Murder à la Carte (3 page)

Jean-Luc poured their glasses and held his own up as if to indicate he would make a toast. He did not. They drank their wine solemnly and then Jean-Luc and Laurent began to talk in fast, low-rumbling French. Their words were unintelligible to Maggie. Jean-Luc gestured with much animation as he spoke, his sentences punctuated often with
“Zut!”
and
“Ach!”
and once even a soft “
putain,”
before looking in Maggie’s direction and smiling apologetically. Maggie watched the recalcitrant restaurant owners as they brought plate after plate of food to the table. A large crock of
pâté
was deposited in front of Maggie, followed by a steaming loaf of bread, a couple of spit-roasted pheasants (golden-brown and fragrant with rosemary), a chafing dish with white fish, redolent in the garlicky
aîoli
sauce of the area. There followed a puffball of pastry, braided and baked to perfection, a large salad of greens glistening with olive oil and liberally sprinkled with basil, parsley, tarragon, oregano, chives and wild thyme, and, finally, little raviolis stuffed with a creamy, sharp cheese. It wasn’t yet ten-thirty in the morning.

Maggie watched as Laurent finished off his third glass of
rosé
and allowed his new friend to pour him a glass of the headier red. Before she had time to give him a nudge under the table, they were joined by a couple whom Jean-Luc introduced as Eduard and Danielle Marceau.

The Marceaus were also Laurent’s neighbors and winegrowers as well. Madame Marceau was a few years younger than her husband, a youthful fifty-something with severely coifed blonde hair that was obviously created from a bottle purchased at the village
pharmacie
. Her face must have been pretty once, but was now harshly lined from too much wind and sun. She smiled at Maggie and Laurent through razor-thin lips. Holding her hands folded neatly in her lap, she allowed her husband to do all of the talking.

Eduard Marceau was as pale and flabby as Jean-Luc was ruddy and firm. Maggie marveled at the contrast in the two men: one of them obviously didn’t have to go out and pick his own grapes, she decided.

Eduard extended a pudgy hand to Maggie and Laurent.

“Bienvenue!”
he said cheerfully. His wife nodded in agreement.  “We are happy to be meeting you at long last.
Oui, Danielle?”
He patted his wife’s hand, then turned to Maggie. “You are to forgive Jean-Luc for talking away with your husband not in English, yes? He is a rough country character with no manners, eh?” He smiled broadly at Jean-Luc, who poured Maggie a large bowlful of the strong red wine as if to compensate for his rudeness.

“I am
très
sorry, Madame,” Jean-Luc said to her, smiling through the picket fence of his teeth. “I am so desiring to talk business with your husband.”

“Eh? What’s this?” Eduard boomed out a little too heartily. “Talking business already? They have just arrived!”

“They haven’t even seen the house, Jean-Luc,” Danielle said meekly.

“What’s the house look like?” Maggie turned to the older woman and took a large sip of her wine. She noticed the old girl wasn’t drinking.

“Of course, you see?” Eduard shook his head at Jean-Luc. “They haven’t even seen the property yet and you are working your wiles, you old devil! Let the man eat his lunch!”

“What sort of business,
exactement,”
Laurent said pleasantly, sniffing the bouquet of his wine, “are you referring to, Monsieur Marceau?”

“Call me Eduard, please,” Marceau said, tearing a piece of bread apart.

“Eduard.”

Marceau smiled and reached for his own glass of wine. “There is so much time for all of that, Monsieur Dernier...Laurent, that I think we will not bore the women, eh? First, let us enjoy a good meal and become a little of what we were to your uncle. Good neighbors.”

“Friends,” added Madame Marceau.

“You knew my uncle well?” Laurent asked, spooning into the huge spinach pastry, its steamy, fragrant contents spilling across the stark whiteness of his plate.

“We were neighbors,” Jean-Luc said, helping himself to one of the pheasants. “Not really friends, but you get to know your neighbor. We helped each other when there was a call for it.”

“For nearly ten years,” Eduard said.

“So your property connects with Laurent’s?” Maggie asked, swallowing a mouthful of cod soaked in
aïoli
.  

