Murder on the Ile Sordou (24 page)

Le Buzz

“I
may not seem very friendly at times,” Cat-Cat Le Bon began her interview. “But I'd like to say how thankful I am that you are both here, on Sordou, right now.”

“I've been thinking,” Verlaque said. “Is it easy for one to phone the hotel, for example, and find out who will be staying here during a certain week?”

“Certainly not,” Cat-Cat said, frowning.

“Let's say I was to call and pretend I was a cousin,” Verlaque said, thinking of Isnard. “And I wanted to double-check when my cousin was booked in here.”

“Well, we'd have to be pretty thick to fall for that,” Cat-Cat replied.

Bruno Paulik smiled.

“Do you think that whoever murdered M. Denis would have wanted an examining magistrate here? For kicks?” Cat-Cat asked.

“Something like that,” Verlaque said.

“That just seems . . . stupid.”

“Was it kept fairly quiet that Alain Denis would be on vacation?” Paulik asked.

“Oh no!” Cat-Cat laughed. “Didn't you know? Now I understand why you keep asking these questions. Alain Denis announced it on
Le Buzz
sometime in late spring.”

Verlaque looked at Paulik, who was busy writing. They would check the date that the television show aired against the dates of bookings.

“I would have told you,” Cat-Cat went on, “but I thought you knew.”

“I've never seen that show,” Verlaque said. He hated French television; he had only recently figured out how to watch his favorite television show—where an English architect visits couples who are building or renovating homes in the English countryside—on his computer.

“I haven't seen it either,” Paulik added.

“That must have helped your bookings,” Verlaque said.

“Only marginally, from what we can tell,” Cat-Cat replied. “M. Denis was fairly vague when asked about his vacations, so you'd have to know Sordou, or do some research, to figure out where he was talking about. There are dozens of islands between here and Nice.”

“What exactly did he say?” Paulik asked, pen ready.

“That he was going
home
,” Cat-Cat said. “To the sun and sea, to an enchanted, unvisited island.”

“And he didn't mention Sordou?” Verlaque asked.

“No, unfortunately for us,” Cat-Cat said. “If one didn't know Provence very well, they would probably mistake his hint for another island. We'd only just opened the hotel: there hasn't been a hotel running here since 1966. Speaking of bookings . . .”

Verlaque braced himself; he knew that the Le Bons were anxious to reopen the hotel. “I'm afraid it's impossible until we solve this crime,” he said.

“And we're just supposed to sit here and lose clients, and lose money?”

“We're working as fast as we can,” Paulik offered.

“When are your next bookings?” Verlaque asked. “Saturday?”

“Yes,” Cat-Cat said.

“That gives us three more days,” Verlaque said. “If we aren't done by then, perhaps we can move the investigation to the mainland, in Marseille.”

Cat-Cat drew in a big breath and then sighed with relief.

“The afternoon of the murder,” Verlaque said. “Were you in your office, or room?”

“Room,” Cat-Cat replied. “We have a small apartment at the back of the hotel, next to Mme Poux's. I was lying on the bed reading when I heard the shot, and Max was in the shower, so he didn't hear it.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she replied, “since I assumed it was Prosper. But I was angry, because our clients could have gotten hurt. I had seen Mme Hobbs earlier in the day, painting by the sea, and her husband and M. Monnier sitting together down by the dock.”

“What time?”

“Well, it would have been before five-thirty p.m., because that was when I came up to our apartment to rest.”

“Were you worried when you hired someone who had spent time in jail?” Verlaque asked.

Mme Le Bon smirked. “It was Max's idea, not mine,” she said. “He's the more benevolent of the two of us.” Verlaque thought of their argument, as described by Sylvie. “He had read a newspaper article about how well ex-convicts can do in the restaurant and hotel business, if given a chance and properly trained,” she continued. “That young chef in England started it.”

“Jamie Oliver,” Verlaque offered.

“Yes, that's him. But I'm glad, now, that we hired Niki.”

“She seems very dedicated,” Verlaque said. “And efficient. How did she get on with M. Denis?”

