The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe (29 page)

“You can be very long-winded at times.”

“Despite our collaboration, I don’t feel it’s a deontologically desirable to allow my private life to invade my professional one.”

Anne Marie nodded.

“Which is why I have never told you about my divorce …”

“Divorce?”

“Strictly in confidence,
madame le juge
.”

“I thought you were the happiest of married men.”

He had raised the bunch of flowers and his face was partially hidden by the bright carnations. Trousseau hesitated before speaking. “My ex-wife and I both have high regard for each other, of course, and we both love our children very dearly, but Madame Trousseau cannot live here in Guadeloupe and for the moment I’ve no desire to return to Paris. You see, Madame, as much as I respect the French way of doing things, I feel a lot more at home here in the islands.”

“You get to see the children?”

“The two oldest girls are married and have their own families. Ronny’s the last one. I miss him because he enjoys working in the garden at Trois-Rivières. We phone of course.”

“You live alone?”

“I cook my own produce.” Trousseau was smiling, but there was melancholy in his brown eyes. “You really must come to Goyave and I will prepare a meal for you—a dish of pork and the breadfruit you so despise.”

They had reached the entrance to the hospital. Anne Marie was about to give Trousseau’s arm a reassuring pat when the glass doors opened silently before them and Dr. Bouton was there, smiling from behind his round spectacles.

“Carnations,
madame le juge
? You really shouldn’t have.”

“I’ve come to see Lucette Salondy,” Anne Marie said as Bouton kissed her on both cheeks. His skin was cold and felt like that of a lizard’s against her cheek.

“Lavigne told me you were on your way.”

Anne Marie said, “How is she?”

“Lavigne told me you now believe this Richard Ferly’s the murderer.”

“How’s Lucette?”

Dr. Bouton took her by the arm and they went toward the large lifts. Almost immediately, the steel doors drew apart and as they stepped inside, Dr. Bouton hit one of the buttons. The lift moved gently upwards.

“Lucette’s going to be all right?”

It was very cold inside the hospital.

“I’d hate to be in one of these things during an earthquake,” Dr. Bouton said, his eyes—or perhaps the rims of the glasses—twinkling.

Anne Marie put her hand to her belly; she could feel the tenseness of her muscles. “How’s my sister-in-law, Docteur Bouton?”

Bouton looked at her, then at Trousseau. Anne Marie could recall how much she had loathed him when he had told her that she was pregnant with Létitia. For a while, he had played with her, like a clever cat playing with a mouse. He had knowledge she needed and he enjoyed the power that knowledge gave him. Anne Marie returned his stare. “Well?”

He raised one shoulder. “You knew of course that she had sickle-cell disease?”

“What?”

“You needn’t worry about last night—that was nothing more than an unpleasant shock. Her system’s resistant enough to deal with that but I’m afraid Mademoiselle Salondy doesn’t look after herself. From birth she’s been anemic—and she’s now diabetic.”

“Lucette …”

Dr. Bouton looked at Anne Marie with his alert smile. “The poor woman’s carrying more weight than’s good for her and I’m afraid she’s not very careful about her diet.” He lowered his voice. “Surprised her doctor didn’t tell her to lay off the alcohol. I get the impression she has a more than healthy fondness for white rum.”

“That’s not the impression I have.”

The illuminated roundel in the panel indicated they had reached the twelfth floor as the doors slid open. Dr. Bouton stepped aside to allow Anne Marie out of the lift. “You should be able to speak to her for a few minutes. She’s no longer in intensive care, but she does need rest so it wouldn’t be a good idea to upset her.”

“Why should I upset her?”

Dr. Bouton placed his hand on her sleeve. “I won’t have time to see you afterwards,
madame le juge
, because I’m invited to a
souper dansant
. However, I wanted to tell you …”

“Yes?”

He held his hands down in front of him, like a falsely contrite child. Because of the temperature in the hospital he was wearing his double-breasted cashmere cardigan. A bogus escutcheon, an English regiment perhaps, at the chest. “I wanted to tell you there’s still no word from Pasteur, other than that they can find no trace of anything in the woman’s body.”

“The woman?”

