The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence (12 page)

“Hello, pretty lady, I haven’t heard from you in awhile. So what’s new in the marketplace that interests you?”

“It hasn’t been that long. I do need a favor though.”

“Anything for you. What’s up?”

“Have you heard about the professor who was murdered here in France?”

“Yes, the campus, what remains of those still milling about, is buzzing. I met him at several functions at the president’s house. He certainly didn’t die in any way I’d want,” he responded.

“He left me a message before he was killed. He said he was going to send me something. I’ve checked my email twice and there’s nothing there. The police here say whoever killed him cleaned his hard drive and deleted his emails.”

“If he sent it, it would have gone through our server, so whatever they did afterward wouldn’t have impacted the transmission of the original data,” he replied.

She recalled Kit’s message.
I will send you a copy…

“On second thought, I don’t think he sent it.”

She was briefly deflated. But then she had another idea that the MIT-graduate had just given her.

“Hezekiah, he said he sent this proposal earlier to someone else. Can you do me a solid and access his sent mail from the server? Whatever he sent, it probably went out on June 20th and would have an attachment. But I don’t want you to send me his emails.” That, she felt, would be somehow invasive. “We don’t want to run afoul of any privacy laws.”

Hezekiah Johnson was not one to ask too many questions, maybe, Havilah suspected, because he wanted plausible deniability. “I can and I will. I’ll have you something in a few hours. It’ll be late in France, though. Will that work for you?”

“That would be fine. Just send it to my personal email account: [email protected].”

“ShebaBaby1975?”

“Pam Grier, and the year the film was released. I’m old school Blaxploitation like that. I love the marketing tagline: ‘Hotter ’N Coffy, Meaner ’N Foxy Brown’.” She smiled into the phone, thinking about her quixotic choice in film heroines. She had grown up wanting to be an academic version of Pam Grier’s characters: smart, quick on their feet, loyal with a keen sense of purpose.

“In a minute then.”

“Thanks, Hezekiah.”

XII

Off the faucets went and back to the Internet. It was 9:10 p.m.; the street lamps were on. But the sky was still blue. Night was falling. Kit would have still been alive. Havilah began thinking about her deceased colleague’s research. Research was the operative word. Whatever he was working on required research and it had to do with the Félibrige
and
William Knowlton, she was certain.
There was something else. Sweet William!!
The lead Laurent had provided her. Kit’s poem was titled “Sweet William.”
Was the ‘Sweet William’ William Knowlton or his lover?
she wondered.

She went back to the William Knowlton Foundation website.
Nothing.
She brought up the Centennial program online. Kit was presenting his remarks on Thursday as a prelude to the exhibit of Knowlton’s paintings and watercolors. She googled “William Knowlton papers” and up popped the Chicago Historical Society. Havilah clicked to that site. Knowlton was incredibly prolific, a gifted composer, avant-garde filmmaker, painter, and photographer. And to boot, he was way more generous than she had ever imagined.

She typed in the title of Kit’s reading: “Sweet William.” The search entry retrieved an oil painting titled
16 Sweet Williams
. The painting was done around 1965. While lovely, it was just a vase filled with flowers.
Of course. Sweet Williams!
Havilah threw herself back on the bed in frustration. Her mind was cloudy. She hated riddles. On a whim, she decided to call CHS. As she was dialing and walking back to the sanctuary of the old faithful bathroom, her mind was working furiously to come up with a reasonable sounding tall tale.

An automated system picked up and screened callers with menu options. The first thing she noticed was that, while the website was called the Chicago Historical Society, the screening system said Chicago History Society. She pressed #2 for the library. A pleasant-sounding male voice answered the call.

“Library, how may I help you?” a man offered cheerily.”

“Hello, I am actually calling from France,” she began. “I’m assisting a professor here with work on William Knowlton.”

“What are you looking for in particular? All of Knowlton’s papers are online.”

“Not all of them,” she hedged. “I am interested in an oil painting,
16 Sweet Williams
.”

“Let me transfer you to our art curator, Bradley Sweet.”

“Wait! Wait! I need to follow-up on a request made by a Professor Lathan Conor Beirnes. He ordered some documents using a Finding Aid, but we haven’t received them as yet.”

