‘The Christmas Mystery’ Chapters 30-34

The doors to the book-lined room remain open. Well-dressed men and women enter and take seats.

“They are employees of Valex, important employees,” Julien says. Some of them smile at me. Some give a tiny bow.

“I’m a New York City cop, Julien. I’m not accustomed to such respect.”

Julien Carpentier takes me by the shoulders. He looks directly into my eyes. He moves his head uncomfortably closer to mine. He speaks.

“This is a gigantic company. Sixteen offices. Twelve factories. Valex manufactures everything from antacids to cancer drugs. Thousands of people are dependent on Valex for their employment, hundreds of thousands are dependent on Valex for their health. You are their boss’s son. Allow them to respect you.”

I am a little nervous. I am a little confused.

“But this is not my company,” I say. “It’s my father’s enterprise.”

“But it is your responsibility,” Julien says. I want very much to trust his sincerity, to trust Babette. But I have spent so much time in my life listening to the lies of heroin dealers and murderers that I cannot wholly embrace the sincerity of my father’s two most trusted employees.

I nod at Julien. He smiles. Then I sit. Front row center. The best seat in the house.

Julien is to my left. K. Burke is to my right.

“What are you thinking, Moncrief?” whispers Burke.

“You know me too well, K. Burke. You can perceive that my instincts are telling me something.”

The room is settling down. All is quiet. Burke leans in toward me. She whispers.

“Can you ask the lawyers to hold off for a few minutes, so you and I can talk?”

“No. What you and I have to say can wait.”

 

Chapter 32

THE LEAD TRUSTS, wills, and estates attorney is Claude Dupain, a short-nosed, large-eared methodical little man who has devoted his entire life to my father’s personal legal matters.

“Good afternoon to the family, friends, and business colleagues of my late great friend, Luc Paul Moncrief. Monsieur Moncrief ’s funeral memorial, as you know, will take place tomorrow. Today, however, at the request of his family, we are deposing of Luc’s...forgive me...Monsieur Moncrief ’s will...forgive me once again...I am, of course, referring to Luc Moncrief père, Moncrief the elder. He is the Moncrief I shall be speaking of here.

“In the upcoming months, Monsieur Moncrief ’s bureau of attorneys will begin the complex filing of all business documents, debt documents, mortgages, and other Valex-related items. As you all know, Monsieur Moncrief paid strict attention to detail. While his death was terribly unexpected, he recently had become...shall we say...somewhat preoccupied with preparations for death. He brought his will and estate planning up to date in the last few weeks. And that recent planning is reflected in what I announce at this gathering.

“I must add that while it will take many months, even years, to honor all legal procedures in company matters, Monsieur Moncrief ’s wishes in other matters, personal matters and bequests, are quite simple and very clear.”

I realize easily what Dupain’s legal babble means: Valex is a monstrosity of a company, so it will take a great deal of time to sort out its future. However, my father’s personal directions about his estate will be, like my father himself, easy to understand.

Dupain opens a leather portfolio and removes a few pieces of paper. I bow my head. I look down at the floor. The attorney speaks. And, as promised, the information is simple.

Babette will receive a yearly income of 150,000 euros with annual appropriate cost-of-living increases. She will also receive rent-free housing in her current house at Avenue George V. After her death, her heirs will receive the same annual amount for one hundred years.

Julien Carpentier is to continue at his annual salary of 850,000 euros annually. And, subject to the approval of the board of di- rectors, Julien will be named Chairman and CEO of Valex and its subsidiaries.

The American phrase comes to mind again: I could not care less.

There now follows a long list—at least forty names—of disbursements to office personnel and household staff members in Paris, as well as at my father’s London house, his château in Normandy, his house in Portofino, and—a stunning surprise to me— his apartment at 850 Fifth Avenue in New York.

The amounts of the disbursements are generous, excessive by traditional standards. Housemaids will be able to stop scrubbing and dusting. Butlers will retire to Cannes. Gardeners will become country squires. Frankly, I am delighted for all of them.

After the listing of the bequeathals to the staff members, Dupain dabs at his forehead with a handkerchief. An assistant presents him with a large glass of ice water. He drinks the water in one long gulp. Then he says, “There is but one item left. I shall read it directly from Monsieur Moncrief ’s testament.”

Dupain removes a single paper from yet another leather envelope. He reads:

“To my son, Luc Paul Moncrief, I leave all my homes and household goods, all attachments to those homes and household goods, all real estate, all attachments to that real estate. I further leave to him all monies and investments that I may own or control.

