by Nell Goddin
“Accomplice? How do you figure that?”
Charlot sighed. She pushed her chair away from her desk and stood up. “Let me take you by the hand, step by step. A woman was murdered. One person and one person only has disappeared and not been heard from. That makes him our prime suspect.”
“With all due respect, so you’ve said, chief. And I agree that Lapin’s behavior after the murder is suspicious. But how are you dragging Anne-Marie into it? Do you think she knows his whereabouts and is lying about it? Maybe she’s a masterful liar, but she seems genuinely upset and concerned about Lapin’s absence. On the verge of distraught, I’d say.”
“And you believe this show of emotion? You do not think it can be faked?”
“Well, yeah, of course technically I suppose it can. I just don’t believe it is in this case. Just because a thing is possible doesn’t mean it’s remotely likely. What possible reason would Lapin have for strangling that young woman, whom he’d never met before? Everyone at that party had the opportunity to kill Crespelle, so why aren’t we focusing on the motive? Do you know about some connection between the Broussards and the nanny that you haven’t shared with me?”
Charlot turned her back to Paul-Henri. “I’m waiting for the lab reports,” she said. “We’re virtually hamstrung until we get that information. It’s impossible, working with these villagers who have no sense of urgency!”
Paul-Henri was used to Charlot ignoring his questions, but he tried once more. “What is the lab going to tell us beyond the fact that Crespelle was strangled? Do you have some reason to think Anne-Marie was involved, either before or after the murder was committed?”
Charlot ignored him again, causing an angry red to start creeping up his neck. She dropped back into her chair and picked up the phone.
“Put Nagrand on, it’s Chief Charlot. Bonjour to you too…right…yes, that’s exactly what I’m calling about.”
Paul-Henri backed out of the office and took a brisk walk around the block to collect himself. The village looked as it always did, the old golden stones almost glowing in the sunshine, a cat wandering across the street, Madame Tessier sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. It was hard to believe a place of such calm and beauty could also be vulnerable to such violence. When he circled around to the door of the gendarmerie, he had to force himself to go back inside, barely able to stand being in the chief’s presence.
“Honestly, I don’t know how anything gets done in this backwater,” said the chief, striding out from her office. “Turns out the lab screwed up and that’s why it’s taken so long. Some of the samples were mislabeled and they’ve had to start all over again from the beginning.”
Paul-Henri shook his head, not sure how she was able to make him feel that the lab mistake was somehow his fault.
“Nagrand says they still have enough of what they need. Should be any day now.” She got to the door and then said over her shoulder, “Just because Lapin is the number one suspect doesn’t mean I’m sitting back and thinking the case is finished. I’m heading out to talk to the people out at L’Institut Degas. Never trust an artist, that’s what I always say, so I’m not going to give them any free passes.”
“Why don’t you trust artists?” asked Paul-Henri, truly baffled.
“Oh, you know how they are,” said Charlot, leaving him just as confused. “And tomorrow morning, I plan to pay a visit to Molly Sutton. Private investigator, indeed. You might say it’s the perfect cover if one wanted to go on a murdering spree.”
“One death is hardly a spree. Are you seriously suggesting that Molly and Ben had something to do with the murder of Violette Crespelle?”
Chief Charlot just turned the corners of her mouth up as though she were smiling—which she was not—and left the station.
Paul-Henri sat at his desk for a good forty-five minutes before the redness on his neck dissipated, but his fury at having to serve under a woman he did not respect (and in fact loathed) was as intense as ever.
32
Rex Ford, longtime professor at L’Institut Degas, loitered outside Marie-Claire Levy’s office, hoping to run into her as though by chance. His most promising student had been absent for the last two classes, and he wanted to ask Marie-Claire if the boy had called in with an excuse. An everyday sort of task, familiar to teachers of all levels—but Rex was famous for taking a simple thing and making it a thousand times more complicated: a useful trait in an artist, potentially, but one that made being his superior at work often tiresome.
Marie-Claire’s assistant left to have lunch, but still Rex stayed in the corridor, pretending to study something in a notebook as the older woman passed by. Finally Marie-Claire herself emerged, looking well turned out as she always did, her hair in a neat chignon and a white silk blouse draping perfectly around the waist of her gray flannel pencil skirt.
“Rex!” she said, startled. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, bonjour Marie-Claire,” said Rex, as though surprised to see her. “Have you heard anything about the murder case?”
Marie-Claire shook her head. “Nothing that you don’t know. I did hear that Simon Valette hired Molly and Ben, which I found curious. But I’m grateful about it, since I haven’t heard a single positive word about our new chief of gendarmes.”
“Nor I,” said Rex, always pleased to join in on any complaining. “Do you know Charlot bargained at the épicerie? Well, you can’t even call it bargaining—she just goes in, takes what she wants, and throws down any amount of money she pleases!”
“I’ve never heard of anyone doing such a thing.”
“Nor I,” said Rex. “I heard a group of vendors at the Saturday market talking about it. They want to do something to stop her, but they can’t exactly call the gendarmes, can they?”
