Crime Fraiche (16 page)

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Authors: Alexander Campion

BOOK: Crime Fraiche
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CHAPTER 26
C
apucine slathered the thick slice of toasted
pain de campagne
with salty farm butter and then covered it with large dollops of Odile’s bittersweet cherry preserve. She gave a satisfied little sigh and looked around furtively to make sure there would be no interruption.
Just as she licked the dripping preserve from the side of the toast, preparing for her first big bite, she heard the dreaded words, “Madame la Comtesse
est demandée au téléphone.
”
“Who is it, Gauvin?”
“Monsieur Vienneau, and, if Madame la Comtesse will permit, he seems very upset.”
“Capucine, it’s Loïc. Something terrible has happened. Can I come and see you?” He sounded close to the threshold of hysteria.
“Of course. I’ll be here all morning, or would you like to come to lunch?”
“Not lunch. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” A short pause, then, “Thank you,” awkwardly.
As she went back to her breakfast, she heard the ponderous knocker thump against the front door and Gauvin rush down the hallway to open it. Vienneau stood shyly on the threshold. He was unshaven and smelled of alcohol. It was obvious he had been standing in the driveway and had called on his cell phone.
In the petit salon he refused coffee and sheepishly asked if he could have some Calvados instead. Gauvin brought a small crystal decanter filled with the dark brown liquid and a thimble-sized stemmed glass on a silver tray. Vienneau frowned at the size of the glass and downed two shots in rapid succession. He took a deep breath, shuddered, filled the glass again, and held it between thumb and index.
“Capucine, I’m desperate. Marie-Christine has left.”
Capucine looked at him, waiting.
Vienneau downed two more measures of Calvados.
“She had been even more affectionate than usual for the past few days. I thought things were getting better. You see, after Gerlier’s death I had to spend much more time at the élevage and so often I would come home late. Sometimes I even missed dinner altogether. That upset Marie-Christine. It would upset anyone! And she became a little—how can I describe it?—a little distant. But this week that changed and she was very loving and attentive, clinging almost.”
He gave Capucine a look of almost childish expectancy. She nodded with a small smile.
“Then last night, when I came home, she was in tears. She had been drinking. At first she was inconsolable. I tried to soothe her. We talked for hours. About everything. About nothing. Us. Her parents. The fact that we couldn’t have children. That made her sob hysterically.” He paused, visibly racked with guilt. “Then she seemed to calm down. The storm had passed. I made a cup of tisane tea for her and found some sleeping pills that Homais had given me last year. She took one and went to bed. I stayed with her until she fell asleep. But I could see that she was still restless, changing position and moaning constantly.” He tossed off another tiny glass of Calvados.
Capucine still said nothing.
“I had a bit to drink myself after she went to sleep. I was very upset. Very late I went to bed.”
He stared at Capucine. This was the part he didn’t want to talk about.
“When I woke up, she was gone. She’d left this note on her pillow.” He handed Capucine a sheet of very thick letter paper with the name of their house printed at the top from a hand-engraved plate. In the French manner, the paper had been folded in four with the writing on the outside.
Dearest,
It’s not out of cowardice but out of love that I tell you this on paper and not to your face. If you were in front of me now, I would not have the strength to do what I know I must do.
I am moving to Paris. I will stay with my sister for the first few days, and then I will have to find someplace to live on my own. I do this not because I want to leave you but because I know I will drag you down. With me clutching your waist, even your very powerful wings are not strong enough to lift us both off the ground.
Please forgive me and think of me fondly.
I will love you forever.
Yours,
Marie-Christine
“What do you think?” Vienneau asked.
“You called your sister-in-law?”
“Of course. Right after I woke up. Marie-Christine’s there, but she wouldn’t speak to me. My sister-in-law said she was asleep. I think she must have spat out the sleeping pill and waited for me to come to bed and then driven to Paris. What really amazed me is that a lot of her clothes are gone. She must have packed her bags and put them in her car before I came home. She had planned it all out. Right?”
“That’s possible.”
“Capucine, listen, I’m asking this of you, a police officer. I need the police to bring her back, and I want you to tell me how to get them to do it.”
“The police have no authority whatsoever in matters like this. I can tell you as a friend—and as a woman—that your best course of action is to let her work through whatever it is that’s troubling her all by herself. If you interfere, it will only make it harder for her.”
“You don’t understand.” Vienneau’s pitch had gone up a notch. “She’s a sick woman. Her letter is almost suicidal. ‘With me clutching your waist, even your very powerful wings are not strong enough to lift us both off the ground.’ That phrase makes me very afraid.”
“Yes, she’s clearly highly upset.”
“That’s why the police need to intervene. Can’t you order some officers to take her to be medically examined? She’s obviously taken leave of her senses. She needs help. I understand you are very powerful in the police.”
“Loïc, the police only get involved if there has been an infraction of the law, which is certainly not the case here. This is not the way to deal with this. Let time do its work.”
