Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) (9 page)

As they got closer to the assembly room voices could be heard—some high-pitched, others rapid-fire whispers—but all silenced when the judge and two police officers entered the room.

“Good morning and thank you for coming on a Sunday,” Bruno Paulik said. Those gathered—twenty-some-odd who had been present at Professor Moutte’s party or who had worked with the deceased—stared at the former rugby player, some of them with half-eaten cookies in their mouths. Verlaque stayed silent, enjoying the impression that his six-two, 210-pound bald commissioner was making.

“We’ll begin by talking with all of you together, followed by individual interviews. As Officer Cazal has informed you, you’ll be expected to remain here for the day, and if you are planning to leave Aix this week, please let her know where you can be reached.”

“I have research to do at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris later in the week!” complained a well-dressed middle-aged man with chiseled cheekbones and thick white hair.

“Ah, come off it, Bernard, you can do your research anytime!” a woman answered. She looked Italian or Spanish to Verlaque, and like her colleague had also been blessed with abundant, thick hair, all of it still black.

“But my train ticket is booked!”

“Paris is no problem, just leave us a number where we can get
ahold of you,” Paulik quickly replied before any other interruptions could be made. “Most of you present this morning were at Professor Moutte’s party on Friday night. The doyen was murdered sometime early Saturday morning, just a few hours after the party. My first question is, who was the last person to leave the party?”

“I was,” the Italian-looking woman spoke, her voice loud and self-assured. “My name is Annie Leonetti. I’m a theology professor. I heard Georges—Dr. Moutte—tell his housekeeper that she could go home and come back in the morning to do the dishes.”

“And so you stayed late to help the doyen?”

“No,” Dr. Leonetti replied. “I stayed late to help out the maid. I took the dirty wineglasses into the kitchen and helped wrap up the leftovers.”

“Okay,” Paulik said. “What did you speak of with the doyen?”

“No doubt his surprise retirement postponement,” the white-haired professor said, quietly but loud enough for those close to Verlaque and Paulik to hear.

“Certainly not, Bernard!” Leonetti replied. Then, looking at Paulik and then Verlaque, she added, “We only spoke of the merits of cling wrap versus aluminum foil.”

“Did he tell you that he was going to the office after cleaning up?” Verlaque asked.

Annie Leonetti paused for the briefest of seconds, Verlaque noted, before replying.

“He did mention it, yes.”

“Did that not seem unusual to you? Given the late hour?”

“No, not really,” she answered. “He had no family to look after, and he often worked late. But when I left just after midnight he was still in the kitchen. We didn’t leave together.”

“Thank you,” Verlaque replied. He wondered how Annie Leonetti
knew that the doyen often worked late. She also sounded resentful of the fact that he had “no family to look after.” She was a beautiful woman, with olive skin and thick red lips, but her sparkling brown eyes had dark circles under them. He thought of the modern professor’s life—publish or perish—and imagined that she might have small children at home.

“So no one saw Dr. Moutte leave his apartment early Saturday morning? Or did he mention it to anyone that night? The fact that he may have had some late-night work to do?” Paulik asked.

The assembly remained silent, some of them looking at each other in hopes of hearing someone speak, others looking into their coffee cups.

“He did tell me that he was meeting Giuseppe Rocchia, but he didn’t say when,” the handsome Bibliothèque nationale researcher said, quite unnecessarily, thought Verlaque.

“Bernard!” Annie Leonetti again chastised her colleague. “That could have been anytime!”

“The policeman did ask what we talked about. I’m Bernard Rodier, by the way.” He looked over at Annie Leonetti and added, “I too teach theology, but I’m mainly a researcher and writer.” Annie Leonetti sighed and rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling. Rodier went on, “You may be familiar with my volumes on the Cistercian order…they’re in most good bookshops, even on Amazon…”

“Thank you, Dr. Rodier,” Verlaque quickly answered. “We’ve been given a list of those of you who have keys to this building and will begin our interviews with you, for obvious reasons.” He was already getting tired of the bickering between Drs. Leonetti and Rodier and wanted to remind the professors that their boss had been murdered only two nights ago.

