Murderous Mistral Read online

  “You’re late,” he said by way of a greeting.

  “Monsieur Le Bruchec?” Blanc asked, casually raising a hand to his cap. Either the man didn’t know that the police had been turning his neighbor’s house upside down for hours, or he was a very good actor.

  “Lucien Le Bruchec. Please come in.”

  He led them down a sort of corridor that the two policemen realized ran around the exterior wall of the house, opening inwardly onto different rooms, each of which in turn was like a little house in its own right, each in turn opening via a glass sliding door onto a raked gravel interior courtyard with a swimming pool in the middle. Le Bruchec led them along until they came to a window with a bent aluminum frame.

  “I came home from work at lunchtime on Saturday and found this as I walked through the house. Then I realized that as I turned into the driveway I had heard the sound of a motorcycle in the forest. I decided to take a closer look around. I had taken the Range Rover to work and left the garage open. There had been a few tennis rackets hanging on the wall and they were now gone.”

  “You mean you were burgled for a pair of tennis rackets?”

  “Good equipment doesn’t come cheap. They were worth more than a thousand euros.”

  Blanc gave Tonon a look and he nodded back: The lieutenant was to go out and ring the crime scene people to ask if they’d come across any sports equipment.

  “What time did you return home from work?” he asked Le Bruchec.

  “It must have been around three P.M.”

  “So a bit later you saw the marks on the window, then you walked out to take a look around, and discovered the items missing in the garage. That can’t have taken too long.” Blanc studied his notebook. “But you only reported it to us this morning. Why did you wait so long, Monsieur Le Bruchec?”

  The architect frowned. “It sounds as if you think I’m the perpetrator rather than the victim.”

  “The delay is unusual.”

  “I wanted to sleep on it. Reporting things to the police means a lot of nuisance and time. The investigation. Maybe a trial. You have to think whether or not it’s worth it all. And then yesterday was Sunday. I didn’t want to spend it at the police station. So I waited until today.”

  “You didn’t see anybody Saturday?”

  “No.”

  “And then, after two days thinking it all over, you make a report and accuse your neighbor? I assume you have good reasons for that?”

  “I’ve found this Moréas fellow on my land when I came home from work on two previous occasions. On one of them he was even tampering with the window.”

  “Whereabouts do you work? And do you always come home at the same time?”

  “I’m an architect. I have my own studio in Salon. I’ll give you a card. Sometimes I get home at midday, sometimes not until midnight. It just depends on what I’m working on.”

  “Do you work all through the summer?”

  “Most of my work is in summer. Building extensions for Parisians down here, renovation work for the British, building new houses for Russians. But I shall take a holiday in August.”

  Tonon came back and gave a barely noticeable shake of the head.

  “You live alone here?”

  “My wife died six months ago. Cancer. Our daughter lives in Grenoble. Ever since I lost my wife this person has been roaming around here, knowing that during the day the house is often empty.”

  Tonon sighed and pulled an ancient scratched cell phone out of the pocket of his uniform. This time he didn’t bother to conceal his intention. “I’ll call the crime scene people, ask them to come over and see if they can get anything from the window. They might even find motorcycle tire tread marks.”

  “The ground around here is as hard as concrete at present,” Le Bruchec said. Blanc suspected that the architect was disappointed they weren’t already heading for his neighbor’s house with the blue lights flashing, ready to arrest him. “What can you tell us about Monsieur Moréas?” he asked. There was no need yet to tell him the guy was dead.

  The architect asked them to sit down, underneath a futuristically designed awning that covered nearly half the internal courtyard. In the background Miles Davis was playing from some hidden speakers. “Moréas is hardly a friend of mine,” Le Bruchec began, cautiously. “I grew up around here and came back after I finished studying. If I had to list all the locals I know it would probably amount to the population of a small town: old school friends, the families I’ve worked for, politicians, builders, workmen, traders, restaurant owners. I’m a member of the local tennis club, a member of the Association for the Protection of the Touloubre. Believe me, of all the locals I know, I know none of them less than the man who lives next door to me. And believe me, I do not regret it. The man is, how shall I put it: excitable.”

