by Nell Goddin
Sighing and feeling a pang of hunger, Molly asked a few more incidental questions, said her goodbyes, and made her way to Café de la Place to meet Ben for lunch. She hoped that the doctor’s reluctant opinion of Camille might finally be the thing to sway him.
36
“You’ve been feeling better,” Simon commented to his wife as he prepared to take a shower.
“Why do you say that?” she asked. Her tone was anxious and Simon turned toward her. He wished he had said nothing. “Why, Simon?” she said with urgency. “I think it is only that I am learning to fake it more successfully.” She lifted her chin and turned away from him. “None of you in this family understands me. I am surrounded by people—by noise, by all these needs and wants and pressures—but I am utterly solitary.”
“We all are, when you get down to it,” said Simon quietly.
“No! I am more alone than all of you!”
Simon sighed a deep sigh. Not for the first time he regretted ever meeting Camille. But how was he to guess that that elegant young woman would turn out to be dangerously imbalanced, that her emotional state would zigzag by the hour so that no one in the house ever felt safe?
He dropped his clothes on the floor and stepped into the hot shower. He was filthy from working with the stones and the water pouring off him was at first brown and then gray. The water was very hot and soothing. His eyes closed.
He did not see his wife enter the bathroom. Or see that she had a knife in her hand, an expression of rage deforming her face.
37
Waving at Pascal, Ben came into the café and took a seat by the window. A cool breeze had kicked up and hardly anyone was having lunch on the terrace. Molly appeared a few minutes later and they kissed cheeks before settling in their chairs.
“I could eat a horse,” she said. “Um, does Madame Longhale ever put horse on the menu? Because I didn’t mean that literally.”
Ben laughed. “I think she prefers beef and lamb,” he said. “And duck, of course. All good cooks in the Périgord know their way around a duck.”
Pascal arrived brandishing new menus. “Maman may have gotten a little carried away this time,” he said to them. “She wanted to shake things up, said she was bored making the same thing day after day. So the entire menu is different.”
“No beef stew?” asked Ben, stricken.
“Not for now,” said Pascal. “Please excuse me, I’ve got a table I have to get to—” He made a short bow and hurried away.
“Now what in the world was that about?” asked Molly.
Ben looked up from the menu. “What?”
“Pascal. He’s always the most charming man in the entire village—”
“Ahem.”
“—excepting you, of course. Didn’t you notice he seemed a little short with us? Not mad, but like…like he wanted to get away?”
“I didn’t notice anything. I am busy mourning the beef stew I had planned to order.”
“And—when he left, he made that excuse about another table, but he just ducked into the kitchen. Didn’t go to another table at all.”
“Hmm,” said Ben, studying the menu with intense focus.
“Hmph,” said Molly, opening hers and beginning to read. “I’m just saying that never once in the years I have lived in Castillac has Pascal not been warm and delightful when greeting me.”
“Do you consider that rude?” Ben folded his menu and put it down.
“No, not rude. More…distracted. Wanting to get away from us.”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe he’s not in the mood for any talk about the investigation. It is true that when we’re on a case, we hardly speak of anything else.”
Molly nodded, unconvinced. “Maybe it’s just Bad Manners Day here at the café…I see Boris whatever-his-last-name-is sitting over there. Do you know him? He’s been driving a delivery truck for the renovation job. Do not like.”
Ben dropped his napkin to the floor and sneaked a look when picking it back up. “Never seen him before. Must be new to the village.”
“Is it totally selfish of me to wish the gates had closed after I got here?”
Pascal returned and took their orders with efficiency—a seafood quiche for Molly and roast pork for Ben—and headed back to the kitchen without any further conversation.
“See what I mean? The place isn’t crowded. He’s avoiding us!”
“Oh, Molly, you’re like a dog with a bone,” said Ben with a sigh. “It’s just a moment in time. I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe he’s coming down with a cold or has a blister on his heel. Could be a million reasons he doesn’t feel like socializing today.”
“Yes, if he were a normal person. But this is Pascal we’re talking about.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, okay, I’ll drop it. You have anything to report on the Petit case?”
“Not a thing. It’s crossed my mind that…that Monsieur Petit is not being entirely forthcoming with me.”
“How so?”
“Well, as you know, I set up video cameras in strategic locations. As an aside, they were less expensive than you might think and I’m sure we’ll have occasion to use them in the future. At any rate, they have produced absolutely nothing. I’ve watched a lot of footage of a cat wandering along the side of the house but not a single human except for the housekeeper and Petit himself. He has not reported anything else stolen.”
“Can you think of anything else to do?”
“At this point, no. I’m all ears if you’ve got anything.”
Molly was listening, but her eyes followed Pascal as he waited on a table in the far corner and went outside to check on one hardy couple seated on the terrace. She and Ben chatted about the weather, about some of the places the Jenkinses had told them about that they wanted to get around to visiting, and then, as usual, circled back to the case at hand.
