Murder in the Latin Quarter (26 page)

Laurent lifted Maggie's chin and wiped away her tears.

“There is more to tell me,
oui
?” he asked firmly but gently.

Maggie nodded. He'd probably never let her out of the house again with either of the children even go to the grocery story once he heard about the Catacombs—and she could hardly blame him—but she couldn't keep it from him either.

They went downstairs and walked down the wide sidewalk, with Notre-Dame looming in the distance like a benign presence, until they came to the first café nearest the apartment. Laurent ordered them both sherry and toast spears with foie gras and Maggie told him everything that had happened, from Gerard's apartment to André's kiss to her night in the catacombs and ending with Delphine's last words.

“
Incroyable
,” Laurent said, shaking his head.

“I wanted to give her peace. I wanted to ease her mind.” Maggie said, finishing off her third sherry and feeling the exhaustion of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours pressing down on her.

“Turns out I didn't succeed on doing either.”

M
aggie wasn't surprised
that Laurent's presence in the apartment should fill up every inch of it with noise and activity. Although taciturn himself, there was something about the man that naturally energized those around him. As soon as they got back from the café, he set to work in the kitchen making dinner. Maggie sat at the kitchen table with Jemmy on her lap until the toddler grew impatient with her attention.

Laurent stood at the stove stirring a pot of coq au vin. He held Mila in one arm and Beatrice and Zouzou stood beside him.

The cozy picture infused a burst of contentment in Maggie as she watched. Like most women, Beatrice was transfixed by Laurent. She gazed at him with adoring eyes and tripped over herself to be of service to him, handing him dishtowels, wooden spoons and spices before he asked for them.

The children too clustered about him, vying for his attention. Maggie sipped her wine and watched how they hung on him, chattering and laughing. She wondered how a boy with no happy memories of his own childhood could grow up to be a man who easily and naturally generated them for others. She watched Mila and Jemmy and felt a flush of gratitude—not just for herself that she had them, which she felt on a daily basis, but because she was able to give them Laurent for a father.

“
Papa! Papa! Moi
!” Little Jemmy called out while tugging on Laurent's pant leg.

“
Moi aussi, Papa
!” Zouzou said, pulling on his other leg.

Laurent handed the baby to Maggie and picked up Zouzou. He continued to stir the steaming pot.

“You have a papa,
oui, ma petite
?” he murmured to her in mostly English.

“
Tu, es mon papa
!” Zouzou crowed. Laurent turned to give Maggie a frown.

It was hardly surprising that Zouzou had forgotten Windsor. She hadn't seen him in eighteen months, nearly half her life. Maybe they should be grateful Grace hadn't brought her men home. At least Zouzou wasn't remembering André as her father—or whoever had come before André.

“Your father lives in America, yes, little one?” Laurent asked as he moved about the kitchen, taking lids off pots and checking on a casserole in the oven. He turned to Beatrice. “Do you speak English with her?”

Maggie felt sorry for Beatrice. The girl so wanted to please her new idol. But the ability to speak English had not been one of the requirements on Grace's checklist for an au pair. Beatrice spoke only French.

“
Monsieur
?” she said, her bottom lip trembling.

“
Ça ne fait rien
,” Laurent said. But Maggie recognized the look of determination on his face. He'd already settled on a course of action that probably included confronting Grace or phoning Windsor—or both.

Before they sat down to dinner, Maggie made another attempt to talk Grace out of her darkened bedroom—where she'd been all day—and join them. Maggie tapped on the door and opened it a crack.

“Grace, can you come out? Laurent is here.”

“Darling, I'm sorry. I'll see everyone in the morning, all right?”

“Is she ill?” Laurent asked Beatrice when Maggie returned to the table. He sat with Mila in one arm and passed the bowls around the table with the other hand.

“Not really,” Beatrice said eagerly, determined to reinstate herself in Laurent's good graces. “Perhaps hung over?”

