Items related to Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
The long-awaited return of Timothy Williams, CWA award-winning grand master of crime fiction, whom The Observer named one of the “10 Best Modern European Crime Writers”
The sun-drenched Caribbean island of Guadeloupe is technically part of France, subject to French law and loyal to the French Republic. But in 1980, the scars of colonialism are still fresh, and ethnic tensions and political unrest seethe just below the surface of everyday life.
French-Algerian judge Anne Marie Laveaud relocated to this beautiful Caribbean island confident that she could make it her new home. But her day-to-day life is rife with frustration. Now she is assigned a murder case in which she is sure the chief suspect, an elderly ex-con named Hégésippe Bray, is a political scapegoat. Her superiors are dismissive of her efforts to prove Bray innocent, and to add insult to injury, Bray himself won’t even speak to her because she’s a woman. But she won’t give up, and Anne Marie’s investigations lead her into a complex tangle of injustice, domestic terrorists, broken hearts, and maybe even voodoo.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
CWA award-winning author Timothy Williams has written six crime novels set in Italy featuring Commissario Piero Trotti, as two novels set in the French Caribbean, Another Sun and The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe. In 2011, the Observer placed him among the ten best modern European crime novelists. Born in London and educated at St. Andrews, Williams has taught at the universities of Poitiers in France, Bari and Pavia in Italy, and at Jassy in Romania. He taught for thirty in the French West Indies but now spends his time between Europe and Africa. For more information, visit his website: https://www.facebook.com/thdw.co.uk.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
1: Tim tim
It was past six o’clock and night had begun to fall.
The group of men moved aside as the Land Rover came down the track. The whip aerial swayed against the red sky. The yellow beams were like two eyes.
The Land Rover halted and the engine was turned off. The toads resumed their loud monotonous croaking in the grass.
Two white men jumped down. They wore kepis, neat khaki uniforms and black shoes. They walked towards the group of waiting men.
The driver remained sitting behind the wheel.
“What is it?” one of the gendarmes asked, turning to an old man.
The old man was holding a bicycle. He had one hand on the cracked leather saddle and with the other, he pointed to the middle of the pond. The black water reflected the lingering light of day.
A dark, humped shape was caught among the reeds.
“A man?”
The old man shrugged.
The others stood in silence. Some wore rubber boots, several had narrow machetes that hung loosely in their hands. Their eyes followed the two white gendarmes.
“I’ve never seen this pond before.”
“It comes with the rain.” The old man spoke in Creole.
The fronds swayed and creaked. The pond lay in the hollow of the sloping valley. Grass-covered hills ran down to the edge of the white dirt track and its two parallel lines of coconut trees. To the east, against the darkening hill top, rose the gaunt silhouette of the derelict sugar refinery. A couple of hangars and a tall, crumbling chimney that pointed to the sky and the rising half moon.
The gendarme turned to his companion. “You’d better pull whatever it is out of the water.”
“The water is infected—there’s bilharzia.” Anxiety in the eyes beneath the brim of the kepi.
“The cows drink the water.” The captain pointed to the dark forms of an indistinct herd of cattle grazing on the far side of the pond.
As if in acquiescence, a cow emitted a single, mournful low. Elsewhere in the valley, another cow gave an answering call.
The third gendarme slipped from behind the driver’s seat and began to undress. “I’ll go.”
The captain returned to the vehicle and leaned inside the Land Rover. He then clambered onto the rigid bonnet. A searchlight on the roof came alight, and he aimed the beam toward the dark water. A mist had started to form, dancing wisps along the surface.
The gendarme had stripped to his underclothes; he walked across the grass and stepped into the pond.
“A damn fool wanting to fish.” Behind the searchlight, the captain lit a cigarette.
The old man said, almost under his breath. “No fish in that water.”
The black gendarme stepped further into the pond. A circle of light followed his movements. He gave a curse, stumbled and began to swim, only his head above the water. A couple of strokes brought him alongside the floating object.
He stood up, took hold of the nerveless bundle and waded back toward the edge of the pond, bright rivulets streaming down his face and body. He squeezed his nose and spat into the water. “He’s dead.”