“It’s just unbearable to me that those little girls are being mistreated so,” said Molly. “Did you get spanked when you were a child?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ben. He shrugged. “We all did. It was unpleasant, no doubt, but since it was what almost all the parents did—and teachers too—it was just part of the world, if you understand me. I’m glad it’s fallen out of fashion.”
“I got the impression that what Camille is doing to her daughters goes beyond spanking. Gisele told me that sometimes her mother would put makeup on her to hide bruises.”
Ben grimaced.
“I want to stop her.”
“I know, chérie. I know.”
Pascal delivered their plates with a flourish but did not stay to chat though Molly was looking at him quizzically. And then, in the most French of moments, as they ate the delectable homemade food, all thoughts of work, of murder, of any worry at all—everything fell away and their attention was utterly and completely on the succulent pork with crispy edges, and the pillowy scallops nestled in the most comforting chive-flecked custard ever to be surrounded by a buttery, flaky crust. Conversation was minimal, with Ben talking about his favorite dishes from childhood, and Molly scandalizing him by relating how much candy she had eaten once she was old enough to walk to the corner grocery by herself.
“Do you want coffee?” she asked him, feeling warm and nearly content after the meal.
“Actually, have it without me,” he said, rummaging in his coat for his wallet. “I’m going to go see Paul-Henri, and I want to get over there right now, while he’s in a good mood after lunch. See you at La Baraque?”
“Sure. Hope he gives you something decent.”
“Probably it’ll be a lot of complaining about Charlot, like last time. I get the feeling he thinks I’m connected to the gendarmerie somehow and will be able to do something to have her removed.”
“He’s a good guy, Paul-Henri. But maybe in the wrong line of work.”
Ben nodded, put a pile of euros on the table, and left. Molly decided to see what Madame Longhale had made for dessert as she kept a close and suspicious eye on Pascal.
Though she
would have preferred to talk to him at the station, Chief Charlot was on her way to Lapin’s shop, hoping to catch him inside and unwary. She had told Paul-Henri to demand he come in, but without any sort of actual legal pressure to force that, Paul-Henri had been reduced more or less to begging Lapin, which had not moved him even a little.
The village was all right, Charlot thought as she walked through the narrow streets to the shop. The people were just as ignorant as they were everywhere, no surprise there. Filled with smug overreachers like Dufort and Sutton, cheating merchants, and nobodies. She heartily wished her posting in Castillac would be over sooner rather than later, but knew from experience that trying to influence the whims of the gendarmerie was not a good or productive idea.
Just as she entered the Place, Ben Dufort came striding along on the same side of the street. It would be rude to cross over and avoid him, yet Charlot almost did anyway. The man was at the dinner party when the murder was committed, she thought. How dare he set himself up as an investigator, she thought, when he and that women he was living with (and don’t get her started on that) had not proven their own innocence.
“Bonjour, Chief,” Ben said, when they reached each other.
“Bonjour,” said Charlot, her smile brittle.
“I’m glad our errant friend Lapin has finally come home,” he said, shaking his head with a little smile.
“No doubt.”
“I understand you will—or maybe you already have spoken to him, officially—but I wanted to tell you I talked to him, and it seems like it’s a simple case of…well, neurotic behavior, I suppose you could call it. We in the village know his history, you understand—a cruel father Lapin had, very cruel. And so even now, as a grown man, sometimes his reactions to things are a bit...outsized, you could say.”
“Could say, could not say…I am not so fussy with my characterizations, Monsieur Dufort. What I know from experience is that people do not abscond if they are not guilty.”
Ben opened his mouth to respond but she talked over him.
“—I am not stating definitively that Monsieur Broussard, that you all insist on calling Lapin, killed Violette Crespelle. We are still, maddeningly, waiting for the lab report to come back. I am hoping that material from under the girl’s fingernails will be useful. In the meantime, I am not willing to let your friend completely off the hook. He may or may not be guilty of murder, but I can bet you any amount he is guilty of something.”
Ben looked at her, unable to find anything to say. He found her very unpleasant, and imagined shouting at her, though he kept himself in check.
“Well, I’m off,” she said, nodding faintly and proceeding past him down the sidewalk. She went by the Café de la Place, seeing Molly Sutton inside, seated by herself. There’s no getting away from these people, she thought with annoyance.
Lapin’s shop was a five-minute walk from the center of Castillac, at the end of rue Baudelaire. Charlot spoke to no one on the way. She spent the walk ruminating over past grievances in what was a nearly lifelong pursuit of pensées des escaliers, when you come up with the perfect thing to say but you’re already halfway down the stairs.
The sign hanging from the wall outside Lapin’s shop said “Laurent Broussard” in stately gilt letters. Charlot pushed her way inside to the tinkling of a bell, and looked around for the owner.
The front counter was stacked with small cardboard boxes, and the two aisles on either side were jammed with furniture—a rocking chair, a console table that looked ancient, Louis XIII. Charlot sniffed, feeling a vague sense of disapproval that she couldn’t quite pin on anything.
The shop was silent. Had he wandered off with the door unlocked? These villagers have no idea about security, she thought.
