Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  DAY FOURTEEN

  May 26, 2010

  (Moulin des Chennevières)

  Silver Ribbons

  84

  I’ve opened the window. It’s just after midnight. I thought it would be easier to jump once night had fallen. I’ve tidied everything in the room, like a crazy old woman, as if the worst of Jacques’s obsessive behavior has finally rubbed off on me. On the table I have left the letter asking for Neptune to be looked after. I didn’t have the courage to take down my black Water Lilies.

  I have no illusions; some junk-shop vultures from the Eure Valley will come and help themselves. Furniture, pots and pans, knickknacks. Perhaps some objects will make their way to the antique shop on Rue Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, to my old house above the school. But I’d be surprised if anyone troubled themselves to take an interest in my Water Lilies, that hideous painting daubed with black.

  Who could imagine that another life full of light might be hidden underneath?

  To the bin with it!

  To the hole in the ground, beside her lovely husband, the old woman who leaned too far out of the window.

  The wicked old woman who no longer spoke to anyone, who never smiled, who barely said hello. Who could imagine that beneath that wrinkled skin there was once a little girl with talent. Perhaps even genius…

  No one will ever know.

  Fanette and Stéphanie have been dead for so long now, murdered by an overzealous guardian angel.

  I study the courtyard of the mill through the window. The gray gravel is lit by the light from the porch. I’m not scared, I have just one regret. Little Fanette had such a love of life.

  I don’t think she deserved to die feeling so bitter.

  85

  The Citroën Picasso stops almost below my window. It’s a taxi. I’m used to it; taxis often drop off tourists at the holiday homes at the end of the evening. They take the last train from Paris to Vernon station, suitcases full to bursting.

  Neptune goes over, of course. Usually taxi doors open to release a horde of children, still excited by the journey, and Neptune loves to welcome them.

  No luck for him this time; there isn’t a single child in the taxi.

  Just a man, an old man.

  No luggage either.

  Strange…

  Neptune goes and stands in front of him. The old man bends down. He strokes my dog for a long time, as if he’s an old friend.

  My God!

  Is it possible?

  Everything explodes, my heart, my eyes, my head.

  Is it possible?

  I lean out still farther. Not in order to fall, this time. Oh, no! A terrible wave of warmth fills me. I see myself at the window of another house, a pink house, Monet’s house, in another life; a man was standing beside me, a very charming man. I said some strange things to him back then, some words I never thought would come out of my mouth.

  Some words like a poem by Aragon… lines learned by heart forever…

  “It’s just your Tiger Triumph that I’ve fallen in love with!”

  I laughed then, and added,

  “And perhaps also the way you always stop to stroke Neptune.”

  I lean even farther over the windowsill. The voice rises up the tower. It hasn’t changed, or has changed so little, in almost fifty years:

  “Neptune… Old man, I never thought I’d find you here after all this time, alive!”

  I go back into the bedroom and press myself against the wall. My heart is thumping. I try to reason, to think.

  For ever, for all time.

  I never saw Laurenç Sérénac again. Inspector Laurenç Sérénac was a good policeman, very good. Some months after the Morval case, at the end of 1963, I learned from Sylvio Bénavides that Laurenç had asked to be transferred to Quebec, as if he had to escape to the other end of the world. Escape from me, I thought. Escape from Jacques’s murderous jealousy, I now realize. It was in Canada, over the years, that everyone got used to calling him by his nickname, Laurentin. In Quebec, that’s what they call the inhabitants of the St. Lawrence Valley, from Montreal to Ottawa. It must have been too tempting for his colleagues to turn Laurenç’s Occitan name into a good Quebecois Laurentin. I learned that he’d gone back to his job in Vernon when I read about him in the national press. Some of Monet’s paintings had been stolen from the Musée Marmottan, in 1985, and he was involved in the case. At that time, some photographs of him appeared in the newspapers. How could he not have been recognized? Laurenç Sérénac, who was Chief Inspector Laurentin to everyone else. Amadou Kandy told me that they hadn’t even taken down the paintings in his office at Vernon police station, twenty years after he retired. Cézanne’s Harlequin, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Red-Haired Woman…

  I’m trembling like a leaf. I don’t dare to return to the window…

  What is Laurenç doing here?

