A Provençal Mystery (15 page)

Therese replied slowly. “No. She’s young. Her interests don’t lie here but elsewhere.”

“In fashion perhaps,” I said, smiling at the thought of Madeleine’s outfits.

“She does dress with art,” Therese replied with a small smile. “Indeed she does. But no. In history, I think. In any case, we wouldn’t encourage her to become a nun. As I said before, we don’t proselytize.” Mother Therese stood; the interview was ending. “ Anything else?”

“Yes,” I said, my heart beating fast, “is there any way I may be allowed to visit the interior of the convent to see how the nuns live?”

“Ordinarily lay people cannot come beyond this parlor. Sometimes we do have weekend retreats for laywomen, but nothing is scheduled for this winter. However, since you want to study us for academic reasons, I think I can make an exception. Would the Thursday after next be good for you?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I said.

“I’ll have Sister Gabrielle, the nun who escorted you here, give you the form to fill out.” She regarded me for a moment, as if analyzing my character from my face, then, satisfied, said, “I had another thought about your work. Have you spoken to Monsieur Chateaublanc about the convent in the Old Regime? Not as the archivist but as the descendant of the Chateaublanc family? I believe one of his ancestors was a great supporter of Our Lady of Mercy. A very important family—the Chateaublancs of Chateaublanc, the village where I grew up. They still own part of it.”

“I do keep finding hints that nuns were sponsored by the rich. But the records of benefactors at the archive seem skimpy. Perhaps they are here in the convent,” I said. I did not take my eyes off Mother Therese’s face. My own face felt red and flushed, and I knew my hair was wilder than usual.

What was it? It was as if the sun shifted down in the sky to put Mother Therese’s face in shadow, as if a hundred small adjustments had changed her pose. No matter how it manifested itself, I knew that a shiver of anxiety had passed through her and had just as quickly been conquered. “Old Régime documents were commandeered by the French revolutionary government in 1792,” she finally said—and almost too smoothly.

“And no others?”

She hesitated for a long time. I heard a solitary bird singing in the courtyard. “We do have some. For nuns who entered the convent after the Revolution. And we have transcriptions of our council meetings—the meetings of the Superior with her assistants. They’re closed to lay people.”

“Even to historians?”

“Even to historians.” Her voice was firm. Something was amiss. I measured Therese again, the impenetrable exterior. She was hiding something, yet I was sure that her morality was many-layered but fixed and true. Then she changed the subject: “Have you spoken to the police about Agatha’s murder?”

“Oh, yes, we all have,” I replied. “You, also?”

“Yes, though we don’t know much.” Her face turned grim, and I thought I would not like to face her in a dispute. “The individual who did it should be caught. I want to kill whoever it is myself, but for me to contemplate that thought . . . Forgiveness. It’s what I have been taught, but I cannot find it.”

She rose. The interview was over, that was clear. Therese called the doorkeeper, told her to find the forms for the weekend visit, and went from the room. I filled out the forms and paid the fees. Remembering Rose’s description of Mother Fernande’s nightly walk up and down the corridor, I asked that I be assigned to the middle cell that had to have been Rose’s.

When I left the convent, at about ten-thirty, I felt naked and exposed under the bright sun. A glare of light turned the ordinarily pale skeletal shadows of the plane trees on the sidewalk to black. No traffic. I could hear the sound of my own footsteps. Even though the street was empty, I felt watched.

Chapter 14

It seemed a long time until I could visit the convent again. I consoled myself by considering other avenues I could research —the Chateaublanc family, for instance. Mother Therese had indicated that the Chateaublancs were benefactors of Our Lady of Mercy. Could Rose’s seigneur and Mother Fernande's father have been a Chateaublanc? That seemed more and more possible. But while researching the territory the convent served, I had found evidence of more than one seigneurie. Our archivist should know for how long his family had given money and support to the convent.

Chateaublanc was sitting at the front desk. When I approached and stood in front of him, he looked slightly annoyed as if I were interrupting an intense conversation between him and the paper knife he was toying with.

“I have just been talking with Mother Superior Therese at Our Lady of Mercy. She tells me that you come from an illus-trious family. Is there a Chateaublanc seigneurie?” I asked.

“Yes.” A simplicity of answer that had behind it centuries of privilege.

“Did your family own more than one seigneurie?” I asked.

“Yes.” He nodded and looked at me with a blue-eyed regard. He was flipping the paper knife between his fingers as if it were a tiny drill team baton.

I went on, “Mother Therese said that the Chateaublancs gave money to Our Lady of Mercy back in the Old Régime. Yet I find no records here. . . The story of Our Lady of Mercy, I find, is full of holes.”

“Isn’t that always the case? That history has holes?” he asked, with a note of arrogant surprise that I, the American professor, did not know this elementary fact.

“Of course. Historical research is full of holes. Unanswered questions. Yes. But this. . .” He had pushed me off track.

