Murder Under the Palms (16 page)

It had
beaucoup de charme
, as the French would say.

As Charlotte understood it, the château was an exclusive private dining club, membership in which was convenient for paying off social obligations for those, like the Smiths, who didn’t keep a full-time cook on staff.

Charlotte was greeted at the door by René himself, whose manner, as always, was smooth and debonair. After touching his lips to her hand, he informed her that Eddie had already arrived. Then he escorted her through a stone-paved center hallway past a staircase with a massive hand-carved oak balustrade into a small barroom.

Eddie was sitting at the bar in a room that was empty except for the bartender. Charlotte had wondered if she would feel differently upon seeing him again, if her feelings would have lessened after the novelty of seeing him for the first time. But there he was, and her heart did a little loop de loop.

He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

“Here is Miss Graham,” René announced, as he pulled out a stool for her.

“You make it sound as if you arranged all of this, René,” Eddie commented.

“Who knows?” said René, his dark eyebrows lifting. “Maybe I have powers you’re not aware of.” He pantomimed Cupid shooting his arrow, then, moving around behind the bar, he removed two small glasses from an overhead rack and pulled out a bottle, which he set on the top of the bar.

“This is Calvados, the specialty of Normandy,” he told them. “We say in Normandy: ‘Calvados is to the apple what cognac is to the grape.’ This is my finest: Calvados du Pays d’Auge.” He winked. “I think we have a very special occasion to celebrate here,” he said as he removed the cork.

Standing up, Eddie removed another of the small stemmed glasses from the overhead rack and set it on the bar. “Please, René,” he said, gesturing at the third glass. “Won’t you join us?”

“I would be delighted,” René said. After dismissing the bartender, he poured the apple brandy into the three glasses, and they raised a toast to the memory of the
Normandie
.

“Tell me,” said Charlotte, looking around at the enormous old oak Calvados casks behind the bar, the heavy beams on the ceiling overhead, and the half-timbered walls, “is this an old Norman inn that you disassembled and had shipped over here, or did you build it from scratch in the Norman style?”

“I renovated it in the Norman style,” René told her. “There was a restaurant here before. I imported Norman workmen. Everything is authentic.” He laid his hand on the bar. “The bar is a slab from the trunk of a three-hundred-year-old tree, the curtains are Alençon lace, the dinnerware is Norman faience.”

“It’s lovely,” said Charlotte.

“Have some Norman cheese,” René said. Reaching under the bar, he produced a tray of cheese and crackers, which he set in front of them as a concession to the American custom of serving cheese before the meal. “Tonight is our Normandy night. We are serving only authentic Norman cuisine.”

Charlotte and Eddie helped themselves as René pointed out the various kinds of soft, full-flavored cheeses that were native to that province of France: camembert, pont-l’évêque, pavé d’auge.

“And was the building modeled after a real Château Albert?” Charlotte asked, as she spread some of the rich pont-l’évêque on a cracker.

“No,” he said. “This building is modeled after a modest country house. But there
is
a real Château Albert. It’s there,” René said, pointing to a photograph hanging on the wall. It showed a big old French château made of red brick and limestone, with a steeply pitched slate roof.

“What’s the significance of it?” Charlotte asked, studying the photo of the tall, elegant building, with its formal
allée
of pleached lindens lining the drive to the front entrance.

“It’s where I grew up,” he said. “My family estate. Louis the thirteenth, built in the early seventeenth century. I’m originally from Normandy, you see. That’s another reason why the ship meant so much to me.” He paused, and then said: “I imagine that you’re wondering why I’m here”—he nodded at the photo—“and not there.”

Charlotte smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact …” She passed a cheese-topped cracker to Eddie and spread another cracker with cheese for herself.

“An American millionaire owns it now. My father lost his fortune—and the château—as a result of debts he incurred in Deauville’s high-stakes gambling salons, and what he didn’t lose gambling, he squandered on his racehorses. That was when I was fourteen. He died not long after, a ruined man.”

“How tragic,” Charlotte said.

