Michael eased into bed after she dozed off into a light sleep but, even though she half woke, she didn’t speak to him as the bedsprings squeaked and he curled away from her. She drifted off sometime later, and in the morning he was up before her and the car was gone. Rehearsing, probably. Not for the first time, Katherine admitted to herself she was glad Betty Lou was no longer the ethereal young woman on her old album covers. In her current state, Katherine would have contrived to feel jealous.
As she tended to her garden halfheartedly, she replayed J.B.’s case for the tour. What if she stayed here? It would cut travel costs, and the argument about the dogs (and the yellow cat, of which she was fonder than Michael was) would be settled. She would miss the excitement. Reigny was not likely to take her to its collective breast no matter how hard she worked to make the fête’s entertainment the best they’d ever had. But if it was successful, and it had to be, the tour might set Michael’s past hurts to rest. She resolved to talk to J.B. and Betty Lou and help them convince her husband to give this a shot.
Screw Eric for all the misery he had caused, she said to herself, and then took it back. Part of the history between the leader of the Crazy Leopards and Michael was, after all, that she had done just that. Only once, and before she and Michael were married, but still. She yanked hard at a weed, which turned out to be a delphinium stalk. “Oh, rats,” she said.
“Talking to your plants again?” said a voice behind her. Penny stood, waving a hand in front of her face. “These flies are a pain. Sometimes I wish I’d never bought that house.” She parked herself in the same wicker chair J.B. had sat in, looking down in surprise as it gave a little. “I was at the market in Auxerre and you’ll never guess what I heard.”
Katherine figured it wasn’t her job to guess. She straightened up, feeling a dull ache in her lower back that could be from her weeding or from a bad night’s sleep. She sat on a bench in the shade and looked inquiringly at the younger woman in front of her, whose smile was almost coquettish.
The gate rattled and both women looked down the steps to see Pippa, taking the steps as though they were an exercise challenge. “My goodness,” she said, panting and looking at Penny with an eager expression, “I tried to catch up with you, but the hill is so steep and you do walk extremely fast. I’m sure it’s why you’re so slim. Do you mind if I sit with you for a minute?”
Wishing she could say no, Katherine smiled and pulled a chair out from the table. “Penny was filling me in on the investigation into poor Albert’s death.” She knew it was wicked, but at the very least it might get Penny off the topic sooner if she thought Pippa ought not to be thinking of Yves as a suspect in a nonexistent murder.
Pippa’s face lit up, her eyes widened, and she nodded rapidly, her curls bouncing in a shaft of sunlight that caught her hair. “Brilliant,” she said to both of them, “absolutely brilliant.”
Penny, after a hesitating moment, continued. “The police are checking out a stranger who came into Yves’s shop twice right before Albert died, buying everything he could about the château. And guess what?” She was looking at Katherine and, not waiting for an answer, added, “He was German.”
Pippa raised her eyebrows and looked back and forth at the two women. “Is that a clue or something? I mean, it sounds rather important in a vague sort of way.”
“Oh, Penny,” Katherine said. “This is significant how? I mean, at this time every year visitors do come from all over Europe and the States to visit the château. Monsieur in the café said people have been coming in complaining since the CLOSED sign went up on the driveway the day Albert’s body was found. Parts of Château de Bellegarde date from the twelfth century.”
“Thirteenth, actually,” Pippa said, sitting up straight and nodding. “Later, King Charles the Fifth had something to do with the place, although I can’t remember exactly what.”
“Thank you,” Katherine said. “The point is, Penny, it’s important in Burgundy’s history, so of course lots of people want the guidebooks.”
Penny’s impatience showed. “No, that’s not it. Don’t you see, it’s the timing, the fact that he was so focused on only this château, and that he was another German? He was even asking questions about the owners. For all we know, he might have had something on Albert, like blackmail, some kind of illegal gun dealings or something. He might have tracked Albert down to Reigny.”
“My, that’s awfully sharp,” Pippa said. “Gun running, do you think? I started a story once about smugglers. Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “it was set in the Caribbean, so there were ships. I may have to dig it out and finish it.”
Katherine ignored the writer. “Michael told me Albert’s gun-dealing days are long since over. He runs—or rather, ran—an investment company, or import-export or something. The police are taking this seriously? It sounds terribly thin, especially if you’re saying Albert’s fall might be murder, Penny. Are you?”
