While the Music Lasts

By John Brooke

Luc Malarmé was one of France’s most popular rock stars when he was convicted for the murder of his girlfriend, beloved film star Miri Monette. After nine years in prison, he has just been released and come to live at his country retreat near Saint-Brin — Inspector Aliette Nouvelle’s home and base of operations. All Malarmé wants is to tend his vineyard and play music. But the citizens of Saint-Brin have neither forgotten nor forgiven his crime against Miri, or, it turns out, some ugly prior local history involving Luc. They let a fallen star know he’s no longer welcome in town. Aliette is appalled at her fellow townspeople. Hasn’t Malarmé paid his debt to society?

Someone obviously doesn’t think so. The violence begins with the poisoning of the musician’s dog, and quickly escalates. Malarmé is badly beaten. Then his vineyard is torched and there is an attempt on his life. The shooter misses and the wrong man dies. Or did the shooter miss? Aliette loves Malarmé’s music. But even she knows the man is trouble.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Signature Editions
• Release date: Jan 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781927426715

John Brooke

John Brooke became fascinated by criminality and police work listening to the courtroom stories and observations of his father, a long-serving judge. Although he lives in Montreal, John makes frequent trips to France for both pleasure and research. He earns a living as a freelance writer and translator, and has also worked as a film and video editor as well as directed four films on modern dance. His poetry and short stories have been widely published and in 1998 his story "The Finer Points of Apples" won him the Journey Prize. Brooke's first Inspector Aliette Nouvelle mystery, The Voice of Aliette Nouvelle, was published in 1999, followed by All Pure Souls in 2001. He took a break from Aliette with the publication of his novel Last Days of Montreal in 2004, but returned with her in 2011 with Stifling Folds of Love, The Unknown Masterpiece in 2012, and Walls of a Mind in 2013, which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Award.

Book preview

Cover: “While the Music Lasts”, An Aliette Nouvelle Mystery, by John Brooke.

While the Music Lasts

AN ALIETTE NOUVELLE MYSTERY

JOHN BROOKE

Logo: Signature Editions.

© 2016, John Brooke

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Terry Gallagher/Doowah Design.

Photograph of John Brooke by Anne Laudouar.

Author’s Note: Many of the locations in this novel are fictional, although those familiar with the area may notice more than a passing resemblance to actual places.

We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council for our publishing program.

Ann Lamott quote (part 1) from Ann Lamott shares everything she knows, Salon.com, April 10, 2015; John Berger quote (part 2) from Some notes on song: The rhythms of listening, Harper’s, February, 2015.

Cover art based on Johann Carl Loth’s painting Music Lesson.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Brooke, John, 1951-

       While the music lasts / John Brooke.

(An Aliette Nouvelle mystery)

Issued also in electronic format.

ISBN 978-1-927426-70-8 (paperback).

--ISBN 978-1-927426-71-5 (epub)

       I. Title. II. Series: Brooke, John, 1951 August 27- Aliette

Nouvelle mystery.

PS8553.R6542W45 2016    C813’.54    C2015-905906-2

       C2015-906000-1

Signature Editions, P.O. Box 206, RPO Corydon

Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3M 3S7

www.signature-editions.com

Always for Annie

Contents

PROLOGUE

PART 1 THE MIRI THREAD

• 1 • A DOG CALLED LENNON

• 2 • A FLIGHT OF SWALLOWS

• 3 • PARIS GREEN AND PETTY PEOPLE

• 4 • A BATTERED BUSKER

• 5 • LES DEUX FILLES

• 6 • TWO SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS AND A SMASHED GUITAR

• 7 • MIRI’S ACOLYTES

• 8 • DISCRETION

• 9 • JUST US?

