A Bouquet of Rue

by Wendy Hornsby

  We made our way back through the strip of woods to the cars. On the other side, as we picked twigs and leaves from each other, Jean-Paul suggested we go find that meal we were headed for when Delisle was called to the scene at the pond. Guido declined the invitation. He and Delisle had made plans for later after all, so he wanted to get back to rue Jacob to get ready, whatever that might entail. We said good-bye to our detective and the three of us headed out in Jean-Paul’s car. We dropped Guido at the train station, promising to get the camera gear to rue Jacob in the morning before our scheduled meeting with Diane Duval at the studio.

  “Dinner at the bistro?” Jean-Paul said to me as we drove out of the lot.

  “Later, if you don’t mind,” I said, rubbing a rash that suddenly popped out on the back of my hand. What had I brushed against in the woods? “There’s someone I want to talk to. Know anyone at the Ministry of Education?”

  “Do you feel like sharing why you want to speak with this person?”

  “Because I don’t trust coincidence.”

  ] Eight

  We found Samuel Lambert, the secondary school’s furloughed directeur, in front of his tidy little cottage in Villepreux, an outer Paris suburb, washing garden tools under a hose. Joel Gold, the math teacher, told us the man had a passion for gardening. The sun was long gone but there was enough light from the street that, standing on the sidewalk and peering over the gate in his iron rail fence, we could see the meticulously maintained flower beds and graveled walkways that filled his long front yard. I breathed in the heady perfume of his roses, a lovely antidote to the sticky stench of death that seemed to have settled deep in my lungs.

  “Monsieur Lambert?” I said to get his attention.

  He turned off his hose and looked over to see who was there. “Oui?”

  “May we speak with you?”

  Lambert hesitated, studying us, but in the end he walked closer. He was tall and thin, with the sun-browned skin and rangy build of a longtime outdoorsman. He was also surprisingly young, mid-thirties maybe. I always thought of school principals as wizened old relics, but he certainly was not. Indeed, he gave off a sort of wiry energy.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “May we speak to you about Ophelia Fouchet?”

  “Ophelia?” He drew back, wary, garden fork gripped in his hand. “What have you heard?”

  “About where she might be?” I said. “Nothing. It’s been six days now.”

  “Merde.” He frowned as he thought that over. “I hoped, I strongly hoped, she was back. But what brings you to my door?”

  I said, “Monsieur Lambert, were you close to Ophelia?”

  “Close to her?” His expression hardened. “My relationship with Mademoiselle Fouchet concerns you how? You are family, police investigator, education ministry official?”

  “None of the above,” I said. “My name is Maggie MacGowen and this is Jean-Paul Bernard. I’m a filmmaker. I’m exploring the idea of doing a piece about bullying. Actually, about harassment generally. One of your charges, Ahmad Nabi, was badly beaten yesterday because Ophelia was not around to protect him. Monsieur Gold told us that sometimes Nabi and Ophelia joined your faculty jam sessions. I thought that perhaps the kids confided in you.”

  “If they had, and I then spoke to you about it, that would be a breach of their confidence, would it not?”

  “Yes. Unless they told you about something that might put them in peril or might rescue them from peril. Or help locate the missing girl.”

  “Locate the missing girl, yes,” he said, bristling, I thought. He set down the garden fork and walked right up to the gate. “I know absolutely nothing, not one thing, about where young Ophelia might have gone this time, but if I did I would move heaven and earth to persuade her to come back. However, if you want to talk about bullying, I will be only too happy to have that discussion. There’s bullying of the sort that got Ahmad Nabi a thumping. And there’s bullying of the sort that can ruin a man’s career—hell, ruin his life—with nothing more than an accusation on an anonymous note. And what can he do to redeem himself? Nothing. Everything he says in his defense only digs him in deeper in the public eye.”

  “That’s what happened to you?” I asked.

