The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe

Wednesday, May 16, 1990

“You’re looking for me?” The woman was attractive, but her face appeared tired, the eyelids dark. There were wrinkles about her soft brown eyes. She placed a pile of exercise books on the table beside her handbag.

“Madame Dugain?”

“Yes, I am Madame Dugain. I teach French and Latin. Your child is in which class?”

Anne Marie moved toward the table. “It’s about your husband.”

For a moment the expression went blank, devoid of emotion, while the eyes searched Anne Marie’s face. “I have already made a statement to the
police judiciaire
.” Madame Dugain drew a chair—a school chair with a steel frame and a plywood seat—toward her. “Several statements.” She leaned wearily against the backrest.

Anne Marie sat down on the other side of the table. On the formica top there were a couple of tin lids that had been used as ashtrays.

The far wall was covered with pinned-up notices concerning the different teaching unions. Beneath the drawing pins, the paper rustled relentlessly; the doors to the staff room were wide open and a mid-morning breeze kept the air cool. Through the shutters, Anne Marie could see a flame tree that had started to blossom.

“My husband is dead—isn’t that enough?”

Anne Marie nodded sympathetically. “He died under strange circumstances.”

“He was hounded to death.”

“I don’t think anyone hounded your husband.”

Madame Dugain shook her head. “I’d rather not talk about these things.”

“I understand.”

The eyes flared with brief anger. “You understand?”

The two women were alone in the silent staff room of the Collège Carnot.

(Somewhere children were singing. In another building a class burst into muffled laughter.)

“I know how painful it is to lose someone you love.” Anne Marie held out her hand. “I’m Madame Laveaud. I’m the
juge d’instruction
.”

Madame Dugain took the proffered hand coolly, keeping her distance. “I really have nothing to say to an investigative magistrate or indeed to anybody else.”

“I asked the head mistress for permission to speak to you.”

Madame Dugain folded her arms against her chest. She was wearing a dress that went well with the brown, liquid eyes. A necklace, matching gold earrings. Black hair that had been pulled back into a tight bun. Her lipstick was a matte red.

“On Saturday, April twenty-first, three officers of the
police judiciaire
visited your husband in his offices in the Sécid Tower. They had a search warrant and they were seeking information concerning accusations made against your husband—”

“Everybody accused Rodolphe.”

“Accusations that as director of the Centre Environnement, he had been misappropriating funds.”

“My husband’s not a criminal.”

“Your husband received money from the government—from the Ministry of Employment—in order to recruit and train young people under the Youth Training Scheme. There were six young people working for him at the institute. Their salaries, funded entirely with government money, were paid into the Institute’s account.”

“I know very little about my husband’s financial affairs.”

“Your husband’s accused of employing two of the young people in his small business in Abymes and paying them with the government allowances.”

“I’ve given the police as much information as …” She bit her lip. “My husband would never have taken money that wasn’t his.”

Anne Marie touched Madame Dugain’s arm. “Given the circumstances, I don’t think any good can be achieved by continuing with the enquiry.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “My husband and I were happy. We’d been married for seventeen years. You don’t think my children and I have suffered enough?”

Somewhere an electric buzzer sounded, followed almost immediately by the sound of scraping chairs and the scuffling of feet as the pupils left their desks at the end of their lesson.

“Just supposing that your husband was guilty of these accusations …” Anne Marie shrugged. “A fine—twenty thousand, thirty thousand francs. Not a lot of money—not for your husband.”

Madame Dugain flinched.

“He could’ve paid that sort of money,” Anne Marie said.

“Rodolphe was innocent.”

“It’s not for thirty thousand francs that an influential and well-respected member of the community decides to do away with himself.”

France Antilles
, April 23, 1990

Mr. Rodolphe Dugain, better known to most television viewers as Monsieur Environnement, died on Saturday, April 21, of multiple internal injuries after throwing himself from the fourteenth story of Sécid Tower block in central Pointe-à-Pitre
.

If the rumor had been circulating for some time that the
police judiciaire
were making enquiries into the Centre Environnement, the sudden and untimely death of Monsieur Dugain, one of the major and most respected figures in the cultural Who’s Who of our
département
, seems to have taken Guadeloupe by surprise. The shock can be still felt in the University, where Monsieur Dugain held a lectureship in natural sciences, as well as in the corridors of the RFO television station, where he regularly broadcast his popular nature programs
.

On Saturday morning, three officers of the Service Régional de la Police Judiciaire presented themselves at the offices of the Centre Environnement. According to eyewitnesses, Monsieur Dugain appeared his normal, jovial self, not allowing his good humor to be affected in any way by the presentation of a search warrant. According to sources, he offered a drink to the three men. Then, while the officers were looking for documents and other information—the nature of which as yet has not been revealed by the parquet—Mr. Dugain managed to slip from the room. Once on the far side of the steel front door, he locked it, making prisoners of the police officers. Taking to the stairs, Mr. Dugain climbed from the third to the fourteenth floor of the tower block. On the top floor, he made his way to the observation window and from there jumped to his death
,
landing on a car parked on the sidewalk of the Boulevard Chanzy. Mr. Dugain died immediately on impact. The vehicle was badly damaged and several people were taken to the nearby Centre
hospitalier
, suffering from shock
.

A crowd of onlookers soon gathered around the macabre spectacle. Yet again in Guadeloupe, the lamentable behavior of rubbernecks and passersby hindered the fire and ambulance services in the execution of their duty
.

Mr. Dugain, who was a Freemason and an ex-secretary of the Rotary Club, was born in Martinique 57 years ago. He leaves a wife and their two children, as well as two children from an earlier marriage
.

There will be a memorial service at St. Pierre and St. Paul on Tuesday at ten o’clock. The inhumation will take place at the municipal cemetery at midday
.