A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1)

by Fliss Chester

  ‘The murderer is someone around here, that’s all we know, so watch your back, eh?’

  With that ringing in her ears, Fen slipped back through the vines to where she’d left her hod and began working. The monotony of it helped her go into a sort of meditative state and she started piecing together all she knew. The clues hovered in front of her eyes, her envelope grid, one word sliding into another; some corroborating others – like the fact that she knew there was a thief in the house and she had definitely found some stolen objects. Then it came to her: alibis, that’s what I’ll concentrate on next.

  Fen poked her head up over the top of the vine she was working on and could see that no one particularly interesting was around, even the tall man was much further along his row now. There was no one else nearby.

  ‘Right then.’ Fen put down her hod and crouched on the dry, dusty ground. She pulled the envelope and pencil out of her pocket and started a new tally. She kept it to just initials and started working out where everyone was for each of the murders.

  Father Marchand. Well, that was easy in a way – everyone was around the table. But then, that might not have been when he was poisoned. She remembered the pamphlet the now-deceased Pascal had shown her about the gases used in the trenches and how Prussic acid, otherwise known as hydrogen cyanide, which was deemed in the end too light and ineffective a gas for trench warfare, would kill a man in hours rather than minutes. So really, he could have been poisoned that morning, or even the night before, long before breakfast at any rate. So that ruled no one out, apart from the injured Sophie.

  She then started afresh with Pierre’s murder, for she was still sure it wasn’t a terrible accident. Sophie couldn’t have got to the winery… but someone took the quilt from Benoit’s bed. She drew a big E next to Pierre’s name as her thoughts turned less to everyone else’s alibi and primarily to Estelle’s. She knew her way around the winery and went to the cupboard often. The white scrap of fabric might not be hers, but the quilt could definitely have been taken by her and used to block the ventilation. She was also a dab hand at stealing – and using – sleeping draughts. Fen glanced at the word D R U G G E D that she’d written on the envelope a few nights before. And Marchand, she’d hated Marchand…

  Fen straightened up and placed the envelope back in her pocket. For the rest of the day, she argued with herself the pros and cons of whether Estelle could be the murderer, but it kept coming back to one thing: motive. Having the slightest reason to kill the local priest was one thing, but to kill her employer and her lover?

  ‘Of course, I’m assuming there is only one killer amongst us,’ Fen reported to the cat as she trudged back up the pathway after her day’s toil was done.

  With considerably fewer workers left in the vineyard, and the race now on to get the grapes harvested before they over-ripened or were devastated by birds or the weather, her back and arms were aching almost as much as her head. What’s more, although she hated to admit it, to man or beast, she was absolutely no closer to finding out who was responsible for killing the good people of Morey-Fontaine.

  Twenty-Two

  Fen looked at the bath and the hot-water geyser above it. It occurred to her that perhaps she should check the fixings, as there had been one too many ‘accidents’ around here already, but her shoulders and back ached and she was dusty and sweaty from working the shift of two or more people. She turned the hot tap on and stood and watched as the bath slowly filled with steaming water. Never one to take advantage, she only let it get to an inch or two deep before turning off the tap and sluicing in some cold water from the basin. She gingerly climbed in, hoping the water was still warm enough – and deep enough – to ease her tired muscles.

  Fen knew she had to confront Estelle. If only to get her letter and Arthur’s cigarette case. It was clear to her now that Estelle was the thief, but was she the killer too?

  Fen lay back in the few inches of water and closed her eyes, dreaming of a full, steaming bath, gently scented with aromatic herbs and salts. How easy it would be to fall asleep and then submerge yourself…

  ‘Hang on a tick…’ Fen sat upright. ‘If Pierre was asleep before he was asphyxiated by the carbon dioxide – well, that would explain why an experienced winemaker didn’t spot the danger signs, or indeed the quilt. He must have been drugged.’ She looked over to the lavatory, where she had flushed away the sachet of sleeping powder a few nights ago. It had been so easy to come about them, even so, Estelle had almost definitely stolen one from her… Was it to replace one she’d already used?

