L'Assassin - Hardcover

Chapter One

It looked like a simple burglary at first. In fact, as crimes go, the robbery of Louis Morgon’s house in the village of Saint Leon sur Dême seemed noteworthy only for its ineptitude. The burglar, a small-time criminal known to French police as Pierre Lefort, came to the house in broad daylight and broke a window to let himself in. He poked around the house for a while, and then he cut the lock on the barn, where Louis had his painting studio, and went in.

A short while later he loaded up his loot and left. The old car backfired as Lefort drove down the steep driveway and turned onto the lane. Solesme Lefourier was pruning her roses, and she paused to look as he passed. The handle of Louis’s lawnmower bobbed and weaved from Lefort’s open trunk like a semaphore.

Solesme’s eyes were failing because of her illness, so she could not read the license plate, but she got a good look at the car and the driver. She went inside and called the police, which in Saint Leon meant Jean Renard. He was wrestling with some overdue reports and was relieved to hear the phone ring. "Renard, you better come," said Solesme. "I think Louis’s house has just been robbed."

Louis had returned home by the time Renard got there, and Solesme had flagged him down and told him what had happened. Louis was going through the house to see what might have been stolen, while Solesme sat outside at the table under the linden tree. Renard joined Louis inside. He wrote an inventory of what was missing, but as far as Louis could tell, nothing much had been taken.

Louis seemed disappointed, as though he had mainly been robbed of a bit of excitement. "It was a pathetic effort on the thief’s part," he said. "Besides the lawnmower, which would barely start, the guy took some screwdrivers, an electric drill, and a couple of sweaters. I’m always glad to see you, Jean," he said to the policeman, "but I’m sorry you had to come out for this."

"Worst of all," said the policeman, "it means writing another report."

Renard went back outside and pulled two chairs up beside Solesme while Louis heated water. The air was heavy with the perfume of linden blossoms, and the three friends sat sipping tea and listening to the bees at work just above their heads in the sullen afternoon air.

When Solesme saw Louis looking at her in that way he sometimes had now, she waved her hand as though a bee had flown too close to her face.

Renard pushed his chair away from the table. "I have to get back," he said, and stood to drink his last sip.

Once the policeman was gone, Louis said, "So, what did he say?"

"Who?" said Solesme.

"Who. Bertrand, of course."

"Bertrand! He’s just guessing. What does he know? They’re all just guessing."

"He’s your doctor," said Louis. "So tell me: what did he say?"

"He said it has spread," said Solesme. "It is in my bones. But still, even with all his tests, what does he really know?"

"He’s your doctor," said Louis, sounding helpless this time.

Louis had expected this news, but he was not ready for it. He stood, but he did not come around the table to her, as she feared he might. The last thing she wanted right now was his comfort.

"I’m just going to look at the garden," he said, and took a few steps in that direction. Solesme stood up to go with him. Her spine was deformed—it had been since birth—which caused her to shift her body oddly as she rose, projecting her right shoulder forward and rising under it. She had the same slight twisting motion in her walk. To Louis she always seemed to be dancing. It was a subtle and odd dance, but he still found it mesmerizing, as he had from the first time they had met.

Thirty years ago he had just arrived in Saint Leon for the first time. It was the summer solstice, the night of music. All over France cities and towns stationed orchestras and bands and choirs in their streets, and music filled the night. The town square in Saint Leon had been decorated with colored lights and cleared of cars. A small stage had been erected.

Louis had not planned to stay the night, but the Chalfonts, who ran the hotel, had insisted he be their guest. Chalfont leaned close to him and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "This night is not to be missed, monsieur," he said. Then the music began to play and the entire village rose to dance. The spectacle swept over Louis and somehow, in a way he did not understand that seemed—though he certainly did not believe in magic—to be magical, transported him out of his unhappiness.

As it happened, later in the evening Louis was seated next to Solesme, and, though it was not something he would normally have done, he invited her, a complete stranger, to dance. He had always found dancing to be dangerous somehow—its sexuality was so public, but he invited her nonetheless.

Solesme stood up in that peculiar way of hers. "Oh, madame, I am sorry," Louis said in his awkward French. "I did not know. Please forgive me."

"But I love to dance," said Solesme with raised eyebrows and a charming smile, and held out her hand to him. The gypsy musicians played and sang plaintive waltzes, and Louis and Solesme danced around and around the square, caught up in the swirling throng.

The next day Louis continued on his journey, but afterwards he was drawn back to Saint Leon, and not only because of that evening. The town was small, and out of the way, and ordinary. It suited him—someone who wanted to disappear and begin life anew—perfectly. He bought the house and the barn at the top of the hill. He cleaned out the barn and made it into a painting studio, although he had never painted before. He planted a large vegetable garden and flowers and shrubs, although the only gardening he had ever done had been to push a lawnmower back and forth around his yard in Virginia.

Louis and Solesme had now been lovers for most of those thirty years. It was not surprising, therefore, that he did not give the burglary as much thought as he might have. Her illness terrified him. However, the burglar, Pierre Lefort, seemed determined that Louis should not forget his handiwork. The day after the burglary, while Louis was in the market picking out a fish for supper, he saw a man—Pierre Lefort—walking across the square wearing his sweater.

"You won’t believe it," he said as he burst through the door of Renard’s office. "I just saw the thief."

"What?!" said Renard.

"The burglar," said Louis, "the man who robbed my house. I just saw him. He fits Solesme’s description, and he’s wearing my sweater."

By the time Louis and Renard rushed outside, the man was no longer in the square. They walked through the side streets. "How do you know it’s your sweater?" said Renard. They found Lefort behind the post office wearing a vivid, blue and yellow striped sweater, too short in the body and too long in the arms. He was getting into the car Solesme had described. Renard confronted him and placed him under arrest.

Pierre Lefort appeared before a judge in Tours. He was convicted of burglary and was sentenced to serve a year in the Granville prison. Louis repaired the broken window, replaced the padlock on the barn door with a new, sturdier one, and forgot about the robbery.

Dr. Mauricio Bertrand, the oncologist, had been unsparing in describing for Solesme the likely course of her cancer, how it had moved from her bones to her organs, and how it would eventually spread into her brain. "There is nothing more we can do," he said finally. "We can, however, keep you comfortable until the end."

"And when is the end?" Solesme wanted to know.

"It is only a guess," said Dr....