She figured if he had, the librarian could quickly find out and perhaps give her a clue as to what he’d requested.

“I’ll need to look that up. Why don’t I transfer you to Mr. Sweet and then he can transfer you back once you conclude your query with him? You are, may I ask? And what’s that professor’s name again?”

“That would be great. I’m Professor Havilah Gaie. The other professor is Lathan Beirnes.” She spelled out Kit’s troublesome last name.

“Hold on while I transfer you. If the call drops, his direct line is 312-259-9999.”

Mr. Bradley Sweet was even more agreeable and helpful than the librarian whose name she hadn’t gotten. His name suited him. He proceeded to tell her about the oil painting; the themes of nature, sensuality, and youthfulness in Knowlton’s oil paintings and watercolors during this period, and how the painting was more than likely self-referential. The original was done, as the website had stated, circa 1965. But there were several variations on the “Sweet Williams” theme well into the early 1970s right before Knowlton died tragically in a car crash on one of the hairpin turns along the Amalfi Coast in Italy. She thanked him and asked to be transferred back to the chirpy librarian.

“Professor Gaie, Professor Beirnes had ordered some correspondences beginning in the fall 2008, and again in early February 2009 and in fall 2009 between Mr. Knowlton and Dr. Philippe Friedrich. He seems to have received those. He very recently requested some others. According to the Federal Express tracking number, those documents arrived in Cassis on Saturday and were delivered to Professor Beirnes at the Félibrige Foundation on Monday.”

The librarian had pronounced Cassis with an ‘s’ on the end like the liqueur. It was adorable. She could just see him sitting at his desk, hoping today would be the day that some hapless researcher would give him something interesting to do; she imagined him as a well-dressed, resourceful gentleman of a certain age preciously guarding over a treasure trove of archival secrets.

“You have been most helpful, Mr…”

“Allen. Mr. Allen. Do let me know if the documents don’t arrive. I can express them again at no charge.”

“Thank you again, Mr. Allen.”

“Good day, Professor Gaie.”

After she hung up, she did a little dance.
Progress
. Havilah called Laurent. The sky was beginning to form patches of dark and light blue.

“
Allô, oui
?”

“Laurent,
c’est moi
, Havilah.”

“Havilah, darling, what do you need? You and Donatello’s David have a fight, need some condoms, KY jelly, or what?”

“You are impossible! Besides, I’ve been a very good girl for the past six months!” she exclaimed a little too loudly. Havilah then piped down to a near whisper, “Did Kit receive some mail today?”

“I hadn’t bothered to check with all that’s happened. The boyfriend and I are having a drink at the harbor. I’ll swing by the office. If there is some mail there, how about I bring it by your hotel?”

“Have the concierge call and I’ll come right down. Thanks so much, Laurent.”

“No problem. But you need to be handling that living man instead of chasing behind a dead one.”

With that said, Laurent clicked off. The dial tone pulsed dully in her ear. She hated that he got the last word on the matter. She drank some of the now tepid tea and began pacing the room. The Friedrich correspondences presented a new angle. William Knowlton released the film on Friedrich in the late 1950s. Friedrich, a missionary doctor among other things, lived most of his life in Africa, running the hospital he founded in French Equatorial Africa. He had won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1955. And the 16 Sweet Williams? She could think of no connection. She would be back on the Internet tonight. Once she got her hands on Kit’s book proposal and those requested documents, it would all make sense. She hoped. There were thirty-eight hours between now and when she would deliver her remarks on Wednesday at 11 a.m. If there really were someone out there who thought she was a loose end, as Gasquet and Noubard had theorized, then they’d probably come for her between now and then. She hoped to neutralize them first.

* * *

A well-dressed gentleman took a seat in the lobby of Les Roches Blanches. He crossed and uncrossed his legs as he contemplated his surroundings. He had inquired about a room. But the hotel was, as they say in French,
complet.
There were four rooms per floor as far he could tell. It was a rather small establishment and this was the beginning of high season. He should have known better.

“My colleague, Thierry Gasquet, is staying here,” he impatiently informed the impish check-in clerk. “Could you ring him up, please?”

“Oui, Monsieur.” The clerk’s long index finger furiously jabbed out the room extension.

