French Fried (29 page)

Then, worse luck, Inspector Villon arrived. He actually knew the industrialist and scoffed at the idea that Monsieur Dubois could also be a terrorist with Indonesian connections. “If there is a criminal here, it is you, madam, my chief suspect,” the inspector said to me. “Gunshot residue can be washed off. I have applied for permission to search your hotel room and your luggage. You are under surveillance so that you cannot dispose of the pistol, and you may not leave Avignon until the case is solved.”

“I have been subjected to this indignity at the word of a criminal?” cried Monsieur Dubois, trying to brush black dog hair off his gray suit.

I passed him the fax. “Don’t you think this looks like you? It’s the picture of a terrorist sent to me by an inspector in Lyon.”

“We can’t stay in Avignon indefinitely,” protested my husband. “We have tickets home in a few days.”

“
You
may leave, sir,” said the inspector. “Your
wife
may not.”

Monsieur Dubois was staring at the fax. “How can this be? I am not a terrorist. What is the name of the inspector in Avignon? I insist that he does not spread my picture about under the guise of combating violence.”

“At least you understand why we thought you were—”

“I do not understand. I am an innocent industrialist with high political connections, and that lady—” He pointed accusingly at Albertine. “—instructed her dog to attack me.”

“Ah ha!” snarled Inspector Villon. “We must confiscate the dog.”

I thought Albertine was going to attack the inspector, but finally the multifaceted argument was settled, if not amicably, at least without anyone going to jail, including Charles de Gaulle, who, once removed from the industrialist’s chest, stood guard at my side while people shouted at one another. He evidently did consider himself my knight in shining—well, if not armor, then fur.

Jason explained at length our trials here in France. Albertine explained that the dog loved me and wished to protect me. The inspector doubted that a dog could love more than one woman and wondered why that woman wasn’t his mistress. Sylvie said that I enthralled dogs by feeding them sausage under tables. I apologized to the industrialist and gave him Inspector Roux’s telephone number, although I explained that the inspector was busy with riots in Lyon.

The industrialist muttered that rioting had come to Toulouse as well, which was why he was trying to have a peaceful dinner here in Avignon. Jason remarked that he thought Mercedes, for whose shooting the inspector blamed me, had already left the city. The industrialist left the restaurant in search of some quieter place, and the rest of us sat down, under the glowering eyes of the management, to finish our entrées and order dessert. My lamb chops were lovely, and I skimped on calories by ordering sorbet and fruit for dessert.

In the hotel lobby, I was told I had a message, so I stayed to retrieve and read it while Jason went upstairs, completely exhausted by our traumatic dinner and worrying that we wouldn’t be able to leave France on time. The message, from Pierre, informed me that my own husband in 1990 had written a letter to the editor of
JACS
pointing out errors in the work of the French scientist Maurice Bellamee.

Dropping onto one of the couches with the note in my hand, I considered the undeniable implication. Catherine, still in mourning for her husband and blaming his death on a critical American chemist, my husband, had reason to kill us. But there was so little hard evidence, at least evidence that the blockheaded Inspector Villon would accept: a research outline that didn’t have her name on it, recollections of her reaction to her husband’s death fifteen years ago, and the long time she’d held a grudge against someone she’d never met. Even Jason wouldn’t be convinced. He didn’t think chemists killed one another.

I used the telephone in the lounge to call Martin at his hostel, which had only one phone. Once they found him, I told him about Jason’s letter to the editor and asked if he really thought his research director would have tried to poison us with her synthesized toxin. He did, but understood that there was not enough evidence to denounce her. “I have the key to her apartment,” he said. “We could search for clues while she is at the meeting.”

“Don’t you have to be there yourself?” I asked. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“I will not be her student after this semester. I have made arrangements with another university. Why should I work for a woman who would hate me if she knew . . . about me?”

Was he leading me into an accusation against Catherine because
he
hated her? I wondered. “How did you get her key?”

“Every day she sends me for something she forgets. I am her errand boy,” he replied bitterly. “When I found the fish paper in her desk, I know something is wrong, so I copy that and her key at a key store in case of need. Now I never eat or drink near her. You and your husband should not, either.”

“Can you be at my hotel tomorrow at nine with the key?” I asked.

“
Oui
, madam. I will come. But I will go to the apartment with you. What if she comes back? You would be at her mercy.”

“Yes,” I agreed, deciding to invite Albertine, just in case I needed protection against Martin. Poor fellow. I’d become paranoid. If Jason and I survived this trip, it would be due to Martin’s loyalty. And I wouldn’t mention our breaking-and-entering foray to my husband, since he didn’t take the idea of Catherine as a murderess seriously. Albertine, however, was delighted when I called her. She promised to join us, with her dog. And to think that I had once disliked her intensely.

Albertine parked her
car at the gate to the complex, where each apartment for seven or more floors was a concrete square, open in front above the balcony edge, as if someone had piled the apartments on top of each other and side by side on three sides enclosing the courtyard, with its zigzag pattern in red and brown. The crowning touch was a red metal clock in the shape of a lobster. At least it looked like a lobster with the usual legs and claws, not to mention black metal gears sticking out. Presumably the gears ran the black clock hands, one of which appeared to be topped by a pair of spectacles. The sign in front said the gates were locked at night, and I imagined with a shudder being locked in there, with Catherine hunting me through the corridors and stairways.

We had to cross the courtyard, wondering who might be watching as we prepared to enter Catherine’s fourth-floor apartment illegally. What a sight we must have made—two middle-aged women, a towering, redheaded youth, and a large black poodle, pulling excitedly at his leash. It was a relief when Martin used his copied key to open the door and we slipped inside.

