From the heights of Fort Louis, Marigot seems to fit entirely between the bay, the dry hills and the still water of the lagoon. The town is modest in size, but it remains the main town on the French side of Saint-Martin. Its low houses, its facades faded by the sun and its crowded streets give it the appearance of a small tropical capital which has long since given up competing with the tumult of its Dutch neighbor.
A few kilometers away, Philipsburg welcomes cruise ships like floating buildings. Further south, planes descend over Maho Beach before landing on the Princess Juliana runway. Each arrival unleashes a new wave of visitors who spread across the island in search of beaches, tax-free alcohol and easy-to-photograph exoticism.
A few tourists push on to Marigot. They come to spend their dollars in the luxury boutiques, jewelry stores and restaurants located around the Marina Royale. They usually only stay for a few hours. Their itinerary is set in advance: visit to the fort, visit to the market, lunch facing the sea, then return to the air-conditioned coaches.
Tourist buses cross the island in a slow movement of tropical digestion. In Marigot, visitors buy t-shirts and caps in the colors of Friendly Island. They sometimes negotiate a few dollars, more for the pleasure of bargaining than out of real necessity. They eat grilled chicken, accras and ribs in the lolos that line the bay, then return to their air-conditioned cargo ships before the heat, mosquitoes or surrounding poverty disrupt their vacation for too long.
Apart from the carnival gatherings, the city maintains a gloomy atmosphere. Many businesses seem to be operating slowly. Behind certain windows, sellers wait for customers who no longer come. ATMs are rare and often out of service. Buildings still bear the scars of successive cyclones.
Unlike its Dutch counterpart, with its casinos, clubs, brothels and neon signs, Marigot seems to feel an instinctive distrust of commerce. The town accepts the money, but seems to refuse to show its affection too openly.
On the lagoon side, the Marina Royale looks like an area forgotten since the passage of Cyclone Irma. Dislocated pontoons sink into murky water. A few dismasted sailboats still cling to tired buoys, as if they were waiting for an owner who will never return. Sea scooters sometimes cross this scenery with their aggressive roars.
The water in the lagoon is thick and stagnant. Plastic bottles float between the hulls. Molluscs proliferate on the pillars eaten away by salt. Sewage, hydrocarbons and silt make up an iridescent surface where no one seriously thinks about swimming.
In the Marigot market, Betty Lenox sells t-shirts, scarves and caps to tourists coming off the liners from Philipsburg. She knows the coach schedules and the arrival days of the largest ships. She knows which visitors like to chat, which ones want to negotiate and which ones can buy without looking at the price.
Betty carefully lays out her goods every morning. Bright colors attract tourists: green palm trees, orange sunsets, French and Dutch flags united under the slogan Friendly Island. She smiles, jokes in several languages and tells guests exactly what they want to hear about the island.
Between two sales, she scans the bay in the hope of seeing Jacques' sailboat among the masts at anchor. She sometimes mistakes a white hull with that of Picsou. Her heart speeds up, then she recognizes an unknown boat and resumes her work as if nothing had happened.
Every day, Betty sends a message to Jacques. She asks him where he is, when he plans to return and if he still thinks about her. She almost always adds the icon of a ring. At first, Jacques answered. Now, his messages sometimes go unanswered for several days.
Betty left Honduras aboard the Picsou. Jacques was the captain. With him, she traveled along the coast of Guatemala, crossed the waters of Belize then reached Mexico before reaching Saint-Martin. She keeps memories of this trip of silent anchorages, night shifts and meals shared in the narrow cabin of the sailboat.
In her village, sending girls to school was not considered a priority. Betty learned to read and write late in life. She deciphers the short messages, the prices and the signs, but the administrative forms give her the impression of being designed to humiliate her.
However, she has other skills. She knows how to remember the face of a deadbeat, assess the wealth of a client by their shoes, run a small business and recognize the houses where it is better to never be alone. She also knows how to clean a hotel room in a few minutes, make a kitchen shine and tidy up the traces left by others.
Betty doesn't say she cleans. She says she keeps things from decaying.
After some work on his sailboat, Jacques left Saint-Martin to head towards the Virgin Islands. He had to come back quickly. He had talked about a few weeks, maybe a month. Betty didn't remember the details. She only remembered that he would come back.