A rustling in the back, then footsteps, and eventually the large belly of Lapin showed around the side of a tall bureau as he made his way to the front of the shop. When he saw who it was, his face sagged.
“Bonjour, madame,” he said, trying to pull himself together. “I believe you are the new chief of gendarmes? I am Laurent Broussard—everyone calls me Lapin—very pleased to make your acquaintance.” He had often used kissing a woman’s hand as a way to defuse an awkward moment, but it didn’t seem right for the chief of gendarmes. He smiled weakly.
“Correct, I am Chief Charlot. Can you tell me why it is that everyone calls you Lapin? Why do they not call you your actual name, a name that you must approve of since you have put it on the sign of your shop?”
“It’s—that’s a long story, chief. Well, maybe it’s a story that might…that might help my situation. I was born and raised in Castillac, you understand. I travel for my work but have spent almost every night of my life right here, in the very same house. The people…well, you see, in a village this size, we all know each other. A lot of us know each other pretty well, if you see what I mean.” Lapin stopped talking and looked out of the window at a mother going by pushing a stroller.
Charlot looked askance, wondering if he was simple-minded.
“I guess some people might take offense, but I never did,” he said, standing up a little straighter. “They call me Lapin because they think I’m a coward. A scared bunny. And I don’t mind, because, well, it’s true. As my recent behavior has amply shown.”
Charlot blinked. “You’re saying that your old friends call you a coward but you don’t mind?”
Lapin shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better to be seen for who you are. Sometimes truth—”
“Oh dear Lord,” interrupted Charlot. “Tell me about the other night. At the Valettes’ dinner party. Start at the beginning, if you don’t mind.”
She’s not that bad, Lapin thought. “Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?”
“I did not come to your shop looking for refreshment,” she said. “Just tell the story. In your own words.”
“Yes. All right,” said Lapin, rubbing his hands on his belly. “It was a rather strange thing, the dinner party. An invitation out of the blue, you understand. I’d never met the Valettes, didn’t even know of their existence. But when I got the invite, I talked to some friends, they’d gotten one too, so we decided what the hell—we’d go and give the thing a chance.
“Simon poured us a nice glass when we got there. By ‘we’ I mean me and my wife, Anne-Marie.” He smiled, saying her name. “So, I don’t know, we mingled around like you do at a party, talking to our other friends—I assume you have a list of who was there? I can say that I knew everyone, except for the Valettes, and poor Violette. The rest are people I’ve known all my life and can vouch for.”
“I’m not asking for any vouching, Lapin. Just…tell the story.”
Lapin took in a long, noisy breath through his nose. He closed his eyes. “All right. We drank the champagne in the foyer and before long moved into the dining room. People were a little subdued, since no one knew the host and hostess. It was awkward, you understand. I think the hostess was pretty nervous, understandably—it would be odd to give a party and know none of the guests, wouldn’t it? Luckily there was some harmless drama thanks to the children—I suppose a big party like that gets them all excited. In any case, one of them was tearing through the crowd, and the poor nanny was chasing after her and losing her most of the time.” Lapin chortled. “And there was another girl too, a little older. Serious. I’m not sure how they managed it, but they got themselves hidden underneath the dinner table during dinner. I know because I kicked one by mistake, and heard a yelp. Cute little girls. Do you have children, Chief Charlot?”
“Tell the—”
“Yes, yes. All right. Honestly, I don’t have much else to tell. We were mingling, sharing a joke or two. Simon was friendly with the nanny, telling her not to worry about the children, he was sure they were out of harm’s way. I thought that was kind of him. I do very much like to see fathers being kind, don’t you?”
A muscle in Charlot’s jaw twitched.
“Some of us had a quick word with Violette as she passed through—I
did, I believe Ben Dufort did as well. Gérard—the doctor, you know—was going on about her last name, telling her how much he enjoyed eating crespelles on some vacation or other.” Lapin looked up at the ceiling, chewing his upper lip and thinking. “The whole time the storm was getting worse and worse. You remember that night? It was crazy, the rain, the thunder and lightning…all through dinner it was practically all anyone talked about. I was facing the window and I kept seeing these jagged flashes tearing across the sky.”
Lapin got suddenly quiet.
“Go on,” said Charlot.
He sighed. “Don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of trying Merla’s cooking? She’s one of the best in Castillac, truly. Always thought it a shame she didn’t have a little restaurant tucked somewhere, I’m sure she’d—”
“Please!”
“Yes. Well, we ate, we enjoyed the food tremendously. Things had gotten a bit looser, people were beginning to have a genuinely good time. And then…the lights went out.”
“If you could be precise about who was where and what you saw at this time?”
“I’m sorry, that is impossible. You must understand, it was black as pitch, chief. You could not see your hand in front of your face.”
“So what did you do, then?”
“I got up from the table, felt my way to the foyer, wrenched open the front door, and ran.”
Charlot cocked her head. “Into the storm? Because…?”
“I can’t explain it. I panicked. I…I didn’t really know the extent of it until that night, but it turns out, I am deathly afraid of the dark. You just don’t know what might happen. You don’t know what people might do, given darkness that complete.”