Death and Croissants, page 7
Monsieur Meyer sat opposite Passepartout. He didn’t seem a happy man anyway, and the small dog was just adding to his woes. The family, consisting of a rather brusque wife and twin nine-year-old daughters, had arrived the evening before from Alsace, and life just looked a little too hard for poor Monsieur Meyer. Richard felt some empathy for him. They had turned up to breakfast on time, as people with German blood in them always do in his experience, but hadn’t bargained for a chihuahua with a fine line in haughtiness to be dumped at their table. Madame Meyer was giving Monsieur Meyer a look that asked what, if anything, he was prepared to do about it, while Monsieur Meyer just stared at Passepartout as if he were the living embodiment of all his worldly disappointments.
Richard stood behind his breakfast bar, as usual trying to look inconspicuous, rather like a nervous Wild West sheriff waiting for someone to pull the trigger first. On the one hand Valérie had massively overstepped the mark in asking the Meyers to look after Passepartout “for a moment” as if she owned the place; but on the other he was trying to affect an air of “what can you do? She owns the place.” It was the cowardly way forward, and one he was fully willing to exploit for now. The Meyers had booked for three nights; there would be plenty of time to iron things out. Maybe.
Valérie came rushing down the stairs, a long flowing cream dress adding to her not inconsiderable elegance, but also making her look something like a ghost, ephemeral. Richard suspected she’d gone back to her room just so that she could make a second entrance at breakfast, but after plucking Passepartout from the relieved Meyers she produced a notepad.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” she said, as if she and Richard were alone. “We’ll talk after breakfast.”
“OK,” he replied meekly, catching Monsieur Meyer’s eye, which plainly said, “You, too, eh?”
There was a brief lull, long enough for, ostensibly, the patron to draw breath, and then Valérie stood up again with another flourish. “No,” she said, “it can’t wait! Follow me, please.” And left by the open patio doors.
“I’m in the middle of serving breakfast, I can’t just…”
“I’m sure Madame Tablier can fill in for now,” she shot back over her shoulder, to which Madame Tablier replied with another of her “casserole” looks. The Meyers, who had been patiently waiting for the coffee to be ready, all looked at each other, then the three females of the party all looked at the male. The male’s heart sank; action would be required.
He raised his hand as Richard passed the table to try and get his attention. “Yes,” Richard said distractedly, “sorry, the coffee will be ready in a second. Madame Tablier, would you…?” He hurried on past, avoiding eye contact.
“Coffee, is it?” Madame Tablier asked in a threatening manner of Monsieur Meyer.
“Er, yes please.”
Madame Tablier snorted in response, watching Richard leave the room after Valérie while keeping her position in the corner like a guard. The coffee could wait.
Valérie was standing in the garden, Passepartout at her feet, looking every inch the accessory. “Look,” Richard began, “I can’t just keep dropping things for this nonsense. Those people have paid good—”
“Yes, yes.” She dismissed his complaint with a wave of her hand. “So have I. Now, look. That nice Italian couple who left yesterday. What do you know of them?”
“Why? What does it matter?”
“What do you know of them?”
“Well, that they’re a nice Italian couple, honeymooners they said, and they, quite reasonably in my book, have a problem with blood on the walls! So do I, come to that.”
“They are staying at the Thompsons’.”
“So?” Richard couldn’t help but be a little put out at this knowledge and if it came down to it and he was a guest, he’d prefer a bloodstain to the kind of antics that Martin and Gennie got up to. That’ll test their marriage early doors, he thought.
“It doesn’t concern you?” Valérie, exasperated, was in full “schoolteacher with a thick student” mode.
“Why should it concern me? Why does it concern you for that matter? They came to the Loire Valley on honeymoon, they left my place, fearing for their lives probably, and are still staying locally. I don’t get why that bothers you.”
“Because something is going on. I can feel it.”
