A Provençal Mystery (20 page)

Fitzroy and Rachel were still entwined when Madeleine, wearing a cloche hat and a simple black dress tied at the hip with a many-colored sash, walked into the café. She glanced around the room. Then she saw us. For seconds, she was as still as a cat-stalked rabbit. Then, caught, she reluctantly walked to the table to say hello. She had little choice. It would have seemed more peculiar had she ignored us. I realized it was the first time I had seen Madeleine and Fitzroy speak to each other.

"It’s been a long time since Aix," said Fitzroy.

"Right. I’m in a hurry," Madeleine said. "Someone is waiting for me.” She rushed off, obviously having forgotten what she came for—was she meeting someone?

There was a tension in the air that I could not bear.

“What was that about?” I asked. “I thought you two didn’t know each other.”

“What made you think that?” asked Fitzroy.

“She told me that she had never met you in Aix.”

“Really?” His face was strained. “That's strange.”

“How so?” I asked.

He turned away from Rachel to look me directly in the face and said, “I do not want to discuss this!” The anger and fear in his voice and manner made me pull away. I felt as though I'd been struck.

I rose and went home with Foxy, surmising that Rachel and Fitzroy would end up in bed together and that there was nothing I could do about it. I was worried about my friend—and she had become my friend, even though I was still not sure she was innocent. With that temper, Fitzroy could be a murderer.

Chapter 18

When I walked into the archives the following day, I saw that Fitzroy had taken a seat at a table of Mormon genealogists across the room and was seemingly buried in his work. Madeleine came in, said hello to me, and went to work at the far end of our table, head down.

It was after ten when Rachel arrived and chose a table away from everyone else. The curve of her back as she sat at her place told me something was very wrong, so I went over to her. In her eyes were tears waiting to fall.

“What is it?” I asked. Struggling not to cry, she did not reply right away, so I added, “Let's get out of here,” and, without speaking further, we left the archive, took the elevator to the plaza, and stood by the drainpipes, out of the wind.

"You were right about Martin,” she said. “He broke it off between us. Without explanation. Cold. I should have known not to trust him.” Her face screwed up, and she gave in to tears. I reached over and put my arm around her shoulders—they seemed fragile, made of bird-like bones. "Something is wrong,” she finally added, blowing her nose. “We are not at that point yet. That point where a man like him breaks it off." Her face was pale, her clear ginger-brown eyes full of more tears.

“I’m sorry, Rachel.”

"I really liked him. Saw something in him. Something that other women had not, or so I thought."

"It did seem that he had some real feelings for you," I said, wanting to comfort her, yet also speaking the truth.

"But the streetcar got caught. After the game of pétanque,” she said, smiling slightly.

"I figured that.”

"You think you know so much about love!" she said, then added immediately, "I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. You warned me. You were right. He reacted just as you said he would. Live and learn." She shrugged, a gesture I knew she did not mean.

“But you two were so happy at the café last night,” I said. “That didn’t seem to be an illusion, though I suppose romance is always at least a little bit illusory.”

“Afterglow. Who knows? Maybe it took him a while. To figure out that his mission was accomplished.”

"Then I came in, then Madeleine. It was strange—how she acted. Did Martin say anything about knowing her?"

She was silent a moment—I thought she was deciding what to tell me. Then she shook her head "He didn’t want to discuss it. After you left, I tried to ask him about it. But he still wouldn’t talk. Let’s change the subject." Her voice was flat, as if she had been temporarily emptied of emotion.

"You really want to do that?" I looked over at her, pale, her usually shiny hair now lusterless, eyes red from crying.

"What more is to be said? After all, Martin and I just started seeing each other. Worse things happen than a broken heart."

"How broken is your heart?" I didn’t want to stop Rachel from talking if she really wanted to talk.

"I can’t tell yet.”

“Maybe you need. . .” I began but stopped in mid-sentence because I saw Madeleine coming fast down the steps from the archive entrance, her brown silk suit flowing with her movement, the ends of her saffron-colored silk scarf floating behind her. She seemed to be anxiously looking for something. That something was us.

She ran to us, her breath cloudy in the cold air, she said, in French, without preamble, “You must stay away from Martin Fitzroy. He is a dangerous man.”

Rachel turned white-faced and speechless.

“So you do know him,” I said. "You avoid him. You haven’t been within ten feet of each other except last night at the café. You didn’t expect to see him there. And you did know each other at Aix.”

"Yes. I knew him. I am sure that he killed Agatha. But I thought it would end there,” Madeleine replied, winding the ends of her scarf around her fingers.

“What are you talking about?” asked Rachel in a high, strained voice.

"I should go back to the beginning,” Madeleine replied. “We met at the university. He was teaching there on a sabbatical. I was in his survey class. Immediately I became attracted to him."

"Why?" I asked, honestly puzzled. This didn't seem to fit her previous story of hoods, hope, and redemption by loving nuns.

"He was not like Jean-Pierre. No drugs. No crazy talk." She was trembling, and not entirely with the cold, I surmised.

"No woman ever falls for the opposite of the one she first loved. Not really," I remarked, unsure that what I was saying was true. “Isn’t Fitzroy a misogynist, too, like your hood boyfriend?"

"Maybe he is. That could be,” Madeleine said. “But I didn’t think that of him then. I went to see him in his office. I used a question about the class as an excuse. It started out as a friendship, an intellectual friendship, I thought. What a fool I was!” She spoke in a low, confessional voice. I had to strain to hear her and thought how strange it was that every time she talked, the atmosphere of conversation altered dramatically—and she was center stage. "But then it changed. He wanted me to sleep with him. I said no, that I felt it was a sin. I thought it was a sin then, and I think it is now.”

