Provence - To Die For (27 page)

My experience with René had jarred my senses, and as the heat relaxed my sore muscles, my mind went to work. Would he have let me fall over the wall if Jill hadn’t arrived? Could his roughness be attributed to his heightened emotions over the loss of a father he’d never really known? Or had his troubled childhood created a disturbed man, one so volatile he could explode in violence, given motive and opportunity? When I’d gone to see if Bertrand was indeed dead, René had emerged from the elevator. Was he coming down from his room, or going up from the scene of the crime? Had his been the voice Claire had heard? And who else had motive and opportunity ?

Could the police keep Claire indefinitely without any firm proof? Madame Poutine’s testimony would provide only circumstantial evidence. She’d seen Claire with the body, but hadn’t seen the murder itself. Now that the police had the murder weapon, would Claire’s fingerprints be found on it? Was she as innocent as she claimed?

And what about Daniel and Guy? Did their alibis hold up? Had the police even investigated them? And Mallory, where was Mallory? I ached for that child, a fugitive from the law at fifteen.

I stayed in the tub, turning over what I knew about the case, until the bubbles disappeared and the water cooled. Weary in both mind and body, I succumbed to the enticement of a nice big bed, and gratefully fell asleep.

 

The next morning, over fruit and croissants in the atrium, I learned what had happened to Mallory. I’d just taken my first sip of the hotel’s marvelous coffee when I saw her face before me. It was a photograph on the front page of the local newspaper being read by a gentleman at the table across from mine. I hurried out to the front desk, bought a copy of the paper, and struggled to translate the French idioms in the article as I finished my breakfast.

As I understood it, the knife Mallory had hidden was “an exact match”—
exactement de la mime forme,
for the fatal wound on the chef’s body. The teenage American suspect had been apprehended in the woods around St. Marc near where she had been staying with an American writer. Efforts to reach the writer, J. B. Fletcher, for comment were unsuccessful. Police had initially gone to the area to break up a ring of thieves that specialized in stealing truffle dogs, and had found the accused hiding in a barn that housed the stolen animals on the property of Albert Belot. Police had had Belot under surveillance for some time. Known as the Truffle King, Belot had dug up his land some years back to plant oak trees to cultivate the fungus
T. melanosporum.
His success in gathering the tuber strangely coincided with the disappearance of dogs in the neighboring villages around his farm, and an increase in reports of trespassing on private properties. It was not known if the young American was part of the ring of thieves.

The police had detained her for questioning, and a relative had arrived, John Cartright, the young lady’s uncle, who had already hired a lawyer to defend her. The hotel clerk originally arrested for the chef’s murder had been released, the article said, and was recuperating from her devastating experience at home in Avignon. The rest of the report was a summary of Bertrand’s career, comments by the police on how they had tracked down the fugitive—“
La Jeune Tueuse Americaine,”
they called her, the young American killer-and ended with statistics on teenagers and violent crime.

Thank goodness her uncle had arrived. Mallory would be grateful, too, I thought, to see someone from home.

“Are you Madame Fletcher?” asked the bellman who’d come to my table.

I put down the newspaper. “Yes, I am.”

“A gentleman by the name of Marcel Oland instructed me to give these papers to you right away.”

Marie Roulandet had received the fax I’d been waiting for. I signaled the waiter for more coffee, and tore open the thick envelope she’d sent to me via Marcel.

The top sheet was a note from Mort, saying he’d gotten the telephone number of Mallory’s parents, who lived in Cincinnati, and had called them. They informed him that they’d received the news earlier from the international police and had alerted Mr. Cartright’s brother, who was searching for her in France. The Cartrights were both business executives who held high posts in major corporations ; their daughter had refused to return to school, they’d told Mort, after an incident in which Mallory had been accused of lying to police during a drug investigation.

Mallory’s inability to hold fast to the truth had trapped her once before. Why would a child from a well-to-do home become a compulsive liar? Was it a cry for attention? Or was her prevarication a sign of a much more serious mental condition?

The rest of the papers Mort had sent were copies of stories from her hometown newspaper in which Mallory’s name had been mentioned. She’d won a blue ribbon for a school science project in fourth grade; she’d sung in the chorus that had performed for the vice president on a campaign swing through the state; and she’d made honor roll her first year in high school. From all outward appearances she was a normal teenager. But inside, in the psyche of the fifteen-year-old girl, there were problems, serious problems. Had they manifested themselves in murder?

 

A taxicab delivered me to the building from which I’d fled three days before. There was no man in a trench coat following me this time—at least not one that I saw—and although there were few pedestrians about, the sun had chased away all the shadows, and the commercial area of Avignon looked positively quaint and cheerful. I entered the vestibule of the building and pushed on the painted glass door. It was still unlocked. Several of the office doors on the first floor were open, inviting their customers to walk in. Those that were closed were occupied nevertheless; fluorescent fixtures inside illuminated the glass panes on the doors, indicating they were open for business.

I took the elevator to the second floor and walked to the end of the hallway. The door to the real estate office was open and I entered unannounced. A young woman sat at the reception desk in the center of the large room, which was decorated with file cabinets and a row of straight-backed metal chairs lined up beneath a map of the city. Behind her desk on the left and right were doors, which I assumed led to two inner offices.

“Bonjour, madame.
May I help you?”

“Yes. I believe so.” I debated briefly which of the partners I wanted to speak with first, and decided M. Routine was the logical choice. “Is Monsieur Poutine in?”

“Have you an appointment?”

“No.”

“May I tell him the nature of your business?”

“I’m interested in L’Homme Qui Court,” I said, calculating that the disposition of the restaurant would be more likely to open one of those two doors than a discussion of murder.