“I’ll call you in one at a time to the office across the hall from
this room,” Officer Cazal said. “There will be sandwiches provided for you at noon, so please don’t leave the building until you have been interviewed. We’ll start alphabetically.”

“
C’est pas vrai
!” moaned the doyen’s secretary. “I’ll be last! My name starts with a Z! But surely you don’t need to interview me? I didn’t even stay long at the party.”

“No exceptions, I’m sorry, Mademoiselle. You have a key to the building, don’t you?” Paulik asked.

“Yes, of course I do!” she replied, her hands on her narrow hips. “But Dr. Moutte could have let in his murderer!”

Paulik stared at the young secretary with something close to disbelief. “We’ll still need to interview you. We should be through by six.”

The secretary sighed, and Paulik added, “You can work upstairs in your office, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Verlaque imagined that Mlle Z. had either been planning on leaving early or was nervous about being interviewed. He left the assembly room and walked across that hall to a small office that appeared to be the kind that was used by graduate students or for small meetings. The desk was 1960s metal and in a few years would probably be considered vintage and be sold in antique stores in the sixth arrondissement in Paris. Three mismatched chairs had been placed in the room, along with a stack of paper and two pencils. Extra office supplies, most of the boxes half-opened, were stacked on the floor in a corner, as were the parts of a dusty plastic coffee machine.

Paulik came and sat down across from Verlaque. “Does anyone in that room like each other?”

“I was thinking the same thing, although we only heard from the same three people.”

Officer Cazal poked her blond head in the room and said, “The first interviewee is ready if you are.”

Verlaque nodded. A woman in her late sixties with outdated wire-rimmed glasses and neat, short auburn hair stood in the door and looked at Paulik and then at Verlaque.

“Hello, Judge,” she said. “Since I’m here on official business we won’t speak of your routine practice of breaking my daughter’s heart.”

Antoine Verlaque looked up over his reading glasses at Mme Florence Bonnet. She smiled.

“I seem to be a suspect,” she said. “By the simple fact that as a semiretired theology professor I have a key to the building. Plus I hated Georges Moutte, but no one has known that until now.”

“P
lease sit down,” Verlaque said, motioning to a chair but not returning Mme Bonnet’s forced smile. “This is my commissioner, Bruno Paulik.”

Florence Bonnet took her seat and looked at Paulik, adjusting her glasses as if to see him better. She smiled—obviously liking what she saw—and then said, “We’re a motley crew in the Theology Department, aren’t we?” Verlaque hid his smile and liked Mme Bonnet a little more.

“We did get the impression that not many of the theologians actually get along,” he answered. “At least those who spoke up during the meeting.”

Mme Bonnet made no acknowledgment of the judge’s hint and continued. “That was Georges Moutte’s fault.” Both men leaned forward, interested. “Moutte played cat and mouse with his professors. He left me alone—I think that he was a little afraid of me.” She smiled openly at the thought of it. “Both Drs. Leonetti
and Rodier are under a fair amount of stress right now,” she added, wanting to give the policemen a better impression of her department. “Georges was going to retire at the end of the school year, and Annie and Bernard were up for the post. But Georges would play the other professors off of each other, promising one a full professorship and then giving it to someone else. He even did the same thing with the graduate students, dangling the Dumas prize in front of their noses, hinting at who would win, that sort of thing.”

“Was the Dumas that big of a deal?” Paulik asked. What he really wanted to add was
that someone would kill for it?
Mme Bonnet looked at Paulik and then at Verlaque, her eyebrows raised.

“Have you heard of the Prix de Rome?”

Verlaque nodded but it was Paulik who replied, “The prize given to artists and architects to study in Rome?”

