Murder for Love (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 4)

by Nell Goddin

  “I believe you are friends with Iris Gault?” she said, her tone changing to nonchalant, though Nugent was not fooled by it.

  “Yes, Mademoiselle,” said Nugent. “We have known each other for many years.” He couldn’t keep his mouth from spreading into a smile at the thought of Iris.

  “It’s too bad, really, isn’t it?”

  “What’s too bad?” asked Nugent, feeling prickles of warning on the back of his neck.

  “Too bad about the affair she’s having with Monsieur Séverin.”

  “Mon—” gasped Nugent. He turned away, straightening up a stack of napkins on the counter behind him. His throat felt like it was closing up. “I don’t think—”

  “Oh, I have proof,” Caroline said. “I’ll admit I was as surprised as you. Granted, everyone knows Madame Séverin has her problems….”

  “Depression is a kind of monster,” said Nugent, his voice faint. They stood looking at each other but lost in their own particular wretchedness. “Well, it’s none of my business anyway.”

  “Nor mine,” said Caroline, and took the bag with her strawberry tart and banged out the door.

  Nugent put his palms on the counter and leaned his weight into them. Iris, with Tristan? He couldn’t believe it. Tristan had always seemed a pleasant enough fellow. Coffee éclair, liked raspberries if they were fresh. But a bit of a goofball. And married to that poor Lucie, who had been suffering so terribly from depression for years. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her, now that he thought about it.

  Iris with Tristan? Nugent just could not believe it. He doesn’t have enough passion, thought the pastry chef, drawing himself up. Tristan is not worthy of a goddess such as Iris Gault!

  And neither is that Pierre, he added darkly. Oh Iris, you exceptional, magnificent creature! Why not me? Why not me?

  As Nugent had a strict schedule for his entire day, bedtime was no different. Eight o’clock at the very latest, and preferably seven. But here it was, getting close to nine—nine!—and instead of climbing into bed with a cup of chamomile tea, Nugent was pacing from his bedroom to the kitchen, muttering to himself.

  Tristan Séverin was a puerile sort of fellow, a lightweight. He did not in any way deserve to have Iris Gault in his bed. Sure, he had his charms, Nugent supposed grudgingly. The parents of schoolchildren seemed to approve of him. But that’s just it—he’s boyish. Exactly suitable for a job in a school. But a woman like Iris…deserves a man.

  Nugent had been going around and around like this for several hours. While still at the shop, he had marginally been able to distract himself with all the work and dealing with customers that the shop required, but once he was home, the torrents of jealousy just kept coming and coming.

  Why did she never choose me?

  They had been in school together, as children. Grown up together. Nugent had watched the quiet, pretty girl transform into a beauty, as simultaneously he became a man. But she had never allowed him so much as a kiss. Not once.

  He put on his nightshirt and got into bed, and the instant his head hit the pillow he was filled with a kind of rage unknown to him before that moment. Throwing the summer coverlet aside, he leapt out of bed and got dressed.

  Something had to be done. He could not bear these feelings, not for another second. It was time for Edmond Nugent, at long last, to act.

  6

  Iris knelt by a parterre outlined in miniature English boxwood. The shrub grew very slowly so it didn’t often need her attention, and that evening she let her hands drift over the top of it, releasing its distinctive scent, and then leaned over to ferret out some weeds that were trying to advance into the santolina and lavender which she had planted in a large sunburst design.

  It was dusk. Pierre was still at work, as he almost always was. It was one of Iris’s favorite times in the garden—the light was soft and she could hear animals scurrying about in the woods close by. The birds were singing their hearts out and the sound expanded her sense of melancholy, but in a way that felt more pleasurable than not. She was not working with any sort of fervor but kept sitting back and breathing in the perfume of her garden, the roses and oriental lilies, and watching the birds flit in the trees, and the clouds lit up by the sinking sun.

