CHAPTER 12 #3
‘As you wish. That’s exactly what I plan on doing once this little visit is over, Charlie James. Got my accommodation sorted.’ He tapped the planks of the bench with his left hand as he poured red wine down his gullet with his right.
‘What can you tell me about the dead man in the forest?’ She counted to ten in her head to give space for Mael to answer.
Galvanised by the red wine, the wanderer burped and slapped his chest. ‘I saw him just after lunch yesterday. Just over there.’ He pointed to a patch of lawn under an elm tree a hundred metres or so from the food stalls. ‘His black suit was all I could see of him.’
‘All you could see?’ replied Charlie, who was now taking notes.
‘He was lying down, relaxed, asleep on a picnic blanket. Had a newspaper over his face to shade himself from the sun. He stayed there asleep all afternoon.’
‘Until dark?’ Charlie asked.
‘No idea.’ He took another sip of his wine. ‘I left at dusk to get to my soup kitchen. French onion, it was, proper like, not gruel. Generous with the comté.’ He sounded pleased.
Charlie shivered. Hadn’t Allard just said the man had been dead for over twenty-four hours, judging from the rigor mortis?
Could it be that the man had already been shot and the newspaper had been draped over his face to keep prying eyes away from the body until he could be disposed of under the cover of darkness?
It would take a tall, strong person to carry an eighty-kilogram body into the woods. Or multiple people.
‘How do you know the sleeping man is the dead man? You just said his face was concealed by a newspaper?’
‘So it was. But the clothes are the same. Same star on the collar.’
Charlie shot him a look.
‘Yes, I followed the shouts when the body was discovered by walkers at first light and went and had a look at the body myself. I didn’t touch anything.’ He held his hands up defensively. ‘Don’t tell the police, they’ll lock me up.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Anyway, the man was fast asleep. His friend was whistling a tune so loud that I asked him if he was worried he’d wake his companion.’
‘Friend?’ Charlie sat up straighter.
‘Yes. He was with a man. Tall, dark, short hair. Blue eyes. Very cold. Trimmed moustache.’ He combed his own beard with his fingers.
‘The man said he wasn’t worried a jot about the whistling.
His exact words were: “I’m surprised you can’t hear the snoring from where you are. My friend sleeps like the dead.”’
Charlie shivered. ‘May I ask if the man you spoke to had an accent?’
‘Sure as eggs he did. German. No question.’
‘Certainement? Not Swiss? Sometimes they can sound the same.’ It was a long bow to try to connect Maisy Bell’s case to this one, but Charlie was trying to justify keeping it open in her mind, if not her work logbook.
‘Look, m’lady, maybe accents sound similar to your foreign ears, but my family has been performing across these regions for centuries. I tell you … I know a northern German accent when I hear one.’
‘Understood. May I ask where you are from, Mael?’
He waggled his finger again, shaking his head before taking another gulp from his flask. ‘My people are from all over. We belong everywhere and nowhere,’ he said sadly as he spat on the grass. ‘What about you? Where’re you from?’
‘Paris. The sixth,’ she replied.
‘Not with that accent you’re not.’
‘Australia. Sydney.’
‘Never been,’ he said simply and took another swig from his flask. ‘Show me your hands.’
Charlie held her hands up.
‘Not like that.’ He flipped her hands over so they were palm up. She was surprised at how cold his were. ‘My mother had the gift and her mother before her. I like to look at people’s hands to see if I can trust them.’
Charlie kept her hands still and said nothing.
Mael nodded to himself. ‘Just as I expected, you have earthy hands. Square palm, stubby fingers—practical. Grounded. Hands of a worker.’
He peered into her eyes and she blinked him away and turned her head.
‘Long lifeline. See? Mine’s shorter. Much shorter.’
Charlie looked at him and he nodded and jutted out his lip while he held one palm out to show her. He took another sip from his flask and winked playfully at Charlie.
‘You have a strong love line. Broken here, love … but gets going again.’ He chortled and patted the seat.
‘But your whole hand is holding you back. You’re searching …
but in the way of yourself. You’re fixated on something you can’t resolve.
There’s something you need to let go of.
You won’t find what you’re looking for until you do. ’
Was he talking about love? Or work? Both?
Charlie thought of her ex-husband. That was resolved.
Then she pictured Maisy Bell’s happy face. Unresolved.
‘Excuse me. I need to visit the gentlemen’s room before I check into where I shall be staying tonight.’ He reached down and grabbed his pillowcase. ‘It was a pleasure meeting you.’
‘Don’t go!’
‘My old man’s not what it was. Forgive me,’ he said as he dragged the clinking bag away to some trees.
Charlie watched the man disappear into the undergrowth, making a note of the direction so she could tell the police. Maybe Mael was right—she needed to focus all her energy on this new story. Yet she couldn’t let the Maisy Bell story slide … maybe she never would.
But for now, she needed to concentrate on unlocking what had happened here in Tours. Charlie pulled out her notebook and made a list of the details she had so far, including Mael’s French onion soup with proper comté cheese so she could track him down to the exact soup kitchen later.
When she was done, Charlie closed her notebook and went to find one of the police officers patrolling the park to tell him about the conversation she’d just had with a man in a burgundy velvet suit.
A young man with thin lips assured her they would find him and investigate before ushering her out of the park.
The local police certainly did not like the press.
Chastened, she wandered along the footpath to catch a taxi back to the hotel and tell Violet all she’d discovered.