Murder à la Carte (29 page)

1

Roger stood up and gave Laurent’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Come on, old son,” he said.

“Laurent,” Maggie said, staring at the dead dog between the two men. “What happened? Roger...?”

“Sorry, my darling,” Roger said, smiling ruefully, the old Roger-smile. “Not much of a hello for us, is it?” He turned back to Laurent. “Shall we move him, squire?” He spoke gently, unmindful of the mud caking on his expensive trousers.

“It’s another message, isn’t it?” Maggie said, pushing Petit-Four back into the house with her foot.

“Message?” Roger Bentley said, raising his eyebrows. 

Laurent stood up slowly. “It’s the business I am telling you about,” he said quietly.

“Ah, yes.” Roger turned to regard Maggie. “The happy association of villagers welcoming you lot into their tender bosoms. God, I love the French.” He slapped Laurent on the arm. “No offense, old chap.”

Laurent grunted in reply, then leaned over and slid his hands under the dog to lift it. Maggie turned away and retreated into the house. She could smell something cooking. She walked into the kitchen and stood for a moment, staring at the postcards she’d stuck on the refrigerator, the letters from her parents in Paris collecting dust on top of the toaster-oven, and the large bowl of cut flowers Laurent had bought at the market three days ago in Aix. She looked down at Petit-Four, who was busy nosing an empty dinner bowl. Someone unpleasant, she thought, wasn’t finished trying to impress them with just how unpleasant they could be. She glanced toward the door that led to the
cave
and felt an icy needle of fear touch her on the back of the neck. As she stood in the kitchen, she heard Roger and Laurent at the front door. 

“Maggie?” Laurent called.

“In the kitchen.”

He appeared in the doorway, his face grim and worn. The anger seemed to have given way to fatigue.

“Oh, Laurent,” she said, going to him and hugging him hard. “I’m so sorry about Inge.”

Laurent kissed her on the top of the head and she pulled back to look at him.

“We’re not calling the police?” she asked.

He shook his head, his eyes avoiding hers.

Roger came into the kitchen and stood behind Laurent.

“I know it’s a bit anticlimactic,” he said, smiling at her, “but it is good to see you again, Maggie.” He stood in the kitchen, nearly as tall as Laurent, his clothes soiled, his hair tossed about his smiling face. If she didn’t know so much about him, she’d be tempted to like him.

“I’m glad to see you, Roger,” she said. “You’re looking quite well.”

“You really think so?” Roger grinned and smacked Laurent solidly on the stomach with the flat of his hand. “Been running lately,” Roger said.

“I don’t doubt it,” Maggie said tartly. “Laurent, are you still determined to handle this yourself?”

Roger laughed and picked out a couple of black olives from a dish on the counter.

“Laurent, you liar, you said she’d gone soft. Still appears pretty feisty from where I’m standing.”

Maggie ignored him. “Laurent...?”

“
Oui, oui,
“Laurent said, moving to the stove to snatch off pot lids. “It is done and so now we―”

“And so now we what?” Maggie pulled at his sleeve, trying to get him to face her. He remained focused on his cooking. “Laurent, you know this is Gaston’s work.”

“Ah, that’s very helpful,” Roger said, stealing another olive. “Knowing the name of the perpetrator.
Very
helpful.”

“It is not Gaston,” Laurent said, spooning up the roast rabbit onto three midnight-blue china plates.

“I say, that looks marvelous.” Roger sniffed dramatically over Laurent’s shoulder. “Haven’t lost your touch, I see. Ah,
avec les petites saucisses!”

“What do you mean, not Gaston?” Maggie allowed Roger to wedge in between herself and Laurent. “Of course it’s Gaston...”

“Maggie, put the wine glasses on the table,
chérie.”

“Laurent. I am talking to you about―”

“
Je sais.
May we eat, please, before it is cold?” Laurent gave her a mildly exasperated look as he arranged the little sausages around each of the rabbit steaks.

“I’ll open the wine,” Roger said, clapping his hands together lightly. “Just point me in the right direction, squire.”

“Would Paris be too far?” Maggie asked sweetly.

Laurent threw the pot lid into the sink with a loud clatter. Maggie started at the noise―along with Roger and poor Petit-Four. “Enough!” he shouted, without turning around.

