The Fleur de Sel Murders_A Brittany Mystery Page 7

  “So you have no idea who might have been here yesterday evening? Or what might have been going on with the barrels in your saltworks—or what illegal substance they might have contained?”

  Rose’s final question was clearly pointed. This prompted Paul Daeron to step in.

  “How is my brother supposed to know that? He obviously has no idea. He called me during the night. Right after the police called.” His voice was much softer than before. Protective.

  “We don’t use any additives in the Guérande. No chemicals,” Maxime Daeron said, “nothing at all. If that’s what you mean. There are no machines either, no computers, no technology. Everything is done by hand, with old tools. It’s all about the paludier understanding his craft. It’s about the sea, the sun, the wind, the soil.” He said this in a very matter-of-fact way.

  “And in relation to the barrels, the only thing that occurs to you is the cooperative?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does the cooperative use barrels for?”

  “Well, I think they’re for transport. I don’t know.” He hesitated for a moment. He seemed uncertain for the first time, which was in stark contrast to his manner up to this point.

  “Last year”—he broke off—“last summer we got the impression a few times that water might have been added to the saltworks overnight. Fresh water. The water levels looked like they’d been adjusted. Only slightly. And the concentration of salt too. We lost the harvest in a few of the pools several times.”

  “What does that mean?” Dupin was irritated that his interjection sounded so foolish.

  “Everything depends on the concentration of salt in the harvest pool. If it’s too high or too low, everything is ruined. It has to be around two hundred and eighty grams per liter of water, that’s when the salt crystallizes. But we weren’t able to say for sure. The water level thing—it’s difficult to pin down. It’s pure speculation, really. I’m only saying it because you’re asking.” Even now, Daeron wasn’t speaking rhetorically.

  “You don’t want to believe something like that, but I know the business world. Those kinds of people do exist.” It was clear that this was important to the elder brother. “You can’t deny it. These things happen.”

  “You think someone might have brought fresh water into the saltworks in barrels to dilute the concentration of salt and sabotage the harvest?”

  It sounded preposterous, but for the first time Dupin saw the possibility of a theoretical link between salt marshes, salt production, barrels, and crime—a small amount of crime at least. “Couldn’t someone just open the sluice gates to the reservoir pools and let in extra water that way?”

  “That would be much too obvious. You would see the change in the water level right away. If it’s fresh water, you don’t have to add half as much.”

  “The barrels,” Dupin said, his brow furrowed. “They could have had any substances inside them, right?”

  Daeron looked at him, puzzled.

  “I mean substances that render salt, let’s say, useless. Inedible.”

  That would be another possibility for sabotage. Dupin didn’t think the idea too far-fetched.

  “Our salt is constantly and stringently checked.” There was a note of indignation in Daeron’s voice. “Every single harvest from every single salt marsh. By an independent lab. Twice. The system has multiple safeguards. Throughout the Guérande.”

  Dupin had not meant it like that. Rose came to his rescue: “We’ll examine the water in this saltworks very carefully. We’ve already started.”

  This thought didn’t seem to interest Daeron. He looked across his salt marsh. “So where are these barrels supposed to have been, which pools were they next to?”

  “Possibly at the large wooden hut,” Dupin answered as quickly as a schoolchild who finally knew something for sure.

  “That’s where the harvest pools are. Right in front of it.” Daeron’s brow furrowed.

  “And there would be no point in adding fresh water to the other pools? If somebody wanted to manipulate something, I mean.” Dupin had no idea how a salt marsh worked. It seemed complicated.

  “No. You could easily compensate for that; the different kinds of pools are separated from each other by sluice gates.” Daeron thought for a moment, then continued, clearly trying hard to be precise. “Due to high and low tides this whole area is supplied with seawater via an extensive system of canals. We fill the first reservoir pools from the large canals, the étiers, and after that several intermediate reservoir pools arranged in a row. From there we run water into the first salt pools every fortnight. Into the front pools.”

