The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club (15 page)

‘I’m here to report a break-in,’ he smiled charmingly.

‘Of course.’ Gabrielle felt herself blushing as the stranger’s curiously light green eyes connected intensely with hers.

‘How do you do? I’m Jeremy Anstruther-Formby and my shop was broken into last night.’ He held out a beautifully manicured hand, which Gabrielle shook.

‘I’m Gabrielle Poulpe. I’m just helping out here today, but I most certainly can take your report and pass it on to a detective.’

She helped Jeremy fill out the reports and, later, when Gabrielle’s father took over, she couldn’t tear herself away from him. She listened eagerly, pretending to be taking notes. She loved the way Jeremy talked. His French was impeccable but she thought his English accent was so cute.

After work, Gabrielle went to Le Gorille, a little restaurant on the port where she often met with her old school friends to watch the boats dock in the late afternoon. That day there were no friends to meet, but sitting at the next table was Jeremy Anstruther-Formby. She pretended not to see him – she didn’t want him to think she was stalking him, but he noticed her immediately.

‘May I join you?’ he asked in his cut-glass voice. ‘Unless you’re expecting someone?’

‘No, no, I’m just winding down after work. I only started at the gendarmerie last month and sometimes it gets quite difficult. So many things to remember and they are all so important!’

‘So much red tape and bureaucracy. How ghastly for you,’ he laughed, but she looked bemused so he quickly added, ‘I’m sorry, that’s just my British sense of humour.’

‘Oh, but I agree,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Far too much red tape. My father gets swamped. He has to fill things in triplicate and write down the tiniest of details, otherwise his cases may be thrown out.’

‘Well, I hope you were very thorough with my case then and that you will find the culprit,’ Jeremy smiled at Gabrielle so entrancingly that her heart did a somersault.

They talked and talked and she discovered that he was from an aristocratic family in England, that he was one of three children with a life-long passion for collecting antiques, and that he had opened a small shop in one of the quaint back streets of Saint-Tropez just a few months ago, after selling his shop in London.

He was twenty-nine to Gabrielle’s nineteen, but that did not stop her falling head over heels in love with him. After their third date, in his shop late one night, he looked surprised at her confession, but then he held her gently and told her how much she meant to him. She had hoped – no, expected – that he would want to make love to her. All of her girlfriends had had boyfriends, lovers, some even had husbands now, but she had never been interested in any of the local Saint-Tropez boys. They seemed gauche and unworldly, particularly next to Jeremy, who was a man of the world, much travelled and extremely knowledgeable. He enthralled Gabrielle with exciting tales of far-away places he had been to and the glamorous and famous people he had met.

The more they saw each other, the more Gabrielle wanted – she needed Jeremy to make love to her. When she haltingly broached the subject after months of meeting, he told her that he didn’t feel she was ready yet.

‘You’re so young, my dear. I want to educate you before we make love,’ he said, sipping a vintage claret at Maxim’s the next night.

He had contrived to take her on a trip to Paris, where he had booked a suite at Le Bristol. The room had two bedrooms and the first night, although he came into her bed and cuddled up to her, they did not make love, contrary to her fervent desire. Gabrielle started to feel inadequate. At nineteen her hormones were in full flow and she listened to tales of her girlfriends’ lovers and liaisons with frustration and a little jealously.

‘Be patient,’ Jeremy had said to her often. ‘Be patient,
cherie
, and when you are ready I will love you more than you can ever imagine.’

So she continued to worship at Jeremy’s shrine and to hope that one day he would feel she was ready for love. He taught her a lot – about art and music and the theatre – but he never taught her what she most wanted to know about: the art of making love.

One day, after having solved a rather complicated case of cheque fraud and bursting with pride, she decided to surprise him by popping over to his shop. She couldn’t wait to tell Jeremy about how she had cracked it and she hoped he would congratulate her, and then, maybe . . .

They were supposed to celebrate her twentieth birthday that night at Chez Madeleine, a quiet restaurant on the Route de Tahiti in Ramatuelle that specialised in fresh lobster. But Gabrielle was too excited to wait until then. They could always have a lovely afternoon and drive there together in his beautiful open-top vintage Bentley. Perhaps now he would no longer see her as a teenager, and he would feel this was the right time.

She arrived at the antique shop where he worked just after one o’clock, but the front door was firmly locked. Then she realised it was lunchtime, when every self-respecting French shopkeeper closed for at least two hours.

Undeterred, Gabrielle walked round to the back of the shop. Although she had only been there a few times, she remembered the narrow back alley where deliveries were made.

A sleepy ginger cat lay in a small patch of sunlight outside the back door. Gabrielle shooed it away with the toe of her boot. Its hackles rose and it hissed at her fiercely, arched its back, then stalked off with dignity. She pushed the back door, which to her surprise opened, and found herself in a short dark passageway, at the end of which was another door.

Some instinct told her not to call out Jeremy’s name. It was quiet in the shop, except for the light hum of traffic and the ticking of an ancient clock. Slowly she opened the door at the end of the passage and walked into what was obviously a storeroom. Finding herself flanked by a pair of massive ormolu candelabra and some imposing bronze and marble statues of golden youths, she stopped dead beside a stack of folded Aubusson rugs. She could hear something. Behind an elaborate black lacquer screen she could hear sounds of breathing – harsh, masculine breathing – and whispers too faint to be properly heard.

She could smell the potent cologne that Jeremy always wore, his signature scent, musky and strong.