“Is that because of what the nuns taught you at the Refuge?” I asked.

She nodded. “Sex is not love. Sister Agatha and the other nuns convinced me of that. Martin said the nuns had ruined me. He blamed them. The abominable things he said about them! Especially Agatha! Once he said she did not deserve to live. It terrified me. He shouted by the hour that I was denying my humanity—that the nuns had distorted who I really was.” She was wringing her hands in the scarf, like a penitent. “I began to be afraid of what he would do. Maybe beat me up. So I kept away. I thought I had seen the last of him."

"Then there he was at the archives," I said.

“When I saw him, I avoided him. I didn’t want it all to start up again. Then Agatha was killed. He did it. I know he did.” She looked down. "The needle—I knew what it meant—that she should have kept her mouth shut with me and everyone else.”

“Martin would not have done that. I know it. He’s much too rational,” said Rachel, but I wondered if she was convinced of Fitzroy's innocence.

“Your evidence is very circumstantial, Madeleine,” I added. We said nothing more for a few minutes. I looked out over the plaza, which was almost empty. Finally I asked, "Why didn’t you tell your suspicions to the police?”

“They wouldn't believe me. I have a record with them. And what evidence did I have? Then he went after you, Rachel. I began to think that he would hurt you, too. I had to warn you.”

"You don't need to. We're over,” said Rachel. Her face was serene, and I thought I knew what was going on in her head: She now knew why Fitzroy had dropped her so suddenly. He had seen Madeleine as a threat, not only to him but to her. Of course that would make her happy—that he had dumped her to protect her. So maybe it
wasn't
over. On the other hand, that didn't mean he wasn't guilty of killing Agatha in a fit of rage.

“Why would he go so far as to kill Agatha?” I asked.

“Anger at her for making me someone he could not seduce,” said Madeleine.

“That's hardly enough,” Rachel said.

“That's some ego you have, Madeleine,” I said, but I also turned to Rachel and added, “He has a fierce temper. We've seen it, and just over a game of pétanque. Perhaps Agatha enraged him enough. . . “

“I don't think so,” said Rachel firmly. Because she was still talking in short sentences, without elaboration. I knew that the certainty of her tone hid uncertainty.

“It's cold,” I said, feeling it more than ever, “and we will not settle this here. You have given your warning, Madeleine. Nothing more needs to be said.”

We returned to the reading room. Rachel went immediately to Fitzroy and leaned down to whisper something; they left the room together.

While we were outside, Roger had arrived and was sitting at a table industriously examining documents that I knew he had little interest in. When I came over to his table, he raised his head and smiled. Our eyes met, I smiled back, and I felt a flash of desire. He said, “What's going on, Dory?”

“What makes you think something is?” I asked back.

“The look on your face.”

“It’s othing I can talk about here,” I said. “Let’s go to the reference room?”

In the reference room we stood facing each other, close enough to kiss, and I told him Madeleine's story. “I suspect Fitzroy more than I did before,” I said.

“Just a strange love story,” he said. “Madeleine is a peculiar woman, who tends to misinterpret. Would you not say that is so?” He leaned back against the bookcases.

“Of course it's strange and peculiar, and she's strange and peculiar, but that doesn't eliminate him as a suspect.”

“Perhaps she's pointing the finger at him because she's the one who killed Agatha,” he said.

“What possible reason would she have for that?”

“How about thwarted desire? Or resentment over the so-called reform?”

“You're stretching it,” I replied. I could hear floor boards creaking under feet as someone walked in the hallway.

“And why would Fitzroy kill Agatha for an equally trivial reason?” He smiled—a little condescendingly, I thought.

“Trivial? Listen. . .” My voice rose. “Fitzroy is a man with a gigantic ego, and he . . .”

“He what?” came from the door. Fitzroy, with Rachel at his side, was standing there.

“Is perhaps capable of murder,” I said defiantly, as they came into the room.

Madeleine, right behind them, spoke, white-faced: "It had to be you, Martin." She held the door frame in her trembling hand.

Fitzroy looked at her as he might watch a crazed panther. “Are you insane? he said in an authoritative professorial voice, meant for the lectern. “
You
accuse
me
of murder? How dare you, you little idiot! What a piece of work you are! . . .”

“But you . . .” began Madeleine.

“What?”

“All those things . . .”

“Wait a minute,” Fitzroy said again. “Wait a minute. Just you be careful about . . . “

“This discussion belongs elsewhere,” I said. I thought I sounded reasonable.

“You keep out of this!” shouted Fitzroy. ”It's none of your damned business.”

“Someone's dead. It
is
my business,” I said, angry, standing my ground, even though I hate confrontations. Maybe my bravery had a great deal to do with Roger's solid and reassuring presence beside me.

Fitzroy ignored what I had said and turned to Madeleine. “Listen, Madeleine, in Aix, we just talked. That was just academic talk!” His voice pleaded, and I saw him flinch as he realized what he said.

“Just talked? All that you said against the Holy Church! Against nuns! You. . .”

As I heard Madeleine berate Fitzroy, I saw in his surprised face the realization that what he had said to her in Aix had had far more impact than he thought it did at the time. After this, would he always wonder when he argued some controversial historical point if his students were taking it more seriously than he intended?

“Why, then, did you not approach me here? You acted guilty!” Madeleine’s voice rose to a near-wail.

“Simple. I thought it was
you
who killed Agatha.”

Madeleine moved into the room. “But why would I want to kill Agatha, whom I loved?”

“Unsatisfied passion? Frustrated obsession? You seemed to me to be unhinged,” he replied, still furious.

“I
was
ambivalent toward Agatha,” Madeleine said. “That’s true. I always felt that had I not been a sinner, she would not have loved me so much. But I didn’t kill her.”