Throwing away his cigarette, the captain jumped from the roof of the Land Rover while the crowd moved forward. Many hands helped drag the body onto the grass.
The corpse lay like a landed fish, transfixed by the single beam of the searchlight.
The captain crouched down and ran his hand over the bloated, pale flesh. In the light, the fingers cast spiderlike shadows.
“Gunshot wounds.”
Red mounds against the white skin.
“Stand back,” he ordered and, tugging with both hands, the captain pulled at the corpse.
It rolled over slowly, the body faster than the head. The mouth fell open and water ran from colorless lips. The throat gurgled.
The old man with the bicycle peered at the body. He clicked his tongue.
The captain turned, shading his eyes against the light. “You know him?”
The man nodded.
“Who is he?”
The old man did not answer and the captain raised his voice, “Who is this man?”
“They’ve murdered Monsieur Calais,” the man replied softly, and with his gnarled hand, he crossed himself.
2: Twelve bore
The Mercedes pulled off the track and the driver opened the rear door. The procureur rose with difficulty from the seat.
The procureur could have passed for a white man, despite the short curly hair, now turning white. His skin was pale. He was overweight and he had to exert himself to get onto his feet. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of pale blue slacks. His tennis shoes appeared exceptionally small.
The onlookers had come from the neighboring hamlets, on bicycles and mobylettes, or in battered Peugeot and Toyota pickups. There were several women, squat on their rubber sandals and shapeless beneath cotton dresses. One held a child to her chest.
Barriers had been put up and a gendarme held the crowd back.
Uniformed men and civilians moved within the radius of the converging floodlights.
The corpse lay beneath a dark blanket.
A van stood near the pond. Nearby, two men were talking. Commandant Lebel looked up and, noticing the crowd of onlookers draw apart, rose to his feet and saluted briskly.
The procureur was out of breath. He took a small cigar from his mouth. “This Calais?”
Commandant Lebel nodded. He bent over and lifted the edge of the blanket. The procureur squinted, smoke in his eyes. He looked down on the face, now grey in death. “Poor bastard.”
“You knew him, monsieur le procureur?”
“Who didn’t know Calais?” Slowly the procureur turned on his small feet and looked at the stationary vehicles, the Jeeps and the Saviem van.
“Everything in order?”
Lebel let the blanket fall back on the dead face, “Everything in order, monsieur le procureur.”
“I’ll be needing an autopsy.” He paused, looking at Lebel thoughtfully. “Gun wounds?”
“We’ve found the cartridge—twelve bore.”
“Fingerprints?”
Lebel shook his head. “The cartridge had been trampled in the mud.”
“When did he die?”
“The corpse must’ve been in the water for at least eighteen hours.”
The procureur took a small packet of Déchets de Havane cigars from his pocket. “Twelve bore?” He lit another cigar with the burning stub.
“We’ve located the culprit.”
“Fast work, Lebel.” The procureur raised an eyebrow. “My congratulations.”
“We need permission for a search warrant—and to bring the man in for questioning.”
“Who?”
“An old man. A revenge killing.”
“You’re sure?”
“The man spent most of his life in French Guyana—in the penal colony. An ex-convict.”
“How do you know he’s guilty?”
“He’d been making threats against Calais.”
The procureur sucked on the new cigar and looked upwards into the sky. For a few seconds the moon broke through the low clouds. It soon disappeared again, leaving a blue aureole. Addressing no one in particular, the procureur said, “Calais must be disappointed.”
“Disappointed, monsieur le procureur?”
“To be killed by an old convict.” He raised his shoulders. “Calais who wanted to be a martyr, who wanted to die for a cause.”
“What cause?”
“God knows.” The procureur laughed again.
Commandant Lebel appeared embarrassed.
“You’re sure it’s the old convict?”
“Good evidence, monsieur le procureur. I think we can be sure.”
“Hearsay is not evidence.” The procureur’s smile was bland.
“You want me to bring him in?”
The procureur nodded; his thoughts were elsewhere. “I can entrust the enquiry to Juge Laveaud.” The floodlights caught his smile and revealed large, stained teeth. “Let’s see what she can make of it.”