“Both of our properties touch yours,” Jean-Luc said to Laurent. “I am placed on the east, yes?” He positioned a chunk of bread next to Laurent’s wine glass to indicate where his house was located, and then moved the
pâté
below it. “And Eduard is just to the south,
comme ça.”

“Neighbors,” Laurent said.

“
Comme il faut,”
Danielle said, then smiled at Maggie. “My English is not being too good.”

“That’s okay,” Maggie said. “My French sucks.” Danielle showed no sign of understanding the idiom. “At any rate, can you tell me about the house? Can we live in it or is it falling down?”

“Live in it?” Jean-Luc looked questioningly at Laurent. “The agent said you were interested in selling Domaine St-Buvard.”

“I totally the love name.” Maggie grinned and looked at Laurent. “I’ve got to get stationery printed up. Seriously.”

“We
are
interested in selling it,” Laurent said, refilling his wine glass again. “Probably. Just not immediately.”

“Ah,” Eduard said and glanced briefly at Jean-Luc. “Well, you will be anxious to see it, I’m sure. And yes, Madame―”

“Maggie,” Maggie said happily, deciding she quite liked this old gentleman winemaker and his wife. “
Vous m’appelez ‘
Maggie
.’
” She was sure she got that totally wrong but the second glass of wine made her care a lot less.

“
Bon,
Maggie
.
The house is not falling down.” Eduard said. “It is not a
château
,
vous savez?
But it is a good house. Don’t you agree,
chérie?”
He turned to his wife, who nodded vigorously at Maggie.

“We would love to accompany you on your visit,” he added, “
bien sûr,
but Danielle and I have business in Aix this afternoon.
Tant pis.”
He shrugged, then reached over and took the last roasted pheasant.

3

The house was a good house.

Maggie gaped at it from the front drive while Laurent and Jean-Luc toured the vineyard. A large stone terrace splayed out from the front door in three tiers to the curving gravel drive. Oleander and ivy clustered against the fieldstone walls of the farmhouse in thick tangles of dark green. A black wrought-iron railing framed a second-story balcony that jutted out over the front door. The three bedroom windows upstairs were tall and mullioned with bright blue shutters.

The house looked sturdy. Towering Italian cypress and Tatarian dogwood flanked the front door. Hollyhocks pushed out of the tangle of bushes lining the driveway. A stone lion stood guard at the edge of the terrace, his head bowed, one ear mauled.

Maggie placed her paper cup of coffee on the hood of the Citroen
. Laurent had been so eager to see his vineyard
, she thought with amazement
, that he hadn’t even stopped to look at where we would be living.
She pushed open the heavy, wooden door of the house and stepped into a large foyer flooded with light on a floor of pale, yellowing stone tiles. A large marble staircase emptied into the foyer.

She walked to the staircase and touched the steps gently.

Marble steps? Mother will flip.

The downstairs comprised only two rooms. The living room covered almost the entire ground level. It was forty feet square anchored by a massive fireplace on one wall, and French doors on the opposite wall that led to the garden. The other room downstairs was the kitchen. Not terribly modern, Maggie noted, when she found no dishwasher or disposal, but the sink didn’t appear as if it had seen any world wars and the cooking stove was large and capable-looking.
Leave it to the French
, she thought
, to have a stove as large as a minibus but no automatic dishwasher.

Behind what Maggie initially thought was the door of a broom closet was a steep staircase that led to the basement, or
cave
, as Jean-Luc called it. Maggie peered down the stairs into the dark and could make out three odd-shaped pieces of machinery. They stood in the corners like hulking spaceships. Old, stained oaken barrels lined the
cave’s
limestone walls. Each of the three bedrooms upstairs was large, airy and, of course, had no closets. As she stood at one of the upstairs windows, Maggie watched Laurent and Jean-Luc walk through the vineyard back toward the house. As far as she could see, there were grapevines. Row upon row of grapevines.

My God, is all this Laurent’s?
 

She stood at the window and hugged her arms, enjoying the coolness in the air as the afternoon sun dipped behind a cloud. She watched Laurent as he walked, turned, pointed something out to Jean-Luc then shook his head. She tried to imagine what it felt like to be a visitor in your own country, to see it in all its beauty and familiarity and to know that you would leave it to go home to someone else’s country when your visit was done. She knew that Jean-Luc and the Marceaus thought of them as visitors, foreigners―Laurent, for all his native fluency, included.

