Murder for Love (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 4)

by Nell Goddin

  “…insurance. I know it looks bad,” Pierre was saying.

  “Whatever moved you to take out such a large policy?”

  “Iris urged me to do it. She could be a little morbid, you know. She would get into these funks and part of it was dwelling on a belief that she wouldn’t live into old age.”

  “Well.”

  “Yes, well. Obviously she was correct. I suppose I could refuse the pay-out? Or donate it to some cause?”

  “I don’t think that will matter much,” said Dufort. “You might fare better in village opinion, but the gendarmes will look at it as a desperate attempt to throw guilt off yourself.”

  Molly knocked discreetly on the open kitchen door.

  “Come on in,” said Ben. “You don’t mind, do you, Pierre? Molly has been extremely helpful in past cases, as you might have heard.”

  “A regular Inspector Maigret,” said Pierre, without any hint of a smile.

  Molly stood uncomfortably in the doorway. “Do you mind if I ask a few questions?”

  Pierre shrugged. He stood up and looked out at the garden.

  “I know this is personal, and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t necessary. Maybe you’ve already covered this? But a crucial thing—how was your marriage, Pierre? Were you and Iris happy together?”

  Pierre sighed. “Yes. She was an angel and I adored her.”

  No one spoke.

  “That’s what you want to hear, right?” said Pierre, bitterly. “Because when something happens like this, people forget that marriage has ups and downs, rough patches interspersed with happiness, or maybe not even that, maybe the best you get is not miserable—people don’t understand how it is. But in their ignorance they will decide my fate.”

  Ben cocked his head. “That’s not correct, Pierre. The evidence will decide your fate.”

  “Though if part of that evidence is that you loved your wife, that’ll help,” Molly added quietly.

  “We were very happy together. But tell me: how am I supposed to prove that?” asked Pierre.

  “No affairs, nothing like that?”

  “No. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Molly bristled at Pierre’s defensiveness. She shot Ben a look but he did not meet her glance. “Pierre has a partial alibi,” he said to Molly, still not looking at her.

  “What’s a ‘partial’ alibi?”

  “He was at Chez Papa Friday night. I don’t know the time of death as determined by Nagrand, but it would seem as though during much of the window of opportunity for murder, Pierre was—with you, actually.”

  Molly bristled again. “Excuse me if I’m not understanding, but I thought the idea of alibi implied that you had one or you didn’t. If there’s any time you can’t account for, and it’s enough to have committed whatever crime is in question, then…sorry, no alibi. No such thing as a ‘partial’, in other words.”

  Pierre glared at her.

  “Look, I’m not trying to be difficult. And Pierre, I understand that what I’m saying may not be easy to hear, but what good will beating around the bush do you? Am I missing something, Ben? If, for example, we know that Iris was killed between eight and ten, and Pierre was at Chez Papa from eight until nine, how in the world does that help him at all? To me the facts say he had a nice fat hour that’s unaccounted for.”

  Finally Pierre spoke. “You said that Nagrand didn’t confirm the murder, only speculated about it. It might very well have been an accident. So how far do you think the gendarmerie will go with this? Might they poke around a bit and give up?”

  Molly and Ben heard the hopeful note in Pierre’s voice, and both of them felt a little depressed at the sound.

  The following morning, Molly and Ben met at the Café de la Place for breakfast. A heat wave was gathering strength and even at that semi-early hour it felt more comfortable to sit in the dappled shade of a giant plane tree. They gave their orders to Pascal and affectionately looked at each other across the table.

  “You look lovely this morning,” he said, noticing how her hair was sticking out crazily on one side.

  “Not half bad yourself,” she said, grinning.

  A few customers sat down at the table next to them—tourists probably, since neither Ben nor Molly recognized them.

  “The insurance…that’s a bad break,” said Ben in a low voice, jiggling his leg under the table.

  Molly said, “Hm,” and looked out at the Place, which was quiet, with only a few people walking around.

