Cezanne's Quarry (24 page)

“
Salade Lyonnaise
?” Picard’s eyes gleamed with pleasure as he looked upon his excited little daughter.

“Yes, sir,” the girl said brightly, then turned and ran off.

Picard rose and winked at Martin. “You know, in this house, the real boss is Hélène. So we’d better go. But before we do, can you tell me if she was—”

Martin shook his head. He had no intention of telling René Picard that Solange Vernet had been raped.

The first course went smoothly. As soon as they were seated in the airy sun-filled dining room, the Picard elders at either end of the table, and Martin beside Lucie and directly across from Bernadette, Hélène took over. She circled around them, placing a steaming poached egg on top of their individual bowls of vinegary mixed greens and
lardons
. “Eat before the eggs get cold,” she commanded, as she flew out of the room and closed the door.

“Eggs laid just yesterday,” was the only remark Picard allowed himself before digging in. Mme Picard tried to maintain a dignified posture, but the girls, who had been suffering through the torture of the inviting aromas for hours, pressed their forks into the slightly cooked yolks with undisguised relish, smearing the yellow contents all over the salad and dipping their bread to catch the runoff. Martin hesitated, and then followed suit. He had never seen a hot egg planted on a salad before, but the results were wonderful, especially since the creative urgency of mixing, stirring, dipping, and stuffing their mouths kept the girls well occupied.

“Ahh.” Picard pushed his bowl forward. “One of Hélène’s specialties. But only a preview of her skills. Next, duck with olives. Duck fresh from the country.”

“And old olives from last year!” Amélie loved teasing her father as much as he loved teasing her.

“Amélie!” The mother nodded her head toward Martin, signaling that they had a guest, and good manners were expected.

Bernadette wiped her mouth with her napkin and shot her sister a look across the table. Martin was not sure which member of their family the older girls were passing judgment on. Before anything else was said, Hélène set a large, steaming tureen in front of Picard. “At last, I can turn off the oven. Your cheese and pears are on the sideboard. Call me when you need dessert.” She waddled away with a huge sigh, fanning herself with a towel.

“Dessert, and not before,” remarked Lucie, having her own fun. Then she bent toward Martin as she explained, “Our cook hates to use the oven in the heat.”

“Hélène or no Hélène,” Picard declared, “surely we need to put forth some effort when we have such a special guest.” All eyes once again fell on Martin. He cleared his throat and tried to act as if Picard’s distribution of the stew were all he had on his mind. When everyone had a full plate in front of them, they began the intricate work of cutting the flesh away from the bone. This took some effort, but not enough to discourage conversation.

Mme Picard was the first to speak. “Before the investigation, M. Martin, did you know Solange Vernet?”

The dark stew was delicious, much more earthy than anything he would have gotten at his mother’s table. The food and wine were putting Martin in a better mood. He realized that to be sociable he would have to say a little. “Not really,” he said, then put a piece of duck into his mouth, chewing slowly to discourage other questions.

“Well, I did.” Forks almost dropped as the three daughters turned to their mother. “Mother!” exclaimed Bernadette, “you never told—”

“There was no reason to,” said Mme Picard as she popped an olive into her mouth and smiled at her husband. The plain brown hen was enjoying her chance to trump the peacock at the other end of the table.

“How? Where?” Lucie leaned past Martin to get a better look at her mother.

“At two of our charity meetings.”

“At the church?” Bernadette asked, surprised. Although Martin kept his silence, he was every bit as interested in the answers as the Picard girls.

“Yes. You see, your father is not the only person in this household who gets to meet interesting people. She came and wanted to help out, although I must say she did not have a proper idea of what a ladies’ organization does. She asked if we helped poor abandoned girls and babies and little children, as if we went directly to their homes to feed them and change their diapers. We told her about our yearly fair and the annual charity ball, and how this provides money for the sisters, who are in a much better position than we are to go directly to the poor. After two meetings, she seemed to lose interest, and I must say,
although we invite everyone in
,” she emphasized to Martin and Picard as if she knew that men would wrongly accuse her of small-mindedness, “most of us were not that interested in having her, either.”

“So you’ve both seen her,” Amélie said, looking from her mother to her father, “and maybe you too.” She had caught the ambiguity in Martin’s answer about whether he “knew” Solange Vernet. “I mean,” she suddenly blushed, “did you see her before she died?”

“Amélie, please.” Bernadette nudged her little sister. “Let’s not talk about corpses at the table.”

“I just wanted to know if she was beautiful or intelligent.”

Oh yes
, Martin thought,
she was all that and more
. How much more? Had she really thought the upper-class women of Aix would welcome her into pious circles? Perhaps, unlike them, she was willing to go into hovels to feed and care for the poor. Clearly Solange Vernet had had no understanding of how well-brought-up women like Mme Picard and Marthe DuPont performed their “charities.”

“Well,” Picard was not one to lose an opportunity to be the center of attention, “I think some people might have found her attractive. She certainly was fashionable. In a Parisian sort of way, of course. And, yes, I would say she was intelligent—”

“What did you think, M. Martin?” Mme Picard asked, interrupting her husband before he got going.

“Excuse me?”

“I know that if I were a different kind of woman, I might have been jealous of René’s dealings with her. Despite his hemming and hawing just now, he did tell me that he thought she was quite beautiful.”

“Yes, yes.” Martin kept his head down, as he fished around in his stew. “But I only really saw her once, before. We both happened to be at the counter of a bookstore and I heard the man say her name.”

“What did she get?” Amélie seemed very excited by this notion. “I mean, what book?”

Martin looked at her and smiled. “I really don’t know.” At least that was truthful. After all, Solange Vernet had insisted he take the translation of Darwin with the preface by Clémence Royer.