  “Happened? Is happening still,” he said with heat. “I am all for this Out the Pig movement. It’s way past time that we paid attention to girls and women when they say they have been abused or harassed by some idiot so unsure of his manhood that he needs to keep women down or believes that females only exist for males to toy with. But we have reached a point where, as a society, we are so eager to punish abusive bastards that we don’t bother to examine the veracity or motives of the accuser. In our zeal we have opened a new Reign of Terror. At the first word of accusation, it’s off with their heads! Or off with their dicks, as it were. And how do we, the innocent victims, defend ourselves during this public bloodbath?”

  “Monsieur,” Jean-Paul said in a quiet voice.

  “I have been ruined,” Lambert fumed, volume rising. “And I don’t even know by whom.”

  “Monsieur,” Jean-Paul said in the same quiet voice. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

  “What?” Fully flummoxed by the question, Lambert leaned toward Jean-Paul as if he hadn’t quite heard and might find the words hovering in the air. “Eaten? Did you say eaten?”

  “Yes. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

  “I— No. Why?”

  “There’s a very good little bistro just down the road that serves a more than decent pot au feu on Thursdays. We missed lunch and we’ve had a very upsetting afternoon. I wonder if you’ll join us for a meal.”

  “Now?”

  “Bien sûr, yes, now. I’m starving, and I know that Maggie is interested to hear what you have to say. Am I right, Maggie?”

  “Bien sûr,” I said. “Yes to both starvation and conversation.”

  “Well.” He looked at his hands, saw they were sufficiently clean, tucked in his button-down shirt, and said, “Allons-y, let’s go. If I’m thinking of the same bistro, they serve a very nice house Burgundy with the Thursday special. It’s close, we can walk.”

  And we did. The bistro was a very old and very traditional neighborhood eatery. Customers walked in and chose their own seats at one of the two long tables that ran the length of the room, sitting down next to friends and strangers alike. Maybe not the best environment for a private conversation, but certainly a good place to pull in a variety of opinions on any subject you might bring up. There were two choices on the menu board outside the door, pot au feu—beef stew—or poached white fish. On the table there were stacks of squat glasses, carafes of red and white wine and tap water for diners to pour as desired. We sat, small plates of cold, thinly sliced pickled fish and pickled root vegetables, along with a basket of fresh bread and sweet butter, were placed in front of us, and we all chose the beef stew. What could be more French than this?

  I gave Jean-Paul’s hand a squeeze and smiled. I said, “Lovely.”

  “C’est ça,” he said, returning the squeeze; that it is.

  I was floundering for a way to begin this conversation, a bit concerned about setting off Lambert’s temper and starting a general brouhaha in the crowded restaurant over the issue of harassment, thereby not ferreting out of him the specific information I wanted. But he played the opening gambit first.

  “So, Madame MacGowen, you make films?”

  “Please call me Maggie, and yes I do.” I gave him a short summary of how my work had landed me in France. He was intelligent, engaging, and he was certainly savoring his food and wine.

  The proprietress, a woman maybe in her sixties, white apron over her flowered dress, carrying a stew tureen and a stack of thick crockery bowls on a tray worked her way between the long tables, greeting customers, exchanging little jokes and comments until she came to a stop beside Sam Lambert. She unloaded her tray and began ladling thick stew into bowls, talking the entire time.

  “Monsieur Lambert, h
ere you are,” she said, looking at him as she placed a steaming bowl in front of me. “And you have brought my old friend Monsieur Bernard. How are you, Monsieur?” she asked, taking up a second bowl. “It has been too long. How is that handsome boy of yours?”

  “Dom is fine,” Jean-Paul said, accepting a heaping bowl from her. “I’ll tell him you asked after him. We left him at home to fend for himself tonight.”

  “Next time, you’ll bring him. And make it soon.” Then she looked at me and waited to be introduced. All niceties taken care of, stew served, with a parting “Bon appétit!” she went back toward the kitchen, collecting empty plates and bowls along the way.

  The pot au feu was earthy and rich and maybe the best thing I had ever tasted. Certainly the very best thing all day. After we had agreed that our meals were exceptional, Sam, as he asked to be called, said to me, “I believe that we did not come here to discuss pot au feu, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sam, will you tell us about Friday?”

