Murder in Passy (8 page)

A door opened. Irati’s aunt motioned her inside, then padded down the hallway.

A twentyish man with dark curly hair and thin black-framed glasses blocked the doorway. Weak-chinned and with a questioning look. “But I’ve never seen you before,” he lisped:
hair on the tongue
was the old saying. “Who are you?”

Robbé, the fiancé, stared at her, a mixture of alarm and irritation on his pale face.

“Some confusion. I’m sorry, Irati’s aunt presumed I came from the family.” She stepped forward. “We didn’t meet last night. I’m Aimée Leduc.”

“So
you’re
the one!”

Whatever Robbé was implying didn’t sound good.

“Irati’s too shaken to see anyone now,” he said, “as you can imagine.” He turned toward the door.

“I’m sorry, of course. I understand.”

He hesitated, a thaw in his voice. “But I’ll mention that you came.”

From what she’d seen of the ground floor layout, Xavierre would have used this hallway to reach the garden. So would the murderer.

She had to get information. No doubt he could shed some light.

“It’s terrible, Robbé,” she said. “Who would do this?”

“Talk to the
flics
,” he said.

“Maybe you’re unaware of the terrible allegation against Morbier. That he’s a suspect. Can you tell me—”

“That’s the
real
reason you’re here,
non?
” he interrupted. “Not sympathy and flowers. A tragedy, and you’re asking questions?”

She hadn’t expected this.

“He’s the jealous type, I heard,” Robbé said.

Anger flushed her cheeks. “Morbier was working in Lyon on a case.”

Aimée heard footsteps, the creaking of the wooden floor. Irati—still in the red silk skirt, now wrinkled, her blouse halfunbuttoned—leaned against the door frame. For support, Aimée figured, given her vacant look and shaking fingers.

“Can I help, Irati? Why don’t you lie down?” Aimée said. “We can talk.… ”

“You told me so yourself,” Irati said. “Jealous bastard. I hope he rots in hell.”

Did she really believe that? Instead of being struck mute by tragedy, Irati’s voice was edged with anger.

“But you know that’s not true, Irati,” she said. “Morbier loved your mother.”

“Do I?” Her lip quivered. “I can’t think any more,” she said, clenching her fist. “I don’t want to.”

Robbé put his arm around Irati’s shoulder. “Can’t you see the strain you’re putting on Irati? You’d better leave.”

“Robbé, let me handle this,” said Irati, shrugging him off.

“Someone was here, Irati. A man. You must remember. The noises?”

“What?” Her legs wobbled.

Aimée reached to steady her, but Irati batted her arm away. Anger and fear suffused her pale face. Afraid to reveal what really went on? The bouquet fell, scattering gardenia petals over the Turkish carpet runner.

“
Je regrette,
I didn’t mean to.… ” Her voice was tinged with remorse.

Aimée sensed a chink in Irati’s confusion. A chance to push for the truth.

“Did Xavierre’s argument with this man get loud, so you shooed the guests away? Did you end the party early because of it?” she asked. “Did he threaten your mother, then you?”

“Who?”

“The man whose blood I found on the gravel.”

Irati burst into sobs.

Robbé’s hand clutched Aimée’s arm and he pulled her down the hallway. “Look, last night we told the police everything,” Robbé said. “And again today.”

“Then you can explain. Who was he?”

“But there was a party, a house full of guests,” Robbé said, his lisp more pronounced. “We’ve cooperated. They told us a suspect’s in custody.”

“Why can’t you understand, Robbé?” she asked, exasperated. “They’ve got the wrong person. Irati needs to tell the truth.”

“Truth? As if we don’t have enough to deal with right now? Canceling the wedding, relatives struck with grief, now we have to bury her.… ”

Helplessness emanated from him.

“Overwhelming, I know. But …” She grabbed at a straw. “… I never saw a catering truck.” He blinked. “Now you’re talking about caterers? You’re crazy.”

He edged away, shaking his head.

“What about the other Mercedes I saw parked in the driveway?”