She stayed in Sandy Ground, in a small house where she shared with Lily Bros. Betty's room contains little furniture: a bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table and several bags filled with clothes. Above the bed, she hung a photograph of Picsou taken in Marigot Bay.
She is waiting for Jacques, Jacques the sailor, Jacques the traveler, Jacques the missing.
When he returns, they will get married. They will have a house with a terrace. They will have children. Jacques will repair boats and Betty will open a shop. She often imagines this life with a precision that almost allows her to forget its lack of real foundations.
On Sunday, Betty attends mass said by Pastor Adam Legall. She settles down among the women in their Sunday best and prays that Jacques will return. She also prays that there will be many customers, that Lily returns safe and sound, and that the contradictory signs she receives end up forming an understandable message.
In the Marigot market, among the bananas, mangoes and papayas, Betty also sells some bracelets and charms supposed to protect against the evil eye. Tourists appreciate these objects when they are accompanied by a story. Betty affirms that some have been blessed, that others ward off jealousy or favor the return of the loved one.
She herself doesn't always know what she believes. She sometimes smiles inwardly when a customer buys energy protection made with a piece of string and three plastic beads. However, in the evening, Betty wears several of these bracelets on her wrist.
She got organized. She works regularly at the La Semana hotel. She also cleans for the island's wealthy residents. She knows the schedules, habits and domestic secrets of several families. She knows who drinks in secret, who sleeps in a separate room and who goes through their partner's bag.
Betty says little about what she observes. Secrets are a currency best kept until the day it can become useful.
Among her clients, there is Isaac. He explained to her that, for all important decisions, she could trust Tatiana. Tatiana analyzes vibrations, identifies hostile influences and protects those who trust her with her personal magnetic shield.
Isaac showed Betty videos in which Tatiana talks about waves, frequencies and emotional interference. The words are complicated, but the images are clear. Blue halos surround the protected people. Red arrows represent negative energies pushed outwards.
Betty wants to believe it. The world would be simpler if dangers had a color and if it was enough to activate a shield to keep them at bay.
When she finishes her work, Isaac sometimes walks her home. Betty rides behind him on his motorcycle. She places her hands around his waist and immediately feels the power she has over him. When she gets closer, Isaac's driving becomes less regular. His shoulders stiffen. The motorcycle swerves slightly before he corrects his trajectory.
Betty is aware of this. This discovery reassures her. In the homes where she works, she often feels invisible. On the motorcycle, she can change the direction of a man with a simple movement of her body.
At the Yacht Club, Betty sometimes works as a waitress. She brings beers, clears the tables and observes the customers. She listens to the conversations of boaters, yacht owners and businessmen. They speak in front of her as if she doesn't understand their language.
Betty learns a lot of things this way. It seems that some large yachts cross the sea at full speed without respecting other boats. It seems that drunken captains take the helm. It also seems that some collisions are presented as accidents in order to avoid insurance, lawsuits and investigations.
Betty sometimes imagines Picsou being hit by one of these floating monsters. She imagines Jacques being thrown against the hull, then disappearing into the dark water.
If anyone touched Jacques' sailboat, she would avenge him.
No one touches Jacques.
Jules enjoys this rare privilege: being freed from the ordinary obligations necessary for survival. He has no walls to paint, no locomotive to drive, no hotel rooms to clean to earn his living. Like an old sage, he can devote his days to a few ideograms traced in his notebooks.
By rereading the symbols lined up the day before, he looks for continuity, a beginning, perhaps even a truth. Above all, he tries to answer the questions that have been piling up for years in his desk drawers. Some concern deaths. Others concern living people who would have preferred to remain forgotten.
The agency’s activity is at its lowest. The phone hardly rings anymore. A layer of dust has formed on the least recent files. Jules sometimes wonders if he wouldn't be better off closing up shop for good and devoting the rest of his life to observing boats from a terrace.
He is at this point in his thoughts when a silhouette emerges behind the glass door of his office.
Lily Bros enters with a determined step. Jules immediately notices her face with fine features, her long legs emerging from an elegant dress and this way of moving which oscillates between professional confidence and old fatigue.
She doesn't sit down right away. She examines the desk, the notebooks, the unkempt plants and the window overlooking the street. She seems to be checking that she hasn't gone to the wrong place.
Jules points her to a chair.
