Murder à la Carte (20 page)

“Dad? What’s the matter?”

John Newberry shook his head and listened to Laurent speak in rapid French into the receiver.

“Dad, what is going on?” she asked in bewilderment.

Babette’s eyes were on Laurent and they grew larger and larger as she listened. Suddenly, she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp.

John Newberry put his hand on Maggie’s arm. “Darling,” he said. “It’s terrible....”

“What?
What
is terrible? Is something in the basement? Did you find something in the cellar?”

“Maggie, darling,” he said. “We...we found a body in the basement.”

Maggie stared at him.“A body? A
dead
body?” she asked. 

Laurent hung up the phone and reached for her. He kissed her and lifted her chin in order to look into her eyes. She could smell the wine and cigarettes on him.

“It’s Connor, Maggie,” he said.

Chapter Eight

1

The pot bubbled violently. The combined scents of poached salt cod, boiled lamb, carrots, chickpeas, and stewed cauliflower wafted through the quiet café. Grace rubbed the mascara from her eyes with a shaking hand and sipped her Pernod. She wasn’t a bit hungry, couldn’t imagine trying to eat anything this morning, let alone boiled eggs and fish stew. The bile rose in her throat and she took another, longer sip of her drink to force the nausea back down. This wasn’t just a hangover, she thought miserably, something was really wrong with her. She looked out to the street and allowed the pain and horror of last night’s visit from the police to descend upon her.

Connor, dead? It wasn’t possible. He was there last night, teasing and being naughty and charming and annoying. It just wasn’t possible that he wasn’t in the world any more.

The waiter brought a small tray of eggs and
aïoli
with a large plate of lamb, cod and assorted vegetables. He also brought a plate of six snails nestled in little pools of garlic butter and freckled with parsley. Grace stared at them in horror.

Has Windsor lost his mind?

Across the crowded café, she watched him pulling cigarettes out of the rusting machine near the kitchen.

The police had arrived in the middle of the night, chatted briefly on their doorstep with a groggy Windsor, and then left. When Windsor returned to bed he had been wide awake and after he told her the news, so had she been for the rest of the night.

It’s no wonder I feel like shit.

She lit up a cigarette and pushed the plate of escargots away with two fingers. No sleep, too much wine and probably stomach flu contracted from any one of half a dozen people last night. She stared straight ahead at nothing and felt the tears sting her eyes again.

How could he just leave and not say good-bye?

“How you doing, sweetheart?” Windsor tossed the packet of Luckies down on the table and then plopped into the chair opposite Grace. “Sorry, it was all they had.”

She looked up at her husband who, in her estimation, looked about as bad as she felt. Bleary-eyed and pale, his hair uncombed, even his lips were cracked. They’d driven Taylor to school together this morning, not bothering to cover their gloom with robotic niceties to the child. They had driven into Aix in silence save for the occasional, nonsensical singing and babbling of their daughter. Leave it to a tragic, senseless death to bring out the cheer in the girl, Grace thought unfairly, and then admonished herself. Taylor didn’t know, of course, about Uncle Connor’s death.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said to Windsor, her eyes filling again with tears.

“I know,” he said, picking up one of the hard-boiled eggs and dipping it into the mayonnaise. “It’s unbelievable. Incredible―”

“Why did you order all this stuff?” Grace said crossly, stubbing out her cigarette and picking up the new pack from the table. “It’s disgusting.”

“We need to eat, Grace,” Windsor said reasonably, biting into his egg.

“When did the police say they wanted to talk with us?” Grace wanted to put her head down on the table and weep with fatigue and hurt.

“This afternoon. They’re questioning everyone, I guess.”

“Do they think we had something to do with it?”

Windsor shook his head and scooped up one of the slippery snails with a pair of silver tongs. “It’s what the police do. They ask questions. Of everybody.”

“Poor Maggie,” Grace said softly, blowing out a long stream of smoke. “She must be beside herself. I feel bad not calling her this morning.”