  “That’s what you did on Tuesday morning? Here, I mean, in this salt marsh?”

  Dupin really ought to have got his notebook quickly. This was confusing. Too many pools. Too much—potentially—important information.

  “Exactly. From these pools the water runs through various other pools to the center of the saltworks, the harvest pools. The water gets more and more shallow and warm, up to a temperature of a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. There’s a slight slope, which makes the water flow, meanwhile the wind and sun ensure there’s continuous evaporation. So the water gets more and more salty. Until it crystallizes in the oeillets.”

  “And that’s where a few barrels of fresh water would ruin everything?”

  Dupin knew they had been over this point before. But he was gradually coming to understand.

  “Absolutely. Everything hangs in the balance here every day. A night of heavy rain and everything is over, weeks of work. Or if there isn’t enough sun and wind. Or if you make a mistake with the water quantities. Then the harvest fails. Last year the season was over by mid-August, it just rained and rained. We missed out on six weeks. A third of the usual harvesting period. It was a disaster.”

  “We’ll check the salt concentration very carefully too,” Rose said, her tone making it clear that this point had now been sufficiently dealt with and Daeron could be sure that they would follow up even the smallest leads. She went on smoothly: “Who might have an interest in destroying your harvest, Monsieur Daeron?”

  Daeron drew his eyebrows together. Then shook his head. “No one. Truly, no one. I actually can’t even imagine a thing like that.”

  “You have no idea? Think about it.”

  “No. I have no idea.”

  “Do you own a gun, Monsieur Daeron? A nine millimeter?”

  “I’ve never owned a gun.”

  “And where were you yesterday evening between half past eight and ten o’clock?” Rose looked Daeron right in the eye the whole time.

  “I was harvesting until eight, in one of the other saltworks, then I drove home. We live right by La Roche-Bernard. My wife was at home, we ate dinner, and then I got some paperwork done. When your inspector called me I had only just gone to bed.”

  Dupin had been expecting more close questioning from Rose, and also that she would speak to Daeron about Lilou Breval, but for some reason she finished with him abruptly.

  “And you, monsieur, where were you then?” Commissaire Rose turned abruptly to Paul Daeron, making him jump. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this question.

  “I … I was in Vannes. At my company. Near Vannes. We had a few guests. Wining and dining. Big clients—we do it frequently. It went on late. Till midnight.”

  “And the guests will confirm that?”

  Again, Paul Daeron looked surprised. “Of course.”

  “Inspector Chadron will ask you for the names of everyone who can corroborate your statements about yesterday evening.”

  Maxime Daeron suddenly looked nervous. “Could I take a look at my salt marshes? Where everything happened?”

  Dupin almost looked to Rose first, but he hurried to reply before she could: “I’ll go with you. Tell us if anything strikes you as strange. No matter what, even if it seems like a tiny, insignificant detail.”

  Dupin wisely did not look at Rose now. She contradicted him anyway.

 
“That is a sealed-off crime scene, I—”

  Right in the middle of her sentence, Dupin’s mobile rang.

  Nolwenn. He had tried to get through to her several times earlier on the journey from Le Croisic to the saltworks, but her line had been busy every time. Dupin thought about it, then took a few steps to one side and answered. The reception in the White Land was flawless this morning, or at least it was on this road.

  “We’ve absolutely got to find Lilou Breval. This is all absurd. I want you to try her every five minutes, Nolwenn. Surely she’ll be reachable again at some point. Somebody must know where she is.”

  While they were speaking, Dupin started to walk along the road toward the Route des Marais. The morning sun made the large and small pools to the right and left flash brightly, and it was clear that the fresh breeze that had sprung up the evening before would give way to another scorchingly hot day. Although the scenery and its beauty looked much more real today, Dupin still felt like a stranger in the White Land, oddly dazed as if this bizarre world only put up with visitors reluctantly.

