A Provençal Mystery (24 page)

“Perhaps. But still. Connotations. Hidden meanings.
Etcetera
.” I pronounced “etcetera” the French way, with the accent on the last syllable.

PART III

Chapter 21

The gutsy voice of Jacques Brel, sounding like a lowdown guitar, burst from the radio in the little rented Renault. I banged the steering wheel in rhythm. It had been months since I had been behind the wheel of a car.

Avoiding the Autoroute, I took a back road that wound under arched lanes of plane trees, then past vineyards and wild uncultivated lands. The earth was a rosy brick color, the air clear. The road led through several towns, each with a church, a bakery, a butcher shop, a town square. Villages on the ridges of the mountains were stony sentinels over the valleys that dreamed in the wintry sun. Foxy put his head out the window I had opened for him in spite of the chilly weather.

In New Chateaublanc, I parked the car off the town square on the one main street. Foxy and I got out of the car, and I leashed him. Vendors had set up stalls all around the edges of the square—farmers selling cheeses and meats, a spice seller, entrepreneurs hawking sweatshirts lettered with the names of American universities, a family roasting chickens on a large rotisserie, someone with soap from Marseille. Visiting with each other and the vendors, the townspeople wandered from stall to stall, carrying straw market baskets or pushing wire carts. Foxy raised his head and sniffed the air. I envied him—how much more profound to the nose of a dog would be the smells of roasting chicken, aged cheese, lavender, the earth that still clung to the roots of vegetables.

In the little central park, Roger, wearing a sweatshirt with “California” written on it, sat waiting on the base of a statue of Mistral, the Proven
ç
al poet. Foxy lunged toward him and took his hand gently in his jaws, a sure sign of affection.

“Have you been waiting long?” I asked.

“No, not at all.” He stood and took my arm. I let him.

We started meandering through the market. At the cheese booth, an old man and a little girl sat on a pair of chairs, while a young woman offered small slices on a knife blade. I took one and broke off small pieces for Roger and Foxy. The cheese was unctuous and biting at the same time, intense with flavor.

“Delicious. Is it local?” I asked the woman in French.

“Of course, madame, we sell only local cheese. Would you like to buy some?” Her accent was thick and southern. She put the knife blade down on the wheel of cheese.

“A small slice, yes, you think?” I turned to Roger, and he nodded in agreement.

The woman measured out a slice on the wheel and looked at us for confirmation. “Yes, that’s good,” I said though it was a bit more than I had thought to buy.

"You are American?” the woman asked. When I start talking, the French always know where I come from.

“Yes. A historian.”

“And your husband?”

“I am French,” said Roger as I said, simultaneously, “He is not my husband.”

The woman smiled, threw out her hands, half in apology, half in Gallic insouciance. She wrapped up the piece of cheese in paper and handed it to me. Roger started to reach for his wallet, but I stopped him and paid for the cheese.

“And you brought this dog all the way from the United States?” the woman asked as she reached down to pet Foxy.

“All the way. He is my faithful companion,” I replied, knowing what suckers the French are for dogs.

“And what history do you study?” She scratched behind Foxy’s ears, and Foxy lay down and rolled over, exposing his belly in delight. The little girl, a toddler, climbed down from her chair, hunkered down next to Foxy, and stroked his face.

“Nuns. Especially the nuns of Our Lady of Mercy.”

She straightened. “The convent in Avignon?”

“Yes, and the ones from that order in other cities. I’m working in the Avignon archives now. Someone told me that the Chateaublancs were benefactors of the convent, even as far back as the seventeenth century. Have you heard about that?”

“A long time ago, Madame. Though you might talk to my great-aunt Marie Forêt, who worked in the convent when she was younger. She might know about the later Chateaublanc bequests. She lives up in Old Chateaublanc. In the last house, such it is, on the street.”

“I didn’t know anyone lived in Old Chateaublanc,” I said.

“
Most people moved down here back around nineteen hundred, to get away from the rough weather up on the mountain,” said Roger. “Old Chateaublanc has been almost deserted ever since. Now it’s just a few holdouts and a couple of artists.”

“And where is the Chateaublanc estate?” I asked.

“
Above Old Chateaublanc. A little road goes there,” the vendor said. The little girl left Foxy and headed toward the street; the woman reached down to pull her back. “And you, monsieur, what do you search for?” she asked Roger.

“Old artifacts,” Roger replied.

“A collector?”

“No, Madame, I work for the Ministry of Culture.”

“A bureaucrat, then.”

Roger laughed. “I suppose so. Can you direct me to a source?” He turned to the old man. “For old things, from before the Revolution?”

The old man smiled. “Really, Monsieur! I am old, but not
that
old!” He thought a moment. “Perhaps the chateau,” he said.

“The Chateaublanc chateau?” I asked.

“There is no other,” the woman replied. “Not here.”

“You must remember the war,” I said to the old man.

“War?” asked the woman.

“World War Two,” Roger said.

“
Ah, yes. That happened before I was born,” the woman replied, picking up the child, “but my father does remember.”

The old man smiled wider, revealing a mouthful of very white teeth
.

“What did the Chateaublancs do during the war?” I asked.

“They stayed here, except for the son who joined DeGaulle,” he said, standing up slowly, stiff-jointed. He spoke with an even thicker accent than his daughter's.

I took another bit of cheese off the proffered knife, then asked, “Were any of them in the Resistance?”

He shrugged. “The Chateaublancs? Who knows? Certainly they were not in our local group of maquis.”

“Did maquis save
local
Jews?”

"Some. Farmers hid them. They hated the Nazis more than they loved the Jews, though." He grinned. The smile deepened the wrinkles on his face. "A few others did turn the Jews in."

"Who?" I persisted.