“That’s it. I’m getting a restraining order. Get out.” He muttered something. A Basque curse by the sound of it. Slammed the door and locked it.

Closing ranks against outsiders. Again that smell of fear, like Irati. She’d hit a stone wall. Played her cards and got nothing. She counted on Irati’s aunt proving more helpful.

“Don’t start with me, Mademoiselle,” said Cybèle, hands on her hips in the dining room. “My husband’s ill; I only arrived from Bayonne this morning,” she said. “What do I know? Why should I be bothered about Irati’s wedding? Xavierre, bless her soul”—she paused, making the sign of the cross—“I don’t circulate in her chichi crowd. Growing up, we never did either. We were just sheepherding Basques.”

A troubled look creased Cybèle’s brow. “The Basques say if you don’t believe in a law, don’t break it; simply sidestep it.” Cybèle shrugged. “I hadn’t seen Xavierre for months. But I tell you, all she talked about was this wedding and that Morbier. What we call
destino
, that fate meant them to meet again.”

She moved closer to Aimée. “Was it a crime
passionnelle
? I’m not condoning it, I tell you, but if it happened.… ”

Aimée shook her head. “He’s my godfather and I’d never seen him so happy. A different person when they were together. I saw them laughing, in love.… ” she said. “Morbier’s devastated. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Who does? They say if the gods bless you with a great passion once in your life, you just endure the rest.” A wistful look filled Cybèle’s eyes. “I discovered police instead of wedding preparations,” she said. “Did anyone think to inform me?” A snort.

So she could tell Aimée little. Back to zero: no one knew anything or would talk to her.

“Not even Agustino’s here.” Cybèle sighed. “Always an empty stomach, that one.” She gestured to an abstract on the wall, in a similar vein to the paintings in the hallway.

“This painter?”

“You know him?”

Aimée didn’t, but nodded to keep her talking. The painting breathed life. Slashes of color, yet one could almost feel the heat, grit, and dust and hear the silver-green olive leaves rustle in a dry wind.

“Who’d have thought he’d become a Basque icon?” Cybèle expelled air from her mouth. “The old guard, Xavierre called him,” she said, a tinge of disgust in her voice. “Just an aging
enfant terrible
who abhors politics now. Those old revolutionaries called themselves freedom fighters once.”

Drawn to the painting, Aimée wondered at Cybèle’s words. The mingled loss and despair in her voice. A brief hint of the past, something shared. Had there been more to their relationship?

“What do you mean, Cybèle?” she asked.

“That was another time, under Franco’s dictatorship,” she said. “We were young. Not that I helped much, stuck on the farm nursing my mother.” A little smile. “Young, like you.”

“So you’re saying Agustino’s sympathies—”

“Sympathies?” Cybèle interrupted. “The cause. Everyone wanted change, independence. Down in Bayonne, Xavierre, all the students, demonstrated to release Basque prisoners, protested the arrests in France. The daily arrests. Torture in Spanish police stations across the border. It was the times. We wanted to liberate the French Basque prisoners.”

Now it made sense. ETA—
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna
—the Basque nationalist separatist group. Outlawed and regarded as terrorists by both France and Spain.

“You mean the ETA?”

“I never said that.” Cybèle’s jaw tightened. Her work-worn hands busied themselves on the table. “I’ve got no more to say.”

Now she’d lost her.

“But such power in Agustino’s work,” she said, “such force. It’s beautiful.”

Cybèle gave a snort of disgust. “Agustino lives off fat commissions,” she said, unable to resist one last dig. “A
très important
artist in residence at the Le Corbusier Foundation.”

Aimée felt something warm being put into her hand. Caught the whiff of butter. Inside the blue cloth, tied up parcel-like, she saw the light brown crusted
gâteau
Basque. “You understand respect; you came to make proper condolences in your own way, Mademoiselle. I know that. And you, you’re too thin.”

Thin? She’d gained a kilo during her recuperation.

“Merci.”

She shouldered her bag, scanning the room, the entry to the kitchen. No telephone. “My phone’s out of battery,” she said. “I’m late for an appointment. May I use yours?”

