A Well-Timed Murder Page 6

  She swung to face him. “They don’t know our merchandise like I do. They can’t make larger deals on my behalf.”

  “Do you have merchandise for larger deals?”

  She moved as if to put a fist on his chest, but stopped short. “Yes, I have merchandise.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She drove her hands into her pockets, crossed the room, and turned on a lamp.

  “I don’t know why you go to Baselworld anymore,” he said. “You didn’t want to go this year. You told me you didn’t, and now you don’t have to.”

  “It’s different now. Guy’s family has had a booth since the show began. A hundred years. I can’t quit the week he died.” Her voice softened. “The fee was paid. Next year, I’ll see.”

  “Will there be a next year?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did Guy reveal his world-changing idea? Do you have that? Is that what you’re counting on to pay the bills?”

  Marie pressed her temples. “Stop it. He’s only been buried one day.”

  “Have you been in his workshop? Seen what he left you?”

  “You need to leave.

  “Do you even have a key?”

  She bit her lip.

  “Because I do.”

  Seven

  Agnes was disoriented. Low morning sunlight streamed through the windows, hitting the papered walls and illuminating a set of framed family photographs. She slipped a hand out from under the duvet and rubbed her eyes. Slowly the objects around her came into focus: jewelry box on the dresser, George’s robe laid over the back of an armchair. She eased her head onto the pillow again. This was her own bed. Her own bed in her own house. That’s what was wrong.

  She hadn’t slept here since George died. Last night, when she reached the driveway, she had bypassed her in-laws and turned in next door, entering the house she and George had shared. It wasn’t habit; that had been broken months ago. It was something else. A different need. She’d spoken with Aubry again before leaving Baselworld, hoping that what she’d remembered would help his investigation. Afterward, Vallotton had walked her to her car. If honest with herself, that was the reason she had slept in her own bed.

  She closed her eyes. It wasn’t the same. The old familiar sounds were absent. The boys were away skiing, and George was never coming back. The house was empty. No, not empty; it felt abandoned, which she supposed it was.

  She swung her legs out from under the covers, and a streak of pain shot down her right side from hip to ankle. She lay back, gritting her teeth, starting her relaxation exercises. Three weeks ago, she hadn’t known what a femoral nerve was; now she felt as if it were her closest companion. The doctor had said he didn’t know if the pain in her leg would ever ease. Apparently, nerve damage was part science and part mystery. At least this time she could identify the cause. She had walked more yesterday than in all the days since her injury.

  The pain subsided. Her stomach growled and she remembered that there was not a morsel of food in the house. Not even coffee. Sybille had seen to that, citing a desire to avoid attracting rodents to the pantry.

  She sat up, carefully this time, checking the bedside clock. She’d arranged to meet Christine Chavanon at the family’s property this morning. She would also speak with Guy Chavanon’s wife. Depending on what Marie Chavanon said, the priorities would become clear. Hopefully she would know enough to call Bardy. Then she could enlist officers from the local gendarmerie to ask questions around the neighborhood. If Chavanon thought he was being watched, someone might have seen something. Neighbors in Switzerland were notoriously eagle-eyed.

  Thankful she hadn’t moved all her clothes next door, Agnes dressed and headed to her car, planning to stop at a highway restaurant for coffee and a croissant. One foot on the front porch and she knew the plan was flawed.

  Sybille was in the front garden of her own home, stationed near the hedge separating the two properties. She’d brought her gardening shears as a prop and was waving them as if planning an attack on the climbing roses. Agnes wondered how long she’d been there. Probably since dawn.

  “I didn’t know you’d slept next door,” Sybille said cheerily despite the blatant falsehood.

  A Saint Bernard nosed his way past her, attempting to force his large body through the shrubbery to reach Agnes. When they were younger, her boys made the dog wear one of the iconic barrels on his collar every time they walked him to the village. In case they needed rescuing, they’d explained. Sometimes she thought Brandon missed the prestige of the small barrel. Agnes reached over the hedge to pat the top of his head.