Hot flushes, Richard thought, though wisely didn’t say it out loud. If he was having something of a midlife crisis it was perfectly feasible that Valérie was having some kind of menopausal upheaval of her own, surely?
“Excuse me”—Monsieur Meyer appeared—“but we have been waiting for coffee now for ten minutes.”
“Yes, sorry. I’ll be right there.”
“They are following poor Monsieur Grandchamps. I know it.”
“Your poor Monsieur Grandchamps is a mafia don, or something. Frankly I’m glad the lot of them have gone. Though I’m not sure even the mafia could cope with Martin and Gennie.”
“We are also waiting for our eggs.” Meyer’s apologetic demand was greeted with a sigh from Richard and indifference from Valérie, though he was used to both.
“It says on your website that you provide your own eggs.” He flourished one of Richard’s fuzzily printed flyers, as if that were proof.
“Madame Tablier!” Richard shouted, losing any pretense at control of the situation. “Madame Tablier!”
“Yes,” came the sullen reply from right behind him.
“Ah, I thought you were indoors. Could you please…”
“I agree with ’er.” Madame Tablier nodded toward Valérie and gestured unnecessarily with her bucket. “Something’s up.” Valérie nodded in response, and Richard watched as a grudging mutual respect formed in front of him. He slumped again.
“My wife really wants an egg.” Meyer was trying to sound forceful but was once again ignored. He slumped, too. Then he immediately stood up straight as he realized that the rest of the Meyer family were standing just behind him, each with the same disapproving look on their face.
“There is nothing going on!” Richard was adamant. “This is the Loire Valley. Nothing goes on in the Loire Valley.” Suddenly he stopped and looked accusingly at Valérie. “How do you know the Rizzolis are at Martin and Gennie’s?”
“Because I went there.”
“You went there?”
“Yes. I went there. I knew you wouldn’t come so I went on my own.”
“And?”
“And they don’t wear clothes; I found that out very quickly.”
“The Rizzolis?”
“The Thompsons!”
“I could have told you that! They’re bloody sex pests, the pair of them.”
Madame Meyer tried to cover her daughters’ ears while looking accusingly at her husband, who blurted out “eggs” as if that would help.
“I know that now. It doesn’t bother me, they are adults; they can do what they like.”
“And they do, believe me.”
“And poor Monsieur Grandchamps stayed there.”
“I knew it,” Madame Tablier had put her bucket down and was fiddling with her cigarette, “something’s going on.”
“There’s nothing going on!”
“We really would like some coffee, please.”
“Yes, I heard you!” Richard found himself shouting at the wrong people.
“And he disappeared the same way. Blood, glasses, poof!” Valérie made a gesture like a cheap stage magician. “Into thin air.”
Richard shook his head. “So what? I want nothing to do with it. Knowing Martin and Gennie, they’ve probably got him locked up in one of their dungeons with a zip mask on.”
Valérie’s expression changed immediately. “Do you really think so?”
“No! No I bloody don’t. I think he’s a silly old man, playing silly games. Mafia silly games at that, and—and I want to make this absolutely clear—it has nothing whatsoever to do with me!”
“Eggs!” Monsieur Meyer finally snapped. “We want our eggs.”
“Look.” Richard had now lost control and pointed toward the chicken coop. “Go and get them your bloody self!”
The Meyer family all looked at the chicken coop not far away in the corner of the garden, shaded under a lime tree. The two little girls both screamed, and turned their heads into their mother’s dress. The mother glowered at the father, the father looked stunned, and Richard, Valérie, and Madame Tablier all turned to look in the same direction. There, hanging from the coop, a wire noose around her neck, her eyes white with death, was a hen.
“The bastards,” Richard said quietly. “They’ve killed Ava Gardner.”
