“Frankly, I’m surprised,” said Opuu. “There isn’t much to go on.”
Tama nodded. “I had to promise to show him my vanishing-coffin trick before he’d go along.”
The inspector rolled his eyes lugubriously, for he had long since tired of his boss’s endless series of childish tricks. “Threatened him, more likely! Can you really do the vanishing coffin?”
“With the procureur’s wife inside? Wouldn’t he love it!”
Alexandre Tama had never had a taste for thin blond popa’a women, and as he eyed Brigitte Nystrom, the widow of the deceased Swedish banker, he wondered what anyone, even a dried-up old stick of a bridge player thirty years her senior, found so attractive about her. Her limp blond hair was dull and matted, and her brown eyes protruded slightly. Others may have considered her tall and svelte; to Tama she was tall and skinny and rabbity, with hunched-over shoulders and breasts that were too large for what was sure to be a scrawny chest. She wore a plain white dress with a gold locket at her neck, a gold watch on one wrist, and a heavy gold bracelet on the other.
Bright sunlight poured into the spacious living room through sliding glass doors that opened onto a covered terrace and a sparkling blue pool. The jagged outline of Moorea could be seen on the horizon beyond a neatly trimmed hedge of aito pine. She licked her lips nervously while Tama and Opuu seated themselves on the same pale blue divan of her living room where presumably Charles Nystrom had writhed in his death throes; she herself sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair with her hands clasped tightly together in her lap. There was nothing about her of the pert and saucy Parisian Tama had expected to find.
The news that her late husband had been smothered instead of dying of a heart attack broke what little composure she had possessed. She had fallen back in her chair and sobbed noisily while Tama looked on coolly, asking himself if she could be as fine an actress as all that. Finally he shrugged. Who could tell what women really thought, especially popa’a women? Inspector Opuu offered a tissue and a glass of water. Her sobbing stopped and the interrogation began.
They quickly learned that her husband had never been married previously, and that their own marriage had taken place in Lyon, where Brigitte Giraud-Roux had been the receptionist at a celebrated two-star inn, Le Père Grisou.
“Ah,” said Tama, brightening. “Their salmon in sorrel sauce — a masterpiece! So you worked there, well, well! But what this means is that under French law you inherit the entire estate.”
“I... I suppose.” Brigitte Nystrom looked down at her hands and blinked rapidly.
“It’s substantial, I imagine.”
The widow shrugged helplessly.
Tama scowled in exasperation. This mouselike blonde had no spirit at all! It was hard to imagine her smothering anybody, even the most helpless of invalids. And yet... and yet: she undeniably had a motive, and, according to the gossip, this whole sad story had begun by her cuckolding her husband with a younger man. Perhaps her husband was about to divorce her; they had a marriage contract that separated their property; in the case of a divorce Brigitte Nystrom would receive nothing at all of her husband’s wealth — the prospect of that might have impelled her to sudden reckless action...
But another half an hour of questioning left him no farther along. She denied that she and her husband were on the point of breaking up, and tearfully but adamantly refused to name her former lover, declaring that the episode had been a one-time madness for which she would now be punished the rest of her life. Tama snorted in disbelief, but was unable to shake her resolve. A rabbit with backbone, he told himself disgustedly.
She indignantly denied calling the Chinese cabinetmaker and ordering the delivery of the casket to their home in the hills. And the day of her husband’s death she had driven to town to join three other women, all of them French, for a day’s excursion to a waterfall on the other side of the island. Charles Nystrom was in good health when she left, dead at the hospital when she returned. Inspector Opuu carefully took down the names of the other women and they took their leave, letting themselves out the front door while Brigitte Nystrom sobbed silently in the living room.
The maid and the gardener, middle-aged Tahitians who came up the mountain road by scooter six mornings a week, had not yet left for the day. Tama and Opuu questioned them in Tahitian in the shade of a broad flame tree bursting with bright red flowers. Both of them declared that Madame had been a faithful and loving wife ever since the poor monsieur had returned from the hospital and that Monsieur was apparently radiantly happy. Certainly they had never seen them quarreling, or any evidence of a lover.
“Hrmph,” muttered Tama as they looked into the garage, which housed only a gray Renault and a silver Mercedes coupé, “not even the coffin’s there. Came back to get it when he really died, I suppose.” His lips tightened. “Well, Opuu, you can check out Madame’s alibi, but I’m afraid it’s going to stand up.” He mopped his head with his bandanna. “And if she didn’t smother him, who did?”
Inspector Opuu shrugged. He pointed at the lush green hillside that surrounded the house. “Look at all of this, no neighbors at all. Anyone could have driven in, or even walked in through the bushes, without being seen. You saw all those sliding glass doors: the house is probably open all day long. A couple of Tahitians skulking through the hills, looking for a bottle of whiskey or a stereo set to pinch. Nystrom was taking a nap, woke up, surprised them, they panicked—”
“Hrmph! In the middle of the afternoon they were doing this?”
The inspector shrugged again. “Then who else? The Chinese who brought the coffin?”
“Ha!” cried Tama happily, “the invisible man! The stooge in the audience that nobody notices! He brought the coffin, he unloaded it there by the door. Charles Nystrom comes to the door, is shown his own coffin, handed a bill for a million francs! What would you do, Opuu?”
“Me?”
“You’d yell and scream and wave your hands, that’s what you’d do,” amplified Tama with relish. “The nerve of this guy! You’d tell him to scram! You’d grab him by the collar, you’d start shaking him, he’d resist, he’d knock you down, he’d grab a pillow, he’d...” Tama’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Well, you can imagine the rest of it. Excellent, Opuu, excellent! We’ll make a detective of you yet!”
“Have it your own way,” grumbled the inspector as they walked back to the Citroen, “but you’ll see: this case isn’t like any of your fancy magic tricks, it’s just a couple of Tahitian kids prowling through the bushes, maybe a voyeur looking for naked women by the pool who—”
“Opuu, Opuu, Opuu,” sighed the chief of police as the Citroen sagged under his sudden enormous weight. “Leave me my illusions, will you? What little fun there is in police work you’re always trying to take away.”
“Fun, ha!” The inspector snorted lugubriously. “I suppose you want to go see this coffin maker again.”
“I do.”
“Oui, mon général. And after that — I’ll start rounding up all the voyous in town.”
“Ha!” chortled Inspector Opuu forty minutes later as the Citroen pulled away from Ah Ping Lii’s noisy workshop in the dark, dank Titioro Valley. “How’s that for an illusionist’s trick? You forgot that one little Chinese cabinetmaker doesn’t haul 300-kilo coffins around all by himself, he’s got his own stooges in the audience!”