  “I thought you would enjoy an evening to yourself,” she said. “I wanted to check on the house and must have fallen asleep.”

  “A house changes when it’s empty.” Sybille aimed the shears toward the front door.

  At the gesture Agnes wanted to shout, En garde. Instead she said, “I was thinking of moving back in. There’s no reason not to.” She knew there was every reason not to, but something about Sybille made her act like a fifteen-year-old, arguing a point simply to show that she had her own opinion. When Sybille didn’t respond, Agnes had a moment of panic. What if Sybille didn’t object? She couldn’t leave her boys alone in the house after school, much less when work kept her late. That was the reason they’d continued to sleep at George’s parents’ house after the initial shock of his death wore off.

  “You should rent it to someone,” Sybille said, studying the two-story stucco structure with an appraising eye. “There’s not enough housing with the population growing so quickly, and you’d make a nice income. You’re not going to move back in. Not when you need me to look after the boys.”

  The houses were twenty meters and two hundred years apart, something that reverberated through their lives. Agnes wondered if her in-laws knew how much she’d loved their home from the first moment she set eyes on it. George’s parents lived in a picture-perfect three-story chalet with balconies running on the upper floors and flowers cut into the old-fashioned wood shutters. The wood was darkened with age, and a feeling of permanence was in every detail. It was a stark contrast to the house they had built for their son as a wedding gift. At the time, Agnes had been so thrilled that they would have a home to call their own, particularly one large enough to welcome the children they’d imagined, that she’d not objected to the proximity to her new in-laws. Nor had she objected to the modern design. It was well built and comfortable. In that moment, she knew that she wouldn’t rent it out. It was still theirs. Hers and George’s.

  “Your roses were lovely last summer,” she said to Sybille. “When they return from skiing, I’ll ask the boys to give the vines a thorough pruning and clear away the winter deadwood.”

  “Leaving the house empty is like looking for ghosts. It needs new life. It would help the boys move on.”

  Sybille waved the shears dangerously close to Agnes, who took them and snipped the stems that protruded over her side of the hedge. She was surprised when Sybille didn’t object to her inexpert cutting.

  “Have they said something?” Agnes tossed the stems into the wicker basket, catching her thumb on a thorn. It bled and she sucked it clean.

  “They don’t need to. The house is a reminder of their father. It’s waiting for him. It’s a mausoleum.”

  This was unexpected. Agnes had thought Sybille would want her son’s home kept as a tribute. Then she remembered the feel of her own sheets that morning. The silence of her own home. It didn’t have to feel abandoned.

  “The boys will grow up, they won’t always need—”

  “Attention?” Sybille scoffed. “They’ll never outgrow that. Not until the day they die.”

  The word hung in the air like an accusation.

  “The kind of attention changes,” said Agnes. “Eventually they’ll want to feel independent.”

  “Coming home to a warm welcome and hot meal is something no one should outgrow.”

  Agnes found a ti
ssue in her pocket and wound it around her bleeding thumb. She was suddenly weary, and it was more than the strain of a first day back at work. Her thoughts drifted to Julien Vallotton.

  Sybille gave her a knowing smile. “Go on, get to your work. I’ll check that you’ve locked up properly.”

  Agnes handed the shears back. Then she remembered. “Sybille, I won’t be home for dinner tonight.” She hesitated, but it had to be said. “I’m having dinner at Château Vallotton.”

  * * *

  The Chavanon property sat on several acres halfway up a forested hillside overlooking the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Although the factory was also there, the wooded neighborhood felt affluent and residential. Agnes decided that most of the homes were built after the Chavanons were well established.

