Provence - To Die For (29 page)

LeClerq, who’d taken the chair at the head of the long table, drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “What about you, Monsieur Lavande?” the detective asked Guy. “Did you threaten Monsieur Aubertin?”

“Threaten him? No. He is not worth a threat.”

“But you did know of Chef Bertrand’s plans,” I said.

After what seemed an eternal period of deliberation, he said,
“Oui.
I knew.”

“Which must have been difficult to accept,” I said. “You once told me that Emil had promised you a partnership in his future endeavors.”

He ignored me and swiveled in his seat to face Mme Poutine. “You were the one who spoke against me,” he said, his voice a melding of anger and sadness. “It was always you who told him I was not good enough for him, not... not handsome enough for you.” He glared at her. “Not handsome enough for television.
Television!”
He spat out the word as though it were a piece of spoiled clam. “Guests in a restaurant want to eat, not make eyes at the chef.”

Mme Poutine laughed and said, “Look at him. He is no good for the camera. Daniel, at least, we can train.”

“What do you mean, train?” Daniel shouted. “You know nothing about cooking. You are a bookkeeper. You take some classes, follow around a chef, this does not make you an expert on food. And what kind of television connections could you have? You demonstrated makeup to bored housewives.”

“Enough!” LeClerq shouted.

The combatants fell silent

But Guy was not to be silenced. “I served him faithfully for ten years,” he said, “cleaning up after him, running his errands, fixing his mistakes, doing his dirty work.” He guffawed and looked at Daniel. “You thought
he
put the salt in your sugar canister, didn’t you? I put it there, Daniel, so you wouldn’t get a star before he did. ”

Now it was Mme Poutine’s turn to vent. She stood, leaned forward with both manicured hands on the table, and said to Guy, “You ingrate! You sniveling, whining ingrate. Emil planned to go to Paris without you and close the doors on L’Homme Qui Court, walk away from it, leave you nothing. I was the one who convinced him not to do that. I told him that if he didn’t take care of you, toss you some bone, you’d make trouble. And I was right What did you think, Guy, that because you were loyal to your master, like some pathetic puppy, you were owed the world? With Emil and Daniel, and with my financial backing and business sense, we were going to build an empire. Negotiations were completed with the television people in Paris. Emil would have had his show, and we were grooming Daniel for the same. And the restaurants opened for them would become the most popular in Paris. Eventually we’d expand to other cities, too.” She paused and drew a deep, labored breath. For a moment I thought she might cry, but that was not in character for this strong, ambitious woman. She tamped down her emotions and finished in a cold voice, “Until Emil decided to take advantage of my planning and contacts, and go off on his own. May his soul rot in hell.”

Her hate-filled proclamation brought an abrupt end to the fighting. I turned and looked at Guy, whose eyes had filled with tears. He slowly lowered his head and rested it on his folded arms.

I touched his shoulder. “Guy,” I said, “I understand. You’ve been terribly hurt by a man you revered, a man who lied to you and who ...”

He raised his head, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“He betrayed you with Claire, too, didn’t her’

He nodded.

“Someone you love very much.”

“Oh, Guy. I’m so sorry,” Claire said.

Guy reached out a hand to her. “He never loved you, but he knew I did. He played with you to taunt me.”

Claire pulled her hand away. “No, I don’t believe it,” she said, but her voice was uncertain.

“How spiteful,” I said, sighing. “And you only wanted to protect her, didn’t you?” My heart went out to him. He’d been beaten down by all around him, dismissed as too homely to be of value to the Poutines, betrayed by the man he trusted and to whom he’d given his loyalty and his friendship, and rejected by the one he loved.

“She is so innocent,” he said, watching
Claire’s
face. “And he treated her so poorly, like some common piece of fluff. He knew she found him appealing. Why, Claire? I’ll never understand.”

Claire bit her lip and kept her eyes cast down.

“It’s not so hard to understand. A young woman’s infatuation with a powerful older man,” I offered. “He was very charismatic and Claire is very young. She would have outgrown him.”

“I like to think that,” he said. “It is comforting to think that.”

“You’ve always looked after her. When you saw her pull the knife from Bertrand, your first instinct was to protect her again by hiding the knife.”