“I was afraid you would ask that,” Cat-Cat replied.

“Oh?”

“Niki didn't like him, let's just put it that way.”

“I'm afraid, Mme Le Bon,” Paulik said, “that you'll have to be more specific.”

“He . . . made a pass at Niki,” she said.

“Just once?” Verlaque asked. “Mlle Darcette didn't tell us.”

“More than once,” Cat-Cat said flatly.

“She told you, then?”

“Yes, she was livid,” Cat-Cat said. “I've never seen her so upset.”

“Upset-sad, or upset-angry?” Verlaque asked.

“The latter.”

•   •   •

Max Le Bon seemed more nervous than his wife. In fact, Velaque had commented to Paulik at the end of the day that Cat-Cat Le Bon hadn't seemed the slightest bit nervous, which they both knew was rare. “I've seen even police get nervous under police questioning,” Bruno Paulik had said.

Max Le Bon had confirmed that both he and his wife were in their apartment when the gun went off, and when pressed admitted that Niki Darcette had been furious over Denis's unwelcome flirtations. What he was able to add had to do with the hotel, as if he wanted to release some of the tension: “We weren't able to book all of the rooms, even this week, even with Alain Denis here,” M. Le Bon said. “It's that single that you are in, commissioner.”

“Why do you think that is?” Verlaque asked.

“Any number of things, none of which we thought of when we naively bought this hotel,” Le Bon said. “Proximity to Marseille . . . or is fifteen miles too far out? Too expensive, or not expensive enough? Too quiet? Who knows . . .” His voice fell off.

“And since Denis's death?”

“I don't like to admit this,” Le Bon said. “But we're now fully booked until the second week of September.”

“So his death helped, in some weird way.”

“Who knows?” Le Bon repeated. “But Niki has been working really hard over this past week; she's been sending out press releases daily, and harassing journalists . . . before M. Denis's death, I'd like to add. We also splurged and put a small ad in
Madame Figaro
magazine. It came out last Sunday. We're waiting to ask clients, when they get here, if they saw the ad. If they telephone to reserve, we ask them outright how they found out about Sordou.”

“And what do they say?”

“Niki tells me about a third saw the
Madame Figaro
ad, and a few have seen our website, and one or two have admitted they'd like to come to pay homage to Alain Denis.”

“Only one ot two?” Paulik asked.

“Truth be told,” Max said, “there are probably more than that who booked because of Denis, but . . .”

“But they won't admit it,” Verlaque suggested.

“Exactly,” Le Bon said. “It doesn't put anyone in a good light if they say they'd like to come to see the island where a famous actor was murdered.”

•   •   •

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Eric Monnier said as he sat down, setting his Panama hat on the table.

“Hello, M. Monnier,” Verlaque said. “You were by the dock, having a cigar, on the afternoon of Alain Denis's death.”

“Yes indeed,” Monnier replied. “An Upmann forty-six. My last one.”

“Last cigar?” Verlaque asked. “Or last forty-six?”

Monnier laughed. “Last forty-six; don't worry!”

“How long were you there?” Verlaque asked.

“For over an hour,” Monnier said. “As long as it took me to smoke the forty-six. I got there just before five p.m. and left sometime after six-thirty p.m.”

“Did you see anything unusual?” Paulik asked.

“No, or I would have told you,” Monnier replied. “Bill Hobbs was reading some self-help book that Yanks go for, on the bench opposite me. We tried to talk, but there was an issue with the languages.”

“But you knew what he was reading?” Paulik asked.

“I can read English fairly well,” Monnier said, “but get all tongue twisted when I have to speak it.”

“And out on the water? Was there anything?”

“Nothing,” Monnier said. “It was getting rough, even I could see that. Not a soul was out there.”

“You're from Marseille, right?” Verlaque asked. “The commissioner did some digging around before he got to Sordou.”

“Well done,” Monnier said, winking. “And I would imagine you have a team of policemen researching our files right now.”

“We do.”

“I was born in Marseille on June 12, 1940.”