“She’s an intelligent woman.”
“No doubt. Intelligent and ambitious.”
3: Pointe-à-Pitre
“My God, it hurts.”
Trousseau smiled from behind his small desk. His long fingers lay on the keyboard of the old typewriter. “Somebody’s thrown a curse on you, madame le juge.”
The skin on the back of Anne Marie’s left hand and fingers was swollen with white weals. She could feel the heat of friction as she rubbed. “Who hates me, Monsieur Trousseau? I haven’t been here long enough.”
“You’re white—that’s enough to get yourself hated.”
There was a sink in the corner of the office. She got up and turned on the tap, then held her hand beneath the cold water. She rubbed again. “Must be something I’ve eaten. I never had an allergy before coming to this country.”
The water had a numbing effect. She let it run for over a minute. Trousseau started to type.
Anne Marie looked out of the window. She liked her office—little more than a cupboard, just big enough for her desk and the greffier’s, a couple of filing cabinets, a floor of polished mahogany and a small sink. It was at the top of the Palais de Justice and the gentle winds came through the open shutters and pushed against the billowing lace curtains. Lace from Chantilly that she had bought in Paris before sailing out to the Caribbean. As the water continued to run, the pain ebbed and became a dull sense of heat. Anne Marie leaned against the sink and looked out over the vivid red of the corrugated roofs of the nearby bank and the old Chamber of Commerce. Ship masts, bare without their sails, rocked with the movement of the green sea within the small port.
Pointe-à-Pitre.
Along the quayside, only a few meters from the schooners and the rust-stained ferry for Marie-Galante, the stalls bustled with their early morning commerce: jars of hair pomade from Liverpool, ground corn from Suriname, anthuriums from Martinique, good-luck aerosols from Puerto Rico. Sitting on cardboard boxes, the fat smuggler women from Dominica had laid out contraband brassieres and minuscule knickers for children. And in the distance, standing out in clear relief against the sky, the Souffrière. The mountain range filled the horizon and the volcano, with all the intricate detail of its eroded flanks, its gullies and its tropical vegetation, rose up above everything else until its summit was lost in a dark crown of clouds.
“Get somebody to cast a spell for you,” Trousseau said, pointing at her hand. “A spell against the curse.”
“These curtains are dirty. They need changing.”
“I know an old man—a gadézaffé—part Indian, part Carib—who lives down at Trois-Rivières. He knows all the remedies. He’ll cure you.”
Anne Marie turned off the tap.
“He also does sacrifices.”
With a handkerchief, she made a tight bandage around her left hand. Then she returned to her desk.
“A letter for you, madame le juge.”
She took the letter—it was from Papa—and placed it in her handbag. “What’s on the agenda for today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“The old people know about these things. They had their own medicine—the Caribs and the Arawaks—long before Christopher Columbus set foot on this island.” He added, disparagingly, “Christopher Columbus and the white men.”
Anne Marie looked at the chipped varnish on her damp fingers. “The agenda for today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“We’re booked for the seven thirty flight for the Saintes tomorrow.”
“The Saintes?”
“The girl who smothered her baby.”
“And today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
He pulled the day-to-day calendar from behind the typewriter. “Lafitte will be here soon—in about ten minutes.”
“Which dossier, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“The Calais killing.” He pointed to a folder on her desk. “It’s all there—Lafitte brought it round last night.”
Anne Marie picked up the beige folder.
The cover, made of cardboard and cloth, with a loose buckle, smelled of glue. Calais, Septembre, 1980, had been typed on the label. Above it in neat printing, Ministère de la Justice, Département de la Guadeloupe.
“The old man says he’s innocent,” she said.
“What proof is there against him?”
“The accusations of a few villagers. He’d been making threats against Raymond Calais. The gendarmerie found the cartridge on the scene of the crime—twelve bore. Then yesterday they found the gun.”
“Where?”
“Buried, madame le juge. A hunting gun. A pre-war model, probably an Idéale. Buried about two hundred meters from where the old man sleeps. He denies ever having hidden his gun, but that’s where the gendarmes found it—in a field where he keeps his goats. It had been wiped clean of all prints and wrapped in an oily cloth. Then put in a plastic bag.” Trousseau paused. “His name is engraved on the butt.”
