A Well-Timed Murder Read online

  Agnes stepped forward while Vallotton moved in the opposite direction to study a pair of watches with convincing intensity.

  “I’m Gisele LeRoy,” the woman said in response to Agnes’s introduction. Up close, her eyes were the color of a summer sky. Her clothes were more relaxed than the dark suit worn by Christine Chavanon, and her short blonde hair created a halo around her head. Light shimmering on and between the individual strands caused Agnes to look for its source.

  They were standing by a display case that held a dozen models in a range of styles. There were no heavy chronographs, or specialty sporting watches promising accuracy to astounding depths of the ocean for voyagers to that final frontier. The complications were simple ones: perpetual calendar, phases of the moon. Gisele opened the case and ran her hand across the faces, as if reading braille on the glass. At last, her hand stopped and she selected a watch, holding it out to Agnes. The face was white with tiny flecks of color scattered as if paint had dropped on a canvas. The case was thin and gold, and the band was subtle. A soft barely tan leather. A lady’s watch, not too delicate, but feminine.

  Agnes held it to her wrist. “It’s lovely,” she said, meaning it.

  “Would you like it?” Julien Vallotton said, appearing beside her elbow. Hastily, Agnes returned the timepiece to Gisele, shaking her head emphatically. Vallotton moved off to study a case of men’s watches.

  Gisele looked between the two of them. “It would make a nice gift?” she suggested before returning the watch to the case and locking it.

  Agnes shifted the conversation back to the reason she was here. “Was there anything particular that you remember about the days leading up to your employer’s death?”

  “I wasn’t at work the week before Monsieur Chavanon died. Since I’m here for eight straight days at Baselworld, they give me time off before the show. Ivo takes his time off afterward. You should talk with him.” Gisele motioned for her colleague to join them.

  “I’ll miss Monsieur Chavanon,” she added. “I liked it when he walked around and talked to us, even though he was distracting. His mind was off in a hundred different directions.” She motioned again to Ivo. “Have you been to the factory? Make sure you see the collection. Ask Christine to show you.”

  “Not Madame Chavanon?”

  Gisele made a face. “She doesn’t know that much. She’s all-business. I don’t think she really cares about watches. We could make surgical equipment for all it matters to her. She’s not even from La Chaux-de-Fonds. She’s from Lausanne.”

  Agnes could hear her mother-in-law saying something similar: my daughter-in-law’s parents aren’t from here, they’re American. Years, decades—in Agnes’s case, an entire life—didn’t make a difference. Being from somewhere in Switzerland wasn’t taken lightly.

  When Ivo broke away from the clients he was helping, Gisele crossed the showroom floor to take his place. Agnes introduced herself. Ivo smiled warmly, although the expression didn’t reach his eyes. He asked that they go to the nearby café bar. They didn’t speak on the way there, and when they sat down, he had a lengthy conversation with the waiter about the hot drinks on offer before deciding on a cappuccino. Agnes ordered one as well, sensing that Ivo was nervous.

  Once the drinks arrived, he spoke rapidly. “I was the last one to see him alive.”

  “You were at the Institute the day Monsieur Chavanon died?” Agnes leaned forward, startled.

  “No, I mean I was the last one of us to talk to him. From the company. Or the family.”

  Agnes sat her cup down too hard; it banged the saucer.

  “I came in that weekend to start packing for the show. I’m in charge of displays and we were making a few changes.”

  “Monsieur Chavanon was there?”

  “He wasn’t in the factory when I arrived. He saw my car and came in. He was like that. Always wanted to see what we were doing.”

  “He kept a sharp eye on everything?”

  “Not like checking on us. He was simply interested.” Ivo moved his cup to the side. He looked away. Agnes waited, watching him replay those last words and actions in his mind. The last memory. Routine conversation, routine actions cemented forever as the end. A hurried goodbye that should have been “I love you.”

