Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) (28 page)

Marine squealed in delight as they drove along the road,
sometimes from awe at the view of the sparkling sea, sometimes from fear of the road’s sheer drop into the sea. At the entrance to the village, Verlaque pulled the car over in front of a small yellow hotel and turned off the ignition. “Here it is,” he said. “Let’s hope the same family still owns it.”

They walked in arm and arm, and a young man in his midthirties with thick black curly hair greeted them. Verlaque asked in English if they had a room, and Marine wandered around, looking at the varied collection of paintings and prints and Italian ceramics that adorned the small lobby. The young man informed Verlaque that they did have a room, with a sea view, that included breakfast at 9:00 a.m. sharp. Verlaque looked at the man, who was dressed in what looked like California surfer attire, and finally said, “Alessandro?”

“Sì.”

“It’s me, Antoine. Emmeline and Charles Verlaque’s grandson. We used to come here, with my brother, in the seventies. You were just a kid, about seven or so.”

The man slapped his forehead and came around the desk, embracing Verlaque and calling to the kitchen. “Mamma! Papà! È Antoine Verlaque! Il nipote d’Emmeline e Charles!”

An elderly couple hurried out of the kitchen, the father, gray haired with a big handlebar mustache, wiping his hands on his white apron. “Salve!”

They embraced Verlaque. “Is this Mme Verlaque?” the signora asked, looking at Marine.

Marine laughed. “I’m his girlfriend,” she answered in Italian. “And sometimes we work together.”

The signora said something else in Italian and Verlaque looked to Marine for a translation. “The signora says that she misses your grandmother,” Marine said.

Verlaque smiled and said, “Grazie.”

“Are you a lawyer, Antoine? You always wanted to be one,” Alessandro asked.

“Yes. A judge, actually.”

Alessandro translated for his parents and his father whistled.

“And this is Dottore Bonnet, my girlfriend,” Verlaque continued. “She’s a law professor, who, as you noticed, speaks very good Italian.”

“
Permesso
,” the father said as he took Marine by the arm and led her into the kitchen, which, from what Verlaque could see through the open door, hadn’t changed since he was a boy. In the middle of the room stood a surface used for rolling pasta that was simply an old wooden table covered in Carrara white marble, and above it hung copper pots, and all along the sides green-painted wooden cabinets held dozens of mismatched earthenware.

“And Séb?” asked Alessandro, who had one eye on the kitchen and Marine. “What’s he up to? He wanted to be a doctor when we were kids.”

“Ah, he’s a real estate mogul.”

Alessandro winced. “Don’t mention that in front of my parents,” he answered. “They’ve been trying all their lives to protect this little bit of coast.”

“They’re right to do so,” Verlaque said. “By the way, your English is fantastic.”

“Thanks. I’ve learnt it entirely from our Anglo clients. And our elementary school teacher in the village, she was nuts for it.” Alessandro stood back and reached out his arms. “‘Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.’”

“Wonderful!” Verlaque exclaimed. “Shelley?”

“Good guess. It’s Shakespeare, from
The Tempest
, but it was engraved on Shelley’s grave.”

“Well done!” Verlaque said. Taking Alessandro aside, he whispered, so that the diners couldn’t hear, “Does Giuseppe Rocchia, the television theology guru, have a summer house here?”

Alessandro nodded. “His wife does, it’s been in her family for years. It’s at the bottom of the via D. H. Lawrence.”

Verlaque laughed. “I had forgotten that the streets are named for the English writers who loved it here. Do you know Signora Rocchia well?”

“Sure I do. She eats here almost once a week when she’s at the house, and she and Mamma share gardening tips. They’re great friends.”

“Is she a woman of her word?” Verlaque asked. “I mean, do you trust her?”

“On my life,” Alessandro answered without hesitating.

“Thank you. I’ll put our bags in our room, if I may, and have a quick shower before dinner. You can send Marine up when your parents are through with their tour.”

