by Serena Kent
“Louchard’s farm?”
“Yes, and that’s where it came from. I’m sure of it. I checked the sight lines this morning—before M. Louchard caught me.”
“What do you mean, Louchard caught you?”
“He chose that moment to come down the track—he was coming home on his tractor. I didn’t show him the bullet—I just told him some story about losing an earring.”
Clémence looked perturbed. “Did he believe you?”
“He seemed to.”
The Frenchwoman shook her head, as if she were having some difficulty with the story. Penelope realised with some irritation that Clémence was staring at her dangly painted parrot earrings, bought from a highly reputable designer stall in Camden Passage some years previously. Her disdain was as ill-disguised as it was typical, even at a time of crisis.
Penelope ignored it. “He said that he was in Banon, at the Agricultural Fair, for all of yesterday. But that rifle shot definitely did come from his land, near his house.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Yes, absolutely sure.”
“And, the last time you were shot at, Penny, you met Louchard on your way back. I think you said he had his rifle then, yes?”
“He was cleaning it when I went past.”
“Think back, Penny. Everything that you can remember. Every detail.”
Penelope cast back to that afternoon. The lovely blue sky and the farmer’s pessimism about the weather. The shots and the ruined chapel where she had taken cover. The sky clouding over, and then the first spots of rain as she sat outside with Louchard on her way home after the ordeal. The rain becoming more insistent, raindrops bouncing off the iron café table, and fizzing on the barrel of the rifle that still sat beside him.
Realisation hit.
“It was still hot.”
“What was hot?”
“Louchard’s rifle—I remember, when it was raining, how the drops fell on the barrel and boiled off straightaway.”
The two women fell silent, and Penelope gave an involuntary shudder.
“I may have just had a narrow escape. If he is the one who has been shooting at me, he would have realised that I suspected him. Which is why he spun the tale about being at Banon and driving back through the night. So why didn’t he try to do something this morning?”
“Perhaps he did.”
“What do you mean?” asked Penelope feebly, even as she started to feel a bit sick. “The plum brandy? He was drinking it too, but what if he put some kind of drug in my glass?”
“How do you feel?”
“I’ve been better.”
“Have some water. Lots of water, just in case.”
Penelope opened the fridge and grabbed a large bottle of Evian.
“You still have the bullet you found?”
“Yes.”
“We must take it down to the chief of police to get it matched.”
* * *
PENELOPE WAS still feeling queasy when they arrived at the police station. The drive down, predictably, hadn’t helped. But three large glasses of mineral water and a mini baguette with ham had toned down the effects of the plum brandy. It seemed possible that any malevolent physical symptoms attributed to M. Louchard’s hospitality had been imaginary. This time, her queasiness was due to another rendezvous with the chief of police.
They were asked to wait in a bare room where a young gendarme took a brief statement.
“I bet Reyssens keeps us waiting for as long as possible. He’s not going to be pleased to see me, is he?” hissed Penelope.
Clémence put her finger to her lips. “Don’t say anything.”
Clémence looked quite rattled herself for once, Penelope thought as she watched her texting from her phone as dexterously as a teenager. Perhaps she was feeling guilty about selling a property that had thrown up one unforeseen problem after another. Especially as she had been so sure that Le Chant d’Eau was the house for Penelope.
It was a full half hour before they were called up to the office of the chief of police. Inspector Gamelin, his smartly dressed sidekick, stood at his side, taciturn as ever. Greetings were polite but perfunctory.
Clémence wasted no time in telling them exactly why the situation had become urgent. Penelope handed over the plastic bag holding the bullet casing.
The chief took it, and the two policemen peered at it, exchanging a few muttered words.
Gamelin spoke in English. “Mme Keet. Monsieur le chef de police is very concerned.”
“Thank you. That is a great relief.”
“No, Mme Keet. He is concerned that you refuse to accept his advice to leave this case to the police investigators.”
The man himself turned to meet her gaze with a look of intense annoyance.
“The chief thanks you for your help, but he requests that you cease your investigations from now on. This is not the first time he has asked you to desist.”
“What?” cried Penelope, glaring at the sour-faced chief.
