by Katie Penryn
The mayor was waiting for us on the front steps of his office standing under the flagpole where the tricolore flew proudly above the arched doorway.
“Come in, come in, madame,” he said stretching forward to shake my hand and usher me inside with barely a nod to Felix and Sam.
He hurried us along the corridor to his private office, shooed us inside and shut the door. He was so flustered he sat down before inviting us to do so. That was only to be expected in the circumstances. Beaucoup-sur-mer was a small holiday town unused to murders or explosions. He had to be out of his depth.
He remained silent pushing back the cuticles on his left hand with the nails of his right hand. He seemed lost in a private world. Shocked.
“Monsieur,” I said quietly after a long wait. “You called me into see you? What about?”
He raised his eyes at that and stared at me as if trying to work out who I was.
Felix leaned forward in his chair. “Is someone dead, monsieur?”
The mayor blinked slowly. “No, no one was killed. It is not that bad, but it is bad. Really bad.”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“The experts have already decided the explosion was not an accident.”
Sam burst in, “So quickly?”
“Yes, unfortunately, it was only too easy for them to find the proof.”
“I find that surprising,” I said. “When we visited the site everything was in smithereens.”
Monsieur Bonhomie sighed. “But not the oven, that huge monstrosity. That big oven, it was not damaged much.”
“So what did they find?”
“Someone had drilled a small hole in the inlet pipe to the stove and had made doubly sure by loosening the joint that attached the pipe to the oven.”
Sam nodded. “I see. So the gas would have been leaking into the bak—”
The mayor finished Sam’s sentence. “And when the oven switched on automatically at four o’clock in the morning to bake the day’s bread — kerboom!”
Poor Monsieur Bonhomie. Another major crime in his town.
“So the police and the fire brigade are investigating?” I asked him.
He shook his head sadly. “Yes, but…,” and his eyes glazed over again.
Felix coughed. “But, monsieur, why have you sent for Madame Munro?”
The mayor straightened up and squared his shoulders. “It is a disaster. And I’m hoping Madame Munro can sort it out.”
“Why me?”
“Madame, you were so clever to find Edna Yardley’s murderer and save your mother. Now I need you to save my brother-in-law.”
Felix, Sam and I exchanged puzzled glances. Brother-in-law?
The mayor went on, “Monsieur Tidot is married to my sister. The police are suggesting the explosion was an insurance fraud. That Tidot blew the place up on purpose to get the insurance money.”
“And you want me to prove he didn’t?” I asked.
“Please, madame.”
I shifted in my seat and looked across at Felix and Sam.
Felix took up the challenge. “Monsieur, Madame Munro has only just moved here. She has spent a week clearing her mother of a charge of murder. She has her own life to live and her younger brother to look after. You are asking too much of her.”
I stood up to leave saying, “Monsieur, I’d love to help you but I have other commitments and anyway I don’t see how I could prove a negative.”
Bonhomie came round the desk to take my hands in his. “Please madame, you could show that my brother-in-law is not short of money. He has no debts. He had no reason to blow up his own bakery. It was his pride and joy.”
Felix put his arm around me and gently eased me towards the door. He turned aside and said to the mayor. “You do realize that if your brother-in-law didn’t set the explosion, someone else did. And why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. And the townspeople depend on me to keep order. What can I do?”
“You could leave it to the police?”
The mayor harrumphed. “That Dubois is sympa enough, but he’s hardly the sharpest tool in the toolbox, is he?”
Sam opened the door for me in an attempt to extricate us from the scene but the mayor pushed it to again. He turned aside with a sob.
“You’re my last hope, Madame. You and your friends here.”
He took out a large spotted handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “I am so sorry to give way like this but my sister is distraught. She says her husband is an honest man. What makes it worse is that she can’t get hold of him. He’s at some conference in Bordeaux and his phone is switched off.”
“Can’t she leave a message for him at the reception desk?” asked Sam.
“She has — several — but there is a long morning session and there are to be no interruptions.”
“Penzi,” Sam began. “Penzi, this is Emmanuelle’s aunt and uncle we are talking about.”
“And Emmanuelle is becoming important to you, Sam, I gather?”
Sam nodded.
“No,” said Felix. “Absolutely not. Remember what happened to Penzi last time she became involved in one of the town’s messes. She was nearly killed. I won’t allow it.”
The mayor had been following this exchange and a tiny spark of hope shone in his eyes. “Madame?”
How hard it could it be to find out who had set the explosion? It wouldn’t be like solving a murder, would it? The stakes wouldn’t be so high, and so how much danger could I be in?
“Felix, my friend. I have to do this. You do see that, don’t you? Not only for Sam and the mayor, but because it’s the right thing to do. The hardest thing usually is the right thing, as you know. I would much rather get out of bed tomorrow morning and start on the brocante and all its treasures than hunt down a saboteur, but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.”
“So you’ll do it?” the mayor asked jumping up and down on the spot.
