by Aaron Elkins
"Well, let’s go sit down," Ray said. "I’ve asked Beatrice to bring us some coffee."
With luck Beatrice would not take Ray’s request in too narrow a sense; he was ravenous, although he’d breakfasted in the hotel restaurant at eight. Delicious as the French petit déjeuner of croissants, rolls, and café au lait was, its staying power was an hour and a half at most. The French, realizing this, often had a second breakfast at midmorning to tide them over until lunch, and if Beatrice were to offer him something along that line, he would not turn it down.
In the window alcove of the salon were the same people he’d met the evening before, as if they’d been there all night, leaving only to change their clothes. Now, however, it was an ample breakfast they were putting away, and Beatrice’s croissants looked a lot better than the ones at the Terminus.
Ray and Gideon walked past the group, which was deep in conversation (except for Jules, who was sucking in croissants as quickly as he could smear them with jam and butter), and headed toward a pair of chairs in the far corner, but René caught their eye with an amiable smile and waved them over. There was no polite escape. With a small shrug between them, they joined the others. This time it was Ben who moved his chair to make room for them.
Beatrice got there at the same time they did, and, happily, she had not forgotten his good appetite. With the steaming pitchers of milk and coffee there were two big baskets; one of croissants and one of rolls, both of them warm and fragrant—altogether the best combination of smells to be found in France. Maybe in the world.
"We’ve solved your mystery for you," René announced, sprightly and pink-cheeked.
"Oh?"
"Obersturmbannführer Kassel of the SS. That’s who it is. It must be."
"Yes, I heard something about him." Gideon glanced down to break open a roll. "Tell me, do you remember what he looked like?"
"I’ll never forget." The shadow of a cloud rippled over René’s bland face. "No one could, who was here when the trouble came. Very handsome in the German way; very cold, very Aryan. A blond giant…"
"You know," Ben pointed out, "you might be overstating this‘giant’ thing a little, which maybe could mislead Gideon. You were a kid then, and to a kid every grown-up looks big and strong."
"René was sixteen," Mathilde said. "That was not a child in those days. Besides, I remember the SS man very well too. And I was… somewhat older." After a moment she added: "At that time." Just in case anyone thought it might still be true.
"Well, what about the bones, Gideon?" Sophie asked. "Do they fit the description, or don’t you have enough to go on?"
He hesitated. He had more than enough to go on, and no, they didn’t fit the description, whatever Joly might think. But he was saved from having to hedge by someone making an entrance into the salon. Six pairs of eyes swiveled in the newcomer’s direction with candid hostility. Even Ray, to whom glowers didn’t come easily or often in Gideon’s experience, managed a creditable one.
"Claire’s father," Ray whispered to him. Gideon, whose back was to the doorway, turned out of curiosity.
Claude Fougeray, as Joly had said, was not an endearing man, at least to look at. Short-necked and squat, radiating
belligerence, he stopped at the entrance of the room to return the collective antagonism with a goggling, malevolent stare of his own. Then he muttered an ugly laugh and made his way past them to the empty dining room.
Good God, if that was Claire’s father, no wonder her eyes had that haunted look.
In the salon the conversation had stopped, so that the clink of carafe against wineglass in the other room was audible, then the hollow gurgle of liquid being poured, and even the three wolfish gulps that followed. There was another muttered, contemptuous laugh, and the process was repeated: clink, gurgle, glug, glug, glug. And again the clink…Gideon shuddered. It was 9:15 a.m.
"Tell me, René," Sophie said, her voice brighter and louder than before, "what will you and Mathilde do? Will you give up your job in Germany and come and live at the manoir?"
"Well," René said, "we haven’t really—"
"Of course we will," said Mathilde. "It may take a few weeks to put things in order, however. It’s quite difficult at the moment without an automobile to get about in. Guillaume’s Citroën is still in the car park at Mont St. Michel, you know. I was hoping, Raymond, that you might go there and drive it back."
"The car? Yes, of course. But how would I get there?"
