Another Sun (32 page)

He raised his eyes and for a couple of seconds Trousseau and Anne Marie looked at each other. The Indian and the Pied-Noir, both stranded in a distant land. Trousseau was about to run a finger along the thin moustache when Anne Marie stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Monsieur Trousseau.”

She then darted across the road and entered the building. She stopped to look over her shoulder.

Trousseau had not moved. Nor had the driver sitting in the Simca. They were both staring at her.

She gave a small wave and then went over to the reception desk.

“I was just about to leave.”

“I won’t keep you long. May I sit down?”

The office was chill. Overhead, the conditioner hummed. On the wall, there was a poster with a photograph of Notre Dame de Paris.

The large desk was cluttered. Brochures, timetables, thick volumes of air ticket prices. And a Perspex cube which had been filled with various photographs. Anne Marie recognized the smiling face of Armand Calais in a snapshot taken in New York. Seeing the photograph, Anne Marie was struck by the likeness.

Madame Calais stood up. “I can’t stay.” She was wearing a black dress and a black cardigan draped over her shoulders. There were a couple of bracelets around her wrist. The freckled flesh had formed goose pimples.

There was an electric kettle on the floor. “I think you should. Perhaps you could offer me some tea—it doesn’t have to be Fortnum and Mason.…”

“I’m meeting someone for lunch.”

Anne Marie picked up the receiver of the grey telephone. “Give them a ring and tell them you’re not coming.”

“What on earth for?”

“Tell them you’ve just been arrested.”

Madame Calais sat down again.

“What impressed me was your concern for Hégésippe Bray. You insisted he was innocent, you told me it was the MANG who’d killed your husband. And so I believed you. I believed you sufficiently not to associate you with the gun.” Anne Marie smiled. “I now realize it was you who cleaned it and buried it. Admittedly, it would have been stupid to do otherwise. The gun must’ve been lying about your house for the last forty years—ever since Hégé-sippe Bray was sent to French Guyana and your husband took his land. Then with Bray back in Guadeloupe—and his name engraved upon the butt—you knew the gendarmerie would automatically accuse the old man.”

“Am I right in thinking you’re accusing me of the murder of my husband?”

“Have you noticed the way nobody’s got a good word to say for your husband? A thief, a scheming politician, a blackmailer, a gangster—in fact, the only person favorably disposed toward him is you. Even your brother-in-law, Jacques Calais, has difficulty in hiding his distaste. But then, Raymond Calais was a distasteful man, and you did a lot of people a considerable service by destroying him.” Anne Marie shrugged. “I hasten to point out that murder is a crime—and punishable in the last resort with the guillotine.”

“I shall make some tea.”

“A good idea.”

Anne Marie leaned forward as Madame Calais plugged in the electric kettle. “I must say I like your bracelet.”

“A friend bought it for me in Madagascar.” Madame Calais set two cups on the table. “Milk or lemon?”

“Neither.”

Later, as Madame Calais poured the tea, Anne Marie noticed that the freckled hand was trembling. The tremble was transmitted to the flow of amber liquid.

A bowl of brown sugar was placed on the blotting pad.

“Only your family could’ve had access to the gun. When
Hégésippe Bray went to French Guyana, he left no family in Guadeloupe.”

“Sugar?”

“No thank you.”

“An interesting theory—but not sufficient to convict someone with. You seem to forget, mademoiselle.…”

“Madame,” Anne Marie corrected her.

“I’m a fairly wealthy woman. The best lawyers—I can get them from France, and I can pay for them.” For the first time the mask of her face broke into a smile. “An argument like yours won’t last five minutes in a court. You must realize that. If you really want to pick on the Calais family, I don’t see why I should be considered guilty rather than Jacques.” The eyes held Anne Marie’s look. “It wasn’t me my husband blackmailed. But he did blackmail Jacques Calais.”

“Unlike Jacques Calais, your husband tried to murder your son.”

The smile died slowly, leaving her lips hard set. There was a whiteness about the pinched nostrils.

“You see,” Anne Marie said softly, her hand on her lap, “I am a mother, too.”

“A husband—you can never completely own him. You can love him, but you can never be sure he’s yours. A child is different—a child is part of you; he’s your own flesh and blood.”