  That night, as she pulled weeds and fussed over the topiary swans, she made a decision. She was realizing, rather late at age forty-four, that she had allowed her life to drift, allowed other people to make important decisions for her, allowed their desires to supplant her own. It was no wonder she was unhappy when she had taken so little responsibility for herself. She saw, finally, that she had expected happiness to come to her and not to have to seek it.

  Marrying a man simply because he wanted her so desperately—how could she ever have thought that would go well?

  On the side of one of the swans was a knotty stem that continually caused trouble. For some reason, new growth sprouted from it in great profusion and in all directions, and if the smooth lines of the swan’s wing was to be preserved, Iris had to clip the soft new growth from it nearly every week. She was absorbed in this task when someone came around the side of the house, walking slowly on the gravel path.

  She heard the footsteps, and looked up. “Bonsoir,” she said with a weary smile, letting the hand with the clippers drop to her side.

  7

  Gilles Maron, acting chief gendarme of Castillac, had been having a decent summer so far. A little on the boring side, since his day-to-day had mainly consisted of rounding up drunk drivers and dealing with a few break-ins of vacation homes in which nothing much was taken. But Maron had discovered during the last murder investigation that he was an uneasy leader, and that somehow being made acting chief had undermined his former confidence in his own judgment. He was hoping he only needed more experience before being in charge would feel comfortable, and he hadn’t minded a few months of quiet in the village while he got his feet more firmly underneath him.

  That Friday in July was the first day on the job for Thérèse Perrault’s replacement. A man, for which Maron was grateful, being more comfortable in the company of men. But so far, unfortunately, not a man he especially liked.

  Officer Paul-Henri Monsour was young and untested. He had grown up in an upper-middle class suburb of Paris, and wasted no time letting Maron know that the Monsour family thought being a gendarme was socially beneath them.

  “I’m heading home,” said Maron in early evening, after an uneventful day. “When your shift is over, lock up the station as I showed you. It’s been quiet lately so I doubt you’ll have any problems, but if anything happens, you know where to reach me.” Maron flexed his shoulders, could think of nothing else to say, and left the station.

  Monsour smiled a wide, toothy smile once he was alone. He had dreamed of being a gendarme since he was a little boy, and here he was at his first posting, all by himself and in charge on his very first day at work. He got up from his desk and straightened up, placing chairs along the wall in a neat line and sweeping the big room where his desk was and where people first came inside. How could Maron let the place get so filthy? he wondered, going to the bathroom for paper towels so he could wipe down the dust on the windowsills.

  His paperwork was all taken care of, and he hadn’t been there long enough to have anything on his desk that needed attending to. The big clock on the wall—hopelessly old-fashioned, Monsour thought—ticked away, counting off the minutes of his shift.

  There was nothing to do.

  Calls could be diverted from the station to his cell, so it wasn’t absolutely necessary that he stay inside—Maron had told him it was all right, even helpful, to walk around the village while on duty, alert to the needs of the villagers (and perhaps the villagers’ pets). So after carefully locking the station door behind him, Monsour set out into the warm July night, thinking to acquaint himself with the narrow streets and learn his way around a bit. With any luck, he’d find someone who needed help, or even better, someone who needed to be put ba
ck in line.

  He found his way to the Place easily enough. A statue of a World War I soldier stood in the center, ringed by flowers. A crowd was spilling out of Chez Papa and he heard a woman’s high laugh. A well-dressed couple went into a restaurant farther along, a group of teenagers went into the Presse, and a chubby chihuahua with a red collar crossed the street after looking both ways.

  Pretty enough village, he thought. In his mind Castillac was only a stepping-stone of his career, a short-lived posting on his way to where the action was. He expected before long to be working in the outskirts of Paris, rooting out terrorist cells—and the sooner he was done in Castillac, the better. Monsour wanted danger, excitement, and the possibility of quick advancement. He wanted to be where he would risk taking a contraband bullet anytime he stepped outside…and none of that, clearly, had a thing to do with this sleepy, wholesome village, far from any city.