  “What’s ‘hm’ mean?”

  “Oh, just….”

  Ben raised his eyebrows. “You don’t trust Pierre.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes slightly as he thought about Molly’s answer.

  Molly was trying to do what she had found to be the most helpful thing in detective work: not make assumptions. And she certainly wasn’t going to assume that Pierre was telling the truth about not murdering his wife, just because he said so. Or because he had been to school with Ben and done an excellent job renovating her pigeonnier.

  One thing has nothing to do with the others, in her view.

  “He doesn’t have an alibi. There’s the insurance money for a motive. I’m not saying I definitely think he did it, but you have to admit, it’s certainly possible.”

  Ben finally spoke. “In that case, maybe it’s not a great idea for you to be working with me on this.”

  Molly was nonplussed. “Do investigators always have to believe their clients are innocent?”

  “In this case, yes. The job is to exonerate Pierre. Chase down every lead, pursue every avenue that might be productive. I’m going to be doing a lot of interviews, for one thing, and if you’re there pulling in the other direction…I think it could be damaging. It could hurt my progress.”

  “What do you mean, ‘pulling in the other direction’? I’m not claiming I know what happened any more than anyone else. I’m not saying I think he’s guilty or that I want him to be guilty. Only that I don’t necessarily believe Pierre is innocent just because that is what he claims.”

  “And you think I’m a fool because I do?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “It’s implied, Molly,” said Ben, his expression stony.

  They sat for some long moments. Molly was unwilling to budge since she felt she’d only said what made perfect sense to her, and Ben was equally immoveable, feeling insulted.

  “I’m going to have a run and get on with it, then,” he said, standing up. “You won’t mind eating two breakfasts, will you?” And with that, he took off down the street and was out of sight in a matter of moments.

  Pascal arrived with two coffees, two freshly-squeezed orange juices, and two croissants, all on separate plates. He looked quizzically at the empty chair.

  “Ben had to rush off,” said Molly, managing a smile for the handsome server. “But you know me, never let it be said that a cup of good coffee or croissant went to waste on my account!”

  She sprinkled a packet of sugar on her café grande and took a good long slurp, closing her eyes, the sweet-bitter-milky flavor sending her into a quick rapture, despite having just had what amounted to her first fight with Ben.

  Now what in the world is his problem? wondered Molly, never having known him to get so cranky. And to storm off for no reason? She was irritated with him right back, the way he acted as though she wasn’t allowed her own opinions, and thought she was insulting him when she wasn’t.

  In the case of Pierre and Iris Gault, it was obvious to Molly at least that neither of them knew what had happened. They hadn’t even begun to investigate!

  Thank heavens her irritation did not get in the way of enjoying her croissant, which she could tell was from Pâtisserie Bujold. There was a signature flavor Monsieur Nugent somehow managed to pull off, an intensity of buttery deliciousness that no other pastry shop could match. After finishing Ben’s orange juice, she polished off his croissant, and then decided it was time for a long walk.


  It was hot but she had just eaten two breakfasts and she needed the exercise. And she thought that if she walked all over the village, surely she would find some people to talk to who might shed some light on this whole business.

  It’s not that she set out to prove Ben wrong, exactly. But if that’s what happened—at least in the mood she was in in the moment—she wouldn’t be all that sorry.

  13

  Dufort started towards the station thinking he would have a word with Maron, but then changed his mind. Sweat was making the back of his shirt damp and he wiped his brow with the back of his hand, though walking a few blocks was hardly any exertion for a man as fit as he was. He cut down a narrow side street and walked away from the center of the village, heading to the herbalist’s.

  He stopped when her strange little shop came into view. He didn’t want to have to go inside. He recoiled at the thought of having to carry around the blue glass vials again, being dependent on the tinctures after being free for so many months.

  But it wasn’t the treatment that was the real problem. What he didn’t want—passionately didn’t want—was the tingling up and down his spine starting up again, along with the jangly thoughts, the sweating, the runaway anxiety. He had hoped that when he crossed Valerie Boutillier off the books it would settle things down for good. And he had felt so much better lately, days and even weeks without so much as a prick of worry.