René nodded. “After his death, my mother and I lived in our former bakehouse. We were reduced to the status of tenants on our own estate,” he added bitterly. “I think that’s another reason why
Normandie
always meant so much to me. She was a substitute”—he waved at the photo—“for all of that.”

“Then you lost the
Normandie
, too,” said Charlotte.

René nodded and downed his shot of Calvados in a single swig. “You have to drink this all at once,” he explained. “To make a
trou Normand.
”

“
Trou
?” asked Charlotte, whose French was pretty lame.

“A hole for the food,” he explained.

Charlotte complied. The smooth brandy warmed her stomach. “You never finished your story the other night,” she said. “Of how you ended up here.”

“Ah, as I told you, it is a very long story. I think you have better things to talk about tonight, eh?” he said with a wink.

“Please, I’d like to hear the rest of it,” said Charlotte. She turned back to Eddie. “After the
Normandie
burned, René went back to France and joined the Résistance. He stopped his story just as he was captured.” She noticed that he was again wearing the red and black rosette of the Résistance in his lapel.

“I think the telling of this story will take some more Calvados,” René said and proceeded to pour another round. Then he continued with the story he had started at the party at Villa Normandie:

“As you said, I was captured. I was put in a prison for political prisoners in Fresnes, outside of Paris. Cell eighty-five. All my life, I will remember that number. We were crowded seven and eight into a cell that was meant for one. But—I was lucky to be alive.”

He paused, and Charlotte asked what he meant.

“The guests didn’t stay long in that hotel,” he explained. “The Gestapo would order regular clean-outs. Prisoners were either executed, or, if they were lucky, shipped out to Buchenwald. I was there eight months—long enough that it was time for them to get rid of me.”

Charlotte and Eddie listened as they sipped their Calvados. René once again downed his in a single swig.

“Then came D-Day. As the Americans drew near Paris in June of 1944, the executions were stepped up. I thought for sure that I would be put to death. But as you can see”—he patted his belly—“I lived to tell the tale. There were only eight hundred of us left when the prison was finally liberated.”

“And after that?” Eddie asked as he picked up his glass with a burn-scarred hand. Charlotte noticed that he hadn’t volunteered the information that he had been part of the Navy crew in charge of the
Normandie
conversion.

“I had been planning to go back to my village,” René answered. “Its name was Oradour-sur-Glane. Does that mean anything to you?”

“It sounds vaguely familiar,” Eddie said.

“The Oradour massacre. In June, 1944. One of the most notorious Nazi atrocities of the war. Every man, woman, and child in the village was murdered by the SS. Six hundred and forty-two people, including my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins. They shot the men and locked the women and children in the church, and then burned it down.”

His mother burned alive! Charlotte was horrified. “But why?” she asked.

“Supposedly in reprisal for a Résistance attack on a military formation moving toward the Normandy beachhead.” René shrugged. “But the Germans didn’t need an excuse to behave like butchers, as we well know.”

For a moment, there was silence.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said.

René shrugged. “There was nothing to go back to,” he continued. “So I signed on again with the French Line. I was the dining room steward on the
Ile de France
for twelve years. But the
Ile
wasn’t
Normandie
. Nothing could have been
Normandie
. She had been my life, my love. I loved her with the kind of passion that is usually reserved for a beloved mistress.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Eddie.

Charlotte and Eddie drained their glasses, and René poured another round.

“Eventually I left the French Line and came to New York. I was drawn there the way one is drawn to the final resting place of a loved one. The East Side restaurant that the
Normandie
crew used to frequent when the ship was interned was still in business, and I used to go there often. One day the owner asked me if I wanted to buy him out, so I did. I had saved up quite a bit.”

According to gossip, the dining room steward aboard the
Normandie
earned more than the captain, thanks to the generous tips of the passengers, and Charlotte suspected that much the same was true aboard the
Ile de France
.

René continued: “Before, the restaurant had been only marginally profitable. People from the neighborhood, a regular clientele of French emigrés. I turned it into a very successful bistro.”