• 10 • THE LINE WAS NOT SO FINE

• 11 • POSTER WAR

• 12 • FIRE IN THE VINES

PART 2 TOWARD THE NIGHT OF MUSIC

• 13 • CONFLICTED CHORUS

• 14 • FORENSICS FIRST PASS

• 15 • A DIRTY LITTLE BUSINESS TRICK

• 16 • A SENSE OF GUILT

• 17 • INSTRUCTIVE FINGER

• 18 • THIN WOMEN

• 19 • ENTER MARTINE ROGGE

• 20 • ASSIGNMENTS

• 21 • FORGET THE FEAR IN YOUR HEART

• 22 • ANOTHER FAN

• 23 • SMACKED IN THE SOUL

• 24 • COMMUNICATING

• 25 • FALLOUT

• 26 • ACOUSTICS

• 27 • INTERROGATING LEINA

• 28 • TWO VIEWS OF THE HUNTING PARTY

• 29 • THE NIGHT OF MUSIC

PART 3 AT THE HEART OF THE CURSE OF MISFORTUNE

• 30 • SUNDAY AT JÉROME’S

• 31 • COP AT THE WINDOW

• 32 • ONGOING MANOEUVRES IN THE FIELD

• 33 • BORDEL

• 34 • WHEN THE WORLD IS EXACTLY FINE

• 35 • WHAT RACHELLE KNEW

• 36 • FAMILY DYNAMICS

• 37 • BAD COP

• 38 • FACETIME

• 39 • DOWNWARD TRENDING

• 40 • ISABELLE’S LIE

• 41 • JÉROME’S GUN

• 42 • ISABELLE’S BIG DAY

• 43 • AN AWFUL TRUTH

• 44 • SECOND EYES

• 45 • TWO JOLIE COPS ON BIKES

• 46 • THE KILLING GUN

• 47 • EXPANDING THE WINDOW

• 48 • PERSONAL REASONS

• 49 • MOVING THE PAWN

• 50 • SATURDAY TIMELINES

• 51 • YOU ASKED FOR A MAN?

• 52 • THE MOON IN HER FACE

EPILOGUE

NOTES

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents Page

Epigraphs

PROLOGUE

PART 1 THE MIRI THREAD

1 A DOG CALLED LENNON

2 A FLIGHT OF SWALLOWS

3 PARIS GREEN AND PETTY PEOPLE

4 A BATTERED BUSKER

5 LES DEUX FILLES

6 TWO SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS AND A SMASHED GUITAR

7 MIRI’S ACOLYTES

8 DISCRETION

9 JUST US?

10 THE LINE WAS NOT SO FINE

11 POSTER WAR

12 FIRE IN THE VINES

PART 2 TOWARD THE NIGHT OF MUSIC

13 CONFLICTED CHORUS

14 FORENSICS FIRST PASS

15 A DIRTY LITTLE BUSINESS TRICK

16 A SENSE OF GUILT

17 INSTRUCTIVE FINGER

18 THIN WOMEN

19 ENTER MARTINE ROGGE

20 ASSIGNMENTS

21 FORGET THE FEAR IN YOUR HEART

22 ANOTHER FAN

23 SMACKED IN THE SOUL

24 COMMUNICATING

25 FALLOUT

26 ACOUSTICS

27 INTERROGATING LEINA

28 TWO VIEWS OF THE HUNTING PARTY

29 THE NIGHT OF MUSIC

PART 3 AT THE HEART OF THE CURSE OF MISFORTUNE

30 SUNDAY AT JÉROME’S

31 COP AT THE WINDOW

32 ONGOING MANOEUVRES IN THE FIELD

33 BORDEL

34 WHEN THE WORLD IS EXACTLY FINE

35 WHAT RACHELLE KNEW

36 FAMILY DYNAMICS

37 BAD COP

38 FACETIME

39 DOWNWARD TRENDING

40 ISABELLE’S LIE

41 JÉROME’S GUN

42 ISABELLE’S BIG DAY

43 AN AWFUL TRUTH

44 SECOND EYES

45 TWO JOLIE COPS ON BIKES

46 THE KILLING GUN

47 EXPANDING THE WINDOW

48 PERSONAL REASONS

49 MOVING THE PAWN

50 SATURDAY TIMELINES

51 YOU ASKED FOR A MAN?

52 THE MOON IN HER FACE

EPILOGUE

NOTES

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guide

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents Page

Epigraphs

PROLOGUE

Start of Content

EPILOGUE

NOTES

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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You are the music while the music lasts.

T. S. Eliot

The Dry Salvages

PROLOGUE

Ten years had passed since the tragedy — a blow to the head that killed his lover, the actress Miriam Monette. He had been released the previous spring. It was on the evening broadcast; they’d caught a preview of that dull, fixed-forward stare. Legally, Luc Malarmé, former frontman and driving creative force behind Ma Malheureuse Pelouse, had paid his debt to society and was just another man faced with the long, slow task of rebuilding his life. But Luc was not just another man, and moral outrage is like an insidious weed. When a friend tried to help Luc get a leg up, the weed grew rampant. The friend was a theatre director in Montreal who was mounting a play and had created a role for Luc — as an on-stage balladeer narrating the thread in song. The shrill reaction to this gesture made it more than a little ironic that it was a play about forgiveness.

Chief Inspector Aliette Nouvelle thought so. ‘Let the man get on with his life!’ she blustered.

Luc Malarmé was only a singer, after all. Perhaps he would sing a redemption song.

