The Body in the Vestibule ff-4 Page 3

  Thursday, Faith was busy getting ready. She bought a roll of gift wrap that looked like malachite to cover the table, paper napkins, candles, and inexpensive holders, all at Monoprix, her favorite store in Lyon. It was even better than an old-fashioned five-and-ten, because it had great clothes for Ben, turned out to be the most reasonably priced place for sexy underwear for herself—she'd tried to seduce Tom into the brief briefs Frenchmen wore, but he was stolidly clinging to his boxer shorts—and sold food upstairs, but not marche or Chorliet food. She rarely bought anything from the shelves of canned cassoulet and afrigo section complete with frozen pommes frites, the original French fries, yet she liked knowing it was there.

  She returned to the apartment with a full basket, which she set down while she opened the mailbox in the vestibule. She heard someone come in behind her, and looked up, expecting the pharmacist's wife from the shop located on the street floor of the building.

  Madame Boiron was, curiously enough, an Anglophile, unlike most of the French Faith had met, who seemed to regard their hereditary enemies as ready to pull the same kind of fast one Wellington had at Waterloo. Then there was that distressing tendency the British had of referring to their friends Jacques and Marie across the water as "frogs." That the embers still smoldered and the water was wide was dramatically illustrated one morning in the marche when Faith heard a large, pink English lady say loudly to her companion, "Mind your purse, Daphne." Shoppers around her froze for a moment, then moved conspicuously away. It was a wonder the Channel tunnel had ever been approved.

  But it was not Madame Boiron calling, "Good morning, Mrs. Fairsheeld" in her beautifully accented English, hastening over for a practice chat. It was Christophe, the eldest d'Ambert, who nodded his head and said, "Bonjour, madame. Ca va?" Christophe was at lycee, high school, and probably returning home for lunch, although usually students this age filled the bars and small bistros near their schools during the hour or more break.

  “Yes, thank you. And you?" Faith answered, still chary of her accent. Christophe spoke excellent English, due, he had told her, to his parents' desire for reducing the numbers in the apartment whenever possible. Faith knew that, in fact, his parents were doing what all the other parents of their class did, which was to send their children off at a tender age to another country to perfect their language skills during the vacances.

  Christophe picked up her basket and gave a small courtly wave of the hand. "After you, please." Like the other French teenagers she'd observed, he seemed impossibly grown-up. Maybe it was that impossible exam, le bac, the baccalaureat, looming up at the end of their schooling that made them so somber. They sat at small sidewalk tables, chain-smoking Gauloises, or American cigarettes when they could afford them, and drinking cup after cup of cafe noir. But then she would also see them chasing each other over the playground equipment at Place Lyautey, eating cakes like happy preschoolers.

  Christophe, however, at eighteen did seem to have taken a final giant step across the line between childhood and early adulthood. Somehow she couldn't picture him climbing a jungle gym. He was very good-looking—thick dark blond hair that waved conveniently back from his brow, deep blue eyes. He wore his 501 jeans with shirts and cashmere sweaters from Faconnable, a fashionable men's store whose prices left Faith gasping. She'd seen sale signs in store windows advertising, PRIX CHOC! and she'd told Tom that "Price Shock" was a more apt description for the physical condition you felt when looking at the tags. She'd ventured into one children's clothing store and realized an outfit for Ben was more than her new winter coat had cost last year. And this from a woman who walked fearlessly into Barney's, New York.

  She knew Monsieur d'Ambert was a lawyer—his offices were on the floor above the pharmacy—and he must be doing very well, indeed. To be sure, all those clothes could be passed down to the younger d'Amberts, but still. Faith thanked Christophe for his help and said good-bye. He leaned over and casually kissed her on either cheek. All this kissing was becoming such a reflex with Faith that she was sure she'd find it hard to stop in Aleford and would stun the community by kissing everyone from the beggar at Shop and Save to Charley Maclsaac, the chief of police. Maybe even Millicent. And maybe not.