“I’m sure it’s a madhouse at Domaine St-Buvard about now,” Windsor said. “You can call her this afternoon.” He looked up through the shade of a large sycamore tree hovering over their table. There were a large number of dead leaves still on the branches.

“Poor Maggie,” Grace repeated, laying her head on her folded arms upon the table. “Poor Connor and poor all of us,” she said softly, as she tried to blot out the odors of boiled cod and eggs.

2

“Garlic is what keeps the French youthful. A little parsley and there you are! No bad breath. We French never get cancer. Americans? Always cancer. The French? Never liver disease, rarely heart disease. And why do you think that is?”

Maggie looked at the young police detective sitting in her living room and willed herself to be numb, to feel nothing. She stared blankly at him.

“Garlic?” Elspeth, seated beside Maggie, ventured the answer.

“
Bien sûr!” L’agent
nodded solemnly at Maggie’s mother.

The police had arrived on the scene a full hour after Laurent had rung them but they made up for their tardiness by refusing to leave once they’d arrived. They roped off the
cave
and sent photographers, coroner, pathologists, artist and detectives below for several hours. Maggie was surprised that the basement could hold them all. She found herself making turkey and
tapenade
sandwiches and serving them up with gallons of boiled, black coffee.

The police questioned each of them separately. During her interview, Maggie tried to concentrate on what the young police officer was saying to her, but all she could think of was Connor’s impish laugh, Connor putting the fear of God into Taylor, Connor enlivening the whole party, the whole evening, just by walking through the front door. She felt her face tighten with the effort of trying not to cry because a white sheet-draped stretcher in the arms of two burly gendarmes was how Connor had
left
the party. And in case she wasn’t absolutely sure of that, a red-checkered arm had escaped its cover to prove it to her.

She watched Laurent as he stood on the terrace, smoking and talking to another police officer in yet another series of questions and more questions. Maggie was sure the questions were the same: Why was Connor late to the party? What sort of mood was he in? To whom did he talk? Were you good friends of his? And most importantly: when was the last time you saw him?

Her father sat in a chair across the room from her, his face grim and unrevealing, his eyes watching his wife and daughter with concern. Nicole, bored and cross, sat on the floor with Petit-Four curled up in her lap.

“And so, you see,” the arrogant young officer continued, “our herb, sage, will cure diabetes, our lavender the stomach cramps...” He gripped his thin flap of a stomach as if to demonstrate this and rolled his eyes at them. “And our savory? You have tasted it, Monsieur
?
You will not have trouble with impotence if you eat much savory in Provence! We French are a healthy people―”

“May I...offer you...a drink?...
un pastis?”
John asked the detective.

The detective looked momentarily surprised. He glanced briefly at his superior outside with Laurent and then smiled at John. “
Je veux bien,”
he said, nodding sternly as if to show that just because he would have a little drink, they were not to think he was a pushover.

John rose to fetch the drink when Petit-Four barked sharply, its ears standing up at attention and pointing in the direction of the front door.

There was a loud, heavy banging at the door which set the little dog off all the more. Maggie saw Laurent toss down his cigarette and make motions to leave the terrace to answer the front door himself.

The young cop hopped up and held up his hand to Maggie who had also gotten up to answer the door. “I will see it is who,” he said firmly.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Maggie said to her mother as the skinny officer strode to the front door, nearly tripping over the dog. Immediately, she could hear Madame Renoir jabbering away at the man in her excited, high-pitched voice. Maggie hurried to the door.

“Who is this woman?” the cop said, his hands on his hips.

Maggie ignored him and addressed Madame Renoir.

“Madame Renoir...” she began.

“Babette is telling the town,” the woman said. She was wearing the same outfit she had on last night. The same outfit, in fact, that Maggie had always seen her in. Maggie had an image of a whole closet full of black wool uniforms―each identical to the other―that Madame simply rotated after each washing. There was a determined set to the baker’s face.

The policeman turned to Elspeth. “Is this a service woman of some kind? There can be no cleaning of the murder site. It is absolutely forbidden.”

