SIXTEEN
Veronique Langlois was preparing one of the reduction sauces for the dinner service. It was almost five and things were running behind schedule, and destined to get even further behind if the young Surete agent continued to ask questions.
Agent Isabelle Lacoste sat at the scrubbed pine table in the warm kitchen, not wanting to leave. The kitchen had the most wonderful aromas, but more than anything it smelled of calm. Odd, she thought, for a place so filled with activity. Assistants in crisp white aprons were chopping herbs and cleaning early vegetables taken from the kitchen garden or dropped off by the local organic farmer, Monsieur Page. They baked and kneaded, they stuffed and stirred. It was a regular Dr Seuss book.
And Agent Lacoste did her job. She probed.
So far she’d interviewed all the outside staff, now back to cutting the vast stretches of lawn and weeding the endless flower beds. The place crawled with them. All young, eager to help.
Pierre Patenaude, whom she was currently interviewing, had just explained that the staff changed almost every year, so it was necessary to train most of them.
‘Do you have trouble holding on to staff?’ she asked.
‘Mais, non,’ Madame Dubois said. Agent Lacoste had already interviewed her and told her she could leave, but the elderly woman continued to sit, like an apple left on the chair. ‘Most of the kids go back to school. Besides, we want new staff.’
‘Why? It seems a lot of extra work for you.’
‘It is,’ agreed the maitre d’.
‘Here, taste this.’ Chef Veronique shoved a wooden spoon under his nose and he pursed his lips as though kissing it, just the lightest of contacts. He did it by rote, a thing he’d done many times before, Lacoste realized.
‘Perfect,’ he said.
‘Voyons, you always say that,’ the chef laughed.
‘Because it’s always perfect. You can’t do anything but.’
‘It’s not true.’
Agent Lacoste could tell she was pleased. And was there something else? Something in the instant the spoon touched his lips? Even she had felt it. An intimacy.
But then cooking was an intimate act. An act of artistry and creation. Not one she herself enjoyed, but she knew how sensual it could be. And she felt as though she’d just witnessed a very private, very intimate moment.
She looked at the chef with new eyes.
Towering over her young assistants, her apron-wrapped torso was thick, almost awkward in its movements, as though she only borrowed her body. She wore sensible rubber-soled shoes, a simple skirt and an almost severe blouse. Her iron-grey hair was chopped with less attention than the carrots. She wore no makeup and looked at least sixty, maybe more. And she spoke with a foghorn voice.
And yet there was something unmistakably attractive about her. Isabelle Lacoste could feel it. Not that she wanted to sleep with the chef, or even lick her spoon. But neither did she want to leave this kitchen, this little world the chef created. Perhaps because she seemed so totally oblivious of her body, her face, her clunky mannerisms, there was something refreshing about her.
Madame Dubois was her opposite. Plump, composed, refined and beautifully turned out, even in the Quebec wilder ness.
But both women were genuine.
And Chef Veronique Langlois had something else, thought Lacoste, watching her gently but clearly correct the technique of one of her young assistants, she had a sense of calm and order. She seemed at peace.
The kids gravitated to her, as did Pierre Patenaude and even the proprietor, Madame Dubois.
‘It was a commitment my late husband made,’ Madame Dubois explained. ‘As a young man he’d travelled across Canada and supported himself by working in hotels. It’s the only job untrained kids can get. And he spoke no English. But by the time he got back to Quebec he spoke it very well. Always with a heavy accent, but still it stayed for the rest of his life. He was always grateful to the hotel owners for their patience in teaching him his job, and their language. His dream from then on was to open his own auberge and do for young people what was done for him.’
That was the other ingredient of the Manoir, thought Lacoste.
It was filled with suspects, it was filled with Morrows, huffing and silent. But more than that, it was filled with relief. It was like a sigh, with structure. Guests relaxed, kids found an unexpected home at a job that could have been agony. The Manoir Bellechasse might be built of wood and wattle, but it was held together by gratitude. A powerful insulator against harsh elements. It was filled with young people revolving through, learning French, learning hospital corners and reduction sauces and canoe repair. Growing up and going back to PEI and Alberta and the rest of Canada with a love of Quebec, if not the subjunctive.
