A Bouquet of Rue

by Wendy Hornsby

  “I’m fine. Couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Did I wake you again?”

  “Do you remember what you were dreaming?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  He took hold of one of my feet and began to massage it. “What are the heavy thoughts at oh-dark-thirty that keep you from going back to sleep?”

  “Revenge,” I said. “It all begins with revenge.”

  “All what begins with revenge?”

  “Bullying, running away. Everything. Why do Muslim religious extremists say they bomb synagogues and random crowds of people? Revenge for Israel’s treatment of Palestine. Why do Christians harass Jewish children in public schools until they are driven out? Because they fear Jews will draw Muslim terrorist attacks to the school, at least that’s the excuse for this generation. Some Muslims, rejected out of fear they are terrorists, become angry enough to commit acts of terrorism. And we cycle back to the beginning.”

  I gave Jean-Paul my other foot to rub. The massage felt good, but it also let me know he was still awake. “A high school girl dumps a set of friends and befriends a new kid. Out of revenge, the old friends mercilessly bully, then beat, the newcomer. Poor Louis Roussel, not only does his crush have no interest in him, his mother is dying and his father is preoccupied. If he hurts Nabi, does his own pain hurt less? Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in someone else’s pain.”

  “Schadenfreude? No wonder you can’t get back to sleep.”

  “One more,” I said.

  “One more foot? I only count two.”

  “One more example of the domino effect of revenge.”

  He yawned. “I’m listening.”

  “Yvan Fouchet sexually harassed your friend Suzanne. When she tried to break it off, he had her fired, then blackballed her. After other remedies failed, Suzanne, wanting revenge, called Claire. Vengeful, Claire filed for divorce, blaming Yvan. Thunderous fights ensue, but no divorce happens. The next move is Ophelia’s. She goes to children’s court and files abuse charges against her parents. Nothing happens. She stops being their princess and starts running away.”

  “Out of revenge?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Schadenfreude has a sadistic connotation. So, considering the sequence you laid out, it’s apt. In this family game, who gets the next revenge play?”

  “Good question. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Ophelia is not a runaway this time. And she isn’t coming back.”

  “Be careful,” he said, untangling himself and getting to his feet. He reached for my hand and pulled me upright. “If what I think you believe is true, you’re treading treacherous waters.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To bed,” he said. “There are other uses for beds than sleep, my dear.”

  Sunday morning, we went for a run later than usual because we slept in. All things considered, it was an uneventful outing. Except for running into our neighbors, Holly and Kevin Porter, that is. They fell into stride with us and asked if we had any objections to them offering a live-in nanny-housekeeper position to Diba. Their little girl loved her and Nabi both. Their au pair had returned home and they were desperate for help. After making sure they meant for Nabi to live with them, as well as Diba, we assured the Porters that we had no objections, but the decision was Diba’s to make.

  Because it was Sunday, after our run, we showered and dressed, collected Dom, and went to Jean-Paul’s sister Karine’s house nearby for family brunch. Karine’s husband, Émile, was an internist who worked in a large family medical practice. I watched Jean-Paul work Ari into his conversation with Émile as the two of them, beers in hand, manned the backyard grill. Dom and his two cousins went down the street to play basketball at a small park. That left me to be grilled in the kitchen by Jean-Paul’s mother and sister about wedding plans. So far, our plan was to sneak away to the town hall as soon as I had been in the country for forty days and announce the deed to everyone after the fact. There would still have to be a party because Jean-Paul’s mother and my grandmother would insist. I escaped the conversation by grabbing two bottles of beer and taking them outside.

  “Couldn’t stand the pressure, huh?” Émile said with a chuckle. “You know they’ll get their way in the end, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to spoil their fun,” I said. “How are you doing? Has Jean-Paul persuaded you to hire Ari yet?”

  “I’ve seen the man’s résumé and transcripts, Jeep made sure of that. If it were up to me, he could start tomorrow morning. But my colleagues need to agree, and that may not easy.”

  “Because Ari is a Muslim?”