  It’s crazy.

  I have to put my thoughts in some sort of order. I pace around the room.

  It can’t be a coincidence. I walk toward the mirror, even though my feet didn’t ask for permission.

  There’s a knock on the door, a few floors down.

  I panic like a teenager who’s been caught coming out of the shower by a potential boyfriend. My God, I must look ridiculous… Just for a moment I think of Patricia Morval, little Mary, the sneak, Jérôme’s wife, collapsing into my arms a week ago. Life changes you. For the better, sometimes. Did she call Laurenç? Who put him on the trail of the truth, the abominable truth? I have no time to try to understand.

  There’s another knock down below.

  My God…

  I look at this cold and wrinkled face in the mirror, my hair covered by that black scarf that never leaves me now, the face of a bad-tempered old hag.

  Impossible, just impossible to imagine opening the door to him.

  I hear the sound of someone pushing open the door to the tower. I didn’t close it behind me. To make it easier for whoever found my body.

  A voice, in the spiral staircase:

  “You stay there, Neptune. I don’t think you’re allowed upstairs.”

  My God. My God.

  I tear off my black headscarf. My hair cascades down onto my shoulders. I’m almost running, now; I’m the one issuing commands to my legs. And they’re keen to obey.

  I open the second drawer of the side table, scatter old buttons, rolls of thread, a thimble, needles. I don’t care if I prick myself.

  I know they’re there!

  My trembling fingers find two silver ribbons. Images pass in rapid succession before my eyes. I see Paul in the cherry tree in the courtyard of the mill, unhooking silver ribbons and offering them to me, calling me his princess; I see myself kissing him for the first time, promising to wear them all my life; I see Laurenç, some years later, stroking the ribbons in my hair.

  My God, I need to concentrate.

  I run to the mirror again. Yes, I swear, I run. Feverishly, I knot the silver ribbons into my hair in a makeshift chignon.

  I laugh nervously.

  A hairstyle fit for a princess, that was what Paul said, a hairstyle fit for a princess… How mad I must seem!

  The footsteps approach.

  There’s another knock, this time at my bedroom door. It’s too soon. I don’t turn round, not yet.

  Another knock. Gentle.

  “Stéphanie?”

  I recognize Laurenç’s voice. It’s almost the same as before. A little more serious than I remember, perhaps. It seems like only yesterday, he wanted to take me away. My whole body is shivering. Is it possible? Is it still possible?

  I look at my face in the flaking gold mirror.

  Do I still know how to smile? It’s been so long.

  I try.

  I pass through the mirror.

  What I see in the glass isn’t an old woman anymore.

  It’s the joyful smile of Fanette.

  It’s the water-lily eyes of Stéphanie.

  Alive. Oh, so alive.

  Michel
Bussi has won fifteen literary awards, making him one of France’s most prestigious crime authors. When not writing fiction, he is a Professor of Geography at the University of Rouen and a political commentator. After the Crash, his first book to appear in English, was a No. 1 bestseller in the UK and has been translated into twenty-six languages around the world. Black Water Lilies is his second novel to be translated into English.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at another riveting crime novel from Michel Bussi:

  AFTER THE CRASH

  In paperback and ebook from

  December 23, 1980, 12:33 a.m.

  The Airbus 5403, flying from Istanbul to Paris, suddenly plummeted. In a dive lasting less than ten seconds, the plane sank over three thousand feet, before stabilizing once again. Most of the passengers had been asleep. They woke abruptly, with the terrifying sensation that they had nodded off while strapped to a rollercoaster.