Lily gets straight to the point. Her roommate, Betty Lenox, died at Louis-Constant-Fleming hospital. Doctors detected several incompatible substances in his body. They talked about poisoning, then drug poisoning. The police questioned a few people before temporarily closing the case.
Lily does not accept this conclusion. Betty sometimes took pills, but she was also afraid of being poisoned. For several weeks, she had been repeating that certain people were trying to steal her energy, her money or her destiny.
Jules asks her what job she does. Lily shrugs slightly before responding:
Lily: I work as an escort. A whore, in other words.
Her voice contains neither provocation nor shame. It sets out information that Jules will have to take into account, in the same way as an address or a schedule.
There is no corpse to examine. The hospital handed the body over to a funeral home before Lily understood the importance of requesting a second opinion. Betty was buried quickly. No one requested an additional autopsy.
What’s left of her is now elsewhere.
There are his clothes in the Sandy Ground house. His goods on the market. Medicines without a prescription. Talismans. Religious objects. A phone full of messages addressed to Jacques.
There are also its digital traces: conspiracy forums, videos from esoteric influencers, advertisements for magnetic protections, incoherent conversations, orders for food supplements and research on household poisons.
Jules wonders about this era saturated with information where the most fragile minds drift in the middle of an ocean of contradictory beliefs. Everyone can now find a voice to confirm their fears, a store to give them shape and an expert to price them.
Lily places Betty's phone on the desk.
The screen is cracked. A notification still appears.
A message sent to Jacques three days before his death.
A single icon.
A ring.
As he needs to find clues, Jules goes to the Pleasure House, the Sandy Ground residence where Betty shared a room with Lily. The name of the place seems excessively optimistic to him. The facade is cracked, the gate does not close well and several electric cables hang above the courtyard.
The room Betty occupies contains all kinds of strange objects: talismans, energy protections, stimulating pills, unlabeled vials and religious objects. A Bible rests next to a sachet of powder supposed to repel bad influences. On the wall, a photograph of Jacques is surrounded by red ribbons.
Jules opens the drawers, examines the boxes and photographs the packaging. Several products were purchased on the Internet. Some promise to restore energy, purify the blood or strengthen clairvoyance.
Under a pile of clothes, at the bottom of a cupboard, Jules discovers a weapon. This is a Block19, a compact pistol whose appearance almost resembles that of a toy. The weapon is real. The charger is engaged.
Jules understands that, in this house, the poison circulated as much in the minds as in the bodies.
He questions Betty's relatives, the people for whom she cleaned and her colleagues at the Marigot market. He also questions employees of the clubs where she worked. The testimonies contradict each other.
For some, Betty was cheerful, hardworking and generous. For others, she had become suspicious, unpredictable and sometimes threatening. Several people heard her talk about conspiracies, bad vibes and people she had to punish.
Little by little, Jules connects the elements. Several hypotheses emerge.
He goes to the Gillets, to the Pamplemousse villa. The personality of Élise Gillet surprises him. He perceives in her a perfectly controlled class contempt, a cold social violence which never requires raising one's voice. Élise speaks of Betty as a member of the staff who has become unstable.
Would this boss be capable of poisoning her servant?
Betty reportedly drank a glass of unusual-tasting rum at home. Élise claims that it contained nothing other than rum and a few ice cubes. Jules notices, however, that she keeps several powerful medications in a cabinet.
According to another hypothesis, the poisoning would follow an ideological logic. It would have started on the Marigot market. It would be linked to moral intransigence, an ecological obsession and a fascination with the mechanisms of contamination.
Félicie would have given Betty a pill intended to combat fatigue. She claims it was a natural supplement. No packaging was found. Several witnesses, however, describe a tense relationship between the two women.
Poisoning suggests an indirect, almost intimate method. We don't hit Betty. We give her something to drink, to swallow or to believe.
Betty's friends also talk about Jacques. According to Lily, Betty had a great love affair with him. However, the relationship between the two lovers appears unstable and ambiguous. Jacques left without giving a precise date. Betty sometimes threatened to harm herself to force him to return.
Emotional dependence, jealousy, loneliness and psychological distress: Jules wonders about a relationship that has become toxic. He is considering a voluntary overdose. He also wonders if Jacques could have provided Betty with the drugs found in her room.
Three suspects emerge.
Élise has the products, the contempt and the habit of dominating.