“It’s a definite possibility. Yves says he was treated as a suspect before this clue was discovered, and a suspect for what if not murder? Why else would they have questioned him so long?”
“I didn’t realize they had. Is it possible Yves exaggerated a bit? How did they find out about this stranger?”
“Yves told them.” Penny was triumphant. “He remembered it while they were questioning him. The woman who works for him noticed the man too. She hated to admit it since she’s part German too, which only makes it more credible.”
“Your beau is a suspect?” Pippa clasped her hands and held them close to her chest. “Good heavens, how interesting. I wonder if I might speak with him?”
The rapt look on Pippa’s face and the feeling that this conversation was getting away from her like a large kite in a high wind made Katherine uneasy. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, blowing out a loud sigh at the speculations of both of her guests. “What a lot of half-truths you’ve picked up. I’m sure Yves is not a serious suspect for anything. Mme Robilier is not German. Her husband’s mother was German, or maybe it was his grandmother.”
Penny lifted her chin and glared at Katherine. She sat up straighter. “You don’t want Yves to be arrested, do you? The police are looking everywhere for the man. It’s a shame Yves didn’t think to write down his license plate.”
“There’s a nice image—the bookstore owner keeping track of his customers’ license plates on the off chance they turn out to be murderers.”
Pippa was not to be denied her role as an armchair sleuth. “I say, if he bought books from the store, there will be credit card slips, won’t there?”
“He paid in cash,” Penny said in triumph. “He obviously didn’t want to be traced.”
“That is a complication,” Pippa said, rubbing her hands together. “How old was he, approximately? Because Mr. Bellegarde was an old man, and if this chap was a former business associate, one would assume they were at least marginally in the same generation. Did Yves mention that, I wonder?”
“He’d have to be ancient,” Katherine said, but neither of her companions paid any attention.
Penny told Pippa she didn’t know, but Yves had said he was suspiciously chatty about the château.
“Pumping him, I think you say in America? Yes, he might well be worth checking on.”
Katherine was too worn down by her fight with Michael to continue arguing with them. If the policeman wasn’t smart enough to see through this ridiculous German assassination theory, then that was his problem. Admittedly, finding Albert’s gun in the bushes was a puzzle, but she agreed with Michael. Someone might have gotten into the château, either kids or someone thinking to steal a few portable items, was discovered by Albert, who attempted to scare him off but fell down the stairs in the process. The would-be thief could have picked up the gun almost reflexively, then decided against stealing it and thrown it away as he ran down the driveway.
She did wonder, briefly, if Emile was right. Would Jean be stupid enough to try that? Her hunch was that breaking into a house at night when he might accidentally confront the owners and be recognized was beyond Jean’s degree of bravado or scope of vision. He had lived in Reigny all his life and this was the first serious crime she’d heard about. With all those mouths to feed and very little call for Reigny’s quarry stones, however, perhaps she shouldn’t completely absolve Jean yet. She wondered how she might find out what he had been doing that night, maybe ask Jean a question or two and see how he responded. If there was anything suspicious in what he said, she could report it right away to that policeman, although, come to think of it, she wasn’t sure how to reach him. Some detective she was. But she’d be damned if she’d mention the idea to Penny, who would pass along an idle comment as fact by tomorrow morning, or to Pippa, who would probably start skulking around the family’s courtyard.
“You look particularly well put together today, Penny,” she said to change the subject. “Are you going somewhere?”
“To Paris, with Yves. We need to shake off the stress from all this. I found a sweet little hotel near the Place des Vosges.”
“One of my favorite neighborhoods, lucky you. There’s a store off the square that sells the most charming ceramic roosters. Much too expensive, of course, but tourists will pay anything.”
“I never stop in Paris,” Pippa said, shaking her head emphatically. “Even a pot of tea costs the earth. I bring my own sandwiches and go right through to the Chunnel, you know.”
Penny gave Pippa a horrified look that Pippa didn’t see, being in the process of struggling out of the chair, which was losing its shape and its backbone from all the visitors who had been dropping in lately. She turned her attention back to Katherine. “There’s a new show at the Pompidou Center I want to see, feminist art, and Yves wants to try this new bistro that serves only raw food.”