“No, no, you’re not understanding. I need Marie-Christine. I can’t function without her. I can’t function without her even when things are going well. And they’re certainly not going well now. I never realized how much Gerlier actually did at the élevage. I have to spend all day there, and the work is still not done. Listen, Capucine, I tell you this in the strictest confidence. Last month was the first time since I took over from my father that we lost money. Not a lot, thank God, but we were actually in the red.”
He put his elbows on the table and ground his eyes with the heels of his hands. “What am I going to do?” he asked the tablecloth. He raised his head to down another thimbleful of Calvados. “Don’t you have any bigger glasses?”
CHAPTER 27
E
ven the exterior of the little house announced that Lisette Bellec was thriving in her widowhood. Her husband, Lucien, had died violently barely two weeks before, but the narrow stucco row house exuded a feeling of well-scrubbed serenity.
Capucine clunked the knocker, an old horseshoe welded onto a cast-iron hinge, and the door opened immediately. There was a moment’s fluttering hesitation as the Widow Bellec—as she would be known in the village for the rest of her days—anxiously wrung her hands, drying them in her apron.
“Mademoiselle,” she almost sighed, “I was sure you would come.” She paused. “Oh, excuse me. I know I’m supposed to call you Madame la Comtesse now, but I always think of you as Mademoiselle. I’m sure you don’t remember, but I worked in the kitchen at the château when you were just a little girl.”
Capucine hesitated for only a short beat. “Of course I remember you. You used to teach me to bake when you weren’t washing dishes. We made all sorts of cakes. How could I ever forget?”
Capucine was led down the long, thin house—clearly built in the lane between two existing houses in the last century—and into a minuscule sitting room where a dining table and six chairs fought for space with a high-backed banquette. A boxy television, so old it had a large circular dial with numbers for the channels, had pride of place at the end of the table. It was easy to imagine the table elbow to elbow with family, one eye on the flickering screen and one ear on the conversation. There was a single window, which looked out over a yard as long and narrow as the house. A large number of rabbits hopped lethargically in a chicken-wire cage raised to shoulder height on stilts. Beyond, a kitchen garden was being diligently wound down for the winter.
“I’m glad to see you’re so comfortable,” Capucine said.
“Yes, mademoiselle, I did well by the Père Bellec, thanks to the Lord.” She made a rapid sign of the cross and glanced at the crucifix hanging on the wall over the television. “He was a hard man but a good provider.”
“I’ve come to ask you some questions about your poor husband. I’m trying to understand about his death.”
Lisette snorted. “He wasn’t that poor. He got a good wage at the élevage, and he never spent a sou on me or the house, as you can see. There was quite a good bit more in his postal savings account than I expected. And don’t feel sorry for me. His death was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. But I don’t have to tell you that. You’re married, so you know what men are like.” She paused. “Would you like some tea? I was just going to make some.”
As the tea was poured from a flowery teapot obviously reserved for special occasions, Capucine nudged the conversation gently back to the murdered worker. “It doesn’t seem that your marriage was much of a success,” Capucine said and immediately regretted using a phrase more appropriate to a Saint-Germain cocktail party.
Lisette looked at her in incomprehension. “I did what women have to do. I married the first man who asked me so I could have a home of my own and no longer needed to work ten hours a day for servant’s wages, sleeping in a freezing cubicle under the roof. Even if I had known what it was going to be like, I still would have done it.”
“Are you telling me he beat you?”
“No, not really, or at least not when I didn’t deserve it.” She laughed as if she had said something clever. “You know what marriage is like. He would go to the café after work and come home drunk, yelling and swearing if his dinner wasn’t nice and hot on the table, waiting for him. Then he’d sit in front of the TV, drinking beer until he fell asleep. I’d help him to bed and he’d curse at me.” She paused, lost in her memories.
“Of course, when we were still young, you know, he would claim his rights as a husband more frequently than I thought a man ever could. He didn’t care if I wanted to or not, and he was always very rough. Many times he made me bleed, and if I told him to stop, then he really would hit me, and not just a
gifle
—a little slap—like when I had done something wrong. I was very glad when he grew too old for that, believe me.” She crossed herself, glancing at the crucifix, and then laughed, but this time with a note of heavy irony.
“What about his friends, the people he saw, his life when he wasn’t here?”
“Mademoiselle, you know men. He only saw his friends at the café. How could I know them? Decent women don’t go to cafés. Of course, nowadays they seem to be filled with these young hussies all tarted up with makeup. What’s the world coming to? And, of course, he went hunting in the winter and fishing in the summer, like all men do. It’s not a woman’s place to know her man’s friends. I suppose they all worked with him at the élevage. They must have. Half the men in the village work there.”
“Do you know if he had any enemies or if anyone wanted to see him dead?”
“I’m sure he had enemies. All men do. As to seeing him dead, I don’t know about that, other than me, of course.” She laughed an almost carefree chuckle but suddenly became serious, as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to her.
“So it wasn’t true, what Capitaine Dallemagne said about you and the taxes?”
“Capitaine Dallemagne came to see you?”
