Blackbird Fly (16 page)

Then he covered his nose from the stench as he walked
through the house. She felt her heart sink. Would the Inspector
make a case against her? Is that why Arnaud had given her the name
of a criminal lawyer?

From her doorway, Madame Suchet watched, arms across
her ample chest, a frown on her face. After Rancard drove away
Merle swallowed hard and walked across the street toward her. As
she approached the old woman stepped inside and shut her door with
a definitive thud.

“
And a
bonjour
to you too,”
Merle muttered, turning back to the house. Inside the front room
she attempted to open some windows, hitting the sashes with the
heel of her hand. Two complied, revealing generations of moths. She
unlocked the shutters, sweeping the moths outside. She sneezed, and
sneezed again.

A utilitarian space, both sitting and dining, basic,
utilitarian. For a moment she thought she dreamed it, the sunlight
streaming through the dust motes, the footprints across the dusty
floor, the rough beams of the ceiling strung with spider webs. On
the mantel was a small vase, white china painted with a delicate
but unremarkable blue design. It was a cheap thing, yet it had
somehow survived.

Nothing but dead flies inside. Maybe it was Harry’s
mother’s, a relic from her French life. Marie-Emilie had dumped the
last flower out with the water, onto the ground, then set it on the
mantel to say goodbye.

She wandered through the ground floor, eyeing the
piles of grain sacks with disgust. It was soon apparent to her
there was no electricity in the house. Not an outlet or a light
fixture. The only water was rainwater caught in a metal cistern
sitting on hefty posts ten feet off the ground. Gutters off the
roof funneled the water down to it and with a pull on a chain it
flowed into a large washtub on the ground.

The stone house in the backyard was a latrine, an
outhouse complete with rough stone stool topped with a porcelain
ring. A rank odor and a multitude of dead insects as well as their
buzzing descendants filled the small, dirt-floored space. A small,
filthy window at eye level provided light. Merle hurried out into
the garden, gulping air.

Summoning her courage, she mounted the stairs. The
door at the top was stuck. She pulled on it until the doorknob fell
off in her hand. Behind the door she could hear cooing and the
occasional flutter of wings. A regular covey of pigeons, it sounded
like. Back downstairs she pulled out her notebook and began making
a list.

TO DO —
Les choses à faire

Install new locks.

Drag furniture outside and wash.

Drag grain sacks outside.

Patch glass in windows as necessary.

Wash walls and ceilings.

Sweep & wash floors.

Clean chimney/fireplaces.

Fix shutters, paint.

Find roofer.

Arrange electrical hookup.

Ditto water service.

Find electrician.

Find plumber.

Take trash, chair (upstairs junk?) to — dump?

Paint walls.

Replace floorboards.

Wash windows.

Buy beds/furniture.

Plan bathroom.

Call Stasia in Paris.

Jean-Pierre Redier watched her leave the hardware
store with a slip of paper in her hand. The American looked in both
directions, gave the policeman a look as if to thumb her nose at
the French state, then walked south. He flicked his cigarette into
the gutter and followed her.

At the corner she consulted her paper then entered a
building he knew to be Andre Saintson’s, the locksmith. Andre was
an old man who kept a messy shop but he was the only man in town to
change a lock. Jean-Pierre waited, smoking another cigarette in the
doorway to the bistro where he sometimes drank after work. This
block of Malcouziac had defied all efforts by foreigners to
modernize it. Three townhouses were vacant. One had been broken
into and vandalized repeatedly over the years, at least since his
own youth. It was a party venue for the delinquents in town.
Sometimes he had to walk one home after a night of drinking, but
who could blame them? There was nothing to do in this little
town.

This foreigner, this American, had created a problem
however. She was not to be tolerated, according to his uncle. So
Jean-Pierre had the boring job of following the silly woman around
and finding something else to hold her on because apparently murder
wasn’t enough. French law was adaptable. A person, especially a
foreigner, could be held without charges for weeks if necessary.
And according to some plan his uncle had yet to inform him of, it
was necessary to get the American out of the way.