“All day?” Laurent asked. “Jemmy, do not start eating until I say, yes?”

Jemmy nodded at his father but his eyes went back to his plate. Even Maggie had to force herself not to grab up her fork. It smelled and looked amazing and she realized she was starving. She gave a wink to Zouzou who giggled.

The meal was lively and fast as only one with two toddlers and a baby can be. Afterwards as Maggie and Beatrice bathed the children and put them to bed, Laurent cleaned the kitchen. Once the children were in bed and—after too many stories that only Laurent could read to them—finally asleep, Beatrice retired to her bedroom and Maggie and Laurent sat outside on the small balcony overlooking the back alley of specialty shops and bakeries below. While the street shops had been closed for hours, there were still many people walking to and from the area's popular restaurants and clubs.

“What is the matter with Grace?” Laurent asked.

“My guess? She's either in the process of getting dumped—and that's a new feeling for her—or she's managed to develop a drinking problem.”

Laurent did not look surprised. He brought his cigarette to his lips and nodded reflectively. “And Windsor?”

“Last I heard he was making noise about getting custody of both kids.”

“
Vraiment
?”

“Yes. Grace has been totally distracted by this André guy.”

“The one who kissed you.”

“Okay, Laurent, I hope that's not how you're going to define him going forward. For one thing, Grace doesn't know about it.”

He shrugged. “She is not being a good mother.”

“Well, she's made sure Zouzou is clothed and fed and loved by a very good caretaker.”

Laurent gave her a baleful glance.

“But yeah, you're right. She's not being a good mother.”

“I am surprised you haven't gotten to the bottom of this.”

“I haven't had time. What with Delphine and all.”

“Of course.” A shadow passed over Laurent's face.

“Can I ask you something, Laurent?”

He raised an eyebrow and his full lips held the hint of a smile.

“Why didn't you tell me you came from a wealthy background?”

He let out a long sigh.

“I mean, were you ashamed of being too rich or something?”

“Non
,” he said, “of being given every opportunity by a woman who loved me and throwing it all away with both hands.”

Oh. That.

“It pains me to think of all my grandmother sacrificed for me and for Gerard. And how we repaid her. She died thinking I was a thug.”

“Oh, Laurent. I'm sure that's not true.”

“I
was
a thug.

“I wish you could have seen Aunt Delphine again so she could've seen how you'd changed.”

“To what end? To be in her good opinion? Did I deserve that?”

“Pretty hard on yourself, Laurent.”

“Au contraire
.” He held Maggie's hand and nodded in the direction of the room where Mila and Jemmy slept. “I have been rewarded for my bad choices beyond what I deserve.”

T
he next morning
, Maggie and Beatrice fed the children while Laurent was on the phone with the executor of Delphine's estate. Maggie had wanted an autopsy performed but Laurent had seen no point in it. It was clearly natural causes.

Grace still hadn't come out of her room.

Laurent came into the kitchen as Maggie was unbuckling Mila from her highchair.

“I am to meet the executor at Delphine's lawyer's office today,” he said.

“Oh?” Maggie turned and looked at Laurent. “Oh!” She'd totally forgotten that Laurent was to inherit a third of a very big fortune. While she'd mentioned the will to him last night and the fact that he, Noel and Amelie were to inherit, everything else had pressed on her until she'd forgotten the fact. Now as she watched Laurent pick up his cigarettes and car keys and pat his pockets to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything, it occurred to her that their money problems in the vineyard were about to be over.

“Will Noel be there too?” she asked, trying to keep the bounce out of her step as she walked him to the apartment door.

“
Oui
. And Madame Tavers. I've set up a service for Delphine for the end of the week but I will need to return home and come back for that.”

“I'm so ready to be home, too,” Maggie said wistfully.

“Just a few more days,
chèrie
,” Laurent said, kissing her at the door. “There is no point in you returning before then.”

“Leave Jemmy with me.”