And so it went, the little dance. On and on. Moves and counter-moves. A long question from me and usually a one-word flat answer from him. No real information that I could go on, and he was becoming more irritated—or was he nervous?

I had found out very little — just attitude.

H42 sat alone on the table that only I used, now that Agatha was dead and Madeleine in and out of the archive. The diary was gone again. Someone was teasing me with it, and I did not know who it was. I could not bear to think about spending the afternoon with H42. Madame des Moulins came to mind, and, knowing that police records were stored at Avignon's municipal library, I decided to go there to see if I could find documents about her. Picking up my briefcase, I approached Griset, who, arms folded, was perusing the room, who knows for what. "I will be back," I said.

"You are going off to an assignation?" he asked, with a lecherous little smile.

"An assignation at the municipal library," I replied. Then in response to Griset’s raised eyebrow, "With some documents, monsieur! That is where Old Regime police records are kept, isn't that true?"

"Ah, Madame Red, too bad," he said, shaking his head. “That is so boring.”

The city library had wide stone steps as imposing as those to the archive, but it was newer, a yellow stone, eighteenth-century public building with a certain cold harmony in its proportions. The librarian, a woman who belonged to that race of librarians who want to keep books on the shelves where they belong, asked me for several kinds of identification. Reluctantly, she finally went off across the polished, creaky floor to the back room to find my documents. Because it was early in the day, only a few people were working there: some teenagers from the lycée, an old man reading the Paris paper, two genealogists.

I started with the reference book for the F series. Within an hour, I had found the document number, FF87, where Madame Des Moulins’s police records had been stored, filled out the requisition slip, and waited, wondering if the documents would tell me anything of importance.

The documents came in a thick, dark red folder held shut with flat woven ties like shoelaces. The ties had been recently re-fastened so that old pale sections, which had been protected from dirt by the ties and their knots, now were exposed. Someone had been in the folder before me. But that could have happened ten years before, for all I knew. And wouldn’t anyone wanting to be secretive about examining the documents have more carefully retied it? I opened the folder up and started leafing through the documents to see what was there.

A fact sheet (
Factum
) written up by one Procureur Bernard Martin summed up Mme. des Moulins’ story, with the customary editorializing by the prosecution. I carefully read that first, then depositions from her neighbors; pleas by des Moulins for her release; and finally a statement from Mother Superior Fernande of Our Lady of Mercy, which merely stated that des Moulins had entered the Refuge without incident.

Quickly I made copies of the documents. Filled with excitement to the very roots of my hair, I worked through lunch reading them
.

By the time I left the library, it was nearly three-thirty. I debated about taking the rest of the afternoon off, but Magnuson’s face loomed in my head, and I decided I would work on the recruitment article until closing time at the archive and at home late into the night. I dutifully walked back to the archive building, buzzed for entrance at the little outside door, took the elevator, and entered the nervous room.

“What is it?” Roger was at my shoulder, speaking English. He smelled faintly herbal, like dried thyme.

“Nothing,” I said.

“No,” he replied, standing close to me—I could feel his body heat. “Something’s happened. You’re very excited.”

“Forget it. It has nothing to do with the here and now.” My voice was rising.

“Please. Talk to me.”

“Shhh,” said Rachel. “I’m trying to work here.” Fitzroy made little clapping—and annoying—motions in agreement.

“Later,” I said. “It’s a good thing, not a bad one.”

“No, now. Let’s go have coffee somewhere.”

In his eyes, I read intractability. He wasn’t going to give up. I found myself rising from my chair and shutting the record book. Who was this man? I asked myself the question as we walked down to the elevator and pushed the down arrow. Perhaps he was a cop and was ready to confide in me, knowing that I had not murdered Agatha. Perhaps he was not. He couldn’t be the killer, could he? He hadn’t come to the archive until after Agatha’s death. But what if he had been there before. What if he had sneaked into the archives, waited in the bathroom and killed Agatha?

The doors of the elevator slid open. As we entered, the floor shook under us. The doors slid silently shut. I imagined it: his big hands would settle themselves around my throat. They would be warm at first, and gentle. I'd swallow at the pressure. Then slowly the pressure would increase, shutting off my airway. I’d gasp for air.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, smiling. “You’re off in some American dream,
le rêve américain
, are you not?”

“You could say that,” I replied, listening to the swish of the descending elevator. The elevator came to a stop. He politely waited for me to exit before him.

The sun cast long afternoon shadows of the palace over the plaza, turning the cobblestones darker. The wind was still. Roger laid his heavy hand on my arm. It calmed me. I felt like a stroked cat. “The Café Minette?” he asked.

“I never say no to that,” I replied. It was a public place, and familiar. My self-induced fear, which had some deliciousness in it, subsided.

“So,” said Roger, after we had ordered coffee. He leaned back against the chair back, folded his arms, and looked at me with amused eyes. “Who is the murderer, do you think?”

