“You just thought of her too, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It makes so much sense.” She got out of the bed, opened a drawer, and began choosing clothes. “Let’s go. It’s cooler today, thankfully.” She then began to laugh.
“What’s up?” Verlaque asked. “Why are you laughing?”
“What on earth are we going to buy Sandrine to wear?”
Verlaque and Bonnet had just finished shopping and were walking to the parking garage when Verlaque’s phone rang. It was Bruno Paulik. The cigales were making a racket, and the streets were busy with shoppers leaving the market, battling the wind, their bags full of tall leeks and even taller sunflowers. Marine put the Monoprix bags down beside a fountain and sat on its edge while Verlaque took the call.
“How are you all?” Verlaque asked.
“The girls went back to bed and are sleeping again,” Paulik answered. “But the firefighters have been working all morning at the bastide. This mistral is badly timed. The fire chief and gendarme captain came by and had coffee with us, when Léa was still up. They found a body in the attic.”
Verlaque sat beside Marine and held the phone between them so she could hear. “A woman?”
“Yes,” Paulik replied. “Léa explained what happened last night. She went into the kitchen and grabbed the photograph, but on her way out she heard noises at the top of the stairs, and followed them all the way up to the attic. A woman was up there, dressed in some kind of long white gauzy dress, designed to frighten Valère, no doubt. Her face was exposed, and Léa recognized her as the blind woman from the village. Léa screamed, and the woman chased her. Léa ran out the back door, running all the way to the chapel without stopping. What she couldn’t have known was that the woman tripped over the gown and hit her head on the stairs’ wrought-iron banister. The fire chief said she was probably unconscious when the fire started.”
“Are the gendarmes searching her rented house in Puyloubier?”
“Done. They uncovered her purse and ID, still sitting on the kitchen table.”
“Who was it?”
“Monica Pelloquin,” Paulik answered. “The publisher’s wife.”
Verlaque looked at Marine, and she nodded. “How did she sneak off to the bastide?” Verlaque asked. “I thought her house was being watched.”
“It was supposed to be,” Paulik answered. “But we were understaffed—there was a friendly match in Marseille last night, since Spain just won the World Cup.”
“The soccer game,” Verlaque cut in, sighing. “France against the UK.”
“We had to send as many officers to Marseille as we could. The hooligans . . .”
“On both sides,” Verlaque said.
Paulik asked, “Did you know about Mme Pelloquin? You don’t sound surprised.”
“I figured it out late last night,” Verlaque said. “I kept thinking of her luminous pale skin, so someone who would wear a sun hat. Daniel de Rudder had me barking up the wrong tree, thinking it was Ursule Genoux or her sister. Plus it seemed to me that Mme Pelloquin had a lot to gain by exposing Valère as a literary fraud.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s a fraud—”
Verlaque smiled. He, too, such a lover of Barbier’s early books, wanted to defend him. They’d soon know how much Valère wrote and how much his late wife did. “A Parisian acquaintance did some calling around late last night and early this morning,” he said. “It seems that press and literary folks are either nighthawks or early risers. Anyway, Mme Pelloquin had indeed approached a few newspaper and magazine editors with what she called ‘the Valère Barbier scoop of the century.’ She even talked to a film producer. She could have made a lot of money and found fame.”
“Alphonse Pelloquin must have told her about Agathe’s involvement.”
“Yes, and Monica probably thought they were having an affair too. Agathe’s dead; she couldn’t get back at her. But she could attack Valère in her place.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Aix-en-Provence,
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Marine held up her champagne. “Santé,” she said, tipping her glass toward her husband’s.
“Cheers,” Verlaque replied, as he always did when toasting, in English.
“It was very kind of Jacob and his wife to let us stay here for a few days while they’re in London,” Marine said, looking at the low rows of purple lavender that led to the swimming pool.
“It only makes sense,” Verlaque said, “to stay in a place before you buy it. It’s crazy that we have to make such rushed decisions when buying property, never being able to try it out beforehand, like a test drive.”
Marine nodded. “When I bought my apartment in the Mazarin, two other prospective buyers were breathing down my neck. I had to decide and make an offer in about ten minutes. I’ve deliberated longer buying shoes.”
Verlaque looked back at the long, low farmhouse that had been added onto throughout the centuries. “It’s not as majestic as the Bastide Blanche,” he said, turning back around.
“Thank goodness for that.”
“It’s probably not haunted, either.”
“Do you really think?” Marine asked. “The bastide—”
“Yes,” Verlaque answered. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“I do too,” Marine said. “Even without Monica Pelloquin’s tricks, there were too many mysterious things going on.”
“And the objects disappearing and reappearing.”
“Like you always misplacing your reading glasses.”
“Very funny,” Verlaque said.
“I’m sorry about Judge Rudder.”
Verlaque looked up at the clear blue sky and smiled. “He lived a good long life. I’m glad I was able to fill him in before he died. He seemed relieved.”
“Three dead,” Marine said.
“Sadly, Ursule Genoux believed the only way to overcome her guilt was to take an overdose of sleeping pills.”
“And with both Ursule and Alphonse Pelloquin dead, we’ll never know for sure what happened on that boat.”
“We know well enough,” Verlaque said, “Célestine Parent knew quite a bit. Her visit to Aix yesterday turned out to be quite fruitful.” He took a sip of champagne, loving the way the light bubbles slid from the back