“Alain Denis was born in Marseille in 1940 as well,” Verlaque said.

“Marseille is a big city,” Monnier replied.

Verlaque said, “Mme Poux, the housekeeper, told me that Alain Denis was a champion swimmer. Did you know that?”

“Not in any kind of detail,” Monnier said. “He swam at the club, I believe . . . Le Cercle des Nageurs. Again, like his prestigious high school and family mansion overlooking the Corniche Kennedy, Le Cercle was way out of my league.”

“You've been to Sordou before?” Verlaque asked. “You told me on the boat.”

“A few times, yes, when it had a roaring hotel. We didn't go near the hotel, mind you. Stuck to the other side of the island. But I mostly vacationed on Frioul, at my uncle's cabin. Sometimes when we were kids we would get a boat ride over here and swim around Sordou's shore, hoping to get a glimpse of the rich and famous staying at the hotel.”

“Oh, so you swam too,” Verlaque said.

“My dear boy, we all swam in those days,” Monnier said. “There wasn't television—unless you were rich—or video games, or those awful cell phones.”

“So you didn't know each other?” Verlaque asked. “Denis went to Thiers High School.”

“I know that,” Monnier said. “When he became famous, which was soon after high school, if I remember correctly, all of Marseille claimed some responsibly for Denis's talent and stardom. Alas, I can claim nothing. I never met him. In 1953 I was awarded a scholarship to study with the Jesuits in the Vaucluse.”

“The boarding school?” Paulik asked. “In Avignon? Saint-Joseph?”

“That's the one,” Monnier said. “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Why do you say that?” Verlaque asked.

“Because they taught me poetry, dear boy.”

•   •   •

Yolaine Poux walked silently into their makeshift office and sat down, smoothing her apron.

“I'm sorry to take you away from your work,” Verlaque said.

“It's not a problem,” she answered.

Verlaque had a hard time not looking at Yolaine Poux; her gaze—especially her light-blue eyes—was intense. Marine had commented on what a handsome woman Mme Poux was, and Verlaque now agreed. He had never seen her this close; her complexion was radiant, even if she too was born in 1940. Her cheekbones were prominent, showing off not only her olive skin but also her full lips and wide mouth. But it was her statuesque physique that so impressed him; her legs were long and still thin and shapely—he could see this as her black dress fell just to the knee—and her shoulders wide. “You told me something very interesting yesterday,” he began. “That Alain Denis was a champion swimmer. Did you know him growing up?”

“Yes, I did,” she answered slowly but clearly. “Marseille is a village.”

“Ha,” Verlaque mused. “M. Monnier just referred to it as a big city.”

“He lives in Aix,” she replied. “The Aixois always think that Marseille is a big city.”

Verlaque could see Paulik writing, and he could imagine what it said: “No apparent connection between Yolaine Poux and Eric Monnier.” Unless she's a good liar, thought Verlaque.

“Would you care to tell us how you knew Alain Denis?” Verlaque asked.

Mme Poux looked at her watch, and both men saw that she caressed its face. “Do you have a while?” she finally asked.

Le Cercle des Nageurs

P
aulik reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small tape recorder. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Mme Poux replied.

She began:

“Whenever I hear classical piano music, especially Bach, I close my eyes and imagine myself floating, on my back, in seawater, with the blue southern sky above me. The higher piano notes sound to me like the delicate ripples of water: like sparkles of light.

“The staff could swim in the club in those days; I doubt that they can today. Le Cercle des Nageurs—that's Marseille's elite private swimming club—was opened in 1921 by a Spanish architect who was obsessed with swimming. Even back then the club trained Olympic swimmers and water polo players, but it also gave bourgeois Marseillais a place where they could swim and socialize. All the same, I had to defend the club when I spoke to my parents about it when I got the job; ‘It's not a club for the rich,' I would tell them. They were Communists, as were most of our friends and neighbors. I told my parents: ‘The rich have vacation houses. Members of Le Cercle do not; Le Cercle is their residence secondaire.'

“ ‘Then it should be open to all!' my father would yell, banging the kitchen table with his fist. ‘And free!'

