John Lescroart - Son of Holmes

When we finally walked down to the cemetery proper, Georges and Paul had arrived. Paul looked especially out of place in a dark suit. In the time that I’d known him, I couldn’t ever recall having seen him dressed even semiformally before. We joined them by the gate.

Gradually, some other of Marcel’s friends and relatives began to appear, and the four of us who had been in the room that night found ourselves effectively ostracized. Henri and his wife arrived among a small group who left them immediately after they’d passed the gate. Madame Pulis, whom I’d never met, was weeping, and Tania walked over to comfort her. Henri joined the rest of us.

After a few moments of uncomfortable small talk, we walked over to the grave. Marcel’s parents had died long ago, and he hadn’t been married. I had probably been his closest friend, and yet the others around the grave treated all of us as though we’d been his enemies. We stood in a knot while the usual forms were followed and, when the body had been lowered, were the first to turn and go. Madame Pulis had been constantly crying throughout.

Georges walked crookedly next to me. “Rather ugly, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I don’t suppose you can blame them.”

Gathered around my car, we stopped to talk. Tania packed Madame Pulis into their carriage and walked pensively back.

“I can’t understand those people,” she said. “Henri, your wife . . .” She stopped.

“I know, I know. I suppose I shouldn’t’ve brought her along. She’s so emotional. She was fine until we met that other group. They asked if I’d been there Wednesday and acted as if . . . well, you know. And she’s very sensitive to that sort of thing. You’d think one of us killed him, the way they were acting.”

Paul was seated on the running board, his tie now off, his coat across his legs. “It appears,” he said, “that one of us did.”

“Well, I didn’t,” stormed Henri. “I goddamn well didn’t!”

“I didn’t say you did, Henri. Calm down. But it isn’t unreasonable to assume that one of us planted that poison now, is it? You might as easily assume that I did it.”

I looked sharply at him.

Georges spoke up. “Have the police mentioned to any of you their suspicions? Motives, hints, clues?”

Everyone said no.

“The point is, they mentioned to me . . . well, we shouldn’t go around picking each other to pieces. They mentioned that it seemed to them to be at least as good a bet that it was suicide.”

“That’s absurd,” I said. “I’d been with him most of the day. He hadn’t been depressed. In fact, he’d been looking forward to the summer.”

“Well, the alternative, of course,” said Paul, standing up, “is that one of us did it.”

“Again, not necessarily,” said Georges.

“What do you mean?”

“Not necessarily one of us. One of ‘us’ isn’t here.”

“Lupa!” said Henri.

“It does seem strange he didn’t come,” said Tania, “though some people simply cannot abide funerals.”

Paul laughed. “No one likes funerals.”

“My wife does.” Henri shook his head, and we all laughed as the tension broke. “Speaking of . . .” He smiled at all of us and began to walk to the carriage. Tania called after him and asked if she might go with him, since I’d told her that I had business in St. Etienne.

The three of us remaining watched them move off slowly, and I asked Paul if he needed a lift. Georges said he had some deliveries to make at St. Etienne and would I mind if he accompanied us? Since he had to pick up his supplies, we all agreed to meet later in the afternoon, and I drove off alone toward La Couronne. On the way, I remembered the beer I’d promised Lupa and detoured back by way of my home.

Chez moi, I changed into something more comfortable and asked Fritz if he’d mind arranging the delivery of several cases of the beer to Lupa. Since it was lunchtime, Fritz insisted I stay and have something to eat, and he quickly prepared a small plate of ham croquettes, fresh bread, and a delicious paté made, he said, from the liver of a wild hare. Since he didn’t hunt, I had reason to doubt him, though one of the neighborhood boys might have come around with his catch. Still, wild hare or not, it was excellent. I had one of my own beers to overcome my lurking fear about them, and during the first few sips, Fritz looked at me with real anxiety. I smiled.

“They don’t produce cyanide of themselves,” I said.

He didn’t think that at all funny and crossed back into the house, where he could eat in his cool and shaded kitchen, washing everything down with his daily demi-bouteille of uncomplicated wine.

I decided it would be a waste of time to see Lupa before I’d been to St. Etienne, and so I found myself for the second time that day with some spare time on my hands. I walked slowly up the stairs to my room and reached into the false bottom of my lower left-hand drawer, taking out my pistol.

It was an older but nevertheless effective weapon, excellent for close quarters and concealment. I don’t know why I’d stopped wearing it when I’d returned home this last time. That had been foolish. It was a derringer, its tiny butt overlaid with carved ivory. For all its beauty, it was a terribly powerful weapon—the same gun, though of course an earlier model, had been used to assassinate the American President Lincoln. I carried it in a special holster that I wore under my shirt. Up in my room, I began to clean and oil its few moving parts, so that by the time I left the house, I felt finally prepared for the work I might have to do.

It was still early for our rendezvous—I was meeting my friends at the town fountain at one thirty—so I stopped by Tania’s house to see if she’d come back yet. I found her inside, fuming. Sitting down next to her, I kissed her on the cheek.

“Is something wrong?”

“That man is such a . . .” She was so angry her voice was shaking. “And I thought you were to be in St. Etienne.”

I explained the delay, though her eyes still flashed in anger. “It’s not really you—it’s him. He’s so infuriating, I . . .”

“Now, now,” I continued, “Henri’s under a lot of pressure, and . . .”

“Not Henri. That other man, the one you asked to join us the other night. Lupa!” She stood up and stalked around the room.

“What’s he done?”

She stopped and glared across at me. Then suddenly her face softened, and she walked back and kissed me.

“I’m sorry. I’m just very upset. Let’s go outside and talk, shall we?”

So we walked out to where she’d eaten earlier that morning. She asked Danielle to bring us some tea, then sat down.

“Now,” I said, “what’s wrong? What’s Lupa done?”

“He’s done nothing. He’s just so arrogant! He omits doing things, and so superciliously . . . well, no. I’m being hysterical.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the table.

“We were coming back, and as you know, Madame Pulis was very upset by the whole thing, and I was thinking of the callousness of our fellow townspeople. We happened to pass La Couronne on our way, and we saw your Monsieur Lupa sitting under the awning, reading a newspaper and drinking beer. I wanted to scold him—all right, I know I’m too much a mother sometimes—but I did want to. I asked Henri to stop.

“Now,” she continued, stopping me before I could interrupt, “don’t think I was going to snap at him for missing the funeral. After all, I realized that he hardly knew Marcel. I was just angry. I really don’t know why I stopped. Perhaps I was being too whimsical. But nevertheless, I did it. Henri let me out and I walked over and asked if he’d mind if I joined him for a moment. Do you know what he said?”