"But I don’t-Gideon, it was almost fifty years ago."
"Ray, don’t hide anything; it can wind up hurting whoever you’re trying to help. Believe me."
"Whomever," Ray said, and retreated into a mute and uncharacteristic mumpishness.
TEN
With his slim, elegant fingers steepled before his lips and his elbows on the plain metal desk in Guillaume du Rocher’s study, Joly read aloud from the note lying on the blotter in front of him. It had come from the bureau in Mathilde’s room.
"‘I have reached a decision on a matter of singular family importance,’ " he read. "‘We will discuss it at Rochebonne on 16 March.’ You have no idea what he was referring to?"
Mathilde fingered the necklace of heavy gold links at her throat. "I’m afraid I don’t," she said flutily. "You do realize he sent the same note to everyone."
Joly unsteepled his fingers. "You, your husband, and your son flew here from Germany-your husband giving up several days of work-without knowing why you were coming? Merely on your cousin’s instructions to do so?"
"Yes, Inspector. Others came from considerably farther. There was nothing strange about it. When business matters of importance to the family arose, Guillaume would simply send for us, and we would come."
"But you arrived Sunday, the day before. You had many chances to talk with him. The subject never arose?"
" Every one arrived Sunday," Mathilde said patiently. " Every one had many chances to talk with him. I should be very surprised if any of them know any more than I do about it."
"Not even Claude Fougeray?"
Mathilde’s upper lip curled very slightly. "Claude least of all."
"Claude and Guillaume were not on good terms?"
"I believe Claude Fougeray had not set foot in the manoir in over forty years."
"And why was that, madame?"
Ah, a hesitation, a fleeting shift in the focus of her eyes, a gathering of resources for equivocation.
"Oh, he had some sort of falling out with Guillaume- ages ago, in the forties. I never knew the details. I was quite small at the time."
You were seventeen at the time, madame, Joly said to himself, but he decided to let it go for the moment. There were more immediate matters.
"Madame du Rocher, can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill Claude Fougeray?"
Mathilde’s eyes lit up with happy malice. "Well, there is someone who comes to mind, but…no, it’s ridiculous, and I’m not one to tell tales…" Her glittering fingers rose again to her necklace as she paused demurely.
With a small sigh Joly delivered what was expected of him. "Permit me to decide that, madame."
"Very well, Inspector," she said promptly. "I understand that most murders are committed by one’s closest relatives. Isn’t that so? Well, that’s where I should look if I were you." She rested her topmost chin on the next one down and eyed him meaningfully.
Joly did not enjoy coaxing, and he was not very good at it. And he didn’t care for Mathilde du Rocher.
"If you have something to say, please say it clearly," he said sharply.
She glared at him, as if deciding whether to punish him by holding back, but in the end her instincts won out, as he was sure they would. How often could opportunities like this fall into her lap?
"Leona Fougeray," she said flatly, letting him know that he had taken the joy out of it for her, "is having an affair with a man in Rennes; an elderly, immensely wealthy widower who is eager to marry her. He is in his dotage, as I need hardly point out-or haven’t you met Leona?"
"Briefly, madame. I should think she would find divorce a more delicate avenue than murder." Damn. Sarcasm wasn’t going to get him very far. Did he used to be more tolerant of mean and boring people, or was it his imagination?
"More delicate, perhaps," Mathilde replied evenly, "but far slower, and with the disadvantage of requiring dealings with obstructive petty fonctionnaires. "
He looked at her with new respect.
"In addition," she said, "Monsieur Gris is a devout Catholic. He would never marry a divorced woman. But a widow-well, that’s a different story."
"May I ask how you come to know this? Is it common knowledge?"
"In our family? I don’t think so. I certainly have never talked about it; except with my husband, of course." She glanced challengingly at him, but there was nothing to read in his eyes. "However, I happen to have a friend in Rennes who keeps me informed. You can rest assured that it’s true."
"I have no doubt of it." He stood up. "Thank you for your help." Joly was known among his colleagues for his abrupt interview terminations, which often shocked informants into giving more information than another twenty minutes of questioning might bring. He walked around the desk to the door of the study and opened it.
Mathilde watched him without getting up.
"Is there something more you wish to tell me?" he asked with a small smile.
"How," she replied, "is this to be paid for?"
The smile disappeared. "Pardon, madame?"
"Am I expected to maintain the people you’ve ordered to remain here? Food is not free, and I’m sure you’re aware that it’s going to be some time before the estate is formally settled-"
"I didn’t order them to stay here, I asked for their cooperation," Joly said, drawing a finer point than he liked. "But I’m sure that if you speak with Monsieur Bonfante he’ll arrange something."
He sincerely hoped so. A complaint from the commanding Mathilde du Rocher to Monsieur Picard, the public prosecutor, was not something he wanted to think about. And now that he had a fresh murder on his hands, things would be getting even worse; there would be a juge d’ instruction riding herd on him as well. Pity the poor French detective. Did John Lau appreciate how simple his life in the FBI was? Joly doubted it.
He bowed Mathilde out, went back to the desk and jotted a few more sparse notes on the lined pad on which he had put down a word or two from time to time. Then he turned to the list of names at the front, placed a check mark before Mathilde’s, as he had already done before those of Rene, Beatrice, and the resolutely taciturn Marcel. With a finger to his lips he studied the remaining names, then got up again and called to Fleury.
"Will you have Madame Fougeray come down, please?"
Another formidable woman, Leona Fougeray. Not in Mathilde’s way: Mathilde was imposing the way a cannonball is imposing-heavy, dense, solid. Leona had the formidability of an arrow, or better yet a poison dart-quick, thin, brittle, full of venom. Vivid as a magpie in a black-and-white-striped suit with enormous square shoulders that made her neat, dark head look tiny, there was not even a pretense of the mournful widow about her; no hint of tremor, no tastefully restrained anguish over the fact that her husband’s body had been carted off to the police morgue barely half an hour before. In fact, she had spewed a stream of abuse each time Joly had mentioned Claude.
"No, how do I know what my husband meant?" she said, her Italian accent strong despite a quarter-century in France. "I haven’t paid attention to him for years. Half the time he was raving from wine, the other half he was raving just from natural stupidity."
"Perhaps," Joly said, "but his remarks this time were very specific." He glanced at his notes. "At the reading of the will he claimed that Guillaume had planned a new will, did he not? He said that was the purpose of the council."
She turned down her mouth. "He said, he said. Pipe dreams. How could he know what Guillaume planned? You think Guillaume confided in him? If he did he’d be crazy. For forty years we never heard from him; not once. You know the first time I ever saw the great Guillaume? Last Sunday." She shrugged. "Not such a treat."
"Your husband also said-to you, before Guillaume died-that the others had a surprise coming, that he knew some things they didn’t know."