  “Ah, Friday.” He replenished his glass. “Horrible Friday. What can I say? It started as any Friday would. Nothing at all unusual. We’ve gone to a five-day school week, so we release the students earlier in the day than in years past. It was a lovely day and I was looking forward to having a few hours of daylight to visit the garden shops and prepare the garden for tomatoes I wanted to plant Saturday morning. And then, with a single telephone call, my entire professional life came to a standstill. I couldn’t believe what I was being told. There was this horrible accusation. An anonymous but sufficiently credible-sounding accusation. While it is being looked into by the Ministry of Education, I was put on leave, to begin immediately. No one would answer my questions. I had no way to defend myself. No one to confront.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What could I do?” His voice was very low, his face flushed. Then he shrugged, looked up at me with a wry little smile, and said, “I went home and planted tomatoes.”

  “You just went home and stayed there?”

  “No. I felt terrible. Ashamed. But for what? I had done nothing,” he said. “I wanted to hide myself. But I thought, I’m not guilty, so why would I behave like a guilty man? Most Fridays I play in a pick-up combo after the dinner service at a café in Vaucresson. So, I gathered up my clarinet and my music and went.”

  “Which café?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “Bertholds,” he said.

  “I know it well. What time did you arrive?”

  “What time? You sound like the police, Jean-Paul.”

  “I don’t mean to,” he said with an apologetic little nod. “Maggie has been working on a timeline of Ophelia Fouchet’s movements Friday night. She was seen in the general area around Bertholds at about nine-fifty Friday night, so I wondered if she might have gone inside, or whether you had seen her at all. Joel Gold told us that sometimes she jams with teachers and other pupils. It would be natural for her to go to the café to listen, or even to play. She had her cello with her.”

  “I arrived as usual around nine o’clock, maybe a little after. We always have a drink or two while we decide on the evening’s playlist. Anyone can join in, but if I had spotted Ophelia Fouchet Friday night I would have run like hell out of there.”

  “Why run?” I asked.

  “Because it is Ophelia I am accused of having an inappropriate relationship with.”

  “Ah,” I said, surprised that I was not surprised. “When we showed up at your gate asking questions it’s a wonder you didn’t throw your garden fork at us.”

  He laughed. “I resisted the urge because I needed to know what you wanted.”

  “The police have probably already asked you most of the same questions we have,” I said.

  “No, they have not. The ministry assured me that because the accusation against me is anonymous they will keep their inquiries discreet and in-house for the time being. Anyway, as far as they are concerned, I have been accused of an ethical breach, not a legal offense.”

  “I assumed the accusation was for sex with an underage girl.”

  “Maggie,” Jean-Paul said. “The age of consent is fifteen. Unless the accusation was that Ophelia was coerced or forced, there is no crime.”

  “Correct,” Sam said. “I was furloughed because the relationship I am accused of is a violation of ministry policy for faculty and administrators.”

  “But, surely, after she went missing, someone had questions for you.”

  “So far,” he said, refilling my glass and raising his to me, “only you.”

  “Merde,” I said, loving this universal swear word and wish for good luck more all the time as I clinked my glass to his. By then I was silently applying a string of merdes to the itchy rash on the back of my hand acquired during our romp in the woods that afternoon. Except that the rash now looked more like a cluster of blisters.

  “Have you hurt yourself?” Sam said, reaching across the table for my hand.

  “I must have run into some poison ivy,” I said as he lowered his head for a closer look at the blistered skin.

  “Poison ivy was eradicated from France years ago,” he said. “There are nettles, of course. But is it possible you brushed against rue?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Rue is an herb, right? What does rue look like?”

  He shrugged. “It’s an evergreen. Pretty yellow flowers. Quite common, butterflies love it, but some people have a severe skin reaction. It can be worse than this. Were you out in the sunshine?”

  “It was almost dusk when we went into the woods.”

  “You’re lucky. Exposure to the sun makes rash from rue erupt. Horrible stuff.”

  I turned to Jean-Paul. “I should have kept the white jumpsuit on.”

