John Lescroart - Son of Holmes

“If you’d prefer that I leave . . .”

“No, no, don’t be silly. It’s I who should leave,” said Henri. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget myself. I act like the ass.”

“Sometimes we all do,” Lupa replied with a pleasant smile. “Such is the effect that troubles sometimes have on us.”

Henri nodded, taking another huge drink from his bottle. Then, in a kind of double take, he put down his glass and stared at Lupa.

Georges, however, was the first to speak. “What do you know of Henri’s troubles?” The others all nodded in shared suspicion.

Lupa, aware of his faux pas, was nearly successful in smiling. Then he spoke in a self-deprecating tone. “You mustn’t mind me, please. Sometimes I get carried away by assumptions I can’t help making, and they lead me to conclusions that are often ridiculous. I saw Monsieur Pulis sitting slightly slumped over, and the thought entered my head that he seemed unnaturally subdued, given the spirit of the occasion. Additionally, I noticed that the second button on his shirt is missing and that he wears a wedding ring. He is, therefore, married, but on bad terms with his wife just now, or she wouldn’t have let him go out with his shirt un-mended. Finally, he appears to be drinking much more than the rest of us, often a sign of someone trying to forget a particularly depressing or difficult situation.”

Henri’s hand had gone to the missing button. His face clouded over; then he grinned sheepishly. “I’ve got to be more careful,” he said, somewhat enigmatically.

I had earlier marveled at Lupa’s perspicacity, so I was prepared to some extent for his displays. The others, I noticed, were beginning to look as though they felt slightly apprehensive, as though they were all unwittingly under some unseen magnifying glass. Before anyone else could comment, however, Fritz entered with the beer, walked to the various seats, and deposited the new bottles, setting a glass before Lupa. He might have simply brought the tray into the room, but the pride he took in his work demanded that certain rituals be performed.

We looked to Tania, who by tradition delivered the first toast after the whole company had assembled. We had not all opened the bottles yet, which Fritz refused to do because, he said, of the danger. Once a bottle had exploded as he was about to open it, a common enough occurrence with home-brewed beer, and since then he’d refused to participate in any opening.

Tania looked at Lupa and then at the rest of us. Georges was still fiddling with his bottle, but she began.

“To our new guest, M. Lupa, and . . .”

Before she could say, “and to France,” there was a loud pop, and Georges was grabbing his right hand with his left, swearing. We all leapt up and crossed over to him, and Fritz entered silently with a cloth.

“Damn the bottles,” said Georges, and there was general agreement as Tania took the cloth and wiped the blood away. “Have you any gauze?” she asked, and I told her there was some in the bathroom.

Georges said he’d get it himself, that he was all right, and he walked out to clean up. Lupa sat in the chair Georges had vacated, where he’d gone to inspect the bottle, while the rest of us reassembled ourselves. Marcel said something conciliatory to Henri, and they retired to what had been the American corner. Tania and I went back to the divan, and Paul stood joking with Fritz about his wisdom.

When Fritz had finished cleaning up the spilled beer, he went to get another, and Paul turned and sat with us. “So much for that toast,” he said.

Forgoing the next one, we all reached for our beers and drank. Henri and Lupa drained their glasses, and Henri had just yelled in through the kitchen for Fritz to bring more than one more, when Marcel stood up straight, grabbing his throat. He croaked out, “I feel . . .” but before he could finish, he reeled forward over the small table onto his face. Lupa was to him in a flash, rolling him over and lifting his eyelids. Georges came back to the door in time to hear him say, “He’s dead.”

The events of the next moments were confused and rapid, though they seemed to me to follow one another with agonizing slowness. Tania, sitting next to me, put down her glass and stared, then covering her face with her hands cried, “Oh God, no!” and leaned back. I was aware of Georges stopping in the doorway, gauze over his recent cut, turning pale and being the second one to reach Marcel’s side. Lupa had turned him over onto his back and undone his collar, but it was too late. Georges slapped the corpse several times, saying, “Marcel!” over and over in a scolding tone, then looked over to me as Lupa finally stopped him.

“What happened?” he asked.

Fritz came to the door as I stood to cross the room, and I told him to take the car to town and get the police. Paul and Henri stood where they had been sitting and watched in stunned silence. I walked to where Marcel lay and felt for his pulse. There was none.

“Get back! Get away!” I yelled at Lupa and Georges. Paul had gone out to the hall for his coat, and he returned, placing it over Marcel’s head. Georges limped back and forth across the room, hands thrust deep in his pockets. Tania had stopped crying and stood by the settee. Everything began moving at normal speed again, and everyone began talking at once. I went back to Tania and sat next to her, watching the others. Finally Lupa, who had been sitting, stood again and bellowed out, “Silence!” and we obeyed. “Let us sit,” he said, “and wait for the police.”

“Who are you to tell us what to do?” demanded Henri, who seemed quite shaken. Georges, standing next to him, put his arm around his shoulder. Paul sat alone by the fire, looking at the flames.