  Dufort opened the door to the shop and walked in. The herbalist, a young woman with long tangled hair and no makeup, was leaning on her elbows, on the counter, looking at a large book.

  “Bonjour, Benjamin,” she said, barely looking up. “Hot today, eh? How have you been?”

  He sighed. “Very well, thanks. Extremely well. I haven’t used any tinctures in quite some time. No problems at all. But lately, and today….”

  “The anxiety is back? Does it feel the same as last time?”

  Ben nodded. “I’m not getting the racing thoughts,” he said, feeling embarrassed to talk like this to the young woman, and also relieved to share his trouble at the same time. “But the feeling of dread is back. The feeling of electricity in my spine. And I’m jumpy as all hell.” He remembered Molly and how he had let a simple disagreement infuriate him. “And I’m suddenly getting really bothered by things that wouldn’t have bothered me at all five minutes ago.”

  The herbalist, whose name was Chloé, looked at Ben with a clinical eye. She asked a long list of questions, some of which sounded very odd to him, but he didn’t hesitate to answer them all.

  “Now, finally,” she said. “What has changed? Are you working a new case, even now that you’re retired from the force?”

  “Did you know Iris Gault?”

  Chloé laughed. “Everyone knew Iris! The goddess of Castillac.”

  “Just curious…do you have any ideas about what happened?”

  “Me? I really can’t say, Benjamin. I didn’t know her personally, or her husband either. People are saying it was murder, is that right?”

  Dufort nodded.

  “Well, I’d be looking at the husband then,” she said, as she opened a drawer and took out a number of small glass bottles and began adding drops to a larger one. “I mean, it’s usually the husband, right? And it happened in their house?”

  Dufort nodded again. “Yes, she fell down the back stairs.”

  “You mean she was pushed.”

  Dufort nodded reluctantly. He realized that somewhere deep inside he had not really accepted that Iris’s death was not an accident. As though the wishful part of himself was thinking that Florian Nagrand would be calling him up any moment to say it was all a mistake, she had just been clumsy, they could all go home and stop looking for a murderer.

  “And when you found out that she was pushed, is that when the anxiety ramped up again?”

  Dufort was looking at the squiggly pattern on Chloé’s dress. It reminded him of studying cells back in biology class years ago—of cell membranes and cilia and all the things living in the world that you need a microscope to see.

  “Yes, more or less. Before Iris died—before her husband hired me to investigate—I was doing fine.”

  “None of my business really. But you might want to think about another line of work?”

  Dufort shrugged. “Maybe. It’s…it’s difficult figuring out what to do, at my age. I thought detective work was what I wanted to do above everything.” He raised his palms as though in surrender. “You’d think I’d have sorted it out by now.”

  Chloé nodded. “Sure, it feels that way. But I see all kinds of people in here who haven’t sorted things out, not by a long shot. Maybe it’s work, maybe it’s relationships, or even just how to manage day-to-day life. You’d be surprised, Benjamin. People struggle. Pretty much everyone, at some point.”

  “You’re kind to say so.”

  “Now, same as before. Three drops under the tongue if you’re having a bad moment, otherwise just five drops in the morning and another five before bed. Come back and see me if it doesn’t help.”

  Dufort thanked her and paid, then headed back to the sunny street. He was thinking about Rémy, who said that everyone has a mission in life—but easy for him to say when he had a messianic devotion to organic farming.

  He preferred to take the drops in privacy, even away from Chloé, and so he ducked into the first alley he came to, looked around, and slid the bottle out of the bag with a sigh. He was going to have to get things figured out this time. He was thirty-five years old. It was time to decide what kind of life he wanted and start living it.

  On his way to the Monday lunch shift at Chez Papa, Nico took a detour. He left his small apartment over an old stable on rue Pasteur and walked in the opposite direction from the bar, not noticing the hot weather because he was so focused on the purchase he was about to make.

