John Lescroart - Son of Holmes

It was still early for our rendezvous—I was meeting my friends at the town fountain at one thirty—so I stopped by Tania’s house to see if she’d come back yet. I found her inside, fuming. Sitting down next to her, I kissed her on the cheek.

“Is something wrong?”

“That man is such a . . .” She was so angry her voice was shaking. “And I thought you were to be in St. Etienne.”

I explained the delay, though her eyes still flashed in anger. “It’s not really you—it’s him. He’s so infuriating, I . . .”

“Now, now,” I continued, “Henri’s under a lot of pressure, and . . .”

“Not Henri. That other man, the one you asked to join us the other night. Lupa!” She stood up and stalked around the room.

“What’s he done?”

She stopped and glared across at me. Then suddenly her face softened, and she walked back and kissed me.

“I’m sorry. I’m just very upset. Let’s go outside and talk, shall we?”

So we walked out to where she’d eaten earlier that morning. She asked Danielle to bring us some tea, then sat down.

“Now,” I said, “what’s wrong? What’s Lupa done?”

“He’s done nothing. He’s just so arrogant! He omits doing things, and so superciliously . . . well, no. I’m being hysterical.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the table.

“We were coming back, and as you know, Madame Pulis was very upset by the whole thing, and I was thinking of the callousness of our fellow townspeople. We happened to pass La Couronne on our way, and we saw your Monsieur Lupa sitting under the awning, reading a newspaper and drinking beer. I wanted to scold him—all right, I know I’m too much a mother sometimes—but I did want to. I asked Henri to stop.

“Now,” she continued, stopping me before I could interrupt, “don’t think I was going to snap at him for missing the funeral. After all, I realized that he hardly knew Marcel. I was just angry. I really don’t know why I stopped. Perhaps I was being too whimsical. But nevertheless, I did it. Henri let me out and I walked over and asked if he’d mind if I joined him for a moment. Do you know what he said?”

I smiled. “I’d guess he said something like, ‘To be frank with you, yes, I would mind.’ ”

“Well, of course, he wasn’t that rude, but I certainly wasn’t made to feel very welcome. After I’d sat down, he carefully ignored me while he finished the column he was reading, drank off his beer, called for the waiter, and ordered two more. Finally, he looked straight at me, and in the sweetest voice asked if I’d like some refreshment.

“I asked for a café au lait, and he appeared to shudder slightly as he ordered. I asked him if something was wrong, if he’d rather I left.

“ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I simply have a prejudice against milk and coffee together in the same cup. Two tolerable beverages by themselves, but together,’ and here he turned his mouth up the smallest degree, ‘together rather like a man and a woman who individually are pleasant but who fail as a couple.’ So we sat in silence until the waiter returned.”

Danielle came back with the tea, and we poured.

“I still fail to see, my dear,” I said, “what he’s done to so upset you. I grant you that he’s arrogant and outspoken, but not without a certain charm.”

“Well, he’s not learned to polish his charms, so they appear cheap.”

“All right, now, what else?”

She sipped at her tea. “As soon as the waiter had gone he looked at me in all politeness. ‘And now, madame, what can I do for you? You look a bit tired.’

“ ‘I am a bit tired,’ I said. ‘One of my dearest friends was buried this morning.’

“ ‘Yes?’ he answered, as if to say, ‘Well, so what?’

“By this time I was so rattled that I’m afraid I rather blurted, ‘We were wondering why you hadn’t bothered to attend the funeral.’

“ ‘We?’

“ ‘Yes, we. Those of us who’d been at Jules’s. We were all there, as was proper. Except, of course, for you.’

“He picked up his beer and drank as though completely dismissing me. I tell you, Jules, I was sorely tempted to slap him. Finally, he put his glass down, told me I was upset, and asked me if I would care to lunch with him. Then he proceeded to speak of his upcoming lunch as though it were all that mattered in the world. I’ll try to give you some of the flavor of it.”

As she spoke, Tania tried to imitate Lupa’s deep baritone: “ ‘Sausages. I was in Spain a few years ago and one day I was standing outside a tapas bar, and the smell of fresh sausage pulled me inside. A large, smiling woman, Señora Beran, was grilling ten or more sausages behind the bar, and so I sat down and began talking with her. She said the sausages were prepared by her son, Jerome, and the recipe was his special secret, but I was welcome to try them. As soon as I’d tasted them, I knew them to be superb, and the flavor remained with me until, indeed, I could think of nothing else. Daily, I went to this same bar and, I’m afraid, badgered that poor woman to distraction. I had to have that recipe. Finally, though, I had to leave and, since that time, have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate that flavor. I’ve written to Jerome Beran personally, through his mother, but he’s been elusive. So now once each month I try again. Not more often because the frustration of failure is bitter indeed. And I dare to call myself a chef. Ha!’ ”

She looked down into her tea. The forenoon breeze whipped her shining dark hair intermittently into her eyes. She reached out her hand across the table for me to take it. “Can you imagine, Jules? He sat and talked about that sausage as though there were no war, no deaths . . .” She paused for a moment to control her voice. “Then, when the sausage arrived, he took a bite and immediately removed from his pocket a small notebook and wrote something. ‘It’s not right,’ he said simply. ‘I must use less brandy and more fowl.’ Thereupon he proceeded to eat every last bit of sausage, pausing at regular intervals to shake his head.