“Sure thing. Papà adores French women, and one who speaks Italian, well…”

Verlaque took the bags and the room key, started up the stairs, and turned back when he was halfway up. He surveyed the entry, thankful that not a thing had been touched. There was color and warmth everywhere. “Hey Alessandro. Does your father still make those deep-fried cod fritters as a starter?”

“Yep. They’re on tonight’s menu.”

“Heaven help me.”

“T
he bed and breakfast where I stayed with Sylvie and Charlotte was around here, I recognize this road,” Marine said as she flattened the map on her knees and looked out the window at the green rolling hills just south of Assisi. “It was owned by this guy, Piero, whom Sylvie was convinced was Saint Francis of Assisi reincarnated.”

Verlaque puffed on an 898, which he usually smoked when he was alone because although he loved its flavor he didn’t like the look of a man of his thick build holding a long, thin, delicate-looking cigar. He stole a glance at Marine and smiled. “Why? Piero liked animals?”

“Oh yes, he loved animals, but it wasn’t only that. Piero had given up his fast-paced life in Rome to move to the country, just as Saint Francis had given up his soldiering and lofty inheritance. Both their mothers were French, from Provence…”

“Really?”

“Yes, weird coincidence, eh? And there were animals, dozens of them. Piero had this huge walk-in birdcage that Charlotte
loved, but it freaked Sylvie and me out. He called the birds ‘flying bits of color.’ He had this otherworldliness to him.” She looked at the landscape that was still very green but had suddenly turned flat. “According to the map we should be in Foligno any minute.”

Once in Foligno they parked their car in the small downtown, beside a short, squat, red-stoned Romanesque church. “Just a quick peek!” Marine said as she hopped out of the car and ran into the church. Verlaque went up to the parking meter and by the time he had figured out how to use it and fumbled in his pockets, and then in the car, for change, Marine was back.

“Did you find an Annunciation?” he asked.

“Yes! And Mary was beaming! Really, really happy!” Marine put her arm through Verlaque’s and they walked toward the imposing duomo, built from a pale pink stone.

“If we find this art museum on the main square we can ask to speak to a curator or the director about a glassworks around here,” Verlaque said.

“You’ll have to buy me lunch first. Mamma’s fresh-squeezed orange juice and chocolate-filled croissant was a long time ago.”

“I don’t know how you could have eaten that croissant,” Verlaque said, squeezing Marine’s arm and bringing her close to him so that a cyclist could pass. “Leave it to the Italians to take something that’s perfectly fine and then stuff it full of gooey chocolate.”

“And then sprinkle sugar on top! You missed out, darling.”

Verlaque laughed and looked at his watch. “It’s 1:15, so everyone at the museum will be at lunch. Best we do the same, but let’s just order one dish, not the full menu.”

They walked onto the main square and looked up at the cathedral in wonder. To the left was a museum, the building marked as the Palazzo Trinci. It was indeed closed for lunch and would reopen at 3:00 p.m. “Okay, let’s do a tour of the restaurants,” Verlaque said.

Marine turned to grab Verlaque’s hand, but he was already walking toward the other side of the square. He stopped to look at a menu that a restaurant had posted next to their front door. “A restaurant on the main square? Aren’t you breaking Antoine’s rule number one?” she asked as she got to his side.

Verlaque took her hand and led her away. “You’re right. Let’s get off the square.”

Marine rubbed her stomach. “I’m going to sit down on that bench over there, beside the old lady, while you find us a restaurant. I know you’ll be fussy about music and plastic chairs, and I’m too hungry to care about those things right now.”

“Give me five minutes,” Verlaque said.

They left the restaurant at 3:30 p.m. “I’m so full I can hardly walk,” Marine complained halfheartedly, laughing. Indeed, they had ordered the five-dish tasting menu, which ended up being seven dishes, the restaurant’s owner thrilled by their enthusiasm and Marine’s beauty. Once sitting down at a table that was located beside the bar—lined with local wines and a collection of restaurant guidebooks—Marine had reasoned that it was financially wiser to order the tasting menu than à la carte, while Verlaque claimed that he wanted everything on that day’s menu anyway, so ordering the set menu made things easier.