  He took my hand, studied the rash on the back, then turned it over and kissed the palm. “We’ll have Ari take a look at it.”

  The proprietress put a tray of cheese in front of us and asked if we wanted the gâteau au chocolat or the apricot tart for the finish. I would have declined, except that dessert was included and I had seen the chocolate cake when it was set in front of other diners. A narrow, dense, rich, nearly black chocolate wedge. I didn’t care that I had already eaten enough. I said, “Le gâteau, s’il vous plaît, Madame.” And my companions ordered the same.

  When she walked away again I looked across at Sam. “If you can stand it, I have one last question.”

  “I’m afraid, but all right.”

  “What make of car do you drive?”

  “I don’t drive a car.”

  “I have a last question as well,” Jean-Paul said.

  “Oui?”

  “If the ministry should find against you, what would the punishment be?”

  “Assuming consent, I could be demoted, counseled—scolded, that is—and relocated,” he said. “Relocated no matter the determination. And for the rest of my working life I will have a dark cloud hanging over me.”

  “Dommage.” I said, and gave his hand a little pat, because the situation truly was a bloody pity.

  Coffee arrived with the chocolate cake. Sam looked at it and sighed. “You have both been so kind, letting me vent and then feeding me instead of— Well, instead of doing several things I can think of. If you will keep a confidence, I would like to run something past you because you seem to be familiar with the situation. A suspicion only, backed by no facts at all.”

  “Please do.” Jean-Paul set his first forkful of the rich cake back on his plate. “I don’t know that we can help you, other than to listen.”

  “It’s this,” Sam said, gesturing for us to lean closer. “You asked whether Ophelia confided in me. And the answer is no, not directly. But there was a query about her. When I think back, it seems that the apparent equilibrium of Ophelia’s life began to collapse some months ago, shortly after we distributed a pamphlet to students, ‘Non au Harcèlement,’ put out by the Ministry of Education. The pamphlet defines what constitutes harassment and lists references for further reading.
At the back there is contact information for anyone who feels harassed or bullied. It was maybe a week later that someone from the office of the juge des enfants— Do you know who they are, Maggie?”

  “I’m guessing that it’s child protective services of some sort.”

  “Something like that, yes,” he said. “So, this official came to the school and asked me questions about Ophelia. Were there signs of physical abuse on her? Did she seem to be in immediate peril? Had I observed a change in her mental health? I could only answer that she appeared to be healthy, there were no outward signs of physical abuse, and that she was keeping up with her school assignments. Indeed, she is an excellent student. None of which indicates that she is not a victim of abuse in some form. A week after that visit, Ophelia ran away for the first time. When I next saw her, she had dyed her hair and was dressed in garb my grandmother would have described as vêtements de deuil.”

  I turned to Jean-Paul. “What is that?”

  He thought for a moment before he said, “Widow’s weeds I think you say.”

  “Dressed all in black, as in mourning.” I opened my bag and pulled out the printout David Berg had given me at lunch the day before. Aloud, I read the definition of domestic abuse: “‘Harassment of one’s spouse, partner, or co-habitant by repeated acts that degrade the other’s quality of life and cause a change to the other’s physical or mental state of health.’”

  Sam extended his hand and I gave him the printout. After reading the highlighted passages and looking to see who was responsible for issuing it, he said, “That’s exactly what I was asked. Do you know something?”

  “I know very little,” I said. “But I’ve heard that life chez Fouchet is not always peaceful. Tell me, if Ophelia went to the authorities claiming that her parents abused her, what would happen?”

  “Not enough,” he said. “It is a great scandal, you know, that we don’t protect our children legally until there is gross mistreatment. Ophelia could walk into the office of the juge des enfants by herself and file a complaint; she has that right. But the system takes a clinical approach to family problems, not a legal one as I think is more often the case in America. In France, everyone concerned would be brought in for a conversation. Not testimony, you understand, just a conversation in judge’s chambers. The judge would hear the child’s complaint, listen to the parents, and then there would be a justice negocié and everyone would go home.”