  Izel was woken not by the turbulence, but by the screaming. After nearly three years spent traveling the world with Turkish Airlines, she was used to a few jolts. She had been on a break, asleep for less than twenty minutes, and had scarcely opened her eyes when her colleague Meliha thrust her aged, fleshy bosom toward her.

  “Izel? Izel? Hurry up! This is serious. There’s a big storm outside. Zero visibility, according to the captain. You take one aisle and I’ll take the other.”

  Izel’s face bore the weary expression of an experienced flight attendant who wasn’t about to panic over such a small thing. She got up from her seat, adjusted her suit, pulling slightly at the hem of her skirt, then moved toward the right-hand aisle.

  The passengers were no longer screaming, and they looked more surprised than worried as the airplane continued to pitch. Izel went from one person to the next, calmly reassuring them: “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. We’re just going through a little snowstorm over the Jura Mountains. We’ll be in Paris in less than an hour.”

  Izel’s smile wasn’t forced. Her mind was already wandering toward Paris. She would stay there for three days, until Christmas, and she was giddy with excitement at the prospect.

  She addressed her words of comfort in turn to a ten-year-old boy holding tightly to his grandmother’s hand, a handsome young businessman with a rumpled shirt, a Turkish woman wearing a veil, and an old man curled up fearfully with his hands between his knees. He shot her an imploring look.

  “Everything’s fine, honestly.”

  Izel was calmly proceeding down the aisle when the Airbus lurched sideways again. A few people screamed. “When do we start doing the loop-de-loop?” shouted a young man sitting to her right, who was holding a Walkman, his voice full of false cheer.

  A trickle of nervous laughter was drowned out almost immediately by the screams of a young baby. The child was lying in a baby carrier just a few feet in front of Izel—a little girl, only a few months old, wearing a white dress with orange flowers under a knitted beige sweater.

  “No, madame,” Izel called out. “No!”

  The mother, sitting next to the baby, was unbuckling her belt so she could lean over to her daughter.

  “No, madame,” Izel insisted. “You must keep your seat belt on. It’s very important…”

  The woman did not even bother turning around, never mind replying to the flight attendant. Her long hair fell over the baby carrier. The baby screamed even louder. Izel, unsure what to do, moved toward them.

  The plane plunged again. Three seconds, maybe another three thousand feet.

  There were a few brief screams, but most of the passengers were silent. Dumbstruck. They knew now that the airplane’s movements were not merely due to bad weather. Jolted by the dive, Izel fell sideways. Her elbow hit the Walkman, smashing it into the young guy’s chest. She straightened up again immediately, not even taking the time to apologize. In front of her, the three-month-old girl was still crying. Her mother was leaning over her again, unbuckling the child’s seat belt.

  “No, madame! No…”

  Cursing, Izel tugged her skirt back down over her ripped tights. What a nightmare. She would have earned those three days of pleasure in Paris…

  Everything happened very fast after that.

  For a brief moment, Izel thought she could hear another baby crying, like an echo, somewhere else on the airplane, farther off to her left. The Walkman guy’s hand brushed her nylon-covered thighs. The old Turkish man had put one arm around his veiled wife’s shoulder and was holding the other one up, as if begging Izel to do something. The baby’s mother had stood up and was reaching over to pick up her daughter, freed now from the straps of the baby carrier.

  These were the last things Izel saw before the Airbus smashed into the mountainside.

  The collision propelled Izel thirty feet across the floor, into the emergency exit. Her two shapely legs were twisted like those of a plastic doll in the hands of a sadistic child; her slender chest was crushed against metal; her left temple exploded against the corner of the door.

  Izel was killed instantly. In that sense, she was luckier than most.

  She did not see the lights go out. She did not see the airplane being mangled and squashed like a tin can as it crashed into the forest, the trees sacrificing themselves one by one as the Airbus gradually slowed.

  And, when everything had finally stopped, she did not detect the spreading smell of kerosene. She felt no pain when the explosion ripped apart her body, along with those of the other twenty-three passengers who were closest to the blast.

