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was peevish. “I am Madame Suez-Panama.”
    Anne Marie moved forward. “I am Madame Laveaud.” She held out her hand but the old woman kept her arms beneath the blanket.
    “I spoke to Marcel this morning and he suggested I speak to you. He says you rarely leave the house and I happened to be passing through Morne-à-l’Eau.” Anne Marie spoke apologetically. “I have just come from the beach with my son.…” She added foolishly, “It is Wednesday today.”
    The woman said nothing.
    “I thought I could drop by for a few words with you.”
    The leaves of the potted plant rustled. A cat walked over the planks of the wooden floor. Fabrice was silent, his body pressed against Anne Marie’s leg.
    “About Hégésippe Bray. I am the juge d’instruction. I have the responsibility of preparing the enquiry.”
    “What enquiry?”
    “The murder of Raymond Calais.” Anne Marie coughed. “I should really have asked you to come to Pointe-à-Pitre. I’ve already seen Monsieur Suez-Panama. And since I was passing through Morne-à-l’Eau.…” Again she coughed. “There are a few questions that I should like to ask about your brother—about your half-brother.”
    “Hégésippe will die if he’s kept in prison.”
    “I have come to see you personally here because there are certain things that I need to know, Madame Suez-Panama.”
    “Raymond Calais was an evil man.”
    “Did your half-brother kill him?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Then who did?”
    “I am not a policeman.”
    “It would appear Hégésippe Bray had a motive.”
    “A lot of people had a motive.” A harsh, rasping voice. “Raymond Calais deserved to die.”
    “If Hégésippe Bray didn’t shoot Monsieur Calais, why weren’t there any finger prints?”
    “Why have you arrested him?”
    “Monsieur Bray has not been arrested. He’s merely helping us by answering a few questions.”
    “If he hasn’t been arrested, why isn’t he free? Why can’t he go back to Sainte Marthe?”
    “I hope to be able to send him there very shortly.”
    “Headstrong.”
    There was a long silence and then the woman sighed. “Even when he was young, Hégésippe was headstrong. Like all men. Proud and so sure he could look after himself. Never wanted help from others. Never sought our advice. A fool like all the rest of them.” The old woman sat back and the rocking chair creaked. “An innocent fool—and a good one. Good to his mother andgood to me. We were the only women Hégésippe ever really loved—and Mother and I were certainly the only ones who ever really loved him … loved him as he deserved to be loved.” She sighed again, the cold voice now less unsympathetic. “Hégésippe sent money from the trenches so that I could go to school. The
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and then my job as a teacher—I’d never have had all that without Hégésippe.” The chair creaked. “Always so kind—but that never stopped him from being a fool.” She clicked her tongue. “The woman from Martinique—he should never have had anything to do with her. At his age. Scheming and evil. All she ever wanted was his money.”
    “What money?”
    “She wanted the money from the land. The land he’d bought from Calais.”
    “The same land that Raymond Calais took?”
    Madame Suez-Panama retorted, “Just because Raymond Calais took it doesn’t mean Hégésippe murdered him.”
    “Your half-brother was sent to French Guyana. Why did you never stop Raymond Calais from taking your half-brother’s land?”
    A short, bitter laugh. “By the time I returned here in 1946, it was already too late. Raymond Calais had taken everything. There was nothing that I could do. What proof did I have? Me against a powerful
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?”
    Fabrice had buried his face into Anne Marie’s side. She ran her hand through the hair thick with sea salt.
    “I went to see him, you know.”
    “Who?”
    “It must have been last year. Calais never liked me—but I managed to get him to agree to giving