  “Quick-tempered.”

  “That would be a better word. Aggressive. Not a nice man. But that’s just about all I know of him.”

  “Did he get a lot of visitors?”

  Le Bruchec made a dismissive gesture. “Our houses are far enough apart not to see or hear anything.”

  “Yet you describe your neighbor as aggressive. Just because you found him on your land a couple of times?”

  “Twice at the house itself. I’ve seen him on my land a lot more often. Out in the forest. No idea what he might be looking for out there. Hunting maybe. In any case it was never exactly a pleasure running into him, especially when I pointed out he was trespassing on my land.”

  “Was he armed on those occasions?”

  “Sometimes. With a hunting rifle. Just a few days ago I had a fence put up, because I found the whole situation disconcerting. Cost me a small fortune. And the workers who put it up said Moréas shouted at them when he saw them putting the posts in, threatened them.”

  “Moréas won’t be threatening anybody anymore. He was murdered,” Blanc told him in a calm voice, watching for the architect’s reaction.

  Le Bruchec leaned back in his chair. He looked more relieved than surprised, confused, somewhat embarrassed, but not in the least shocked.

  “Who was it?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Then whoever was messing around at my window on Saturday wasn’t Moréas?”

  “We can’t be certain of that,” the captain said carefully, getting to his feet. “Moréas was murdered on Sunday. What he might have done immediately beforehand we don’t know. We will keep you informed on the investigation into the break-in.”

  “Are you his only neighbor?” Tonon asked.

  “No, there’s another house in the forest. On the neighboring land on the other side of Moréas’s shack. It’s owned by an artist. A German painter. A very quiet man, shy. Maybe he can tell you more than I can. Although I suspect he won’t be shedding many tears either.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later Blanc and Tonon were standing outside a carefully constructed little house. Blanc would have found it hard to tell if the house was recently built or if it had been hiding there amidst the pine trees since the Middle Ages. The door was open and in front of it stood a dented wine-colored Clio hatchback with the legs of an easel sticking out of the open rear. At just that moment a man of about forty years old came out of the dark interior of the house. Average height, thin, with long wavy hair, freckles, rimless glasses, and a reddish glowing pirate’s beard. He was carrying a pair of white-framed canvases under his arms and stopped dead when he spotted the two policemen and their patrol car. He put down the canvases and wiped his hands on his tattered jeans. His face was red, but whether that was from exertion or embarrassment, Blanc couldn’t tell. The captain introduced himself and his colleague.

  “I’m Lukas Rheinbach,” the painter replied. “What can I do for you?” His grammar was perfect but he spoke with a curious mixture of local Midi dialect and a thick German accent.

  “Monsieur Rheinbach,” Blanc began, not even trying to imitate the unpronounceable “ch” sound at the end of the
man’s name, “I’m afraid we need to ask you a few questions, because your neighbor Charles Moréas has been the victim of a crime.”

  “Come in,” said the German, leading them into a brightly lit room that seemed to serve as living room and studio at the same time. Blanc was surprised that he hadn’t asked what sort of crime his neighbor had been the victim of. They couldn’t see his face, but Blanc got the impression that the German wasn’t so much irritated as relieved.

  “I can’t tell you very much about my neighbor,” the painter said at last, running his fingers through his hair. “We were hardly friends. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

  “Did you feel threatened by him?”

  Rheinbach hesitated. “Yes,” he admitted. “You could hardly walk through the woods without being afraid of him accosting you. On one occasion he nearly ran me over with his motorbike, hurtling along the forest path on the thing at top speed.”

  “Did you inform the gendarmerie? Did you report him? Or make a complaint to the local commune?”

  “No. It wasn’t really all that bad. And I just want to work here in peace and quiet.”

  “You’re a painter?”

