Murder in Lascaux (6 page)

Taking me by the elbow, Marianne moved us toward the steps of the house, where she formally introduced us to her father, Baron Charles de Cazelle, and her brother, Guillaume. The brother welcomed us in less fluent English to “the domain of Cazelle.” His father, warmer in the eyes than his son, bowed slightly and murmured, “
Vous êtes les bienvenus à Cazelle
.” And with a nod, he signaled to a female servant, who scurried from her station just inside the doorway and proceeded into the hall. With a sweep of his hand, the old baron silently invited us to cross the threshold. Toby and I followed David and Lily into the mansion, while Marianne stayed behind a moment with Jackie.

The interior space was enormous—a huge square, lit from its back by evening light coming through a wall of glass-paned doors. To our left was a sideboard, from which the domestic was lifting a tray of delicate glasses. I couldn't help gaping at the ornate decor of the spacious salon. There was gold everywhere—gilt-framed mirrors, gold statuettes, and even gold etched into the intricate design of our fluted glasses. When all the glasses were full, the baron dramatically raised his. Looking each of us in the eye in turn, he saluted us: “
A votre santé
.” Toasting our health was all the more apt, I thought, after we had been in the presence of death. With one voice, Toby, David, and I replied, “
A la vôtre
.” Lily nodded, along with Marianne and Guillaume, and we all took our first sips of crisp champagne.

The baron, elegantly lean and straight-backed, led us across the parqueted hall and signaled us to settle ourselves on a set of three velvet sofas. They were arranged with their backs to the room, facing out to French doors, which opened onto a formal terrace. Beyond that, a lane of red roses led to a line of neoclassical statues set against a high wall of green topiary. Observing our admiration, the baron offered a proud smile. He took a sip of champagne, seated himself in one of the two armchairs in front of the windows, and looked to Marianne to continue the conversation.

At that moment, however, a new couple came clattering across the hall. Or, rather,
she
clattered, in high-heeled sandals that were never meant for parquet floors. He shuffled, in suede loafers. “I guess we are
en retard
!” chirped the clatterer, with a lilt in her voice that conveyed little remorse. “We just heard your cars arrive.” She smiled toward Toby and introduced herself as Dotty Dexter and her companion as Patrick Greeley.

Obviously, Dotty and Patrick were our fellow students at the cooking school, but they made an unlikely couple. With her girlish demeanor and blonde bob, Dotty was trying to lop decades off her actual age—maybe late fifties, judging by her weathered neckline, which was amply exposed. Patrick's shaggy hair and casual manner said he was not very long out of school, and still finding himself.

Our hostess cut in, “I must tell you that our new guests have had an ordeal this afternoon.” Once she explained the situation to Dotty and Patrick, they made murmurs of commiseration and adopted more somber expressions. “However,” Marianne concluded, “we'll try our best not to let this event ruin everyone's stay.” She informed us that since the police had asked her to reserve the next morning for interviews at the château, the original schedule for our cooking class would have to be changed. Tomorrow evening we would proceed as planned with a restaurant dinner, but there would be no cooking school during the day. As for tonight, we would all dine here.

“For now, please enjoy your champagne. In a bit, Madame Martin will show you to your room and you will have a chance to freshen up before dinner. Nora, we've put you and Toby on the second floor at the end of the hall. The door nearest your room leads up to the attic, but no one goes there, so you'll have your privacy. We'll serve dinner at nine thirty.”

Dotty turned toward me and confided behind her hand in a stage whisper, “I can't get used to these late dinner hours. You know, it's murder on the waistline. They say that for every hour after six you eat dinner, you'd better add another two hundred calories to your day's total.” I could see she wasn't about to let the news of our day cast a pall on her evening. She chuckled, jiggling her ample bosom, and twisted to her right to ensure that Patrick caught the view.

“Will your sister be joining us, Dot-ty?” asked Marianne, giving the name a hard accent on both syllables.

“You mean my sister-in-law.” (There was a slight pause.) “Why, Marianne, Roz wouldn't miss your cooking. You know that. Here she comes now.”