  Faith turned to open the door and had the distinct impression that Christophe was lingering on the stairs. When she looked over her shoulder, he was gazing with appreciation at what Tom called her "bon cul," accentuated today by a short checked skirt. Christophe did not appear at all embarrassed, nodded, and clattered down the stairs to his dejeuner. Faith was amused—and pleased. But teenage boys, even one who had obviously been shaving for years, did not attract her. Except, of course, in the purely aesthetic sense, she told herself.

  She unloaded the panier and decided to finish her letter to Hope. She'd mail it on her way to get Ben.

  Municipal workers were planting begonias in symmetrical circles around the lamppost in the middle of the square. She felt a little sad she wouldn't be here gazing down on them when they came into full bloom and covered the bare earth.

  The clochard had been joined by two others. One was the man Ben called the "party man," after watching Faith, Tom, and others in the building repeatedly chase him from his refuge behind the poubelles in the vestibule with cries of "Va-t'en, parti, parti!" The other was younger, dressed in a long woolen coat tied around the waist with string. He had long hair that might be blond when washed but was a curious gray color and matted close to his head. The three were companionably sharing a bottle of wine and calling out to passersby to join them. The radio was blessedly silent.

  Faith had almost finished the letter when she heard the sound of crashing glass and loud shouts through the open window. The younger man was running across the square toward the river, the clochard of St. Nizier in pursuit. He stopped and menacingly waved the broken bottle by the neck at the departing figure, shouting "Ta gueule, salaud!" followed by a gesture that made the meaning clear in any language. Then he stumbled unsteadily back to the church, still shouting. The "party man" was creeping slowly away, his back pressed against the stone fa9ade of the church, holding his bright yellow Prisunic shopping bag close to his chest with both hands. His eyes were filled with fear. The clochard whirled around, saw him, and in one swift motion slashed his cheek with the bottle. Blood poured down his face and he collapsed on the ground.

  A group of people had gathered outside the pharmacy, avoiding the normally crowded walk outside the church. No one moved for an instant, then as the clochard viciously began to kick the fallen man, who feebly tried to protect his head with the bag, several people ran across the square to stop him. Faith, like the crowd, had also stood motionless, stunned by the swift change from conviviality to violence. But when he started to kick the helpless figure, she yelled from the window, "Arretez! Arretez! Je telephonerai la police!" The clochard looked confusedly toward the sky and appeared not to know where the voice was coming from. He dropped the neck of the bottle and returned to his spot by the door to the church. Two men grabbed him. There was a wail of sirens, yet he did not appear to notice, nor did he offer any resistance. Three police cars screeched to a stop. Several gardiens de la paix jumped out, pulled notebooks from their pockets, spoke to a few people, then dispersed the crowd and took both clochards and the animals away.

  Five minutes later, all that was left was the broken glass, spilled wine, and a large boodstain on the empty sidewalk.

  Faith realized she was shaking. It was time to get Ben and she had to force herself to walk past the church.

  The next morning, the clochard was back, looking slightly cleaner. Same animals, same radio, same casquette.

  “Ah, Tom, you have put your linger exactly on the problem. What will happen to us poor French in 1992 when all Europe will be homogenized into one community? We will be flooded with Spanish and Italian wines and, quelle hor-reur, perhaps English cheeses." Everyone laughed at Georges Joliet's gloomy prognostications, then proceeded to all talk at once. It remained for Madame Vincent's s
ofter, yet more pronounced voice to rise above the rest as, slightly flushed from the white Cotes du Rhone, she declared, "France will always be France. It has nothing to do with wine or cheese, but who we are. Whether you live in Paris, Lyon, the countryside—'la France profonde,' we French share something that politics and economics cannot destroy. It is our destiny to be French." The rest cheered. It was a wonderful party.

  The room was filled with a glow produced by the warmth of the food, the people crowded around the table, and the candles Faith had placed wherever she could find room. Everyone had brought flowers and she'd had to put the last bunch—beautiful arum lilies—in the teakettle and prop them up on the mantel. They looked perfectly at home.