“Probably some impious book,” Bernadette sniffed. “Father Grevier mentioned her and M. Westerbury in a sermon just before we left for the country. Actually he didn’t call them by name, but he said there were outsiders who had come to town trying to propagate the lie that the world is millions of years old, when, he said, everyone knows that Adam and Eve could not have lived more than four thousand years ago.”

“Really.” The word slipped out before Martin could stop it. In truth, he was torn between wanting her to go on, so that they would ignore him, and wanting her to shut up.

“Yes, of course. Don’t you agree?”

“I haven’t made any study of science.” Martin was trying to be noncommital, but, as soon as he said it, he realized that his answer had come out as either a challenge or an evasion.

“What about the Bible?”

“Bernadette!” Mme Picard obviously thought her daughter had gone too far. Picard, on the other hand, pulled back from the table to get a better view of the fray.

“Well, I think she got what she deserved.” Bernadette glared at Martin.

Well said
, Martin thought,
you and all the pious women of Aix
.

“Dear, that is not a very Christian attitude.” The mother moved in to quell the flames.

“And when, my dearest, have Christians ever been Christian?”

“René!”

“Here we go again!” Amélie interjected with impish delight. This was obviously an old and familiar argument, but, as far as Martin could tell, the mutual affection of the Picards was older and deeper still. Their exchange reminded him how his own father had tried to tease his mother out of some of her opinions, although his father would have never displayed the notary’s pomposity.

“Still,” Bernadette was not about to give up the floor, “I want to know what M. Martin thinks. Do you think she deserved what she got?”

This was an easy question to parry. “No one deserves to be murdered.”

“Well, she went to the quarry by herself, she lived in sin, she was a hypocrite who acted like she was religious when she really wasn’t.”

A red heat was rising from Martin’s neck to his forehead. He did not know why, but he was sure that Solange Vernet had practiced more true virtue in her short life than Bernadette Picard would in a hundred years.

“M. Martin, are you all right?” Lucie’s hand fell gently on his wrist. He realized that he was clutching his fork and glaring at Bernadette. He gave his head a shake. How gauche and unreasonable to be angry with a young girl, just because she was expressing conventional opinions. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking.”

“About her?”

“Solange Vernet? Yes.”

“It must have been horrible to see her afterward,” Lucie said as she pulled her hand away.

“Yes.” It had been horrible, and he hoped that the girl’s sympathetic intervention would end the conversation.

“Do you think he did it? Did you talk to him? Do you think he is a murderer?” Amélie’s eyes were large and excited.

“M. Westerbury?” Martin had regained his composure. The child was asking the obvious question, innocent of prejudice and judgment.

“Yes, yes. M. Westerbury. The lecturer. The Englishman. Did he do it?”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot speak of any specifics of the investigation at this point.”

Even this vague, innocuous answer seemed to thrill little Amélie, if only because it sounded so official. She was speaking with the investigating judge who was going to catch the man who had committed the most heinous crime in all of Aix.
If only,
Martin thought,
if only and soon.

“I know you should not speak ill of the dead, but,” although Bernadette sounded somewhat chastened, she was not to be dissuaded, “I just wondered what you thought of her when she was living. The kind of life she was leading. The lies she propagated. After all, like Maman said, she didn’t even know how to act like a lady. Where did she get all that money?”

“Well, I can probably say more about that than our young judge.” Picard had given up the stage for far too long. “The money was hers, not his, and I believe that she
earned
it.”

“Earned it?” This took Mme Picard aback. “A woman earned a fortune?”

“Well, you know that I don’t like to talk about my clients’ business, but since she is dead, I can tell you that she was a very successful milliner in Paris. In a poor neighborhood, but obviously she attracted a rich clientele.”

“A hatmaker? What kind of family did she come from?”

Picard looked at Martin, who shrugged, noncommital. He could have recited another official-sounding, meaningless piety about the “ongoing investigation,” but he didn’t bother. The truth was that he did not know. And he should.

“I’m sure M. Martin, being a man of the world,” the notary declared, “does not find it all that shocking that a woman made her own way. And when he finds out how, I’m sure we’ll all know about it. It will be in the papers. And if we are polite, perhaps M. Martin will grace our table again.”

“
La Croix
said that she was a woman of ‘indeterminate origin,’ whatever that means,” Bernadette sniffed. “I can just imagine.”

“Girls, girls, enough.” In Mme Picard’s circles, it was a mother’s first duty to keep her daughters from such imaginings. “Your father’s right. Let’s engage our guest in more pleasant conversation. Lucie, would you bring the pears and cheese from the sideboard and call Hélène to ask her to clear?” Now that Mme Picard had had the fun of springing the surprise of her brief encounter with Solange Vernet on her family, she was pulling them back to proper form.

Martin hoped that the rustle of Lucie’s movement covered his sigh of relief. The rest of the meal continued in a more pleasant vein. The fruit was ripe and delicious, and so was the cheese. They conversed about the Picard country home, the coming theater season in Aix, and the differences between the food of the north and the south.

Despite the fact that the family banter released Martin from having to strain to find things to say, he grew more and more uneasy as the afternoon wore on. Bernadette’s remarks had roused unexpected anger in him. What right did she, a thoroughly conventional and inexperienced girl, with a privileged place in the smug society of Aix, have to look down upon Solange Vernet, who had worked hard to make something of herself? By all accounts, Solange Vernet had always treated others with graciousness and compassion. Cézanne had loved her deeply. Westerbury said that she was a remarkable woman. Because of the boy, because of Merckx, and because of his own fear of exposure, Martin had been neglecting in his own mind the first victim to whom he owed justice. He realized that he urgently needed to do more than clear up this or that detail of her life. He longed to know her. Who was she really? Where had she come from? What had she hoped for? Only Westerbury could begin to answer these questions.