The hope was they’d help the economy.”
“When were the penal settlements abolished?”
“At the end of the war but before French Guyana became an overseas département in 1946. There was nothing for the ex-convicts to do. They weren’t allowed to own land or set up shop or have a business. Most drifted into petty crime. Either that or working as a domestic in the house of one of the prison officers. And working at virtually slave labor rates.”
“They weren’t sent back to France?”
Lafitte looked at the ceiling. “The bill to do away with deportation was voted before the war—because there was growing pressure in France. In the press.”
“Albert Londres?”
“Madame, why do you want me to tell you when you know about these things?”
Of course she knew about these things. At magistrate school she had specialized in punishment and recidivism. She gave him a friendly smile. “Continue, please, Monsieur Lafitte.”
“Newspaper articles shocked the public—at a time between the wars when there was a growth of interest in the colonies. The penal settlements in French Guyana would probably have been done away with by the time Hégésippe Bray was sent there if it hadn’t been for the war. French Guyana—like Martinique and Guadeloupe—came under the control of the Vichy government. So it was there—Devil’s Island and the Moroni—the collaborationists sent all their political undesirables—Gaullists and Communists. Useful because it was out of the way.”
“Bray wasn’t a political prisoner.”
“A murderer, but the court decided there were extenuating circumstances. So he was condemned to seven years in French Guyana. La guillotine sèche. Dry guillotine. No dripping knife edge and a lot slower—but just as effective.”
“Why wasn’t Bray sent back here? After the abolition of the bagne?”
“Like everyone else he was offered a free passage back to France. He’d been to France during the Great War and had almost died of flu there. He didn’t want to go back—he wanted to return to Guadeloupe. For that, he says, there was no arrangement. He had no money.”
“Strange.”
“And perhaps he was ashamed.”
“He could have contacted his sister.”
“Half sister.” Lafitte shrugged. “Possibly he didn’t want to.”
“He owned land in Guadeloupe.”
The door opened and Trousseau entered carrying a couple of sandwiches wrapped in brown paper. Without a word, he set the sandwiches and two bottles of Pepsi Cola on Anne Marie’s desk.
“And your ointment, madame le juge.” A green box with a red cross that Trousseau placed before her.
Anne Marie turned back to face Lafitte. “What do you know about Hégésippe Bray’s past?”
“We’ve telexed to Paris,” Lafitte said.
“I’m quite sure you’re following up all the lines of investigation with your habitual thoroughness,” Anne Marie said. “Please tell what you know about Bray’s past. What did the half sister tell you?”
Lafitte stared at the dossier that he had opened on his knees. “His mother died when he was in France. During the first war, when he was a soldier in the infantry. He was sent to the front where he ended up building the road that carried arms and men to Verdun. Verdun was under siege from the Germans.”
“Really?”
The yellow skin of Lafitte’s face seemed to tinge with a blush. “He worked alongside the Senegalese. He even shook hands with Pétain once—which made him a life-long admirer of the Maréchal. A quarter of a century later he was indignant about being sent to prison alongside people who denigrated the Maréchal.”
Anne Marie smiled.
“Wounded in the first war. And decorated. Possibly that’s what helped him get off
the death sentence in 1940. Above all, what stood him in good stead with the judges was the fact he was Calais’ favorite employee. At the age of twelve he’d started work on the Calais estate—first as a stable boy, then in the fields. Later he was put in charge of the horses. Very good with animals and the old man Calais was impressed by him—at least, that’s what the half sister says.”
“She’s told you a lot of things, Monsieur Lafitte.”
“Back from the trenches, Calais gave him a job as a foreman. With horses, a house of his own, a maid—and the responsibility of going round the plantation, seeing everything was in order. And paying the workers at the end of each month. Hégésippe Bray got on well with the coolies.”
“Coolies?”
“The Indians. At the end of slavery—after 1848, the Negroes didn’t want to work in the fields any more—the planters brought over indentured laborers from India. Good workers.” He smiled, turning in his seat. “I’m sure Monsieur Trousseau’ll agree with me.”