  Rheinbach stared out of the window. “I suppose you could say that,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Pardon?” Blanc asked, disconcerted.

  The German sighed. “You won’t find my work in any museums or galleries,” he said. “I paint pictures for puzzles.”

  “Pardon?” Blanc said again.

  “Jigsaw puzzles. The sort of paintings that get printed onto cardboard and then split up into thousands of pieces. A courtyard in the Camargue. Romantic chapels. Cypress trees. Mont Ventoux at twilight.”

  “A bit like Van Gogh,” Tonon suggested.

  “A bit like Paul Cézanne, only a hundred and fifty years later, and about half as good.” He pointed at a few cardboard boxes piled up at one end of a shelf. The front of one had a picture on it of a hilly landscape with a medieval village. Not bad, Blanc thought to himself, though I’m hardly an expert.

  “German jigsaw puzzle fans love Mediterranean landscapes,” Rheinbach explained. “When I was a student I knocked out landscapes to pay for my education. Today I still do the same thing to earn a living.” He laughed and shook his head as if he was still surprised by himself. “At some stage I realized I had a certain degree of talent, but wasn’t going to get any further. And seeing as I learned to love this landscape traveling through it as a young man, I decided to move down south here a few years ago.”

  “You own this house?”

  “The jigsaw makers pay well, but not that well. I do own it, but when I bought it, it was little more than a heap of stones in a clearing in the forest. I rebuilt it myself, a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, if you like.”

  “You live here on your own?”

  Once again that slight hesitation. “Most of the time. Every now and then I get to know someone. But the women I like don’t like this house.”

  Blanc and Tonon asked a few more questions about Moréas, but he couldn’t help them: He had never seen anyone visit him, never noticed anything suspicious, never had him attempt to break into his own house. Just the awareness of an unpleasant, somehow threatening neighbor it was best to avoid.

  “Are you going somewhere?” the captain asked as they were leaving the house, nodding in the direction of the packed Clio.

  “To Luberon, just for a few days. I want to paint the lavender fields around Sénanque monastery. It’s one of the most popular Provence scenes. For next year’s Christmas presents.”

  They said good-bye and along the forest track drove to the route départementale in silence. It was only when they reached the road that Tonon turned and said: “Excessively punctual, that German. If you ask me.”

  Blanc looked at him in surprise. “That Rheinbach guy didn’t exactly strike me as a Prussian officer.”

  “But he’s heading for Luberon, to paint the lavender fields, at the beginning of July. They only really come into bloom at the end of July. You’d think a painter who’d lived in Provence for years might know that.”

  Madame le Juge

  Blanc took a left turn off the forest track. “You need a GPS,” Tonon announced. “This isn’t the way back to Gadet, this leads up the hill to Caillouteaux.”

  “That’s where I’m heading.”

  “We’ve done enough today.”

  “It’s still light.”

  “You’re not in Paris anymore, what do you want with the little hick town up there?”

  “Even if Moréas never showed his face there, it’s still a commune, a small town. They must know him at the mairie. He might have applied there to set up a business, might have asked for planning permission. The town hall just has to have something relating to him. They have something about everybody.”

  The Mégane trundled onward up the D70A. The scent of pines and earth drifted in through the open window. The cicadas clicked incessantly. It was still so hot that the captain didn’t like to let his left elbow rest on the metal of the open window. This isn’t Paris. Thank you for telling me. He imagined his colleague was just hungry again—but there again maybe he was right. Who was he going to find to talk to in Provence in summer after 5 P.M.? Maybe a pigeon on a roof or rats in a cellar. Merde. But it was always good to act quickly; Moréas might have been an asshole, but his body had still been hot when they found it, goddammit.

  After a few minutes they were already passing a few modern houses, and the tarmac under their wheels had gotten darker, smoother. And then they were passing between ancient stone houses baked in the sun, ochre with blue and green shutters on the windows, most of them closed to keep out the sun. Purple oleander grew out of walled courtyards. There was not a soul to be seen, no dogs wandering about, not even a sleeping cat. An alleyway so narrow that his side mirrors almost scratched the walls on either side. A tiny main square with a modest little fountain topped with a stone bust of Marianne, the symbol of the republic.