  Fen pushed herself up from the bath and grabbed the thin piece of linen she’d found to dry herself with. Wrapping it around her, she walked over to the basin and finished washing, splashing water on her face. All the while, she was thinking. If Pierre had been drugged, then when does that put his time of death, or at least time of starting the chain reaction? Who had access to sleeping powders and was the pharmacist’s death a revenge?

  Back in her room, Fen dressed herself and sat down on her bed. She knew the words would come, but she needed to be a little bit more prepared as to what she was going to say to Estelle.

  She got up and went over to the chest of drawers. Her hands hovered over where she knew the letter from Arthur was, but she controlled herself and pulled out her own drawer and fetched out a jumper. She poked around in the drawer for her mother’s brooch too, but it only took a moment for her to realise that it wasn’t there.

  ‘Oh this is too much!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Estelle’s voice was alarmingly close. How had she crept up so quietly?

  ‘I think you might know full well. Where is it?’

  Estelle had the decency to look sheepishly at Fen. Then she pushed her out of the way and pulled open her own top drawer. She reached inside and pulled the brooch out from under one of the pressed and starched aprons.

  ‘Here.’ Estelle held the brooch out to Fen, who took it quickly and closed her hand around it protectively. She was desperate to ask why the other woman had so obviously stolen it, but she thought about Arthur’s letter and knew that pushing Estelle now on the brooch could make her clam up about what else she might be hiding.

  Fen looked over at the opened drawer and asked, ‘Anything else in there you’d like to return to me?’

  ‘I don’t think so. No,’ Estelle sneered.

  ‘What about the letter that Arthur, my Arthur, wrote to me.’

  ‘You have been sneaking through my drawers? How dare you!’

  ‘How dare I? I think I had good reason.’ Fen tried to remain sounding firm but fair. ‘Now hand it over, else I’ll shop you in for all this thieving.’

  ‘You can’t, I won’t let you!’ Suddenly the Frenchwoman had her hands around Fen’s neck, forcing her up against the wall. ‘I have lost everything, if I lose this position…’

  ‘Stop!’ Fen could barely breathe. ‘Estelle, stop!’

  The Frenchwoman glared at her, then released her and, to Fen’s astonishment, started crying.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Forgive me.’

  Fen rubbed her throat with her hands, wary of the woman who had almost throttled her. It was easy to see how Estelle could become murderous, but now, now she just looked completely beaten.

  ‘I’m not a murderer, I’m not a murderer,’ she wept, then suddenly reached out and grabbed Fen’s arm. ‘I have done bad things, yes. But I have not killed anyone. I am sorry for stealing your brooch.’

  ‘And Arthur’s cigarette case?’ Fen tried her best to hide the tremble in her voice, as she was still being gripped by Estelle and was more than a little scared.

  ‘How did you know?’

  Fen pulled her arm free and quickly moved a few steps away from the other woman, putting a safe distance between them. ‘I saw it in the chemical cupboard.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ll be wanting it back.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Estelle seemed deflated, downcast. ‘I have ne
ver been in love, you know, but Pascal was everything to me. He promised me so much. But he asked things of me too. I had to steal back the chemicals that he sold to the Bernards so that they would order more from him.’

  ‘Lumme, that’s not exactly playing by the rules.’ Fen wasn’t at all impressed.

  ‘And he also said if I stole from the English and the Germans, we would then be able to save up and be the real winners of this war.’ Estelle wiped her nose with her sleeve and carried on, slightly more defiantly than before. ‘There are always winners and losers, and I’m fed up of being a loser all my life! “Estelle, will you wipe my children’s bottoms? Estelle will you cook for us? And clean for us. And clean up our mess.” Ah, this is not fair, no?’

  ‘No, but stealing mementos from grieving loved ones is also decidedly not fair.’

  ‘I did not know Arthur would have some fancy woman coming after him.’ Estelle’s retort made Fen frown. She wasn’t a fancy woman, but perhaps the others in the château all presumed it.