“The woman we thought was Vaton. I believe she’s now been identified. I’m extremely embarrassed not being able to identify the cause of death. However …” He held up his hand in a deprecating gesture that irritated Anne Marie. “I’m willing to stake my professional reputation her death wasn’t violent.”

“If it wasn’t violent, how was she killed?”

“Pasteur’s sent blood samples to Paris. Normally they’d wait a
week, but neither they nor I think we’re going to find anything. The girl’d been dead for more than three days. In that time, the chemical components started to break down. If she didn’t meet with a violent death, the most probable explanation—a healthy young woman in the prime of her life, who was seen to be happy and healthy on the Sunday morning—the most plausible explanation is poison or drugs. Unfortunately by the time I got my hands on her, there wasn’t much left in her stomach. There were old traces of syringe marks, but that doesn’t prove anything. However—and if you are right about Richard, this may well be a nail in his coffin—I’m convinced the girl didn’t die on the beach.”

“Why not?”

Again the patronizing smile of a man who can share or withhold knowledge. “From the beginning I was convinced the body’d been carried to the beach,
madame le juge
, on the Wednesday morning. If we accept she died on Sunday night and the corpse was found on Wednesday by the fisherman, there seems no reason why animals shouldn’t have started tearing the body apart. Of course, there are times when a body can give off a smell that frightens animals away—but a smell’ll never frighten away all animals.”

“More or less the conclusion I had come to, Docteur Bouton.”

He nodded, trying to conceal mild irritation. “Livor mortis would suggest the corpse wasn’t moved after death. You no doubt remember livor mortis seemed to indicate the woman’d collapsed onto her back and had remained in that position.”

Unexpectedly, Trousseau spoke from behind the bunch of flowers. “Perhaps she’d died in bed.”

“Excellent, Monsieur Trousseau,” Bouton exclaimed, beaming at the
greffier
.

“Which would mean,” Anne Marie said thoughtfully, looking from one man to the other, “the bikini on the beach was left there deliberately.” She spoke slowly. “The bikini was left there so we’d associate her with the young woman Monsieur Desterres’d met and photographed at Tarare.”

She was glad to have Trousseau beside her.

(Dr. Bouton had accompanied them as far as the closed door, then turning on his heel, had gone off down the corridor, his shoes echoing off the linoleum against the bare walls.)

Anne Marie took the flowers from Trousseau and entered the small room. It was on the north side of the building, bright but without the heat of the sun. It gave on to the hospital park, the boulevard and, beyond that, the ghetto of Boissard.

There were flowers everywhere, yellow chrysanthemums, balisiers, varieties of roses and many bouquets of carnations. They had been placed on tables, on chairs and on the floor.

In the middle of the room was a single bed, anchored to the floor by various tubes and leads. At first, as Anne Marie approached, she could scarcely see her sister-in-law. The large body had sunk into the mattress and the small head was lost in the depths of a plump pillow.

Trousseau took the flowers from her hand and walked over to a small sink.

With a pounding heart and the muscles taut in her belly, Anne Marie stepped forward. She thought Lucette Salondy was asleep. The face had lost its color and the mouth was slightly open. A double loop of plastic piping ran across each cheek into a nostril. There was a saline drip, an opaque bag hanging from a metal pillar and leading to Lucette’s arm, concealed beneath the cotton blanket.

The head turned, the eyes opened and there was recognition. With relief, Anne Marie saw the sunken face slowly break into the familiar smile.

Lucette said something. Anne Marie had to lean forward to hear the feeble, sibilant voice.

“They thought they could kill me.” It was as if a brace had been set onto Lucette’s teeth.

Trousseau left the flowers in the sink beneath a running tap and he now brought a chair for Anne Marie to sit down. She kissed Lucette’s forehead, noting the faint smell of tear gas, placed her hand on Lucette’s shoulder and slowly lowered herself onto the cold chair. “Nobody’s going to kill you.”

There was a slight wince of pain.

“You should be out of here before long.”

“No pizza.”

“What?” Anne Marie leaned forward.

“Supposed to be taking the children for a pizza, you and I, and look what happens to me.” A smile and Anne Marie realized that the sunken cheeks and the sibilant pronunciations were because Lucette’s false teeth had been removed. “Instead I end up here.”

“You need to rest, Lucette.”

“They told me the Dominican was killed.”