11
Wiping his brow, Richard leaned heavily on the spade. The late spring ground was dry and difficult to dig but he was determined to show Ava Gardner the same respect as he’d shown the others, and give her a grave and a dignified sendoff. There were at least eight hens buried behind the woodstore, their graves each marked with a stone to avoid being exhumed the next time a death occurred. He was working as fast as he could before Madame Tablier made off with Ava Gardner’s tasty corpse. He’d already seen the woman eyeing up the dead bird, and while Richard was maybe no longer the boss in his own home, hopefully a temporary situation, he was not going to let Madame Tablier eat his beloved Ava Gardner.
“Do you bury all your hens?” Valérie had asked with the inevitable Passepartout in her arms and a hint of surprise in her voice.
“Yes,” Richard had replied archly.
And that had been that, even Valérie showing some sensitivity for the moment and going back indoors. Richard went back to digging the hole and once he felt it was deep enough, he laid down some straw and placed the stiff bird gently in the ground and filled the hole back up.
“This is personal,” he said to himself, sitting heavily on a nearby garden bench. “This is personal,” he repeated. “The thing is,” he began, “I don’t even know what this is.” He stared at the fresh earth on top of Ava Gardner’s grave. “I don’t get it, old girl. A bloke disappears, possibly violently and possibly more than once and it’s you that gets it in the neck. That’s not right, is it?” He paused. “You don’t mess with a fellow’s hens. Even if you are the mafia.” The mafia, he thought, that’s obviously why Valérie is so convinced the Rizzoli couple are involved; there’s no actual evidence, but easy national stereotyping is as good a place to start as any, one supposes. It’s odd that she would go to the Thompsons’ on her own, though. He clenched his fist angrily; she goes running off and stirring up trouble and it’s his hen that cops it.
“It’s time I took back control, Ava, I think,” he said, standing up stiffly. “I need to stop being pushed around. I won’t let what’s happened to you go unpunished. No.” He picked up the spade as if it were a rifle. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“Who are you talking to, Richard?” It was Valérie, for once Passepartout-less and thankfully treading gingerly around the hen cemetery.
He looked at her defiantly. “I am talking to myself, madame. It’s the only way I can guarantee sensible conversation around here. Watch your step there, please, you nearly stepped on Katharine Hepburn.”
“You were talking to the hen, weren’t you?” She looked a little worried by the prospect.
“Yes. And?”
“Oh.”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, I think it’s rather sweet.”
“Oh, well.” He didn’t know what to say. “Thanks.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What did your hen have to say?”
Richard turned to Valérie to see if she was mocking him. She didn’t look like she was and he suspected that she wouldn’t be capable of hiding her emotions, even sarcastic ones.
“She didn’t say a lot, funnily enough. Difficult to talk when someone breaks your neck. And her being a hen, obviously.”
“So what have you decided?” She sat down on the bench and he sat back down next to her.
“I’ve decided that I don’t like being pushed around.”
“Who’s pushing you around?”
“You are.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are.” She looked hurt. “Look, it’s not your fault, not really. I’m very easy to push around, but it’s Ava Gardner down there who’s paid the price.”
“I don’t think I’ve pushed you around at all.”
“Oh you have, you and everyone else I know.” He sighed wearily. “All I want is a quiet life, but what happens is you end up just being dragged along by other people’s whims. I don’t blame you, as such, but in a very short space of time, I’ve lost a guest, possibly murdered—in your opinion—possibly more than once, if what the Thompsons told you is correct. And two Italian killers—in your opinion—are now sending me hen-based mafia death warnings!”
“But…”
“Please don’t interrupt. You see, I don’t remember at any point signing up for all this and yet I appear to be at the very bloody center of it. I don’t even know you; you might have killed Grandchamps for all I know! And poor Ava. You might be in cahoots with the Rizzolis, too.”
“And why would I still be here, then, if it was me?”
“I don’t know,” he said tartly. “I’ve still got two hens left; maybe your work isn’t finished.”
She stood up. “You are being ridiculous.”
