Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (22 page)

“You're welcome,” he said. “But this isn't a social call, is it?”

“No,” Marine said. “Do you have a few minutes?”

Bley nodded and motioned to a chair, then walked around to the far side of his oversized wooden desk, the same desk his grandfather had used, in the same office. Marine sat down and set her purse on the floor; as she did so, her silk top slipped off her left shoulder. She quickly readjusted the blouse and looked up to see Bley staring at her. He had seen the small bandage on her upper chest, where the puncture for the biopsy had been performed.

“Are you all right?” Bley asked.

Marine sat up straight. “Yes, I'm fine.”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked.”

“It's all right,” Marine answered. “I went in for a biopsy this morning; that's why the bandage's there. It didn't hurt, but it was extremely uncomfortable. It's hard to describe.”

“I'm sorry,” Bley said. “When will they know something?”

“Possibly by the end of the day,” she answered. “My dad put a phone call through to the lab to hurry things up.” Marine's father was Aix's most sought-after general practitioner; he had been the Bley family doctor for years.

Bley reached across the desk and squeezed Marine's hand. “I'll keep my fingers crossed.”

Marine smiled. “Thank you, Éric.”

“So…what's going on?” he asked.

“It's Mme d'Arras's death,” Marine said. “And you're the family lawyer….”

“That's right.”

“We know that Mme d'Arras had an appointment with you that she wanted to keep from her husband.”

Bley nodded. “That's confidential, Marine.”

“But she was murdered,” Marine said. “On Friday night.”

“What?” Bley asked, his face ashen. “I heard this morning that she died, but not how. I was in Paris all weekend and just came back on the morning train. I'm speechless. How did it happen?”

“We don't know yet. Her body was found in a vineyard; she had been hit on the side of the head with a rock, and her wallet was missing.”

Bley sat back and ran his fingers through his hair. “What do you want to know? And why are you here, and not the police? Or are law professors branching out these days?”

“I'm helping Antoine Verlaque.”

Bley stayed silent for a few seconds and then said, “Still seeing him, are you?”

Marine nodded. “We need to know why Mme d'Arras had to keep the appointment with you a secret,” she said. “It seemed an odd secret to keep: I'm told that she and her husband did everything together.”

“Poor Gilles,” said Bley. “Yes, they were inseparable. But Mme d'Arras came to see me about her money, the Aubanel family fortune.”

“Ah, I see.”

“She had a separate section of the will, independent of what she and Gilles had written up. I can show it to you if you have a warrant—which, since you're not a police officer, I assume you don't.”

“No, I don't. But Judge Verlaque doesn't need one.”

“Then send him over,” Bley said, his voice curt. “I might even ask why you're here instead of him.”

Marine knew that she was now being punished for dating Antoine and for turning down Bley's advances. It was also, as Bley had pointed out, unusual that Verlaque had sent her on this mission. She thanked him and got up, shaking his hand this time, and quickly left the office. Out on the stairs, she called Verlaque's cell phone.

“Hey, it's me,” she said. “How soon can you walk over to Éric Bley's office?”

“In about two minutes,” Verlaque said. “I can practically see it from my office.”

“He won't tell me what Mme d'Arras came for, but it has to do with her will.”

“I'll be right there.”

“And as an examining magistrate, you don't need a warrant, right?”

“Correct. Just my badge.”

She hung up and sat on the stairs, which were surprisingly cold given the warm September day. She pulled out a slim volume of Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs and began reading, but after a few lines her mind started wandering, and she put the book away. She realized that she had just told Éric Bley more about her state of health than she had told her boyfriend, at least until their dinner last night. Was it because she wanted to be strong and healthy for Antoine Verlaque? Was she afraid that he wouldn't be supportive if she fell ill? Or was it because she had known Éric Bley since they were children, and as all of Aix knew—at least her set of friends and acquaintances—Bley had recently nursed his elderly father through a long and painful cancer?

Verlaque arrived in two minutes, as he had predicted, and bounded up the stairs. “Lead me to him,” he said, kissing Marine.

They walked into the office, interrupting the secretary and Bley, who were deep in conversation.

“
Bonjour,
Maître Bley,” Verlaque said, and strode across the reception room to shake the lawyer's hand. “I'm Antoine Verlaque, examining magistrate of Aix-en-Provence. Do you have a minute?”

Bley motioned with a wave of his hand for Verlaque and Marine to enter his office, and closed the door once they were settled. Verlaque removed his badge from his jacket and showed it to Bley. As required, the lawyer laid it on his desk. “You'd like to see the changes Mme d'Arras made to her will?”

“Please,” Verlaque said.

“Mme d'Arras made the changes to her
private
will,” Marine explained. “She had her own fortune, from the Aubanel family.”

Bley removed a file from a turn-of-the-century wooden filing cabinet that had obviously been purchased along with the desk decades earlier, and set it on the desk, beside Verlaque's badge. He opened the file folder and turned to a typewritten page on his office's letterhead.

Verlaque leaned over and put his reading glasses on. “What exactly did she change?” he asked as he read. “It seems that she is giving her fortune, eight hundred ninety thousand euros, to the”—he bent down closer to look—“Société pour la Prévention de la Cruauté Envers les Animaux,” he said. He took off his reading glasses and looked at Bley. “The SPCA?”