  When his cell buzzed he quickly pressed it to his ear.

  “Maron?” said a man’s voice.

  “This is Officer Monsour. What’s the problem?”

  “Where is Maron?”

  “I am on duty now, Monsieur. It is my first day on the Castillac force.”

  “I see. Well, my wife’s been hurt. I’ve called the ambulance but I guess you should come too.”

  Monsour’s heart began to race. “What’s your address, Monsieur?”

  “67 route de Canard. Stone house, on the west side of the road. A dark blue Ford in the driveway.”

  “On my way. Is your wife…is she all right, sir?”

  “I don’t believe so, no,” said Pierre Gault, and the two men hung up without saying anything further.

  8

  The Gault’s house on route de Canard was right on the edge of the village. Set back from the road, and made of yellow limestone, the building was hidden by a high evergreen hedge. The house number was marked clearly on the postal box and gendarme Jean-Henri Monsour had no problem finding it. He was on foot, Maron having failed to show him where the keys to the police vehicle or the scooter were kept.

  Monsour had no idea what to expect. He had never approached a situation such as this by himself and had so little general experience that he believed the possibilities of what he might find were nearly endless. He didn’t know what kind of shape the woman was in, whether the man who called had hurt her or if there had been an accident. The ambulance wasn’t in the driveway, and as he walked up the driveway, he heard no sounds except for the nightbirds and a single car heading out of town on route de Canard.

  With some trepidation Monsour knocked on the heavy old door. He realized that he had failed to ask the caller’s name and had no idea whose house this was.

  “Excusez-moi! Il y a quelqu’un?” he shouted, banging harder when no one appeared.

  He heard slow footsteps from within. Then someone fiddling with the door handle.

  “Salut,” said a large man, opening the door at last. “Thank you for coming. No idea what’s keeping the ambulance.”

  Monsour stood uncomfortably on the doorstep. “May I come in?” he asked finally.

  “Oh yes, of course,” said Pierre.

  “I am Officer Monsour,” he said, remembering that he had already told the man his name when they spoke on the phone but the man had not given his. “Where is your wife?”

  “She’s in the kitchen. Down that corridor,” he said, gesturing for the officer to go ahead.

  The house was neatly kept. Monsour passed the living room and glanced in to see everything tidy and clean. A stack of books stood on a small table by an armchair. An empty teacup by the books.

  Monsour blinked hard when he got far enough down the corridor to see into the kitchen where Iris lay on her side, one arm outstretched, her legs bent at the knees as though she were running.

  Her eyes open wide.

  Monsour took a deep breath, strode into the kitchen, and knelt by the body. He placed two fingers on her neck, looking for her carotid artery, but not with any real hope he would feel a pulse. She was lying right at the bottom of a curving, narrow set of stairs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Pierre, as he stood up. “You said you called the ambulance? How long ago?”

  “Oh, it was…I can’t say, really. It’s not like I look at my watch whenever I do anything.”

  “What is your name, Monsieur?”

  “Pierre. Pierre Gault.” He walked to the sink and looked out the window at the garden.

  “I wish it were otherwise, Monsieur Gault, but I’m afraid I have to call the coroner.”

  Pierre nodded. He was chewing on his lower lip, scanning the garden as though looking for something. He said nothing.

  With a sense of importance, Monsour called Florian Nagrand on his cell and told him the Gault address. “Broken neck, looks like,” he added, irritating Nagrand, who never liked it when gendarmes waded into his bailiwick.

  It was uncomfortable being alone in the kitchen with a dead woman, especially since her husband showed no signs of grief, or any emotion at all. Monsour looked around the kitchen but there was not much to see: everything was put away, there were no dishes in the sink, no half-eaten meal on the table, no sense that normal life had just been interrupted. He appreciated order and cleanliness to a fairly high degree, yet the Gault house, as far as Monsour had been able to see, was so orderly that it felt almost as though people didn’t actually live there.