“Yes. Well, the Dumas was almost that prestigious. A cash prize of fifty thousand euros to enable a scholar to study; a furnished apartment here in Aix, just downstairs from the doyen’s apartment; travel expenses paid in case your research takes you to Jerusalem or to Dublin; and something on your résumé that’s invaluable.”

“And will no doubt lead to future employment,” Verlaque added.

“Almost certainly.”

“And the fellowship has been in existence since when?” Verlaque asked.

“Since 1928, when Father Jules Dumas left the family fortune to us.”

“Could you explain to me how a French university was allowed to keep a Theology Department going after 1905?” Verlaque asked.

Mme Bonnet peered at the judge and thought twice before answering, not because she didn’t know the answer but because he hadn’t said
please
.

“In 1905, as you know, a separation of church and state was declared. The university Theology Departments across France were closed, save in Alsace because it was German at that time, and this small department in Aix, thanks to one savvy Dr. Roland Dumas, uncle of Jules. Those wishing to study theology had to do so in a History, or even Law, Department. Fortunately the Dumas family was wealthy beyond belief, and even in 1905 money spoke loudly. The fact that one uncle was a cardinal and another a politician helped. The department was granted autonomy if they could prove to the state that they would be totally self-funded. The family had made enough money and wise investments that this was easy to affirm, and the scholarship has been granted yearly without a break since 1928, except during the occupation of the south of France from 1942 to ’45.”

Verlaque asked, “And how long will it keep going on?”

Florence Bonnet shifted in her seat. “Ah, with God’s will…many years to come…”

Verlaque cut in. “So there remains quite a bit of money.”

“Enough,” Mme Bonnet answered, clearing her throat.

“You’re the treasurer of the Dumas Committee,” Paulik said, looking at his notes.

“Yes. We’re having a meeting at the end of the week, as a matter of fact.”

Verlaque knew that Florence Bonnet was hiding something, but he wanted to get her to continue talking of the murdered Georges Moutte.

“You said that you hated the doyen,” Verlaque said.

“Well…‘hate’ may have been too strong a word. He wasn’t
good at his job and I think he knew it—so he used fear and false promises as weapons. I hated that part of him, yes. I didn’t value his scholarship either…he was a Cluny specialist but he rarely published, and when he went up to Cluny it seemed to me it was more for the Burgundian wine and food than for research. But I suppose I didn’t hate the man.”

“He would have made enemies treating people like that,” Verlaque said. “But enough to be killed for it?”

Mme Bonnet’s face became rigid at the word “killed,” smoothing out the many wrinkles of her extremely tanned face. Marine’s parents were great walkers, and unlike their daughter, they adored the sun.

“Perhaps in a rage?” Mme Bonnet suggested. “You’re the policemen. Are people capable of such acts?”

“In a rage, yes,” Paulik answered.

“Well, Bernard Rodier was certainly in a huff at the party, but not in a rage,” she offered.

“Tell us more about the party, Dr. Bonnet,” Paulik said.

“I couldn’t hear what they were saying—Georges and Bernard, that is—the harp was ringing in my right ear. We all heard Georges yell at Bernard, ‘And my decision will be final!’ and then Bernard left, slamming the door. But we’ve all slammed doors on Georges Moutte, myself included. And then Georges made his announcement that he was not going to retire just yet, or anytime soon. This must be what he told Bernard, which is why, we all assumed, Bernard left the way he did. But you should ask Dr. Rodier himself.”

“What time did you leave the party?” asked Verlaque. Mme Bonnet raised her eyebrows but did not question why she was being asked for an alibi.

“Early, right after Bernard left. I was home by ten-thirty, and my husband—Marine’s father,” she said, as if wanting to remind
the judge of his ties to the Bonnet family, “was waiting up for me. We drank some herbal tea, read for an hour or so, and then turned out the lights and slept until 8:00 a.m.”

“Do you think it odd that Dr. Moutte would leave his apartment so late, after a party, and walk across town to his office?”