“Well, this is a surprise,” said Albertine, looking at the starkly modern décor. “Catherine and Maurice loved antiques, or maybe it was just Maurice.”

There were four rooms and a bath, a combination living and dining room decorated in burnished steel, glass, and black canvas, a kitchen with stainless steel appliances and gray granite counters, a bedroom all white with unfinished wood furniture, and a study lined with glass-doored book-cases and a black desk under a window with gray blinds. The impression was cold, grim, and industrial. I’d have hated to live here. Martin showed us the drawer where he’d found the paper on tetrodotoxin. The original was still there. I took a photo with my digital camera.

He continued to search in the office and found a photocopy of Jason’s letter to the editor about Maurice’s mistakes. I came in from the bedroom to photograph that. Meanwhile Albertine was poking around the living area and remarking on the paucity of decorative interest and drawers in which to search. She gave up there and went into the kitchen.

Having opted for the bedroom, I found nothing in the nightstand or in the top dresser drawer. However, in the second drawer, beneath some plain underwear and two nightgowns, I discovered a fragile, illuminated prayer book swaddled in gauze and nested in a wooden box. The language, I thought, was Latin, which meant it dated from the Middle Ages, before religious books were translated into the vernacular. There had been a prayer book on the list of items stolen from Catherine’s Lyon apartment the day I was pushed down the stairs. I carried the box to the bed and photographed it, then returned it to its drawer and placed it carefully under the nightgowns. The chest yielded nothing else.

I was studying the closet shelves, which contained several stacked boxes, when Albertine arrived with a handgun wrapped in a dishtowel. “I found this under a silverware tray,” she announced. Martin looked in, but none of us knew whether it was a target pistol. I snapped a picture of the gun and began to hand down boxes to Albertine. One contained a hat, black of course. Another housed a locked jewelry box, and the third, bundles wrapped in soft gray cloth—a set of silver candlesticks and six engraved gold forks.

“She pushed me down the stairs, then left her apartment door ajar, and took the items with her that were reported stolen by her aunt,” I concluded. “And I felt so terrible about the loss of her heirlooms! Martin, can you get that jewelry box open? There were several pieces of jewelry on the list.”

Martin tried, but his fingers were too large to fiddle with the tiny lock. Albertine pushed him aside, retrieved a hairpin from her chignon, and had the lock open in seconds. Among other things in the box were a gold cross with inlaid blue stones and a pearl and ruby necklace and earring set. I thought those had been on the list, but I’d have to ask Inspector Roux to fax it to me. In the meantime, I took more photographs. Then we carefully put everything back where we’d found it, including the gun in its dishtowel, and prepared to visit Inspector Villon to report our discoveries.

He’d have to get a warrant and come back. I did hope the gun was the one that had been used to shoot Mercedes. Perhaps it was also the gun with which Maurice killed himself. Catherine would probably find killing one of us with Maurice’s gun a fine symbolic revenge.

“Oh, and Martin, would you look at some little vials I found in the pantry?” Albertine asked. Martin wanted to leave, but there was no denying Albertine. We went to the kitchen, where we found Charles de Gaulle with his nose in the refrigerator, eating a sausage. On the floor were two rounds of partially eaten cheese.

“Naughty dog,” said Albertine. “He is so clever. We had to have special handles put on our refrigerator. He simply clamps his teeth on an ordinary handle and pulls the door open.”

While Albertine showed Martin two tiny vials of colorless liquid she’d found behind a box of rice in a pantry, I cleaned up the dog’s mess. He hid under the kitchen table, looking out at me sadly because I’d taken the sausage away from him.

“These could be samples of the toxin,” said Martin.

Just in case, I took pictures of those, although they were barely visible between Martin’s very large fingers. I just hoped that we could convince Inspector Villon to seize the evidence before Catherine got home from the meeting and noticed that her refrigerator had been raided, or that something was out of place in her obsessively tidy and austere apartment.

Inspector Villon was
too busy to see us—no surprise there. Albertine tried to make an appointment, but I was tired of being a suspect, so I took Charles de Gaulle, just in case there were criminals lurking in the hallways, and marched off in search of the inspector’s office with two policemen chasing me, shouting in French, and Albertine behind them. The five of us piled into Villon’s office in a noisy clump. Evidently Martin, now worried about his possession and use of Catherine’s key, had stayed behind, or perhaps decamped entirely.

Over the babble of the pursuing officers, who were now trying to explain why they hadn’t been able to keep me out, I said loudly, “Inspector Villon, Madam Guillot and I have discovered who shot Mercedes Lizarreta.”

“That is no longer of interest to me,” he snarled, “since, as your husband warned, the young woman has left the city without filing charges. I shall, however, determine whether you frightened her away. That, too, is a crime.”

I plopped myself down on a chair, so clearly angry that the dog pushed his head onto the desk and growled on my behalf. Villon gave an order to his subordinates, but they backed away. When the order was repeated in booming tones, they drew guns, upon which Albertine placed herself in the line of fire and railed at them in French. She took no time to translate, so I turned back to Inspector Villon.

“You don’t care that a murderer is at large? She’s killed one man in Lyon, a professor who ate poisoned pâté she meant for us. This morning we found what may be vials of it in her pantry. She tried to run my husband down with her car. On another day she lured me to her apartment and pushed me down the stairs, then took away some possessions of hers so that it would look like a robbery. We found those items in her apartment here in Avignon.