  “No. There are Muslims in our practice now. The issue is, Ari is a foreigner. It helps that he has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and will have mutual acquaintances with some of my colleagues. All I can promise is, I will get him an interview.”

  It was still early afternoon when we got home. Guido called and asked if we would join him and Detective Delisle—Fleur—in the village for pizza later. We thought that was a fine idea. Jean-Paul asked if I wanted to go with him to the equestrian center for a ride, but I declined because Claire Fouchet had called earlier and invited me to come over that afternoon to see her garden. She seemed disappointed that I couldn’t come until late afternoon, something about the shadows late in the day, but any time was fine. Jean-Paul said the horses could wait, if I didn’t mind him tagging along. He’d love to see the Fouchets’ garden, he said, but the truth was, he didn’t want me to go there alone.

  Diba and Nabi, chaperoned by the always protective Ari, were on the terrace, deep in conversation with the Porters. The last of the household, Dom, was picked up by his grandfather for nine holes of golf, whether Dom wanted to golf or not. Roland, Marian’s father, came inside only long enough to be introduced to me and to take a look at what had become of his late daughter’s office. He shook his head, gave the room a shrug, smiled like a martyr, kissed my cheeks, shook Jean-Paul’s hand, and left. After a rather long phone conversation with Detective Delisle, I put a large round of Camembert from my grandmother’s cheesemaker into a basket, and with Jean-Paul driving, went to keep a date with Claire Fouchet.

  The black Audi was parked in the driveway when we arrived. When we spoke earlier, Claire told me that she would be in the garden. Just ring the front bell, she’d said. Yvan would be inside watching tennis and he would show me the way. But if he fell asleep as he sometimes did, and didn’t answer the bell, then I should just come right in and walk through; I would see the garden from the foyer. I rang the bell, and no one answered.

  “She told me that if no one answered I should just walk right in. I don’t feel comfortable walking into someone’s house,” I said to Jean-Paul after an appropriate wait. “I hardly know Claire.”

  “Let’s go around to the back.”

  We followed the driveway to the back of the house and peered over the garden gate. Claire was off in a far corner, on her knees, packing fresh earth around the base of a spindly rose bush. There were four other young rose plants already in the bed, and five sixteen-gallon plastic pots from a nursery scattered on the lawn behind her.

  “Claire,” I called.

  “Oh, Maggie! And Jean-Paul, too. How nice.” Though I was expected, we seemed to have startled Claire. She rose to her feet and came across the lawn to open the gate. “Sorry, I lost track of time. It always happens when I’m out here. I thought I would just pop in that last rose and be finished before you arrived. Did you ring the bell?”

  “No one answered,” I said. “Your garden is beautiful.”

  “Yvan is in the house. Why didn’t he bring you through?” She glanced toward a back door, shrugged, and put her hostess smile back on. “Probably fell asleep. Most of my friends would just come right in; I never hear anything when I’m out here. And, thank you, my garden is a great solace to me, especially now. Come and see.”

  “We are enjoying the peonies you brought us,
” I said as we, at last, were admitted through the gate. “I wanted to share this Camembert from my family’s fromagerie with you.”

  She looked at the wheel of cheese in the basket and gave the label an appreciative nod. “I know this cheese well. Your family produces it?”

  “They do. The cheesemaker, his father, and his grandfather before him, have made our estate cheese for nearly a century.”

  “But you’re American.”

  “My mother was French. I was born in Normandy.”

  “I had no idea.” If she had watched me on Jimmy Jardine’s show, as she said she had, and if she were paying attention at all, and at least somewhat sober, she would have heard that factoid get discussed to death. Were I in her shoes, I would not be able to focus on anything except the great big fact that my daughter was missing. I’d be a wreck, like Yvan. I found it a bit jarring that on that bright Sunday afternoon Claire seemed almost perky. Credit the garden? Or acceptance of her family’s new status quo? A pill?