“Yes, I know. I know I’m being ridiculous. This whole bloody thing is ridiculous. We’ve got an old man who detests his brother so much he needs to find him so he can keep annoying him, a policeman who doesn’t seem to think Missing Persons is his job, a mysterious Italian couple now in the grip of two British perverts, you bossing me around like we’re married, and a dead hen! I have a right to be ridiculous. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” He looked at her to see if she recognized the film reference, which she obviously didn’t. Good God, he thought, has this woman never seen a film in her life at all? “Well, I’m not going to be pushed around anymore. From now on we do things my way, OK?”
He looked at her; if he was expecting an argument, he was disappointed. Instead her face was a picture of innocence as if not recognizing one word of the damning picture he had just painted. “Of course,” she said, patting his arm, “what do you suggest we do?”
Dammit, thought Richard, he should have seen that coming. It’s all very well claiming control of a situation but you really should offer some sort of plan as well.
“Well, I’ve given this some thought,” he said, not entirely with conviction.
“You and the hen?”
“The hen and I. And I think we get this policeman chap involved properly?” He heard Valérie make a noise under her breath that indicated very strongly that she didn’t agree. “All we told him was that Grandchamps had disappeared; we didn’t tell him about the blood or the broken glasses. Surely he’d be more inclined to get involved if he knew the circumstances? Rather than fob it off on to us.”
“But we have no proof that they ever existed. So we would only be reporting the same thing to him; also he would ask why we didn’t tell him this in the first place.”
“I wanted to!”
“But proof, Richard, the proof disappeared with the Rizzolis.”
“What about the judge? Surely he must have some real concern for his brother; we could tell him about the missing evidence.”
“Or”—she hesitated slightly—“we look for the evidence ourselves and then we go to the police.”
He remained silent for a moment, weighing this up. “But you think the Rizzoli couple have the evidence?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Which means searching the Rizzolis’ rooms over at Martin and Gennie’s?”
“Richard!” Valérie cried, jumping up off the bench. “That is a brilliant idea! We search the Rizzolis!”
“No, now hang on, I wasn’t for one minute…”
“Really, you are very good at this. You are so right; from now on we do things your way.”
“Eh? Now look, just wait…” He trailed off; he could feel his mouth moving but there was nothing coming out. He felt like an amateur chess player who had just come up against a grandmaster. So much for control.
“Hey, boss?” Madame Tablier appeared, a cigarette hanging from her lips, her eyes darting around to see if she was in time to grab the hen. “Boss?”
“Do you mean me?” Richard replied disconsolately.
“There’s some guests arrived, asking for a room for a few nights. I said most people only stay the one these days, but they still want a room anyway. Shall I put them in the Germans’ room? They’ve already cleared off.”
The Meyers had left immediately after seeing the dead hen. Two traumatized little girls, a fearsome mother, and a father who knew it wasn’t his fault but was racked with guilt anyway. They never had gotten their coffee. And they were probably forever turned off the idea of eggs.
“Yes,” Richard said, “if it’s ready.”
“They barely stayed long enough to make a mess. It won’t take long.”
“What’s the name?”
“Marie Gavinet, monsieur. My name is Marie Gavinet.” The slight figure of Marie stepped out from behind Madame Tablier. “We have met. And, monsieur, madame”—she nodded toward Valérie—“I really need your help.” She moved slightly to one side to reveal a young man standing behind her. “That is, we really need your help.”
“Tch!” snapped a put-out Madame Tablier, trudging off. “And I suppose I’m just chopped liver around here.”
12
It was hard not to stare at Melvil Sanspoil. For his part, Richard was only capable of framing the world through the parameters of old films—a gesture, a personality, looks, a situation, they were all categorized and judged according to how Hollywood had seen it. And to Richard, Melvil Sanspoil was Peter Lorre, the bug-eyed Hungarian émigré who had been Hollywood’s go-to villain of choice for much of the 1940s: weak, impressionable, dangerous. He couldn’t think of a modern equivalent and that, he decided, was exactly the problem with the modern world; there was no Peter Lorre in it.
