The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (37 page)

Anna thanked her, went inside, and picked up the phone. “Where are you?”

“Still at the hospital. I’m just leaving now. I should be home by lunchtime.”

“Were you up all night? Did everything go all right?”

“Yes. I’m exhausted. The population of Castagniers has just grown by one. Did you sleep well?”

“Not well. I read your letters.”

“You did?”

“Yes, all of them. That first one about why you decided to stay in Castagniers—is the story true? About your patient in the convent, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“C-C, I’m sorry about what I said to you yesterday.”

“
Amour
, you have every right to expect something more from me. Particularly now. I want you to know that I have made a decision.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “What kind of decision?”

“We will talk about it this evening.”

There was silence.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to wait until this evening.”

“Anna?”

“Yes?”

“
Je t’aime
.”

Anna put down the receiver. Suddenly, she had a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach, the dark feeling of foreboding she had felt only once before in her life, just before her grandparents had died.

CHAPTER 65

D
iamanté was heading home to Castagniers, having delivered Léo and Pierre to the Nice train station and picked up his restaurant supplies. It was a warm, hazy morning, and the countryside smelled of lavender. He thought about the past few days. Anna and their friends had all been part of the wedding, the start of the new life that he and Elise would now make together. It was comforting to him.

As he turned onto D614, the road became narrow and precipitous. At the end of August, vacationers were in the last days of their month off, and there was more traffic than usual. He was within just a few kilometers of Castagniers when the traffic slowed and finally stopped completely. Diamanté could see in the distance that a long line of cars was jammed in both directions. A SAMU with its lights flashing was in the oncoming lane, trying to get through the traffic. Several police vehicles and a tow truck, all with flashing lights, were parked along the side of a sheer cliff that fell to the valley below. Diamanté got out of his car and joined a group of onlookers.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

A woman answered. “An accident,
Monsieur
. The tow truck is pulling a car from the bottom of the ravine. They just loaded the driver into the SAMU.”

Diamanté tried to move closer to the edge to get a glimpse of the car. It was a black Mercedes. He couldn’t make out the model or license plate. He went over to a policeman and asked what happened.

“Only one car involved. The poor
mec
must have fallen asleep at the wheel and gone over the side.”

“Do you know who the driver is?” Diamanté asked, his heart pounding.

“The identification in the vehicle said he was the doctor from Castagniers.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“
Non
,” said the policeman, “he was killed. Chest crushed. Must have died instantly on impact.” The car was clearly visible now just a few feet from the top of the cliff. It was horribly smashed. The policeman left Diamanté and went over to aid the tow truck driver.

Diamanté sat down on a boulder by the side of the road and put his face in his hands.

CHAPTER 66

A
t the Ajaccio, it was well past lunchtime, and neither C-C nor Diamanté had arrived.

“
Oh là
… I wonder what could be keeping my
Lobo
?” Elise worried aloud to Jacques as she placed freshly-cut, bright orange sunflowers in clear glass vases for the evening service. “He hasn’t called, either.”

Guy had gone up to his room for a nap. Anna had completed her drawing of Elise and was in the square taking photos of the vendors and shoppers in the marketplace. She zoomed in and shot an upclose photo of the bell tower of the convent, visible high over the trees in the distance. Silently, she planned how she would ask C-C to take her along with him later this afternoon when he would most certainly visit his patient.

She paused at an artisan’s table spread with handmade pieces of pottery. As she admired a large, contemporary pitcher with a bold, dark blue pattern, the potter approached. He was middle-aged with a balding head and scruffy red beard. His olive skin was tanned like a piece of shoe leather, the result of hours in the sun, and his large hands were caked with clay from working the potting wheel.

“It is made using the traditional methods,” he told her in a sing-song
provençale
accent. “You will not find another like it anywhere,
Mademoiselle
. It is a unique piece.”

“How much are you asking?” Anna inquired, knowing that she would have to bargain.

“One thousand francs,
Mademoiselle
.” There was a suggestion of a glint in his eyes.

Anna mentally calculated the exchange rate. That was a little over two hundred dollars. “Ah, but I can’t take it with me,” she said. “It is too big for my suitcase.” She put it back down on the table, shaking her head. “I’m afraid
non
,
Monsieur
.”

“Eight hundred seventy-five francs,
Mademoiselle
. Then you can surely find room in your
valise
.” He tilted his head sideways, his arms outstretched.

“But it will cost me at least two hundred fifty francs to ship it to my home in the United States. I’ll give you six hundred twenty-five francs for it,
Monsieur
.”

Then came the expected maneuver: “I am a poor potter,
Mademoiselle
,” he said with a puff of the lips. “I’ll sell it to you for six hundred fifty francs. No less.”

Anna reluctantly agreed to the price and handed him the bills. He carefully wrapped the pitcher in brown paper and tied it with a piece of raffia.

Just then, Diamanté’s car appeared in the square. Inside the Ajaccio, Elise heaved a sigh of relief. “Ah,
le voilà
!” she said. She hurried out to the terrace to meet him but stopped short when she saw his ashen face as he got out of the car. “
Beh, qu’est-ce que c’est
?”

He quickly bussed her cheeks. “Where is Jacques?”

“In the kitchen. Why?”

He didn’t answer. He was already through the door of the restaurant. Elise followed him.