Trousseau looked up. “Negroes, mulattos, Indians, whites—all the same to me.”
“Negroes and Indians don’t always get on very well.”
Trousseau sucked his teeth noisily.
“Go on, monsieur l’inspecteur.”
“There was … there appears to have been a bond of loyalty between the old man Calais and Hégésippe Bray. According to the half sister, Calais considered Bray a son. By 1937, Bray was able to buy land from Calais, and he started growing his own sugar.”
“He continued to work for Calais?”
Lafitte nodded. “And he took a common law wife. This was in 1939, so he was already fairly old.”
Trousseau said, “Forty-two.”
“She was from Saint-Pierre in Martinique. A maid who worked in Calais’ house—a mulatto woman of considerable beauty. However Bray must eventually have decided she was a soucougnan because of the curse she put on him.”
“What kind of curse?”
“She took away.…” Lafitte blushed again. “She took away his virility.”
“Many witches still about,” Anne Marie remarked.
“There was a child,” Lafitte said. “A boy. The boy was found drowned in a rain pond. Bray claimed she killed the child to spite him.”
“Bray killed his wife out of revenge?”
“He killed the woman because she was a witch, a soucougnan. She was young and beautiful, whereas he was old. She wanted a vigorous young man. One night he cut her throat—with a machete. Then he burned the corpse.”
“And he was sentenced to a mere seven years?”
Lafitte’s smile was apologetic. “In those days, courts were more sympathetic to jealous husbands.”
“And they knew all about witches.”
“Bray had the good testimony of Calais. He got life—more than life. Thirty-eight years in a tropical prison.”
Listening, Anne Marie kneaded the back of her bandaged hand.
“When the Salvation Army contacted the half sister, she went down to Cayenne, and she persuaded Hégésippe Bray to return to Guadeloupe. He agreed on the understanding he would live in the country—on his own. The years of solitude had made him something of a hermit. Bray lived on the edge of the Calais estate.”
“Then why kill Calais?”
“An old grudge.” Lafitte shrugged. “Really there was no reason for Calais not to have taken the land back, even supposing that it’d once belonged to Bray. Like everybody else, Calais must’ve assumed Bray was dead.”
“You believe Bray killed Calais?”
“The motive was there. Hégésippe Bray had made threats.” Lafitte ran his hand through his hair. “And if it wasn’t Bray, who could it have been?”
Drops of condensation had formed on the bulbous glass of the Pepsi Cola bottles.
“Always possible that it was somebody completely different.”
“Such as, madame le juge?”
“Such as terrorists.”
5
Hégésippe Bray
Bray had blue eyes—bright blue eyes as clear as polar water.
The old man shuffled in like a man who had forgotten how to lift his feet. He advanced very slowly, guided by the prison officer who held his arm. Hégésippe Bray’s hands hung loosely before him; they were chained together.
“Unlock those cuffs.” Anne Marie spoke curtly to the officer. “And then kindly wait outside.”
When the officer had left, Anne Marie pointed to a chair. Lafitte took a couple of steps forward and placed it behind the old man.
Hégésippe Bray was wearing a faded prison uniform. The top buttons of the shirt were undone, revealing tight curls of white chest hair. He had not shaved. The skin of the jaw—a matte black like leather—was partially hidden beneath white stubble that gave him the look of an escaped convict.
Hégésippe Bray had once been strong; his chest was deep and his shoulders broad. Now as he lowered himself carefully into the wooden chair, putting his weight on Lafitte’s arm, he winced with pain.
Trousseau remained behind his desk, watching the old man.
In silence, Anne Marie and Hégésippe Bray stared at each other. Anne Marie had never seen a black man with blue eyes.
The innocent, clear eyes of a child.
“I am Madame Laveaud—the juge d’instruction—and I’ve been charged with the Calais dossier—the murder of Raymond Calais.” She tapped the beige folder. “There’d appear to be a prima facie case against you, Monsieur Bray, and you’re temporarily being held at the maison d’arrêt in Pointe-à-Pitre so that you can help us in our enquiries.”
There was no reaction.
