“Two reasons,” she told the court. “I was addicted to him. He made love to me like no man had ever made love to me before.” And when the procureur demanded to know what the second reason was, she replied: “I was very much afraid of what he might do.”
“To you?”
“To my husband. And perhaps to me, too.”
The accused sat cold and impassive in the dock as she went on to describe to the court the events of September 9, 1990, at the abandoned Fort du Grognon on the Ile de Groix. There, she and Kerjean had been engaged in a passionate bout of lovemaking when they were unexpectedly interrupted by the deceased, Adam Killian.
“Thibaud went crazy,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes from the memory. “He was just an old man, kind of skinny and pale. But Thibaud screamed and shouted at him. Accused him of spying on us, of being a dirty voyeur. He literally chased him from the fort. It would have been comical if it wasn’t so grave. I was terrified that word would get out about our affair. Thibaud was stark naked, pushing the old man across the old parade ground, slashing at his legs with a stick. When they disappeared into the tunnel I couldn’t see them any longer, but I could still hear Thibaud shouting.”
“Did you hear him make any direct threats toward the deceased, Madame Montin?” the avocat de la partie civile asked her.
Madame Montin seemed to hesitate, and only answered after a prompting from the bench. She told the procureur: “I heard him shout- you breathe a word of this, you old bastard, and I’ll have your
This was the lurid reporting of a tabloid journalist, and Enzo was immediately wary of putting too much store by it. The quotes were selective, feeding an unsophisticated readership’s eager appetite for sex, violence and fear. But it was clear, all the same, how Arzhela Montin’s testimony must have fed popular antagonism toward Kerjean and inflicted considerable damage on his defence. How quickly love had turned into something so destructive.
Michel Locqueneux, a mechanic from the garage at Port Tudy where Kerjean had his car serviced and repaired, had been called to give evidence for the prosecution. He had told the court that Kerjean had brought his car in for its annual vidange the morning of the day that Killian was murdered. His testimony was that the car was running perfectly when it left the garage and that there was not a single reason he could think of for it breaking down that night, as Kerjean claimed. He had also told the court that Kerjean had not subsequently brought the car back for examination. And so the fault that appeared, then disappeared so mysteriously in the course of one night, remained unexplained.
Kerjean’s lawyer called several rebuttal witnesses to discredit Locqueneux, disgruntled clients who told stories of oil leaks and failing brakes and engine malfunction after servicing at the Locqueneux garage.
Several customers from Le Triskell were called to describe Kerjean’s rantings in the bar the night he threatened to put Killian in the cemetery.
But as Enzo worked his way through the prosecution case, it became painfully clear that there really was no hard evidence, except for that obtained at the crime scene. The fingerprints on the gate, the footprint in the garden, the Montblanc pen. And that was simply blown out of the water by a ruthless defence avocat who demonstrated beyond doubt that the handling of the crime scene and the initial investigation would have been perfect fodder for the scriptwriters of an Inspector Clouseau movie. In fact, he had made the allusion more than once, eliciting considerable laughter from the public benches. It was little wonder, Enzo reflected, that Gueguen was still embarrassed by it all, even although he himself had only been a trainee at the time.
The crux of the whole case, Enzo reflected as he stepped back out into the Rue du Port, revolved around the encounter at the Fort du Grognon. Only three people knew exactly what happened that day. Killian was dead. Kerjean was unlikely to provide any enlightenment. That only left the lover, Arzhela Montin. And she was still on the island, living at Quelhuit, according to the libraire. Enzo checked his watch. There was just time to catch the late afternoon ferry back. He would be on the island again a little after five. Time enough to drive out to Quelhuit and talk to Kerjean’s exmistress before dinner.
Chapter Sixteen
Quelhuit was a disparate group of whitewashed cottages gathered around an old church and strung out along the north shore. Fading light washed the landscape as Enzo turned off the Pen Men road and nursed his Jeep along a narrow, winding track between high hedgerows and tall oaks that shed brittle, brown leaves. Ahead, the church and the cluster of houses were silhouetted on the rise against a darkening blue sky.
It wasn’t until he was almost there that Enzo realised Arzhela would no longer be Madame Montin. And he cursed himself for not stopping off at the Maison de la Presse to ask what her new married name was. But as his father had always been fond of saying, he had a good Scots tongue in his head. He would simply have to stop and ask. He pulled into a paved parking area in front of the church, drawing up next to a tractor and a digger. As he stepped out into the dusk, he felt the chill settling with the night and reached back into the jeep to retrieve Killian’s scarf.
Again he was aware of the man’s scent, and the sense of him there, at his shoulder, watching his progress, or lack of it.
He pushed open a gate and heard it squeak loudly in the still of the coming night. The birds had already fallen silent, and the only sound to be heard was the sea washing gently along the shore. His footsteps seemed disproportionately loud as he crunched down the gravel path to the back door of one of a row of terraced cottages. The door was a freshly painted royal blue, and it was hard and unyielding beneath his knuckles.
The silence that followed his knock seemed profound, until a light above the door came on and startled him. The door opened to reveal an elderly lady wearing a patterned apron over a pale blue skirt. She wiped floury hands over the pattern and peered at him in the light.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, madame. I’m looking for the home of a lady who used to be called Arzhela Montin. I’m afraid I don’t know her new nom d’epouse.”
The old lady seemed to lean even further out of the door, squinting up at him with beady blue eyes. “You’re that investigator,” she said. “The one they wrote about in the paper.”
“Yes.” It seemed there was no corner of the island where he wasn’t known.
“She’ll not talk to you, you know.”
He was taken aback. “What makes you think that?”
“She’s never spoken about it in all the years she’s been here. Keeps herself to herself, she does. Thinks she’s better than us, just because she married an incomer and had her face in all the newspapers once. The centre of it all.” She snorted her derision. “Hah! You wouldn’t think it to look at her now. That a woman like that could arouse so much…” she searched for the right word, “…passion.”
Enzo followed her directions, past the church and down the slope to where a manicured lawn led toward the seashore and a solitary white bungalow was set among the trees. He made his way through a wellkept rock garden to a conservatory built along the front of the house. The distant lights of the mainland winked and twinkled in frosted air across water that lay still and grey, like slate.
When she came through from the house to open the door and switch on the lights of the conservatory, Enzo saw what her poisonous neighbour had meant. Arzhela Leclerc, as she now was, did not fit the image of the scarlet woman at the centre of an illicit affair that had led to scandal and murder. Enzo found himself almost disappointed. She was small, no more than five-two. What might once have been a slim and willowy figure, had turned to fat, and the impression she gave was of a ball, almost completely round. Her face, though unlined, had sagged, its jawline lost in jowls, her mouth down-turned and quite unattractive.
She stood looking at him, wearing a mantle of weary resignation. “I’ve been expecting you.” She stood aside, a silent invitation to enter. The conservatory was tiled and filled with fleshy-leafed potted plants. Cane furniture was arranged to take advantage of the view across the water, and she waved him into an armchair. “My husband will be