  “If Lilou didn’t pluck the idea out of thin air, then there were barrels in the saltworks that didn’t belong there. With something inside them that didn’t belong there. So the barrels weren’t here by chance. So the saltworks weren’t a random location. There are more secluded spots than the saltworks for hiding illegal activity,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair. “Although they are very secluded at night.”

  It was not uncommon for Dupin’s conversations with Nolwenn to be a chance to describe confusing events in a different, more succinct way the second time round. The new narrative style sometimes made things clearer for him. But it didn’t even vaguely work this time.

  “I only know her articles, but I consider Lilou Breval a highly credible person who does conscientious research,” Nolwenn said emphatically, “and she’s not afraid of anything or anyone. Examine everything in the saltworks very carefully. There’ll be something to it.”

  “We don’t even know if she ever saw a barrel here herself, or just heard about it or suspected it.”

  Suddenly a van rumbled past him, clearly going too fast, sending small stones flying meters into the air and hitting Dupin in the leg and hip.

  He hesitated for a moment, but then he asked what he had been meaning to ask. “So—the thing with the prefect. Do you know what…”

  “There’s a longstanding and painstakingly nursed enmity between the messieurs. I thought it was crucial to make the prefect aware that Préfet Trottet would, as a matter of principle, stop at nothing to exclude you and the Finistère area from the investigations. And therefore him in particular, too.”

  Dupin had been thinking that this miracle must have something to do with Nolwenn. Who else?

  “Thanks, Nolwenn.”

  “Collar the culprit, mon Commissaire. It’s unacceptable. Nobody shoots at a commissaire from Concarneau.”

  The disgust came from deep down inside; Nolwenn’s entire being resonated with these words. He loved her for it.

  “You’re not forgetting that you wanted to go to Paris today? Her birthday. She’s tried to call you several times, but she hasn’t left a message.” Nolwenn sounded sympathetic.

  “I know. I…”

  Dupin changed the subject.

  “There’s something else I need to know. Lilou Breval wrote a long article about the saltworks in June of last year. Could you check if she has published other articles about the Guérande? About salt or the salt farmers? The competition between Mediterranean and Atlantic salt? And any of her other articles that touch on the saltworks? It doesn’t matter what aspect of them it is. And I’ll need every article from the Ouest-France about the saltworks, not just her articles. Everything from the last few years. And from the Télégramme too.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Nolwenn had hung up (nobody hung up more quickly than Dupin, apart from Nolwenn).

  Dupin turned round. He had walked a good half kilometer and at some point had turned onto one of the paths that branched off the road. It all looked exactly the same as Daeron’s saltworks. His brow furrowed, he trudged back the way he’d come.

  The Daerons and Commissaire Rose were nowhere to be seen. The only people around were the two police officers dutifully standing by the cordon.

  Dupin took the turn for Daeron’s saltworks. Inspector Chadron was standing halfway to the hut, and she seemed to be waiting for him.

  “Commissaire Rose asked me to tell you a few things,” she said. Her facial expression was neutral. As was her tone of voice. As though she was even picking up facial expressions and tones of voice from Rose.

  “She said she didn’t want to disturb you during your private conversations. But that she thought it appropriate to proceed with the investigation.”

  Dupin was too taken aback to answer.

  “She has driven on ahead to see Monsieur Jaffrezic. You’re to meet her at the cooperative headquarters. Near the warehouses. If you drive along the Route des Marais toward Guérande town, there are signs for it. It’s about two kilometers away.”

  Unbelievable. So she must have driven down the road just now. There was no other route.

  “We’ve already clarified whether Maxime Daeron’s employees were in this salt marsh after Tuesday morning and the answer is: apparently not. At least not according to the statements from the people questioned, which we will of course verify. Above all,” she continued, still in that same neutral tone of voice, “Commissaire Rose said you ought to know that a neighbor saw Lilou Breval last night near her parents’ house on the gulf. Around eleven o’clock. Some of our officers were there. The report just came through. They haven’t come across Madame Breval this morning, but she was there last night, anyway. The neighbor didn’t notice anything unusual. She said Madame Breval was alone. Commissaire Rose says you should stop worrying.”

