The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe Read online

  Also by Timothy Williams

  The Inspector Piero Trotti Novels

  Converging Parallels

  The Puppeteer

  Persona Non Grata

  Black August

  Big Italy

  The Anne Marie Laveaud Novels

  Another Sun

  Copyright © 2015 by Timothy Williams

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Williams, Timothy.

  The honest folk of Guadeloupe / Timothy Williams.

  HC ISBN 978-1-61695-385-0

  PB ISBN 978-1-61695-622-6

  eISBN 978-1-61695-386-7

  1. Police—Guadeloupe—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Guadeloupe—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6073.I43295H66 2015

  823′.914–dc23 2014021690

  Map of Guadeloupe: © istockphoto

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Map

  1: Madame Dugain

  2: Fait Divers

  3: Public Trial

  4: Les Seigneurs de Saint-Domingue

  5: Trousseau

  6: Gendarme

  7: Jacuzzi

  8: Golf

  9: Mobylette

  10: Palais de Justice

  11: Green

  12: Mère Nature

  13: Lafitte

  14: Court Bouillon

  15: de Gaulle

  16: No Man’s Land

  17: Vitamin

  18: Divorce

  19: Hospital

  20: Lipstick

  21: Bed

  22: Canine

  23: Paraboot

  24: Sunkist

  25: Chamonix

  26: Sheet

  27: Accountancy

  28: Allude

  29: Sandwich

  30: Tarare

  31: Mother Nature

  32: Chair

  33: Incense

  34: Neurosis

  35: Préfet

  36: Courtesy

  37: Ylang ylang

  38: Doctors Without Borders

  39: Phone

  40: Handcuffs

  41: Millet

  42: Luc

  43: Corsica

  44: Aftermath

  45: Bloodshot

  46: Baimbridge

  47: Proud

  48: Baccalauréat

  49: Wife

  50: Breadfruit

  51: Chez Camille

  52: Air France

  53: Palais de Justice

  54: Cane juice

  55: Lovers

  56: Car Grease

  57: Ashanti

  58: Coquetry

  59: Downtown

  60: Carnation

  61: Harassment

  62: Les Messieurs de la Martinique

  63: Sigmund

  64: Morne

  65: Diabetes

  66: Tails

  67: Sharks

  68: Nylon

  69: Sermon

  70: Fast food

  71: Useless

  72: Silhouette

  73: Passport

  74: Gambetta

  75: Half a Dozen

  76: Threat

  77: Hawaii

  78: Winning Team

  79: Terrapin

  80: Zorro

  81: Invitation

  82: Les Bonnes Gens de la Guadeloupe

  Aux anciens étudiants de l’Université de l’Express:

  Claude

  Patrice

  Laurent

  Roland

  Bernard

  Éric

  Kamel

  Yves

  Pierre

  Serge

  Chantal

  Madly

  et à la doyenne de la faculté de pharmacologie,

  Éléonore

  1

  Madame Dugain

  Wednesday, May 16, 1990

  “You’re looking for me?” The woman was attractive, but her face appeared tired, the eyelids dark. There were wrinkles about her soft brown eyes. She placed a pile of exercise books on the table beside her handbag.

  “Madame Dugain?”

  “Yes, I am Madame Dugain. I teach French and Latin. Your child is in which class?”

  Anne Marie moved toward the table. “It’s about your husband.”

  For a moment the expression went blank, devoid of emotion, while the eyes searched Anne Marie’s face. “I have already made a statement to the police judiciaire.” Madame Dugain drew a chair—a school chair with a steel frame and a plywood seat—toward her. “Several statements.” She leaned wearily against the backrest.

  Anne Marie sat down on the other side of the table. On the formica top there were a couple of tin lids that had been used as ashtrays.

  The far wall was covered with pinned-up notices concerning the different teaching unions. Beneath the drawing pins, the paper rustled relentlessly; the doors to the staff room were wide open and a mid-morning breeze kept the air cool. Through the shutters, Anne Marie could see a flame tree that had started to blossom.

  “My husband is dead—isn’t that enough?”

  Anne Marie nodded sympathetically. “He died under strange circumstances.”

  “He was hounded to death.”

  “I don’t think anyone hounded your husband.”

  Madame Dugain shook her head. “I’d rather not talk about these things.”

  “I understand.”

  The eyes flared with brief anger. “You understand?”

  The two women were alone in the silent staff room of the Collège Carnot.

  (Somewhere children were singing. In another building a class burst into muffled laughter.)

  “I know how painful it is to lose someone you love.” Anne Marie held out her hand. “I’m Madame Laveaud. I’m the juge d’instruction.”

  Madame Dugain took the proffered hand coolly, keeping her distance. “I really have nothing to say to an investigative magistrate or indeed to anybody else.”

  “I asked the head mistress for permission to speak to you.”

  Madame Dugain folded her arms against her chest. She was wearing a dress that went well with the brown, liquid eyes. A necklace, matching gold earrings. Black hair that had been pulled back into a tight bun. Her lipstick was a matte red.