Bley nodded.

“Who was the recipient before she changed it?” Marine asked.

“Her nephew,” Bley replied. “Christophe Chazeau.”

Y
ou're an ass!” Fabrice yelled into the phone. “I never thought I'd say that about you, Antoine, but you're a total ass! Christophe just called me; he said that the prosecutor was raking him over the coals.”

“I'm sorry, Fabrice,” Verlaque said, “but Christophe's aunt was murdered on Friday night, and he was disinherited a few days prior to that.”

“He was with us Friday night, or don't you remember?”

“He would have had time to go to Rognes,” Verlaque answered. “Before the party.”

“And how did he know he was disinherited?” Fabrice asked. “Huh? Huh? Answer me that!”

“Mme d'Arras called Christophe's mother, her sister Natalie, and told her. M. d'Arras confirmed that today.”

Fabrice stayed silent for a few seconds. “It's all very circumstantial. And you arrest him for that?”

“I didn't arrest him, Fabrice,” Verlaque replied. “I only called him in for questioning. He's at home now.”

“He must feel like shit. Way to go.”

Verlaque didn't tell Fabrice that, while he was questioning Christophe, Officers Flamant and Schoelcher were out in the parking lot, taking samples of mud from the tires of Chazeau's new Porsche SUV. “What's most unfortunate is that he doesn't have an alibi for Friday night from the time he left work at five-thirty p.m. until he came to the cigar-club dinner at eight p.m.,” Verlaque said.

“I'm not sure I have an alibi for those hours!” Fabrice yelled into the phone. “So am I a murderer?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Verlaque said.

“You're upsetting
la fraternité
! We're a club!”

“‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…'”

“
What
are you going on about?
No one
is happy at the moment, especially poor Christophe. I'm going to hang up now, Antoine, and I want you to think very hard about what you've just done. Goodbye.”

Verlaque hung up and put his head on his desk, resting it on his forearms. Someone knocked at the door. “
Entrez,
” he said without looking up.

“Oh, sorry, sir,” Jules Schoelcher said. “Should I come back?”

“No, no. What is it?” Verlaque lifted his head.

“Since it rained the other night, M. Chazeau's car was pretty clean….”

“
Merde.
”

“But there was some dried mud clinging to the inside of the wheel well that we managed to scrape off. It's already in the lab.”

“Excellent,” Verlaque said. “Let's hope it's not from a vineyard.”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Christophe Chazeau is a friend.”

“Oh, I see. That must be very awkward.”

“To say the least. Have you seen the commissioner around?” Verlaque asked.

“Yes, he's at his desk.”

“Could you send him in, with Flamant, please? You come back too.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Within minutes, the three men were in Verlaque's office. “Please tell me that there's something linking Mlles Durand and Montmory,” Verlaque said.

“
Nada,
” Paulik answered. “We've checked all we can think of, from hairdressers to dentists.”

Verlaque said, “Keep going over everything. I'm going to meet with Gisèle Durand's old boss from the clothing shop. She works in Aix now, and we're to meet at a café in”—he looked at his watch—“five minutes. Keep me posted if you find anything, and I'll see you all here tomorrow morning, in my office, at nine.”

Verlaque had suggested a café on the Rue Gaston Saporta that he rarely went to, where he knew he wouldn't run into people he knew, especially cigar-club members; they tended to frequent the cafés on the Cours Mirabeau, their favorite being the Mazarin. He wanted Mlle Matour—or Mme? he wasn't sure if she was married—to feel as comfortable as possible. He was relieved that she now worked in Aix and he didn't have to drive to Rognes to meet her. When he got to the café, a few minutes late, he scanned the terrace for women who looked as if they might work in the garment industry in Provence. Since most of the patrons looked either like preppy-type Sciences Po students who had come to Aix before the term started, in a mad rush to find an overpriced
studio apartment, or like old men drinking pastis, the choice was easy.

“Excuse me,” he said, leaning down over the only woman who was alone. “Mlle Matour?”

“
Oui,
” she said, holding her hand out for Verlaque to shake it. “Sit down…please.”

Verlaque sat down and ordered a coffee from the waiter, who then disappeared.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet on such short notice,” Verlaque said.

“You'll have to excuse me if I'm not good company,” Mlle Matour said, taking a drag on her cigarette and then placing it in the ashtray. “I'm in shock over Gisèle's…murder. There, I said that word. I never thought I'd have to say ‘murder' along with the name of someone I knew.”

“I'm very sorry,” Verlaque said. “You worked with Mlle Durand a long time, didn't you?”

“Twelve years. She was a good employee, and I hope a good friend.”

“You hope?” Verlaque asked.

Mlle Matour nodded, taking another drag on her cigarette. “I worked alongside her for twelve years, but when I look back on it, I'm not sure we were ever friends. Colleagues, yes, but friends?”

“Was she hard to get to know?”

“Yeah. Easy to like, but hard to get to know. I think she had a bad childhood, and then seemed to pick rough guys as boyfriends. It never worked out. They flocked to her, though.”