“He is concerned that you have compromised this bullet by touching it and bringing it here. Even if it was indeed fired in your direction, as you say.”
Both Penelope and Clémence objected forcefully.
Penelope drew herself up and turned to face the police chief. “Monsieur, I wore gloves whilst I searched, and as you can see, the bullet is properly bagged and tagged. I have done this before, you know, in England.”
Reyssens gave a dismissive snort. “Angleterre—oui, Agatha Christie, M. Poirot! Amateurs! Toujours les amateurs!”
“This is not one of your mystery novels, madame,” interjected Gamelin. His contemptuous tone made the words sound almost profane.
The spectre of the axe rose before them.
Another nasty look from the chief of police made Penelope wonder whether they had any hope of solving these crimes.
“He feels that this is a specialist job best done by the police,” went on Gamelin.
“But I have been shot at, at least twice!” protested Penelope. “At the fête, you said if you thought I was in danger, you would protect me. Well, I am in bloody danger!”
The chief of police narrowed his eyes. He sat back in his chair.
There was a long pause, during which Penelope remembered her drunken certainty that he was also a very real threat. She felt an aura of increasing menace around him.
“I will ask my men to look in each day,” he said. “We will set up CCTV observation. Are you alone in the house?”
Penelope could not help feeling that the surveillance was as much to keep an eye on her as for her safety. “I’m alone,” she said quietly. “Thank you for that, monsieur. It will be a great comfort to know that the security cameras will record the entrance of the killer before he strikes.”
But the irony was lost on the chief, who rose from his seat and told her that was all he could do.
“And are you going to ask your ballistics and forensics experts to examine the bullet casing?”
“Naturellement, madame.”
With that, they were dismissed.
30
EVEN CLÉMENCE THOUGHT THEY HAD been badly done by. They rocketed back up the hill to St Merlot in near silence.
“Thank you for coming with me,” said Penelope. “I’m sorry that I’ve messed up your day—again.”
“I could not leave you to deal with this alone.”
Penelope was just about to say that what Clémence had done was surely above and beyond what was required of an estate agent when the house came into sight. Outside was a smart blue Mercedes. The mayor was waiting for them. He looked concerned.
“How did it go with the chief of police?”
“How did you know where we were?” asked Penelope.
“Clémence sent me a text.”
“That rat Reyssens could hardly bear to listen to us,” said Clémence. “He gave the impression we were keeping him from something much more important. Like a four-course lunch.”
“You are probably ri
ght,” said the mayor. “But don’t forget, I am on your side. The bullet casing that you found, Penny—I suppose you have left it at the police station, but can you describe it for me, please? I know all there is to know about the guns kept in St Merlot. It is one of my duties to issue the licences.”
“I can do better than that,” said Penelope. “Come inside, and I’ll show you.”
In the kitchen, she reached into her bag for her phone. “There,” she said.
She held out the photos she had taken of the bullet, all of them next to a tape measure.
“Well done, madame—well played!”
Clémence looked suitably impressed.
“Does that help?” asked Penelope. “Can you narrow it down to the weapon that fired it?”
“It does help,” said the mayor cautiously. “But we have to be very careful before drawing any conclusions. We might be able to identify the gun, and the ammunition—but this alone will not tell us who fired it.”
He was right, of course. They all looked at each other.
“You have some ideas, though,” said Penelope.
“Make me some good strong coffee,” said the mayor.
Clémence answered a phone call and walked back down the hall to take it.
The mayor paced around as Penelope attended to the coffee. “It is good that you came to this village, Mme Keet,” he said, abruptly. “When all this is over, you will be happy here, I promise you.”
“I hope you’re right—if I survive long enough!”
He started to say something, then stopped. He closed the door. “There are a number of issues I would like to discuss with you.”
Penelope felt a lecture coming on.
“If you want to tell me off, it really would be better to do it here and now,” she said, furious at how prissy that sounded.
“Tell you off?”
“I’ve probably done something wrong, as usual, so you might as well tell me now and get it over with.”
He gave her an odd look. “I did not mean—”
Clémence returned, tucking her phone back into her bag.