"Take someone else’s car, of course."
"But no one else has a car, my dear," René said. "Marcel picked everyone up at the airport or the train station in Dinan."
Mathilde shrugged crossly. She was not interested in details. "You can take a taxi to the train station, I suppose, and go from there, or perhaps you can rent a car. It’s all very annoying. I can’t imagine why Guillaume kept only the one car here. In Frankfurt we have—"
"Ha!" Behind Gideon, Claude had returned to the entrance to the salon. No one looked in his direction.
"—three automobiles and could easily do with another. It sounds ostentatious, I suppose, but—"
"Ha!"
Even Mathilde faltered. "—but as a matter of fact…as a matter of fact…"
"Ha!" There was a startlingly loud crash.
Gideon spun around in time to see Claude’s half-filled wineglass drop to the thinly carpeted stone floor and smash a few inches from where the carafe had splintered a moment before.
"Jesus Christ!" Ben Butts cried hoarsely. "What is it? Claude…!"
Claude’s body was rigid, arms spread, fingers clawing convulsively at the air. "Ha!" he cried. "Caah!" From one corner of his stretched lips a fine white froth seeped, as if his mouth were full of soap. His bulging eyes heaved.
"Oh, my God," Sophie murmured. "He can’t breathe!"
"Do something!" Mathilde commanded all-inclusively. "He’s having a heart attack!" And, her tone implied, on my Aubusson carpet.
Gideon, as paralyzed as the rest of them, finally pulled himself out of his chair and moved toward the stricken man. Before he got there Claude jerked as if an electrical current had pulsed through him, grunted through clenched teeth, then abruptly threw himself down on the floor, onto his back, like a circus performer who would momentarily spring unaided to his feet, all in one movement.
He didn’t spring to his feet, of course. He didn’t move at all, except for his outflung arms, which settled gently to the floor at his side in a quiet motion of terrible finality. His eyelids were lowered halfway over glazed and unfocused eyes. When his mouth fell open a moment later, a gob of foam welled from it and slid down his cheek toward his ear.
HEAD down, hands clasped behind his back, Joly listened to Gideon’s brief description of what had happened. When it was done he nodded once and stepped from the vestibule back into the salon to address the assembled household, who sat, edgy and subdued, in the alcove. Only Leona and Claire, in seclusion in their rooms, were absent.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said matter-of-factly, "I shall want to speak with each of you in the next few hours. After that, I expect to ask for your cooperation in remaining in the vicinity for the next several days."
"But we’re supposed to fly to the States tonight," Ben said.
Others began to protest too, but Joly cut them off. "If any of you find it an extreme inconvenience to remain until—let’s say Tuesday, three days—please inform me when we speak privately. But I hope that won’t be the case. It would create annoying and time-consuming difficulties for me and for yourselves. Madame," he said to Mathilde, "is there a room in which it would be convenient for me to hold interviews?"
"I suppose so," Mathilde said grudgingly. "Guillaume’s study is right across the hall."
"And someplace other than here where people might wait comfortably? I’m afraid I must ask all of you not to return to your rooms for the moment."
Mathilde fixed him with a penetrating eye. "Are your men going to search them?"
"Yes, they are."
She sighed her displeasure. "There are some chairs at the landing near the central staircase."
"Thank you. Fleury, please escort everyone as Madame du Rocher directs, and wait with them."
There was some muttering but they went meekly, except for Mathilde, who expressed restrained indignation at these high-handed police methods in her own home.
"Oh, and get somebody here from Pathology," Joly called after Fleury. "Dr. Fouret, if he’s available."
"I hope he’s a real doctor," Mathilde grumbled with a last scathing look at Gideon over her shoulder. Gideon spread his hands apologetically. His tentative, conspicuously amateurish attempts at CPR had not met with her approval. Nor with his own, but Claude had been so obviously beyond the reach of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation or any other earthly assistance that nothing would have helped in any case. Not even a real doctor.
So said Dr. Loti, the elderly physician—Guillaume’s doctor of many years—who had been summoned by Marcel after Claude’s shocking attack.
