Murder in the Rue Dumas : A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (9781101603185)

by Longworth, M. l.

  “Ah. The sadness.”

  “I’m sorry about the pasta,” Marcel Féau said as he cleared away the dishes.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” replied his wife.

  “That’s very kind of you, but it was overcooked, and I know how fussy Corsicans are about their pasta.”

  Annie Leonetti rested her head back against the kitchen wall. “I hardly noticed, to tell you the truth. And the kids gobbled it down. Where did they learn to put ketchup on pasta, by the way?”

  “My parents’ house,” Marcel replied, pouring his wife a cup of herbal tea. He braced himself for a discourse on the poor eating habits of his parents, who as retired French civil servants had more money than they knew what to do with. They obviously didn’t spend it on food—as Annie complained about regularly—and Marcel often wondered if his father had a secret gambling habit, or if his mother had been a victim of some Internet scam. But Annie stayed quiet for some time, until she finally said, “It is terrible about Professor Moutte’s death, but I can’t help but not feel too saddened by it. Terrible for a theologian to admit that, isn’t it?”

  “Theologians aren’t immune to impure thoughts,” her husband replied, putting a packet of cookies on the table. “Besides, Moutte wasn’t the most likeable man in the world. He treated you and Bernard horribly, waiting until the last minute to retract his retirement promise, teasing you the whole time with the suggestion that you had the job. I’m sure he did the same to Bernard.”

  “Yes, I’m quite certain he did, judging by Bernard’s behavior at the party. You don’t think…?”

  Marcel looked at his wife, surprised. “Annie, I can’t imagine anyone doing such a thing, and I’m surprised that you would think so of Bernard.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. More likely it was Rocchia.”

  “Annie!”

  Annie laughed and took a cookie and dipped it into her tea. “I was feeling quite cocky up until Friday night. I was sure I had the job, and I had mentally moved us into the Quatre Dauphins apartment.”

  “Ah,” Marcel said, frowning. “The kids would have left a trail of water from the pool into the house all summer long. Think of the mess.” Annie laughed and reached over the table, taking her husband’s face in her large brown hands and giving him a kiss.

  Chapter Ten

  Dr. Bouvet Delights in Annoying Judge Verlaque

  Verlaque arrived late at the restaurant, having toured each level of the underground parking garage only to find, on the bottom floor, what he was fairly certain was the very last spot. He had then run up the stairs of the garage that emptied into the immense place aux Huiles, then run up more stairs that led to the rue Sainte, the restaurant just on his right. Opening the restaurant’s door was always a delight—a haven away from the busy Marseille port and its bars spilling out onto the sidewalks, most of them televising a soccer game at full volume.

  Jacques saw him and walked, as quickly as his cane would take him, toward Verlaque. “Monsieur le Juge!” he exclaimed, slowly lifting his right hand up to shake Verlaque’s.

  “M. Jacques!” Verlaque exclaimed. He knew the couple’s family name, but had always referred to them as Jacques and Jeanne.

  “M. Madani is already seated, with a view of the old port.” This was Jacques’s regular joke, as the restaurant had no windows overlooking the port, but one long fresco of the port that took up the entire west wall—where the view would have been, had there been windows. The painting was too bright, the perspective all wrong, but Verlaque loved it. He made his way to the table, smiling at two young women as he passed their table.

  “I’m dying over this whiskey,” Madani said, taking Verlaque’s hand and shaking it.

  “Jacques has a new one?”

  “Bruichladdich,” Madani answered. “I’m sure I’m butchering the name. Jacques says it’s new—well, it was old, but the distillery closed and so the head whiskey maker went out and raised just enough money to save it. A labor of love, according to Jacques.”

  Verlaque sniffed the golden whiskey and asked, “Islay?”

  “Yes,” answered Jacques, who was now at their table.

  “Were you Scottish in another life, Jacques?” asked Madani, laughing and looking over Verlaque’s shoulder at the dozens of whiskey bottles displayed behind the bar.