Elspeth sighed in exasperation from where she sat in the living room and looked at her husband, who now stood next to her with a tray of glasses and a small bottle of
pastis
.

“I have come to help,” Madame Renoir said to Maggie.

Maggie had to admit that it was a sort of balm to see the old girl. Her sweet face helped soften the ugliness of the morning. “I...there’s really nothing―” Maggie said.

“La petite fille?”
Madame Renoir said peering shyly into the house. “The little girl is in the way?”

Instantly, Nicole was at the front door, the squirming puppy in her arms.

“Oh! You like
la petite chien, hein?”
  The woman smiled at Nicole, who looked up at Maggie.

“She’s the one gave us Petit-Four, right, Aunt Maggie?”

“Madame Dernier...Maggie...” Madame Renoir became grim and serious once more. “I am not to be a trouble to you. If the girl wants to come with Madame Renoir for
l’après midi,
then Monsieur may bring her back to you
ce soir.”

She was right, of course. Smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation was no place for Nicole. The whole morning had been tense and tearful and awful. It was a wonder that her niece hadn’t protested more, Maggie thought, as she looked down at Nicole.

“Please, Aunt Maggie?” Nicole brushed a lock of silky brown hair from her face and dropped Petit-Four gently onto the floor.

Maggie touched Nicole’s hair. “What? You mean you’d rather spend the day in a pastry shop than stay here and keep out of everyone’s way?” she teased.

Elspeth moved past the now disinterested policeman who was pouring his own
pastis
, and put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder.

“
Merci, Madame,”
she said to Madame Renoir. “That would be so very kind of you. The day is hard for all of us.”

Madame Renoir broke into a beam of pleasure.

“
Bon,”
she said. “She may ride on the back of my
bicyclette.”
She smiled kindly at Nicole who was already climbing into her jacket.

As the heavyset older woman and the child walked down the path and away from the house, Maggie could hear Madame Renoir chattering away to Nicole about the puppies still left at the
boulangerie.

God. I hope we don’t inherit another dog from all this,
she thought.

Laurent spooned into the crunchy topping of the
cassoulet
and served up Maggie’s plate. The four of them sat quietly around the dining room table. The remaining two detectives had finally left the house to find dinner in the village, but had left two policemen downstairs to sift and dust, bag and collect.

“When in the world did you have time to make this?” Elspeth asked Laurent as she helped herself to a salad of three different kinds of lettuce sprinkled liberally with fennel and thyme.

Laurent looked up, distracted, his brow furrowed in worry.
“Pardon?”

“The
cassoulet
,” Elspeth said, nodding at the steaming earthenware casserole. “It smells divine. When did you make it?”

Laurent shook his head. “The Marceaus,” he said, pointing to the terrace as if the Marceaus could be found standing out there. “They sent it over.”

“Really?” John looked up from his dish. “That was thoughtful.”

“Because MacKenzie was American,” Laurent said, pouring each of them a large glass of
Côtes-du-Rhône
. “I think they feel as if it is like a death in our family.” He shrugged and looked at Maggie.
“Je ne sais pas.” I don’t know.

“I feel like it is too,” Maggie said. “I guess because it happened at our house. What a horrible Thanksgiving...” 

“We didn’t know him particularly well,” Laurent said. “But we are particularly...” he paused to search for the word, “...affected by him.”

“Will the police finish with us soon?” Maggie took a bite of dinner, finding herself surprisingly hungry. “When will we get our house back?”

Her father cleared his throat. “They’ve already given us the okay to leave when ever we want,” he said.

“You’re kidding.” Maggie looked at Laurent to see if this was news to him. It didn’t appear to be.

“They can see that our return flight out of Paris isn’t for another three weeks.” John said. “So they feel relatively safe letting us go, I think.”

“They never looked at you as suspects, did they, Dad?” 

“No, no, I don’t think so.” John Newberry looked over at Laurent as if the two of them shared a secret of some kind. “They just wanted to make sure they’ve exhausted me as a possible source of information.” He cleared his throat. “Having discovered the body and all.”