Katherine didn’t know which she’d dislike more, not that she dismissed art by women who had been left out of the museums and art history books for hundreds of years and were determined to be seen in the twenty-first century. She didn’t like the branding of their work, or her own for that matter, as a special class, the same way defining “ethnic” art consigned it to a curiosity corner, leaving the main stage once again for white men. She opened her mouth to say something of this, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. In the two years she had known her American neighbor, she had figured out that anything other than skimming the surface of ideas bored Penny. This was more properly dinner conversation with other art school graduates, conversations she hadn’t had since her own days as a student. In Los Angeles, where she had moved after art school and met Michael, party talk had centered on real estate and yoga classes. Nevertheless, all of a sudden, she missed that time fiercely, missed California, missed days full of speaking in English, paying with dollars, picking up a newspaper at the corner drugstore.
“How sweet of Yves to treat you to a trendy dinner,” she said, shutting that door to regret sharply and giving in to the impulse to poke a metaphoric stick at a friend who could afford to jet back and forth, keep a poor boyfriend, and spend two hundred euros on a plate of raw vegetables cut, no doubt, into strange postmodern shapes.
Penny colored and stuck her chin out. “It’s hard to make a living at something so esoteric and important. Rare books are like jewels, but appreciated by a select few.” She turned to the steps, Pippa right behind her with an eager look on her face that Katherine suspected meant Penny was going to have inquisitive company for her walk home. “I have to get going if we’re going to make the train. I thought you’d be happy for Yves to hear the news.”
“Have a wonderful time, take a few minutes to visit the Victor Hugo museum in the same neighborhood, and of course I’m thrilled for anything that eases Yves’s and your mind. Good-bye, Pippa, thank you for dropping by,” she said with all the sincerity she could summon. She waved at their backs as they descended from view, and when the gate creaked closed, she returned to the border she’d been working on, realizing she still held the delphinium stalk in a stranglehold.
* * *
When the phone rang, she was tempted to let it go, given the mood she was in, but thought it might be Michael. Pulling off her gardening gloves, she hurried in and grabbed the receiver. It was Adele, and she sounded much calmer than when Katherine had last seen her. She offered lunch, wanted company, and said she needed to ask Katherine’s opinion. Glad for something to do other than replay her quarrel with Michael in her head or vent her frustration at Penny’s ridiculous assassination proposal, Katherine accepted. She left a note on the kitchen table for Michael, shut the dogs inside, and walked through the village and up the other side of the little valley.
Sophie had gone back to Paris for a few days to take care of matters in her father’s firm, which, Adele said, would come to her, so she might as well groom herself for the role. “It certainly does not interest me, and I have quite enough to live on, although not to continue the historical renovations on my own. I will have to speak with Sophie about that later. She will inherit this too someday, after all.”
She poured them each a glass of the region’s glorious red wine, holding up the bottle so her guest could see the Premier Cru on the label. “Really too good to drink so casually, but what am I saving it for? I had not realized how well stocked Albert’s cellar was. I must consider putting a lock on it and taking up some of the small things we chose to have around us. If there is a cat burglar in the area, I must not ignore him, n’est-ce pas?”
“Is that the policeman’s current thinking?” Katherine said after exclaiming over the wine, which was indeed extraordinary, deserving of serious attention. She wondered if word of the mysterious German assassin had reached the widow.
“One hardly knows. They say nothing, only ask questions and permission to look around again and again. I gather they think something else was removed from the gun display. There’s some kind of depression in the velvet material.”
“Do you know what’s missing?”
“No. Guns were Albert’s passion, not mine. Honestly, I feel as though my privacy were completely taken from me.”
“But you always had tourists.”
“That was different. They were here to admire. And they were only allowed in certain areas, and twice a week, if that. It will be such a relief when my sister arrives. She was away when all this happened, and has only been able to arrange her schedule now.”
“That’s good news. I worried about you here by yourself. Of course, I imagine the neighbors have been dropping by to pay their respects.”
“Mais non, not at all. Only that annoying, pretentious Mme Pomfort, who came to grill me, and who thinks she can give instructions to me. Imagine suggesting that a Bellegarde owes it to Reigny-sur-Canne to have a memorial service in that sad excuse of a church.”