Charlotte wasn’t surprised. With his impeccable manners, infallible memory for names, and polished diplomatic skills, René was a natural restaurateur. “What was it called?” she asked.

René cited the name and address, and she nodded in recognition.

“I first came down here with a lady friend fifteen years ago.”

That was another thing that hadn’t changed, Charlotte thought: René’s penchant for rich American women, and theirs for him.

“An acquaintance took us to the Club Parisienne, as this place was then called. While we were here, I got into a discussion with the owner—naturally we both shared an interest in French cuisine—and learned that he was about to retire. The idea of moving south sounded good to me …”

“And the rest is history,” Eddie broke in.

“Pretty much,” René agreed. “Another acquaintance suggested that I turn the restaurant into a private dining club. So I sold the bistro in New York, and set to work. The renovations took two years.”

A noisy group of four had come in and taken seats at one of the tables at the back of the room.

René downed his glass, and then said: “And that,
madame et monsieur
, is how René Dubord ended up in Palm Beach, Florida.”

“It’s quite a story,” Eddie said.

“I warned you that it would take more than one shot of Calvados,” René reminded him. “And now,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the dining room, “would you like to sample the cuisine of Normandy?”

8

The dining room was characterized by the same sense of rustic elegance as the rest of the building, with a floor of quarry tile, a beamed ceiling, high-backed runged chairs with rush seats, and windows with lace curtains. René showed them to a table in a private nook by a huge field-stone fireplace hung with old copper pots. It was a romantic setting for a romantic event. As René pulled out her chair, Charlotte was reminded of those late-night suppers with Eddie in the intimate Café-Grill aboard the
Normandie
, and it struck her that the course of life tended to express itself in geometric patterns. Sometimes it felt as if it were traveling in a circle, sometimes as if it were doubling back on itself, sometimes as if it were traveling at an upward or a downward angle, or in a zigzag path. Sometimes it ran at cross purposes to itself or meandered in a wavy line. Maybe it was the art deco influence, but right now she felt as if the dominant geometric motif in her life was a spiral. Ever since her arrival in Palm Beach, it seemed as if she kept coming back to the same places she had been before, but on a different plane. First there had been René, then the
Normandie
, then Eddie—all coming back into her life after fifty-three years. Everything the same, and everything so different.

Charlotte hadn’t seen Eddie since the night of the
Normandie
benefit, and she filled him in now on the investigation into Paul’s death, and Dede’s discovery that Lydia Collins was an embezzler—it was an easy way for a nervous date to launch a conversation. When he learned how much Lydia had stolen from the preservation association, Eddie’s first reaction was to wonder if he was ever going to get paid for his gig at the party. Charlotte then went on to tell him her theory that McLean might have murdered Paul on Lydia’s behalf, and asked him if he thought the admiral could have done it. “He was your commanding officer, right?” she asked.

“Yes,” Eddie replied, “but I haven’t seen him in fifty years.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think he could have done it. He was one of the most upstanding men I’ve ever known. Big Jack, we used to call him. It was a nickname from his Yale days. He played football there.”

“Then I guess I’ll abandon that theory,” Charlotte said. “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere with it.”

A waiter appeared at their table with a dark bottle of
cidre bouche
, which he described as the sparkling cider that was native to Normandy, and a plate of hors d’oeuvres, which included dry-cured duck sausage, a duck galantine, a
pâté de campagne
of pork and veal, and pickled vegetables. He also brought menus, which listed four more courses, as well as red and white dinner wines, a dessert wine, and a sampling of Normandy’s fruit brandies.

The Calvados had already gone to Charlotte’s head, and being in Eddie’s company had heightened the giddy sensation. She could just imagine how she would feel before the evening was over. Moreover, all three entrée selections were cooked in Calvados.

The choice of main courses included veal chops in a Calvados and cream sauce, chicken sautéed with apples in a Calvados and cream sauce, or filet of sole cooked in butter, cream, cider, white wine, and Calvados. “Not exactly
cuisine minceur
,” she said as she scanned the menu.