by Nell Goddin
It made perfect sense—everyone knew that if a wife is murdered, the husband is the number one suspect. It wasn’t prejudice or fairy tales or television shows that made it so: it was statistics. Pulling out her cell, she did some quick googling and found several well-researched articles on the subject of women being murdered in Europe. Chillingly, the statistic for France was six women per month killed by their partners.
Six. Per month. It was hardly outlandish to bet that one of them, this July, was Iris Gault.
She walked back toward the Place, drooping from the sun, trying to think of whom she could interview that might have known Iris well. Who might know something, might have heard her talk about Pierre or the state of her marriage?
Right on rue Picasso she found her answer. The primary school was nestled near the center of the village; she had walked by it many times, although the sight of the children running around the playground almost always made her feel melancholy, unable to hold back a flood of regret at not having her own little ones.
But that morning those feelings didn’t take hold of her at all—she had a job to do. Molly looked in the windows and saw a man and a woman sitting at their desks. They must have known Iris quite well, she reasoned, and without any hesitation she sailed through the front door.
“Bonjour,” she said tentatively, from the office doorway. “Let me introduce myself. I am Molly Sutton. I moved to Castillac about a year ago, from the United States.”
“Bonjour Madame Sutton,” said the man, springing up from his chair. He was tall and lanky, with longish hair falling over one eye.“I am Tristan Séverin, principal of the school. What can I do for you?” His expression was warm and kind, and Molly felt encouraged.
“Well, I’ll just jump right into it. You know Ben Dufort, of course?”
“Oh, yes,” said Séverin. “He used to come every year to talk to the students, back when he was Chief. Very entertaining, the children loved him.”
Molly smiled. “Well, he’s…he’s a private investigator now, is that the term? My French is improving but hardly perfect,” she said, blushing. “Right now he is looking into the death of Iris Gault. I’m sure Officer Maron has been in to see you?”
The woman, who was still sitting at her desk, dropped something heavy on the floor.
“Not yet,” said Séverin. “It’s such terrible news. We were very fond of her, weren’t we, Caroline? Excuse me, this is Caroline Dubois, my assistant. Couldn’t accomplish a thing without her.” He smiled at Caroline, who managed an approximation of a smile at Molly but not a very convincing one. Molly noticed that she was well-dressed and quite neat, in contrast to her boss, who looked like he’d just come in from a session on the playground himself.
“Is it true what we’ve heard?” asked Caroline. “That she was…murdered?”
“I’m afraid that’s the coroner’s best guess. You have faith in Nagrand’s judgment?”
“I’ve never had any dealings with him one way or another,” said Séverin. “I expect he knows his business. But it’s very hard to imagine why anyone would want to kill Iris.” He glanced at Caroline, who nodded and then looked back at her computer screen.
“Would you have a few moments to talk?” Molly asked Séverin. “I don’t want to interrupt your day, but I was walking by and hoped you might have a minute or two now that school is out for the summer. Maybe you could show me where she worked?”
Séverin looked at Caroline. “Nothing pressing?”
“No, it’s an easy day, actually. The mailings went out last Friday and you’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning, but that’s all. Besides that mountain on your desk,” she added, gesturing with a strained smile.
“Please, deliver me from that mountain,” he laughed to Molly, and they left the office together. “So you’re working with Ben on this, am I right? You’ve made quite a reputation for yourself, Madame Sutton, solving crimes left and right! Castillac is lucky to have you.”
“Why, thank you,” said Molly, the blush deepening. “Yes, I’m working with Ben. He’s been hired privately to look into the matter. Though no doubt the gendarmerie is on top of it as well.”
Séverin nodded. “Terrible situation. Really—it’s unthinkable. Iris was such a gentle soul, I can’t imagine how a thing like this could have happened.”
“Had she worked at the school long?”
“Yes, for many years. I believe she started out as an assistant cook in the cantine and over time worked her way up to the head position. She came up with the menus, managed the kitchen, all of it really. For my part, it was one area of running the school I never had to worry about—I knew that with Iris in charge, the children’s lunch was going to be wholesome, delicious, and served on time.”
“So no disagreements, problems with the other workers, anything of that sort?”
“Oh no, not at all.” They passed through an empty courtyard and into a very large room in another building. “Occasionally we’d have some back-and-forth about the budget. What chef doesn’t want to spend money on the best ingredients, after all?” He smiled. “Sometimes she would get frustrated about that, or about not being able to find enough local vegetables in some seasons. She was very good at her job. Very caring and loving to the children.”
“And how did she get on with everyone else? Did the others in the cantine like working with her?”
“Oh yes, certainly, I never heard a word about any problems. You might want to talk to Ada Bellard, her second in command. She’d know better than I would about what went on behind the swinging doors.” Séverin gestured at the double doors that led to the kitchen.
“And…I know this sounds terribly nosy, but that’s what we have to do…did she ever talk about her husband?”
Séverin started to speak but closed his mouth. Molly had the sensation of wanting to reach down his throat and pull those swallowed words right out. With effort, she kept quiet.
