The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe (8 page)

“In what way?”

“You’re no longer sneezing. I told you the vitamins were effective.”

“In what way did Dugain help you?” Anne Marie put the mug of coffee—weak and instant—down on the cluttered desk.

“He had friends—and I needed a place to be by myself and to do a lot of thinking. The kind of thinking I’d never had the time to do in thirteen years of marriage.”

“A long time, thirteen years.”

“You’re telling me?” The laugh in her throat caused the silk scarf to bob. “I married late—at thirty. I thought I wanted children.”

“And Dugain?”

“Through a friend of his, Rodolphe Dugain got me a little apartment in Gosier as well as this job. It was the job—the responsibility, the right to be in charge—that really saved me from going mad. Or perhaps just the fact of getting out of the house. I was never meant to be a hausfrau.” She added, “I grew up among boys—three older brothers.”

“You saw Dugain often?”

“From time to time he would come and see me.”

“You played Monopoly?”

She glanced briefly at Anne Marie and the knowing, worn face softened. “I’ve no illusions about men, West Indian or European, here or anywhere else.”

“Spoiled and selfish?”

“They give little and they always want something in return.”

“That’s what they say about us.”

“My ex-husband—his love of me, his love of the children is selfishness—a very subtle, very cruel form of selfishness, despite the exterior of perfection.”

“What did Dugain want from you?”

“Not Monopoly.” Madame Théodore breathed on the cigarette; the tip glowed. “No bed, no sex. He wasn’t getting it. He knew he never would and so he never asked.” She inhaled. “Perhaps that’s why we became friends. He needed to be admired by intelligent women, and without quite knowing why, I got to like him, I got to know his faults …”

“A womanizer?”

“He liked to think so.” Madame Théodore shrugged. Smoke danced in her eyes, causing them to water. “Rodolphe did something my husband never learned to do. Rodolphe listened to me.” She brushed at her watering eye, caught in the cigarette smoke. “Unlike my husband, Rodolphe Dugain was not perfect. Far from it and, believe me, I found that very, very reassuring.”

“Bouton makes my flesh creep.”

The sensation of heaviness in her belly had grown. She should never have eaten the octopus and now Madame Théodore’s coffee had only made things worse. Anne Marie felt angry and unhappy. She also felt helpless. Her feet were wet and she had started sneezing again. So much for the vitamins.

The tang of ascorbic acid lingered at the edges of her tongue.

Lafitte did not reply. He parked the car at the back of the hospital, near the concrete tonsure of the helicopter pad. It was late afternoon; to the west, the last streaks of color were being drained from the overcast sky. The rain had stopped but puddles in the tarmac threw back the reflection of the hospital lights.

“Bouton must be a zombie.”

“He does a good job,
madame le juge
. You know that. Given the woefully small sum he’s paid for each autopsy, you should be pleased he’s a zombie. Only two qualified pathologists in the
département
and the other doctor refuses to do anything for the
parquet
.”

“A zombie.”

“A motivated zombie.”

Anne Marie glanced at Lafitte and silently wished Trousseau were with her. Trousseau never pretended to be reasonable.

The damp tarmac was carpeted with flame tree blossom.

They stepped through the sliding doors of the main entrance,
to be met by the cold, antiseptic smell of the building. One or two patients shuffled aimlessly about the foyer. They all wore identical tartan slippers.

Anne Marie followed Lafitte down the two flights of stairs into the basement. Her shoes were silent on the rubber floor. She had difficulty keeping up with her companion.

“It’ll soon be over,
madame le juge
,” Lafitte said and grinned over his shoulder.

They came to the hospital morgue.

The grey door was not closed. Lafitte waited for her. Anne Marie brushed past him, not bothering to knock.

“Ah,
madame le juge
.” Dr. Bouton stood up as she entered the room. Light twinkled in the steel frames of his round glasses. He held out his hand, which Anne Marie shook with neither enthusiasm nor warmth.

It was a small, windowless laboratory. Most of the floor space was taken up by two tables made of dull, glinting steel, each with a perforated surface. At the end of each table was a sink. Above each table hung a stainless basin attached to a weighing scale.

Anne Marie could feel her belly lurching.

Overhead, the banks of neon gave off a shadowless light. Dr. Bouton had not yet switched on the long-armed directional lamp that was set directly above the steel tables.