  She did not scream when flames filled the cabin, trapping the one hundred and forty-five survivors.

  Eighteen Years Later

  1

  September 29, 1998, 11:40 p.m.

  Now you know everything.

  Crédule Grand-Duc lifted his pen and stared into the clear water at the base of the large vivarium just in front of him. For a few moments, his eyes followed the despairing flight of the Harlequin dragonfly that had cost him almost 2,500 francs less than three weeks ago. A rare species, one of the world’s largest dragonflies, an exact replica of its prehistoric ancestor. The huge insect flew from one glass wall to another, through a frenzied swarm of dozens of other dragonflies. Prisoners. Trapped.

  They all sensed they were dying.

  Pen touched paper once again. Crédule Grand-Duc’s hand shook nervously as he wrote.

  In this notebook, I have reviewed all the clues, all the leads, all the theories I have found in eighteen years of investigation. It is all here, in these hundred or so pages. If you have read them carefully, you will now know as much as I do. Perhaps you will be more perceptive than I. Perhaps you will find something I have missed. The key to the mystery, if one exists. Perhaps…

  For me, it’s over.

  The pen hesitated again, and was held trembling just an inch above the paper. Crédule Grand-Duc’s blue eyes stared emptily into the still waters of the vivarium, then turned their gaze toward the fireplace, where large flames were devouring a tangle of newspapers, files, and cardboard storage boxes. Finally, he looked down again and continued.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that I have no regrets, but I have done my best.

  Crédule Grand-Duc stared at this last line for a long time, then slowly closed the pale green notebook.

  11:43 p.m.

  He placed the pen in a pot on the desk, and stuck a yellow Post-it note to the cover of the notebook. Then he picked up a felt-tip pen and wrote on the Post-it, in large letters, for Lylie. He pushed the notebook to the edge of the desk and stood up.

  Grand-Duc’s gaze lingered for a few moments on the copper plaque in front of him: CRÉDULE GRAND-DUC, PRIVATE DETECTIVE. He smiled ironically. Everybody called him Grand-Duc nowadays, and they had done for some time. Nobody—apart from Emilie and Marc Vitral—used his ludicrous first name. Anyway, that was before, when they were younger. An eternity ago.

  Grand-Duc walked toward the kitchen. He took one last look at the gray, stainless-steel sink, the white octagonal
tiles on the floor, and the pale wood cabinets, their doors closed. Everything was in perfect order, clean and tidy; every trace of his previous life had been carefully wiped away, as if this were a rented house that had to be returned to its owner. Grand-Duc was a meticulous man and always would be, until his dying breath. He knew that. That explained many things. Everything, in fact.

  He turned and walked back toward the fireplace until he could feel the heat on his hands. He leaned down and threw two storage boxes into the flames, then stepped back to avoid the shower of sparks.

  A dead end.

  He had devoted thousands of hours to this case, examining each clue in the most minute detail. All those clues, those notes, all that research was now going up in smoke. Every trace of this investigation would disappear in the space of a few hours.

  Eighteen years of work for nothing. His whole life was summarized in this auto-da-fé, to which he was the only witness.

  11:49 p.m.

  In fourteen minutes, Lylie would be eighteen years old, officially at least… Who was she? Even now, he still couldn’t be certain. It was a one-in-two chance, just as it had been on that very first day. Heads or tails.

  Lyse-Rose or Emilie?

  He had failed. Mathilde de Carville had spent a fortune—eighteen years’ worth of salary—for nothing.

  Grand-Duc returned to the desk and poured himself another glass of Vin Jaune. From the special reserve of Monique Genevez, aged for fifteen years: this was, perhaps, the single good memory he had retained from this investigation. He smiled as he brought the glass of wine to his lips. A far cry from the caricature of the aging alcoholic detective, Grand-Duc was more the type of man to dip sparingly into his wine cellar, and only on special occasions. Lylie’s birthday, tonight, was a very special occasion. It also marked the final minutes of his life.