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Chapter Thirty-eight

It was well after midi by the time he got back down to Thiers, and there was no one at reception in the gendarmerie. He pressed a button marked sonnez on the counter top and heard a buzzer ringing distantly somewhere in the offices beyond. After several moments a gendarme, still chewing on his sandwich, appeared in the doorway and threw Enzo a sullen look. It was lunchtime, the sacred hour, and no one liked to be disturbed during it.

Dominique, too, was eating, sitting at her desk with a cloth napkin spread in front of her, slices of tomato on a plate, a baguette torn in half, and a small tub of rillettes de porc, the shredded leftovers of cooked meat and fat from the carcass of the pig. An open half bottle of red wine, and a half empty glass stood side by side at her right hand. She seemed surprised to see him.

“I thought you were going back to the hotel.”

“I never got there. I met Anne Crozes en route. Or, at least, I saw her car parked at the foot of the track up to the buron, and found her up there.”

“And you didn’t bring her in?”

Enzo held up his hands. “Hey, that’s not my job.” He paused. “But anyway, I don’t think she killed Fraysse.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But she’s a material witness and she withheld evidence from the police. Did she tell you anything?”

“She told me she met Fraysse on the afternoon of his murder. His mood had been bizarre, she said, almost elated. Manic, was the word she used.” He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair opposite. “Dominique, was there an insurance policy on Marc Fraysse’s life?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure there was.”

“Would you have a copy of it on file.”

She shook her head. “No. But I could get the insurance company to send us one.” She looked at him curiously. “What’s on your mind?”

“Just a vague thought, Dominique. But if it was possible to get a look at that policy, it might turn into something more than a hunch.”

He stood once more by the window, staring out at the start of what promised to be a long, bleak winter, while Dominique made the call. The sky was tinted purple, the air a sad ochre, and even as he watched, he saw the first tiny flakes of snow fall sparsely across the valley. Nothing that would lie, but still the sight of it sent a shiver through his bones.

Dominique came off the phone and spread some rillettes on a chunk of bread, topping it off with a slice of tomato. “They’re going to fax it. Should be through in a few minutes.” She took a bite and washed it down with a mouthful of wine.

The fax arrived five minutes later. Dominique watched Enzo carefully as he pored over the pages of the insurance policy on Marc Fraysse’s life.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

He stood up, a light in his eyes. But he seemed a long way, away.

“Enzo?”

He blinked and looked at her as if waking from a dream. “This,” he said, turning one of the pages toward her and stabbing a finger at a paragraph halfway down. And as she drew it toward her to read, he elucidated. “A suicide clause. To guard against the possibility of the insured killing himself to guarantee a payout to the beneficiary. In the event that Marc Fraysse had committed suicide, neither Elisabeth nor Guy would have received a penny.”

The kitchen was full of stagiaires scrubbing down counter tops, dismantling hotplates and grills to scour with wire brushes, sluicing water and disinfectant across the stippled floor, and scrubbing it with long-handled mops. The chatter of the young chefs died away, and curious eyes turned toward Enzo and Dominique as they made their way past the marble table toward Guy’s office at the far side.

He saw them coming through the windows that offered him a panorama of his kitchen, and turned to face them with grim defiance as Enzo pushed open the door. Gone was all his bonhomie, and his sad blue eyes were heavy with disappointment. “I didn’t extend you the hospitality of my hotel, Enzo, so that you could spy on me,” he said.

“I wasn’t spying on you.”

“Then what was your daughter doing working in our kitchen?”

“She wants to train as a chef.” Which was true, but didn’t quite answer Guy Fraysse’s question.

“Under a false name?”

“Merit was her mother’s name. It is more convenient for her to use a French name. Most people can’t pronounce Macleod.”

It was clear that Guy did not believe a word of it, but saw the futility of pursuing it further. His eyes turned toward Dominique. “What do you want?”

But it was Enzo who replied. “Why did Marc invite the whole Paris press corps down here the day he died?”

Guy’s eyes darted warily back toward Enzo. “I have no idea.”

“I think you do, Guy.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

“We both know that Marc was in deep trouble. Whether or not he was actually going to lose a star is irrelevant. He thought he was. Add to that a gambling debt of more than a million that would take the sale of the auberge to pay off, and you have a man cornered by his addiction, plus his own paranoia.”

The color was slowly draining from Guy’s face.

“He believed he was on the point of losing everything he had spent his life to create. Chez Fraysse. His reputation. His public image. He faced ruin and humiliation. But he wasn’t going to go out with a whimper, was he?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. He wanted to go out in a blaze of publicity, didn’t he, Guy? He wanted all those journalists whom he’d spent his life cultivating, right here on the spot to cover his suicide. Everything was lost, but he was going to make one last, grand theatrical gesture. As flamboyant in death as he’d been in life.”

Dominique said, “The only trouble was, the insurance wouldn’t have paid out if he’d committed suicide.”

“And he might not have cared,” Enzo said. “But you did. And so did Elisabeth. Because, with Marc gone, and no insurance payout, you’d have lost everything, too. When you went up there that afternoon and found him dead in the buron, you knew that you faced ruin. That’s why you doctored the scene to make it look like a murder, isn’t it?” Enzo drew a deep breath. “Whose idea was it, Guy? Yours? Elisabeth’s?”

But it wasn’t a question that Guy was about to answer. He returned their stares, blue eyes clouded and surly. “I think,” he said, “that you are going to have a helluva job trying to prove that.”

And Enzo realized just how true that was.