  ‘The letter is worth nothing, why steal that?’ Fen asked.

  ‘I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘Come on, I think we’re a bit past that now, aren’t we?’

  ‘No, honestly. Arthur gave it to me. Here’ – she got up from the bed and advanced towards both Fen and the chest of drawers – ‘you can have it.’

  Fen let out the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding as Estelle handed her the letter. To hold something of Arthur’s, to look at his writing, to read his words. Fen didn’t want Estelle to be there when she opened it. It might all be too much for her.

  Estelle must have taken Fen’s silence as her cue to escape further interrogation. ‘I’ll leave you to read it,’ she said, then followed up with the slightly less friendly, ‘but if you tell a soul here that I have been a little light-fingered, I will fence that cigarette case before you can say “Gauloises”.’

  Fen didn’t care at that moment, and nodded without really concentrating. All that mattered to her was the letter, Arthur’s letter. Perhaps his last. She waited until the other woman had left the bedroom and then started to open it. Despite Estelle’s proven track record of being a thief, she obviously wasn’t a spy or nosy parker and the envelope was still sealed. Fen uncurled her fingers from the brooch she was grasping and used the pin to gently prise it open. She sat down on her bed, the springs providing the fanfare she really didn’t want for the grand unveiling. She read:

  France, August 1944

  My dearest Fen,

  I’m writing this in such a hurry – Estelle is breathing down my neck, but I have to trust her to give this to you. One word of advice, pat her down before you leave – since I’ve been here, I’ve ‘lost’ my cigarette case, five francs, two pens and now, probably my life, although I can’t blame her for that. Although someone here has betrayed us, someone in this house is a collaborator. So I only trust you, darling honeypot, to find that holy object that starts off reliable but ends at sea, I hear. I’ve stashed it, knocked about, in Greater Rutland.

  I knew you’d come, my clever darling. I’m so sorry that I’m not here to greet you. The clatter of boots is on the stairs – I love you, I love you, I love you, adieu.

  Fen’s tears hit the paper before she could move it safely out of the way, and Arthur’s last signature was blurred forever.

  Twenty-Three

  Fen had to compose herself after reading Arthur’s letter, which she’d done again and again, wiping her tears away each time she reached the last line. Darling Arthur, she’d thought, even with the enemy at his door he’d tried to cheer me up. And he’d confirmed her suspicions about the light-fingeredness of Estelle too. Fen had put the letter away and then slipped it out of its envelope numerous times, reading and rereading his words, and of course stumbling over the nonsense that hid within it more clues. As she put the letter back in its envelope one more time, she heard the church bell strike the hour and knew she should be getting downstairs to help with dinner.

  Closing the bedroom door behind her, she walked along the corridor to the spiral staircase in the old tower at the end of it. In an awful echo of what she’d just read, she could hear the clatter of someone’s boots coming down from the floor above and she paused to see who it was.

  ‘James!’ she hissed at him, in a whisper, as he appeared around the curve of the staircase. The very man she needed to see. She raised her finger to her lips to indicate that quiet and subtlety was needed and they descended the rest of the staircase together. Instead of going into the kitchen, Fen let them both out of the small turret door so that they could talk somewhere, privately and unspotted by the château’s other residents. She led James under the gatehouse and they stood there, beneath the vaulted ceiling so beloved by the local pigeons, listening to them gently coo as they began their roost for the evening.

  ‘What is it?’ James spoke when they were both sure that no one was listening. The slight echo of his voice made Fen frown, so they walked a few steps further away, into the light covering of trees next to the path.

  ‘What are you doing back from seeing Father Coulber so soon?’

  James sighed. ‘Sadly he wasn’t there, so the housekeeper took them in with my scribbled note of explanation and told me to trot on. And now I’m back here in the metaphorical frying pan.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a fire.’ Fen looked up at James and saw a hint of the same concern pass over his face too. ‘I don’t know if anyone’s told you yet, but I found Clément’s old bayonet this morning.’

  ‘No, and that means…?’