“Mightn’t one think it was suggested as a sign of respect, that the people who knew him and who know you, want the chance to honor him?”
“You have not lived here long enough if you believe that,” Adele said, biting hard into a piece of baguette slathered with butter. “Château de Bellegarde is the only reason anyone visits Reigny. Albert and I devoted so many years together to research its history, replace its broken walls, and preserve the valuables in it. Why, the tapestries alone are significant to France’s history. But in all the years, we have never received any thanks or special regard from our neighbors.”
“Surely that’s not so. Everyone tells me how wonderful it is that you come to the fête each summer and contribute something delicious to the food tent.” It was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. The café owner did say that the Bellegardes normally sent over a large tray of only slightly stale baguettes and a generous bowl of olives for the big outside tables. He was alerting Katherine that someone had to be sure to bring the tray and the empty bowl back to the château. One year, they had disappeared and, he said, the village didn’t hear the end of it for six months even though most people were convinced it was a dealer from L’Isle-sur-Serein who had snatched them.
Adele had begun to describe the valuable tapestries that the villagers didn’t appreciate, and before she could go off into rhapsodies about the threadbare and moldy wall coverings, Katherine interrupted. “So what will you do in Albert’s honor?”
“The Bellegardes will gather at our private chapel in Nemours later this year. Albert’s ashes will be installed there. It’s what our family has done for generations.” She took a long swallow from her glass before continuing. “That is not why I have asked you here. I can deal with that ridiculous woman and her airs. Imagine thinking she is descended from Napoleon.”
Adele got up and walked over to a table in the corner. To Katherine’s untrained eye it was quite plain and dark, but she remembered Albert’s explanation that it was untouched from its thirteenth-century origins. It was the kind of historical artifact Albert had been so proud to talk about when he conducted tours.
“What do you make of this?” Adele said, coming to stand over Katherine and holding out a piece of lined paper.
“Ask what the American was doing at your house in the nighttime,” it said in French. The sentence was written in pencil and it was obvious the writer had attempted to disguise his or her handwriting by alternating between crudely printed capital letters and typical French script. Katherine knew who had written it, but wasn’t about to say. The child had no impulse control. Who knew why she had thought to send this to the widow, but the reason was sure to be one that would elude an adult’s understanding.
“Where did you find this?” she asked instead. “Have you shown it to the police?” She hoped not. If she could figure out who had written it, so could they, and Jeannette would find herself in a heap of trouble. She had probably been hanging around here all week, looking for a way to create some mischief.
“It was under a stone outside the door early this morning when I went out to look at the garden, which is in desperate need of work. I cannot think where the gardeners are. Do they think because Albert is dead that the bushes have stopped growing?”
Good, thought Katherine with an internal smile, Adele was recovering. She was glad. The shock of her husband’s death and her relative isolation here might have crushed her elderly neighbor. It was good to hear at least a portion of her normal personality reemerging.
“I am reluctant to show it to anyone until I know who the American it speaks of is. I wanted to check with you first.” Adele spread soft cheese on a cracker while giving Katherine a bright glance. The ammonia vapor from the cheese’s rind caught in Katherine’s throat and Adele’s implied meaning had a similar effect.
“I can’t imagine why you think I would know. There are only me, Michael, and Penny in Reigny. You can’t think one of us snuck into your house.”
“I hardly know what to think. I do not know if it is serious, or who wrote it. But it bothers me, as you must understand.”
“Adele, you’ve been too wrapped up in the personal nature of this tragedy to be aware of it, but there are as many rumors flying around Reigny as there are residents. Believe me, you don’t want to hear them. But the theme, with a few imaginative exceptions, is that it couldn’t be someone who lives here who disturbed Albert. It must be an outsider. That leaves almost everyone in Burgundy, France, Europe and—yes—us few Americans too. I wouldn’t pay much attention to this, really I wouldn’t.”
Adele gave a distinctively Gallic shrug, turning her palms up and spreading long, bony fingers, and let the subject go as she allowed the paper to drift out of her hands and back onto the table. However, her good-byes were cool and there was no talk of a next visit when Katherine took her leave.
Katherine wasn’t interested in a leisurely farewell chat either. She was appalled that Adele could entertain the notion that she was somehow implicated merely because she was American. She was determined to find the girl and give her a severe scolding. The note had succeeded in creating distance between Katherine and Adele, which left Katherine with exactly no one in Reigny-sur-Canne she could count as a friendly acquaintance.