Félicie has the pills, the conviction and the fear of contamination.
Jacques has the emotional connection, the silence and the power to destroy Betty without even being present.
Jules still has no certainty.
He only knows that Betty has been poisoned several times: by substances, by beliefs and by the promises of those who claimed to protect her.
The Marigot market is overflowing with warmth and color. The tourists move slowly between the stalls like fish in water that is too warm. The same souvenirs are sold everywhere: fluorescent caps, magnets, t-shirts. The merchants smile with the polite fatigue of people who have been repeating the same sentences for years.
Me, I'm just trying to earn a little money with my scarves. That’s when I notice her. She doesn't look at anything. Not really. Her eyes dart across objects as if searching for something else behind the decor. A dry, nervous woman, with a strange way of holding her bag close to her, as if it contained a dangerous animal. I smile at her.
Me: Hello miss! Look at the pretty scarf I have for you!
She stops suddenly. His gaze fixes on me with an almost painful intensity. For a second, I feel like she's going to leave without responding.
Her: I don't want a scarf. I just want to chat. Do you want it?
The way he speaks makes me uncomfortable. Yet I continue to smile. In a market, you quickly learn that you have to smile even when instinct says otherwise.
Me: I want to. Where are you from?
Her: I live here, in Saint-Martin. And you?
Me: I am a traveler. I’m from Honduras…but I live here now.
I find myself talking more than expected. Maybe because she looks at me as if every word confirms something she already knows.
Me: Besides, that doesn’t really suit me. I always feel tired. As if the island was draining me of my energy.
His face lights up slightly.
Her: Yes… it shows, you seem exhausted.
She slowly opens her bag. At this moment, a current of hot air passes through the market. The tarpaulins of the stands flap in the wind. A group of tourists laughs very loudly.
Her: I have pills to combat fatigue. Do you want one?
She holds the pill between two fingers with a strange, almost religious precaution. I hesitate. I still don't know why I'm taking it. Maybe because she speaks with such confidence. Maybe because I'm really tired. Or maybe because there are people who are very good at recognizing the cracks in others. I swallow the pill with a sip of lukewarm water. She smiles. It's a tiny smile, almost satisfied.
Among the three suspects, Félicie is the only one to have given Betty a substance directly shortly before she felt unwell. The act took place in broad daylight, at the Marigot market, almost without precaution. A small pill presented as a cure for fatigue. Betty took it and a few hours later, her condition suddenly deteriorated. For Jules, the chronology is enough to make the track serious.
He questions market traders. Many remember Félicie. She is not difficult to recognize when she speaks quickly, observes everything and simultaneously seems to be listening to a conversation located several meters away. A saleswoman confirms having seen her with Betty.
Jules: They were arguing?
The saleswoman: Not really.
Jules: They seemed friends?
The saleswoman thinks.
The saleswoman: Let’s just say they seemed to know each other well enough to no longer need to be polite.
This definition suits Jules quite well.
He then looks for what Félicie could have accused Betty of and Isaac quickly appears. Félicie has an old, complicated relationship with him that is increasingly riddled with jealousy. Betty also knows Isaac. She met him in Saint-Martin and their proximity did not escape Félicie. For someone else, Jules would simply talk about romantic rivalry. At Félicie, things rarely become simple. She accumulates signs, compares times, brings together encounters and interprets coincidences. The repeated presence of Betty around Isaac can thus become, in his system of thought, proof of a much broader intention.
Betty also represents everything that Félicie looks at with suspicion. She works in places frequented by tourists, rubs shoulders with wealthy clients, travels between bars, yachts and hotels. Her way of life can easily be integrated into one of the stories that Félicie constructs to explain the world. Jules never quite knows where political conviction ends for her and where personal interpretation begins.
He asks her directly what she gave Betty.
Félicie: A pill.
Jules: I understood.
Félicie: So why do you ask?
Jules: Because I would like to know what was in there.
Félicie hesitates.
Félicie: Plants.
Jules: What plants?
Félicie: Useful plants.
Jules: Is this a botanical category?
Félicie: For me, yes.
The conversation does not advance much, but it at least confirms that Félicie does not deny having prepared the tablet. Jules then asks to examine what she keeps in her dressing room. There he found bottles, powders, dried leaves, oils, some ordinary medicines and several preparations whose labels did not indicate anything precise enough to reassure a pharmacist. Félicie claims to use these mixtures to protect herself, improve concentration, treat pain or neutralize certain influences.