“With the following stipulation: After assigning this distribution to my son Luc Paul Moncrief, any monies remaining in excess of three billion euros will be divided equally among the Luc and Georgette Moncrief Foundation, the Louvre Museum, the Red Cross of France, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in the United States.”

There is a long pause, a very long pause. It is the kind of pause that comes when you hear that someone has just inherited three billion euros.

My head remains bowed. I continue to stare at the floor. The silence is punctuated by an occasional sob, a smattering of whispering. Finally, Dupain the attorney speaks again.

“I believe that it is now appropriate for the remainder of this meeting to be conducted, not by me, but by Luc Moncrief the younger.”

I hold up my head. But I do not rise from my seat.

“Monsieur Dupain. I think that there is nothing more for me to add to the proceedings. However, I would like to ask a question of you,” I say. “And I ask it here in the presence of all assembled, because it has troubled me since I was first informed of my father’s death.”

“But of course, monsieur.”

“Are there police reports or medical reports or coroner reports or any kind of reports available concerning the death of my father?”

Dupain appears startled by the question, but he does not hesitate to answer.

“As you must know, Luc...er...Monsieur Moncrief, your father was a man in his late seventies. He had suffered from heart disease. He was discovered dead at his desk. Of course, there is an official death certificate signed by Doctor Martin Abel of the French Police Department.”

“And that is all?” I ask.

“That is all that seemed necessary.”

It is then...finally...that I feel my eyes fill with tears.

 

Chapter 33

WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, much younger—ten years old, fifteen years old—I visited magnificent homes of my school friends: huge châteaux in western France, thirty-room hunting lodges in Scot- land, outlandishly large London town homes smack in the middle of Belgravia.

Many of these houses had rooms dedicated solely to pastimes like billiards and swimming and cigar-smoking and wine-tasting. Many had entire floors that housed ten to twenty servants. Some of the houses had stables with rooms put aside for tanning saddles and polishing stirrups.

But I had never seen in any other home the sort of room that we had in our house on rue du Montaigne.

Our house had a “silver room.”

This room was about the size of a normal family dining room. It had perhaps fifty open shelves. These shelves were loaded with sterling silver serving pieces—everything from fingerbowls to soup tureens, asparagus servers to butter pats, charger plates the size of platters, water goblets as ornate as altar chalices. Open bins were neatly filled with stacks of dinnerware assorted into categories like “Cristofle” and “Buccellati” and “Tiffany.” Subcategories were sets of silver dinnerware wrapped with red velvet ribbon, each bin marked with a note signifying when the pieces had been used:

1788, one year before the Revolution

1872, one year after the ending of the Franco-Prussian War 1943, a dinner for General Eisenhower and his secretary, Kay Summersby

Babette, Birthday

Luc, Partie de Baptême

In the middle of the room is a simple pine table. It can easily seat eight butlers to polish and buff silver. It can also seat eight people for a party.

This early evening it seats only K. Burke and myself.

We sit facing each other. We sip a St. Emilion. The wine’s château and vineyard names mean little to me and nothing to K. Burke.

Our moods are...well, I can only speak for me. I am slightly touched now with sadness, and yet I am happy that the process of the will has ended. Tomorrow is the funeral to get through, but then—after perhaps a day or two of shopping and museum-hopping—we will return to our favorite pastime—NYPD detective work.

We ignore the fruit and cheeses and charcuterie that the kitchen has assembled for us. We drink our wine.

Finally, Burke speaks.

“I see the newspaper headline now,” Burke says. “Luc Moncrief, the Gloomiest Billionaire on Earth. Sob. Sob. Sob.”

“K. Burke, surely you, of all people, are smart enough to know that a great big pot full of money does not make a person happy. Too many people in my position have jumped from skyscrapers, overdosed on drugs, murdered their lovers, died alone...money is a fine thing, especially if you do not have it, but it guarantees nothing other than money.”

“Skip the lecture, Moncrief. Of course, I know all that. And I also know that your heart was broken into pieces when Dalia died. There’s no amount in the world—no money, no work of art, no beautiful woman—who can repair that.”

A pause, and then I say, “It is because of that wisdom that you and I are such fine friends.”

“So, what’s the problem, Moncrief? Is it just that your father has been good to you in death and that you wish that he had...”

“No. No. It is not the usual, not the obvious.” I decide to be blunt. I speak.

