“Michèle Baudouin.”
Verlaque walked over to Marine and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her forehead. “I hope we’re wrong about this. I don’t like impostors.”
“I agree.” Marine turned to stir the pasta. “Why did Jacob call?” she wondered. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“They’re moving to London.”
“Really? Why?”
“Lower taxes,” Verlaque replied.
Marine sighed. “The older I get, the more socialist I become.”
“That’s the opposite of what Churchill said naturally happens to us with age,” Verlaque said. “But I agree.”
Verlaque’s answer surprised Marine, but she was too hungry to talk politics. “He called to tell you about the move?”
“Yes, and to tell me that he’s selling his house,” Verlaque said. “And he’d rather not go through an agent. We have first dibs.”
As Antoine Verlaque and Marine Bonnet were eating dinner on the terrace and celebrating the idea of living in Jacob’s house with a bottle of champagne that went surprisingly well with the pasta, Bruno Paulik was sitting in Gaston Bressey’s brightly lit kitchen. He had run into Gaston while buying bread and joked that he was an orphan that night, as his wife and daughter were eating in Aix with his wife’s sister. Gaston immediately invited Paulik to dinner, adding that, given the warm weather, he would make pasta with salmon. Paulik gladly accepted and bought an apple tart from the boulangère, one with a fine crust and thinly sliced apples arranged in a pinwheel pattern. Paulik went home to have a quick shower, wishing as he did that they had the money to build a swimming pool, and arrived at Gaston’s at eight o’clock sharp, with the tart and a bottle of chilled rosé cradled in his arms.
Paulik had to sit at an angle, as his legs would not fit under the small wooden table. He watched Gaston cook as he sipped Hélène’s rosé—she sold so much she could hardly keep up with the demand. Gaston was bent over the counter, cutting leeks, and Paulik imagined the counters here were several inches lower than at his house. Gaston’s wife must have been barely five feet tall. The old man took his time, slowly stirring chopped leeks and garlic in butter and olive oil while they chatted. Paulik asked Gaston about the village over the years, and his job working for the SNCF. Gaston replied with insight and thoughtfulness. Much the way he cooked, thought Paulik. Gaston carefully removed thyme leaves from their woody stalks and added them to the leeks. Paulik could smell it from where he was sitting: lemon thyme, which grew in low bunches along the driveway.
“It must be hard seeing all these newcomers in the village,” Paulik said as he munched on crispy radishes dipped in fleur de sel that Gaston had poured in a small saucer. Since earlier that morning in Verlaque’s office, Paulik could think of nothing but their conversation about Agathe and Valère Barbier. He hoped to get some information from the old man that might put the idea of a still-alive Agathe out of his head.
Gaston shrugged. “Le changement, c’est normal.” He put a small cast-iron frying pan on the gas stove and watched as it heated up. Unscrewing the lid of an old jam jar, he poured in a handful of pine nuts and gently stirred them in the dry, hot pan with a wooden spoon. Paulik stopped eating the radishes, saving his appetite for dinner.
When the pine nuts were toasted a medium brown, Gaston took them off the heat and set the pan aside. Paulik asked, trying to sound casual, “Are there any unusual newcomers to the village?” Gaston turned around, frowning, and Paulik immediately regretted his transparent question.
“What do you mean?” Gaston asked, still holding the wooden spoon in his hand. “Have you come here just to ask police questions?”
“Non, je suis désolé, Gaston,” Paulik said. “Let me explain a bit.” Paulik told Gaston about the mystery of Agathe Barbier’s death, and the old man listened as he cooked.
“Dinner soon,” Gaston said a few minutes later, as he drained the pasta and added several large tablespoons of crème fraîche to the leeks. He set the spoon down in the sink and turned to face Paulik. “I’ve seen the girl, Sandrine, in the village dozens of times,” Gaston began, “but a few days ago I saw her talking with one of the Pioger cousins. They saw me and quickly walked down an alleyway together, as if they didn’t want anyone noticing them.”
Paulik asked, “Can you remember exactly when that was?”
Gaston scratched his head. “That’s a little difficult for someone my age.”
“Fair enough,” Paulik said.
“But yesterday I saw something even odder.”
“Really?”
Gaston leaned down and turned off the burner. “It was late last night, and I couldn’t sleep, so I came downstairs and made some chamomile tea. It happens about once a week. I looked out the kitchen window, the one right beside you.”
Paulik looked out the window and saw the backs of the maisons du village on the street parallel to Gaston’s. “And?”
“The lights came on upstairs,” Gaston said, walking over to where Paulik was sitting. “In that one, up there,” he said, pointing.
Paulik looked at Gaston, waiting for an explanation.
“Don’t you think that odd, Commissioner? Why would a blind lady need to turn on the lights in the middle of the night?”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Aix-en-Provence,
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Despite the heat—already formidable at 9:00 a.m.—Florence Bonnet insisted on riding her bicycle to the archdiocese, which was located just north of the place Bellegarde on a nondescript street lined with postwar-era apartment buildings. From there it ruled over the combined Aix and Arles parishes, but only those with business to conduct would ever find it, for only the address, cours de la Trinité, hinted at the function of the pale-pink building at the end of the residential street. Professeur Bonnet had been coming here for almost fifty years, since she was an
