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Overview
It’s the spring of 1990, and French-Algerian judge Anne Marie Laveaud has been living and working in the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe for more than a decade—but her days are still full of surprises. She’s only just starting to investigate the suspicious suicide of a high-profile environmental activist and media personality when she’s pulled off the case. Is it because she was getting too close to the truth?
From the award-winning author of the Inspector Trotti series, this “absorbing” tale of suspense set in the Leeward Islands is “laden with insights about the legacies of colonialism, such as nuanced racism, official corruption, and troubled interactions between men and women” (Publishers Weekly).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781616953867 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Soho Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2018 |
| Series: | The Anne Marie Laveaud Mysteries , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Madame Dugain
Wednesday, May 16, 1990
"You're looking for me?" The woman was attractive, but her face appeared tired, the eyelids dark. There were wrinkles about her soft brown eyes. She placed a pile of exercise books on the table beside her handbag.
"Madame Dugain?"
"Yes, I am Madame Dugain. I teach French and Latin. Your child is in which class?"
Anne Marie moved towards the table. "It's about your husband."
For a moment the expression went blank, devoid of emotion, while the eyes searched Anne Marie's face. "I have already made a statement to the police judiciaire." Madame Dugain drew a chair—a school chair with a steel frame and a plywood seat—towards her. "Several statements." She leaned wearily against the backrest.
Anne Marie sat down on the other side of the table. On the formica top there were a couple of tin lids that had been used as ashtrays.
The far wall was covered with pinned-up notices concerning the different teaching unions. Beneath the drawing pins, the paper rustled relentlessly; the doors to the staff room were wide open and a mid-morning breeze kept the air cool. Through the shutters, Anne Marie could see a flame tree that had started to blossom.
"My husband is dead—isn't that enough?"
Anne Marie nodded sympathetically. "He died under strange circumstances."
"He was hounded to death."
"I don't think anyone hounded your husband."
Madame Dugain shook her head. "I'd rather not talk about these things."
"I understand."
The eyes flared with brief anger. "You understand?"
The two women were alone in the silent staff room of the Collège Carnot.
(Somewhere children were singing. In another building a class burst into muffled laughter.)
"I know how painful it is to lose someone you love." Anne Marie held out her hand. "I'm Madame Laveaud. I'm the juge d'instruction."
Madame Dugain took the proffered hand coolly, keeping her distance. "I really have nothing to say to an investigative magistrate or indeed to anybody else."
"I asked the head mistress for permission to speak to you."
Madame Dugain folded her arms against her chest. She was wearing a dress that went well with the brown, liquid eyes. A necklace, matching gold earrings. Black hair that had been pulled back into a tight bun. Her lipstick was a matte red.
"On Saturday, April twenty-first, three officers of the police judiciaire visited your husband in his offices in the Sécid Tower. They had a search warrant and they were seeking information concerning accusations made against your husband—"
"Everybody accused Rodolphe."
"Accusations that as director of the Centre Environnement, he had been misappropriating funds."
"My husband's not a criminal."
"Your husband received money from the government—from the Ministry of Employment—in order to recruit and train young people under the Youth Training Scheme. There were six young people working for him at the institute. Their salaries, funded entirely with government money, were paid into the Institute's account."
"I know very little about my husband's financial affairs."
"Your husband's accused of employing two of the young people in his small business in Abymes and paying them with the government allowances."
"I've given the police as much information as ..." She bit her lip. "My husband would never have taken money that wasn't his."
Anne Marie touched Madame Dugain's arm. "Given the circumstances, I don't think any good can be achieved by continuing with the enquiry."
The corners of her mouth twitched. "My husband and I were happy. We'd been married for seventeen years. You don't think my children and I have suffered enough?"
Somewhere an electric buzzer sounded, followed almost immediately by the sound of scraping chairs and the scuffling of feet as the pupils left their desks at the end of their lesson.
"Just supposing that your husband was guilty of these accusations ..." Anne Marie shrugged. "A fine—twenty thousand, thirty thousand francs. Not a lot of money—not for your husband."
Madame Dugain flinched.
"He could've paid that sort of money," Anne Marie said.
"Rodolphe was innocent."
"It's not for thirty thousand francs that an influential and well-respected member of the community decides to do away with himself."
CHAPTER 2Fait Divers
France Antilles, April 23, 1990
Mr. Rodolphe Dugain, better known to most television viewers as Monsieur Environnement, died on Saturday, April 21, of multiple internal injuries after throwing himself from the fourteenth story of Sécid Tower block in central Pointe-à-Pitre.
If the rumor had been circulating for some time that the police judiciaire were making enquiries into the Centre Environnement, the sudden and untimely death of Monsieur Dugain, one of the major and most respected figures in the cultural Who's Who of our département, seems to have taken Guadeloupe by surprise. The shock can be still felt in the University, where Monsieur Dugain held a lectureship in natural sciences, as well as in the corridors of the RFO television station, where he regularly broadcast his popular nature programs.