Cybèle gave her a piercing look, shrugged, then pulled a bronze metallic cell phone from the pocket of her skirt. “As if I remember how to use this.”

“My colleague’s got the same model.” Aimée made a show of hitting buttons. “
Non,
I think to call out you push this.” She kept the phone cupped in her hand while she scrolled down the contacts list until she found Irati’s number.

“Busy.” She clicked off. “
Merci,
Madame. I’ll catch a taxi.”

Outside on the path, she bent down to adjust her stocking. A green hose, coiled like a snake, dripped near the bushes. The damp butterscotch-colored limestone gravel crunched under her boots. The traces of the bloodstains from last night had been washed away.

Still, she scooped a handful into her pocket and with her black kohl eye pencil jotted Irati’s number on her palm while she still remembered it. She shivered, but not from the cold. Irati stood in the upstairs window, a phone to her ear, watching her.

Tuesday Afternoon

A
GUSTINO STROKED THE
canvas with his horsehair brush, leaving a swirl of dusky orange. He wiped the perspiration beading his neck, stepped back, and surveyed the tall canvas, his commission for the Guggenheim in Bilbao. A quiet sense of exhilaration ran through him. Ten hours of painting today in the studio already, and he could work five more.

Now in his mid-fifties, his wavy black hair threaded with gray, he carried a slight paunch and survived on cat naps. He felt alive, focused as always, when his work flowed. He’d almost captured the dance of light, evoked the tingling pine-resin scent, the indigo shadow tinting the Pyrénées valley.

More ochre, he decided.

He reached for his fine-point Kolonosky sable-hair brush, visualizing an arc for the curve. But his paint-encrusted fingertips came back with a brush tipped by hard-caked burnt sienna. The earth tones flaked over his palette. Ruined. His best brush, ruined! Jorge hadn’t cleaned it.

Jorge was late, too. He’d sent him out for pigment hours ago. The nineteen-year-old slept in the atelier in return for doing errands and cleaning up. Frustrated, Agustino pushed aside the dry jars, wanting to capture the line, to keep this rush. He searched behind the pestle where he ground dry pigments. Not there. He tried to remember where he’d stored his stock of brushes.

Where had he put them?

Shadows of fallen maple leaves on the glass-paned roof dappled the paint-spattered concrete floor. The odor of turpentine wafted from half-empty cans. Dustballs furred in the corners. He realized Jorge hadn’t cleaned up in days. The atelier looked a mess. Pushing aside his irritation, he kept looking for the fine brush he needed for the crucial line.

The glass-walled atelier contained no closets, no storage; just southern exposure and light. Radiant light. When the clouds parted in the pearl-gray sky, he uttered inner thanks for the residency program. Not to mention the prestige, the commissions coming his way. Shoving easels aside, he found the trunks with supplies in the corner: charcoal sticks, tubes of Sennelier pigment, old frames he’d picked up at the flea market.

Somewhere … where had he put those brushes?

He tied back his paint-spattered shirttails and bent down behind an easel. Pulling open his grandfather’s old leather trunk, he found his brushes strewn inside. His slow burn of anger notched higher. Why couldn’t this boy respect materials? Agustino kept his tail sable-hair brushes, costing several hundred francs each, protected and ordered by size. With care, he gathered up the fine-tipped brushes.

Below were bulging navy blue canvas bags. Like postal sacks.
IMPRIMERIE NATIONALE
was stenciled on the blue canvas.

Startled, Agustino opened a bag. Hundreds of small official printed documents.

He leaned back on his haunches, stunned. Then looked closer.

French passports, vehicle-registration forms, identity cards. All freshly minted with official stamps, and without names. Blank.

Worth a fortune if authentic. And he had no doubt they were.

How had they gotten here? Besides himself, only Jorge and the half-senile concierge of the Arts Foundation complex had a key. Foreboding weighted his chest.

Jorge. He’d ignored the telltale signs, wanting to believe him, to give him another chance.