"Well," he said to Joly, coming from behind the folding screen that had been set up around Claude’s body and snapping shut his black leather case, "your professor friend here is right about the cause of death. I’m sure your laboratory will confirm it." He nodded at Gideon. "The smell of bitter almonds; very good, young man."
Joly’s glance at Gideon was not especially grateful.
"Look, Inspector," Gideon said, "this is your case. I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t know anything about it. I just happened to be here."
"So it seems."
"All I know about bitter almonds is what I read in Sherlock Holmes. I don’t even know what a bitter almond is."
"Mm." Joly turned to Loti. "Do you have any idea how quick death would have been?"
"Within minutes, probably only a very few. Cyanide is one of the most rapidly lethal of all poisons. It disrupts the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood the moment it’s ingested."
"Then we can certainly assume that it was in the wine," Joly mused. He stood looking at the crime-scene crew taking their photographs and bustling around the corpse on their knees. One man was dusting the pieces of the broken carafe with black powder. "Are you getting any prints?" Joly asked him.
"Yes. More than one person’s, I think."
"Good."
"But you know," Gideon volunteered, "you wouldn’t have had to touch the carafe if you wanted to put poison in it. In fact, you’d be crazy if you did."
Joly gazed down his nose at him for a long moment, his lips pursed. "Thank you," he said.
"You’re very welcome." Funny the way policemen never seem to be particularly appreciative when obliging laymen point out self-evident facts to them. "I think," he said prudently, "that I’ll get out of here and take another crack at those bones."
Inspector Joly did not object.
WHEN the manoir had been built, the stairwell in the southeast corner had evidently been housed in a massive tower. The tower itself had disappeared long ago, probably in some nineteenth-century remodeling, so that there was no sign of it from the outside. Inside, however, the worn stone steps still spiraled in their old cylindrical casing, and the landings were big, hexagonal chambers of bleak, gray stone, sparsely decorated with gloomy fragments of Greek and Roman statues, and furnished with a few appropriately austere wooden chairs and benches.
Fleury had taken the family members to the landing on the ground floor, through which Gideon had to pass on the way to the cellar, and there they stood or sat, alone or in small, grim clumps, looking put-upon, annoyed, or bewildered. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of grieving, Gideon noted. Not surprising, given his own brief acquaintance with Claude.
Ray (one of the bewildered ones) approached him tentatively. "It wasn’t a heart attack, then? I mean, with the police here and all…?"
Gideon led him a little away from the others; out of hearing. "It looks like the wine was poisoned, Ray."
When his friend seemed more bewildered yet, Gideon said gently: "It looks like he was murdered."
"‘As if,’ " Ray murmured automatically, off in his own world, "in both instances. Or‘as though.’ " He frowned dreamily while Gideon’s words made their way through. "Murdered," he finally said. "But why would anyone want to—" Guile was not one of Ray Schaefer’s strong points, and Gideon saw his eyes widen at some unwelcome thought in the midst of his conventional response. "—to kill Claude?" he finished weakly and predictably.
Gideon studied him for a moment. "Ray, if you know something, you ought to mention it to Joly."
"Oh, I don’t know anything," he said, dropping his eyes to stare at his toes. "Nothing important; nothing that could matter." He paused and considered. "It’s just …well, there was some trouble during the war."
"The war? You mean the Second World War?" He looked at Ray with interest. There were an awful lot of World War II vibrations bouncing around the Manoir de Rochebonne.
"Well, yes, sure. In 1942." Ray wriggled and shifted. "Oh—it’s just that Claude had a chance to warn some people that the Nazis were going to arrest them, but he didn’t do it and the SS executed them. One of them was my Uncle Alain—my cousin, rather; Sophie’s and René’s brother— and I guess there were some hard feelings."
"Yeah, I can see how there just might be."
"Well, I mean really hard feelings." He hesitated, then gave his mild version of a what-the-hell shrug. "The thing is, Sophie absolutely adored him, and she’s never forgiven Claude. They never even got Alain’s body back from the Nazis."