“His name?”
“Hégésippe Bray.” Trousseau frowned, his dark eyes watching Anne Marie’s fingers as she started to scratch again at her left hand. “He harbored a grudge against Calais. Hégésippe Bray claims a lot of Sainte Marthe, the Calais estate, belongs to him by right. As it is, he’s been living in a hut on the edge of the estate.”
“When did he get back?”
“Get back, madame le juge?”
“From French Guyana. When did Bray get back to Guadeloupe?”
“Last Christmas. Calais—with his racing horses as well as a couple of villas—generously agreed to let Bray have the hut. No water, no electricity—just a dilapidated hut on the edge of the estate.”
“The Sainte Marthe plantation?”
Trousseau nodded, “Forty years in equatorial America can’t have done Hégésippe Bray’s brain much good. That and rum.” He tapped his temple. “When Bray came back, he hung around the shacks where they sell cheap liquor, and once he’d had a few glasses of rum, he’d start to make threats.”
“Against Calais?”
“Threatened to kill him.”
“Why?”
Trousseau nodded toward the dossier. “Calais’ father had sold at least ten hectares to Bray—and Hégésippe Bray maintains that in his absence, Calais took everything for himself.”
Anne Marie squeezed her hand. “Paraffin tests?”
“Positive.” A shrug. “Bray admits to having used his gun that morning.”
“Why?”
“To kill a goat with scab. He owns several goats—and a garden, where he grows tomatoes. And yams and string beans.”
“A revenge killing?”
Trousseau shrugged again. “You’ll find everything in the dossier. Lafitte’s been very thorough, as usual.”
Trousseau returned to his typing and Anne Marie opened the file. She glanced through several pages. Twice she nodded. Looking up, she was surprised to see the door open.
“Lafitte’s outside, madame le juge.”
She took a fifty-franc note from her handbag, “I’d like to have a better look at the dossier before seeing Lafitte. Perhaps you could get some sandwiches—and something to drink.”
Trousseau stood up.
“And see if you can get something from the chemist’s—something to stop this itching.”
4: Lafitte
&nbs...
It was past six o’clock and night had begun to fall.
The group of men moved aside as the Land Rover came down the track. The whip aerial swayed against the red sky. The yellow beams were like two eyes.
The Land Rover halted and the engine was turned off. The toads resumed their loud monotonous croaking in the grass.
Two white men jumped down. They wore kepis, neat khaki uniforms and black shoes. They walked towards the group of waiting men.
The driver remained sitting behind the wheel.
“What is it?” one of the gendarmes asked, turning to an old man.
The old man was holding a bicycle. He had one hand on the cracked leather saddle and with the other, he pointed to the middle of the pond. The black water reflected the lingering light of day.
A dark, humped shape was caught among the reeds.
“A man?”
The old man shrugged.
The others stood in silence. Some wore rubber boots, several had narrow machetes that hung loosely in their hands. Their eyes followed the two white gendarmes.
“I’ve never seen this pond before.”
“It comes with the rain.” The old man spoke in Creole.
The fronds swayed and creaked. The pond lay in the hollow of the sloping valley. Grass-covered hills ran down to the edge of the white dirt track and its two parallel lines of coconut trees. To the east, against the darkening hill top, rose the gaunt silhouette of the derelict sugar refinery. A couple of hangars and a tall, crumbling chimney that pointed to the sky and the rising half moon.
The gendarme turned to his companion. “You’d better pull whatever it is out of the water.”
“The water is infected—there’s bilharzia.” Anxiety in the eyes beneath the brim of the kepi.
“The cows drink the water.” The captain pointed to the dark forms of an indistinct herd of cattle grazing on the far side of the pond.
As if in acquiescence, a cow emitted a single, mournful low. Elsewhere in the valley, another cow gave an answering call.
The third gendarme slipped from behind the driver’s seat and began to undress. “I’ll go.”