Magistrate Sergio Regarri thought Luc surely would, suggesting, ‘Who among us is above forgiving?’

In the world of French celebrity Miriam Monette had been the equivalent of royalty. Both her parents had enjoyed long and much-praised careers on stage and sceen. Miri was a princess. When news of Luc’s planned Canadian gig surfaced, her father led the righteous parade, declaring it a travesty that Luc Malarmé should sing again in public. How could he sing with Miri confined to the grave? It confirmed the man’s utter lack of remorse. Miri’s papa appeared on evening télé and said it plainly, ‘I detest him. I cannot forgive him.’ A legion of commentators fell loudly in behind. They said that for Luc Malarmé to sing again on stage would render his sin null and void. A politician in Canada who stood for family values intervened. Decreeing that all right-thinking Canadians agreed, the minister in charge of culture made sure Luc’s work visa was revoked.

Paris buzzed and snarked and roiled…

Watching from the south of France one warm evening in early autumn, a disgusted Aliette remarked, ‘How lucky for Canada to have such morally decisive leadership. Poor sheep.’

‘And couldn’t we use some here?’ Sergio replied, laconic, ironic, but not cynical.

Dear Sergio could not allow himself to be cynical and hope to do a decent job.

For a cop, it’s harder. Aliette supposed she could understand Miri’s aggrieved papa. And she had agreed with the feminist side of the debate the sad incident had sparked during the trial some ten years before. There may have been mitigating circumstances, but there was no excuse.

But the backlash of bitterness disappointed her. Nine years in prison is not nothing.

In November a popular Senegalese band invited Luc to come and sing with them.

Which incited yet more angst and accusation in the salons and studios of Paris.

Luc Malarmé had come down before Christmas, to his retreat on a ridge between Prades and Berlou. They’d started seeing him around town that winter. It was hard to miss that boyish face, the tousled hair that kept him looking barely over twenty even after nine years in a prison cell. He was indeed well practised in the art of gazing straight ahead. Luc Malarmé now existed in a netherworld of shame, permanently stained by his violent act. Most citizens of Saint-Brin stared but kept their distance as he unassumingly took his turn in line at the post office, the bank, the butcher’s, or at the Sunday market, that most public moment in the course of a week, when you saw everyone, at least in passing. They were curious to see such a man so close, and so ordinary. Aliette stared too. Impossible not to.

Others were more than curious. They were the ones who found him unforgivable.

It was the way they sized him up, openly judgmental, as if he were a melon past its prime.

There’s a cheap image for you — a cheap image for a small, mean-minded sentiment.

But apt for a Sunday morning in early March. Aliette and Sergio were selecting tomatoes. Luc Malarmé was directly across the lane, at a fruit vendor’s, standing in a shaft of spring sunlight that had found its way through the covering of plane tree foliage. He was choosing a cantaloupe, appraising each piece of fruit with a touch once magical on a keyboard, a guitar string, working notes from his haunting flute. The Midi sun was truly warm that day and you might have thought that simple fact might be reflected in a fruit vendor’s eyes. But, no… Aliette watched the woman edging closer, peering, angry in advance, as if sure that Luc Malarmé would grab one of her wares and run, a pathetic petty thief. The sheer meanness in that woman’s face left the inspector boggled. ‘He looks so utterly alone,’ she murmured.

‘Everyone looks lonely when they’re shopping.’

Sergio’s off-the-cuff profundities were one of the many reasons Aliette had stayed with him for coming on three years. Today, purposely or otherwise, he’d missed her point. ‘I mean in the world. No one will go near him… How can that woman go to mass?’

‘She doesn’t. She comes here to sell her fruit.’

‘It’s a disgrace.’

‘Invite him for a drink. Take him out of pity.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t want anyone’s pity.’

‘Everyone does, in their own way.’

Sergio got back to the business of selecting fare for their Sunday lunch. He chose another tomato and added it to the basket on the inspector’s arm. Then three more with quick resolve. Some radishes, lettuce, cucumbers. Aliette edged along beside her judge. Gawking? Luc Malarmé was more intriguing than her lover’s feel for fresh produce.

He was now bent over a crate of peaches, apparently oblivious to the resentment telegraphed from the fruit vendor’s damning eyes. But a veteran cop is hard-wired to the concept of intent and Aliette was deciding never to buy another piece of fruit from that awful woman when Sergio leaned close, advising, ‘You have to let people live their lives. He’ll sort it out. It’s not like he’s without resources.’

Of course he was not without resources. Luc Malarmé was rich. His band had been the biggest French music phenomenon since Johnny Hallyday. Nine years in jail and all the related legal costs would not come near to depleting that man’s stash of music industry gold.