"I see."
"And Mathilde was engaged to him before she married René. And—"
"Listen, Ray, if you’re thinking about holding this back because you think it’ll protect Sophie or Mathilde—"
"Me?" Ray said miserably and uttered an implausible laugh.
"—don’t do it. Tell Joly what you know."
"But I don’t—Gideon, it was almost fifty years ago."
"Ray, don’t hide anything; it can wind up hurting whoever you’re trying to help. Believe me."
"Whomever," Ray said, and retreated into a mute and uncharacteristic mumpishness.
TEN
WITH his slim, elegant fingers steepled before his lips and his elbows on the plain metal desk in Guillaume du Rocher’s study, Joly read aloud from the note lying on the blotter in front of him. It had come from the bureau in Mathilde’s room.
"‘I have reached a decision on a matter of singular family importance,’ " he read. "‘We will discuss it at Rochebonne on 16 March.’ You have no idea what he was referring to?"
Mathilde fingered the necklace of heavy gold links at her throat. "I’m afraid I don’t," she said flutily. "You do realize he sent the same note to everyone."
Joly unsteepled his fingers. "You, your husband, and your son flew here from Germany—your husband giving up several days of work—without knowing why you were coming? Merely on your cousin’s instructions to do so?"
"Yes, Inspector. Others came from considerably farther. There was nothing strange about it. When business matters of importance to the family arose, Guillaume would simply send for us, and we would come."
"But you arrived Sunday, the day before. You had many chances to talk with him. The subject never arose?"
"Everyone arrived Sunday," Mathilde said patiently. "Everyone had many chances to talk with him. I should be very surprised if any of them know any more than I do about it."
"Not even Claude Fougeray?"
Mathilde’s upper lip curled very slightly. "Claude least of all."
"Claude and Guillaume were not on good terms?"
"I believe Claude Fougeray had not set foot in the manoir in over forty years."
"And why was that, madame?"
Ah, a hesitation, a fleeting shift in the focus of her eyes, a gathering of resources for equivocation.
"Oh, he had some sort of falling out with Guillaume— ages ago, in the forties. I never knew the de
tails. I was quite small at the time."
You were seventeen at the time, madame, Joly said to himself, but he decided to let it go for the moment. There were more immediate matters.
"Madame du Rocher, can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill Claude Fougeray?"
Mathilde’s eyes lit up with happy malice. "Well, there is someone who comes to mind, but …no, it’s ridiculous, and I’m not one to tell tales…" Her glittering fingers rose again to her necklace as she paused demurely.
With a small sigh Joly delivered what was expected of him. "Permit me to decide that, madame."
"Very well, Inspector," she said promptly. "I understand that most murders are committed by one’s closest relatives. Isn’t that so? Well, that’s where I should look if I were you." She rested her topmost chin on the next one down and eyed him meaningfully.
Joly did not enjoy coaxing, and he was not very good at it. And he didn’t care for Mathilde du Rocher.
"If you have something to say, please say it clearly," he said sharply.
She glared at him, as if deciding whether to punish him by holding back, but in the end her instincts won out, as he was sure they would. How often could opportunities like this fall into her lap?
"Leona Fougeray," she said flatly, letting him know that he had taken the joy out of it for her, "is having an affair with a man in Rennes; an elderly, immensely wealthy widower who is eager to marry her. He is in his dotage, as I need hardly point out—or haven’t you met Leona?"
"Briefly, madame. I should think she would find divorce a more delicate avenue than murder." Damn. Sarcasm wasn’t going to get him very far. Did he used to be more tolerant of mean and boring people, or was it his imagination?
"More delicate, perhaps," Mathilde replied evenly, "but far slower, and with the disadvantage of requiring dealings with obstructive petty fonctionnaires."
He looked at her with new respect.
"In addition," she said, "Monsieur Gris is a devout Catholic. He would never marry a divorced woman. But a widow—well, that’s a different story."