  “Is there anyone I can call for you?” asked Monsour. “Relative, friend, anyone?”

  Pierre shook his head.

  Monsour looked out of the window over the sink, wondering what he was looking at, and saw a rather elaborate garden, lit up with artfully-placed floodlights—parterres, a grand potager, and even some topiary swans—and a small shed back towards the woods.

  “You like to garden?” asked Monsour.

  “No,” said Pierre. A long pause. “That was my wife.”

  “Well, it’s quite impressive. Must have been a lot of backbreaking work to make something like that.”

  Pierre shrugged. “I never understood the point. It all dies, you see. Not like making something that lasts.”

  Monsour thought about saying that we all die, so what was the point of anything, but he had the good manners to keep his mouth shut. “I’m sorry for not covering up your wife, but that is protocol, until the coroner gives the okay.”

  “I understand,” said Pierre, turning away from the window and looking down at Iris for the first time that Monsour saw.

  Monsour watched his face, but was unable to get any idea at all about what the man was feeling or thinking as he gazed on the broken body of his wife.

  “Were you home? Any idea what might have happened?” asked the gendarme.

  Pierre looked up at him sharply. “She fell down the stairs,” he said, with an edge of contempt. “I thought that was fairly plain.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Monsour hurriedly. “But Monsieur…people use stairs all the time. Many times a day. And for the most part we do it without uneasiness. An accident such as this—it’s likely to have another aspect, if you understand me. For example, is it possible that your wife had more to drink this evening than usual? Something that might have affected her balance or control of her physical self?”

  “Oh bon sang,” said Pierre, leaving the kitchen by the back door, and letting it bang shut behind him.

  Monsour’s hands clenched into fists. The man had a lot of nerve, walking away in the middle of being questioned. And with a dead wife on the kitchen floor!

  He wrenched open the back door and followed him, expecting that Gault would be going to the front of the house, looking out for the ambulance. But Gault was walking into his wife’s garden, pacing slowly and deliberately down the gravel path.

  Had he pushed his wife down the stairs? If so, why was he not making more of an effort to look less guilty?

  And where, for God’s sake, was Maron?

  “You’re putting it right over the window!”
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br />   “Relax, Franny, I know what I’m doing,” Molly lied, as she lined up the pattern of the second wallpaper roll to match the small green leaves on the first, already neatly glued to the wall. She smoothed it with a sponge and stepped back. “Now watch this.” She took a single-edged razor blade and cut the excess from around the window molding, and within seconds, that section of wall looked perfectly papered.

  “You really do know what you’re doing,” murmured Franny from her usual position on the bed. “I like your new pattern. I mean, I don’t like it, but I think for guests it was a good choice. Tasteful and inoffensive.”

  “You hate it.”

  “Of course.”

  “I sort of like it. I know it’s sort of corny English countryside and all, but I just like leaves.”

  “I thought you liked roses.”

  “I like leaves and roses. I wish I could remember the name of that movie with the faded rose wallpaper. A handsome stranger—charming of course—rents a room in an old woman’s house. Maybe she was running a hotel, I can’t remember. The old woman is in a wheelchair.” Molly paused as she ran the roller dipped in glue along the back of the third section of wallpaper, spread on the floor. “Don’t you think old women in wheelchairs ought to be exempt from horror movies?”

  “Haha!” hooted Frances. “You’re just fixated on that movie because you rent your rooms to charming, handsome strangers.”

  Molly laughed. “Like Wesley Addison?”

  Her cell, sitting on the bedside table, made a whooshing sound. “Will you check that for me? Anything I have to deal with?”

  Frances rolled over and picked up the phone.

  “It’s from Lawrence. Just says: possible murder. call me.”

  Molly looked at Frances with wide eyes. “What?” she said, incredulous.