“How do you know it’s not me?” I replied.

“You’re answering a question with a question.”

“And you’re answering a question with a comment,” I answered. Repartee.

But he turned serious. “I know it’s not you. You didn’t leave your place until you went to the bathroom and found the nun.”

“You weren’t there. How could you know that?

“Griset told me.”

“I have to ask you—are you a cop?”

“So that’s what you think.” He grinned.

“It wasn’t so hard to figure out,” I said. “Why would a new historian appear at the archives so soon after the murder? A historian without credentials?”

“Interesting,” he answered. “You’re quite the detective, no?” The coffee came, and he stirred two spoons of sugar into it.

“You make a bad historian,” I scolded. “Next time you go undercover, study up a little.”

"In school I was not a very good boy and played hooky," he replied, laughing.

For some reason (I knew what it was), I wanted to put my hand on his face. Instead, I said, "You should have known where records of land-holdings are kept in the archive.” My voice sounded nervous in my own ears; I knew it had something to do with my attraction to him. “And you do not teach at the University of Marseille.”

“How do you know that?” He was grinning.

“I called them up and asked. No Aubanas there.”

“Interesting,” he replied. “Chateaublanc didn’t doubt my credentials. He didn't question me at all.”

“He never questions French researchers. Only Americans. Americans have to present a letter of introduction on university stationery. Preferably with a fancy gold-leaf seal.”

"You’re upset. You sound like a schoolteacher."

"I
am
a schoolteacher." I stirred my coffee furiously.

"But you don’t act like one most of the time."

"True. I try not to. Yes, I am upset. Who wouldn’t be upset?"

He raised a thick eyebrow. “Perhaps you want me to take you to the police station to grill you on what you know?”

“You can’t do that. You’re working undercover,” I said, sipping my coffee. It was very strong.

He laid his solid arms on the table and leaned towards me. “I am not a cop.” I was starting to hate him. “I am not a killer, either,” he added.

“So what are you?”

“I work for the Ministry of Culture. My job is to look for and arrange artifacts, to set up exhibits.”

Then I knew who he was. The eyes—of course! The deep laugh from a big barrel chest. The large, graceful body. The posture, leaning into life. The flesh. This was the nephew Agatha had wanted me to meet. “Why pretend to be a historian?” I was indignant. “You could have done an honest piece of digging at the archive. You could have looked for evidence about artifacts. I run into evidence of artifacts in documents all the time.”

He put his hand over mine. “I'm Agatha’s nephew.”

“I know that,” I said. “You look like her—and you knew how old she was—precisely.”

“I posed as a historian so as not to tip the readers off,” he said. “Agatha had told people about me and my job, hadn’t she? I know how she was.”

“Well, yes, she had. She was very proud of you. inordinately proud.” His hand was still on mine—big, warm, quiet. It reminded me of Agatha’s hand.

“She was always bragging about me. I couldn’t make her stop. If I had come into the archive saying I was looking for information about artifacts, someone might have guessed. Wouldn’t you have guessed?”

“Probably,” I replied, staring down into the dark depths of my coffee and letting my hand stay where it was. I didn’t tell him about Agatha’s intention to fix me up with him. “Has your undercover work netted you any suspects?”

He shrugged and lifted his hand from mine. “No. But I do know some things you may not know. I have an old friend, a police officer, who has a big mouth. He told me that Agatha died of nicotine poisoning.”

“What! Agatha didn’t smoke!”

He half hid a smile. “People rarely die of nicotine poisoning from smoking. Not enough nicotine reaches their body at one time. But a child who eats just one cigarette can die of it. No, someone found her in the reference room, injected her with sixty milligrams of nicotine. Enough to kill. It killed her within a few minutes. She probably went into the bathroom because the poison made her nauseous. Or, more likely, the killer caught her in the bathroom and injected her there.”

“Was that why she was that funny color?” My voice shook with remembered horror as I remembered seeing the body.

“Red-purple.” His eyes were intent on me. “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

“Yes,” I replied, pushing away my coffee cup. “How was the murderer able to get liquid nicotine?”

“Probably soaked cigarettes in a solvent, then sucked the resulting liquid up in a syringe. Not difficult.”

I felt suddenly dizzy and put my head between my hands.

“You’re pale,” Roger said.

“I’ll be all right. Give me a few minutes.” I took a few deep breaths. Finally I said, “Griset smokes Gauloises. So does Jack Leach once in a while.”

He smiled. “Well, yes, but the killer didn’t have to be a smoker to come up with the scheme. In fact, the killer might have used nicotine just to point the finger of suspicion at Griset or anyone else who smokes.”

“And the killer couldn’t have been a nun working from inside the convent,” I said. “If it took only a few minutes for the nicotine to take effect, Agatha would not have been able to make the fifteen-minute walk to the archives.”