  She pulled into the Perrault et Chavanon parking lot and got out of her car, looking around. The entire property had an abandoned air. Not abandoned, she corrected herself, since the grounds stretching between the factory, the house, and the two smaller structures were immaculately kept. Lonely. A dusting of snow capped the higher elevations, and the fresh cool air was tinged with the fragrance of evergreens, but it did little to enliven the atmosphere.

  The factory was exactly as Julien Vallotton had described it. The steep slate roof was shingled in a pattern of muted colors; the windows and doors had elaborate stone surrounds, and the entire edifice resembled an overblown one-story château. A statement building for a proud family. The house was closer to the main road than to the factory and had its own driveway with parking on the far side. The modern white blocky structure was three stories tall, topped by an old-fashioned pitched roof. Wide terraces wrapped three sides, reminiscent of walkways around a ship, and Agnes wondered what dynamics led a family to juxtapose a modern residence so near a falsely antique factory. Perhaps a generational divide?

  Farther across the broad sloping lawn were two other buildings; small traditional houses, cottages by comparison to the main residence. She knew one was Christine Chavanon’s. The buildings were one story, neatly kept, and, for the moment, silent.

  She checked her watch. They’d set a time to meet and she was early. Although closed for the weekend, the factory was an intriguing building and she walked closer. Unfortunately, little was to be learned from the exterior. The main door was locked and the windows were too high off the ground to see through. She searched the surrounding lawn for any useful debris or ornament to step on, but found nothing. Imposing and silent, the building looked like a place that death had recently visited. A funeral wreath wouldn’t have been a surprise, and the view down the hill toward town didn’t help the atmosphere. The city was too distant to see in detail, and the general impression was gray.

  “Allô! Bonjour, Inspector!” a woman’s voice called. Christine Chavanon approached from across the lawn. “I was up all night,” she said when they were near enough to speak.

  It was sunny, but a sharp wind blew across the lawn, and Agnes shifted so her back was to it. Maybe it was time to consider exchanging her skirts for slacks. Christine appeared impervious to the weather. Her eyes were bright with excitement. Or from lack of sleep, Agnes corrected.

  “Have you remembered something?” Agnes asked.

  Christine looked shocked. “Of course not. I simply couldn’t sleep.”

  Agnes doubted that. She’d had her share of sleepless nights, and what kept her awake were the thoughts. Swirling, illogical fears and concerns and threads of blame and anxiety. She also remembered denying it.

  “Who lives in the other cottage?”

  “That’s a nice name for them. They were built for the factory managers a long time ago. My father used the other one as his workshop.”

  “I’d like to see inside.”

  Christine turned in the opposite direction. “Let’s start with the factory.”

  Agnes followed the younger woman around the corner of the building to a small door.

  Christine entered a code in a digital keypad. “We put this in about five years ago.”

  The entry was large enough to hold thirty or forty people at close quarters. Metal racks for time cards were affixed to the wall, and a large white-faced clock hung over the double doors leading to the main factory. Another door led to an inner glass-walled room where the manager would have an unobstructed view of everything on this level. The room had a disused atmosphere, like a museum vignette.

  They passed beneath the clock. The main floor of the factory was large, and the windows let in an enormous amount of natural light. Despite this, the room reminded Agnes of a movie set. Real, but not real, at the same time. “Nothing unusual happened here before or after your father’s death?”

  “If you mean a burglary, Gisele and Ivo would have noticed. I can’t imagine what anyone would want. They don’t keep much gold anymore; it’s all lesser metals and they’re locked in the big safe.”

  Agnes wondered why someone had added an elaborate lock with diminished numbers of employees to monitor. She walked to the middle of the room. Without financial reports she had little sense of the scale of success among watchmakers. Julien Vallotton had implied that Dufour, working alone, was the epitome of success. A living legend. Omega and others with their thousands of employees were also successful. Was there a middle ground? Was Perrault et Chavanon a business on the uptick, or in a slow and inexorable decline? Did someone hope Guy Chavanon’s death would speed the descent or prevent it?

  “We need to talk about your father’s note and who he thought was watching him.”