‘But he’s starving for forgiveness,’ she countered.

‘Alors, what do you suggest?’

‘I don’t know… Do we not forgive the sinner who has paid the price?’ A question based on the words of our Saviour and hundreds of years of legal philosophy, not to mention her mother’s pithy admonishments that always went straight to her heart and stayed there.

Sergio shrugged — he was only an Instructing Judge. He gently freed the basket from her arm and presented it to the vegetable vendor to be sorted, weighed and priced.

Aliette heard a voice behind her utter, sotto voce, ‘It’s wrong, so smug, to come walking back into the world like that, glorying in the fact of himself, like nothing happened. Poor Miri. If he weren’t so rich he’d be rotting in his jail cell. We’d not have to see this in our town!’

Where did these people get their ideas? How could anyone be smug after nine years inside?

And the hateful fruit vendor had no problem accepting his money…

Aliette watched him, bags in hand, head bowed, alone as he moved off through the market.

It was as if he had come to test them.

PART 1

THE MIRI THREAD

Earth is forgiveness school. I believe that’s why they brought us here, then left us without any owner’s manual.

Ann Lamott

• 1 •

A DOG CALLED LENNON

Saint-Brin, population about 10,000, was in the lap of a Midi valley. Wine was its principal resource, and while the valley was indisputably picturesque and some of the wines superb, the town was only ordinaire. Two butchers, three bakers, one SuperU, one smaller grocery, two gas stations, two pharmacies (same owner), two doctors (no dentist), three restaurants in a row, one national bank in competition with the banking arm of the post office, one church, one newsagent.

Offices of the Police Judiciaire were on the second floor of the mairie. Chief Inspector Nouvelle’s looked out at the Great War memorial, grey and obscure with its fading names, standing at the confluence of stone paths lined with benches winding through the public garden. Some days the view was peaceful, even charming. Other days the inspector had to remind herself that this was what she had chosen. She could have been part of the major Divisional restructuring and run her affairs from an office in the city of Béziers, forty minutes south. She could have eaten lunch with Sergio each day. But this spacious, often chilly room in a generic Third Empire provincial administrative building was at the heart of her assigned territory, and, three years prior, newly transferred, still sorting through the personal fallout of a failed relationship in the north, an office here had seemed both operationally logical and emotionally necessary. Her new Divisional bosses in Montpellier had reviewed the numbers related to the cost of office space for her and her team and said, ‘Fine, carry on in the old commissariat, Inspector.’ So long as she coped with the constant commuting into the city, it balanced out and it was all the same to them. Yes, her choice. She hadn’t known Sergio then.

In summer she was unequivocally glad to be here in this busy, if muted, town, while the city sweated and stank, and where byzantine streets meant wearying traffic bedlam.

Leave Saint-Brin? The thought had occurred, but it always got lost in the flow of days.

It was April, consistently warm now. The public gardens below were doing well, the season of unconditional love for her town and the life that came with it was hoving into view. Aliette had not laid eyes on Luc Malarmé since that Sunday in the market back in March. Or thought about him. She had ranted at Sergio about her fellow citizens’ lack of charity toward another popular god fallen low, then moved on from that dismaying moment. Presiding over a sprawling rural territory encompassing almost fifty towns and hundreds of villages and hamlets kept her too busy to brood.

And so: ‘Oui?’ turning from her window, responding to a timid knock, she was nonplussed to find the disgraced star standing at her office door. Unescorted, looking lost and shambling in dirty blue jeans, a ragged grey training jersey displaying an American logo, and needing a haircut. But healthy — he had been getting air and sun. He must have wandered up the stairs. Aliette deduced that staff secretary Mathilde Lahi and her counterparts downstairs were all still at their lunch.

‘Is this the police?’

‘Police Judiciaire,’ she stammered, suddenly face to face with the famously boyish presence. She stood, extended a hand across her desk. ‘Chief Inspector Nouvelle. How can I help you?’

He stepped forward and shook it. ‘My name is Luc —’

‘I know your name.’

Said too hastily, it got a grimace — a delicate place touched too quickly, indiscreetly.

A pained look revealed another layer. He was taller than he always seemed, more substantial, and obviously no longer the boyish presence his name automatically invoked. He was a man in his forties and starting to show it: hints of jowls forming, some burst capillaries under his eyes, touches of grey at his temples hiding under the swirling curls.

But he recovered in a blink and moved closer. A not-so-shy gleam in those green eyes, a slight twitch of his fleshy lips forming the beginnings of a hopeful smile; the illusion fell back into place, enigmatic and attractive. Aliette felt something automatic move inside her.