The captain returned to the vehicle and leaned inside the Land Rover. He then clambered onto the rigid bonnet. A searchlight on the roof came alight, and he aimed the beam toward the dark water. A mist had started to form, dancing wisps along the surface.
The gendarme had stripped to his underclothes; he walked across the grass and stepped into the pond.
“A damn fool wanting to fish.” Behind the searchlight, the captain lit a cigarette.
The old man said, almost under his breath. “No fish in that water.”
The black gendarme stepped further into the pond. A circle of light followed his movements. He gave a curse, stumbled and began to swim, only his head above the water. A couple of strokes brought him alongside the floating object.
He stood up, took hold of the nerveless bundle and waded back toward the edge of the pond, bright rivulets streaming down his face and body. He squeezed his nose and spat into the water. “He’s dead.”
Throwing away his cigarette, the captain jumped from the roof of the Land Rover while the crowd moved forward. Many hands helped drag the body onto the grass.
The corpse lay like a landed fish, transfixed by the single beam of the searchlight.
The captain crouched down and ran his hand over the bloated, pale flesh. In the light, the fingers cast spiderlike shadows.
“Gunshot wounds.”
Red mounds against the white skin.
“Stand back,” he ordered and, tugging with both hands, the captain pulled at the corpse.
It rolled over slowly, the body faster than the head. The mouth fell open and water ran from colorless lips. The throat gurgled.
The old man with the bicycle peered at the body. He clicked his tongue.
The captain turned, shading his eyes against the light. “You know him?”
The man nodded.
“Who is he?”
The old man did not answer and the captain raised his voice, “Who is this man?”
“They’ve murdered Monsieur Calais,” the man replied softly, and with his gnarled hand, he crossed himself.
2: Twelve bore
The Mercedes pulled off the track and the driver opened the rear door. The procureur rose with difficulty from the seat.
The procureur could have passed for a white man, despite the short curly hair, now turning white. His skin was pale. He was overweight and he had to exert himself to get onto his feet. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of pale blue slacks. His tennis shoes appeared exceptionally small.
The onlookers had come from the neighboring hamlets, on bicycles and mobylettes, or in battered Peugeot and Toyota pickups. There were several women, squat on their rubber sandals and shapeless beneath cotton dresses. One held a child to her chest.
Barriers had been put up and a gendarme held the crowd back.
Uniformed men and civilians moved within the radius of the converging floodlights.
The corpse lay beneath a dark blanket.
A van stood near the pond. Nearby, two men were talking. Commandant Lebel looked up and, noticing the crowd of onlookers draw apart, rose to his feet and saluted briskly.
The procureur was out of breath. He took a small cigar from his mouth. “This Calais?”
Commandant Lebel nodded. He bent over and lifted the edge of the blanket. The procureur squinted, smoke in his eyes. He looked down on the face, now grey in death. “Poor bastard.”
“You knew him, monsieur le procureur?”
“Who didn’t know Calais?” Slowly the procureur turned on his small feet and looked at the stationary vehicles, the Jeeps and the Saviem van.
“Everything in order?”
Lebel let the blanket fall back on the dead face, “Everything in order, monsieur le procureur.”
“I’ll be needing an autopsy.” He paused, looking at Lebel thoughtfully. “Gun wounds?”
“We’ve found the cartridge—twelve bore.”
“Fingerprints?”
Lebel shook his head. “The cartridge had been trampled in the mud.”
“When did he die?”
“The corpse must’ve been in the water for at least eighteen hours.”
The procureur took a small packet of Déchets de Havane cigars from his pocket. “Twelve bore?” He lit another cigar with the burning stub.
“We’ve located the culprit.”
“Fast work, Lebel.” The procureur raised an eyebrow. “My congratulations.”
“We need permission for a search warrant—and to bring the man in for questioning.”
“Who?”
“An old man. A revenge killing.”
“You’re sure?”
“The man spent most of his life in French Guyana—in the penal colony. An ex-convict.”
“How do you know he’s guilty?”
“He’d been making threats against Calais.”
The procureur sucked on the new cigar and looked upwards into the sky. For a few seconds the moon broke through the low clouds. It soon disappeared again, leaving a blue aureole. Addressing no one in particular, the procureur said, “Calais must be disappointed.”