“I have already promised him he may stay,” Laurent said with a grin. “I won't be long today. Keep your phone on.”

Maggie returned to the sunny kitchen where Beatrice was putting a jacket on Zouzou.

“I am taking them to the park, Madame,” Beatrice said. “You will come?”

“You know, if you don't mind, Beatrice,” Maggie said, “I have some work I'd like to do to get ready for Madame Normand's memorial service. Do you mind going alone?”

“Not at all.”

Beatrice herded both older children out of the apartment and pushed Mila in her stroller while Maggie waved them off. Then Maggie came back inside and, after pausing at Grace's door to see if she could hear anything, went to her bedroom to finish unpacking. She brought the packet of old photos and letters that she'd taken from Delphine's apartment and put them on the kitchen table to sort through them.

She probably hadn't needed to be so secretive about bringing the photos back. Surely nobody but her was interested in them. But she knew how the French inheritance system could be and it was much better—in her experience—to apologize later than ask permission first. In fact, she was pretty sure that approach was basically invented for the French legal system.

She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down with the photos and also Dieter's grandfather's diary. She flipped through it but again could find nothing that made sense to her. She'd stuck the photo of Delphine and Camille that had first prompted her questions between its pages. Delphine had put it in the kitchen drawer, and Maggie had later retrieved it. She looked at it now and turned it over. On the back was written a single word:
Toujours
.

That could mean forever or always. And both were very different meanings
. She put the photo back inside the diary.
This might be a puzzle I work on during a cold winter night back home in St-Buvard
, she told herself as she dropped the diary into her tote bag.

She'd found the photographs in a cigar box on a shelf in the storage closet a few days earlier and had transferred them to the envelope the night Delphine died. From the looks of them she'd already determined that many of them had to be the missing photos from the album she'd found earlier.

Now she spread them out on the kitchen table and, enjoying the fact that her own family was back together again, began to sort through them. Soon however the melancholy of losing Delphine began to seep into her mood. She'd only known Delphine a week but Maggie knew she'd grown to love her in that time. While in the long run the loss of her wouldn't dramatically affect Maggie's life, knowing her somehow already had.

Maggie looked at several pictures that all seemed to have been taken during the same session. There were photos of Delphine with her two sisters and a cloudy, damaged photo of the three sisters with two people who must have been their parents. Maggie squinted but the photo was too blurry. She knew she wouldn't find photos of Laurent in this batch. The photos were old. They were family photos from long before he was born. She found a photo of Noel as a teenager and his nose was the first thing one saw in the picture. There was a baby picture but with nothing written on the back, she couldn't tell who it was. She tried to see if the baby's features resembled Mila or Jemmy.

At this stage, most babies just look like big bald heads with no specific features
, she thought. In any case, the photos would go into a photo album back at St-Buvard so that Jemmy and Mila could see what their paternal ancestors looked like. And maybe, just maybe, Laurent could think from time to time about who it was he came from too.

There was never any point in trying to deny who you were or where you came from
, Maggie thought as she gathered up the photos and slipped them back in the envelope. Sooner or later it comes back to bite you on the…

Suddenly, a thought—ill-formed and amorphous—crept into her brain. Without realizing she was doing it, she pulled her phone out of her purse. The two things were probably not connected but something had suggested it to her—something unconscious and suppressed. She sent a text to Dieter.

<
Sorry to bother you. Wondering if you have a photo of your grandfather? All Internet shots fuzzy
.>

She got up to pour herself another cup of coffee and then walked again to Grace's door. Was she even alive? This can't be a hangover. Should I force her to come out?

She heard the unmistakable
ding
of her phone receiving a text and she hurried back to the table.

<
No
>

She sat down in frustration. He was willing to engage with her but not help her? What was his deal? Ignoring his response, she quickly wrote another text.

<
All the photos I find of him on the Internet his face is in shadow or his hat is pulled down
.>

She waited until she could see that Dieter was forming a reply.