“On second thought, old boy, I shall ring him up on his cell phone. He would probably attend to it quicker. For your trouble.”

He passed the young man a fifty-pound banknote imprinted with Sir John Houblon’s bewigged head and stern face. He’d have to deal with exchanging the British pound to Euros, but it was still a healthy windfall for so little effort. The clerk clutched the note between his sinewy fingers. He smiled in appreciation, quickly hanging up the phone before the call was completed. “Merci, monsieur.”

The man turned to walk towards the bar with his cell phone perched between his head and shoulders.

XIII

It was 9:40.
Kit’s hour and minute of reckoning per Captain Noubard
. Havilah felt there was something unsettling about knowing the intimate details of a murder. The Cassis sky was still not consumed by nightfall. But it was dark enough, particularly on that isolated segment of the Félibrige Foundation’s campus with its fortress-like stone walls, to smoke a cigarette unmolested and commit a murder undetected. Perhaps at this time, his assailant or assailants had been jostling Kit around, luring him, a strategic offer of catnip to a feline. He hadn’t made a sound, or perhaps the loud roar of the sea’s waves drowned out his cries. He also didn’t resist. There were no defensive wounds, according to Gasquet. He had to have been ambushed.

Havilah did not need another prompting from her cell phone appointment reminder. She called MonaLisa Caren’s cell phone twenty minutes ahead of schedule. She had recommended the literary agent to Kit several months ago. MonaLisa had sold Havilah’s last book on the possibility of democratic movements in Arab nations for a tidy sum to a small but reputable publisher known for acquiring reader-friendly academic books. Given his message, she was certain Kit had followed up with her, or maybe another literary agent, if MonaLisa wasn’t interested.

Havilah’s call went straight to MonaLisa’s voicemail. She decided to try her at her office.

“MonaLisa Caren’s Literary Agency.”

“MonaLisa Caren, please. It’s Professor Havilah Gaie.”

“She’s not in. But I’ll transfer you to her assistant.”

“Havilah, it’s so good of you to call. It’s just terrible, terrible,” Mathias Kennedy went on in a full-blown emotive pitch.

“I’m sorry, Mathias, what’s happened? What’s going on?”

MonaLisa’s gaunt, proficient, and highly devoted assistant of ten years launched into a profanity-laced tirade about “
fucking cab drivers and unreliable pricks at the New York 20 car service
.”

“Mathias, I need you to walk me through what happened.” Havilah hadn’t any idea what could have set the usually low key Mathias off.

With that request, he took off on another rant, less profane but equally graphic, about MonaLisa Caren’s being hit by a “
callous asshole
” that morning on her way to work.

“He never even stopped,” he moaned through tears. “Luckily, only one tire crushed her sternum and her ribs punctured a lung. It’s a good thing that Birkin bag fell on top of her back; it gave her a bit of cushion. Nothing like a good, reliable bag. And then,” his tone changed now from high-pitched to a low growl, “the bastard peeled off, like the steaming pile of excrement that he is.”

“Is MonaLisa…” she wavered, “…still alive?”

“Barely. She’s in ICU. The doctors say she’s lucky to be alive. She may pull through. Havilah, the police have no leads. The wretch had a false registration with a cab company. He dumped the cab. He was wearing a hat so no one got a good look at him. The worthless piece of shit may well get away with murder,” he groaned.

“Mathias, I need you to focus for me. Was MonaLisa Kit Beirnes’s agent?”

“Who?”

“Lathan Conor Beirnes.”

“Oh, yes. He contacted her a while back at your suggestion. She was waiting for a proposal from him. Do you think this hit-and-run by this lower than lowest scoundrel had something to do with him? I know people get pissy when we don’t agree to take them on as clients but to blindside MonaLisa with a cab seems quite unreasonable, don’t you think? She hadn’t rejected his proposal. She was in fact quite interested.” He started wailing again.

“Kit Beirnes was murdered yesterday evening. I don’t know if any of this has anything to do with him.”

She didn’t. Though, to her mind, coincidences on this order seemed just too convenient. However, New Yorkers were hit practically every other day by cab drivers. Sometimes pedestrians simply didn’t pay attention while crossing the streets. And then there were those other times when the drivers shouldn’t have been given licenses: they were either too reckless or too ornery for such a stressful job.