I nodded. “Will you please instruct the police cordon to let us through. We’ll go and have a look at the site this morning.”
“Of course, anything you say.”
Felix tightened his grip on my arm and almost pushed me out of the door. I knew he was hardwired to protect me but I had to be able to live my life the way I thought I should. But I had some fences to mend.
Chapter 11
I didn’t enjoy the drive home. No one did. Sam kept quiet in the passenger seat beside me only too conscious of the tension between Felix and me. As for Felix, he sent me to Coventry. Not a word did he speak to me as he frogmarched me out of the mayor’s office and across to our car and he kept it up all the way home. When I took my eyes off the road to glance at him in the mirror, he ignored me, his features rigid taking no care to hide his displeasure at my agreeing to help out the mayor.
I hoped it wouldn’t last. I needed my buddy, my chum, on my side if we were to find out who had set the explosion on Tidot’s bakery. I knew his attitude was a result of his strong sense of duty to protect me and not because he didn’t like me or care for me.
As I pulled to a halt in front of our house, the family came running out, everyone agog to hear why I had been summoned to the mayor’s office.
“Are you in trouble, Penzi?” asked Jimbo as I stepped out of the car.
“Of course not,” Felix answered shutting my car door behind me. “She’s only agreed to help the mayor find out who set the explosion at the bakery.”
Gwinny gasped. “So it was deliberate?”
Felix nodded.
Jimbo took hold of my hand as I walked to the front door. “Penzi’s clever. No wonder the mayor thinks she can help.”
“Hunh,” said Felix. “It’s imprudent to say the least. She could be in danger again and then what?”
“She has you to save her, Felix.”
“And what if I can’t?”
I’d had enough of Felix’s sulks. I punched him on his bicep and he flinched. “Not fair. You know I can’t hit you bac
k.”
“Stop being such a misery then. I’ve said I’ll help so live with it.”
He stopped me as I took the first step up to the front door. “I’m serious, Penzi. This may seem like a happy-go-lucky little holiday town but there is evil everywhere.”
I brushed my hand down his stubbled cheek. “Felix, I know. That’s why it’s my duty as a white witch to do what I can to combat it.”
“Shush,” said Jimbo glancing anxiously at Audrey.
I had almost let the cat out of the bag but she was out of earshot. I would have to be more careful. I hated to think what the High Council of the Guild of White Witches would have to say if they found out I had told ordinary mortals I was a witch.
I knew nothing about explosions; physics was a closed book to me. I had a horrible feeling I would have to rely on my witchiness to get through the next few days even if it would be cheating.
No sooner were we inside our house than Felix pulled me into the study. He must have been reading my mind, but I didn’t think he could. I certainly hoped he couldn’t as I blushed at the thought.
*
“What now?” I asked him as he shut the door of the study behind me. “Not another lecture about being foolhardy, I hope.”
“Look, I’m sorry I reacted so negatively to your brave offer to help the mayor. I worry about you and not just because I’m your bodyguard—”
“You mean my own personal threat management expert?” I said breaking into a smile, glad that the war between us was over.
“That, too. Now be serious for a moment. We have to decide what the next step is.”
“We’ve decided that. We’re going to visit the site. The sooner the better.”
“And what are you going to do when you get there, Miss Smarty Pants?”
“See if we can find anything the authorities missed when they did their search. As soon as the mayor tells us they’ve withdrawn with their forensic booty, we’ll double check.”
“So you’re working on the idea of finding out who the real culprit is?”
“It’s a start. We can’t do it once the street has been swept and opened up again to the public, can we?”
“We’ll need metal detectors to check the gutters and drains and the cracks around the ruins of the building.”
“We can’t use them. Too obvious. The mayor asked us to be discreet. We don’t want word getting back to the prosecutor that we’re interfering. Madame Fer-de-Lance warned me against that, if you remember?”
Felix wandered over to the window and looked out at our shambles of a back yard while he thought. When were we ever going to be able to concentrate on our own lives, I wondered, with all this public service we were being called upon to carry out?
As he turned away from the window, I read his mind as he read mine.
“Magic!” we both whispered.
“Fetch the Book of Spells, Penzi, while I think what kind of spell we need.”
From the doorway I saw him take out his silver hipflask and take a swig.
“Purely for inspiration,” he said when he saw me watching him.
I shook my head. “Felix it’s only eleven in the morning.”
“Time for apéritifs then. Hurry up, Penzi.”
*
“Right,” said Felix as I laid the beautiful but awesome Book of Spells on the table. “We need a spell to make any metal show itself to us. Let’s see.”
I covered my eyes with one hand while I lifted the cover with the other. The gems set in the old leather were magnificent, but I found the intensity of the white light they created as their colors merged painful. I had a slight headache every time we read the Book of Spells. It didn’t seem to bother Felix but then he had feline eyes especially developed through centuries of evolution.
Felix ran his finger down the list of contents taking care not to touch the parchment.