He looked at me quizzically. “How do you know this?” he asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I didn’t know for sure until you said you don’t pay attention to every knife and fork. That isn’t the Guy Lavande I’ve come to know. The real Guy Lavande knows the location of every knife and fork, plate and pot and pan. Remember? You told me that in a kitchen, it’s important to be precise, to know where everything is. And that’s why you’re such a wonderful sous chef. Emil relied on you to have everything perfectly prepared for him, to know what needed to be brought in next, to have his special knives ready. Besides, Madame Poutine said she saw Claire standing over Chef Bertrand’s body. Who else would care enough to put himself at risk to help her by concealing the murder weapon? That’s a crime where I come from. No, I felt it had to have been you. And I was right.”

A look of calm swept across his face, as though a suffocating weight had been lifted. He said earnestly, “Her fingerprints were on it. I was going to warn her but then she ...”—he gave Mme Poutine a fierce look—“but then
she
came downstairs and screamed and made Claire run away.”

“But you helped her all the same. After Madame Poutine left. you hid the murder weapon, and then you put the knife with the rabbit blood on it in Mallory’s backpack to throw suspicion on her, and to protect Claire.”

Claire made a small noise of distress, and looked at Guy.

“Oui,”
he said..

“But my men searched this room,” an irritated LeClerq said.

Guy looked away. “They did,” he said. “I waited till the officers were preoccupied with removing Emil’s body. While they were outside, I sneaked back in.”

“It worked out, didn’t it?” I said gently. “The police arrested Mallory.”

“And let Claire go,” he said. a tiny, satisfied smile crossing his lips.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Guy,” Claire whispered.

LeClerq’s nostrils flared. “Where did you bide the knife, Monsieur Lavande?”

I pointed to the row of olive jars on the shelf above the stove, their designs, called hermines, all perfectly aligned. “Up there?” I asked Guy. “The one you straightened the other day?-He nodded.
“Oui,”
he replied. ”It is up there. I will get it for you.”

LeClerq jumped up and grabbed Guy’s arm. “No, monsieur,” he said, “I will get the knife.”

We all watched as the detective pulled gloves from his pocket and used them to grasp the jar. I went to help him, but he held on to the jar himself, placed it on the table, and removed the lid. I looked into the jar and saw the handle of one of the two knives specially crafted for the master chef Emil Bertrand. LeClerq extracted the knife and laid it on the table.

Everyone stared at the knife except Claire, who gazed through the window into the medieval courtyard where Bertrand had been killed.

“Ah,” said Mme Poutine. “You now have the murder weapon
and
the murderer.”

All eyes went to Guy.

He realized what was behind those eyes, the accusation that he had killed Bertrand.

“No, no,” he said, raising his hands as though to shield himself from those thoughts. “I did not kill him. I hated him, yes. I may be guilty of concealing a murder weapon, but I am not a killer. You are wrong.”

“Your protestations are not very convincing, Monsieur Lavande,” LeClerq said.

“You don’t understand,” Guy said, this time extending his hands palms up, in a gesture of pleading. “Please believe me. You must believe me.” He looked from face to face.

“I do,” I said.

“Then it must be her,” Daniel said, pointing at Mme Poutine.

“Watch yourself, or you’ll be out of a job,” she snapped. “There are other chefs we can hire.”

“It may not be your decision to make,” Daniel replied. “René will inherit his father’s restaurant.”

LeClerq interrupted their exchange. “It seems everyone in this kitchen had the motive to kill Chef Bertrand,” he said.

“Not me,” said Daniel. “He was taking me with him.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Madame Poutine said. “He was leaving everyone behind—me, you, Guy and Claire—everyone. He was planning to dump her, too. She may be a pretty little thing by Avignon standards, but she’s no match for Parisian ladies.” She laughed at her observation.

Claire glared at Mme Poutine. “You were always jealous of me.”

“You! I have no need to be jealous of you. What do you have I should be jealous of?”

“I had Emil.”

“You did not. You only thought you did.”

LeClerq had heard enough. He picked up the knife, put it in an evidence bag, and announced, “You are under arrest, Monsieur Lavande, for the murder of Emil Bertrand.”

“No,” Claire wailed.