“I believe that my father was murdered.”

Burke does not flinch. She barely reacts. Her eyes do not pop open. Her jaw does not drop. If anything she is a woman acting as if she’s heard a very interesting piece of casual gossip.

“Hence, your one and only question to the attorney. The question about the doctor’s report,” she says.

“Of course. I knew you would deduce that.”

“What makes you believe that...other than your impeccable instinct?” she asks.

“Sarcasm does not flatter you, K. Burke.” I pause. Then I say, “Yes, it is my instinct, of course. But there are two small issues. One, my father was a man of great importance and great wealth. You know that the newspapers and political blogs referred to him as le vrai président, the real president. Surely the police and detectives would require an autopsy or some sort of medical investigation to assure that there was no foul play. That would be done for a cabinet minister or an ambassador’s wife. But it was not done for one of the most important men in France? Ridicule!”

K. Burke takes a long gulp of her wine. She nods, but she says nothing. I have something else to add.

“Now, another thing, something perhaps a bit subtler, but not to be overlooked: Julien Carpentier mentioned innumerable times that my father died of a heart attack, that my father had heart disease, that my father passed painlessly because of the speed of his heart attack. How many times was it necessary to tell us that? Likewise, from Babette’s very first phone call to me in the States, she too kept insisting that it was a heart attack, a heart attack, a heart attack. Dupain the attorney mentioned it.  Why so much attention to this? Yes, surely he may very well have died from a heart attack, but is it necessary to mention it so many times?”

I pour us more wine. Then Detective Burke lifts her purse from the floor. It is her big black leather satchel of a purse. She unzips the bag and puts her hand inside. She retrieves a business-sized en- velope. It is cream-colored. It looks like fine heavyweight paper.

Burke hands the envelope to me. On the reverse side, just below my father’s engraved initials, the envelope is held closed by a bit of red sealing wax.

“I found this envelope where I am staying, in your bedroom. It was leaning against the bronze inkstand on your desk. The envelope was meant to be discovered,” she says.

I flip the envelope over. There, in my father’s precise handwriting, are these words: à mon fils. To my son.

I grab a dinner knife from one of the bins. Then I slit the enve- lope open. I read the letter aloud.

My Dear Luc,

This letter assumes that you are now in Paris for my funeral, that you are in our house, in your former bedroom.

Here is what I wish you to know.

In April I received word from Julien Carpentier that our most important new product—Prezinol, a breakthrough treatment for childhood diabetes—was facing serious problems. Prezinol was to be my last great achievement. Valex had worked on it for decades.

Then this awful news arrived. Thirty percent of three hundred juvenile test volunteers in Warsaw suffered a dreadful reaction to the drug—kidney failure or stage one cancer of the liver.

Julien immediately (and without consulting me) dispatched a team of doctors to Poland. By the time Julien involved me in the matter, the doctors reported back that the kidney and liver damage were irreversible. They advised that we stop all testing immediately, and that we cancel our plans for a similar test in São Paulo.

I disagreed with this strategy. I could not allow Prezinol to fail. I posited that we might receive different results in São Paulo. I also knew from experience that it would take the Polish bureau of health a few months to take action against Valex.

I instructed Julien to proceed with everything as planned. He refused. In fact, he accused me of being—and I quote—“a senile old devil.” He said that my entire life was driven by greed and ego.

The fact is this: Julien was correct. I realized the truth of his observation. It is one that you yourself had sometimes made.

That evening I instructed Julien to stop all testing in Warsaw, to cancel plans for the testing in São Paulo, and to arrange significant compensation for the Polish children who suffered such unspeakable damage.

I then considered what else I might do to compensate for my history of abhorrent behavior. Sadly I realized that there was no suitable punishment.

I realized I was just another old man with arthritis and heart disease. My financial success was everything and nothing.

I decided to address my situation as follows.

First, to name Julien as my successor at Valex. Julien has the skills and moral fiber to act in a way that will allow Valex to create pharmaceuticals that will advance worldwide health.

Second, to leave to you the vast portion of my wealth. Out of guilt certainly for my years of paternal neglect, but also because you will use my fortune not merely to live well, but to live wisely.

Finally, to have delivered to me a shipment of fifty capsules of Prezinol.

My dear Luc, more than anything, I wish you the love I kept locked in my heart.