  “On Monday,” Ivo continued, “when Madame Chavanon told us … when she said what had happened, I told her that I’d seen him on Saturday and that he had been so happy.” Ivo looked directly at Agnes. “I don’t know why I said that. It just came out. As if it was better that he felt good before he died. He was nice man. A generous boss. A visionary.”

  “No one is disagreeing with that.”

  “That Saturday I had finished checking the panels we bring to the show, making sure none were damaged, and I was working on the cases. Madame Chavanon had decided to make some adjustments—updating the interiors slightly—and I was nearly finished.”

  Ivo rubbed his palms across the top of his thighs as if they were sweaty. Agnes motioned to the waitress and asked for a bottle of San Pellegrino and two glasses.

  “He was angry,” Ivo said. “He asked why I’d torn up the cases. He said that we had a reputation to uphold and now they looked like backdrops for cheap imports. I didn’t know what he meant or why he said it. They looked nice to me, good-quality wood. I was so stunned that I didn’t argue. I just stood there. And he left. Practically ran out.”

  “Do you think he was angry before he came in to see you?”

  Ivo reflected. “He was always preoccupied, and he was that day, until he caught sight of the cases and blew up.”

  “This wasn’t usual behavior?”

  “No. Monsieur Chavanon was mild mannered. Almost absentminded, although that’s not right. He was focused on whatever he was working on.” Ivo smiled at the memory. “He was a gentle man.”

  “He didn’t say anything else that might indicate why he was so angry? Where had he been before you saw him?”

  Ivo shook his head. “I don’t know. I was pretty mad myself. I walked out and left everything laid out in a mess. I barely remembered to lock the door.” He poured a glass of water from the bottle and drank it down. “I didn’t lie to Madame to avoid what he’d said about the cabinets. I wasn’t thinking clearly and wanted to say something nice.”

  “Do you know where Monsieur Chavanon went after he left you?”

  “No, but he drove off in a hurry.”

  “What time was that?” A note in the police report said that Guy Chavanon came directly from his house to the school reception. Marie Chavanon was shopping in Bern and had left the house hours before. Christine was at a friend’s house.

  “One thirty. I only know because when Madame Chavanon told us he’d died, I realized that was about the time I arrived home, and it had been an hour since I’d seen him. I was fixing myself a sandwich, angry, not knowing that right then he was dying.”

  After a few more questions Agnes stood and thanked Ivo. He returned to work and she took a sip of the fizzy water and visualized the road between La Chaux-de-Fonds and Rossemaison. Guy Chavanon had been pronounced dead at two thirty. It was unlikely he would have ingested peanut product in his own home, and the timeline was wrong anyway. The coroner said the reaction occurred within minutes of contact. What had happened in that hour?

  She spotted Vallotton in a booth across the aisle. He disentangled himself from the saleswoman and met her in the center of the pavilion.

  “Too much mother-of-pearl.” He motioned over his shoulder. “Aimed at the Asian market, I suppose. Funny what one finds here. I liked the watch you were looking at, though.”

  She ignored his comment and slipped into the stream of people heading for the exit. Among the throng moving in the other direction, Agnes spotted Narendra Patel. She looked over her shoulder in time to see him enter the Chavanon booth. The sight of him reminded her of what she wanted to tell Aubry. One of the images in the video she’d seen in the control room had triggered a memory. A face in the crowd. The thought
was interrupted by the sound of her name called out over the general hum. She didn’t need to see this face in the crowd to recognize the voice. Her mother-in-law’s tone was designed to carry across fields.

  “How did you find me?” Agnes asked. Fortunately, Sybille was too focused on Vallotton to hear the accusation in her tone.

  “This place is enormous,” Sybille said. “I barely got through that big exhibition when I gave up and asked for you at security. That nice Monsieur Aubry found you on the surveillance cameras. Do you know I saw a watch at Patek Philippe, called Sky Moon something, that cost over a million francs? I can’t imagine even an American paying that kind of money. Imagine what over a million dollars would buy! And a watch? It tells time just like mine.” She extended her wrist.