4

Ihad supposed that Jacques Magiot, an old acquaintance of mine and the chief of police, would have come out for the investigation, but he sent a young inspector and two gendarmes, who made it clear that their chief’s appearance was by no means necessary for the gathering of evidence. The flics stationed themselves by the door while the inspector walked around inspecting. He leaned down and sniffed the rug where the beer had spilled.

“Prussic acid,” he said.

“Some form of cyanide, at any rate,” I answered.

He nodded. “Are you familiar with poisons?”

“Oh come. The almond smell is distinctive.”

He noted something in his book.

The others stood about nervously. The inspector spent a bit of time looking at a spiderweblike impression on the coffee table and after a series of “ahems” said that he’d like to question each of us separately.

“But before I do, I will say that while you are all free to move about in town, no one is to leave Valence for any period of time without checking with the authorities.”

“But I don’t live in Valence,” said Paul. “I’m from St. Etienne.”

“In that case, monsieur, we will escort you to your home by way of the St. Etienne constabulatory, and you will report to them.”

While we waited to be called to the kitchen for questioning, Tania and I sat without a word on the divan, her arm linked into mine. She seemed too calm, almost to the point of breaking, as though she were under some unbearable pressure. Undoubtedly this local tragedy had turned her thoughts to her sons at the front.

The inspector first called Lupa, then Georges, Paul, Henri, Tania, and Fritz. The first four were led to the back door and excused, while Tania and Fritz waited in the kitchen after their questioning. The inspector interrogated me in the front room.

“Monsieur Magiot sends his compliments.”

I nodded.

“I’ve made no arrests. Have you any suspicions?”

“No.”

“I’m inclined to think of suicide. He was your close friend, was he not? Had he been unduly depressed?”

It went on in that vein for several minutes. I had no information for him, and he had formed no suspicions himself. He thought it odd that so few of my guests had been French, and asked me about it.

I shrugged. “They are my friends.”

Finally, a little after midnight, they left. Tania and Fritz came back to join me, and we sat drinking brandy for a time, pensive. The undertaker had come earlier, and my thoughts went back to Marcel’s body being removed. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how he had been only that morning, but I could not. Perhaps it was better that way. I couldn’t think of him as a dead man yet. He was the friend of my childhood, and he was gone.

Tania and I went up to bed, leaving the room empty save for Fritz, who sat at the edge of one of the coffee tables, fists clenched and eyes glassy.

I awoke while it was still dark and silently got up. The house was oppressive. I needed to get away for a time.

Two days before, the Rue St. Philip had been warming to a new day as I had walked down it to meet Lupa for the first time. Now, at four thirty in the morning, with a light rain falling—still falling, I should say—it gave no hint that it could ever be a pleasant street. The cobblestones were slick and too widely spaced, and twice I nearly fell. It wasn’t cold, but the wet darkness kept me shivering.

I’d taken the bottle of cognac and headed for La Couronne, planning to see Lupa in the morning, resolving to enlist his aid. It was not professional. It was not even . . .

That didn’t matter. I had to do something about my friend’s death. At that moment, I wasn’t a professional, and I didn’t care.

The tables at La Couronne were chained in place, but the chairs had been moved inside for the night, so I pulled up an empty fruit crate and sat by the restaurant’s front door, leaning back against the building. With my coat, I performed the futile gesture of wiping the beaded drops from the table, though it was still raining. There was a small gaslight from within, and its slight glare fell across the table. The rain was so fine that it seemed to hang in the air. There was no wind.

I hadn’t been seated more than a minute when the door behind me opened and I found myself facing Lupa.

“Monsieur Giraud, would you care to come inside where it’s dry?”

I noticed that I was, indeed, very wet, and got up and followed him into the bar. He sat on a stool and looked at me without a word until I spoke.

“I’m surprised to find you awake,” I said.

“I was thinking about your friend.”

“Yes. I wanted to speak to you about it.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, standing and going around the bar. He poured himself a beer.

“I think you do.”

He took a long draft. “Come downstairs,” he said finally. He opened the door to the kitchen, and we descended.

“May I take your coat?” he asked. “I’m sorry, sir, but I neglect my manners. I am on edge. Come, let me take your coat. Do sit down.”

We’d entered another room behind the kitchen. It was warmly lit and pleasant. Three of the walls were covered with tapestries of a cheap variety, and there were several bookshelves and assorted stuffed chairs. I took one of them.

“I live here,” he explained. “You are now my guest. Would you care for some heated milk? Coffee?”

I looked carefully at this man who had been changed so completely by the act of my coming into his living quarters. He went into some other rooms to deposit the coat, then back to the kitchen, evidently to prepare the milk. For nearly a quarter of an hour I sat while he moved back and forth, bringing first the milk, then a pair of pajamas that he insisted I change into, though they were much too large, then a warm housecoat in which I wrapped myself. He stoked the fire, and before long we were sitting comfortably in silence.