* * *
Sure enough, the teenager appeared out of nowhere as she left the Bellegardes’ driveway. Jeannette searched Katherine’s face uncertainly as she came up to her. With more shyness than she usually demonstrated, Jeannette entwined her arm with Katherine’s. But Katherine shook her off and said, “Jeannette, you have some explaining to do. Walk back to the house with me,” and didn’t respond to the girl’s attempts to make her smile as they walked.
“Now,” Katherine said, shutting the garden gate behind them with a bang and pointing Jeannette to a wicker chair, “why did you worry Mme Bellegarde with that note, and why did you pretend you saw one of us at their house the night Albert fell?”
Jeannette looked up at Katherine from under her eyebrows but said nothing. She chewed her lip and rubbed the little metal thing she’d been carrying around lately.
“Don’t pretend it wasn’t you who wrote that note. You’ve created an embarrassment for me and Michael, not to mention our friend Penny. Tu comprends? What were you trying to do? Answer me, child.”
“No,” Jeannette said, startled. “I didn’t mean you. I saw a car—” She stopped abruptly, a look Katherine couldn’t define sweeping over her face for a second before it was replaced with one of shame. “Desolée. I only wanted to help, and I could never talk to a flic. Papa would kill me.”
“Talk to a policeman about what? What car? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But even as she said it, Katherine remembered the girl skipping out of the wild growth next to the Bellegardes’ driveway the morning after the tragedy. “You saw something? It certainly wasn’t Michael or me. What is it you thought you saw?”
“I know what I saw,” Jeannette said in a sulky voice. “It was Brett’s papa’s car. I saw it, but I don’t want Brett to know, you understand?”
“For heaven’s sake, he had business there. He told the gendarmes. He called on M. Albert long before anything happened.”
“No,” said Jeannette stubbornly. “I saw him late in the night. He was there. Then, later, I found something outside.”
“Found what?”
“Nothing,” the girl said.
“Nonsense. Either you did or you didn’t.”
“Rien, nothing. Never mind,” Jeannette said, her voice rising. “I wanted to tell Brett his papa was there, but I was afraid. He will be angry at me if I say what I saw to the flics.” She looked up at Katherine, worry furrowing her brow.
“I don’t believe it. This is one of your pranks, a way to stir up trouble,” Katherine said. “You probably think it’s funny. Really, you let your imagination get the best of you.”
Katherine was angry, angry at Jeannette’s fibbing, but also at Adele’s chilly behavior, Mme Pomfort’s snobbery, and most of all at Michael for saying so many hurtful things last night and for leaving then and again this morning without a chance to talk it out.
Jeannette started to protest, but Katherine cut her off. “Enough. I don’t want to hear any more excuses for your behavior. Honestly, you’re no better than—” She stopped abruptly. Instantly she wished she could take back what she had been about to say about Jean. It was cruel and unfair. “You will go to Mme Bellegarde’s and apologize for upsetting her, and when she tells me you have, we will talk again.”
Jeannette jumped up, knocking the chair over. “Merde,” she yelled, “you have no right to tell me what to do. You’re not my mother. You’re like the rest.” A small sob escaped her. “You do whatever that old witch Pomfort says. You’re afraid of her, like the others.” And she ran down the steps and out the gate, bawling as she went.
“Now I’ve done it,” Katherine muttered. “But the girl turns everything into high drama.” Not unlike me at her age, she thought. Maybe that’s why I have a soft spot for her. Katherine didn’t believe the girl’s fantastic tale for a minute. J.B. was a respectable businessman who was going to make Michael a star—well perhaps not a star, but finally a respected singer-songwriter with royalty checks coming in. They needed J.B., and it was ridiculous to think he could be involved in Albert’s death. Maybe Brett had rejected Jeannette’s romantic overtures and this was her attempt at payback.
Groaning at the messiness of people’s emotional lives, she opened the door so the dogs, who had been whining ever since they heard her voice, could burst out, looking around them to see who else was occupying their leafy yard. The big black dog looked up at her through shaggy bangs as if to ask what was going on. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said out loud. “Rejection as usual.”