  They'd started with champagne and feuilletes sales— assorted small crunchy bits of puff pastry wrapped around an olive, flavored with cheese, or forming the base for a bite-sized pizza—the French answer to cocktail peanuts. At the table, she'd served the first asparagus of the season from the Luberon in Provence, delicate pale green stalks, steamed with a lemony mousseline sauce. Then bouillabaisse. She'd toyed with the idea of trying to create a real American meal—chicken and dumplings, baked country ham, but she had neither the ingredients nor the batteries de cuisine. With only one rather small frying pan, it would have taken a long time to fry chicken for eleven. She did have a big pot, though, and having walked past the seafood, artfully displayed on crushed ice day after day in the market, she'd longed for the chance to cook as many varieties as possible—which meant bouillabaisse. The only departure from her usual recipe—more a fish stew than a soup—was to remove the meat from the lobster and shrimp shells before serving. There wasn't enough elbow room at the table for the guests to do the dissections themselves, nor space for a bowl for the shells. There was room for a platter of slightly toasted bread liberally spread with rouille—the garlic and saffron mayonnaise, which is so delectable when dipped in the jus.

  She'd been a bit worried that no one would want cheese after the first courses, but when she'd produced the platter from Richard, where admittedly she'd gone a little wild—charollais, epoisses, picodon, bleu de Bresse, reblo-chon, and more St. Marcellin, there was a murmur of appreciation. Paul Leblanc had eyed the fromages with delight. "Cheese. You can always find room for cheese. It's like salad.”

  Now they were all finding room for the cold compote of blood oranges with creme anglaise Faith had made the day before and the assortment of dark chocolates Tom had picked up at Bernachon—the correct answer on the analogy section of the SATs to the question "Richard is to cheese as_____is to chocolate.”

  Faith gazed happily at Tom, who was busy pouring a Sauterne to go with the dessert. He was a good host back hi Aleford, yet France seemed to inspire him to new heights. He was off the leash—or rather without the collar—and enjoying every minute of it. She knew his sense of humor and general joie de vivre were a surprise to some of the people they were meeting. Protestants, correctly or incorrectly, were regarded as a solemn, rather dour bunch, and Tom behaved more like a priest.

  Throughout the meal, the talk had ranged from new movies to politics to gardens. Paul Leblanc and Clement Veaux had discovered they shared a passion for growing things, waxing lyrical about the taste of a certain pear, poire William, plucked straight from the tree.

  They were continuing to talk quietly to each other" about pruning, while Georges Joliet again bemoaned the creation of the European Community.

  “But you are a Communist, Georges," Ghislaine Leblanc said. "Surely you are hi favor of doing away with these artificial borders created by capitalistic wars?" Ghislaine wore her dark hair pulled back from her face, which emphasized her high cheekbones and the large full mouth that punctuated her question with a slightly mocking smile.

  “Yes, it is true I am a Communist, but I am a Frenchman first—" he started to elaborate.

  Valentina interrupted him. "You just don't want to be under the same flag as your Italiano in-laws.”

  She addressed the group, "Georges is a Communist, but he draws the line at my family.”

  Georges's face, under an untidy beard in classic anar- chistic style, was crossed by an expression of intense irritation. Then he apparently decided to treat his wife's remarks as a joke and forced a laugh.

  The talk ambled on. Solange d'Ambert—a feminine and very slightly older-looking version of Christophe, despite five children—lit a cigarette. Her hair was shorter on one side than the other, and when she swept the chin-length side back across her head, only to have it tumble back in a silken curtain, the gesture looked so sexy and so fashionable that Faith instantly decided to find a coiffeur to duplicate the cut with her own thick blond hair.

  “Were you here during the fight between the clochards yesterday?" she asked Faith.

  “Yes, I watched from the window. Do you know what it was about?”

  She shrugged. "Not really. I was watching from the street and the old one was shouting about money. I think the young one had taken some coins from the bowl to get more wine and the old one thought he was stealing them. Or maybe he was stealing."

  “Does this happen often?" Tom asked.

  “Oh no," Solange reassured him. "This is a very safe area."