Maggie instantly regretted her sarcasm.  “I’m sorry, Roger,” she said.

“Don’t be silly,” Roger said good-naturedly. “I say, Laurent, you’re overreacting just a bit, aren’t you? Maggie’s always gone after me, haven’t you, my darling?” 

Laurent turned from the sink and regarded them both. He pulled a cigarette out of a pack on the counter, offered one to Roger, who accepted. “She’d been poisoned,” he said.

Maggie swallowed hard, her eyes going from Laurent to Roger. There, in three simple words, went any hope she may have had of the death somehow being an accident. “Are you sure?” she asked.

Petit-Four barked sharply, breaking the mood.

“I say!” Roger clapped a hand to his heart and staggered backwards against the counter to strained smiles from Maggie and Laurent. “Where did this little rodent come from?” He laughed and bent down to tousle the dog’s ears.

Maggie and Laurent shared a glance over Roger’s head as he played with Petit-Four. The look she gave him was one of misery and uncertainty. As usual, his look was impossible to read. 

2

“What did she say?”

“What do you think? She congratulated us.”

“Did you look happy?”

Grace shifted onto her elbow in the bed and rearranged her silk pajama top so that it wouldn’t gape.

“I did my best,” she replied.

Windsor looked at her from where he sat at the foot of the bed. “I can’t believe this,” he said, staring at her, anger and disgust tracing the outlines of his face.

“So you’ve said.” Grace turned away from him and set the alarm clock on her bedside table for five-thirty. Lately, there had been some difficulty in getting Taylor off to school. Grace would need the extra time to cajole her daughter from bed to clothes through breakfast and out the door. She set the clock back down and looked over her shoulder at her husband. “Are you going to have trouble putting on a happy face during Christmas?” she asked.

Windsor gave her a cutting look and stood up. He walked to the bedroom door, opened it and listened for a moment before closing it firmly. He did not return to the bed.

“This isn’t working out, is it, darling?” Grace said with a sigh as she leaned back into her overstuffed pillows and stared at the ceiling. She had made a point to have the workmen attach an attractive molding to the ceiling in their bedroom. It had cost the earth but she hadn’t been sorry.

“You’re a piece of work, Grace, you know that?” Windsor remained standing by the door, his back to her, his shoulders rigid under his soft flannel pajama top. “And at Christmas, of all times. I could murder you.”

“Sorry about Christmas,” she said.

“Just shut up, will you? For once I don’t want to hear your last-word, your perfect
bon mot,
your precise pronouncements.” He approached her in bed, his hands bunched into fists by his sides. “I just want you to shut the fuck up.”

Grace held her tongue.

3

To Maggie’s relief the breakfast car on the train wasn’t crowded. She sat down at a window table, placing a French grammar book and a copy of Graham Greene’s
Heart of the Matter
on the table. She hoped the books might dissuade anyone from thinking she was in a mood to socialize. She watched the landscape shoot by outside her window and allowed herself to feel some relief as St-Buvard and Provence receded from her.

He’d actually had the nerve to ask about Nicole. How she was doing in school, for God’s sake. Was there no end to the man’s nerve?
She smiled at the train attendant and ordered a
café au lâit
and two
brioche
with
confiture
. 

Roger was unchanged, Maggie thought. Charming, friendly, witty, in some ways almost buffoonish. A dangerous man. She nodded politely at an elderly woman on the train, also traveling alone, who sought out a table across the aisle.

What she had overheard last night, she had not been meant to hear. When she got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water, she’d heard the two men still up, drinking and talking down in the
cave
. Amazing, really, she thought. That that cold, dim, place of death should attract them, that they could want to stand there, sipping their Calvados and wine, unmindful―or at least uncaring―that a warm fire and soft chairs were just a few steps away. Their voices came up the stairs easily, like velvet slippers padding into the kitchen where Maggie stood at the sink. First, she heard Roger’s offer. And then, Laurent’s response. 

Maggie stirred the foamy milk around her china cup and stared out the train window onto the bleak, flat winter landscape.
Laurent’s response
, she thought bitterly. Not
oui,
not
non
. Not
peut-être,
even. Laurent’s response to Roger’s offer of employment had been silence. Of course, she had expected Roger to try to entice him. He hadn’t come for a social call. Naturally, he had a proposition. That’s what makes the Englishman run. Scams, gigs, deals. Of course, he would throw one out on the table to Laurent. She tried to imagine Laurent’s nonverbal reaction to Roger’s offer, but could only see Laurent’s enigmatic expression―not smiling, exactly, but not unfriendly, and certainly, not revealing a thing.