“It’s my job to see whether the accusations that the gendarmerie of Sainte-Anne has made against you are sufficiently founded for you to be sent for trial before a court of law.” She paused. “Do I make myself clear?”
The eyes stared at her.
“Do you understand, Monsieur Bray?”
The old man turned, moving his head with his shoulders. He looked at the greffier.
Anne Marie said, “I want to help you, Monsieur Bray.”
Lafitte coughed. Behind the typewriter, Trousseau was silent.
The old man’s forehead formed long ridges. Slowly, very slowly, he looked about the office, at the lace curtains and the filing cabinets. He looked at the photograph of the president of the Republic, Giscard d’Estaing.
“Please tell me if you understand.”
Lafitte gave the old man a reassuring nod.
Hégésippe Bray spoke in Creole. His voice was higher and thinner than Anne Marie had expected.
Trousseau grinned.
“What’s he saying?”
Trousseau rubbed at his moustache and his dark eyes twinkled. Glancing at Lafitte, he tried to smother his smile behind his hand.
“Well, Monsieur Trousseau?”
Hégésippe Bray saw the smile on Trousseau’s face and nodded.
“Kindly tell me what Monsieur Bray’s just said.”
“You’re a woman.”
“Of course I’m a woman, Monsieur Trousseau.”
“He’d like to speak with Monsieur Lafitte—alone.” Trousseau wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He doesn’t wish to talk with you.”
“Tell Monsieur Bray to remember how he was treated by men.” Anne Marie had to stop herself from bridling. “How men deported him, men put him in prison, men sent him to work in a foreign country. Remind him how men punished him and then forgot all about him. And when it was time for him to return to Guadeloupe, those same men couldn’t be bothered to send him home. Kindly tell him that, Monsieur Trousseau.”
Trousseau shrugged. “I think he knows.”
“Kindly do as I say.”
“He can speak French.”
“Then why doesn’t he speak French with me?”
“Perhaps he doesn’t want to.”
“I’m not going to send him to rot on Devil’s Island. Or on the Moroni.”
It was Lafitte w
ho then cleared his throat to speak. “He’s not used to dealing with women.”
“More’s the pity.” She took a deep breath and turned. She gave Hégésippe Bray a reassuring smile. “I’m not going to send you away to die in prison. You’ve already suffered enough, Monsieur Bray.” She stood up and moved round the desk. Today Anne Marie was wearing her Courrèges skirt. The blue eyes followed her.
With a movement of her hand, she gestured to Trousseau to stop his typing. She approached Hégésippe Bray—he smelt of carbolic soap—and bending down, she placed a hand on the worn cotton of his shirt. “I’m your friend.” She could feel the bones of his shoulder. “I want to help you.”
The old face remained impassive.
“There are things I need to know, and I can’t help you if you won’t help me.” She spoke slowly. “You must tell me what happened, Monsieur Bray.”
The silence was broken only by the brush of the curtains against the wood of the window and the distant sound of traffic.
“Please help me.”
Lafitte coughed.
“For your own sake, you must help me.”
Hégésippe Bray shook his head, and at the same time, he shrugged her hand away from where it lay on his shoulder. “Une greluche,” he said defiantly.
The slang word for a woman. He used the intonation of Paris. Of Pigalle and Belleville, beyond the boulevards. Paris—the cheap pimps, the dry smell of the métro, the weasel-faced gangsters, the painted whores, the gonzesses. Paris—a soulless world of asphalt and despair.
“The penal colony doesn’t exist anymore—you know that.” Anne Marie returned to her seat. “Nobody wants to send you there. You will not leave this island—even supposing you’re found guilty.”
The old man lowered his head.
“If you want to live in peace with your goats and your garden, then you must help me—help me by telling me the truth. Monsieur Bray, the gendarmerie at Sainte-Anne believes you’re involved in the death of Raymond Calais. In his murder.”
“I didn’t kill no one.”
He spoke in his throat, guttural and tough. He must have picked up the accent from the riffraff of the penal colony—the murderers and gangsters who were sent out to Cayenne at the time of the Front Populaire. And before.
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