  “It does a bit more than that,” said Vallotton. “The back has sidereal time and a sky chart that traces the stars and the phases and the orbit of the moon, and the usual things like a perpetual calendar. Some of the parts are microscopic. Plus, it has an engraved platinum case that’s a work of art.” Sybille looked at him wide-eyed, and he continued as if talking to a fellow connoisseur. Agnes bit her lip to conceal a grin. “Did you see their platinum World Time model? Practical if you travel a lot, and easy to use.” He paused dramatically. “Should be, for a cost of around four million francs.”

  Both Agnes and Sybille stared at him.

  “Well, no matter what they can do, they’re still expensive.” Sybille extended her hand in greeting. “We’ve met briefly, when you came to my home.”

  Agnes was about to remind her that it was their home when Vallotton stepped into the breach with a greeting and small talk. Before Sybille could quiz him too deeply about what he and Agnes were doing together, Agnes asked about Sybille’s morning at the museum, even though she knew this was entering troubled waters.

  “Interesting,” said Sybille. “Educational. Probably not as interesting as your day. Whatever it was that took you away and kept you here.” She looked around as if expecting to find murder and mayhem in every corner.

  “They caught a man I’d been hunting for five years,” Agnes said.

  “I don’t understand why Financial Crimes needed your help when you are no longer with them. You’re not even back at work yet.” Sybille seemed to remember Vallotton’s presence and smiled. “Is this where they caught him? Right here?”

  They exited the building and Agnes was tempted to point across the street to the spot where the Roach had died and describe it in vibrant detail. Wasn’t that what Sybille wanted?

  “No,” Agnes said, instead. “I’m here making inquiries about a different case.”

  “Such an odd way to spend the afternoon, particularly when we had plans. How could this be better than time spent with your family?”

  “The boys are skiing, they haven’t missed me today.”

  Sybille was not to be outdone. “If you hadn’t been injured, you could be there with them. Such a dangerous job. Monsieur Vallotton, you must agree?”

  “I think it’s an admirable vocation. Not many people make such a difference in the lives around them.”

  Sybille shifted subjects as easily as an ice-skater changed direction. “Agnes, it’s a shame you had to leave the museum before seeing the exhibit. You’ll have to go back.”

  “I doubt I’ll have time. A man died and I’ll spend the weekend tracking down details.”

  “There was an entire wall about your father.”

  “Daddy, in a museum?” Agnes halted.

  “Yes, didn’t I tell you before we left this morning?”

  Agnes knew she hadn’t.

  “The exhibit was about food and history. You must remember how the photographers flocked to your father when he was starting out. Some of them became famous. There were even a few photographs with you in them. When he received his first Michelin star.” Sybille smiled at Vallotton. “Bill was the first American to have a Michelin star in Switzerland. He was famous.”

  “I know the restaurant, of course,” said Vallotton. “But I didn’t know that bit of the history.”

  “I can’t believe they had photographs of him on display,” said Agnes. “Of course, I’ll make a point to go see it.”

  “Let me take you,” said Vallotton. “Now that Madame Lüthi has spoken in such glowing terms, I wouldn’t dream of missing it either.”

  Sybille’s mouth opened and closed. Agnes had never seen her mother-in-law speechless and found the experience exhilarating.

  Six

  Marie Chavanon watched the setting sun move across the façade of her late husband’s factory. Unlike their home, which was lauded for its modernity, the factory was built in a style loosely imitating a château, with a high sloped roof, and windows and doors surrounded by stone lintels. At odds with this suggestion of a historic building, the exterior walls were decorated with art nouveau murals. When she had first visited, she thought the buildings and the family delightfully eccentric; years later she was ready to label them crazy.

  In the opposite direction, down the steep hill, sat the grim gray town of La Chaux-de-Fonds. She quickly drew her eye away, wondering what UNESCO saw that she didn’t. World Heritage Site, indeed. The whole place was nothing more than a well-laid-out and regularized factory town. She slapped a dish towel onto the countertop. All well and good a hundred years ago when their ridiculous house was built and the town accounted for 60 percent of all Swiss exports. A factory town to support the world’s insatiable appetite for the luxury of Swiss watches. She knew that era was over, even if the townspeople didn’t realize it.