  “On Saturday, April twenty-first, three officers of the police judiciaire visited your husband in his offices in the Sécid Tower. They had a search warrant and they were seeking information concerning accusations made against your husband—”

  “Everybody accused Rodolphe.”

  “Accusations that as director of the Centre Environnement, he had been misappropriating funds.”

  “My husband’s not a criminal.”

  “Your husband received money from the government—from the Ministry of Employment—in order to recruit and train young people under the Youth Training Scheme. There were six young people working for him at the institute. Their salaries, funded entirely with government money, were paid into the Institute’s account.”

  “I know very little about my husband’s financial affairs.”

  “Your husband’s accused of employing two of the young people in his small business in Abymes and paying them with the government allowances.”

  “I’ve given the police as much information as …” She bit her lip. “My husband would never have taken money that wasn’t his.”

  Anne Marie touched Madame Dugain’s arm. “G
iven the circumstances, I don’t think any good can be achieved by continuing with the enquiry.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “My husband and I were happy. We’d been married for seventeen years. You don’t think my children and I have suffered enough?”

  Somewhere an electric buzzer sounded, followed almost immediately by the sound of scraping chairs and the scuffling of feet as the pupils left their desks at the end of their lesson.

  “Just supposing that your husband was guilty of these accusations …” Anne Marie shrugged. “A fine—twenty thousand, thirty thousand francs. Not a lot of money—not for your husband.”

  Madame Dugain flinched.

  “He could’ve paid that sort of money,” Anne Marie said.

  “Rodolphe was innocent.”

  “It’s not for thirty thousand francs that an influential and well-respected member of the community decides to do away with himself.”

  2

  Fait Divers

  France Antilles, April 23, 1990

  Mr. Rodolphe Dugain, better known to most television viewers as Monsieur Environnement, died on Saturday, April 21, of multiple internal injuries after throwing himself from the fourteenth story of Sécid Tower block in central Pointe-à-Pitre.

  If the rumor had been circulating for some time that the police judiciaire were making enquiries into the Centre Environnement, the sudden and untimely death of Monsieur Dugain, one of the major and most respected figures in the cultural Who’s Who of our département, seems to have taken Guadeloupe by surprise. The shock can be still felt in the University, where Monsieur Dugain held a lectureship in natural sciences, as well as in the corridors of the RFO television station, where he regularly broadcast his popular nature programs.

  On Saturday morning, three officers of the Service Régional de la Police Judiciaire presented themselves at the offices of the Centre Environnement. According to eyewitnesses, Monsieur Dugain appeared his normal, jovial self, not allowing his good humor to be affected in any way by the presentation of a search warrant. According to sources, he offered a drink to the three men. Then, while the officers were looking for documents and other information—the nature of which as yet has not been revealed by the parquet—Mr. Dugain managed to slip from the room. Once on the far side of the steel front door, he locked it, making prisoners of the police officers. Taking to the stairs, Mr. Dugain climbed from the third to the fourteenth floor of the tower block. On the top floor, he made his way to the observation window and from there jumped to his death, landing on a car parked on the sidewalk of the Boulevard Chanzy. Mr. Dugain died immediately on impact. The vehicle was badly damaged and several people were taken to the nearby Centre hospitalier, suffering from shock.

  A crowd of onlookers soon gathered around the macabre spectacle. Yet again in Guadeloupe, the lamentable behavior of rubbernecks and passersby hindered the fire and ambulance services in the execution of their duty.

  Mr. Dugain, who was a Freemason and an ex-secretary of the Rotary Club, was born in Martinique 57 years ago. He leaves a wife and their two children, as well as two children from an earlier marriage.

  There will be a memorial service at St. Pierre and St. Paul on Tuesday at ten o’clock. The inhumation will take place at the municipal cemetery at midday.

  3

  Public Trial

  “My husband is dead.”

  “I need to know why he died.”

  Madame Dugain raised her eyes. “Is that important?”

  “You said he was hounded to death by the police.”

  “The police, the media, whoever else—it doesn’t matter. Not now.”

  “It matters.”

  A moment of hesitation. “You don’t believe my husband was innocent?”

  “Innocent or guilty, suicide is not a normal reaction.”

  “The SRPJ threw him from the fourteenth floor.”

  “Unlikely.”

  Madame Dugain allowed her shoulders to sag. Then she took her bag. “I must be going.” She stood away from the chair. She was in her late thirties, with a trim, girlish silhouette and attractive brown legs. She ran a hand through her hair.

  “Unlikely the police judiciaire should want to murder your husband.”

  “It’s been nice meeting you.”

  “When somebody’s pushed through a window, the victim hits the ground close to the building. The car on which your husband landed was nearly four meters from the entrance to the Tour Sécid.”

  Madame Dugain stared in silence at the clasp of her handbag.

  “Nothing else you can tell me?”

  “Else in what way, madame le juge?”

