Marine tried not to grimace. So she wasn’t off the hook.
Nathalie continued, “Our records concerning former students are not normally open to the public, as you can imagine.”
Marine set her purse down on a wooden desk and took a letter from it. “The inquest into the death of Agathe Barbier has been reopened by the examining magistrate in Cannes,” she said. “This is a letter from her colleague in Aix.”
“Our directrice was a classmate of Agathe Barbier’s,” Nathalie said. She read the letter and handed it back to Marine, pointing at Verlaque’s signature. “You’re married to him.”
Marine felt herself blushing. “Yes, for a year now.”
“I read the announcement in Le Monde. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll get the dossier and let you get to work. I’ll be in the media room across the hall when you’re finished. I won’t ask what you’re looking for.”
“It’s only a hunch,” Marine said. “I’m not sure myself. What will you say?” She knew that Nathalie would have to immediately report to the directrice.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Could you tell the directrice that I’m writing a biography of Mme Barbier?”
Marine had been reading the young Agathe Le Flahec’s file for over an hour when she came upon something interesting. She sat up in her chair and retied her ponytail, something she always did when excited. She then leaned forward, holding the document in her trembling hands.
When she had read through Agathe’s correspondence at the Musée de Sèvres, Marine had been impressed, and surprised, by the quality of the artist’s prose. Of course, Agathe Le Flahec had gone to a rigorous school, and had been raised during a time when people still wrote letters, and wrote them well. Agathe died long before the Internet and instant messaging killed the art of letter writing. But her prose was even better than Marine had expected. It was poetry. Marine opened her notebook to where she had jotted down the important dates concerning Agathe and Valère Barbier. Agathe died in the summer of 1988. And two years later Valère Barbier drastically switched his genre from literary fiction to romance. Was it, as he claimed at the time, because he was heartbroken? Or had someone else helped him pen his many award-winning books? Marine thought especially of his short stories published in 1980, in her mother’s favorite volume, Tales from Brittany. Agathe was bretonne, not Valère.
Marine grabbed her phone and smirked, realizing that she was about to use modern technology—a cell phone and the Internet—to look up facts. She scrolled through the results, looking for articles about Valère Barbier published around 1990, after the release of his first romance, Another Day. She found several, including a lengthy one in Paris Match explaining the writer’s sudden genre switch and gushing over the new book. Most of the articles she came across were of the same ilk, even with the same wording, as if they had been forwarded by Barbier’s publicity team, which they probably were: he was heartbroken, and in his books now wanted to try to explain love, not philosophical or moral issues. After about half an hour she found an article dating from March 1991 in the satirical paper Le Canard enchaîné—a favorite of her father’s, much to her mother’s exasperation. It included a cartoon that depicted Valère Barbier lying on a chaise longue, eating from a box of chocolates, while writing, with a plume pen, what was obviously a romance. Behind him, his framed Prix Goncourt for Red Earth was hanging crookedly on the wall.
The cartoon was followed by an article by Jean-Yves Bastou that suggested Barbier no longer wrote literary fiction because he couldn’t. The journalist hinted that Barbier may have had help writing his earlier fiction, although he made no reference to Agathe. Marine next looked up Bastou and found a few more articles written by him, more often dealing with rock music than literature. She then came across his obituary. He’d died of a heart attack in May 2002, at sixty-three years of age.
Surely, Marine thought, she wasn’t the only person to have read Agathe’s lovely prose and seen the connection? She switched off her phone and looked at the document on the desk, a creative writing prize won by Agathe Le Flahec in 1964, her last year at the school. The essay’s title, “A Chance Meeting on the rue du Faubourg,” was also that of Valère Barbier’s first book, published in 1973.
Once again, Marine found herself following Nathalie Garcia through the halls of Les Loges. “I want to thank you, Nathalie,” Marine said.
“I hope your trip to Saint-Germain wasn’t wasted.”
“No,” Marine said, hugging her purse. “Although I didn’t find anything earth-shattering,” she lied.
“The directrice won’t keep you long,” Nathalie went on. “She knows you have a train to catch.” Marine looked around her at the framed photographs of former students, teachers, and directors. A painting of a queen caught her attention, and Nathalie stopped before it. “Anne of Austria,” she said. “She founded the convent here in 1644.”
Marine nodded, and they walked on through the silent halls. She almost felt like she was going to meet the mother superior, and her hands began to sweat. A door opened and a short, plump woman in her seventies walked toward them, smiling. She had curly white hair and wore round tortoiseshell glasses. A secretary, thought Marine. The woman held out her hand. “Welcome to our school,” she said. “I’m Célestine Parent, the directrice.”
“How do you do,” Marine said, shaking her hand. “Thank you so much for letting me use the archives.”
“Please,” she said, gesturing toward the door. “Come into my office. That will be all, Mlle Garcia.”
Nathalie nodded and turned away, and Marine followed the directrice into her office. She may look harmless, thought Marine, but Mme Parent certainly spoke with authority. “So,” Mme Parent said, walking around her mahogany desk and sitting
