A Provençal Mystery (4 page)

“Tell me more about that document you showed me this morning,” Agatha said in her resonant voice. Now she was speaking English. “Something about it is familiar.”

“I thought you didn't know it.”

“I said I hadn't read it. Tell me about it. Maybe that will help me remember something.” She looked toward the swinging door of the kitchen, from where the food came.

I described what I had already read and said, “So it didn't come from the convent?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because it isn't from the archive. I has no archive stamp, and it was tucked into a record book by someone between yesterday and today,” I replied. “I thought maybe you put it there.”

“I’d keep quiet about it if I were you. It’s a find,” she said.

“It
is
a find,” I watched Agatha’s face as I said it. “But why keep quiet about it?”

“Someone could take it away from you.” Her face, for once, was not readable.

“How? You mean physically grab it?” I asked.

“No, I mean use it in some intellectual way.”

“You think it’s that important?”

“Yes. Of course.” Agatha’s tone was adamant “Do something with it.”

“I’m supposed to be working on my article,” I replied. “And reading the diary is very slow. I need to establish its authenticity. After all, very, very few nuns' diaries have been found.”

“Use it for the article then,” Agatha said.

“I can't. My article is a statistical study. The diary wouldn't fit into it.”

“But the diary excites you.”

“Yes, it does. Imagine! It’s pages long, and there’s more somewhere. Has to be. I looked ahead—it ends in mid-sentence.”

“If it is what you say it is, perhaps you should concentrate on it. Change the topic of your article.”

“My chair, Magnuson, wouldn’t like that. He sees micro-histories as frivolous.”

“Microhistories?”

“Histories of the small. Of villages. Of people who weren't famous. Like Rose, the writer of the diary.”

Agatha leaned forward, resting on her big, black-robed arms. “Who cares? Do it anyway!”

“I can’t.”

“Listen to me. It’s a cliche, but life’s short, my young friend.”

“I’m not so young,” I replied, feeling defensive.

“How old? Forty-five?”

“Thereabouts.”

“And I’m past seventy. Let me tell you. I know how short life is. Don’t have regrets. I do.” I saw a shadowy sadness cross Agatha’s face.

“You?” I was surprised.

“Yes. Don’t look so curious. I’m not going to tell you what they are.” She changed the subject: “Follow your heart.”

“That sounds like a Disney movie,” I said. “And I’ve followed my heart before, with disastrous results. Look at my sad love life! I am doing important work. Real history. Statistics have verisimilitude.” I was lying.

Agatha shook her head. “But others can do that kind of work. The diary is original, and you are the right person to work with it.” Listening to her, I had the feeling that she was playing with the truth, that there was something she was not saying.

“Work how?” I asked? “You mean write about one real life? In its context? Make history real, as the makers of public television documentaries say? Something like that?”

“Don’t make fun. Yes.” She paused a moment, then added, “Where's the ragout?”

I considered only briefly. “I would take too big a chance if I drop everything to work on the diary. I’ll read it when I can.”

“You’re going against your own nature.”

“I have to go against my own nature. Or I lose.”

“Lose what? It sounds as if your department wants you to fail, so why stay at that school?” She was so persistent. Maybe it had something to do with her impatience about the arrival of the food.

“Tenure. I have a chance, even if it’s slim. If I don’t get tenure, I’ll have to go on the job market again. No one will hire me—a reject by a second-rate school. I’m already a wallflower in the academic dance.”

“You underestimate yourself. I can smell that ragout. Lots of rosemary. Maybe too much?”

“Not really. I mean my estimation of myself, not the rosemary. Anyway, I’m determined to beat them at their game. And from what I’ve seen already, the diary’s out there in the land of irrationality. On the first page we have a little miracle. A strange fire. A demon. Magnuson wants statistics, not miracles. And I don’t want to deal in that kind of thing either. Or I should say, I do and I don't. It scares me.” It was true—Sister Rose’s vision unsettled me. While the irrational fascinated me, I was not a believer in anything that could not be explained logically—at least not then.

“And why not? You take on a certain excited expression when you talk about it.” Agatha stared at me intently.

I started laughing. “Stop that, Agatha! I know your M.O.”

“My what?”

“Your M.O. Modus operandi. You are an instigator. You poke hornet nests just to see what will happen.”

Before Agatha could reply, Madeleine arrived; she ordered a salad and cup of English tea just as the ragouts came to the table along with a plate of scraps for Foxy. I felt Foxy’s head rise from my foot at the smell. Agatha had been right about the special—the lamb stew was thick with black olives and aromatic with rosemary. For a while, we ate in silence. I threw a few delicious bits down to Foxy, who, with thumps of his tail, grabbed them before they hit the linoleum.

“You know about hornet’s nests, too,” Agatha said to me after a while. “We have a lot in common, you and I, in spite of the fact I’m an old virginal nun and you’re an adventurous non-believer. Weren't you even married once?”

"Yes. But for a very short time. And there were other men.”

“Perhaps, then, you are a
femme tombée
, a fallen woman you would call it in English,” Madeleine said, with a sarcastic down-turned smile.

“Fallen woman? According to the definition, yes, I suppose. But no more. I haven’t the time,” I said, mopping up sauce with a piece of bread. “I wasted a good deal of time on men.”

Madeleine, delicately eating lettuce leaves, was quiet for a moment, then said, “Wasted time! Wasted time!” She rolled her eyes and snorted as only the French can snort—in total disdain—and raised her thin eyebrows. “You Americans always thinking about time—everything is a factory with an assembly line. Even love.”

