Her eyes adjusted, her psyche tried to.

He appeared to be assessing this as he informed her, ‘It’s started.You have to help me.’

‘What has started?’ She sat, feeling his eyes, distracted, forgetting to offer a chair.

‘They’re going to kill me.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. They. Everyone. These people…’

He may have been paranoid, but she believed him. Automatically? The harsh thing she had discerned in the eyes of certain people around town came flooding back. ‘And so?’

‘They killed my dog.’

‘Your dog?’ No matter how you might imagine such a moment, you cannot plan how you’ll react when you actually come face to face with a star. Despite the tarnish of shame, Luc Malarmé remained a megastar, and Aliette was bedazzled, not all there, as she mumbled an apology. ‘Well, we don’t really handle that sort of thing. We are more for serious crimes. Not that killing a man’s dog isn’t a serious matter, it’s just —’ She was talking too much and he was retreating back inside himself. Leaving her, for an instant, in something of a panic. ‘But wait!…I mean, wait…’ Not that he had moved a physical inch. ‘Have you reported it to the gendarmes?’ The uniformed police were part of the community in a way judicial police could never be and better positioned for an investigation into the killing of a dog.

The gendarmes — and dogs — lived much closer to the ground.

But he hadn’t. ‘I don’t want all the attention the gendarmes will bring.’

It was a matter of fact and they both knew it.

‘I suppose I could take a look at it.’ Adding (finally), ‘Sit, please. Tell me what you can.’

He sat, hunched forward, hands clutched in his lap like a man explaining to his priest.

He had been working on restarting the grapevines on the land adjacent to his villa. They had been abandoned for six years. ‘I received a letter from Francis saying he wanted to retire and I —’

‘Francis?’

‘Francis Fernandez. The man I bought my land from. He worked my vines and looked after the place. But he’s old and…’ a shrug, ‘…well, I wasn’t there, was I?’

Aliette murmured, ‘No.’ Thought, You were in prison for killing Miriam Monette.

Luc Malarmé nodded into his folded hands. ‘That was during the darkest part, halfway in. It felt like forever at that point. I was losing hope. A very dark time… I wrote Francis, telling him to let the vines go. To retire and forget about me and the place.