  ‘It had,’ Fen lowered her voice even more, ‘blood on it. We think it’s the weapon used to kill Pascal.’

  ‘Really? Where did you find it?’

  ‘Over there,’ Fen pointed back through the gatehouse to the courtyard. ‘Sophie’s taken care of it, but I don’t know if the gendarmes have it now. Oh, and I’ve found the letter by the way.’

  ‘You have had a busy day. What letter?’

  Fen subconsciously touched her neck – she really had had quite a day of it. She was quick to answer James, though. ‘Clément told me about it while you were in prison. The one that Arthur wrote to tell you, or rather me, where the real relic is hiding.’

  ‘Clément told you about that, did he? He obviously trusted you.’

  Fen exhaled and frowned a bit. She didn’t know who to trust, especially with the contents of this letter, but she had no choice but to confide in James.

  ‘And Arthur obviously trusted Estelle, as he gave her this letter, even though it was addressed to me…’

  ‘What, and she never gave it to you? Isn’t that case in point as to why you can’t trust Estelle?’

  Fen sighed. ‘Yes, and that she’s admitted to me,’ Fen rubbed her still aching throat, ‘that she’s the thief in the château.’

  ‘Arthur always had his suspicions.’

  ‘Yes, he said as much in his letter.’ Fen paused, trying not to well up with tears as she thought back to Arthur’s tender words. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘It’s more than a few francs and trinkets though. She and Pascal were pilfering from everyone here, including the Bernards by stealing their chemicals and reselling them back to them…’

  ‘Dirty rascals.’

  ‘Quite, but not murderers. Or collaborators. Anyway,’ Fen handed the letter over to James. ‘Read this. Well, maybe not the last bit.’ She felt her nose fizzing as she remembered Arthur’s loving sign-off.

  James carefully took the folded letter out of the envelope and, much to Fen’s surprise, pulled a pair of spectacles out of the top pocket of his shirt.

  ‘What?’ he questioned her as she stared at him.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to be a bit of an old four-eyes, that’s all. I thought glasses were Arthur’s thing.’ She smiled at the memory of Arthur’s thick tortoiseshell frames.

  ‘Him the brains and me the muscle, you mean?’

  ‘Something like that, I sup
pose, yes. Anyway, read it, what do you think?’

  James took a moment to take in the odd sentences. ‘I take it you’ve had a stab at working it out?’

  ‘Yes. Not much to report so far, except that I assume he’s talking about the relic. And not just because Clément said there was a clue-filled letter about it. If you take the start of reliable, well that’s your R E L I and then with the bit about “ending at sea, I hear”; well that means it sounds like sea, which is the letter C. So that’s your RELIC spelt out. The next sentence looks like it should be so simple, although I’ve never heard of Greater Rutland.’

  ‘Hmm, “I’ve stashed it, knocked about, in Greater Rutland”. Multum in parvo and all that.’ James studied it a bit more.

  ‘Rutland’s motto?’

  ‘Yes, from the Latin meaning “a great deal in a small place”. Seems apt for a holy relic in a small casket, assuming it’s pointing us to where it is.’

  Fen shivered and James indicated that they should probably head back to the house.

  ‘Will you let me keep this, to keep working on it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Fen hesitated. ‘May I… I mean, you will give it back to me, won’t you?’

  James smiled at her and, as they walked across the courtyard towards the kitchen door, rested a hand on the small of her back. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Ah, Fenella, can you chop that onion please?’ Fen and James had barely stepped inside the warm kitchen before Sophie had asked her to help with the family’s dinner. James had taken his leave before Sophie could scowl at him any more and headed towards the stairs. ‘Always so furtive!’ she had said, raising her eyebrows in a conspiratorial way to Fen, who was of the opinion that James had very good reason for avoiding Sophie. She was sitting at the head of the table, her leg perched up on a stool. Benoit was curled up on his mother’s lap, playing with a piece of old string and a twig, and Jean-Jacques was writing in his tatty schoolbook. Fen felt a sudden pang of pity for Sophie and her children; husband and fatherless now, and no uncles either.