“Eureka. This one looks promising – Spell to Find Metals.”
He eyes flicked down the page as he absorbed the details of the spell.
“No good. It’s only strong enough for base metal. We need a more powerful spell. Turn the page.”
Taking care not to damage the old parchment I did as Felix asked and once again he ran his finger over the list.
“Ah, here’s one for all metals — base and precious: Veni metallice. Why are all the spells in Latin? Do you know?”
“No, and it doesn’t make much sense to me. Witches and magic existed long before the Romans. Just think of all those dolmens — all those magic portals. If I ever have to seek out the High Council of the Guild of White Witches, I’ll ask them — respectfully, of course.”
“Of course, you don’t want them turning you into a rat or a toad.”
“Shall we learn the spell? We don’t really have the time for funning about. I want to get this commission over with. I’m longing to explore the brocante.”
It took us up until Audrey knocked on the study door for lunch. I had trouble identifying the symbols Felix described to me. I think it was because we were both tired. We’d been woken up at four by a mighty explosion and had barely had time to stop and breathe since then.
Felix suggested we try the spell before we unlocked the study door. It involved saying the magic words and visualizing the symbols while waving one’s hands about over the target area. People were going to think I was mad when I did it for real after lunch. It worked though. It picked up all the metal objects in the room both base and precious. Each object revealed itself with a strong magnetic force which was impossible for me to resist. It turned my hands into divining rods.
This caused a little frisson of embarrassment when my hand was drawn to Felix’s signet ring and even more when it was drawn to his earring.
He laughed, folded his hand round mine and mimed a kiss. “Oh Penzi, I didn’t know you cared.”
Chapter 12
Felix and I made ourselves a baguette sandwich each to eat on the way, Felix having pointed out that the field would be clear of gawkers during the long French two-hour lunch break. Kitted out with sunhats and sun cream against the scorching 35 degree C noonday heat, we took our time walking up the street. Crowds of holidaymakers thronged the Esplanade and the beach, not in the least put off by the explosion that had shaken the local people.
As soon as we left the Esplanade to climb the main street towards the site of the explosion, the crowd thinned out until we were the only two walking in the heat. Two gendarmes stood on duty at the barrier stretched across the street on the lower side. They challenged us at first but let us through when I showed them my passport as proof of identity. It was just as well they didn’t ask for anything from Felix because all he had were his vaccination certificates as a Savannah cat and his animal import permit.
As we closed in on the footprint of the bakery, treading carefully through the rubble that still lay on the street, we noticed a building at the back of the car park to the rear of the onetime bakery.
“We should check that out before we leave. It looks as if it’s part of the property and it’s still standing,” said Felix.
“Sure, but let’s cover the debris strewn area first. We don’t want to disturb something important by treading on it on our way there.”
Felix pulled a piece of chalk out of his pocket.
“We can mark a grid pattern with this,” he said offering it to me.
“Where did you get that?”
“There’s a box of chalks with all those old school slates we found. You said to keep them for people to use as kitchen message boards. I fetched it while you were in the loo.”
Once the grid was marked out, fairly roughly as it happened as the ground was dusty and covered with fallout from the explosion. I felt stupid walking slowly up and down waving my hands over the ground. It was lucky it was lunchtime and no one was around to see me.
We were right to double check the forensic search of the experts. In the first ten minutes my hand was pulled towards a couple of ancient handmade
nails they’d missed and a bent old tin spoon.
We continued working slowly through the squares of the grid, passing the building at the back of the plot on our way. One half of it was a garage in which a dark green Peugeot 505 was parked.
Felix made a note of the registration number, saying, “It could be Tidot’s car. If so what’s it doing here when he’s supposed to be in Bordeaux?”
I could only shrug and peer through the window of the room next door. Rows of sacks set on pallets lined the walls. It was a storeroom for the bakery. As one would expect, there was a cat flap in the door and I pointed it out to Felix.
A woman came out of the house on the opposite side of the street from the bakery and called us over to her. We picked our way across to her over the ground we had already searched.
“Are you all right?” she asked me. “You look a bit wobbly waving your arms around like that.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“She’s blessing the site of the accident,” Felix told her.
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “We were lucky our house wasn’t blown up along with Tidot’s shop. As it is all our windows at the front were blown in.”
So they had been. I hadn’t noticed because the glass had been knocked out.
“It must have been frightening, madame,” I said. “It was bad enough from our house and we’re several streets away.”
I took her by the arm and gently steered her back to her front door. She gave us an odd look and went back into her house.
“We might need to ask her some questions later,” I said to Felix.
He nodded and gestured to me to continue. It was hot work. The sun beat down on my neck as I bent over to see the ground. We struggled on until we had covered half the area without finding anything else except a couple of horseshoe nails. Goodness knows where they came from.
By two o’clock I was drenched with sweat and very thirsty. I was on the point of asking Felix to buy some cool drinks from Monsieur LaPresse’s shop up the street when the old lady called to us through one of her broken windows.