From across the square, Anna saw Diamanté arrive. She looked at her watch, wondering what was keeping C-C. With the potter smiling and waving after her, she zigzagged slowly through the mass of shoppers and finally reached the Ajaccio. A few late diners were finishing their
cafés
, but the restaurant had quieted considerably from lunchtime. As she entered, she looked to see where Diamanté and Elise had gone. What she saw alarmed her. In the kitchen, Jacques and Diamanté were hugging each other, not in friendly greeting, but rather they seemed to be emotionally consoling each other. She couldn’t see Jacques’ face, but Diamanté’s was drained of color. Elise was standing by the closed door.

“What’s going on?” Anna asked her in alarm as she placed the wrapped pitcher on a table.

Elise shrugged her shoulders in frustration. “I don’t know. My
Lobo
wouldn’t let me go into the kitchen with him.”

As the two women watched, Jacques, his face a sea of sorrow, took off his apron, threw it on the countertop, and, nodding to Diamanté, walked out the back door.

Diamanté came through the doorway where Elise and Anna were standing.

“Go upstairs, Elise. Find Guy and meet me in the salon. I’m going to close the restaurant for the rest of the day. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“But what has happened?” Anna remembered her feeling earlier after talking to C-C. She grabbed his arm. “Something has happened, hasn’t it? Is it C-C, Charlie I mean? Tell me.”

Diamanté looked at her and then turned away. His eyes were moist.

“Let me close the restaurant, Anna,” he said to her in a soft, kindly voice. He went over and spoke quietly to Martine, and then together they approached each table and announced to the stragglers that the restaurant was closing. Anna watched the scene but didn’t see it. She was trembling.

After the last customer had departed, Martine placed a “
FERMÉ
” sign in the window and shut the door.

“Martine, you had better come up also,” Diamanté said to the young woman as he took Anna’s arm and guided her up the back stairway. When they reached the salon, Guy and Elise were waiting for them.

“What is it, Diamanté?” Guy asked, his face white and drawn.

Diamanté looked at Anna. “Everyone, please sit down,” he said. “It is Charlie.”

Anna put her hand to her mouth.

“I don’t know how to tell you this. I was coming back from Nice. There was a horrible traffic jam just at the bend on D614 where the road begins to get steeper. His roadster went over a precipice and into a ravine. I asked the police what happened. They said they thought he had fallen asleep at the wheel.”

“Is he badly injured? Is he in the hospital? Is that where Jacques has gone?” Anna tried to contain her terror.

Diamanté put his elbows on his knees and held his forehead in his hands. He couldn’t look at any of them. For a moment he was quiet, and then a huge sob came from deep in his throat. When he lifted his head, he said, “Charlie is dead.”

CHAPTER 67

H
ow many tears can these eyes produce?
Anna wondered as she stood weeping in the middle of C-C’s bedroom. She walked over to the bed, knelt, and rubbed her cheek against the sheets. In her grief, she hugged his pillow to her chest. His scent lingered in the soft fabric. After a while, she replaced the pillow and shuffled into the bathroom, where she wet a washcloth under cold water, wrung it out, and placed it over her eyes. The flood of tears wouldn’t subside.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Diamanté was delivering the sad news to Clo.

Anna finished packing and put her luggage at the top of the stairs, and then she went back into the bedroom to retrieve her letters, neatly tied, still sitting on the desk. Distraught, she put them in her purse.

No use leaving these behind. No one will have any use for them
, she thought. She opened Nathalie’s tin biscuit box and placed the framed drawing of herself inside. She closed the lid and rubbed her hand gently over the cover thinking,
Jacques should bury this with him.

Diamanté climbed to the top of the stairs and entered the room. He looked emotionally drained.

“Did Clo take it hard?” Anna asked him.

“Yes. Charlie was very kind to him.”

“I want to go see where C-C died.”

“I’ll take you there. I want to have a look at the tire tracks myself.”

“Do you think maybe he was deliberately pushed over the cliff?”

He looked at her curiously. “Why do you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. In December, when we were in Paris, he was always glancing behind him.” Anna’s voice broke. “He phoned the Ajaccio this morning.” Then, through a sob, she murmured, “I guess I was the last one to talk to him.” She paused a moment to gather her composure. “He told me he was just leaving the hospital after being up all night. He was exhausted. Maybe he did fall asleep at the wheel.”

“Charlie has fallen asleep at the wheel before. Did you know that?”

She shook her head.

“He said once he was driving to Salzburg in the middle of the night and fell asleep, but he woke up in time before he went off the road. Then another time, again on a long driving trip, to Brussels I believe, he said it happened to him again.”

“One would have thought,” she choked, “that he would have known then that he was capable of doing it again…” she wiped the tears from her cheeks and muffled a sob, “when he hadn’t slept all night.”

“Yes, one would have thought.”

Diamanté picked up her suitcase. They descended the stairs and walked past the kitchen. Clo was repairing the wall where the pipe had been fixed. He didn’t look at them.

As they went out the front gate, Anna turned to look at the house a last time. Holding back her tears, she said softly, “When he called, he said he had made a decision…about us, I mean. We were going to talk about it this evening. I guess I’ll never know…” She touched the gate. “You know, I was so suspicious of him.”

Diamanté stopped. “Suspicious?”

“I couldn’t understand how he was able to afford all this, in this small village, I mean, until I read the letters.”

Diamanté put the suitcase down and placed a comforting arm around her shoulder. “What letters are you talking about, Anna?”

“He wrote me letters that he didn’t mail. He gave them to me—my God, was that just four days ago?” Her eyes flooded again. “I read them all last night. The first one was written in January. In it, he explained why he decided to stay here.”