Foxy, full of scraps from me, Agatha, and Michel, laid his head back on my foot and went to sleep. He wasn’t interested in conversation. I myself was losing interest. When Madeleine was around, conversation became fraught; she liked to argue about things I cared little interest about. It wasn't long before I rose from my chair, saying, “It’s time to go.” I bid Agatha and Madeleine goodbye and walked with Foxy back to the apartment, where I left him eating a dog biscuit. Then I went to the bank for francs, hoping the copier would be fixed, and returned to the archive.

Chapter 4

Another rattle at the window—the mistral seemed to want to come inside. It was like something out of
Wuthering Heights—
dead Cathy trying to get in. The franc I dropped into the copier slot fell down through the machine and clinked as it hit the little well for rejected coins. The machine was still broken. I stood next to it, wanting even more to kick it.

Griset started to walk quickly towards me to block the kick. But before he reached me, Rachel Marchand rose in one lithe movement from her chair to intercept and confront him. Before she could speak, he said, “I am sorry. I have nothing for you today, Madame Marchand.”

“I ordered two documents from the W series yesterday, and they have not arrived.” She didn’t move.

“Your request has been held up,” Griset replied. His deep-set, humorous eyes sparkled with interest.

“By whom?”

“Not by me, Madame.”

She spoke quickly. “And who else would?” I could hear the impatience in her voice. “More to the point. Why would anyone hold up documents?”

“Perhaps you should ask our noble leader. He might know something.” He raised his eyebrows and pasted an insincere half-smile on his face.

“But why would he . . .?”

“To watch you become agitated, perhaps? You are most attractive when agitated.” Griset’s flirtatiousness got him nowhere with Rachel, who, disgusted, turned on her heel and strode the few steps to the front of the room where she leaned on Chateau-blanc’s desk with both palms flat, her arched back tense as a bow, and asked Chateaublanc a question I couldn't hear.

“Our leader really is noble, you know, authentically of the ruling class,” Griset called after her. He had an ironic glint in his eye. Before taking on the job at the archive, he had traveled the world as a merchant seaman and thought of himself as supranational. He lived to skewer the pretensions of his fellow Frenchmen. The Gauloise wagged as he talked. "Authentically seigneurial. A noble of the blood. "

"Those times are past," said the harassed Chateaublanc. He played with a paper clip; he had linked a string of them together in a necklace on his desk.

Agatha, who had come to stand next to Chateaublanc's desk, grinned and called out to me, “
Au secours
, Professor Ryan! Help me out here. Does not
chateau blanc
mean ‘white castle’ in English?”

“Yes,” I replied, cautious, wondering what she was up to.

“And White Castle is the name of a chain of American hamburger restaurants, true?”

“They’ve lost out to MacDonalds and Bob’s Big Boy, but, yes, there is such a chain. A few left.”

“Could our Chateaublanc, our Monsieur White Castle, perhaps be related to hamburger kings?"

Chateaublanc protectively pulled at the sides of his brown woolen cardigan to button it over his small paunch. Then he stood, perhaps hoping to exert more authority in that way, but without success. Agatha elbowed his arm jocularly, looked sidelong at me for support, and continued, "Perhaps, like Colonel Sanders, Monsieur Chateaublanc could become a symbol for White Castle. Go on American television. Give a French twist to the hamburger." She was laughing, but Chateaublanc was not.

That’s enough for today, I thought. I really didn’t like to see Chateaublanc squirm.

The other readers stared at the tableau in the front of the room. Under their gaze, Chateaublanc managed to erect a reluctant smile on his face. After all, this was a nun, making a joke. And Chateaublanc had respect for nuns. In one of his rare moments of collegiality, he had told the readers that he had been brought up a "good Catholic boy, who learned his catechism from the kind sisters."

“Maybe you’ve harassed the poor man enough, Agatha,” I said. “At least for today.”

Agatha winked at me—this was a little game we played—and relented. “Please excuse me, Monsieur Chateaublanc. I test your good nature too much.”

Chateaublanc again looked down at his stomach and tried to button his sweater.

Griset found his way back into the conversation. "But the past exists, here in the archive," he said, coming to stand by the copying machine. "And doesn’t it arise from the dead, like Dracula?" He took a little toke on the cigarette end and looked at me. “What do you think, Madame Red?"

“Don’t ask me,” I said, too exasperated to engage in their banter—and recognizing its danger.

“You must have an opinion,” Griset said.

I refused to be drawn in. Chateaublanc was, after all, Griset’s boss. He usually exerted his authority lightly with Griset, but who knew when his patience would end? I didn’t want to see Griset get into trouble. I drew a mental x over the picture that invaded into my brain when I thought of Chateaublanc as a seigneur, a picture of Chateaublanc dressed in seventeenth century noble dress, his stockinged legs sticking out beneath—I’d bet they'd be chicken legs. I suppressed my smile and kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t my nature.

Rachel was still standing by Chatueaublanc's desk, waiting. Throughout the entire conversation between Agatha and Chateaublanc, she had not moved or spoken a word. Now, she said, “Monsieur Chateaublanc. I need an answer from you. Where are the documents I ordered?

“I am sorry, Madame, but the documents are not available,” Chateaublanc said with a shrug.

I would have asked why. Rachel said in a flat voice, “I don’t understand.” Junior year abroad, I thought, listening to Rachel’s excellent French accent. I can make myself understood in French, but my accent makes the French laugh.

“There is nothing to understand,” Chateaublanc said, continuing to play with the paper clip.

Silence. Rachel did not move. I wondered if she were trying to decide how she could be most diplomatic. Finally she said, “Has the government classified the documents as secret because they are from World War II, during the Nazi occupation?”

“They are unavailable.” He opened up the paper clip to make a little metal gun.

“Isn’t this a public archive, open to historians?” Her voice had risen in volume, which was unlike her.

“A
French
public archive,” Chateaublanc said. He folded the end of the paperclip down, trying in vain to return it to its original shape.