  “I told you it didn’t make any sense to me.” Christine looked around the large room as if seeing it through a visitor’s eyes. “At the height of production, fifty or seventy-five years ago, there would have been a hundred people working here every day.”

  Several of the tall desks were modern, with white tops and high-powered lamps attached to the upper corners. Two had powerful illuminated magnifying glasses affixed to one side. The fronts of the desks were padded so employees could brace their arms to steady them. Neat boxes of tools sat on flat surfaces and on adjacent rolling storage units. Freestanding cabinets with drawers, cubbyholes, and shelves dotted the area. Agnes peered into a drawer.

  “Component parts.” Christine pulled a long flat box from a shelf. It held hundreds of tiny orange watch faces. She frowned, making her plain face decidedly unattractive. “This is Marie’s doing. They’re not marked with our logo. They’ll be distributed under the name of the retailer who buys them.” She slammed the boxes down, then seemed to think better of it and adjusted them carefully on the shelves. “I’m being unfair, it’s what everyone does now. They have to, to survive.”

  Which meant rivals, no matter what Christine said, thought Agnes, reminded of Antoine Mercier. He’d felt Guy Chavanon was innovative. He’d also mentioned Copernicus. A revolutionary. All at once, she understood what Mercier meant. Copernicus was the astronomer who changed the order of all things: the sun was now at the center of the universe. It was a solar system. More important, people had died defending his beliefs. Were Mercier’s words a threat or a warning?

  “You mean survival by selling a less expensive product?” she asked. A series of completed watches were laid out. They looked nice to her. Fresh and fun. Perfect for someone who would never buy a timepiece that cost as much as a car or a yacht. She recognized several models from the displays at Baselworld and remembered the one Gisele had shown her. She should have asked the price.

  “It’s not the cost as much as it represents the end of craftsmanship,” said Christine. “Or at least the kind of craftsmanship that we always stood for. The kind I’d always hoped to continue. A century ago, when you said Perrault et Chavanon, people knew what to expect. They could imagine the watch. The heavy case, the mechanical movement. Now, we dabble in everything. To me, it means we’re about nothing.”

  Christine opened a cabinet, revealing large cubbyholes holding tools, and selected one made of brass. It was the width of two hands with
four parts that could be drawn together by turning the large screws. She demonstrated how it worked. “Tools like this are obsolete in a modern factory.” She set it back in the cupboard and shut the doors. “We kept these because my grandfather insisted new employees know how to use traditional tools. They did watch repair as training. You have to thoroughly know a watch to repair it.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her heavy sweater and visibly relaxed as she told what was likely a familiar story.

  “My grandfather’s great-grandfather opened the doors to the company in 1841. A remarkable era. Swiss watches accounted for over half the world’s production.” Christine looked around. “When my grandfather was here, the whole town was part of the operation. And not just our factory. All of the factories in La Chaux-de-Fonds and across the valley. They were filled with craftsmen, and others, mainly women, did smaller bits and sent their work to the factory with their husbands or delivery boys. Everyone had a role. All across the city, everyone took pride in what was done.”

  “Isn’t that a romantic notion?” Agnes pictured Guy Chavanon wandering the floor, holding court. It would be distracting to anyone engaged in close, meticulous work. And overhead, Madame Chavanon would look down from her office. Watching. She wondered if Guy Chavanon kept records of his inventions in the factory or if they were in his workshop.

  “Karl Marx wrote in Capital that La Chaux-de-Fonds should be considered as a same manufacture. He meant that we were individual workshops all pulling toward a common goal. I don’t think he was a very romantic person. There was an incredible sense of unity and purpose.”

  Agnes set down the tweezers she had been examining. “Is that why you went to work for Omega? Don’t they practically control Bienne?”

  “They employ a lot of people and we’re spread out in quite a few buildings, but it’s not the same. It’s not as”—Christine searched for a word—“communal.”