Madame Calais handed the thin cup and saucer to Anne Marie.

“After nearly forty years, perhaps I’d have done the same thing myself. Perhaps your husband deserved to die. But by deliberately rigging the evidence, you put the blame on Hégésippe Bray. That old man was arrested for a murder he’d never committed. He killed himself, and as far as I’m concerned, it was you who placed the noose around Hégésippe Bray’s neck.”

“He was going to die.”

“He still had several years to live—years to live in the love of his family. After forty years in South America.”

Madame Calais sipped her tea. “My husband was going to die. I was doing him a favor. A clean death—rather than the long, drawn out suffering and the antiseptic smell of hospitals.”

“You murdered Raymond Calais because you hated him.”

There was a long silence.

“I don’t know whether I hated my husband.”

“Why else did you murder him?”

“Raymond had lied to me. And he had stolen my child from me. Through no fault of mine but through his own stupidity, his
own arrogance. Black skin—for Raymond Calais, it was the greatest dishonor imaginable—as if the color of our skin is going to make any difference when we come to meet our Maker. As if he didn’t know there was black blood in the Calais family. One of his grandfathers was a mulatto—and on his mother’s side, there were at least two octoroons. But of course, like all men, he could never admit his own responsibility.” She laughed without humor and set down her cup. “The Békés are all convinced they’re as white as the driven snow. They’ve got as much black blood as the mulattos—and they’re no better than the mulattos.” She stopped and looked at Anne Marie. “You’re very shrewd.”

“I’m a woman.”

“When did you realize all this?”

“The day of the funeral—the day they buried Hégésippe Bray. I saw Marcel Suez-Panama walking with his mother—with the woman who’d brought him up. And behind them there was Armand, your son. I’d noticed something familiar about Armand—and I’d just assumed it was his likeness to your husband. The same jaw.”

“You met my husband?”

“I saw the photographs.” Anne Marie shook her head. “Then I saw Armand and Marcel—and there were only a few meters between them. By some coincidence, they were wearing similar clothes. It was inevitable I should see the similarity. But it took me some time before I realized that they were brothers.”

“Brothers.” For a long moment, Madame Calais sat staring at Anne Marie, staring without seeing. The eyes glazed over and started to water. “Brothers,” the woman repeated, “and I could have gone to my grave thinking the little boy had died. My little boy.” She wiped at her eye with a lace handkerchief. “What on earth drove Raymond to do that? I thought he was a man—but he was a monster. He was capable of coming between a mother and her child—just because the child didn’t happen to have white skin and he was terrified of a scandal.” She shook her head. “I’d always assumed the poor thing died at birth. That’s what Raymond told
me—and later, when the doctor came from Sainte-Anne, he told me the same thing. A couple of days later, there was the funeral. It was awful—awful. I was just married, you know—and had been married for less than a year, and for all of the next year, I wore black. Black for the child I’d lost—and all the time I thought it was my punishment from God. And Raymond was so cold with me, so cold and uncaring. It was as if he hated me, and he wanted to punish me. There were nights when I cried myself to sleep and wished that I could die—or be like these steatopygous Negro women for whom having children is second nature, a habit like straightening their hair with hot combs or sewing their clothes for the carnival. Raymond had other women, and I lived virtually alone on the estate. He refused to sleep with me. Young and innocent—and don’t forget that I came from an English island where the whites never had anything to do with the local women. How was I to know why my husband was acting so strange?” She tried to smile. “Perhaps in his stupid, male pride, it never occurred to Raymond the poor child was his son, his own flesh and blood. I’m not an educated woman—but in Barbados, those unsmiling nuns had taught us about Mendel and his sweet peas. Perhaps Raymond really thought I’d been unfaithful. With some sweaty laborer from the fields. Or with Hégésippe Bray.” A tear fell from the corner of her eye. “I was alone, so alone, especially after Monsieur Calais died. There was nobody to talk to. I felt so utterly rejected. Just nineteen—and in four years, I don’t think that Raymond and I could have shared the same bed more than three times. During all that period, I could feel he hated me, and I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand he’d married me for my money. He was so hurtful, so unkind. The loss of the child—and then to be rejected by the man you love.”

“Now you know the truth.”