  “Oh yes, I think so,” the restaurateur replied, with a seriousness that surprised the two diners. Jacques stared off for a moment, as if he were imagining the island of Islay, before saying, “Jeanne has grilled shrimp tonight, with an artichoke tapenade, as an entrée. As a main dish she made her daube, which I know you love, Judge, served with pasta.”

  Verlaque did love Jeanne’s beef stew, which she made with Camargue bulls’ meat, a generous helping of orange zest, and tomatoes that she had canned over the summer. But he could never understand the Provençal preference for noodles with stews. “Sounds great, but I’d like potatoes instead of pasta.”

  Jacques smiled. “Jeanne made the pasta, Monsieur le Juge.”

  “In that case, pasta, please. And I’ll start with the same whiskey that my filmmaker friend here is drinking.”

  Jacques motioned to the barman to pour another whiskey and then looked down at their table, leaning even more heavily on his cane. Madani and Verlaque exchanged looks and Verlaque nodded, winking. Madani understood the cue and said, “Jacques, would you like to sit down and join us for a whiskey?”

  Jacques looked around at the restaurant, full but with the other diners already happily eating.

  “Well, I think I might! Just for a minute or two!” With surprising quickness he pulled out a chair from a neighboring table and sat down.

  Just before Verlaque began to break the golden crust of his lavender crème brûlée, his cell phone rang. He immediately answered it, seeing that the caller was Dr. Emile Bouvet, his coroner. He got up and took his phone into the men’s room. “Yes, Emile.”

  “Sorry to bother on a Saturday night, but I have some interesting news for you.”

  “Go on.”

  “Dr. Moutte was hit on the side of the head, as I’m sure the commissioner told you.”

  “Yes,” Verlaque answered quickly, not hiding his impatience.

  “The object was wood,” Bouvet continued, enjoying drawing out the suspense.

  “Go on, Emile,” Verlaque said.

  “And old.”

  “An antique?” Verlaque asked.

  Bouvet smiled, delighted to hear the impatience in the judge’s voice. “You could call it an antique. I’m with an old friend in the lab right now, who specializes in dating these kinds of things.”

  “So what does your friend say?” Verlaque breathed heavily into the phone. It surprised him that there would be a dating specialist living in Aix, but perhaps, like so many people did nowadays, he commuted from Aix to Paris on the TGV. “You are going to tell me, right? What does he say? Fifty? One hundred years old?”

  Bouvet laughed. “She says,” he answered slowly, smiling as he looked across the stainless steel table at Dr. Agnès Cohen. “Judging from the sliver we extracted from the guy’s hair, seven hundred years old.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Meeting Florence Bonnet

  They met at the Quatre Dauphins fountain. “Fancy meeting you here,” Paulik said. Verlaque smiled and shook his commissioner’s hand.

  “I left the car in the garage. Since it isn’t raining, I thought that the walk would clear my head.”

  Bruno Paulik nodded, thinking to himself that Verlaque had probably left his dark green 1963 Porsche in the garage for other reasons—yesterday the commissioner had seen university students walking around the car, peeking inside with cupped hands and whispering with excitement.

  “I just dropped Léa off at the conservatoire for a Sunday rehearsal, and there was a rare empty parking spot in front,” Paulik said, as if needing to explain why he too had been staring at the sixteenth-century fountain whose four fat dolphins spat out water.

  “
Ah, how is solfège going?” Verlaque asked.

  “Moments of panic, soothed by mint chocolate-chip ice cream.” Verlaque laughed and the two walked on, talking of the weather, Paulik’s father’s newfound enthusiasm for ancient Rome, and a banking machine that had been blown up at 5:00 a.m. that morning, giving the thieves easy access to whatever money hadn’t been burned in the explosion. Moments of silence were not uncomfortable, Verlaque noted to himself. He was happy to have a colleague with whom he could speak of history or music so easily. Conversations with Parisian colleagues usually began with real estate prices.