  Claire carried the cheese in its basket as she walked us on a circuit along her graveled paths. We were in the suburbs, so it wasn’t a huge garden and the tour didn’t take very long. We visited the peonies and discussed the roses—my father had a passion for roses. She told us she recently dug up an old hawthorn hedge to make room for the new rose bed. Quite an undertaking, we were told with some detail, because the old plants had root balls that went down five or six feet. Took a week to dig them all out, and a load of fresh soil to fill in the hole they left.

  We oohed and we aahed before thanking her and telling her we wouldn’t take up more of her time.

  “Lovely of you to stop by,” she said. “We haven’t had guests for, well, for a while. Won’t you come in for a glass of lemonade or something stronger? Jean-Paul, I’m sure Yvan wants to say hello and have a word or two about horseflesh.”

  Without hesitation, Jean-Paul said, “Yes, thank you very much. A lemonade sounds perfect. Maggie?”

  “Perfect,” I said, taking my cue.

  She ushered us across a stone-paved patio and through a set of French doors into a sunroom off the kitchen. As soon as we were inside, she leaned though a door connecting to the salon and called out, “Yvan, we have guests.”

  There was no response, so she called again. After a moment of silent waiting, she shrugged, and with a little smile rife with the forbearance of a martyr, asked, “Where can he be? I hear the television so he can’t have gone far. Have a seat, I’ll just go see where he’s got to.”

  We stood. When she was gone, I leaned close to Jean-Paul. “I have a bad feeling.”

  “Do you?”

  “Claire sounded so odd on the phone. Is it customary around here for people to walk inside someone’s house when no one answers the door?”

  “I hope not.”

  Claire screamed. Just once. I wondered later if we had been waiting for it, or for some form of the second shoe dropping. We rushed toward the sound of her voice, across the salon to a small study off the foyer. Yvan was, indeed, in front of a televised tennis match. But hanging by the neck from a rope wrapped around the massive overhead beam I doubted he was seeing very much.

  Jean-Paul reached up and pressed his fingers against one of Yvan’s purple, swollen wrists, feeling for a pulse. His eyes came up to mine and he shook his head. My phone was in my hand. I snapped a picture of the deceased and sent it to Detective Delisle with a note, and then I dialed one-seven, the police emergency code, and handed the phone to Jean-Paul to speak with Dispatch. While he explained where we were and what we saw, I guided Claire back out into the salon and poured her a stiff scotch from a half-full bottle on the drinks cart.

  Claire was dry-eyed, quiet. She looked at the glass in her hand for a moment before she decided to take a sip.

  “The police should be on their way,” I said. “Why don’t you sit down until they get here?”

  She did, perching on the edge of a straightbacked chair, ankles crossed, a well-posed portrait.

  “Poor Yvan,” I said, hovering near. I was shaken, certainly, by Yvan’s ugly death, but I was also angry with Claire, growing angrier still as I watched her try to conjure up a mask of shock. A few years ago, I saw another man who was hanged. He was unconscious when the rope was placed around his neck, but he died of asphyxia. A horrible thing to see. Bulging eyes, lolling tongue, foam around his nose and mouth. And now I’d seen it twice. Damn her.

  “When did Yvan die, Claire?” I asked, failing to sound dispassionate. “I won’t ask how; the police will tell us that.”

  “When?” She looked around the room as if an answer floated there for her to pluck. “When? How would I know that? I was out back; you found me there.”

  “You were in the garden when we arrived, but I think Yvan was already dead this morning when you called and invited me to come over.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? I noticed when Jean-Paul felt Yvan’s wrist for a pulse that his fingers were already stiffening. Rigor mortis takes a few hours to set in.”

  “Think you know everything, don’t you?” she snapped.

  “Not nearly enough,” I said. “But I know you tried to use me to discover your husband.”

  I heard voices in the foyer. Keeping an eye on Claire, I stepped out far enough to see Jean-Paul usher in four uniformed officers. I was relieved they were there. Claire paled, and drained her scotch in two hearty quaffs.

  “I would have been better off if I hadn’t called you, wouldn’t I?” She got up and refreshed her glass. “I’ve never been a good judge of people. If I were, I would never have married Yvan. What a misery he made of my life.”

