Murder on the Ile Sordou by M. L. Longworth Read Free Book Online Page B

his life, speechless. He looked up at the waitress and saw, in her big brown eyes, his own at twenty-two. She looked terrified. Hadn’t he been just as nervous and bewildered by adult life as she was now? The Verlaque family wealth and prestige only partly softened all the apprehension he felt at that age.
    And then he laughed and put his hands together and began to clap. Marine and Sylvie quickly followed suit, Sylvie adding some fist pumps, and Eric Monnier, who had witnessed the whole thing (as he couldn’t take his eyes off of Marine Bonnet), clapped and yelled, “Bravo!” Bill Hobbs began to film the scene with his new iPhone and couldn’t wait to show it to Ian Bertwhistle.
    Maxime Le Bon looked around the room and saw his diners happy, and laughing. Even Clément and Delphine Viale seemed to be having a good time.
    Marie-Thérèse had at once realized what she had done wrong. She had practiced sipping wine with Serge and knew what a good wine should smell, and taste, like. And she knew that it was Chubby Man who was meant to have tested the wine, not her. But now he was clapping, as was Maxime Le Bon.
    Serge Canzano, having heard the commotion, came running into the dining room, and Le Bon motioned for him to take another wineglass to Verlaque’s table. Canzano set down an empty Riedel glass, and Marie-Thérèse slowly poured some wine into it. She smiled at Verlaque, who swirled the wine around and then sniffed at it, and tasted it. “You’re right,” he said. “It is good. Very good indeed.” He didn’t want to teach her that you only need sniff the wine, to see if it was corked, and then say, “It’s fine.” She’d learn that, probably first thing tomorrow morning.
    â€œBravo!” Monnier yelled once again.
    Marie-Thérèse then poured wine into Marine’s glass, who said, “Thank you,” and into Sylvie’s, who said, “Chin-chin!” and took a big gulp.
    â€œI’ll be back . . .
momentarily
 . . . with your first course,” Marie-Thérèse said. She felt, all of a sudden, a surge of power and confidence. She had a feeling that the job would be easy from now on, and she would grow to like it more and more with each passing day. She turned around and walked through the dining room, beaming. It was the first time in her life that, although she had made a mistake, she had made people laugh, and be happy. It made her joyous. She walked by the famous actor’s table (she had never seen any of his films, but thought he was funny in the dog-food commercials), and Alain Denis raised one eyebrow at her and frowned in a way that she knew was not kind. Émile Villey, back at his lookout post, also saw the actor’s callous stare and rushed to be at the kitchen door when Marie-Thérèse walked in.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    â€œThat was quite a scene back there,” Clément Viale said, swirling his whiskey in a cut-crystal tumbler.
    â€œShe’ll be able to tell her grandchildren the story,” Marine said.
    Viale smiled. “At any rate, that was nice of you to applaud her, Dough Boy. A younger Verlaque would not have taken that so well, if I’m remembering correctly.”
    Verlaque rubbed his stomach, not seeming to care about his nickname. He crossed his legs and sipped a bit of the eighteen-year-old Lagavulin. “Stranger than fiction,” he said. “If you were to put that scene in a novel, no one would believe it. It made my day.”
    â€œWhat was
Clément
like at that age?” Delphine Viale asked, leaning forward and resting her chin on her incredibly thin and bejeweled hands.
    Verlaque laughed, sensing the tension between the couple. “Like the waitress,” he said. The group looked on, perplexed. “Full of bewilderment for what lies ahead in life, and naïve too,” he continued. “Not yet aware of all