“But I am old. An old woman. Those forty years—I wanted him to pay me for them. I didn’t say anything—but there was a look in his eyes before I pulled the trigger, and he must have realized. I hope he realized—but Raymond was so selfish and so
self-centered that he could never understand I acted out of love. Out of love for the poor, sweet child he had stolen from me.”

“Marcel Suez-Panama’s in prison at the moment. He admits to having killed your husband. I suspect he’s trying to protect his mother—his adoptive mother, because he thinks she killed Raymond Calais. On the Sunday that he died, Marcel and Madame Suez-Panama were both over at the Sainte Marthe estate, visiting Hégésippe Bray.”

“The boy needn’t worry. I’ll get a lawyer for him. I’ll make quite sure he’s set free.”

“Once you’re arrested for the murder of your husband, Suez-Panama will be automatically released.”

“Forty years—and I’d never have suspected a thing if the Salvation Army hadn’t picked up that old man. And if his sister hadn’t come to visit us.” She shook her head. “Forty years—and I’d never seen him. Not even at his birth. There was no doctor, but the girl from Martinique gave me her magic potions, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Then forty years later he was standing in front of me. My child. He had come with the old woman to ask about the land—and immediately I knew. It was like a flash of lightning. I nearly fainted. I knew he was my child.” Her face softened. “My own child, from my body. Despite the color of his skin—the eyes, the jaws, the eyelashes. He was mine. I began to tremble and I had to leave the room.”

“What did you do then?”

“What could I do? Tell him that this old white woman with the sagging chins and the loose flesh on her arms, tell him she was his mother? And although I knew the truth, I had to be sure. In my heart I knew—but in my head I was confused. He was black—how could I be sure he was my darling, darling boy?” She caught her breath.

“So?”

“So I did the only thing I could do.”

“You asked your husband?”

“You think he wouldn’t lie to me? He’s spent all his life lying
to me. He once told me he loved me—but that was before we were married and that was before he got his hands on my share of the family fortune. Raymond Calais was a liar. He lied with every breath he took.”

“What did you do, madame?”

“Jacques was never like Raymond. Jacques is a good man—and if I’d had any sense, and if I hadn’t been blinded by love, it was Jacques Calais I should’ve married. But in those days, Jacques was infatuated with a silly little mulatto girl from Basse-Terre. I went to see him in the showrooms. I knew Jacques Calais would tell me the truth—but by then, I’d guessed everything.”

“The truth, madame?” Anne Marie placed her hand on top of the pile of brochures. “What truth?”

“Raymond Calais wanted to destroy the child. His own flesh and blood, the cement of our marriage—he wanted him killed. It must’ve been early morning when I went into labor. It came suddenly and unexpectedly—at least two weeks premature. There was nobody in the house, other than Eloise Deschamps. And my husband. Perhaps they were having an affair—I wouldn’t put anything past her. She was an evil, scheming vixen, and she led her husband a fine dance. They say she was a witch. Perhaps she was—and perhaps she threw a curse on me. She knew all the magic potions. For me she made a herbal tea from tree bark. The pain—the terrible pain, a pain I’ll never forget—began to lose its edge. I think I must’ve gone into a coma—because after that, I don’t remember a thing. I don’t even remember coming round when the little child was born. Later Raymond told me my baby had been stillborn—and I didn’t even cry. I just felt empty—terribly empty.”

“What did your husband do with the child?”

“According to Jacques, he gave it to the Martinique girl, and he told her to kill it. Of course, Raymond didn’t have the courage to carry out his own dirty deeds. And the girl—perhaps she was a woman after all, and I must be grateful to her—she ran away and she took the baby to Pointe-Noire. I can only assume
the Suez-Panama woman thought the child was the girl’s. That’s why she kept her secret—and that is why she bought the baby up as her own.

“And then the Martinique girl tried to blackmail your husband?”

“That’s what Jacques told me. Eloise Deschamps was a grasping, evil woman.”

“You were at Sainte Marthe at the time of the murder of the girl. You must know about it—you must know what happened.”

“Monsieur Calais was already very ill. He wanted a grandson—and he was almost as upset as I was by the loss of my baby. He was very kind to me, and he didn’t want me to hear anything or know anything that might upset me. He wanted to protect me—he had no idea that his son had left the marriage bed.”