  After ten minutes of pleasant walking, they arrived at the humanities building. Verlaque looked up at the gray exterior, built in a hurry sometime in the 1930s and in dire need of a paint job. The windows looked as if they hadn’t been washed in years, but up on the third floor someone had made an attempt to cheer up their office or classroom with planters, hung crudely to the metal shutters with wires. French facultés—unlike the elite, much smaller grandes écoles, which both Verlaque and Marine had attended—were open to any student who passed the high school baccalaureate exams. Because of this there was overenrollment and the facultés were underfunded, but the bright pink pansies above him, blooming despite their surroundings, reminded Verlaque that many students, underprivileged or otherwise, did benefit from this free-of-charge, nonelitist system. It touched him, all of a sudden, being French, a feeling that usually came over him in restaurants and museums, not in front of a faculté.

  Two young men, one tall and slim and the other short and stocky, ran past Verlaque and Paulik, both boys trying to squeeze past each other to be the first one in the door, but both getting stuck and then having to step back in order to let out the ballerinalike policewoman Verlaque had seen yesterday. She smiled when she saw the judge and commissioner, and the boys hurried into the building, the taller one pushing his friend through first and following behind.

  “Officer Cazal, good morning,” Paulik said, shaking her hand. Verlaque and the policewoman said hello and the three walked into the building. “We’ll be in room 103, the third door down on the right,” she said, smiling at both men but her gaze lingering on Verlaque. “Everyone is here now; we were waiting for the boys to arrive.”

  As they got closer to the assembly room voices could be heard—some high-pitched, others rapid-fire whispers—but all silenced when the judge and two police officers entered the room.

  “Good morning and thank you for coming on a Sunday,” Bruno Paulik said. Those gathered—twenty-some-odd who had been present at Professor Moutte’s party or who had worked with the deceased—stared at the former rugby player, some of them with half-eaten cookies in their mouths. Verlaque stayed silent, enjoying the impression that his six-two, 210-pound bald commissioner was making.

  “We’ll begin by talking with all of you together, followed by individual interviews. As Officer Cazal has informed you, you’ll be expected to remain here for the day, and if you are planning to leave Aix this week, please let her know where you can be reached.”

  “I have research to do at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris later in the week!” complained a well-dressed middle-aged man with chiseled cheekbones and thick white hair.

  “Ah, come off it, Bernard, you can do your research anytime!” a woman answered. She looked Italian or Spanish to Verlaque, and like her colleague had also been blessed with abundant, thick hair, all of it still black.

  “But my train ticket is booked!”

  “Paris is no problem, just leave us a number where we can get ahold of you,” Paulik quickly replied before any other interruptions could be made. “Most of you present this morning were at Professor Moutte’s party on Friday night. The doyen was murdered sometime early Saturday morning, just a few hours after the party. My first question is, who was the last person to leave the party?”

  “I was,” the Italian-looking woman spoke, her voice loud and self-assured. “My name is Annie Leonetti. I’m a theology professor. I heard Georges—Dr. Moutte—tell his housekeeper that she could go home and come back in the morning to do the dishes.”

  “And so you stayed late to help the doyen?”

  “No,” Dr. Leonetti replied. “I stayed late to help out the maid. I took the dirty wineglasses into the kitchen and helped wrap up the leftovers.”

  “Okay,” Paulik said. “What did you speak of with the doyen?”

  “No doubt his surprise retirement postponement,” the white-haired professor said, quietly but loud enough for those close to Verlaque and Paulik to hear.

  “Certainly not, Bernard!” Leonetti replied. Then, looking at Paulik and then Verlaque, she added, “We only spoke of the merits of cling wrap versus aluminum foil.”

  “Did he tell you that he was going to the office after cleaning up?” Verlaque asked.

  Annie Leonetti paused for the briefest of seconds, Verlaque noted, before replying.

  “He did mention it, yes.”

  “Did that not seem unusual to you? Given the late hour?”

  “No, not really,” she answered. “He had no family to look after, and he often worked late. But when I left just after midnight he was still in the kitchen. We didn’t leave together.”