“I had to bite my lip; I liked the club's members. They were friendly, and chic, and well educated. I don't know how much the membership fee was back then, in 1956, when I got the job, but I've seen this year's rates published in
La Provence
: the initiation fee, after two members formally sponsor you, is sixteen hundred euros, and after that, twelve hundred fifty yearly.

“I got the job my last summer of high school—I skipped two grades in elementary school. I'd help launder the pool's towels, and sometimes serve light snacks and drinks in the small members' lounge. When I graduated I stayed on full-time. There weren't a lot of jobs in postwar Marseille, and at Le Cercle you felt like you were with a family.

“In the early days, the members dove off the low cliffs at the base of the club into the sea, but in 1932 a
bassin d'été
was built—a long and sleek outdoor pool, overlooking the Mediterranean and eastern Marseille, full of sea water. I'd never seen such a beautiful pool. . . . When I had finished my shift I'd quickly put on my bathing suit and step carefully into the pool. I tried not to make myself noticed.

“I was a good, natural swimmer, and I knew it. I had my father's wide shoulders and narrow hips, and I could glide through the water just as well as any of the semiprofessional swimmers. Even then there were Olympic swimmers at Le Cercle; nowadays there are so many that I lose track of their names, when I get the chance to watch the Olympics on the small television in my room. In 1951 our own Joseph Bernardo broke the world record in the four-by-two-hundred-meter free swim. He went on to the Olympics in 1952 and in that
La Provence
article I mentioned earlier the journalist interviewed Bernardo; he still goes daily to the club, to swim, and then he reclines on a chaise longue and soaks up some sun, and he talks with the younger Olympic hopefuls. There were photos.

“In 1956, the year I came, an indoor freshwater pool was built, and years after, an Olympic pool was installed. In 1967 I went back to Le Cercle with my husband, to show him my beloved seawater pool, jutting out over the cliffs, but Rémy seemed nervous, and we didn't stay long. Rémy didn't want me to work; he thought that married women should stay home, especially to look after the children. But we didn't have any children, and then Rémy died of a heart attack in 1977. That's when I finally regretted listening to Rémy, and my father, who didn't want me to apply to university, even though all of my teachers wanted me to.

“1956 was a magical summer—it was dry and hot—and I felt thrilled to be alive. The club members who were my age had seen my skill at swimming and made me one of their own. For that summer, anyway. I haven't been swimming since then; I wonder if I'd remember how. I can't remember many of the faces of my friends from that summer—all wealthier than I was—but I can remember some names: Roger, Alice, Claude, Xavier, Marie-Pierre . . . and Alain, of course. Everyone loved him.

“I distinctly remembered the first time I saw his face up close; I was carrying a stack of fluffy white towels into the woman's change room and he was walking down the hall, toward the
bassin d'été
, humming. I almost ran into him, and he caught the towels before they slid one by one onto the floor, and he laughed. ‘
Fais attention, ma belle!
' he cried. Be careful, my beautiful!

“I told my best friend the next day how beautiful he was. ‘He's beautiful enough to be in the pictures,' I said. We laughed, and my father banged on my bedroom wall because we were making too much noise. He was reading Karl Marx.

“Years later I ran into my friend on La Canebière. ‘Fancy that!' she had said, shaking my arm. ‘You were right all those years ago! Alain Denis was beautiful enough for the movies!' I was Mme Poux now and had never told her what had exactly happened during that summer of 1956.

“Alain Denis—he was the son of a wealthy doctor and a ballet dancer—seemed to glide, not walk, around Le Cercle. A string of young men and women usually followed him, each one vying for his attention. His was a beauty almost feminine: high cheekbones, full lips, and piercing steel-blue eyes. The boys would jump around Alain, trying to be funny. The girls would pout. I immediately noted—this was a pool, after all—that Alain's body was hairless. It fascinated me. That was a contrast to the hair on his head, which he wore longer than what was the fashion in those days; it was parted on the side; it fell elegantly in front of his face. He hardly ever bothered to flick it back out of the way!