  “Park here,” Tonon grumbled. “We can walk the rest of the way.”

  Blanc climbed out of the car and stood in front of the little church built of yellow stone. On the pediment above the door two bells hung like a silhouette against the sky. In a niche to one side was a fine statue of the Madonna smiling a blessing to a fly that buzzed around it. At the far end of the square was a stone clock tower crowned with a wrought-iron bell house—a symbol of civic pride, money, and a finely calculated provocation, given that it rose higher toward the heavens than the church. On the side of the square opposite the alley they had come through stood a grand façade that Blanc at first took for that of a palace—until he realized that nearly all the windows, the grand entrance, and the little fountain on the façade were only painted on and the building had little other ornamentation.

  “People here have money to spend on art,” said Tonon, half admiring, half mocking. “You don’t get the citizens of Gadet or Saint-César painting their houses like that.”

  “They’re not getting money from tourism.” Blanc walked up to a low wall between the church and the house at the end of the square, where a modern bronze sculpture stood: a winged, headless woman with her voluptuous rear end facing the horizon. Behind her, the hill Caillouteaux sat on fell away. The captain looked down at the dark squares of fields and olive groves, the little white dots of a flock of sheep, the blue shimmering hills and the mirror of the Étang de Berre in the distance, and imagined he could feel the steamy heat of the Mediterranean. “It’s pretty here,” he said.

  Tonon stroked the statue’s metal rear end. “Too small, too obscure.”

  “Her backside?”

  “The town. This is the center of Caillouteaux and there are only three figures to be seen: a ceramic Madonna, a stone Marianne, and a headless woman with a fat ass. Not exactly the sort of women you can sit and sip a pastis with. And there’s never been an artist here, except the guy who daubed his work on that house. There’s no tasty odor emanating from a one-s
tar restaurant, no antique seller with a load of overpriced local kitsch in his window. What is there here for tourists? Ah, but we are in luck. The mayor’s still here.” Tonon nodded toward the only other car on the square, a new white Audi Q7 that, set against the background of the unplastered walls, looked like a glass recycling bin on alloy wheels.

  “They’ve got enough money here for things like that too,” mumbled Blanc, trying in vain to recall if he’d ever seen any Parisian district mayor in a car like that. All of a sudden that old feeling came over him that he had had when he was tracking down fraudsters: the call of the hunt.

  Tonon led him past a tiny restaurant. “Le Beffroy,” he said. “Not one line about it in the Guide Michelin, no strangers, no Asian words on the menu. You can eat here if you get tired watching our colleagues chewing away back in Gadet. It gets to us all every now and then.” They went up an alleyway and then a few stone steps. “Voilà.”

  “The offices are closed, I’m afraid,” a pleasant male voice said from somewhere above them.

  “Gendarmerie!” the lieutenant replied.

  “Putain. Come on up.”

  They found the mayor in his office, which had a window opening onto the square. Beneath the obligatory bust of Marianne sat a man in his midsixties, heavy, with an angular head covered in gray bristle, and almost jet-black eyes. He got to his feet and Blanc noticed the expensive cut of his suit. There was more than just a whiff of aftershave in the air, expensive aftershave. The walls were covered in modern frescos, of young women with baskets of fruit and wheat sheaves, allegories of the twelve names given to the months of the year during the revolution. Blanc admired a gently smiling blonde labeled Mademoiselle Messidor, the name given to June and July by the revolutionaries. Frescos in the town hall, a trompe l’oeil façade on the square, a jigsaw puzzle painter in the woods. It seemed Provence was full of artists whose style would have been considered two hundred years out of date anywhere else. Then it occurred to him the one thing missing was a picture of the president of the republic. Wasn’t that obligatory in public buildings?