Marie-Claire shook her head. “Have you…has she contacted you, or Paul-Henri? I expected them to come around long before now. Molly stopped in days ago, but so far, nothing from the gendarmes.”
“Haven’t heard a word,” said Rex. “Not that I expect them to be interested in anything I have to say. The lights went out, I saw and heard nothing, and that’s that. Tough case, it seems to me.”
“Yes,” said Marie-Claire, sneaking a look at her watch.
“You don’t…you don’t think we should mention she was here?”
“No,” said Marie-Claire. “I don’t want the school mixed up in the middle of a murder case. It’s not as though the fact that she happened to apply here had anything to do with what happened.”
Rex cocked his head but said nothing.
“Well, I’ve got to push off, have a meeting in the village.”
“Right, sure,” said Rex. It was not until Marie-Claire was halfway to the village that he remembered he had forgotten to ask about his absent student.
That night, Paul-Henri Monsour spent a little effort on his dinner. He sliced a breast of chicken in half lengthwise and pounded the cutlets thin, breaded them, and fried them until the outside was wonderfully crispy. Then he made a quick sauce from the pan drippings, a dollop of wine, and a knob of butter, poured it over the cutlets, and sat down at his small table with a smile of anticipation.
He took a sip of a nice Bordeaux that had been something of a splurge on his salary; he picked up knife and fork, and then paused with them in midair. His stomach was roiling after another terrifically frustrating day at the station with Chief Charlot. It felt as though there was a pile of crabs inside his belly trying to eat their way out. He took another sip of wine and tried to calm down with no success, then slammed the knife on the table and snatched up his cell phone.
Paul-Henri scrolled through his contacts for some time, not able to remember who he was looking for until he saw the name. Yes, Adam Carron, that was it. An unpleasant fellow, to be sure, but the kind of man who knows how to play politics at work and is good at it. They had been at Officers’ School together, and now Adam was comfortably ensconced at a relatively high administrative level, never having s
ullied himself with actual police work for more than a few months.
Paul-Henri wasn’t positive Adam would remember him, but it was worth a shot. It hadn’t been that many years ago, after all, and he thought Adam was likely to be the sort of person who remembers everyone, in case someday they might be useful to him.
He started to call but stopped himself. How to explain to someone who was not with Charlot, day after day, how colossally inept she was? How to get across that at that very moment she was bumbling through a murder investigation and Castillac’s only hope for justice lay not with the gendarmerie but a pair of civilians (even if they did happen to be rather successful at their work)?
Paul-Henri set the phone down and picked his knife and fork back up again. Just contemplating making the call had settled his stomach somewhat, and he cut a piece of the cutlet and chewed with appreciation.
He just needed to bide his time. Adam Carron would help him, when the time came. He only had to wait and watch for the right moment, and deliverance would be his.
33
The next night, Molly invited the gîte guests over for an apéro, feeling a bit chagrined at how much of her time and energy had been spent on the Crespelle case instead of on them. She was still very worried about the girls, and her interview with Raphael had provided no information that was helpful.
Ah, poor Raphael, she thought. He’s utterly lost, being in this new place. Impulsive, filled with understandable fury—but not dangerous, not really. All bluster, was her judgment of him.
Ben was in Bergerac trying to placate Bernard Petit, since so far the video cameras had recorded nothing of interest.
She hadn’t needed to tidy up much, and after putting bottles and glasses out on the terrace, Molly had a few minutes to kill before the guests arrived. Sitting down at her desk, she tried for the third time to find a phone number for Violette’s sister—and this time, hidden in Violette’s Facebook postings, she thought she might just have it.
I shouldn’t call now, she told herself, knowing she would risk being interrupted. But Molly told herself all kinds of things that she then went ahead and ignored, and this time was no different. She clicked the numbers on her computer and in a wink a woman’s voice came over the speakerphone.
“Hello?” said a faint voice.
“Bonjour, is this Sofia Crespelle? I’m very sorry to disturb you. My name is Molly Sutton, I live in Castillac—”
“Ech!”
“I…I’m so very sorry…about your sister. I am a private investigator,” she said, always feeling silly to call herself that. “I am trying very hard to find out what happened to Violette.”
No answer.
“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? I know it’s an intrusion.”
“How do I know you’re not from one of those papers?”
Molly paused, then realized Sofia was worried about the tabloids getting the story.
“Oh no!” Molly burst out. “I would never! Maybe I can email you, and tell you something about myself? I swear, all I want to do is find justice for your sister.”
“A little late for that now, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so, no. Wouldn’t you be pleased if her killer went to prison?”
“‘Pleased’ is not the word I would choose.”
“Right, that’s…of course not.”
“I appreciate your making an effort. But I must excuse myself now, thank you for calling.”
Click.
Molly sat back in the chair, thinking. Impossible to judge anything about a woman who had just lost her sister to a violent act. It’s no wonder she’s suspicious. At least I have her number now. I’ll try her again later, she thought, startling at the sound of someone rapping on the terrace door.
“Bonsoir!” cried the Jenkinses, peering through the glass door. They had showered and changed after a long day of sightseeing.
