The morning was overcast—the clouds thick, heavy and gray, swirling overhead as a stiff breeze blew past the mourners. Large drops of rain began to fall, slowly as if waiting just for the right moment for someone to shift a foot there so it could land on a nose or even better, in the eye. Haidée couldn’t have planned it better if she was a director of a play, in charge of getting the scenery just right. The cool autumn day struck the right chord of somberness and dark eeriness that somehow, she couldn’t quite shake.
When the magistrate Galliard and the village doctor, a Doctor Martin, arrived at the observatory soon after the discovery of Legard’s body, the rest of the astronomers scattered out into the hallway where she and Renaud had been waiting. D’Aubigne had managed to pull himself together to drag himself out. And while they were waiting for the verdict, the flaxen haired astronomer had declared that he was going to the servants’s quarters to sleep for the rest of the night—if he could get back to sleep after the trauma that he had suffered. The other astronomers had looked at each other and had begun murmuring in low voices, speculating on what the doctor would say. Everard seemed adamant that Legard was still in a coma—but when the old, wrinkling doctor came out, shaking his head, the head astronomer seemed to collapse into himself.
“What a promising scientist!” he had wailed. “All gone to waste in his prime!”
Haidée shifted on her feet, thinking that the pair of shoes that she had donned for Legard’s funeral was a poor match for the occasion. In fact, she was sure that if her choice of outfit for the funeral got out to the rest of society on the mainland, she would be ridiculed. No woman of fashion would ever wear a dark burgundy gown to a funeral. If she had known that someone on this godforsaken island would have the bad manners to die, she would have packed the appropriate mourning dress—which was black.
The servants, Villiers and Claude, had ended up taking Legard’s body out of the room to be placed elsewhere before a coffin could be made. Where, she had no idea. But then upon reflection, she didn’t really want to know where Claude and Villiers had put the body. She had seen corpses before—but they were of the theatre variety, either a mannequin made of rags or an actor smeared with red dye and clutching a blunted foil. But then the corpse was the least of her worries. There were the markings to consider—and she was reluctant to recall where she had learned that before.
The small cemetery beside the parish church was bounded by a wooden fence and a copse of bare trees. In the distance stood the observatory, a round Byzantine hulk upon a dark hill. By a series of ropes and pulleys, a four of the village workmen lowered a plain wooden coffin into the ground. Father DeLorme stood at the head of the grave with an open Bible in his hand. His assistant, a thin, pale young man, held a censer that spewed out noxious smoke, making those closest to the grave wipe their watering eyes with black lacey handkerchiefs. Haidée thought it extremely odd that Legard was given a Christian burial when the night before he had adamantly proclaimed that he was an atheist. But what was done was done—Father DeLorme, after all, was the only one on the island who had had any experience with burials.
Haidée discretely tried to pull her coat closer to her body. The wind seemed to turn suddenly cold as if someone among the mourners was trying to work a certain curious art. She studied the faces of all the mourners, but they were muffled either with handkerchiefs or collars and everyone was looking slightly away from the hole in the ground as if it were something unbearable and taboo.
Much of the village came out to pay their respects for the dead astronomer. She was quite sure that everyone in the village knew Legard much better than she, so politely, she stepped aside for anyone who wanted to edge closer to the focal point of the event. Father DeLorme began speaking in low, solemn tones, but she wasn’t paying attention to the words. She had somehow found herself at the edge of the crowd. To her right was Maurice Ducos, the fellow vacationer who had a friend reserve a bed for him at The Cormorant. His hefty bulk was shifted forward as he strained to see what was going on. To her left was one of the astronomers—the old man Roland. He was wearing a dark brown coat, but at least he was also wearing a black scarf as a concession to the occasion. He was gripping his cane as he listened to the sermon.
“Bah,” Roland said lowly. “Legard is probably rolling in his coffin. I suppose the priest does have his last laugh.”