Jules: What influences?
Félicie: It depends.
Jules: Of what?
Félicie: Influence.
The medical analyzes concerning Betty provide more. They indicate the presence of a substance compatible with the ingestion of a non-prescribed product. Nothing yet allows us to identify its origin with certainty, but the possibility of poisoning is becoming difficult to rule out. Was Félicie really trying to kill Betty? With her, Jules knows that intention can take curious paths. She can give a dangerous product in the belief that she is neutralizing a threat, protecting Isaac, correcting an imbalance or simply preventing something that only she thinks she has identified. The result is much less abstract. Betty is dead.
Among the three tracks, Félicie's is now the only one that directly links a specific gesture to the deterioration of Betty's condition. Jules is still missing what Félicie really thought she was accomplishing when she handed out this pill.
The answer belongs to Félicie.
I know Milton frequents the Simpson Bay Yacht Club. People like him have their habits. They like to give the impression that they can appear anywhere, but they always return to the same places, the same tables, the same boats and the same glasses.
Since Jacques' shipwreck, his name has come up regularly. Some speak of an accident. Others claim that Milton's GoFast deliberately cut off the sailboat's route. No one knows exactly what happened, but everyone knows someone who knows someone who was there.
I don’t need to know everything. Jacques is dead. Milton is alive. That's enough for me. On FaxInfo, I find several articles on the activities of ChronoEmpire. Milton rarely appears there by name. This is precisely what bothers me. Important men like to be photographed. Dangerous men prefer to stay away from photography.
PetitFaitout helps me too. It brings together testimonies, rumors, messages deleted then copied elsewhere. Much of it is probably false. But when the same stories come up often enough, I start to believe there is something behind them. We talk about intercepted boats, threats, people disappearing, contracts executed for ChronoEmpire.
And Jacques. I read everything. Then I start again. After a while, I'm not sure if I'm looking for information or just reasons to do what I've already decided.
The Block19 appears in an advertisement between two articles. “Lightweight. Reliable. Immediate protection. I find the advertising almost reassuring. They show a woman running alone in the evening with the gun in her bag. She smiles. She probably has a dog, a gym membership and no Milton Fleet in her life.
I buy the Block19. I don't train much. I have no intention of becoming a specialist. The gesture only needs to work once. The day I go to the Yacht Club, I leave the gun in my bag.
Simpson Bay is already full of noise. The shrouds slam against the masts, the engines turn around the marina and the waiters circulate between the tables with trays loaded with bottles. I sit slightly apart. I'm waiting. I order something that I hardly drink. From time to time, I look towards the pontoon.
I think of Jacques. I think of his boat. I especially think of this idea that has haunted me since his disappearance: someone continued their life normally after destroying theirs.
Then the GoFast arrives. I recognize Milton before he even set foot on the pontoon. He doesn't look around like someone who would be afraid. He walks with the tranquility of a man accustomed to others moving aside. He settles down. We bring him his drink without asking him what he wants. This makes me angry for some ridiculous reason. Even here, everyone already knows what Milton wants, while no one seems to have asked what Jacques wanted.
I keep my hand in my bag. I could still leave. This possibility exists for several minutes. I watch Milton drink, talk to someone, even smile. So I think about everything I have been taught about God. The good. Evil. Forgiveness. The judgment. I ask internally for a sign. Milton turns his head towards me. Our eyes meet. I decide this is the sign. I take out Block19. He sees me. For a second his face changes. The man who seemed to control everything around him understands that he has just lost the advantage. I shoot.
The noise is much more violent than in the videos. My arm goes up. People immediately scream. Milton gets up. I shoot again. I don't aim well. I aim well enough. The tables are turning. Someone falls near me. A woman screams. I see Milton reaching for his gun.
I shoot again. This time he falls. I stay still for a fraction of a second. I had imagined feeling something specific. Relief. Of justice. Maybe even the presence of Jacques. I don't feel any of this. Only the noise. So I put the gun away and run.
I walk through the Yacht Club while everyone is still trying to understand what just happened. Outside, I walk along the marina then reach the road towards the Simpson Bay bridge. I don't turn around. God will tell me later if he approves. For now, it's best for me to walk away.