Guy turned to me. “Madame Fletcher, please help me. You believe me.”

“Then tell him, Guy,” I said.

Guy turned to LeClerq and again started to protest his innocence, but I interrupted. “Tell him, Guy. You know who the real murderer is.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can. You tried to protect her, but you can’t anymore.”

“Who, Madame Fletcher?” LeClerq asked.

“Claire,” I said, addressing the young woman. “Are you going to let Guy go to jail? Are you going to allow him to continue trying to save you from your own mistakes? Could you be that cruel to someone who loves you?”

Guy jumped from his seat. “No, she didn’t do it. I did it. She’s innocent. He deserved to die. He was abandoning her, leaving her behind.”

“Claire,” I said. “If you don’t confess, Guy will be charged with murder. He has already committed a crime for you. If he wiped your fingerprints from the knife, chances are he left his own on it. Think about it, Claire. Could you live with yourself if he had to spend years behind bars for you?”

“Claire, don’t say anything,” Guy shouted. “I did it. I did it.”

Tears coursed down Claire’s cheeks and she shook her head. “I can’t let you do this.”

“Yes, Claire,” he pleaded. “Let me do this. I love you.”

“I wish I loved you instead,” she told him.

He slumped down in his seat and plowed his hands into his hair.

Claire raised her eyes to mine and I saw determination there. She pushed up out of her chair, cleared her throat, wiped her eyes, and began speaking. “Emil wasn’t only walking out on me. He was abandoning our baby.” She placed a trembling hand over her stomach. “Our child, a sign of our love. I was so happy when I discovered I was pregnant. Now, I thought, we would be together forever. And then she”—she glared at Mme Poutine—“she had to tell me how he didn’t really care for me. He was only playing with me. She ... she dirtied our beautiful love.” She shuddered. “I went to tell him what she said. I knew he would deny it. He was arguing with Guy. I waited till Guy went back to the kitchen and then threw myself into his arms. He pushed me away. He waved around a paper and said he had work to do, I was disturbing him. I said, ‘No, listen to me,’ and told him about the baby and he ... he said he didn’t want it.” She began to weep again. “He ... he told me, ‘Get rid of it.’ I couldn’t believe he could say that. It was our baby, the baby we made when we made love.” Her voice hardened. “I ... I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me. And the knife was right there on the table. I stabbed him, and he was so surprised. He just kind of sank down to the floor.” She gasped and covered her mouth with her hands, reliving the scene. “And then I realized what I’d done. I was horrified, and I tried to take it back. I pulled out the knife. But it was too late.” Her voice quavered. “All the pretty words. I’d believed all his pretty words, and they were all lies.” She looked desperately around the room. “Why? Why didn’t he love me?”

To my surprise, Mme Poutine walked to Claire and embraced her. The young woman collapsed, sobbing in the arms of her older rival. Mme Poutine crooned to her as if she were consoling a child.

Guy crossed his arms on the table and lowered his head. Daniel stood behind him and squeezed his shoulders. Captain LeClerq caught Mme Poutine’s eye and cocked his head toward the door. Together they walked Claire out of the room, across the medieval courtyard where Emil Bertrand had betrayed his young lover. Together they took Claire away, while Guy wept quietly in the kitchen.

“I suspect,” I told the Thomases, “that a French court and jury will take into consideration Claire’s youth, and the circumstances that brought her to the point of lashing out at Bertrand.”

“He was such a bastard,” Craig said.

“I’ll bet Guy will stand firmly with her through everything,” Jill said.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I agreed.

“But why didn’t Mallory tell you about the knife as soon as she found it?” Jill asked.

“Yes,” Craig added. “Why didn’t she?”

The Thomases and I were sitting in the restaurant Christian Étienne, owned by the chef of the same name. An up-to-the-minute restaurant in a fourteenth-century building, Christian Étienne was characteristic of the juxtaposition of past and present that marked so much of modern-day Avignon. I recognized the symbol of Anne of Brittany, the hermine, stenciled on the beams above us and on the hand-painted wall that dated to when the queen of France had visited the walled city. It was the same image painted on the olive jars, into one of which Guy had dropped the knife Claire used to kill Emil Bertrand.