“Just the other day. He asked me almost the same questions you did about Lucien. And as he was leaving, he told me you worked for the
fisc,
the tax agency, and you were going to try to take my inheritance away. But I knew that couldn’t be true. He’s a jealous one, he is, that Capitaine Dallemagne. These flics, they’re all the same. Oh, pardon, mademoiselle. They say you’re a flic, too. Can that be true? I don’t know what to believe anymore.” She crossed herself again, darting an even more reverent glance at the crucifix.
“My dear Bebette. I’m now a commissaire in the Police Judiciaire in Paris. I have nothing at all to do with taxes, thank God.” Capucine started to cross herself and nipped the gesture in the bud. The habit was infectious.
Get a grip,
she told herself.
CHAPTER 28
A
s subtly as a face aging, the cloakroom had morphed. If before it had been merely the stage for a comic interlude, with perhaps a secondary role as a portal into Capucine’s childhood and early adolescence, it had progressively revealed its own genius loci and become a vital sanctuary from the present time.
Behind the closed door, now a universally recognized sign at Maulévrier that she was not to be disturbed under any circumstances, Capucine picked up the receiver of the telephone, ancient even in the world of rotary dial models, and laboriously dialed Loïc Vienneau’s home number.
“Allô,” Vienneau answered anxiously.
“Allô, Loïc. It’s me, Capucine. Good morning,” Capucine said, trying hard to project a warm smile down the line.
“Do you have any news?” Vienneau’s voice was just a shade below a shout.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. I was calling you about something else.”
“I got through to her,” Vienneau said. “It took some doing, but I did it! I tried all yesterday and kept getting her sister, who wouldn’t put me through and who wound up becoming sharp with me. So I tried a little trick this morning. I waited until I knew her sister had left for work and borrowed my financial director’s cell phone. You know how all the cell phones have the same prefix—oh-six?” He paused, seeming to actually want a confirmation for the obvious truism.
“Yes, I did know that, Loïc.”
“Good. So I called her sister’s apartment, and she picked up, not knowing who it was.” Capucine was astonished at how childlike Vienneau had become.
“And what did Marie-Christine have to say?” Capucine asked.
“That’s just it. She didn’t want to talk to me. She says she needs time to herself. Can you imagine!”
“So then what did you do?” Capucine had a sinking feeling as if trying to put a drunk dinner guest into a taxi at three in the morning.
“I called our doctor in Rouen to discuss Marie-Christine’s condition. It was a disappointing conversation. He said the same thing you did, to leave her alone and let her come to grips with her problems. I don’t understand this. What’s wrong with everyone? Why can’t they see what’s happening to Marie-Christine? She’s obviously not well—”
Capucine cut him off. “Loïc, I was calling to ask your advice.”
“My advice?”
“Yes, I need to find out who Lucien Bellec’s friends were at the élevage.”
“Lucien Bellec . . . oh, of course, the poor man who was shot. The person who would know about that is Pierre Martel, one of the foremen. He’s the one who showed you around, remember? He knows everyone and everything that’s going on. Just go to the front gate and ask for him. I’d go with you, but I have a meeting with the bankers in Rouen this morning. Now, listen, do you think you could call the doctor yourself and—”
Capucine rang off with the strong feeling that Vienneau was probably still blabbing into the phone after it went dead.
 
Summoned by the security guard, Martel arrived quickly. Recognizing Capucine, he adopted the classic stance of male aggressiveness, legs spread, thumbs hooked into his belt, hands circling his genitalia. He stared hard at her, daring her to speak.
“Monsieur Martel, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about Lucien Bellec.”
“You’re not going to ask me squat. I already gave my deposition to the flics, so you can fuck off.”
“You already gave your deposition?”
“You deaf or something? That’s what I just said. The gendarmes came around the other day, and I said what I had to say, and now I’m done with you guys.”
“The gendarmes came here to ask you questions about Lucien Bellec?”
“You got it. Capitaine Dallemagne himself. I told him what he wanted to know and he said I wouldn’t have to answer any other questions, no matter who else showed up, ’cuz he was the boss.”
“Did Capitaine Dallemagne also ask you about Clément Devere?”
“I’m not going to tell you what he asked me, but I’ll tell you what he said. He said you were a Paris cop who had no authority down here. He said you were snooping around, hoping to find someone who was cheating on their tax returns. He said you were looking to make trouble for the élevage. He didn’t exactly tell me to shut my trap in front of you, but I ain’t that dumb that I don’t know which side is up and which side is down.” He widened his stance and hooked his thumbs deeper into his belt. “Time for you to get off the property, or I’ll call the gendarmes.” He sneered, delighted with his perceived ascendency.
With a resounding clunk the penny dropped. Ever efficient, someone from the DCPJ must have notified the gendarmerie about Capucine’s assignment to the Saint-Nicolas incidents the minute the staffing committee broke up. And the gendarmerie must have sent some sort of communiqué immediately to Dallemagne. And he had not wasted a second trying to beat her to the punch by a couple of days. Well, at least it had gotten him off his butt and on the move.

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