  “Thank you,” Verlaque replied. He wondered how Annie Leonetti knew that the doyen often worked late. She also sounded resentful of the fact that he had “no family to look after.” She was a beautiful woman, with olive skin and thick red lips, but her sparkling brown eyes had dark circles under them. He thought of the modern professor’s life—publish or perish—and imagined that she might have small children at home.

  “So no one saw Dr. Moutte leave his apartment early Saturday morning? Or did he mention it to anyone that night? The fact that he may have had some late-night work to do?” Paulik asked.

  The assembly remained silent, some of them looking at each other in hopes of hearing someone speak, others looking into their coffee cups.

  “He did tell me that he was meeting Giuseppe Rocchia, but he didn’t say when,” the handsome Bibliothèque nationale researcher said, quite unnecessarily, thought Verlaque.

  “Bernard!” Annie Leonetti again chastised her colleague. “That could have been anytime!”

  “The policeman did ask what we talked about. I’m Bernard Rodier, by the way.” He looked over at Annie Leonetti and added, “I too teach theology, but I’m mainly a researcher and writer.” Annie Leonetti sighed and rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling. Rodier went on, “You may be familiar with my volumes on the Cistercian order…they’re in most good bookshops, even on Amazon…”

  “Thank you, Dr. Rodier,” Verlaque quickly answered. “We’ve been given a list of those of you who have keys to this building and will begin our interviews with you, for obvious reasons.” He was already getting tired of the bickering between Drs. Leonetti and Rodier and wanted to remind the professors that their boss had been murdered only two nights ago.

  “I’ll call you in one at a time to the office across the hall from this room,” Officer Cazal said. “There will be sandwiches provided for you at noon, so please don’t leave the building until you have been interviewed. We’ll start alphabetically.”

  “C’est pas vrai!” moaned the doyen’s secretary. “I’ll be last! My name starts with a Z! But surely you don’t need to interview me? I didn’t even stay long at the party.”

  “No exceptions, I’m sorry, Mademoiselle. You have a key to the building, don’t you?” Paulik asked.

  “Yes, of course I do!” she replied, her hands on her narrow hips. “But Dr. Moutte could have let in his murderer!”

  Paulik stared at the young secretary with something close to disbelief. “We’ll still need to interview you. We should be through by six.”

  The secretary sighed, and Paulik added, “You can work upstairs in your office, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Verlaque imagined that Mlle Z. had either been planning on leaving early or was nervous about being in
terviewed. He left the assembly room and walked across that hall to a small office that appeared to be the kind that was used by graduate students or for small meetings. The desk was 1960s metal and in a few years would probably be considered vintage and be sold in antique stores in the sixth arrondissement in Paris. Three mismatched chairs had been placed in the room, along with a stack of paper and two pencils. Extra office supplies, most of the boxes half-opened, were stacked on the floor in a corner, as were the parts of a dusty plastic coffee machine.

  Paulik came and sat down across from Verlaque. “Does anyone in that room like each other?”

  “I was thinking the same thing, although we only heard from the same three people.”

  Officer Cazal poked her blond head in the room and said, “The first interviewee is ready if you are.”

  Verlaque nodded. A woman in her late sixties with outdated wire-rimmed glasses and neat, short auburn hair stood in the door and looked at Paulik and then at Verlaque.

  “Hello, Judge,” she said. “Since I’m here on official business we won’t speak of your routine practice of breaking my daughter’s heart.”

  Antoine Verlaque looked up over his reading glasses at Mme Florence Bonnet. She smiled.

  “I seem to be a suspect,” she said. “By the simple fact that as a semiretired theology professor I have a key to the building. Plus I hated Georges Moutte, but no one has known that until now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Poor Old Georges

  “Please sit down,” Verlaque said, motioning to a chair but not returning Mme Bonnet’s forced smile. “This is my commissioner, Bruno Paulik.”

  Florence Bonnet took her seat and looked at Paulik, adjusting her glasses as if to see him better. She smiled—obviously liking what she saw—and then said, “We’re a motley crew in the Theology Department, aren’t we?” Verlaque hid his smile and liked Mme Bonnet a little more.