Not sure what exactly, but one felt one cared. Her eyes adjusted, her psyche tried to.

He appeared to be assessing this as he informed her, ‘It’s started.You have to help me.’

‘What has started?’ She sat, feeling his eyes, distracted, forgetting to offer a chair.

‘They’re going to kill me.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. They. Everyone. These people…’

He may have been paranoid, but she believed him. Automatically? The harsh thing she had discerned in the eyes of certain people around town came flooding back. ‘And so?’

‘They killed my dog.’

‘Your dog?’ No matter how you might imagine such a moment, you cannot plan how you’ll react when you actually come face to face with a star. Despite the tarnish of shame, Luc Malarmé remained a megastar, and Aliette was bedazzled, not all there, as she mumbled an apology. ‘Well, we don’t really handle that sort of thing. We are more for serious crimes. Not that killing a man’s dog isn’t a serious matter, it’s just —’ She was talking too much and he was retreating back inside himself. Leaving her, for an instant, in something of a panic. ‘But wait!…I mean, wait…’ Not that he had moved a physical inch. ‘Have you reported it to the gendarmes?’ The uniformed police were part of the community in a way judicial police could never be and better positioned for an investigation into the killing of a dog.

The gendarmes — and dogs — lived much closer to the ground.

But he hadn’t. ‘I don’t want all the attention the gendarmes will bring.’

It was a matter of fact and they both knew it.

‘I suppose I could take a look at it.’ Adding (finally), ‘Sit, please. Tell me what you can.’

He sat, hunched forward, hands clutched in his lap like a man explaining to his priest.

He had been working on restarting the grapevines on the land adjacent to his villa. They had been abandoned for six years. ‘I received a letter from Francis saying he wanted to retire and I —’

‘Francis?’

‘Francis Fernandez. The man I bought my land from. He worked my vines and looked after the place. But he’s old and…’ a shrug, ‘…well, I wasn’t there, was I?’

Aliette murmured, ‘No.’ Thought, You were in prison for killing Miriam Monette.

Luc Malarmé nodded into his folded hands. ‘That was during the darkest part, halfway in. It felt like forever at that point. I was losing hope. A very dark time… I wrote Francis, telling him to let the vines go. To retire and forget about me and the place. And everything. You see?’

She nodded, Go on. After listening to him sing for years while staring at his beguiling face on artfully packaged album covers, she wanted to hear him talk. And contemplate that face, now starkly unfiltered.

‘When I got down here at Christmas, I started thinking I’d try again. The vines. Me, I could do it. It’s a huge project to get them going again, two, three years at least. But I can learn.’ And he was determined to try. And he’d got himself a dog. ‘Lennon… like John Lennon?’

Yes, the chief inspector knew John Lennon.

‘Yesterday, I was out working, Lennon was with me, then he wandered off and didn’t show up for his meal. When I went to find him, he was lying by the side of the road. I thought it must have been a car, but the vet said poison in a piece of meat. Arsenic.’

Aliette said, ‘That’s sad.’ Though she already knew the answer, she had to ask, ‘But why would someone want to kill your dog?’

It wasn’t complicated. ‘They can’t forgive me.’

It’s not good practice to lead a person. You have to let a person make his own statement in his own words. Supplying him with words can help him hide the truth. Despite knowing this, Aliette said, ‘You mean Miri?’ Because she wanted to hear him talk.

He met her eyes. ‘No. I mean me. My music.’ Quiet, as quiet as that shy boy who shimmered in and out of focus. But adamant on this point.

There was a gap there. She was wary. ‘Not Miri?’

‘I’m the same man I was before Miri. I can’t change that. And they can’t stand it.’

She did not need to ask, Who are they? It was the people in the market, and at the post office and the bakery. The ones in Paris even more so. There was a silence as she puzzled his claim, a silence that belied the open window just behind her. A silence like a spell.

Till Luc said, ‘Miri’s gone. There’s only me.’

Only him?

How could he separate Miriam Monette out of the equation?

The condemning voices echoed, a chorus chanting, outrageous! shameful!

He didn’t hear them. Aliette saw this in his bottomless eyes and it brought her fully back to herself. A cop, a woman…a woman who expected men to make excuses, a cop who had grown weary of hearing them, a woman who knew that no matter how a man’s wife may have provoked him there was no excuse for a punch to the side of her head, a cop who sensed — who saw — that Luc Malarmé was long past all excuses… The cop overrode. Miri was a police matter and it had been dealt with. The killing of his dog was a different police