Finally Séverin said, “Well, it doesn’t feel quite right to break a confidence. But obviously, this is an extraordinary situation. I have to think about what Iris would have wanted.”
“Of course.”
“She wasn’t one to talk endlessly about her personal problems. But it’s true, yes, that things had not been going well with Pierre for some time. I don’t know any details. Occasionally she would let slip the odd remark, you understand?”
“I think so.” Molly considered pressing him further but did not wish to go too far.
“Marriage is difficult,” said Séverin. “I know from experience. My wife—well, I won’t bore you with all that. I wish I had more to tell you, but honestly, Iris wasn’t airing her dirty laundry in public, even though all of us working here at the school are friends. She was nothing if not discreet.” Séverin straightened up and smiled. “Is there anything else? I fear Caroline’s wrath if I don’t make at least some dent in that pile on my desk.”
“I understand, and thank you very much for showing me around. Would you mind if I took a quick look in the kitchen before I go?”
“No, not at all, whatever you like. Hope to see you again, for a less grisly reason. Au revoir, Madame Sutton!”
The principal left the cantine and Molly was alone. The room was cavernous; the lunchtime tables pushed against the wall with chairs upended on top of them. Everything was clean and in order. She pushed open the swinging doors, mindful of this being Iris’s place, where she spent so much of her time and energy.
“Oh, excuse me!” said Molly, drawing back.
A man in blue coveralls was hunched over a sink at the end of the kitchen. “Eh, I’ll be done in a moment. Something wasn’t done right when this drain got put in. It’s always clogging up.” He emptied a bucket into it, scratched his head, then banged the empty bucket into the bottom of the sink.
“Do you know if Ada Bellard is around somewhere?” asked Molly.
The man said something Molly couldn’t understand. He made a short wave before leaving through the back door.
Molly wondered why the drain would be clogged if school was out and no one was using the kitchen. She turned on some more lights and walked through the kitchen, thinking of Iris. Large pots hung from a rack on the ceiling, with many more on wire shelves. Everything was organized, tidy, and sparkling clean: exactly what Molly would expect from Iris given her well-kept garden and house.
The industrial steel counters and stove somehow clashed with her idea of French cooking, and she realized she was romanticizing the whole thing—what, did she think that Iris would be hard at work behind a brocade curtain, cooking for the school in a cast-iron pot over a fire in a medieval fireplace? Just because the food was made from scratch didn’t mean the kitchen wasn’t modern.
Molly shivered. Even with all the lights on, the kitchen felt dark somehow—or as though something creepy was there and Molly couldn’t see what it was. She hurried back through the swinging doors, across the large room, and outside into the heat.
Who was Iris Gault? she wondered. Did Pierre kill her in a fit of passion, or did he plan it out? And how much did the insurance money figure into it?
There were a number chores waiting for her at La Baraque. Molly wandered back to her scooter and then zipped home, hurrying through the sweeping up, finishing up some dirty dishes, and deadheading the roses in the front border. She steadfastly refused to think about Ben, or worry that there was anything more than a fleeting irritation between them. And she certainly wasn’t planning to hang around waiting to hear from him—tonight she was headed to Chez Papa by herself, and she could barely wait.
15
Fortified by the new tincture, Dufort walked quickly to the station. He wanted to meet the new gendarme and talk to Maron about the Gault case. But Maron was not in.
“I’m not sure when he’ll be back,” said the short man sitting at Therese’s old desk. Dufort noticed that his uniform was impeccable and wondered if he actually polished the buttons. “A woman came in about half an hour ago saying her husband was missing again. Maron seemed to know what it was about.”
“Ah yes, that would be Madame Vargas. Her husband suffers from dementia, the poor man.” Dufort paused, distracted momentarily by thinking about the parts of his old job he had liked, such as getting Monsieur Vargas home safe. Nothing sinister, nothing complicated, and an almost guaranteed happy ending. He shook his head slightly to bring himself back to the present. “I am Benjamin Dufort, formerly Chief gendarme here.” Dufort smiled but the other man did not change his expression.
“I have heard of you.”
“And your name is…?”
“Excuse me. I am Officer Paul-Henri Monsour. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Dufort understood that Monsour had absolutely no interest in helping him, or having anything at all to do with him for that matter. A Chief who resigns his post—such strange, unaccountable behavior!—is a person to be avoided if at all possible.
Dufort felt that this shying-away on Monsour’s part gave himself an advantage, though he couldn’t say precisely how. In any case, it amused rather than affronted him.
“Actually, Paul-Henri, I believe you are the man I want to speak to.” Dufort knew that using the gendarme’s first name would annoy him. “You answered the call to the Gault house on Friday night?”
“I did.”
“Tell me what you found, if you please. How was Pierre? Was anyone else at the scene?”
“I am sorry, Monsieur Dufort, but you’re asking me to speak about the business of the investigation, and of course that would go against all the protocols of the gendarmerie. Speaking to a civilian in such a way, no, I couldn’t possibly.”
“Of course, I didn’t mean on the record,” said Dufort.
“Nevertheless.”
The two men stared at each other. Eventually Dufort’s expression softened. “Just ask Maron to call me when he gets in. Can you do that?”