The receptionist picked up the telephone and called M. Poutine. “He says for you to go right in.” She pointed to the door on the left.

I twisted the knob and entered a small office, half the size of the reception area.

“Bonjour, madame.
I am Marius Poutine.” The speaker was a short, stocky man in a skillfully tailored suit that was flattering to his physique. He had thick white hair and a brush of a mustache beneath a straight nose and brown eyes. He stood behind his desk and leaned forward to shake my hand, smiling warmly.

“Jessica Fletcher,” I said.

“Enchanté.”
He pointed to a chair in front of his desk and we both sat down. “How may I help you today?”

“I understand your colleague is a partner in the restaurant L’Homme Qui Court.”

“My colleague?”

“P. Franc? The other name on your door?”

“Ah, my colleague, oui.
C’est
vrai, that’s true.”

“Are you a partner as well?”

He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on mine.

“I was wondering what plans are being made for the restaurant now?”

“May I ask your interest here?”

“I was in Monsieur Bertrand’s class the day he was killed.”

“Ah, madame. How terrible. What a tragedy. And we had such plans for him. We are most distressed. My wife mentioned that there were Americans in the class. I did not make the connection when you came in.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

He shook his head. “Many years we know Emil. So sad. To die because of a foolish young girl.”

I didn’t know if he was referring to Claire or Mallory, but I let that go. “What plans did you have for him?”

“My colleague, as you say, has connections in broadcasting. We had hoped to produce a television show with Emil. He was handsome, no? And very good charisma. It comes across on the camera. But we will defer this now.”

“When he died, he was holding a letter from your partner.”

“He was?” .

“Yes. Do you know what was sent to him?”

He gave a slight shrug. “It could be a monthly report, nothing of great importance, I assure you.”

“Had you been in business with him many years?”

“For ten years at least. He wanted to buy our building for his restaurant, but was not quite ready, if you take my meaning. We make a deal for a percentage of the business. That way everyone is happy.”

“What will happen now?”

He shrugged again. “A restaurant without a chef is not valuable, you understand. But that will be rectified shortly.” .

“You have someone in mind?”

“Certainement.
And we anticipate keeping the Michelin star it has been awarded.”

“Isn’t it the chef who earns the star?” I asked.

He nodded. “It is the chefs cooking that is judged, yes,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “But the management of the restaurant is important as well, the
service,
the decor, how well the room is run. We are very good with this. And the chef we are hiring is excellent And very photogenic.”

“Photogenic?”

“It is necessary for television. He just needs an opportunity to expand his repertoire in the kitchen, and we can provide this...

It seemed to me that Emil Bertrand’s death was not such a tragedy for his partners, who were already making plans to replace him and move forward.

“So you own the restaurant now?”

He nodded again. “We are the surviving partners. So yes.”

It was my turn to nod. “And if an heir is named in the will?”

“What happens if Bertrand has an heir?”

He waved a hand in front of his face. “Emil never mentioned any family. There may be a cousin somewhere, but I am sure we can negotiate something equitable.”

“He has a son.”

“A son!
Mon Dieu!
Why do we not know this?” He pushed a button on his phone.

I heard the door swing open behind me.

“Madame Fletcher,” he said, “I believe you’ve met my partner.”

I turned around. “Indeed I have. How do you do, Madame Poutine.”

“We had to let her go.”

“Mallory?”

“Why?”

I was sitting across the desk from Captain LeClerq in his office at the police station. He appeared harried. His tie was askew. There were shadows beneath his eyes. His desk was strewn with papers, no longer the model of neatness I’d seen earlier.

“The lawyer insisted we had no evidence and the magistrate agreed.”

“But the knife?” I asked. “Yesterday’s newspaper said it was an exact match to the wound.”

He moaned. “The newspapers. Don’t mention those vipers to me again. The reporters, they are outside my door every morning when I leave, and they are still there at night when I return.”

“The knife?” I reminded him.

“The knife. Yes, it was an exact match, but the blood, it was not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The blood on the knife was not his.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. It wasn’t even human blood.”

“Ah,” I said. “Rabbit blood?”

“How did you know?”

“It’s obvious, really. If it wasn’t Bertrand’s blood, it must have been the knife he used to cut up the rabbit for the dish he was making. There were only two knives like it.”

“What do you mean?”

I explained to him about the special knives that had been made for Emil Bertrand twenty years ago, and that they were his favorites.

“So you’re back to looking for the murder weapon,” I said.

“It is a disaster,” he said. “We tested every knife in the hotel kitchen and found nothing. I’m being made to look like a goat. Everyone in the station here, they are laughing, but the magistrate, he is not laughing. And I am not laughing.”

“I don’t imagine you are,” I said. “I’d like to offer my help, if I may.”

He sighed. “I have chastised you for pursuing this case, I know. But I need every bit of information you and anyone else has.”

“I’ll do what I can, Captain. After all, we both have the same goal.”

He coughed. “I am most grateful.”

“While we’re sharing information,” I said, “I may as well ask about the man who followed me. You wouldn’t know anything about him, would you?”

“Only that he was embarrassed you were able to slip away from him.”

“I had a feeling he might have been one of yours.”

“Not a very good one, however.”

“Good enough to give me a scare,” I said.

“I will tell him. He will be happy to know he was not a complete failure.”

“Before we talk about the case, I have a favor to ask.”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to see the papers that were found with the body. Do you still have them?”

“Of course.” He picked up the telephone and dialed. “Thierry, bring in the file on Bertrand, and the evidence bags.”

 

“Bonjour,
Claire.”

“Bonjour,
Madame Fletcher. It is good to see you again.”