“And his wife?”
“Oh, her! She was—is—a prima donna. A spoiled girl who never grew up.”
“Would Agathe Barbier have reason to commit suicide?”
“Certainly not,” Mme Genoux replied, her voice raised. “And I told the police the same thing. She was happy, had a brilliant career, and was very talented.”
“Do you have any idea why M Barbier was drinking heavily? Were there marital problems?”
“I have no idea,” she answered. Her voice had reverted to the crispness it had when he arrived.
“Did M Barbier keep an agenda?”
“From the year 1988, you mean?”
Verlaque smiled and nodded.
“Yes, he kept an agenda, and we went through it together every morning. The agendas would now be in his possession, if he still has them.”
“Thank you, Mme Genoux,” Verlaque said as he got to his feet. “May I contact you in the near future if I need to?”
“Yes, use the cell phone number. But I warn you that it’s new technology for me, and I’m just getting used to it.”
“I could ring you on the land line.”
She hesitated and then answered, “I may go and visit my niece and her family in Picardy. Best to use the cell phone.” She got up and walked him to the door.
“Thank you once again,” Verlaque said.
“Indeed,” she said, opening the door.
As Verlaque walked to place de la Madeleine, he thought about how patient Ursule Genoux had been, all these years, if she really believed Agathe Barbier was murdered or that foul play was somehow involved. Why not speak up? But the elderly woman seemed like the sort of person who would never raise a fuss, who would shy away from conflict. Perhaps she had been silently waiting all these years to speak her mind. He shrugged, then hailed a taxi that was driving around the gray bulk of the Madeleine. He had never liked it and wished that some Italian artisan had gotten his hands on it and painted it a pastel yellow or pink like so many churches in Liguria or Sicily, although those churches were baroque and not neoclassical. He gave the driver Monica Pelloquin’s address in the 16th and sat back and enjoyed the view of his favorite city, at the same time trying to imagine white and gray Paris painted in Mediterranean colors. By the time they arrived at Mme Pelloquin’s apartment near the Trocadéro, he’d decided that Paris had best remain gray, to match the Seine. There was no sparkling blue sea here.
At the door, he buzzed at Pelloquin, and an accented woman’s voice told him to take the elevator to the fifth floor. Unlike first-floor apartments, fifth-floor apartments in classic Haussmannian buildings were Verlaque’s favorite: high enough for a view and lots of light, and with a balcon filant, for Baron Haussmann had decided that only second and fifth floors would have balconies. From the street, their uniformity made them look like ribbons of iron running the width of the building.
When he stepped out of the elevator, Verlaque saw a young woman standing in the doorway to one of the apartments. “This way,” she said. He thought her accent might be Portuguese.
“I’m Judge Verlaque from Aix-en-Provence,” he said, stepping inside the vast entryway tiled in black-and-white marble.
“Yes, just a minute please.” The maid—he assumed that’s who she was, as she wore a traditional black apron—turned and left him, walking through a set of double doors. A few seconds later, she came out and said, “Please, you may go in.” He hadn’t had much time to glance around the foyer, but did see some gaudy Venetian masks—the kind tourists buy on the Piazza San Marco—hanging on the wall. He much preferred Mme Genoux’s apartment, at least so far.
The living room was so big that Verlaque at first had trouble locating the apartment’s owner. Mme Pelloquin said hello, and he turned and saw her standing beside a massive fireplace at the far end of the room. It was the kind of stone fireplace normally found in Burgundian châteaus—too big, and too rustic, for a Parisian apartment. “Bonjour, madame,” he said, and walked across the room to shake her hand. Mme Pelloquin did not meet him halfway but stayed standing beside the fireplace. Had she been a friend, he would have made a joke about the long walk. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice.”
Mme Pelloquin shrugged her shoulders. Her rudeness did not faze or intimidate Verlaque, but it did irritate him. As it didn’t seem like he was going to be offered a seat, he jumped into questioning, already anxious to leave. “I have been asked by the former magistrate of Cannes, who officiated over the accidental death of Agathe Barbier in 1988, to make further inquiries,” he said. Since Mme Pelloquin was being noncommunicative, he decided to give her the barest of details. If she wanted to, she could look up Daniel de Rudder and see that he was now retired and living in Arcachon. He went on, “You were asleep when Mme Barbier fell off the boat that night.”
Monica Pelloquin rubbed her eyes with her right hand. “It was so long ago,” she slowly answered, as if it physically pained her to speak. Verlaque did not respond, wanting Mme Pelloquin to continue unprompted. He looked at her and saw what Mme Genoux was referring to when she called the publisher’s widow a spoiled girl. Although Mme Pelloquin must have been in her late sixties, she was wearing an outfit that Verlaque thought Marine might consider too young even for herself: a flowered empire-waist cotton dress that ended well before the knees, with pink high-heel sandals. She had long black hair, tied up in a bun, and luminous pale skin made more striking by her red lipstick. She took her hand away from her eyes and looked at Verlaque. He said, “Please, go on.”
She sighed and continued, “We finished lunch just as the storm began rocking