From the darkened hall emerged a commanding figure. Roz stood squat and strong, radiating motherhood gone to earth-motherhood. Her thick black hair, streaked naturally with silver, was pulled back into a ropy bun. Her coloring was Rubenesque: creamy skin with rosy cheeks and rosier lips, free of makeup. A plain black dress fell becomingly over her rounded frame, and for jewelry she wore only a pair of silver hoops.

“Excuse me for being late,” she apologized, turning first to Marianne, then to the father and brother, before turning to us, the newcomers. “I was taking a siesta. I hope I haven't held up dinner.”

“Not at all,” replied Marianne. “I'm sorry to tell you there has been a very bad incident today involving our guests. We'll need to give them a bit of a rest, so I'm delaying dinner by an hour. You've met David and Lily Press, but let me present to you our new arrivals, Nora Barnes and her husband, Toby Sandler.” And turning to us: “This is Madame Roselyn Belnord, Dotty's sister-in-law.” We shook hands, as Marianne proceeded to summarize the news of our tragedy.

As if sensing instinctively who was most shaken by our experience, Roz grasped Lily's hand, exclaiming with evident sincerity, “What a terrible thing to go through. Yes, of course, we should let you get some rest.” She raised her eyes in concern to Marianne, who took this as a signal to send us off to our rooms and the good care of Madame Martin.

Marianne stopped David, however, to say she would need his passport and Lily's, since she had promised to deliver them to Jackie. David seemed about to protest, but a warning glance from Lily subdued him, and he promised to turn over the passports before dinner. Having stumbled past that snag, we repaired to our rooms on the second floor, to collapse, bathe, and ponder—in that order.

A
bout an hour later, all of us except Dotty were assembled again by the south windows, which now gave out onto twilight in the garden. The sky had cleared, and the marble statues glowed a ghostly white against the dark background of topiary.

We stood, since Marianne and her men were standing. They seemed to be warding us off from seating ourselves on the sofas. Perhaps Marianne was eager to get us to the table, thinking that with a change of scene, the demons of the day could be dispelled.

While we were waiting, I struck up a conversation with Roselyn Belnord. “Is it Roselyn or Roz?” I asked.

“Oh, please call me Roz. Marianne was just being formal, showing her aristocratic side. Even ten years of living in America doesn't knock the finish off a well-bred chatelaine.”

I was taken aback, momentarily. The word “chatelaine” has a suspect connotation in post-Revolutionary France—I remembered that from my undergrad course in French culture. Surprise must have shown on my face, since Roz continued: “Please don't misunderstand me. Marianne may be an aristocrat at heart, but she's the most loving friend in the world. She and I became close when she lived in Washington, D.C. Her husband and mine were college roommates, and they were both in the news business. Marianne's Ben was on the foreign desk at the
Washington Post
, and my husband is a political reporter with the
Baltimore Sun
.”

“So you and Marianne have been friends a long time?”

“Yes, ages. She's the godmother to my older son, and both my boys call her “Tatie” because she's like an aunt to them. In the old days, she and her husband spent a lot of time with our family in Baltimore, and in summers at the Eastern Shore. But those days are over. Marianne was widowed early. You know, newspapers are a brutal business. I was always afraid my husband would die the traditional newspaperman's death— heart attack at sixty. But at sixty-four, Harry is as full of oats as ever, covering Congress like a hunting dog. It's Ben who's gone, and he was the one who jogged and didn't smoke and didn't drink. When Marianne lost him, she came back here to live with Guillaume and the baron.”

“That must have been hard for her.”

“It was, but she and her brother get on very well. Marianne has her cooking school, and he has his girlfriends. Though if he doesn't marry soon, there won't be an heir.”

I raised my eyebrows, and Roz continued. “Marianne says she wants to see him settle down, but every time he starts getting serious about someone, Marianne finds fault with her. To tell you the truth, I think she's a little leery at the prospect of having to share him with a wife.”

She suddenly sensed my distraction. “This probably isn't the time to talk about it. It's Nora, isn't it?”

“Yes, and Toby.” As I looked in his direction, Toby turned and joined us. “And does your sister-in-law also live in Baltimore?” I asked, spotting Dotty flouncing back into the hall in her silky, clinging pants and low-cut top.