“You have news for me?”

Bouton smelled of ammonia and coffee. He smiled a thin smile. “How’s the little girl?”

“Little girl, Docteur Bouton?”

“Your daughter.”

Anne Marie had difficulty in repressing a sneeze. “Létitia’s doing very well. The
procureur
informed me he’d like me to be present for the autopsy.”

“Létitia—such a pretty name. And what a lovely child.”

“I’m ready when you are, Docteur Bouton.”

“There’s no rush.” He picked up his paper cup from where he had placed it on the table.

“The sooner …”

“Please sit down,
madame le juge
.” He gestured to two hard chairs placed against the walls of glazed tiling. “Like some coffee? Or perhaps something a bit stronger? You look as if you’ve got a cold coming on.”

“I’ve been drinking coffee all afternoon.” Anne Marie glanced at her watch. “It is nearly half past five …”

“Some vitamin C, perhaps? Or if you care for it”—he winked—“I have some firewater in my drawer. For medicinal purposes, you understand.”

Anne Marie asked brusquely, “What have you been able to find out about the girl so far?”

“Once upon a time, Mother Mortis had four daughters—Algor, Livor, Pallor and Rigor.” Bouton opened the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and took out an opaque bottle. It was half-full.

“Neither Monsieur Lafitte nor I are thirsty,” Anne Marie said.

He held up a finger. “To calm your nerves.”

“Tell me what you’ve found out about the nurse.”

“Monsieur Lafitte, a little something to keep the demons away?”

Lafitte eagerly took the paper cup Dr. Bouton gave him.

“Evelyne Vaton?” He pronounced the name as if testing it for poetic resonance.

“Precisely.”

“Algor mortis, livor mortis, pallor mortis and rigor mortis,” he repeated. He turned and pulled a wooden stool toward him. He was wearing loose corduroy trousers. Because of the chill air, he also wore a cardigan with a heraldic badge at the breast pocket. His lab coat and cap hung from a hook on the back of the door. Dr. Bouton had a thin face. His skin was waxy and was pulled tight across the bones of his skull.

“You now have established time of death?”

“You will recall that I was not called to the scene of the crime.” He sounded slightly peeved. “I have Malavoy’s report to go on and as usual, Docteur Malavoy’s done a professional job.” He looked up, but not at Anne Marie. “At the scene of the crime, the medical examiner found no foreign bodies other than sand and insects on the corpse. Everything washed away by the rain and several days’ exposure to the elements. A very professional job in all senses.”

“Professional?” Following the doctor’s glance, Anne Marie turned. She had not seen the other man who was sitting quietly in the corner of the room, on a low wooden stool, like a child who had been reprimanded. A West Indian in his early sixties, with a bald head. He was wearing a suit and staring at the ground. Anne Marie had met Dr.
Malavoy on several occasions; on each, he had struck her as excessively shy.

Dr. Bouton was saying, “Anal or vaginal reading of body temperature is subtracted from the normal body heat of thirty-seven degrees centigrade. You then divide that by one point five and you get a rough idea of the number of hours the person’s been dead. Obviously deducing the time of death through algor mortis is rough and ready—and there are variables. Here in the tropics, a body will cool more slowly than in Europe or North America. On the other hand, the body was exposed on an open beach, with a cool easterly breeze. Also there are differences due to body size. Docteur Malavoy put the time of death at somewhere between eleven o’clock on Sunday night and one in the morning. This would be reasonable. I got back from France last night and didn’t get to see the girl until this morning.” He gestured with his thumb toward the grey metal door in the far wall, and beyond it to the morgue. “My colleague was not available.”

“Why not?”

Dr. Bouton shrugged. “Very strange when you recall time is of the essence in an autopsy. This will be mentioned in my report, you understand. More than three and a half days have elapsed since the presumed time of death. Absolutely imperative a body should be examined with speed. When a body dies, some cells live on. It’s their chemical activity that causes a stiffening of the muscles. By now …” He clicked his tongue in irritation. “By now there can be no sign of rigor mortis.”

Anne Marie nodded.

“I’d go along with Docteur Malavoy.”

Malavoy had got up from his stool and approached the others in silence. He said nothing and did not offer to shake hands. He was wearing a black bowtie.

“Between eleven Sunday night and one in the morning of Monday?”