  “I’ve never actually bought flowers for anyone,” he admitted to Madame Langevin, after looking around her shop for a few minutes, lost about how to to choose and what to ask for.

  “A pox upon you!” she said, glaring at him and then laughing. “Of course that’s not a problem, young man. You are Nico Bartolucci, I believe?”

  “Oui, Madame,” said Nico, unsure what to make of her.

  “I am Angela Langevin. Allow me to guide you. You’ve at least chosen a decent moment to buy your first flowers, although when you come back in a few weeks—and you will come back, Monsieur Bartolucci!—the selection will be even more impressive. I have the most amazing bouquets of imported flowers, of course, but the local blooms—just incredible. I’ve got several new suppliers who just got into the business. A young couple who live way out on rue des Chênes, I thought at first they wouldn’t work out at all—they looked so scruffy and unkempt it was hard to imagine they would be able to bring me anything of beauty. But look here—these anemones are from their little farm—magnificent, don’t you agree?”

  Nico smiled, feeling totally out of his element but not especially minding. “I never knew there was a flower called ‘anemone’,” he said. “All I know is, well I’m guessing actually—but I think she’d like something that smells good?”

  Mme Langevin gave Nico an appraising look. She had been a supporting player in the romances of Castillac for decades, and she could size people up quickly.

  Almost too good-looking. Never fallen in love before. Confident, but way down deep, a little fragile. Hell, that describes most of us.

  “Can you describe her to me?” she asked, nonchalantly.

  Nico grinned. “She’s…she’s American. Tall and thin, long legs, hair like Cleopatra.”

  “I meant more her personality, things she likes, so I can have an idea of which flowers might delight her?”

  “Oh, right. Well, I…honestly, she’s a little indescribable!” he said with a laugh. “She’s very direct, says whatever is on her mind. She’s musical. Fun-loving. She makes me want to protect her somehow.”

  Oh, he’s got it bad.

  “Smell thi
s,” said Mme Langevin, wafting a sprig of nicotiana under his nose.

  “Wow,” said Nico. “Can I have a big bundle of that? I want to make the whole apartment smell that good.”

  “If your apartment is not big, then yes, you can accomplish that,” she said, tearing off a big piece of waxed paper and laying some long stems on it. Then she took a few more branches from the bucket and lay them with the others. “I’ll enclose a little card with instructions on how to care for them. They won’t last terribly long but that is part of their beauty.”

  Nico thanked her effusively and walked quickly back to the apartment with the bouquet, hoping that Frances was out so he could get the flowers all arranged and have the apartment perfumed by the time she got home.

  It was true, he did have it bad. He was nearly thirty years old, had had plenty of girlfriends but never fallen in love, and now this strange American woman had entered his life, and he could think of absolutely nothing else but pleasing her. But he was finding Frances not all that easy to please, not because she was demanding, but unpredictable, with odd tastes.

  But who could resist flowers? According to Madame Langevin, he couldn’t miss.

  14

  Perhaps because of the heat, the village was quiet that morning. Molly wandered around aimlessly, hoping to run into anyone she knew, but the streets were practically empty. She went down rue Saterne and saw Madame Luthier’s run-down house, its roof collapsing slightly on one side and a pile of trash beside the door. Then over to rue Baudelaire, where old Madame Gervais lived, but when Molly knocked, there was no answer. The lamp store next door was closed, as it always seemed to be, and Molly spent some moments looking in the window, which was freshly organized and displayed several lamps with silk shades that Molly coveted.

  The disagreement with Ben…she let that alone. No point picking at it like a scab; she’d just see if they could smooth things over when they saw each other again. In the meantime, she very much wanted to have some news to tell him, some scrap of evidence she’d managed to find. And the truth was—Ben’s behavior had stirred her competitive spirit, and she was relishing the thought of presenting him with proof that he was wrong about Pierre.