The palazzo was a fabulous medieval palace that had been restored with the help, by the looks of it, of a contemporary architect from Milan or Rome: large glass doors filled in the archways, and the lighting was sleek and discrete. Marine spoke to a bored-looking woman at the front desk and, announcing that she was with a French judge, asked to see the museum’s director.

“She’s really angry that we didn’t phone first,” Marine said as she joined Verlaque on a leather bench.

Verlaque looked around at the long hallway in front of them
and the exhibition room at the end of it, both empty of people. “Yeah, this place is really busy. She might have to get up off her ass and do something.”

Marine sighed, not wanting one of his anti–civil servant rampages. What she really wanted to do was to lie flat on the bench and close her eyes. She leaned her head against Verlaque’s shoulder and was just falling asleep when she heard voices and felt a nudge. A tall, thin man with gray hair that was a tad too long stood before them with his hand outstretched. “Good afternoon,” he said in perfect French. “I am Dottore Camorro. Sorry to have kept you waiting. Please come with me.” Verlaque glanced at Marine and wondered if she was thinking the same thing: that considering they had come to the Dottore unannounced, he was more than polite. He led them into his upstairs office, every bit as minimalist as the downstairs had been. He gestured to two black leather chairs. “Please, sit down.”

“Thank you for meeting with us, Dottore,” Verlaque said. “I am the examining magistrate of Aix-en-Provence, and this is Dr. Marine Bonnet of the University of Aix. We are here, on very short notice I’m afraid, to investigate some potential leads we have concerning the murder of one of Dr. Bonnet’s colleagues, a Dr. Moutte.”

The museum director frowned and nodded up and down. “You’ll have to go on, Judge. I’m afraid I’ve never heard of this man.”

“We’re here, essentially, because Dr. Moutte collected art glass, and we know that he visited Foligno, possibly more than once.”

“Ah, I see,” replied Camorro, rubbing his long hands together, which Marine noticed were trembling slightly.

“We found in the deceased’s apartment, among some rare and expensive French blown glass, some obvious fakes that were
perhaps made here. Do you know of such a place in or near Foligno?”

Dottore Camorro shrugged. “No, not in Foligno. Surely Venice would be the place for glass studios, Judge.”

“That’s what we thought, but we know that Dr. Moutte was here, in Foligno.”

Camorro looked from Verlaque to Marine and again shrugged. “I’m sorry I cannot help you. And now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a meeting in ten minutes that I must prepare for.” The director stood up and shook hands with Marine and Verlaque.

“Thank you,” Marine said as she shook his hand. “This is a beautiful building,” she added. “Have you been the director here for very long?”

“Ah, for ten years, Dr. Bonnet. I’m glad you like the renovations. They took four long years to complete.”

“It’s lovely.”

Verlaque held the door open for Marine as they left the museum and walked out onto the square, which was slowly getting dark. “I don’t understand,” Verlaque said. “You’d think that he would know of the glass studio. Maître Fabre’s information must have been wrong, poor old guy.”

“Oh, there’s a glass studio here, all right,” Marine answered, stopping in the middle of the square. “And I also think that if we were to slowly turn around we would see Dottore Camorro watching us from the plate glass windows of his sleek office. Who has better eyesight?”

“You do. I’ll sweep you in my arms and kiss you, and you look over my shoulder at his office.” Verlaque took Marine in his arms and kissed the side of her head. She whispered into his ear. “Bingo. He was there, clear as day. He’s gone now.”

Verlaque took her arm and they walked away. “How did you know all this?” he asked.

“That old woman on the bench.”

“What?”

“I asked her if there was a glass studio in Foligno, and said that I was tired of majolica pottery and that I wanted to buy glass. She said that there’s a glass studio outside of town on the way to Bevagna, and that her great-nephew even worked there for a short time, but he left because it was
sporco
.”

Verlaque looked at her with his eyebrows raised.