  “Except for cars," Delphine Veaux interjected. "Lyon is noted for car theft, but with our Renault Five, we don't worry. Now if we could afford a BMW or Peugeot Six-oh-five, that would be something else. We would be lucky to have it a week."

  “Cars and jewels, which we also do not have in abundance and so have been spared," her husband added. "There has been a rash of burglaries around here, in Ainay, and a few across the river in the Brotteaux area. However, the thieves are not greedy. They leave stereos, TV, even cash and take only jewelry and occasionally a small and valuable bibelot."

  “Perhaps it's not greed but good taste," Solange of- fered. "In the Brotteaux, they find expensive new toys, in Ainay, all the valuables tout Lyon has passed down from generation to generation, and here—perhaps a melange."

  “This is a serious matter, cherie." Jean-Francois d'Am-bert appeared surprised at his wife's flippancy. "I can't understand why the flics have not been able to be a stop to it. What are we paying them for? To put tickets on our cars? Yes, they are very proficient at that, but when it comes to real crime, they have not a clue. Just last week, our friends the Fateuils were out of town for her mother's funeral and when they came back, pouf! All their good silver—dis-paru!”

  Faith was happy to have the opportunity to use one of her favorite French words: "Do you think it is the work of one cambrioleur—or cambrioleuse—or a gang?" Immediately, her mind was filled with scenes from To Catch a Thief—the female cat burglar being chased across the roof tiles of Monte Carlo by Cary Grant, roof tiles like the ones she could see from the apartment windows.

  “There has been some speculation on both sides in the press. I myself think it is a well-organized gang, probably operating outside our borders. Are you interested in things of this nature, Faith? I would imagine you have a great deal of crime in your area. You are near to New York City, yes?”

  The French whom Faith had met so far, unless they had traveled to the United States, had a very sketchy idea of distance. "I have a cousin in Milwaukee. Perhaps you know the family?" someone at the Duclos' last week had asked her in all seriousness. But everyone knew two things—the location of Disney World and New York. They also assumed one had to have the equivalent of the Croix de Guerre to venture a visit to the latter and it was close to achieving such a dream to visit the former. Faith was beginning to think she should get the key to the Big Apple for all the public-relations work she was doing. She was about to answer Jean-Francis when Tom beat her to it.

  “The place we live, Aleford, is a. petit village near Boston, about four hours' drive from New York City and, oui, my wife does seem to have an interest in crime, in addition to a particular knack for discovering dead bodies.”

  Everyone laughed, assuming it was some sort of American joke, a blag
ue, tres drole. Faith did not correct them and shot Tom a look to fermer his bouche. Yes, she had been involved in some investigations—a bit difficult to explain, especially in the midst of a dinner party and in a language for which she had a large vocabulary but unreliable grammatical skills. Jean-Frangois seemed to find the joke particularly funny. Like the rest of his family, he was good-looking, but perhaps on the verge of carrying too much weight.

  “Since you are interested in crime, you will enjoy meeting our friend, Inspector Michel Ravier. He will be at the vernissage tomorrow night, unless he is called away. I will introduce you. You can ask him about the break-ins, but"—Valentina Joliet's piercing dark eyes swept the room—"I do not think you have to worry."

  “Could the clochards be responsible?" Faith asked, thinking to steer the conversation away from her own personal history.

  There was more laughter. "A clochard would take the wine and maybe the TV or something like that—if he could figure out how to get into an apartment," Paul said. "These men have been drinking so long, their mental state is not very clear. Additionally, in some cases they are schizophrenic or have some other form of mental or physical illness."

  “But you seem to admire them so much. I see well-dressed people sit and talk with this clochard all the time."

  “Of course, we admire them. They are free. We envy them their lack of responsibilities. They never have to stand at the guichet at the post office and arrive at the front of the line, only to be told by the cretin in power to go to another window. Or produce the birth certificate of their grandmother's second cousin once removed in order to get permission to buy a car. They don't mail letters, pay bills. They don't care about birth certificates, or passing the bac, or any other worries.”