“My pleasure, Monsieur.”
Letting the door bang behind him, Dufort went back outside. It felt as though the temperature had climbed another five degrees and he moved to get under the shade of a oak tree while he considered his next move.
Abruptly he let out a short laugh as he thought how glad he was not to be Chief with Monsour working under him. For a fleeting moment, he imagined what it would be like to leave Castillac, and make a new start somewhere else, where he did not know the histories of most of the inhabitants and felt no responsibility for keeping them all safe.
Then with a sigh he began a list of questions: Did the Gaults socialize with anyone in particular? Who would have insight on their marriage? Who were Iris’s confidantes?
And above all, why was Molly so intent on convicting Pierre before they’d even gotten started?
“Thank you, Nico,” Molly said, wiggling on her stool at Chez Papa and then picking up her kir and taking a long sip. “Good heavens, it was hot today. Have you heard a weather report? When’s this heat wave going to be over?”
“I rather like the heat,” said Lawrence, sitting on his usual stool with his usual Negroni parked in front of him. “I strip down to a glamorous pair of heathen underwear and bask in my backyard like a lizard.”
“You do have an admirable tan.”
“I believe my vitamin D status is absolutely tip-top,” he said. “So come on, enough about the weather and my skin. How goes it with Iris’s case? Is there any hope for poor Pierre?”
“I don’t know why you say ‘poor Pierre’. He’s hired Ben, so he’s not exactly defenseless.”
“Your eyebrows are knitting. Quite adorable.”
“Oh, please. I’m interested in why everyone’s so quick to defend him. You must realize that women die at the hands of their husbands and boyfriends more than any other way? For women in their thirties and forties, more die that way than from cancer!”
“That is startling.”
“I’ll say it is. And it makes me angry, Lawrence. It makes me want to slap that damn mason across the face and ask him how dare he hurt his wife, and I don’t care two figs about what was wrong in the marriage.”
“I agree that being disagreeable shouldn’t get you killed. If that’s what you’re getting at.”
“A murderer demonstrates cowardice, lack of self-control, weakness…the list goes on. I admit—and maybe I sound self-righteous—but I have contempt for it. I know that possibly from time to time it can seem as though I’m obsessed with murder, but it’s the audacity of the murderer that I can’t get past. This idea they have that their feelings, their hurts, are more important than anyone else’s. They are the ones to decide who lives and who dies. It makes me so bloody angry!”
Nico and Lawrence listened warily.
“I don’t often see you this upset,” said Lawrence. “Perhaps never. Is it really directed all at Pierre?”
“No!” she snapped. “It’s also Ben, who’s completely on Pierre’s side. Willingly taking money in order to defend a wife-killer. What am I supposed to make of that?”
“But Molls, you don’t know Pierre did it,” said Nico, a little meekly.
“I do too. Statistics may be manipulated, I’ll grant you that. But in this case, I think the situation is pretty straightforward. As I just said, women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends at an alarming rate. Six a month in France—I just looked it up. Six every month!
“And the facts are these: Iris was pushed down the stairs in their house. Pierre was there. He made a half-hearted attempt at an alibi by stopping by here, which he almost never does, then called the gendarmes in a weak effort to look innocent. Never has there been a simpler case, it’s all laid out plain as day! Are you suggesting, I don’t know, that a stranger strolled by their house, ran in, and pushed her down the back-stairs to her kitchen? For what reason, I ask you? Not to mention that statistically, people aren’t actually killed by strangers very often. And I haven’t even mentioned the fat, juicy life insurance payout. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
Lawren
ce and Nico exchanged a glance. Molly had jumped off her stool and was waving her hands around, her hair flying out in all directions, her cheeks pink.
“So none of you agree with me?” she said finally, when no one spoke.
“It’s you who always says, ‘don’t assume anything’,” said Lawrence.
Molly scrunched up her face. “It’s very annoying to have your own words quoted back to you when you’re trying to make a point.”
“Indeed,” said Lawrence.
The door opened behind them and a family came in—a tired-looking mother and two young children, along with a beleaguered father.
“Is the air-conditioning working?” he asked Nico plaintively.
“Sorry, we don’t have air-conditioning. You know how it is, Fredo—there’s only a few days every summer when we really need it.”
“This is one of them.”
“Wouldn’t argue that point,” laughed Nico. “There’s a big fan going in the back room. Take your family in there and I’ll bring you all some lemonade, how’s that?”
Fredo herded them past the bar and into the back room, and Nico got busy cutting lemons.
“All right then, smarty-pants,” Molly said to Lawrence. “If Pierre didn’t kill Iris, who did? By all accounts she was a gentle woman that everyone liked. Where’s any motive for killing her?”
“There’s always love.”
“Must you speak like a fortune cookie? What do you mean, ‘there’s always love’?”
Lawrence leaned in close, as though if he kept his voice down, it wouldn’t count as gossiping about the dead. “I heard she was having an affair, that’s all.”
Molly’s eyes flew wide open. “What? How come no one said anything about this before? With whom?” she demanded, smacking both hands on the bar. “Although before you answer, an affair only strengthens the case against Pierre, you do realize that.”