“I’ve never heard Father DeLorme laugh,” Haidée said lightly. “I’m sure this is as much a shock to him as it is to us. Legard was murdered after all. What I don’t understand is why we’re having this funeral when we could be looking for who killed him. Besides, this is on such short notice that I couldn’t find anything proper to wear.”
“I agree with you that the murderer must be found, but I care very little for fashion,” replied Roland. “But what do I know? I’m just an old man. What Everard says goes. And you’ve noticed that Galliard doesn’t exactly contradict him. Ha! The young puppy thinks Everard knows everything since he’s in charge of the observatory. But I admit that it is a shock. People need to grieve before they can move on to anything.”
“That’s true.” She was silent for a moment before she said softly, mostly to herself as she remembered what Renaud had told her. “The murderer might be here among us.”
“Yes.” The old man slanted her a glance. “You’re a bright girl even if most of your brain is consumed by frivolous fashion. Who do you think it might be?”
“How would I know?” she replied. “I just arrived on Mont Saint Filan last night. You know the island far better than I. Did Monsieur Legard have any enemies?”
Roland chuckled and then coughed loudly before he hacked up some sputum and spat it on the ground. Several of the mourners, including Maurice Ducos, turned to the old man with glares. “Sorry,” the old man mumbled. When they turned back to hear the rest of the priest’s speech, Roland continued, “Legard acted like a blowhard. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone viewed him as an antagonist at one point or another. Personally, I’m most suspicious of D’Aubigne.”
“Monsieur D’Aubgine?” said Haidée, surprised. “He is the astronomer who shares a bathroom with Monsieur Legard, correct? He seemed severely traumatized by Monsieur Legard’s death. A killer certainly wouldn’t react that way, could he?”
“You tell me,” the old man replied. “You’re an actress.”
She frowned. “I suppose shock can be feigned convincingly.” She thought of a play she had done two years ago where she had played a grieving widow. She had bawled and cried crocodile tears and had no doubt that everyone in the theatre didn’t believe her. Then there were those more subtle instances when she had cried to win the director’s sympathy—the director never believed her tears. But then everyone in theatre tended to disbelieve each other. As for ordinary people, she doubted they even thought of acting when they confronted something as sudden as a death. But with Roland’s words, a seed of doubt was planted in her mind.
Roland wiped his mouth with the end of his scarf. “D’Aubgine does have cause to dislike Legard—perhaps even to the point of hate,” he whispered. “When he first came to the observatory, Everard put him under Legard’s tutelage. They worked together for some research about studying the parallax of stars. When it was time to present the research at the Royal Academy, Legard claimed most of the authorship even though we all knew that D’Aubgine did most of the work. But no one did anything—Everard said nothing about it. And when the person in charge condones something like this, it is hard to bring this issue up.”
“But is taking credit for someone else’s work really enough reason to kill?” mused Haidée.
“You do not understand the world of academia, Mademoiselle. Intellectual minds have tried to kill each other for much less. It was soon after that when D’Aubgine managed to convince Everard to let him go on the research alone. But that’s the problem. D’Aubigne is very good at doing the work, but he is poor on ideas. Legard is very good on ideas but he is not very good at doing the work. The two need each other even when their personalities do not mesh. Perhaps D’Aubigne realized this and it was too much for him.” Roland cleared his throat. “But what do I know? Take the delusions of an old man as you will.”
Shrewdly, Haidée asked, “And what was your relationship with Monsieur Legard?”
“He was a fellow astronomer and a fellow atheist. That is all.” Roland coughed again, but this time, it sounded somewhat false to her ears. “Pardon me, Mademoiselle. It seems as if the weather has gotten quite cold. I’m afraid my constitution isn’t as good as it used to be.”
Haidée turned to look at the rest of the mourners, but out of the corner of her eye, she observed the old man switch the cane to his other hand and make a strange shuffle with his feet. Her own feet felt suddenly chilly. “That is unfortunate, Monsieur,” she replied softly. “But fear not, I am quite sure that Father DeLorme is almost done with his elegy and we’ll soon be able to go back inside.”