  The sun shifted steadily, and she wondered if her husband had ever stood on the floor of his factory, gazing out the high windows, and had these same thoughts. Guy professed to look toward the future, but she didn’t believe him. All those hours surveilling activity at the factory, as his father and grandfather and their forebears had done? He had to admit that in his case it was not to check that all was well with the stream of workers coming and going, but to remember what had been. To remember what time and change and bad decisions had lost. How could it all be about the future with such a past?

  Since his death, she wished she had asked more questions, at the same time knowing that she wouldn’t have done anything differently. Guy was proud of his heritage as the descendant of one of the earliest and finest watchmaking families. Despite living in the house where he was born and raised, working in the same factory where his ancestors oversaw the rise of a great dynasty, where generations had designed and consulted and imagined precision timepieces that were also masterpieces of art and elegance, he had been obsessed with the future. Obsessed.

  The sun dropped farther, and Marie turned her attention inside. There was too much food left over from the funeral reception the day before. She’d sent everyone away before it was eaten, no longer able to tolerate people in her home. Feeling them wondering. Judging. She glanced around the kitchen and out to the hall and living room, remembering what it had looked like when she’d first visited the older Chavanons. A newly engaged young woman, she had been thrilled to meet Guy’s parents and to see and admire the fine house and its pedigree. To live in a house designed by Le Corbusier was beyond her imagination. She would be part of a legacy.

  At first, she was shocked by the stark interiors, but was too timid to say anything. Even now, all these years later, it was impossible to pass judgment on such a famous architect. After all, until she met Guy, she’d only ever lived in her quaint neighborhood in Lausanne. A city girl surrounded by apartments, not a girl who dreamt of a villa.

  Her first visit was nearly twenty years ago, and the house was even sparer now than then. A house for a modern couple, Marie said to the neighbors who noted the changes. The past could be overwhelming, she claimed. Now she looked around, wondering what was left to sell before she couldn’t make excuses.

  “You shouldn’t go tomorrow,” a man’s voice said. Marie started. Stephan Dupré was through the side door and into the kitchen
before she noticed he’d crossed the lawn. He was a lean tall man, his face angular. All of him was angular, as if distilled to pure energy draped over skeleton. At fifty, he was handsome in the way of men whose charisma blurred any need for classical features, and she could never see him without thinking of Guy. Stephan was a doer while her classically handsome husband was a dreamer.

  “I don’t have a choice,” she said. “I have to pay the bills. Leo depends on me.”

  Dupré dropped a pile of papers on the table, then veered to the other window, as if appreciating the view he’d seen a thousand times before.

  “I brought your mail up.” He stepped to the phone and turned the ringer back on.

  Marie glanced through the stack and selected a large envelope labeled with the Institute’s logo. Inside were photographs. She smiled. They were similar to the one Leo had texted to her three weeks ago. Although his shot hadn’t been the best—a ski glove blocked a corner of the frame and the boys’ faces were halfway covered by caps and scarves—the sheer joy in their eyes had reminded Marie why her son lived fifty kilometers away. These formal shots from the school photographer were clearer and would make their way into a frame, but they didn’t capture the joy of the selfies.

  “Leo’s gone?” Dupré said. “I thought you were taking him tomorrow.”

  “I was delaying. He’ll be happier with his friends at school, and Narendra drove us. He’s checking on Gisele and Ivo for me.” Tears formed in her eyes. “Guy always took Leo to school. I thought it would seem less lonely than him going alone with his poor old mother.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “Don’t say that.” Marie set the photographs down. “He needs to get back in his routine, and he can’t stay here alone. I should have been at Baselworld today.”

  Dupré took a step closer. “Gisele and Ivo can take care of your booth. They did the setup without you, and the first two days have gone well, haven’t they?”