‘So, all your workers are English?’ asked Agent Lacoste. She’d noticed that the ones she’d interviewed were, though some seemed confident enough to conduct the interview in French.
‘Almost all,’ said Pierre. ‘Diane over by the sink’s from Newfound land and Elliot, one of our waiters, is from British Columbia. Most are from Ontario, of course. It’s closest. We even get some Brits and a few Americans. Many of them are sisters and brothers of kids who worked here before.’
Chef Veronique poured iced tea into tall glasses, giving the first to Patenaude, her hand just brushing his, unnecessarily and apparently unnoticed by the maitre d’. But not unnoticed by Agent Lacoste.
‘We’re getting sons and daughters now,’ said Madame Dubois, expertly snipping a sagging snapdragon from the beaker of flowers on the table.
‘Parents trust we’ll look after their children,’ said the maitre d’. Then he stopped, remembering the events of the day. Thinking of Colleen, from New Brunswick, standing in the rain, her large, wet hands covering her plain face. Her scream would follow him, Pierre knew, for ever. One of his staff, one of his kids, in terror. He felt responsible, though there was no way he could have known.
‘How long have you been here?’ Agent Lacoste asked Pierre.
‘Twenty years,’ he said.
‘That’s a round figure,’ Lacoste pointed out. ‘I need it exact.’
The maitre d’ thought. ‘I came right out of school. It started as a summer job, but I never left.’
He smiled. It was something Lacoste realized she hadn’t seen. He always looked so serious. Granted, she’d only known him for a few hours, after a guest had been brutally murdered in his hotel. Not much opportunity for hilarity. But he smiled now.
It was a charming smile, without artifice. He wasn’t what she’d call an attractive man, not someone you’d pick out at a party or notice across a room. He was slim, medium height, pleasant, refined even. He carried himself well, as though born to be a maitre d’, or a multi-millionaire.
There was an ease about him. He was an adult, she realized. Not a child in adult’s clothing, like so many people she knew. This man was mature. It was relaxing to be around him.
He ran his Manoir in much the same way Chief Inspector Gamache ran homicide. There was order, calm, warmth about the Manoir Bellechasse, radiating from the three adults who ran it, and impressing the young adults who worked there. They learned more than another language from these people, Lacoste knew. Just as she learned more than homicide investigation from Chief Inspector Gamache.
‘How long ago did you come here?’ she asked again.
‘Twenty-four years.’ The number surprised him.
‘About the same time the chef arrived.’
‘Was it?’
‘Did you know each other before coming here?’ she asked the maitre d’.
‘Who? Madame Dubois?’
‘No, Chef Veronique.’
‘Chef Veronique?’ He seemed puzzled and suddenly Agent Lacoste understood. She stole a look at the chef, large, powerful, cubing meat with fast, practised hands.
Her heart constricted as she felt for this woman. How long had the chef felt this way? Had she lived almost a quarter-century in this log lodge on the edge of Lac Massawippi with a man who didn’t return her feelings? What did that do to a person? And what happened to a love that was spread over time and in such isolation? Did it turn into something else?
Something capable of murder?
‘How’re you doing?’
Clara put her arms around her husband. He bent down and kissed her. They were dressing for dinner and it was their first chance to talk.
‘It seems incredible,’ Peter said, flopping into a chair, exhausted. Beauvoir had dropped off the suitcase from Gabri filled with underwear, socks, Scotch and potato chips. No real clothes.
‘We might as well have asked W. C. Fields to pack,’ Peter said, as they sat eating chips and drinking Scotch in their clean underwear. But, actually, it felt good.
Clara had found a Caramilk bar Gabri had thrown into their case and now ate it, discovering that chocolate really went quite well with Scotch.
‘Peter, what do you think Julia was getting at last night when she said she’d figured out your father’s secret?’
‘She was ranting. Trying to cause an upset. It meant nothing.’
‘I don’t know.’