On Saturday morning, three officers of the Service Régional de la Police Judiciaire presented themselves at the offices of the Centre Environnement. According to eyewitnesses, Monsieur Dugain appeared his normal, jovial self, not allowing his good humor to be affected in any way by the presentation of a search warrant. According to sources, he offered a drink to the three men. Then, while the officers were looking for documents and other information—the nature of which as yet has not been revealed by the parquet—Mr. Dugain managed to slip from the room. Once on the far side of the steel front door, he locked it, making prisoners of the police officers. Taking to the stairs, Mr. Dugain climbed from the third to the fourteenth floor of the tower block. On the top floor, he made his way to the observation window and from there jumped to his death, landing on a car parked on the sidewalk of the Boulevard Chanzy. Mr. Dugain died immediately on impact. The vehicle was badly damaged and several people were taken to the nearby Centre hospitalier, suffering from shock.
A crowd of onlookers soon gathered around the macabre spectacle. Yet again in Guadeloupe, the lamentable behavior of rubbernecks and passersby hindered the fire and ambulance services in the execution of their duty.
Mr. Dugain, who was a Freemason and an ex-secretary of the Rotary Club, was born in Martinique 57 years ago. He leaves a wife and their two children, as well as two children from an earlier marriage.
There will be a memorial service at St. Pierre and St. Paul on Tuesday at ten o'clock. The inhumation will take place at the municipal cemetery at midday.
CHAPTER 3Public Trial
"My husband is dead."
"I need to know why he died."
Madame Dugain raised her eyes. "Is that important?"
"You said he was hounded to death by the police."
"The police, the media, whoever else—it doesn't matter. Not now."
"It matters."
A moment of hesitation. "You don't believe my husband was innocent?"
"Innocent or guilty, suicide is not a normal reaction."
"The SRPJ threw him from the fourteenth floor."
"Unlikely."
Madame Dugain allowed her shoulders to sag. Then she took her bag. "I must be going." She stood away from the chair. She was in her late thirties, with a trim, girlish silhouette and attractive brown legs. She ran a hand through her hair.
"Unlikely the police judiciaire should want to murder your husband."
"It's been nice meeting you."
"When somebody's pushed through a window, the victim hits the ground close to the building. The car on which your husband landed was nearly four meters from the entrance to the Tour Sécid."
Madame Dugain stared in silence at the clasp of her handbag.
"Nothing else you can tell me?"
"Else in what way, madame le juge?"
"Anything worrying your husband?"
A hard laugh. "His name in the papers? The accusation of embezzlement? The police coming to search his offices? Worrying my husband? What more do you want, for heaven's sake? His probity, his reputation—his very life were being called into question. His dignity was being put on trial. No, not a trial. A public lynching without trial. The telephone never stopped ringing."
"With a good lawyer ..."
"Rodolphe was innocent."
"With a good lawyer, he could have—"
"My husband did not need a lawyer. He needed to be left alone, he needed to not be dragged through the mud. The mud his enemies wanted. That the police wanted. And that's what you've got now. You're satisfied, aren't you?"
"Satisfied?"
"Rodolphe's dead."
Anne Marie caught her breath. "Who are these enemies that you talk about?"
"I've nothing further to say."
"Why don't you want to help me set your husband's record straight?"
"You couldn't care less about my husband's reputation."
"I care about the truth."
"Your truth." Madame Dugain turned and walked out into the sunshine, the handbag held to her body. Her heels clicked on the stone paving of the courtyard as she passed beneath the flame trees.
CHAPTER 4Les Seigneurs de Saint-Domingue
"Liliane Dugain's my cousin."
It used to be the lycée. Then, in the mid-sixties, a new school complex was built at Baimbridge on the edge of the city to accommodate the increase in the number of pupils. Consequently the old colonial Lycée Carnot, with its courtyard, its mango and flame trees, its airy, wooden classrooms, stranded in the heart of Pointe-à-Pitre, was transformed into a collège, a junior high school.
The two women walked out of the staff room and across the yard, between the trees. A breeze rustled through the leaves, and the pendulous mangoes swayed gently at the end of their long stalks. Other mangoes had fallen to the ground and split their bruised skin.
(Anne Marie was reminded of her school years in Algeria.)
"I got the impression she was more angry than upset."
The headmistress shrugged. "Lucette'd been married long enough to know what Dugain was like."
There was surprise in Anne Marie's voice. "He was fond of women?"
"You know a man who isn't?"
Anne Marie glanced at Mademoiselle Salondy as they stepped into the school building. "That's why you never married, Lucette?"
"One of many reasons." The headmistress put her finger to her lips and nodded to the closed doors of the administrative offices.
The muffled sound of a typewriter.