"They say that old Jacques Chateaublanc told the police about a rich family of Jews—printers—who were trying to hide, but who knows? He was not that fond of Jews." I sensed no love of the Chateaublancs in his voice.

"An anti-Semite, I suppose?”

Again he shrugged. “How would I know, Madame? Many were not that fond of the Jews, but they didn’t want to see them gassed, either. They would not have turned
that
family in. That family was respected."

"So the Chateaublancs are not loved by the villagers?"

The old man turned to the young woman. "Come, Hélène, it is time for lunch,” he said. I had gone too far. It was as if I had asked the British to criticize the Queen.

Roger and I wandered the market and bought Ni
ç
oise olives and dried black ones in oil from the olive seller’s several bins, a slab of rough-cut
paté de campagne
, a roasted chicken, a bag of hard almond cookies. Had it been spring, we would have found asparagus, fragrant wild strawberries, red cherries. Later, perhaps round melons from Cavaillon, green figs, apricots. But it was too early, and we went into town to buy bananas and Moroccan tangerines at the produce market, a crusty baguette, and a round goat cheese topped with grape leaves.

“We should go to the chateau first,” I said. “Then we can have the picnic.”

Chapter 22

A
fter New Chateaublanc, the road narrowed, winding in a series of switchbacks up through the nearly deserted village of Old Chateaublanc and on up the mountain to the chateau. Roger parked his car below an open gate, and we walked up a steep path to a long, tree-shaded drive. As we rounded a corner, the building came into sight. Set in magnificent oaks and small for a chateau, it was made of creamy white stone cut straight and severe. Directly in front of it, in a rectangular pool green with algae, a fountain threw up sprays of water. The drops seemed to hang in the clear, bright air until a sudden breeze scattered them in scintillations of watery light. A marble wall with urn-shaped balusters surrounded a terrace. On each of chateau's three stories, tall windows were flanked with shutters to be used against the bitter mistral. A proud and beautiful house, very symmetrical, created by an orderly mind.

We walked up the shallow steps that led up to the front door with its arched glass fanlight and Roger knocked, but there was no response. As we turned to retrace our steps, a middle-aged man, shears in hand, come around from the back of the chateau and stood staring at us inquiringly.

“Excuse me, but are the Chateaublancs at home?” Roger asked. I wanted to laugh.

“We don’t have an appointment,” I added, “but we were in the neighborhood. . .”

“They are out at the stables. I’m the gardener here. Can I help you with something?”

Roger said he was from the Ministry of Culture. I said that I was working at the Chateaublanc’s archives.

“I am interested in the papers of noble families,” I said. “Perhaps some Chateaublanc. . . ?”

“The old things are in the shed out back,” he said.

Our stories seemed to impress him, for he led us behind the house to a yard next to stone stables, where Cha
teaublanc, with his two children watching, was getting ready to mount a beautiful black mare. He had one gloved hand on the saddle, one booted foot in a stirrup. I almost didn’t recognize him, and it was more than the clothes. When the gardener said his name, he turned to look at us, imperious, master of his domain in every sense of the phrase. In the ruins of his face was an old handsomeness, and he seemed taller than he did in the archive. The children turned to look at us, with those deepset blue eyes so like his, adult eyes startling in children’s faces.

Chateaublanc took his foot out of the stirrup and said, “Yes?” in a voice that denied real inquiry. “What are you doing here, Professor Ryan, Monsieur Aubanas?”

“We’re sorry to come by in this fashion,” I said, marshaling the French for “barge in,” “but we saw the chateau from the road. It’s so beautiful. We wanted to see it up close.” His look said, did I invite you? More than ever, I felt like the brash American in a strange country. What the hell, I thought. Yet I didn’t have the nerve to ask to see the house.

His wife, wearing elegant riding clothes on her elegant body, led a restive horse out of the stables and came to stand next to the children.

“When was the chateau built?” Roger asked.

Chateaublanc mounted his horse with a ease that came from having done it all his life. “Back in the sixteenth century, by a Chateaublanc,” he said, now looking down on us with haughty impatience.

“The stone is whiter than the stone I see in Avignon,” I said.

“It was from Italy,” he replied, softening only a little. “My ancestor brought over stone-cutters from Tuscany.”

“Isn't it a little small for a chateau?” Anxiety was making me speak before I thought.

He frowned. “It has sixteen rooms. Quite sufficient.”

Roger reached forward to pat the horse, which pranced away. “I'm looking for artifacts to buy for the city of Avignon,” he said. “To be on display for all to see in the museum. We thought that perhaps you might have a family heirloom or two that you would be willing to sell.”

The horse did a little dance while Chateaublanc considered the question, then said, “No,” with a tone meant to shut Roger up. While the boy stood by with his hands in his pockets, the girl put her hand on the stirrup, and Chateaublanc looked down on her with that tender smile, reserved for his children, that was so intimate that I wanted to turn away.

I said, “And I am still interested in finding out if the Chateaublancs were benefactors of Our Lady of Mercy. There’s nothing at the archive. I wonder if somewhere here, perhaps up in some attic. . .”

“You have read too many romances,” said Chateaublanc, looking astonished at my effrontery. The horse snorted, pawing the ground, ready to go.

I took another tack. “A vendor at the market in the village said that you keep papers here,” I said. I didn't want to get the gardener in trouble.

“What vendor were you talking to?” His gloved hand stroked the horse's neck. My own neck was getting stiff from looking up at him, trying to read his face.

“Oh, just one of the produce sellers,” I replied, purposely vague. Perhaps Chateaublanc still exerted some power over the village below.

“A superstitious peasant, I would assume,” he said.

“The papers?” I persisted.

“There is nothing there of any interest to you. And as for heirlooms, they have long since been sold off to pay the taxes this socialist government exacts,” he said.