“Disappointed, monsieur le procureur?”
“To be killed by an old convict.” He raised his shoulders. “Calais who wanted to be a martyr, who wanted to die for a cause.”
“What cause?”
“God knows.” The procureur laughed again.
Commandant Lebel appeared embarrassed.
“You’re sure it’s the old convict?”
“Good evidence, monsieur le procureur. I think we can be sure.”
“Hearsay is not evidence.” The procureur’s smile was bland.
“You want me to bring him in?”
The procureur nodded; his thoughts were elsewhere. “I can entrust the enquiry to Juge Laveaud.” The floodlights caught his smile and revealed large, stained teeth. “Let’s see what she can make of it.”
“She’s an intelligent woman.”
“No doubt. Intelligent and ambitious.”
3: Pointe-à-Pitre
“My God, it hurts.”
Trousseau smiled from behind his small desk. His long fingers lay on the keyboard of the old typewriter. “Somebody’s thrown a curse on you, madame le juge.”
The skin on the back of Anne Marie’s left hand and fingers was swollen with white weals. She could feel the heat of friction as she rubbed. “Who hates me, Monsieur Trousseau? I haven’t been here long enough.”
“You’re white—that’s enough to get yourself hated.”
There was a sink in the corner of the office. She got up and turned on the tap, then held her hand beneath the cold water. She rubbed again. “Must be something I’ve eaten. I never had an allergy before coming to this country.”
The water had a numbing effect. She let it run for over a minute. Trousseau started to type.
Anne Marie looked out of the window. She liked her office—little more than a cupboard, just big enough for her desk and the greffier’s, a couple of filing cabinets, a floor of polished mahogany and a small sink. It was at the top of the Palais de Justice and the gentle winds came through the open shutters and pushed against the billowing lace curtains. Lace from Chantilly that she had bought in Paris before sailing out to the Caribbean. As the water continued to run, the pain ebbed and became a dull sense of heat. Anne Marie leaned against the sink and looked out over the vivid red of the corrugated roofs of the nearby bank and the old Chamber of Commerce. Ship masts, bare without their sails, rocked with the movement of the green sea within the small port.
Pointe-à-Pitre.
Along the quayside, only a few meters from the schooners and the rust-stained ferry for Marie-Galante, the stalls bustled with their early morning commerce: jars of hair pomade from Liverpool, ground corn from Suriname, anthuriums from Martinique, good-luck aerosols from Puerto Rico. Sitting on cardboard boxes, the fat smuggler women from Dominica had laid out contraband brassieres and minuscule knickers for children. And in the distance, standing out in clear relief against the sky, the Souffrière. The mountain range filled the horizon and the volcano, with all the intricate detail of its eroded flanks, its gullies and its tropical vegetation, rose up above everything else until its summit was lost in a dark crown of clouds.
“Get somebody to cast a spell for you,” Trousseau said, pointing at her hand. “A spell against the curse.”
“These curtains are dirty. They need changing.”
“I know an old man—a gadézaffé—part Indian, part Carib—who lives down at Trois-Rivières. He knows all the remedies. He’ll cure you.”
Anne Marie turned off the tap.
“He also does sacrifices.”
With a handkerchief, she made a tight bandage around her left hand. Then she returned to her desk.
“A letter for you, madame le juge.”
She took the letter—it was from Papa—and placed it in her handbag. “What’s on the agenda for today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“The old people know about these things. They had their own medicine—the Caribs and the Arawaks—long before Christopher Columbus set foot on this island.” He added, disparagingly, “Christopher Columbus and the white men.”
Anne Marie looked at the chipped varnish on her damp fingers. “The agenda for today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“We’re booked for the seven thirty flight for the Saintes tomorrow.”
“The Saintes?”
“The girl who smothered her baby.”
“And today, Monsieur Trousseau?”
He pulled the day-to-day calendar from behind the typewriter. “Lafitte will be here soon—in about ten minutes.”
“Which dossier, Monsieur Trousseau?”