“For the moment,” Roz replied, with a voice that noticeably cooled. “Now that my brother is gone, she's shopping for condos in Florida and New York. But it hasn't been that long. She may decide to stay based in Baltimore, and just spend a good part of the year traveling.” She seemed to remember her better self and looked around the room with admiration. “I might do the same thing in her shoes. In fact, I was the one who talked Dotty into coming along with me on this trip. We both like to cook. We've had a little rivalry over who makes the better grits soufflé.” She smiled, and then paused again, studying my face. “I'm sorry, you've had an awful experience, and here I am rattling on about food and family.”

“Please, that's what I need,” I replied. “It's a relief to talk about ordinary things.”

As Marianne waved us in to dinner, I walked alongside Roz and confessed I was feeling a lack of confidence about the cooking school, because I was out of practice. “These days, it's usually Toby who makes our dinners.”

“Well, why not? It must be very nice to come home to a man-cooked meal.”

“It's not that I don't know my way around a kitchen,” I explained. “I was a decent cook before graduate school, but I've been working nonstop at writing or teaching till recently, when I got tenure. The last few years, I've baked the week's bread every Saturday, but that's it.”

In a lowered voice, Roz confided, “That's going to be a surprise for Marianne. She thought that, coming from the Bay Area, you'd be a disciple of Alice Waters and worship at the shrine Julia Child made for herself over there in Napa.”

“Not
too
far off. I learned to cook young, from my Irish grandmother, working with her in our kitchen. No recipes. My mom was totally uninterested in cooking, so we didn't have a single cookbook. But when my little sister was born and I took over as supper-maker, I bought a paperback copy of Julia Child's TV-series and learned the basics from that. So I do sort of worship old Julia. She saved us from eating nothing but soda bread and lamb stew.”

I didn't add that all through those years when the kids were growing up and I was in charge of supper, I looked forward to the daily food preparation as a way of bringing order to an unruly household. Mom worked late hours at a gift shop to bring in extra money, and Dad flopped into bed early, exhausted from his postal route. Most days, I was the de facto parent for my sibs. But cooking always set my mind to rest, and tonight I hoped thinking about cooking would help assuage the trauma of the day.

We were shown to assigned seats at the table, and Roz looked disappointed that the place cards forced us to separate. Marianne had put herself at the head of the table, with her father opposite. I was seated at Marianne's right, which I took as an honor. At the other end of the table Lily and David were seated flanking the baron. Guillaume, the brother, was on my right, and Roz was on his, while across the table Dotty turned on the wattage as she nodded to her swains, Patrick on one side of her, Toby on the other, and Guillaume directly across, with the best view of her cleavage.

Marianne silenced a buzz of polite chatter by tapping her knife on the side of her wine glass. “My father and brother join me in saying, ‘Welcome to our table, and
bon appétit
!'” She moved graciously into her instructor's mode: “In spite of the unfortunate events of today, we hope you will enjoy our first meal together.” Lily managed a smile, and I hoped mine was warmer. Marianne continued: “Even though it is Monday, we have decided to provide an abbreviated version of a Perigordian Sunday dinner. All the courses are typical, but we'll have only four, instead of the usual seven. We'll start with
soupe de fèves
, served as at home.”

With that, Marianne lifted the top from a giant china tureen. This meal may have been intended to feel homelike, but the dish hardly looked like a peasant's pot. The china was bone white, decorated with the same elaborate cross that was incised on the lintels of the horse stalls outside. Here it was embossed in red over a band of gold around the tureen's rim. I was sure the china was Limoges; there's something unique about the color of Limoges ware, a balance of unmistakable depth and delicacy. With a long silver ladle, Marianne dipped into the soup, filled our bowls, and handed them to us to pass carefully down the table, family style.

True to the formal spirit of the china, we politely waited for Marianne to raise her spoon, and then we took up ours to sip a wonderfully creamy soup.

“It's delicious,” said Patrick enthusiastically. During drinks he had hovered quietly in the background, but at table he suddenly came to life. To Dotty he said, “You know, there's nothing like tasting local food on the spot, especially this kind of cooking that's been passed down from mother to daughter.”