“ ‘Hey, towel girl,' he whispered to me one afternoon when I had finished my shift. I had just swum four laps in the seawater pool and was resting, with my elbows propped up on the pool's edge. I had been looking out at the sea. ‘You're a lovely swimmer,' he said.

“ ‘Thank you,' was all I replied.

“ ‘What's your name, towel girl?'

“I told him.

“ ‘See you around, Yolaine,' he said, and dove back under the water.

“I grabbed my towel and got out of the water as quickly as I could; my legs were shaking. I could feel him watching me as I walked around the pool's edge, toward the door that led to the changing rooms. The next day I went straight home after work, not wanting to run into him again. But four days later, after I had I finished my shift on a suffocatingly hot August day, I swam again, almost forgetting about the bold beautiful boy. I swam some laps and then floated on my back—always with that piano music playing in my head—and I lay there, looking at the sky with its fine white clouds racing by. All of a sudden a dark spot appeared in the water just by my right shoulder, and I glanced at it while I floated. It grew out of the water, slowly, and Alain's face appeared. ‘Hello, Yolaine,' he whispered. ‘You need to teach me how to swim like you.'

“ ‘Don't be silly,' I told him, and I quickly reached for the pool's bottom with my feet. I didn't want to be lying on my back so close to him. ‘You're on the swim team. There's nothing I could teach you,' I said.

“ ‘I have speed, but not grace,' he said, smiling.

“I'll never forget those words. Years later, after reading about his fall from cinema, those words would come back to me. I have speed, but not grace. Did he become a star too quickly?

“ ‘Let's lie in the sun,' he suggested.

“So we got out of the pool and lay on our stomachs, propping up our heads so that we could talk, but also look out at the sea. He made me laugh with stories of the swim team; how Aimé always jumped in a second before everyone else, or how Roger had to be forced into the water every morning. We began swimming, and sunning, together almost every night after my shift, for four weeks. His friends never seemed to be around then; I sometimes finished late, and most of the kids left the pool in the late afternoon. Or were they giving Alain some space, knowing that he was wooing me? I never knew . . .

“And then, on the fifth week, I stopped seeing him. You see, the previous Saturday we had swum together, and I felt comfortable enough to tell Alain about my family. He did the same. I even made him laugh. We stayed until I said that I would be needed at home, to help with dinner, and Alain had looked genuinely saddened to say goodbye. We walked down the long hallway toward the change rooms, and just before I was to go into the wooden door marked
femmes
Alain took me by the waist, held my gaze with his blue eyes, and kissed me. To my surprise I kissed back. I have never, before or after, even with Rémy, felt so thrilled to kiss a man. I'm ashamed to say that, but I want you to know everything. ‘You're so—' Alain began to say, but a cough down the hall cut his sentence short. We both swung around to see Thierry, the swim-team coach, standing at the end of the hall, his hands on his hips. Alain let go of me and I fled into the change room, trembling.

“At the end of the summer, Alain won the club's four-hundred-meter crawl, and when he stood on the makeshift podium, surrounded by friends and club members, I was almost certain that he caught my eye, and slowly, for two or three seconds, closed his own eyes, as if to apologize. I can understand why we couldn't go on seeing each other; he was a member, I an employee. He was a doctor's son; my father drove a tram.

“The following April a friend of Alain's—he too was well connected; I had seen him at Le Cercle and never liked him—invited Alain to the film festival in Cannes. Alain had been a stylish dresser—this I didn't know, as I usually saw him in a black bathing suit, or in shorts. It was only when I saw photos of him in newspapers and magazines that I realized how smart a dresser he was. His fashion flair—elegant with a haphazard look was how it was described—and beauty caught the attention of at least two film directors in Cannes, as you know. I always respected the fact that he didn't sign the contract with that flashy Hollywood director, but instead agreed to star in a small movie being filmed in Paris that summer. We all know the story, but I'll repeat it anyway. His next film was with that avant-garde Italian director; and for his third film he was back in Cannes, this time to accept the Palme d'Or for best actor.”