Dr. Bouton smiled magnanimously. “Give or take twelve hours.”

“And livor mortis?”

“Always in a hurry,
madame le juge
.” There was irritation in his urbane voice. He stood up and went to the wall-phone. “Bring me number two, Léopold. I’ll be starting the autopsy in five minutes.” As he placed the receiver back in its cradle, he said over his shoulder, “Postmortem lividity appears to coincide with the photos I have.”

“Which means?”

“The body, once it was abandoned, was not moved.”

“When was the body abandoned?”

“At death—or soon after.”

“And the dogs the fisherman saw pulling at the corpse?”

Again the blank look—the clever schoolboy amazed at his teacher’s obtuseness. “I wasn’t aware of tooth bites indicating the intervention of a dog.”

“The fisherman was lying?” She glanced at Lafitte who stood with his hip against a wall table, near a camera. The camera had elongated bellows and was attached to a sliding steel rod. Lafitte stood with his arms crossed, a notebook in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other. Like Anne Marie, he was not dressed for the chill air of the laboratory. His face had acquired a yellowish tinge in the bright neon light.

Lafitte caught her glance and wrote something in his notebook.

“Wouldn’t dogs have altered the position of the corpse?”

“Understand,
madame le juge
, that I’ve no more than glanced at the cadaver. In a few minutes, while taking a much closer look …”

“In your opinion, once the body fell to the ground, it remained there until it was discovered?”

“An opinion,
madame
, based on little more than the ME’s preliminary report and a superficial glance. A superficial glance at the body and at the
in situ
photographs.”

Dr. Bouton was interrupted by the arrival of a young assistant. Léopold wore a lab coat that set off the dark skin and regular features of his boyish face. His hair was cut flat, to resemble the deck of an aircraft carrier. He walked with a spring in his step. He shook hands with Anne Marie and Lafitte cheerfully, a twinkle in his eye, and then crossed the room and opened the door to the morgue.

Dr. Bouton went to the sink and scrubbed his hands before putting on his white coat and the round cap.

Anne Marie glanced through the open door, down the long walls of stainless steel lockers. She bit her lip. Each locker was large enough to contain a wheeled stretcher.

“Sure you wouldn’t care for some medicine?”

“Docteur Bouton, I’d like all samples you take signed and countersigned. If there’s going to be a trial, I don’t want our work thrown out for the lack of a signature. And perhaps I could sign the
procès verbal
now.”

“Something to drink? We’re going to be here for a least an hour … if not longer.” He added smugly, “I like to do a thorough job.” He returned the opaque bottle to its cupboard. When he stood erect again, he held out a blanket. “For the cold air,
madame le juge
.”

An Air France blanket. It was bit grubby and could have done with cleaning but Anne Marie was grateful for the warmth it afforded her. Her damp shoes were now deformed.

In a matter-of-fact voice, Bouton said, “I don’t envisage any real difficulties so perhaps you’d like to put on a mask now. And some of this beneath the nose—it can lessen the odor.”

She took the stick of Vick’s vapor rub.

Lafitte took another sip of Bouton’s spirit.

“A few abrasions and bruises, particularly in the genital area and the thighs,” Dr. Bouton said.

Lafitte looked up from the notebook. “You’ve already got an idea of how she was killed?”

“Cause of death?” Dr. Bouton raised an eyebrow, and Anne Marie was reminded of the day he had told her she was pregnant with Létitia. He laughed a dry laugh and then turned as the assistant energetically wheeled the stretcher into the laboratory.

There was a body bag in thin nylon, a zipper running down the front. Léopold opened the fastener and the sound grated on Anne Marie’s ears.

Dr. Bouton rolled a fresh pair of plastic gloves over his dry fingers and he stretched his arms. Like a pianist, Anne Marie thought, before a concert.

“I regret not having been able to get down to Saint-François. Sand samples fail to show the presence of blood. The amount of blood spilled can tell you a lot about the nature and the timing of a wound.” He faced Anne Marie, the percolator in a gloved hand. “Sure you wouldn’t like some coffee?”

The laboratory assistant shifted the body from its bag onto the autopsy table. Bouton switched on the overhead light while with the other hand he refilled his cup of coffee. He drank thoughtfully, his eyes hidden behind the glint of his glasses. “Poor thing.”