Page 27 of The Strawberry Thief
She followed me into the kitchen, bringing the scent of gardenia with her. ‘The woman is impossible,’ she said. ‘I suppose I should have expected it.’
‘Which woman?’ I said absently, hoping she wouldn’t want sugar or cream.
‘Vianne Rocher, of course,’ said Michèle. ‘Two lumps of sugar, and cream, please,mon père.’ It was as if the woman knew that I had neither in the house. I looked in the pocket of my coat and found two wrapped lumps of sugar taken from Joséphine’s café. I do not take sugar myself, but sometimes, when I am in Les Marauds, little Maya likes to feed sugar to the horses.
‘I’m afraid it will have to be milk,’ I said.
‘Of course,mon père. Lent,’ said Michèle Montour, which annoyed me all the more. Michèle Montour cares no more about Lent than she does about my company: she had come to complain about Vianne Rocher, and more especially Rosette, with whom Vianne refuses to discuss the topic of Narcisse’s legacy.
‘I don’t see why she has to be so difficult,’ said Michèle. ‘She can’t be doing great business in that funny little shop of hers. You’d have thought she would jump at the chance to make a little money.’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe she doesn’t consider the land to be hers to sell,’ I said.
‘Irrelevant,’ said Michèle. ‘The child can hardly be held responsible.’
I drank my coffee and said nothing. Presumably Narcisse left Rosette the oak wood for a reason.
‘I offered her a handsome sum,’ went on Michèle peevishly. ‘I can only assume that she believes the land will accrue in value. Maybe she thinks there is treasure buried there!’
She gave an unpleasant little laugh, and it occurred to me how often liars confess the truth while trying to say the opposite.
‘But seriously,mon père,’ she went on. ‘What did he expect people to think? The wording of his will is designed to give the impression there’s something more.The sixteen hectares of wood, along with any structures and contents,’ she quoted, accurately enough to make me think that she had given the matter some thought. ‘Don’t tell methatwasn’t meant to imply there’s more to the place than just woodland?’
‘Maybe there is,’ I said, with a hint of malice. ‘Narcisse was—’
‘Difficult, yes,’ said Michèle. ‘He was a very difficult man. No-one knows how much effort we put into trying to placate him, but he never—’
‘I was going to sayquixotic.’
‘Oh. That too, of course,’ said Michèle, and I knew she didn’t know what ‘quixotic’ meant. ‘But that was just my father’s way. He liked his little jokes. Ofcoursethere’s nothing buried there. It’s just his attempt to cause trouble. And if only that woman would see sense and sell us the land straightaway, we could dispose of the whole property so much more easily. Frankly,mon père–’ she lowered her voice ‘– we could do with the money. Caring for Yannick has cost us almost all of our savings. You’d have thought that woman would have felt some kind of sympathy, given the fact that she too has aspecialchild.’ She gave the wordspeciala syrupy inflexion, in contrast with her otherwise rather nasal tone.
I finished my coffee. ‘I sympathize,’ I lied. ‘But what can I do?’
‘You could talk to her,’ said Michèle with annoying directness. ‘You could get her to talk to this Roux person. He’s never going to talk to me. He’s already made that very clear. He wasn’t even at the reading of the will. But maybe you could make them see sense. Persuade them the land is worthless. Otherwise, there’ll be all kinds of talk. You know what people here are like.’
I do, indeed. I also know when someone is trying to fool me. The Montours think there is something more than oak trees in Narcisse’s wood. Buried treasure? How absurd. And yet, the old man was suspicious. It would have been just like him to bury his cash in a box in the ground instead of putting it into the bank. But as for talking to Vianne, or Roux—
‘I doubt it would do any good,’ I said. ‘And besides, I am the executor of Narcisse’s will. To interfere would not be in accordance with his wishes.’
‘Oh.’ I saw her eyes return to the folder containing Narcisse’s manuscript, which I had placed on the worktop by the kettle. ‘But if there was something in there …’ she said. ‘Something that might indicate if valuables were buried there – you’d be obliged to tellsomeone, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s just an example, a silly one, but, you’dhaveto tell the solicitor, or at least inform the family—’
I sighed. ‘I consider this document bound by the seal of the confessional,’ I said. ‘I would no more reveal it to anyone than I would reveal a confession of yours.’
‘But my father wasn’t even a Catholic!’ protested Michèle. ‘Surely,mon père—’
‘The question is not whetherhewas, Madame Montour.Myvows do not differentiate between believers, unbelievers – or hypocrites.’
That should have been enough. As it was, I saw her cheeks colour – with anger, rather than anything else. ‘Well, it seems ridiculous to me,’ she said, ‘that a document that might make the difference between my son being cared for properly or being flung to the mercy of the State should have to be hidden away, on the whim of an old man who was probably not even of sound mind.’
But something she had said had alerted me. ‘What do you mean,flung to the mercy of the State?’
Michèle Montour raised her eyes to mine. ‘Mon père,’ she said, once more adopting the syrupy tone she liked to affect whenever speaking of her son’s affliction. ‘My husband and I will not always be able to care for Yannick ourselves. All that money, wasted on special schools and therapists, with no results, and nogratitude.’ She dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips. ‘One day, we will be gone,’ she said, ‘and our son will be obliged to go into an institution. That is, unless we raise the funds to enable him to be cared for.’
That surprised me a little. From what I’d seen of the Montour boy, he wasn’t incapable of interacting with others, and he’d shown some ingenuity in raiding Narcisse’s jam store. ‘I thought Yannick might be able to live independently as an adult,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Oh no,mon père. My son must be supervised constantly. His condition compels him to overeat to a dangerous extent, and if left to his own devices, he could be dead by the time he’s thirty.’
I thought of the two-litre jar of jam and felt a little uncomfortable. ‘You mentioned that before,’ I said.