  Now Dupin wasn’t sure there hadn’t been a certain undertone to Chadron’s final words after all. But it had been Rose who had been worked up—or more worked up than he was, anyway. But if Dupin were honest, even he felt relief now. A great sense of relief.

  He turned round without a word and walked quickly back up the path. He took out his phone as he walked, called Riwal—who had dropped him off and driven straight back to Kadeg at Le Grand Large—and in just a few brief words gave him some tasks to do. Rose would be kept in the dark for now.

  A minute later he was standing by his car. He had no idea how he was supposed to drive with his injured shoulder, or even get into the dwarf-sized car at all, but it would work out somehow, he reasoned with himself. In a foul mood, he crawled into the Peugeot. Although he was now officially a part of the investigation, he was not pleased about this. Any of this. He had felt like a shadow of himself in the conversation with the Daerons. And this wasn’t his turf either. Dupin did not take well to strangers.

  * * *

  “Ah, Monsieur le Commissaire, Monsieur Jaffrezic was just about to show us the barrels they use in the cooperative. Blue plastic barrels.”

  Rose barely glanced at Dupin.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” muttered Dupin. He rubbed the spot where he had bumped his head yet again while getting out of his car.

  “Come with me. Take a look at everything, if you think it’s necessary. Believe me, our barrels were not involved in that mad shoot-out.”

  Of course everyone knew about it. Radio stations and Web sites were already reporting on the “mysterious criminal activity” and “hours of fierce exchange of fire” in the salt gardens, in which “the well-known commissaire Georges Dupin came within an inch of being shot dead.” Unsurprisingly, his presence there was commented on: “The reason why the commissaire was in the Guérande salt gardens, outside of his jurisdiction, is thus far unexplained.”

  With a cheerful “Come on!” Guy Jaffrezic set off and was now walking across the broad gravel path that led away from the parking lot, past one of the cooperative’s ten imposing, long wareho
uses. Jaffrezic, whom Dupin would have put in his early sixties, was short and very plump, with darting eyes and equally darting hands that were constantly gesticulating. This was in odd contrast to the physical calm he radiated, as if his eyes and hands belonged to a different body. Dupin only just stopped himself from smiling.

  “We only started using the barrels recently, this season. For the dried salt. The salt for the salt mills. We’ve been producing it for two years. People love it. A bestseller. The gros sel spécial moulin. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.”

  He turned to Dupin, seeming to assume that Rose was already familiar with it. He was correct on both fronts.

  Dupin sighed. Up until a few years ago, salt had simply been salt to him (and he still thought this a reasonable attitude). During their Breton lessons, Nolwenn had given him a few preliminary briefings. He hadn’t listened properly on this topic, he had to admit.

  “Commissaire Rose said you’re the commissaire from Paris. People have heard of you.”

  After more than five years in Brittany, Dupin didn’t even respond when he heard this kind of thing.

  “You won’t have a clue about salt.”

  Jaffrezic’s sentence was resonant with a profound sadness. And worry. And sympathy.

  “Without salt, people die. You must never forget that.”

  Dupin almost blurted out: “They die with salt too.”

  “I’ll show you everything and explain everything you need to know, sun and wind permitting.”

  This was—just like his comments about the sel moulin earlier—expressed in an unmistakably pedagogical tone of voice. Like the prelude to a guided tour.

  “This is a police investigation. There was an attempted murder,” Rose interrupted in a friendly but firm manner.

  Jaffrezic remained utterly unfazed, continuing in the style of a saltworks tour guide. “We leave the gros sel moulin to dry in the sun for forty-eight hours after harvesting it, sometimes even seventy-two hours, at least a day longer than normal gros sel. Then it goes into the barrels. But only to transport it to these warehouses. The most significant difference is between gros sel and fleur de sel. Those are the two basic kinds of salt.”