They went up the wooden stairs and entered an air-conditioned room. A photograph of President Mitterrand hung on the wall between a poster of the Declaration of Human Rights and a calendar from a local garage. The cables leading into the light switches were unconcealed and had been tacked into the wall with staples. A telephone on the large desk, and beside it, a plastic cube containing various pictures of Lucette Salondy's relatives. In a small glass jar stood a solitary anthurium.
"Madame Dugain's your cousin?"
"Sit down, Anne Marie." Lucette Salondy had a smile that formed wrinkles at the corner of her bright eyes. "Who isn't a cousin in this island?" She was a large woman whose dress could not hide matronly hips. In her youth, she had been very beautiful.
"You know her well?"
"I taught her. Liliane's more than twenty years younger than I am and when I came back from France in sixty-six she was doing her philosophy baccalaureate. A bright girl, and the youngest in her class." She tapped the desk. "That was when the lycée was still here, before they built the concrete jungle on the ring road."
"I shouldn't discuss things that have been told to me in confidence."
"Then don't."
"Liliane Dugain was acting out a role—that's the impression I got."
"Liliane's too old to act."
"My looking into his death doesn't seem to interest her."
"She needs to be left alone."
"That's what she said."
"The women in Guadeloupe hide their suffering."
"Here at school, do you ever talk to her?"
"My prison." The headmistress gestured to the office, the walls painted the pale grey of France's tropical public buildings and beneath the opaque louvers, the potted dieffenbachia, leaves yellowing at the edges. "My job's to sign bits of paper or phone the rectorat in Martinique. No time for idle chat—there are at least three new teachers this year whom I've never spoken to." She pulled a blue cardigan from the back of the chair onto her shoulders. "Headmistress? I'm just a cog in a big, faceless administration. A factory, an educational factory. The gentlemen of Martinique fail to understand our problems here."
"The gentlemen of Martinique fail to understand the good folk of Guadeloupe?"
"You're learning your West Indian culture!" The headmistress clapped her hands in pleasure. "The landlords of Saint Domingue, the gentlemen of Martinique and the honest folk of Guadeloupe. Two centuries after the independence of Haiti, the honest folk of Guadeloupe run around in SUVs while Saint Domingue's aristocrats cut cane in our fields."
Anne Marie smiled. "Despite the gentlemen of the rectorat in Martinique, you have time to talk with me, Lucette."
She stretched a plump arm across the desk and squeezed Anne Marie's hand. "I rarely manage to get out of this office."
"You've just been out."
"Because I wanted to talk to my sister-in-law before she scurries back to the palais de justice."
"Not your sister-in-law, Lucette. I'm your sister's sister-in-law—remember? You still have your beach apartment in Le Moule?"
"I just don't get time to go there. My weekends are taken up with administrative work. Perhaps when I retire ..."
"I don't think you'll ever retire, Lucette."
The large woman sighed. "It was Dugain's second marriage, you know."
"They weren't happy?"
"Liliane married someone who was seventeen years older than her. That kind of age difference's common here in our islands, but Liliane's an educated woman and she wanted a companion, a friend. In the end she married somebody who could've been her father. She wanted equality and found a man who never treated her as an equal. Someone who gave her two lovely daughters but who went elsewhere for his pleasure."
"Other women?"
"You sound surprised, Anne Marie."
"Not the sort of thing you expect."
"What would you expect?"
"When there's a big age difference, aren't men supposed to lose interest in philandering?"
"Are they?"
"Or so I am told."
"Perhaps French men—but not here," Lucette Salondy said, folding her arms. "Dugain appeared on television—he was a public figure, the kind of person to appeal to women, to our groupie psychology. We're all attracted by the dominant male." She clicked her tongue, as if reproaching herself for something. "Dugain didn't go out of his way looking for women—but they were there."
"Who?"
"There are always women."
"Who?"
"Even a headmistress and a spinster locked away in her office gets to hear things." She got up and went to a small filing cabinet. She turned the key. "Care for a drink?"
"No thanks."
"I often wonder how you manage to stay so slim, Anne Marie. So slim and so young." Lucette Salondy poured a thimbleful of white rum into a small glass. From a small refrigerator, she took a slice of green lime. "Worry about my figure at my age?" She sipped and winced. "The great thing about being old is you don't have to try to please any more, and it's only when you've stopped trying to please men they actually start to notice you. Not for your body, for your figure, for what you can do in bed—they actually notice you for what you are." She smiled wistfully. "I was thinking about your husband only the other day, Anne Marie."
"My ex-husband."
Another sip. "How's your son?"
"Who were Dugain's women?"
"Tell me about Fabrice, Anne Marie. We were all sad when he moved on to the lycée."
Anne Marie flushed. She was about to say something bitter, but instead she chose to relax. She allowed herself to sit back in the tubular chair. "Wind surfing, most of the time. And probably about to repeat his première scientifique at the lycée. Fabrice's pretty hopeless at school."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Timothy Williams.
Excerpted by permission of Soho Press, Inc..
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