“The Calais killing.” He pointed to a folder on her desk. “It’s all there—Lafitte brought it round last night.”
Anne Marie picked up the beige folder.
The cover, made of cardboard and cloth, with a loose buckle, smelled of glue. Calais, Septembre, 1980, had been typed on the label. Above it in neat printing, Ministère de la Justice, Département de la Guadeloupe.
“The old man says he’s innocent,” she said.
“What proof is there against him?”
“The accusations of a few villagers. He’d been making threats against Raymond Calais. The gendarmerie found the cartridge on the scene of the crime—twelve bore. Then yesterday they found the gun.”
“Where?”
“Buried, madame le juge. A hunting gun. A pre-war model, probably an Idéale. Buried about two hundred meters from where the old man sleeps. He denies ever having hidden his gun, but that’s where the gendarmes found it—in a field where he keeps his goats. It had been wiped clean of all prints and wrapped in an oily cloth. Then put in a plastic bag.” Trousseau paused. “His name is engraved on the butt.”
“His name?”
“Hégésippe Bray.” Trousseau frowned, his dark eyes watching Anne Marie’s fingers as she started to scratch again at her left hand. “He harbored a grudge against Calais. Hégésippe Bray claims a lot of Sainte Marthe, the Calais estate, belongs to him by right. As it is, he’s been living in a hut on the edge of the estate.”
“When did he get back?”
“Get back, madame le juge?”
“From French Guyana. When did Bray get back to Guadeloupe?”
“Last Christmas. Calais—with his racing horses as well as a couple of villas—generously agreed to let Bray have the hut. No water, no electricity—just a dilapidated hut on the edge of the estate.”
“The Sainte Marthe plantation?”
Trousseau nodded, “Forty years in equatorial America can’t have done Hégésippe Bray’s brain much good. That and rum.” He tapped his temple. “When Bray came back, he hung around the shacks where they sell cheap liquor, and once he’d had a few glasses of rum, he’d start to make threats.”
“Against Calais?”
“Threatened to kill him.”
“Why?”
Trousseau nodded toward the dossier. “Calais’ father had sold at least ten hectares to Bray—and Hégésippe Bray maintains that in his absence, Calais took everything for himself.”
Anne Marie squeezed her hand. “Paraffin tests?”
“Positive.” A shrug. “Bray admits to having used his gun that morning.”
“Why?”
“To kill a goat with scab. He owns several goats—and a garden, where he grows tomatoes. And yams and string beans.”
“A revenge killing?”
Trousseau shrugged again. “You’ll find everything in the dossier. Lafitte’s been very thorough, as usual.”
Trousseau returned to his typing and Anne Marie opened the file. She glanced through several pages. Twice she nodded. Looking up, she was surprised to see the door open.
“Lafitte’s outside, madame le juge.”
She took a fifty-franc note from her handbag, “I’d like to have a better look at the dossier before seeing Lafitte. Perhaps you could get some sandwiches—and something to drink.”
Trousseau stood up.
“And see if you can get something from the chemist’s—something to stop this itching.”
4: Lafitte
&nbs...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherSoho Crime
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 1616953632
- ISBN 13 9781616953638
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages352
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
US$ 20.76
Shipping:
US$ 3.00
Within U.S.A.
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Brand New Copy. Seller Inventory # BBB_new1616953632
Buy New
US$ 20.76
Convert currency
Stock Image
Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 0.53. Seller Inventory # 1616953632-2-1
Buy New
US$ 26.35
Convert currency
Stock Image
Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published 0.53. Seller Inventory # 353-1616953632-new
Buy New
US$ 26.36
Convert currency
Stock Image
Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Buy for Great customer experience. Seller Inventory # GoldenDragon1616953632
Buy New
US$ 23.21
Convert currency
Stock Image
Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard1616953632
Buy New
US$ 27.38
Convert currency
Stock Image
Another Sun (An Anne Marie Laveaud Novel)
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think1616953632
Buy New
US$ 27.43
Convert currency
Stock Image
ANOTHER SUN (AN ANNE MARIE LAVEA
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.84. Seller Inventory # Q-1616953632
Buy New
US$ 99.96
Convert currency