Anne Marie nodded.

“You were there,
doudou
?”

“I came—but when I reached the school the police had cordoned it off.”

“You saw?”

Anne Marie had seen very little. She had seen one of the men in a flak jacket stand up on the opposite roof as he aimed and fired the canister of tear gas. She had seen the other CRS move forward toward the office, but the action had been indoors, out of view. With the swirling tear gas, her eyes had started to water and she was no longer watching. No longer able to watch. It was some time later Bastia had approached her and given her a mask. She had followed him—strangely nonchalant, he was smoking a cigarette—into the small office where the Dominican’s lung had been blown apart. Blood on the wall, beneath the photograph of a placid, arrogant President Mitterrand.

“I got there later.”

“You came with me in the ambulance?”

Anne Marie said, “They gave you something to sleep.”

“Then he’s dead?”

Anne Marie nodded.

Silence in the room, apart from the sound of the running tap and Trousseau’s arranging the flowers in a vase. Anne Marie’s offering seemed insignificant alongside the other exuberant bouquets.

Lucette smiled a toothless smile. “Like a cemetery in here.”

“The doctor says you should soon be out.”

“I want to sleep.”

“You must sleep, Lucette. I just dropped by to see how you were.”

“You accompanied me last night, didn’t you? That was good of you. You are a good person, Anne Marie.”

“Tomorrow I’ll come with Létitia and with Fabrice, if you like.”

Slowly, as if it were valuable and fragile porcelain, Lucette turned her head on the pillow and Anne Marie felt that she had never seen her sister-in-law look so old. “Bring Létitia?”

“You’d like that?”

“Kiss me, Anne Marie.”

Anne Marie leaned over Lucette. She could smell the unhealthy breath, just as she could smell the skin of her sister in law, the faint whiff of tear gas, blood and death. As she was bending, Lucette caught Anne Marie’s hand. “Perhaps it’s His judgment on me.”

“Whose judgment?”

“God’s angry with me.”

“If He is, tomorrow my daughter will light a candle and say a prayer for you.”

“You’re a disbeliever, Anne Marie, and I’m an old and jealous woman.”

“Lucette, just think about getting some sleep. Then we can get you out of here.”

“It’s God’s punishment.” For a sick woman, she had a strong grip. Anne Marie looked at the freckled brown hand that clasped her own. “I should never’ve told you about the Théodore woman.”

Anne Marie frowned. “Madame Théodore?”

“Keep your voice down, my sister.”

“You never told me anything about Madame Théodore.”

“A jealous old woman. My fault, I should never have allowed myself to love Rodolphe—but that’s an old story.”

“Rodolphe Dugain?”

There was a long pause. Lucette looked at Anne Marie and her bloodshot eyes were damp. “An old, old story.”

“Love Rodolphe Dugain?”

“There could never be anything between him and that white woman but I was jealous—just as I was jealous of Liliane when she married Rodolphe all those years ago. I never forgave her—although, for heaven’s sake, the poor thing’s suffered for her presumption. It’s just that …” She had started to cry.

“You and Rodolphe Dugain, Lucette?”

“Oh, I always suspected the truth. I knew what he was like—but if he’d wanted to, I’d have married him and even later, a lot later, when the Théodore woman was running after him, even then I was jealous. An old, old woman, with already one foot in the grave and one foot macerating in white rum, I was as jealous as a silly adolescent.”

Lucette had lowered her voice and Anne Marie had her ear almost against the toothless mouth.

“In my pride I always felt I could’ve changed him.” She snorted softly. “I could have made him love me.”

“Dugain was a womanizer, Lucette. You could never have changed him.”

“Womanizer?” Perhaps she coughed, perhaps she laughed. “Rodolphe Dugain was a homosexual—right to the end, it was the pretty boys he liked. Why else do you think he killed himself?”

“It’s very kind of you, Monsieur Trousseau.”

She sat in the back of the car. Perhaps because he could feel her unhappiness, Trousseau drove carefully.

“I’ll come tomorrow with the children. It would do Lucette a world of good to see them—she’s always been fond of them. More fond than their own grandmother.”

“She mentioned Rodolphe Dugain to you?”

“She’s afraid of being stuck in the hospital.”

“Your sister-in-law is overweight.”