  “And Ophelia?”

  “Ah, my dear Ophelia.” She sank back into her chair.

  “And Ophelia?” Detective Delisle walked into the room with Jean-Paul and Detective Lajoie looming in the doorway behind her. She gave me a glance but went straight to Claire. “Before you tell me about your husband, I would like to hear what you were going to say about Ophelia, Madame Fouchet.”

  “You have reason not to believe me, but I do not know where my daughter is.” Claire looked up at me. “I lied when I told you that Yvan would follow her in the car. It was I who did that. Whenever she was out at night, I kept my eye on her, afraid something bad would happen.”

  “On Friday?” I asked, and she nodded.

  We were interrupted before she could say anything more by the arrival of an emergency medical assistance team, the SAMU. Lajoie went out to the foyer to speak with them. Delisle never took her eyes off Claire. Over the muffled conversation drifting in from the study where the emergency responders were dealing with Yvan, Delisle prodded Claire to continue. “You were telling us about Friday night.”

  “Friday.” Claire took a breath. “I knew there was no pizza party; I called one of the other parents and checked. So I waited outside the school until rehearsal was over and then I watched Ophelia and that Arab boy walk to the train station. When he came out onto the street without her, I went looking.”

  “And you found her?” Delisle asked, notebook in hand.

  She nodded.

  “And followed her?”

  “As far as the haras, yes. I lost her there. She was always afraid of the people who come out at night, so I thought she must be meeting someone.” A tear coursed down her cheek. “I couldn’t follow her onto the meadow in the car, and there was no place nearby to park. There were few other cars at that time of night, so I was able to stop in the road long enough to see her go into the woods carrying her cello. I waited for her to come out again, but when she didn’t I thought she might be taking a short cut through the woods to the boulevard. I am familiar enough with the haras to know where she would come out, so I drove over to the soccer pitch. And that’s where I found her.”

  “Did you speak with her?” Delisle asked.

  Claire threw back her head and took a few deep breaths, clearly on the verge of melting into tears.

  “Madame?”r />
  After a long exhale and a sip from her glass, she said, “When I drove up, I saw two people, a man and a woman, near the woods, struggling. When I heard the woman scream, I knew it was my Ophelia. A horrible wretch of a man had her by the arms and wouldn’t let her go. I saw the flash of a knife and blood on her. I ran, and with all my strength, I dove into him. The knife fell to the ground, I picked it up, and—”

  She struggled to regain composure. Impatient, Delisle prodded, “What did you do?”

  Claire nailed her with a watery-eyed glare. “I slit his throat.”

  “Was Ophelia injured?”

  She brushed her hand along the inside of her left arm from the elbow to the palm. “Some cuts. Little cuts except for one near her wrist. It wasn’t deep, but it bled a great deal. I tied my scarf around it.”

  The only reaction Delisle revealed was a tiny lift of her left eyebrow. “Continue.”

  “We couldn’t leave that man lying out in the open for anyone to find. There was a bag of horse tack in the trunk of the car. I told Ophelia to go get a lead rope for me. I tied the rope around the man’s middle and dragged him into the pond.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why not call the police?”

  Claire drew back as if miffed by a stupid question. “And put my daughter, my entire family, through a tawdry scandal? What sort of girl is out in the haras late at night consorting with those addicts and perverts? And that bête who attacked her? Who would miss him, anyway? Good riddance.”

  I had to sit down. Delisle’s face flamed with anger. I asked her, “Can I get you a drink?”

  The detective looked at me and shook her head, more at what Claire had said than the offer of a drink. “One would not be enough,” she said before turning her attention back to Claire. “Ophelia helped you do this?”

  “She brought me the rope,” Claire said. “That was all she did. I told her to go sit in the car and wait.”

  Delisle crossed her arms and shook her head, not buying the story. “Madame Fouchet, you are a slender woman. You want me to believe that you dragged an adult man across the field, weighted him with rocks, and sank him in the pond? Alone?”