The Critic

Chapter Twenty-One
I

A glob of spittle transferred itself between upper and lower lip. His face was pale and angry. ‘I’m sorry, but I want you out of here, Monsieur Macleod. ASAP.’

Paulette Lefevre stood behind her husband pink-faced with embarrassment. But she said nothing. Lefevre himself was puffed up with anger and indignation. He had just removed the bloodied swing from beneath the pigeonnier and put down sawdust to soak up any remaining blood from the damp earth below. They stood in a knot of confrontation outside the estate office.

‘There have been nothing but women coming and going at all hours of the day and night since you got here. You’ve vandalised the interior of my gite by drilling holes in the wall for your precious whiteboard. And now this! Break-ins, the ritual slaughter of animals. Gendarmes crawling all over the estate.

Enzo regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Who else knew you wouldn’t be at home last night?’

Lefevre was pulled up short. He glared at Enzo. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Whoever was waiting for me here knew that the place would be empty.’

‘Well, you knew. You should be asking yourself who you told. After all, it was you they were waiting for. Not us.’

Enzo ran his mind back over the past few days. Who might he have told? But, then, he dismissed the thought. ‘It doesn’t matter who I told. Certainly not anyone who might want to kill me. You’re the only ones who knew for certain the place would be empty. And you knew when I’d be coming back, because I told you.’

The globs of spittle on each lip had grown in size and seemed permanently connected as Lefevre exploded in indignation. ‘Are you suggesting I broke into my own home and lured you in to attack you?’

‘No, I’m just speculating about who knew what, and when.’ Enzo glanced towards the chai. ‘How come Petty never tasted your wines, Monsieur Lefevre?’

‘Who says he didn’t?’

‘He didn’t review them.’

Paulette said, ‘We always leave a bottle in the gite for our locataires. We left one for you, if you’ll recall.’

Enzo did. And recalled, too, that it wasn’t bad. ‘So why didn’t Petty review it? You’d have thought it might have had some resonance for him, since this is where his family originated.’

‘You’d have to ask him that.’ Lefevre finally got rid of the spittle, flicking it away on the tip of a lizard-like tongue. And Enzo tried to remember who it was who’d suggested exactly the same thing. Fabien Marre. That’s who. He had used almost exactly the same words, too. The day they confronted each other in the rainstorm at La Croix Blanche.

‘I would,’ Enzo said, echoing his own response from that day. ‘Only someone murdered him.’

‘I want you out of the gite by the end of today.’

‘Monsieur Macleod has paid until the end of the week, Pierric.’ Paulette Lefevre was trying very hard to soften the blunt edge of her husband’s ire.

‘Midday Saturday, then. And you can take your whiteboard with you!’ Pierric Lefevre stormed off into the estate office. His wife hovered for an apologetic moment, an appeal for forgiveness in her eyes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and hurried after her husband.