The problem was the inspector. Capitan Montrose was
of the old school, a methodical and rational man who wasn’t likely
to look kindly on any sort of covert action like throwing the woman
in jail for littering. The jails, he had already proclaimed, were
too full as it was, that was why he let her out, sure that she
would obey his order to stay in the village. Let justice take its
course, he said in his arrogant city way. Banned from Paris,
Jean-Pierre thought, or else why would the inspector be assigned to
the death of a
putain
, a whore? There was talk that the
murder had made the newspaper in Bergerac, although Jean-Pierre
doubted it. No one cared about an ugly old whore, least of all city
people.

The old man emerged with the American, his tool box
under his arm. Andre’s face had more lines than a French road map,
from his previous profession as a grape-grower. His family had once
owned the big mansion, the chateau on the hill, now a winery run by
a multinational insurance company. No one liked the company, least
of all the local grape growers who had last year accused them of
importing cheap grapes from South America and calling it French
wine. Nothing proven, but resentment ran high. Last week
Jean-Pierre had run across a group of farmers plotting something in
the parking lot of the village. They had smiled and slapped his
back as if they were just having a friendly chat, but he knew
otherwise.

On Rue de Poitiers, Andre bent over the front door as
the woman talked in what Jean-Pierre knew to be the worst French
ever to come from the mouth of a human. He stood at the corner,
saying good day to an old woman. She looked down the street and in
a second had him all figured out. It was impossible to fool the old
ladies in this town. His mother had known them all, and now they
all knew him.

Suddenly there was the old priest, walking up to him
with that stupid smile. Jean-Pierre tried to nod and turn away but
the old man caught him.

“
Have you found the killer yet,
Monsieur le Gendarme?” Albert asked. He was the only person in town
who didn’t call him by his first name and for that Jean-Pierre gave
him grudging respect. He had no use for priests
normally.

“
Of course,
Pére
. But she had
a Toulouse lawyer and she is out. You see? She is in the house as
she wanted. She got rid of the old woman and it is
hers.”

Albert’s smile fell as he looked down the street.
“Madame Bennett? Oh, you make a joke. She is no more a killer than
you or I.”

Jean-Pierre shrugged. Better to have lost a possible
murderer to a bad system of justice, than to not have found the
killer at all. “She wants the house, she seeks out Madame LaBelle
at the shrine, she pushes her over the cliff.” He dusted off his
hands:
finis
!

Albert frowned at Jean-Pierre. “
Que tu est
fou
,” the old man muttered under his breath as he turned and
walked toward the woman and Andre.

So now he would have to watch the old priest too. For
an old man he had too much interest in things that did not concern
him. Even his uncle the mayor had mentioned the meddlesome nature
of Pére Albert who had come to the gendarmerie to plead a case for
Madame Bennett. The captain had listened to him. They had some
school tie. For Jean-Pierre who had not gone to university at all
this was loathsome.

So he would keep his eye on Albert too. He had
nothing better to do, or so his uncle would say. He was only one
man, one simple gendarme for the entire village. But his uncle
promised a cut of whatever he had planned, so Jean-Pierre would
keep both eyes open.

Chapter 17

Merle handed the old man the big skeleton key. “Does
this fit?”

The locksmith examined it, hobbled out to the back
gate and tried the key in the keyhole. It was too big.

“
Desolé, madame
,” he mumbled.
Their communication was limited. Merle was tired and her French
wouldn’t come. She resorted to hand gestures. It had taken him
quite awhile to get the idea that she wanted her locks changed.
He’d done the front and back door and now he wanted to know about
the garden gate.

“
Please.
Oui
,” she said. But
he held out his hand again, as if he wanted the skeleton key, and
mumbled something. She had no idea about the key to the gate.
Except that Sister Evangeline had one. She’d seen the nun lock up
the gate from Albert’s garden.

Andre fumbled around in his bag and tried a few
things to open it. He couldn’t do it today, he possibly said, as he
waddled back out through the house. With her new key she locked the
door. Another trip to the hardware store netted a new padlock for
the door shutters, this time accessible from the outside. She
locked up and waved at Madame Suchet on her stoop.