“May I make you a kir?” asked Molly, opening the door wide. “And tell me what church you saw today, and what was interesting about it. I am a little embarrassed to admit that once I moved here, I stopped doing much sightseeing. It always gets put off to later, you know?”
“Oh yes,” said Deana, taking a glass.
“I think if I lived here, I would never get anything done because I’d constantly be playing hooky to go look at one more thing,” said Billy. “The culture is just so amazingly rich! The buildings are so old!”
“It is comforting, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no. I do see what you mean, but it can also make me very aware of how fleeting our time is. The old stones aren’t going anywhere, but us? We’re here for a blink of an eye, and then gone…”
“Well, that’s happy talk for cocktail hour!” said Deana, digging him in the ribs.
Billy grinned and kissed the side of Deana’s head. “So today we drove down to Cadouin, to see the abbey there. We were not disappointed, I’ll tell you that! It has the loveliest cloister—you know, an interior garden with a covered walkway all around.”
“It’s enough to make you want to be a nun,” said Deana.
“Heaven forfend,” said Billy, grinning again. “But seriously, I do know what Deana means. You can just imagine a life of contemplation, with simple work and in this beautiful serene place…it makes our hectic lives seem a little crazy.”
Molly nodded. “What you just described? That’s a lot of the reason I decided to leave the States and move here. I had a successful life, at least viewed from the outside. But all that hurrying left me feeling sort of empty.”
“Cheers to a new life!” said Billy, and they clinked glasses.
“Do you miss home, though?” asked Deana.
“Oh yes. Absolutely. Not enough to consider going back for good, but I get pangs sometimes, even sharp ones. I mostly love being a fish out of water, but sometimes…you just want everything to be familiar and easy, you know? So, tell me more about the abbey. Is it very old?”
“Founded in the eleventh century, is that right, Deana? But the main buildings are gothic, built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Not terribly dark, not at all, but lovely. They’ve got a piece of a shroud that was thought to be Christ’s, but turned out to be from Egypt in the eleventh century.”
When they were on their second kir, Todor and Elise came over and joined them, and Molly and the four guests ended up talking and drinking on the terrace for hours, trading stories about traveling and exceptional places they had been. Dinner turned out to be olives and some garlic bread Molly scrounged up out of a stale baguette, but all of them went to bed happy that night.
Ben had sneaked into the house without disturbing them, and Molly was happy to climb in next to him as he read yet another volume of Napoleonic history.
“Should we talk about the case?” she asked, her eyes already starting to close.
“The Petit case is going nowhere.”
“Crespelle?”
“Not sure what our next move is.”
Molly nodded sleepily. “I talked to Violette’s sister today. Do you think it’s strange that she didn’t come here?”
“What could she do?” Ben considered the question. “I can see it both ways, I suppose. Maybe they weren’t even close—not all sisters are, of course. If they were close, she might want to see the last things her sister saw before her death, to be in the last place her sister had been alive. But on the other hand, I could see avoiding Castillac forever. I wouldn’t relish a meeting with the Valettes, that’s for certain.”
“Camille, at any rate,” said Molly, snuggling against Ben with her eyes closed.
“I don’t see why you’re so certain Simon is innocent. Sometimes I get the feeling you are quite vulnerable to male charms, chérie.” He turned to see her expression but Molly had sunk into sleep, and was beginning, just faintly, to snore.
Early Tuesday morning, Simon was having a cup of coffee in the kitchen when Camille breezed in, dressed in a smart suit with an expensive handbag over one arm.
“Glorious morning,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the lips.
Simon maintained an even expression. “I see you’re feeling better. Excellent! And looking quite chic, my darling. Do you have plans, or is that suit just for the Valettes to admire en famille?”
Camille peeled the top from a container of yogurt and dumped the yogurt into a porcelain dish, once belonging to one of the girls, that had bunnies around the rim. “I’m going into the village,” she said. “I’m not going to allow this business with Violette to turn everyone against me. It occurred to me that as long as I’m acting like a hermit, people in the village are free to make up any kind of story about me they like. And the only way to counteract that is to show them who I am, in person.”
“Brava!” said Simon, with well-acted enthusiasm. “I do wonder…not to be a pest, but do you think—for Castillac, after all—you might be just a little overdressed? We’re not on the Boulevard des Capucines anymore, after all.”
Camille stared at him. Her shoulders rose up around her ears and the corners of her mouth turned down.
“Of course, wear what you like, what makes you feel beautiful,” Simon added, sipping his coffee. “I only bring it up because you are explicitly talking about wanting to make a certain impression, so….”
Camille ate a spoonful of yogurt, opening her mouth very wide so as not to disturb her lipstick.
“Are the girls up?” asked Simon, trying to change the subject.
Camille looked at him wonderingly and he realized his wife had not thought of them at all.
“I’ll see to them,” he said lightly. “They don’t eat much before school anyway.” He refilled his cup, kissed Camille on the cheek, and left the kitchen.
Camille stood for a long moment staring out of the window over the sink. Then she walked over to the counter and a wooden block that held a collection of Sabatier knives. She slid a six-inch chef’s knife out of the block, tilted it in the light to see it glint, and slipped it into her handbag.