The rubber soles of her espadrilles muffled her footsteps as she approached the screen. There were panels of glass running along the top of it, and standing on tiptoe she now peered through one of them.

What she saw made her almost scream. Behind the screen, Jeremy was lolling back in a huge velvet armchair, naked except for his pink silk shirt. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung open, and at his feet knelt a short young man. Both men were oblivious to everything around them, as the boy’s head bobbed up and down rhythmically between Jeremy’s suntanned legs.

The revolting spectacle of the two men – so totally engrossed in each other and with such obvious disregard to the fact that anyone could have walked in and caught them – completely paralysed Gabrielle. As if hypnotised, she watched Jeremy shudder, his whole body convulse, as he thrust himself into the other man’s eager mouth. This couldn’t be happening – it couldn’t be real. It was like a horribly degenerate peep show; she was hallucinating; this must surely be a dream – a nightmare. She shook her head to try to rid herself of the shocking image and took a step backwards, knocking into a pile of porcelain plates.

‘Who’s there?’ she heard Jeremy’s voice. ‘Who is it?’

Stifling the sob in her throat, Gabrielle turned and ran. Stumbling over ornate carved side tables, side-stepping umbrella stands and stuffed deer heads, she ran as fast as she could, away from the dim musty shop into the bright October sunshine.

That had been over four years ago. After that Gabrielle threw herself into work, determined to become the best policewoman she could. All thoughts of boys and men were banished so, at almost twenty-five, Gabrielle Poulpe was still a virgin.

Captain Poulpe sat at his kitchen table reviewing his copious notes about Mina Corbain’s curious death.

Gabrielle was busying about, fixing him his favourite beef bourguignon and waiting for her father to speak. She knew well enough not to interrupt him when he was thinking and, by the way he was slowly sipping his red wine, she knew theories were bubbling.

‘You know what I think, Gaby?’ he finally announced.

‘What, Papa?’ She set the steaming plate of food before him. An excellent cook, Aunt Greta had taught her well.

‘I don’t think it was just food poisoning. I believe the murderer put poison in the oysters.’

‘How could he do that?’

‘Let us say the murderer buys a dozen oysters. He invites thirty people for dinner. Before this he’d bought another twelve oysters from another source and left them somewhere to go bad. He brings in the deadly oysters, mixes them with the fresh oysters that are being served. He injects a tiny bit of botulism from the poisoned oysters into two of them. All the guests will get some sort of food poisoning from the oysters, but the victim, in this case, Mina, served with the bad oysters with the poison will die.’

‘But why Mina? She was so adored, so young and talented. Why would the killer choose her?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her father sipped his wine and gazed into the fire. ‘I have no idea, but the more we question all the people who were at the party, the closer we may get to an answer.’

‘But the Mayor has closed the case; he said it was an accident.’

‘Maybe, maybe not – but we must keep our eyes and ears open, Gabrielle.’

Later that night, Gabrielle and Captain Poulpe stood outside the massive white yacht
Hedonist
, moored on the quay on the far outskirts of the port, watching yet another party. The vessel, owned by the Russian oligarch Sergei Litvak, was too big to get a berth inside the main part of the port, so two hundred of Saint-Tropez’s social butterflies, ranging in age from twenty to decrepitude, plus another two hundred good-looking scrapings from the beach, had to trudge down the cobbled wharf to get to the party. Before they could board, they had to remove their designer shoes and park them in one of the canvas hampers guarded by one of the
Hedonist
’s sailors; only then were they allowed to clamber up to the decks. Everyone was dressed in white, as instructed on the invitation. Sergei Litvak was throwing the party in honour of his friend, the mega-rich tycoon Jonathan Meyer. Litvak stood on the top deck in a flowing white kaftan, surrounded by several lithe teenagers posturing in white sequinned bikinis and pearl chokers. His tame photographer stood nearby, recording Sergei’s every move. Like most denizens of Saint-Tropez, Litvak adored publicity and had his every move recorded for posterity by his personal team.

Jonathan stood beside him in a crisp white silk suit, his gorgeous young wife Vanessa clinging to his arm.

Maximus Gobbi, in a creased white linen jacket, was down on the wharf checking to see if there was any more new action. He badly needed to replenish his stud stable. The three guys he had invited to the beach with Carlotta were not for sale, as they had recently been taken; Fabrizio was becoming too difficult and too busy and he still seemed to be unable to seal the marriage deal with Lara. He was also spreading himself too thin with other liaisons, one of whom Maximus suspected was Betty, his dance instructor.

Two of Maximus’s stable of boys had recently scored big with rich divorcées and left for Miami and New York respectively. They had paid him the commission on the monetary gifts they had received, but not on the cufflinks, leather jackets or cashmere sweaters, so there was little hope now of him collecting any more of anything. ‘Ungrateful bastards,’ he thought as he idly watched the famous elderly English racing driver Henry Phillips walk carefully up the gangplank, followed by his shrill American wife, Blanche.

Henry had won the Monaco Grand Prix forty years ago and, to celebrate this anniversary, he was being feted by the British ex-pats and the visiting Americans all along the Riviera. But at seventy he was partied out and felt far too old for endless festivities and fun, unlike Blanche. For her, there were never enough parties to attend, and even this early in the season she had schlepped Henry all over London, Madrid and the Côte d’Azur relentlessly socialising. The social crowd tolerated her because Henry was a folk hero, but Blanche gave new meaning to the words ‘crashing bore’. Many a matron had exchanged place cards at a dinner table to save their husbands from her inane chit-chat.