Back at her hotel Merle put through another call to
the U.S. Embassy. This time she got a live person and requested
help with her legal situation. She was given a name and number of a
functionary at the Nice consulate, but when she called there the
phone rang unanswered. Next she called Stasia’s hotel in Paris.
Tristan answered the phone.

“
Mom! Why haven’t you called?” He
sounded worried, very unlike a fifteen-year-old.

“
Sorry. Are you having
fun?”

“
Yeah. But I’ve seen enough churches
for awhile though. And rose gardens.”

“
A person can never see too many
rose gardens,” Merle said. “Listen, I have things to do here. The
house is sort of a mess. Would you like to come down?”

“
I thought you were coming
here.”

“
I could use your help. The house is
awesome, Tris. Much bigger than I thought. It just needs some
TLC.”

“
Is it a mansion?”

“
Not that big. But it’s got a
beautiful garden. A huge fireplace. I could use your strong back,
kiddo. We could work together. Just till time for camp. I miss you,
honey.”

He probably missed her too, she thought after hearing
tales of Oliver buying beer and being grounded by his mother for a
day. Stasia had waltzed them through six museums and eight
cathedrals, Napoleon’s tomb, the Louvre twice, and a
bateau
mouche
— her schedule was like the Bataan Death March.

Stasia got on the line and the sisters worked out the
details. Stasia wanted reasons, which were faked. Tristan would
take the train to Bergerac tomorrow.

The inspector shook his head so slowly she wasn’t
sure if he was nodding off or saying no. Merle had tried to explain
that she needed to pick up her son tomorrow in Bergerac and bring
him here. She had perhaps said she needed to see him instead of get
him. Conjugating verbs was a pain in the ass.

Finally she was sure he said no. Stay in the village.
That is the bargain.

Albert might know if there was bus service from
Bergerac or how much a taxi might cost. The gendarme followed her
from the police station, his insolent face and boot steps
everywhere she went. The old priest came to the door in his fencing
jacket and tight white knee-pants. He had been practicing with a
student in the alley because the school was closed today.

“
You look very —“ she wanted to say
‘jaunty’ but said, “— professional.”

He waved his hand. “A glass of wine?”

Merle sat in the garden while he poured her the dark,
oaky wine, a black Cahors. She hadn’t eaten anything since the
croissant at the jail. In a moment he was back with some of the
cheese she’d left him a few days before, still wrapped in its
paper.

“
You are so kind, Albert. I don’t
know to thank you.” He didn’t answer, just smiled. “What did you
think of the house?” She’d taken him inside while Andre worked on
the locks.

“
The garden is so
lovely.”

“
You don’t have a key to the garden
gate, do you? Andre couldn’t get it open.”

“
Sorry, no. You should get
Evangeline’s.”

“
She’s gone, according to the
inspector.” Merle set down her wine glass. “Is there a bus here
from Bergerac?”

“
Once or twice a week. I am not sure
of the schedule.”

The wine made her melancholy. How did she, an
upstanding citizen, a moral person, become a murder suspect? “I
can’t leave the village. The inspector’s orders. And my son is
coming down from Paris tomorrow.”

“
I will pick him up. Think no more
about it.”

“
You have a car?”

It appeared he owned one of those curious beasts, an
ancient Citroën, the Deux Chevaux. His was blue, and a bit rusty.
In the morning she saw him off in it, with its roof rolled back,
the bug-eyed headlamps wobbling, the bicycle tires bouncing. It
barely made thirty miles an hour as it puttered away from the city
parking lot. She’d given him a small list of things to buy for her:
fly paper, scrub brushes, disinfectant.

At the hotel she asked the manager if she could rent
two roll-aways with linens. A few minutes later, and several euros,
a bell-boy helped her roll them over to rue de Poitiers. They
walked back together, rattling over the cobblestones, around
corners, up curbs, ignoring the gendarme. Back at the hotel she
paid her bill. With her suitcase rolling behind her, she bought
towels and soap, mousetraps and buckets at the grocery. At the
hardware store she asked for the name of an electrician, and called
him from the
tabac
. Giving his wife a garbled message, she
crossed her fingers, dragged her suitcase along the stones, and
unlocked the doors to her house in France.