  “Anything worrying your husband?”

  A hard laugh. “His name in the papers? The accusation of embezzlement? The police coming to search his offices? Worrying my husband? What more do you want, for heaven’s sake? His probity, his reputation—his very life were being called into question. His dignity was being put on trial. No, not a trial. A public lynching without trial. The telephone never stopped ringing.”

  “With a good lawyer …”

  “Rodolphe was innocent.”

  “With a good lawyer, he could have—”

  “My husband did not need a lawyer. He needed to be left alone, he needed to not be dragged through the mud. The mud his enemies wanted. That the police wanted. And that’s what you’ve got now. You’re satisfied, aren’t you?”

  “Satisfied?”

  “Rodolphe’s dead.”

  Anne Marie caught her breath. “Who are these enemies that you talk about?”

  “I’ve nothing further to say.”

  “Why don’t you want to help me set your husband’s record straight?”

  “You couldn’t care less about my husband’s reputation.”

  “I care about the truth.”

  “Your truth.” Madame Dugain turned and walked out into the sunshine, the handbag held to her body. Her heels clicked on the stone paving of the courtyard as she passed beneath the flame trees.

  4

  Les Seigneurs de Saint-Domingue

  “Liliane Dugain’s my cousin.”

  It used to be the lycée. Then, in the mid-sixties, a new school complex was built at Baimbridge on the edge of the city to accommodate the increase in the number of pupils. Consequently the old colonial Lycée Carnot, with its courtyard, its mango and flame trees, its airy, wooden classrooms, stranded in the heart of Pointe-à-Pitre, was transformed into a collège, a junior high school.

  The two women walked out of the staff room and across the yard, between the trees. A breeze rustled through the leaves, and the pendulous mangoes swayed gently at the end of their long stalks. Other mangoes had fallen to the ground and split their bruised skin.

  (Anne Marie was reminded of her school years in Algeria.)

  “I got the impression she was more angry than upset.”

  The headmistress shrugged. “Liliane had been married long enough to know what Dugain was like.”

  There was surprise in Anne Marie’s voice. “He was fond of women?”

  “You know a man who isn’t?”

  Anne Marie glanced at Mademoiselle Salondy as they stepped into the school building. “That’s why you never married, Lucette?”

  “One of many reasons.” The headmistress put her finger to her lips and nodded to the closed doors of the administrative offices.

  The muffled sound of a typewriter.

  They went up the wooden stairs and entered an air-conditioned room. A photograph of President Mitterrand hung on the wall between a poster of the Declaration of Human Rights and a calendar from a local garage. The cables leading into the light switches were unconcealed and had been tacked into the wall with staples. A telephone on the large desk, and beside it, a plastic cube containing various pictures of Lucette Salondy’s relatives. In a small glass jar stood a solitary anthurium.

  “Madame Dugain’s your cousin?”

  “Sit down, Anne Marie.” Lucette Salondy had a smile
that formed wrinkles at the corner of her bright eyes. “Who isn’t a cousin on this island?” She was a large woman whose dress could not hide matronly hips. In her youth, she had been very beautiful.

  “You know her well?”

  “I taught her. Liliane’s more than twenty years younger than I am and when I came back from France in sixty-six she was doing her philosophy baccalaureate. A bright girl, and the youngest in her class.” She tapped the desk. “That was when the lycée was still here, before they built the concrete jungle on the ring road.”

  “I shouldn’t discuss things that have been told to me in confidence.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Liliane Dugain was acting out a role—that’s the impression I got.”

  “Liliane’s too old to act.”

  “My looking into his death doesn’t seem to interest her.”

  “She needs to be left alone.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “The women in Guadeloupe hide their suffering.”

  “Here at school, do you ever talk to her?”

  “My prison.” The headmistress gestured to the office, the walls painted the pale grey of France’s tropical public buildings and beneath the opaque louvers, the potted dieffenbachia, leaves yellowing at the edges. “My job’s to sign bits of paper or phone the rectorat in Martinique. No time for idle chat—there are at least three new teachers this year whom I’ve never spoken to.” She pulled a blue cardigan from the back of the chair onto her shoulders. “Headmistress? I’m just a cog in a big, faceless administration. A factory, an educational factory. The gentlemen of Martinique fail to understand our problems here.”

  “The gentlemen of Martinique fail to understand the good folk of Guadeloupe?”

  “You’re learning your West Indian culture!” The headmistress clapped her hands in pleasure. “The noblemen of Saint Domingue, the gentlemen of Martinique and the honest folk of Guadeloupe. Two centuries after the independence of Haiti, the honest folk of Guadeloupe run around in SUVs while Saint Domingue’s aristocrats cut cane in our fields.”

  Anne Marie smiled. “Despite the gentlemen of the rectorat in Martinique, you have time to talk with me, Lucette.”

  She stretched a plump arm across the desk and squeezed Anne Marie’s hand. “I rarely manage to get out of this office.”

  “You’ve just been out.”