“It was not until he had finished that he addressed himself to me again. ‘Now, as to your question, madame. By the way, are you enjoying the sausage? Excellent wine, even though it’s Spanish, don’t you think?’ Food, food, food. All right, the man’s a chef, but really, Jules . . .”

I patted her hand.

“ ‘Why didn’t I attend the funeral?’ he finally began. ‘There are two reasons. Both, I’m afraid, quite selfish. One, I dislike funerals. A man is a man until his death, after which he becomes mere mineral matter. If one is of a cathartic cast, there may be benefit in public interment, but, even then, the catharsis is misdirected. Death is not tragedy but pathos. Two, lately I’ve been becoming much too flexible in my schedule, and I decided to end that flexibility.’ He looked at me as though he’d explained everything.”

“He is rather intractable,” I offered.

“I was so upset by this time, I didn’t know what to do. He sat looking at me from across that small table, seemingly quite pleased with himself. I wanted to leave, but I wanted to, well, to make him mad, so I stood up and said, ‘If I were you I’d be a little more careful. More than one of us believes you killed Marcel,’ and I turned to go. He spoke my name then, so abruptly that everyone looked up, and I came back to the table.

“ ‘Let’s not be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘I am an acquaintance of Monsieur Giraud. In fact, I’ve spoken to him at some length. For now, you are upset, and I suggest you go home and get some rest.’

“With that, he called for a carriage and sent me on my way. What should I think of him, Jules? Is he a friend of yours?”

Of course, Lupa had told her nothing about our real relationship, leaving it to me to make that decision. I’d tried to be honest with Tania as much as possible, though I hadn’t told her what I really was. There had been no need. And now, I was reluctant to tell her because I was afraid of her. Afraid that she might not understand or, on the other hand, would understand too well. So I temporized.

“I wouldn’t worry about Monsieur Lupa, dear,” I said. “I spent the night at his place on Wednesday after my walking took me downtown. He’d come to the gathering only to try my beer, and was genuinely upset at the way things turned out. He’d only met Marcel that afternoon and they had had no disagreements. They seemed to get on quite well. Certainly, he had no reason to kill him.”

“But which of us did?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I really don’t know. I don’t know.” I slumped and stared down at the well-kept gravel of her terrace. “I can’t believe he killed himself.”

“Maybe Henri is right,” she said, “with his rumors.”

“What are those?”

“He said that he’s heard for the past several months that Marcel had something to do with espionage, with the war.”

A chill passed through me. “Henri said that? Where did he hear that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s absurd. I’ve known Marcel all my life, and—”

“But what if he was? What if he was, and another of us is, and we don’t know, and he was killed by one of his friends to keep . . . Oh, Jules,” she said, “I’m afraid.”

I stood up and she rose to embrace me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t be such a baby. It’s just with all of this, and the boys away at the front . . . I just don’t know what to make of things.”

I kissed her, and suddenly she stiffened against me.

“What’s that?” she demanded, putting her hand under my arm where I kept my gun.

I had to tell her. “A pistol, just to be safe.”

Her lip quivered. She was going to cry. “Jules, please, don’t you get mixed up in this. Please.”

“Now, now,” I said. “I’m not ‘mixed up’ in anything. I merely felt a little nervous and decided at least to be in a position to protect myself should any of my friends . . .” I trailed off.

She buried her face in my shoulder and cried softly. “Any of your friends. Why won’t they leave us alone? Oh, poor Marcel.” Her voice broke again. She looked up at me pleadingly. “Jules, really, you’re not involved? You’re not a spy?”

“No,” I said, “no, I’m not a spy. I’m a middle-aged man who’s getting old and ready to retire with his lover. I don’t want anything to threaten that, so I carry a gun, but only until we find what happened to Marcel. All I want to do is brew beer and tend my vineyards”—I picked up her chin—“and love you.”

She smiled bravely.

I kissed her again and stepped back. “I have to go. Georges and Paul will be waiting. I’ll pick you up on the way back. We’ll stay together tonight.”

I watched her walk off into the house, then turned and headed down the stairs to the Ford. The damn thing was, all I really did want to do was brew beer and tend my vineyards and live with Tania. But, then, what if Tania were a spy? No, I wouldn’t let myself think that.

It was hot in the car as I turned into the road. I’d have to see Lupa after I’d been to St. Etienne, and I found myself hoping that Fritz would deliver the beer before long. I was as bad as Lupa with his sausages. My rituals were beginning to keep me from the pain of Marcel’s death, as a kind of insulation.

But my friend was dead, and when the rituals were over, that would remain, so I drove slowly, thinking of my own best sausage recipe and watching out for potholes.

6

The war was everywhere. If normal life can be said to continue in a town stripped of its young men, then normal life went on. But of course the war touched everyone you knew or met and colored the mood of the entire countryside. Even as the sun shone brightly down on our fountain, where Paul sat with his pants rolled up cooling his feet, the streets were cleared for a convoy of trucks and carriages carrying supplies to the front.