“But he’s long dead,” Paulik said. “Why was the house locked up, and everyone afraid of it, even your mother?”
“Ghosts,” Gaston replied frankly. “The crying ghosts of the poor girls—servants from Aix and around here—who were Hugues’s sex slaves, their unwanted babies buried in the basement.”
Paulik grimaced. “Does everyone around here know about the ghosts?” He thought of the Pioger cousins, and anyone else who might have wanted to frighten Valère.
“Oh, sure, everyone knows. At least, everyone over twenty years of age and locally born. But now Puyloubier is what they’re calling a bedroom community for Aix. There are a lot of foreigners.” He looked at Paulik and raised an eyebrow. Paulik knew that he, too, even though Provençal by birth, was being included in that group.
“Not everyone’s afraid of the house,” Paulik went on. “The new owner told me that when he bought it, the rooms had been tagged by local teens.”
Gaston shrugged. “They’re young and silly.”
Paulik took his last sip, enjoying the sensation of the alcohol’s warmth passing through his body. “You know, my daughter, Léa, who’s eleven, definitely felt something in the house, but it wasn’t fear.”
Gaston nodded. “There are some locals who have said the same thing. When I was in high school, a gang of my classmates used to go up to the bastide and try to scare each other. There was this sweet girl, Jeanne, who later became a nun—I haven’t seen her in years. She used to go with them. They broke in one night and ran from room to room for about ten minutes, then left, having worked themselves into a frenzy. But once outside, they noticed Jeanne wasn’t with them. Two of the guys volunteered to go back in—they bragged about this for weeks after, they did—to look for Jeanne. They found her in the attic, sitting on the floor, motionless. They claimed it took them a good ten minutes to get her to hear them and stand up. Afterward, she told everyone that she wasn’t frightened but warm, more like, and secure. That’s the way she described it. Warm.”
“You never went up there?”
“No, sir,” Gaston replied. “Not after the licking I got. I had more sense than that.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Aix-en-Provence,
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Officers Goulin and Schoelcher parked an unmarked car in front of the boarded-up hardware store in Puyloubier. The store, once one of the hubs of the village, along with the boulangerie, boucherie, and cave coopérative, looked like it had been closed for some time. It still had its wood storefront, including peeling wooden shutters that would have been closed when it wasn’t open. Verlaque had briefed the officers on the Pioger cousins, but since they didn’t have a warrant, they were to simply watch the apartment’s front door and wait for signs of either Didier or Hervé. Photographs of the cousins had been easy to obtain, since both had criminal records.
“We can’t stay here too long,” Sophie said to her partner, Jules. “It’s one thing to stake out an apartment in Aix, where people are always coming and going, but here . . . we’re in a village. Everyone must know each other.”
Jules shrugged, keeping his eyes on the sidewalk on either side of their car. “Maybe not,” he answered. “Villages like Puyloubier have a lot of tourists in the summer and newcomers who commute into Aix every day.” He spread out a map on the dash, to make it look like they, too, were tourists.
“Some local will probably ask us if we need help finding something,” Sophie said.
“I doubt it,” Jules replied. “We’re not in Alsace.”
Sophie smiled but didn’t reply. Jules Schoelcher was Alsatian, and when he first arrived on the force, fellow officers had teased him over his ironed jeans and meticulousness. “Look,” Sophie said. “That old guy on the other side of the street. He’s slowing down in front of the apartment’s front door.”
“There can’t be two apartments upstairs,” Jules said. “It looks too small.”
“He has a key,” Sophie said. She tilted her head to see well. “He’s going in—”
“Let’s wait five minutes.”
After three, Sophie looked at her watch and said, “I’m uneasy about this.”
“You’re right,” Jules said, opening his door. “We can’t leave that old guy up there. Let’s go.”
“We’re from the Green Party,” Sophie whispered as they crossed the street. “I have a clipboard prepared, with fake signatures.”
“Got ya.”
The old man had left the street door unlocked, and the officers bounded up the stairs. Jules Schoelcher knocked on the door. They heard moaning and exchanged looks.
“Let’s go in,” Sophie said.
“Âllo!” Jules called out, opening the unlocked door as he did. “Are you all right?”
They walked into a living room furnished with relics from the 1970s, including faded wallpaper patterned in orange and yellow plaid. “Oh mon dieu,” moaned the voice, and they continued on into the kitchen, where the old man sat at a Formica table, his head in his hands.
“Sir,” Sophie Goulin said, approaching the man and putting her hand on his left shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“They’ve cleared out,” he answered, looking up at her. “And they owe me three months’ back rent.”
Sophie and Jules exchanged looks. “The Pioger cousins?” Jules asked.
“Mais oui!” the old man answered angrily, as if Jules should have known who rented his apartment.
“Perhaps we can help you, Monsieur . . .?”
“Cheneau,” he replied. “Marcel Cheneau.”
“You’re sure they’ve left?” Sophie asked, glancing around the filthy kitchen.
“Their clothes and papers are all gone,” Cheneau replied. “And their fancy stereo.” He looked up at Sophie and asked, “And who are you, anyway?”
“Police officers,” Sophie replied. “From Aix.”
“Did you know the Piogers left me high and dry? How did you know that before me?”
“We’ve been sent by the examining magistrate in Aix,” Jules replied, sitting down at the table, “on another matter. A kidnapping at the Bastide Blanche.”
Marcel Cheneau looked at Schoelcher, wide-eyed. “You don’t say? And you think the Piogers did it?”
“We’re