She turned and scanned the horizon. It was studded with faded clumps of rusty brown that she knew were more grapevines. She wondered whose fields those were. Maggie found herself feeling that this was going to be a good home for her and Laurent. For this year, she thought resolutely to herself, Domaine St-Buvard is going to be ours. But as she watched Jean-Luc walking shoulder to shoulder with Laurent she felt a vague cloud of doubt descend upon her.

Chapter Two

1

“Vous êtes Madame Dernier, n’est-ce pas?
”

The rotund woman beamed at Maggie as she scooped up the row of flaky croissants and placed them in a paper bag. Her hair fell in old-fashioned curls around her sweet, chubby face.

“
Oui,
” Maggie said, returning the smile.
Well, close enough anyway
. Her French certainly wasn’t up to explaining her living situation with Laurent. Besides, this was France. It was probably all the same to them anyway.

“Mais vous m’appellez
Maggie
, s’il vous plait,
” Maggie said, taking the bag of rolls.
Please call me Maggie
.
“Et vous êtes...?
”

“Madame Renoir.” The pudgy baker rubbed her flour-whitened hands together and gestured to her surroundings.
“La boulangerie!
” she said with a big smile.

Maggie and Laurent had been in their farmhouse for two days, and what few contacts they had made in the village― the post office, the owners of the café, the gas station attendant―seemed to be pleasant enough.

Maggie was aware of stares from the two other customers in the bakery who were not so much waiting their turns as eavesdropping on her conversation with Madame Renoir. She smiled at them and dug in her purse for the francs for the croissants.

 “
Je ne parle pas bien votre langue,
” she said to Madame Renoir.
I don’t speak your language.
“Mais je suis...
working on it.” She shrugged and handed over the correct change to the plump baker.

One of the women behind her spoke up briskly in English: “You will learn.” She smiled at Maggie and then added, “If you stay.”

Maggie nodded to the woman―an elderly, rake-thin Frenchwoman with high cheekbones and an imperious tilt to her chin. Her harsh appearance seemed in conflict with her friendly manner, Maggie thought. The smile, though short, seemed genuine.

“I hope so, Madame,” Maggie said.

Indignant at being one-upped by her English-speaking countrywoman, Madame Renoir refused Maggie’s money.

“
Bienvenue,
” she said. “You are understanding? Welcome to St-Buvard.”

Maggie was surprised. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

Behind the sturdy proprietress, Maggie caught a glimpse of a teenage girl with a sullen face. The baker’s daughter, she wondered? The girl, fair-haired and delicately pretty, manned her broom behind the counter as if she were being paid by the square inch swept.

The thin French woman beckoned Maggie aside, much to the annoyance of Madame Renoir who was forced to wait on the next customer. Her sharp little eyes gathered in Maggie’s sweat pants and Nikes but no disapproval showed on her face.

“I am Madame Dulcie,” she said. “The
charcuterie
, yes?” She pointed toward the window.

“Oh, you run the butcher shop?” Maggie clutched her bag of breakfast and wondered if Laurent had been shanghaied at the café where he was supposed to be ordering two large coffees to go.

“
Monsieur
Dulcie et moi,
” the woman said, still obviously inspecting Maggie’s attire. “You are liking St-Buvard?”

Maggie nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes. Very much. We love it. We’re staying on a vineyard nearby.”

“You are picking the fields, yes?”

“Picking the fields?”

“The grapes, Madame.” Madame Dulcie spoke slowly, as if talking to a child. “You are picking the grapes? It is time, is it not?”

“I...I really don’t know,” Maggie said. “I don’t think we’re picking it ourselves, no.”
 

“It is harvest time in St-Buvard, Madame.”

“Well, I’m sure...if that’s what people do...” Maggie smiled nervously at the gathering customers in the store, hoping that none of them understood English. “...we’ll do something similar. In fact,” she brightened as she edged toward the door. “I believe my husband…”
It was getting easier and easier to call him that
“…will probably take the advice of Monsieur Alexandre on this matter.”