Maggie sipped her sweet coffee and watched the brown, withered rooftops of a nameless village pass her window.
Why, in God’s name, hadn’t Laurent told Roger to forget it? Loudly and definitely. Why hadn’t he said that he was happy with the way things were...that he didn’t want to jeopardize his new way of life? Why had he not answered him?

Later that night, after Laurent had finally come to bed, they had argued. And Maggie had been left with the helpless feeling that she had done more to convince Laurent to take the offer than to reject it.

Maggie watched the drab French countryside roll away from her like an unimaginative travel video being run in reverse. The speed of the train made it impossible for her to rest her eyes for long on any one object out the window. Soon, she felt a dull ache develop between her eyes. She pulled the shade down on her window. The older woman across the aisle smiled at her again and Maggie returned the smile―with effort. Forcing herself to put thoughts of Laurent and Roger aside, Maggie picked up her French workbook and flipped it open. It was too advanced for her. Laurent had bought it in Aix a few weeks back. He was hopelessly optimistic, Maggie thought, as she read the complicated sentences, understanding none of them. She snapped the workbook shut and ordered another
café au lâit
.

She remembered the last time Connor had teased her about her French. At the same time, he seemed to be encouraging her to try harder with it. She had to admit she’d done no studying, preferring to think instead, that “living it” would suffice to improve her grammar. Laurent refused to speak French with her at home―he said he needed to be able to communicate with greater depth than, “Here is the blue bowl. Let us eat the big peach.” Connor had scolded her about her laziness, her desire to learn French through osmosis. He was right, of course. Her French was not much better now, after three months in France, than it had been with all those conscientiously, if irregularly, attended class meetings at the French Language Institute of Atlanta.

A new china cup of steaming, frothy
café
arrived, and the steward whisked away the soupy dregs of the old one. Maggie tried to picture Connor as he had looked the last time she had seen him alive. He had been robust, laughing, handsome and healthy. How could so much verve and energy be so quickly snuffed? She thought of Babette, angry and pregnant, flirting with Laurent, hating Connor. And then there was Bernard. Had Bernard Delacore really killed Connor? Maggie tried to think of it in logical terms. Had Bernard gone to their house that night with the intention of killing Connor? She hardly thought so. On the other hand, how could it have been done unpremeditatedly? After all, there was no argument between the two that any one could remember. No contact, even, although that might not mean much.

It was beginning to rain as the train sped northward toward Paris. The dashes of rain jumped at Maggie’s window like animated exclamation points.

Bernard was supposed be a passionate man, Maggie remembered. Everyone said so, even Laurent. But what passion he’d displayed on Thanksgiving night was directed at his wife, not Connor. He and Paulette were the ones that had supposedly quarreled. Maggie tried to imagine Connor downstairs in the
cave
, rummaging about for a bottle of this or that―and Bernard joining him, either because he was sent there by Laurent or because he saw Connor go down and wanted to...what? Maggie shook her head and lifted the window shade a little. Did Bernard really have the finesse to kill a man, and then come back to the party, quarrel with his wife and take his leave from his host with proper excuses in order? Maggie frowned at her reflection in the window. Now, Roger could have done it, she had no doubt. With Austrian cow bells on. But a big, bruising French peasant who supposedly couldn’t keep his mouth in check after one
pastiche?
It didn’t make sense.

 Even with the hot coffee in her, Maggie felt a chill at the creeping revelation that she was suddenly not at all convinced that Bernard killed Connor.

Later, as she watched the evening lights of Paris drift by, Maggie found herself looking forward to the reunion with her parents. She needed this break from St-Buvard and its mysteries and oppressive provinciality. She welcomed the separation, she thought with surprise, from Laurent. She saw her father first, on the outdoor platform at
Gare de Lyon
, his white hair covered by neither beret or cap even in the face of this cold city-wind, somehow more nasty than the straightforward
mistral
of Provence. She waved to him and reshifted the bag on her shoulder as she descended from the train.