“My God, it hurts.”
Trousseau smiled from behind his small desk. His long fingers lay on the keyboard of the old typewriter. “Somebody’s thrown a curse on you, madame le juge.”
The skin on the back of Anne Marie’s left hand and fingers was swollen with white weals. She could feel the heat of friction as she rubbed. “Who hates me, Monsieur Trousseau? I haven’t been here long enough.”
“You’re white—that’s enough to get yourself hated.”
There was a sink in the corner of the office. She got up and turned on the tap, then held her hand beneath the cold water. She rubbed again. “Must be something I’ve eaten. I never had an allergy before coming to this country.”
The water had a numbing effect. She let it run for over a minute. Trousseau started to type.
Anne Marie looked out of the window. She liked her office—little more than a cupboard, just big enough for her desk and the greffier’s, a couple of filing cabinets, a floor of polished mahogany and a small sink. It was at the top of the Palais de Justice and the gentle winds came through the open shutters and pushed against the billowing lace curtains. Lace from Chantilly that she had bought in Paris before sailing out to the Caribbean. As the water continued to run, the pain ebbed and became a dull sense of heat. Anne Marie leaned against the sink and looked out over the vivid red of the corrugated roofs of the nearby bank and the old Chamber of Commerce. Ship masts, bare without their sails, rocked with the movement of the green sea within the small port.
Pointe-à-Pitre.
Along the quayside, only a few meters from the schooners and the rust-stained ferry for Marie-Galante, the stalls bustled with their early morning commerce: jars of hair pomade from Liverpool, ground corn from Suriname, anthuriums from Martinique, good-luck aerosols from Puerto Rico. Sitting on cardboard boxes, the fat smuggler women from Dominica had laid out contraband brassieres and minuscule knickers for children. And in the distance, standing out in clear relief against the sky, the Souffrière. The mountain range filled the horizon and the volcano, with all the intricate detail of its eroded flanks, its gullies and its tropical vegetation, rose up above everything else until its summit was lost in a dark crown of clouds.
“Get somebody to cast a spell for you,” Trousseau said, pointing at her hand. “A spell against the curse.”
“These curtains are dirty. They need changing.”
“I know an old man—a gadézaffé—part Indian, part Carib—who lives down at Trois-Rivières. He knows all the remedies. He’ll cure you.”
Anne Marie turned off the tap.
“He also does sacrifices.”
With a handkerchief, she made a tight bandage around her left hand. Then she returned to her desk.
“A letter for you, madame le juge.”
She took the letter—it was from Papa—and placed it in her handbag. “What’s on the agenda for today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“The old people know about these things. They had their own medicine—the Caribs and the Arawaks—long before Christopher Columbus set foot on this island.” He added, disparagingly, “Christopher Columbus and the white men.”
Anne Marie looked at the chipped varnish on her damp fingers. “The agenda for today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“We’re booked for the seven thirty flight for the Saintes tomorrow.”
“The Saintes?”
“The girl who smothered her baby.”
“And today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
He pulled the day-to-day calendar from behind the typewriter.
“Lafitte will be here soon—in about ten minutes.”
“Which dossier, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“The Calais killing.” He pointed to a folder on her desk. “It’s all there—Lafitte brought it round last night.”
Anne Marie picked up the beige folder.
The cover, made of cardboard and cloth, with a loose buckle, smelled of glue. Calais, Septembre, 1980, had been typed on the label. Above it in neat printing, Ministère de la Justice, Département de la Guadeloupe.
“The old man says he’s innocent,” she said.
“What proof is there against him?”
“The accusations of a few villagers. He’d been making threats against Raymond Calais. The gendarmerie found the cartridge on the scene of the crime—twelve bore. Then yesterday they found the gun.”
“Where?”
“Buried, madame le juge. A hunting gun. A pre-war model, probably an Idéale. Buried about two hundred meters from where the old man sleeps. He denies ever having hidden his gun, but that’s where the gendarmes found it—in a field where he keeps his goats. It had been wiped clean of all prints and wrapped in an oily cloth. Then put in a plastic bag.” Trousseau paused. “His name is engraved on the butt.”
“His name?”
“Hégésippe Bray.” Trousseau frowned, his dark eyes watching Anne Marie’s fingers as she started to scratch again at her left hand. “He harbored a grudge against Calais. Hégésippe Bray claims a lot of Sainte Marthe, the Calais estate, belongs to him by right. As it is, he’s been living in a hut on the edge of the estate.”
“When did he get back?”
“Get back, madame le juge?”
“From French Guyana. When did Bray get back to Guadeloupe?”
“Last Christmas. Calais—with his racing horses as well as a couple of villas—generously agreed to let Bray have the hut. No water, no electricity—just a dilapidated hut on the edge of the estate.”
“The Sainte Marthe plantation?”
Trousseau nodded, “Forty years in equatorial America can’t have done Hégésippe Bray’s brain much good. That and rum.” He tapped his temple. “When Bray came back, he hung around the shacks where they sell cheap liquor, and once he’d had a few glasses of rum, he’d start to make threats.”
“Against Calais?”
“Threatened to kill him.”
“Why?”
Trousseau nodded toward the dossier. “Calais’ father had sold at least ten hectares to Bray—and Hégésippe Bray maintains that in his absence, Calais took everything for himself.”
Anne Marie squeezed her hand. “Paraffin tests?”
“Positive.” A shrug. “Bray admits to having used his gun that morning.”
“Why?”
“To kill a goat with scab. He owns several goats—and a garden, where he grows tomatoes. And yams and string beans.”
“A revenge killing?”
Trousseau shrugged again. “You’ll find everything in the dossier. Lafitte’s been very thorough, as usual.”
Trousseau returned to his typing and Anne Marie opened the file. She glanced through several pages. Twice she nodded. Looking up, she was surprised to see the door open.
“Lafitte’s outside, madame le juge.”
She took a fifty-franc note from her handbag, “I’d like to have a better look at the dossier before seeing Lafitte. Perhaps you could get some sandwiches—and something to drink.”
Trousseau stood up.
“And see if you can get something from the chemists—something to stop this itching.”