Votre père

 

Chapter 34

THE SONGWRITER WAS wrong when he wrote the lyrics that said he even loved “Paris in the winter, when it drizzles.” I tell this to K. Burke as she and I walk the Boulevard Haussmann toward the enormous shopping cathedral known as Galeries Lafayette, after my father’s funeral.

“The drizzle, it even gets through the finest wool coat,” I complain.

“You should wear a good puffy ski jacket like mine,” says Burke.

“I would rather wear a circus clown costume than a ski jacket.”

“Say what you want, but I’m warm and dry, and you’re cold and wet.”

The morning had been a blur, but it was a mercifully short, respectful service with no gathering after. Except that I called Julien and Babette to meet with us. We ate homemade breakfast brioche and discussed my father’s suicide.

Julien and Babette readily admitted that they knew the full story, and, yes, they had been complicit in hiding the method from me. They swore that they were going to tell me the truth and to put that truth “in context.” That my father was suffering from advanced heart disease, that the children’s diabetes drug had caused grave damage to many in the test group, that my father had, in fact, ended his own life by taking more than four dozen Prezinol capsules.

“We merely wanted to get through the funeral, Luc. With so many business matters and the will, it seemed like the right thing,” Julien said. “I am sorry if we miscalculated.”

I was inclined to believe him. I still am. You see, the simple truth is: What difference does it make? We move on. My father is gone. Babette is a sad old lady. Julien is set for a lifetime of overwhelming work. We move on. At least we try.

As for me, I am and will always be without my beloved Dalia. To have a death that meaningful in your life is to always have the tiniest cloud over even the greatest joy. My police work may fascinate me. Good friends like Burke will support me. France may win the World Cup. I may sip a magnificent Romanée-Conti. I may even fall in love again. Even that I cannot rule out. But: no matter. Dalia will not be here with me.

K. Burke and I continue our walk. Now we are within a block of the Galeries Lafayette. Christmas lights hang from the chestnut trees. Candles sit shining in the shop windows.

“You know, Moncrief. You’re a real Frenchman,” she says.

“Did you ever doubt it?” I ask.

“No. Here’s why: you do what many Frenchmen do. I noticed. You don’t walk. You stroll. Long strides, a little hip swing, head back. You’re like a little cartoon of a French guy.”

“There’s a compliment hidden somewhere in those words, K. Burke. I just haven’t found it yet.”

So we stroll. We approach the Haussmann entrance to the store. Burke asks that we pause for a moment. We do, and she says, “So, you were right. Your instincts were true. Your father was murdered.”

“But, of course not, K. Burke. Not murder. My father committed suicide.”

“I guess, but...” she says. “He was a murderer who...murdered himself.”

I tell Burke how I feel. That sometimes I believe his suicide was an old-fashioned noble gesture; that he had committed sins that could never be forgiven. So, poof. He punished himself.

“But then,” I tell her, “I think he was an old-fashioned coward. The mere thought of earthly punishment—jail, humiliation—told him to escape. He up and left us. He left Babette, a woman who loved him. He left Julien, a young man who idolized him. And he left me, his son, the boy he barely knew, the man he never knew.”

We walk inside the gilded department store. It looks like a Christmas tree turned upside down. Sparkle and glitter and thirty-feet-high gift boxes suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Burke looks upward, her neck stretching backward, as if she were standing in the Sistine Chapel. Her mouth literally opens in awe. The Christmas shoppers crowd the floor.

Then she says, “Let’s start shopping before you start wanting to move on. I want to buy a few things to take back.”

“I can assure you, K. Burke, there is almost nothing worth purchasing here.”

“Well, thanks for the advice, Moncrief. But I think I’m about to prove that statement wrong.”

I limit her, however, to one hour. In that short time she purchases a green Mark Cross Villa Tote bag, a pair of real silk stockings (the sort that also requires her to buy simple but quite intriguing garters), two tiny bronze replicas of the Arc de Triomphe (“Vous touriste!” I tell her), and four silk scarves (blue for her cousin Sandi, red for her cousin Elyce, yellow for her cousin Maddy, white for her cousin Marilyn). The scarves are my treat. I insist.

I also came out of the store with a purchase of my own. A five- pound tenderloin of venison.

“I shall give this venison to my father’s cook, Reynaud, and you shall feast in a way you never have before.”

“I’ll say that it was interesting being in a butcher store inside a department store. But really. . . venison? Deer meat?”

“What is so odd about that?” I ask.

“I can tell you in one word: Bambi.”