“Just in time,” said Penelope. “Er, coffee’s ready.”
They sat down at the kitchen table.
“Right,” said Penelope, recovering her composure. “Who is on your list of gun licencees who owns weapons that could potentially have fired this bullet?”
The mayor’s handsome face clouded. “There are only two. One is M. Louchard.”
Penelope and Clémence exchanged glances.
“And the other is M. Charpet.”
“No!” they cried together.
“Impossible!” said Clémence.
“They both have old-fashioned rifles that they use for hunting. The bullet could have been fired by either one of these weapons.”
“Did you manage to check with the organisers of the fair at Banon that Louchard was supposed to be at?” asked Clémence.
“I tried, as soon as you texted,” said the mayor. “I’m still waiting for a response.”
“It can’t have been M. Charpet. For all sorts of reasons,” said Penelope. “I was with him and Valentine for lunch. He likes me. I’m giving him work!”
“He could have followed you after you left his house,” pointed out the mayor.
The two women shook their heads.
“But no,” went on the mayor. “You are right. I do not think M. Charpet fired the gun. But as I said before, that does not mean that one of these guns was not the one that was used.”
“We should get the police up here to visit Louchard and take his gun for testing. And to look, at the same time, for any evidence that his house was broken into,” said Clémence, scrolling numbers on her phone. “I’m calling them now.”
“I think we have to,” he agreed.
Clémence spoke briefly and ended the call. “Right. They are on their way.”
“I would like to warn Louchard, though,” said the mayor.
“What?” shouted Penelope. She had forgotten, in the heat of the moment, how the mayor always looked out for his villagers. “Why would you do that?”
“He will appreciate being treated correctly and fairly, you will see. That is how we act in this village—most of us, anyway.”
“It doesn’t seem right. Surely . . .” Then she remembered the draft contract, and the times she had seen them together. Why did everything seem to come back to this piece of the puzzle—a piece that she couldn’t admit to having seen?
The mayor raked his hand through his hair and gave her a stare that might have been smouldering in other circumstances. “This is the difference between us, Penny.”
She felt herself overheating.
“Between the French and the English, I should say,” he went on. “In your country, people are innocent until they are proved guilty. Here, we have the Code Napoléon. Guilty until proved innocent. If the police are lazy . . . I am sure you see the problem.” He sighed. “By the way, did Reyssens tell you they have a potential identification of the bones in the chapel?”
“No, he bloody well did not!”
“Ah. Well, they only have a partial match using dental records, but the name I’ve been given is Michel Cailloux.”
“Do you know who he was?”
The mayor thought for a while. “I cannot say I do. There are some who pass through the village quickly, before anyone has had a chance to get to know them. Maybe he was here for a short while. It would have been before I was mayor. Although I have had my house here for many years, I spent most of my time working in Paris until about seven years ago.”
Despite her confusion over Louchard and the mayor, something snagged in Penelope’s mind. Michel Cailloux. Was it possible she had heard that name before? “No more information at all?” she asked the mayor.
“Only the name, and there is no absolute confirmation.”
* * *
THE MAYOR left swiftly to get along to the Louchard farmhouse before the gendarmes did. Clémence, too, made her excuses. “Something urgent has come up with the sale of one of our properties in Goult. I’m sorry. I need to go there immediately. I will call you later.”
“That’s OK. Thank you—again—for everything you’ve done.” Penelope would have been more effusive, but Clémence had clickety-clacked on her high heels to the front door and run out to her car.
Penelope sank onto a kitchen chair, grimaced at the strong coffee, and got up again to make the only brew that would do. As she boiled the kettle to make a cup of brick-red builders’ tea, she tried to look on the bright side.
It did seem as if matters were finally coming to a head. Was the person who tried to shoot her also embroiled in the murders of Manuel Avore and this Michel Cailloux?
She looked outside at her terrace. Though the sun was shining, she decided against taking her tea outside. She was not daft enough to present herself as a sitting duck until the police had resolved what was going on.
She sat back down at the kitchen table, sipped, and closed her eyes. That was a mistake. All she could see were bullets and bodies. Bones. A skeletal hand. The ace of spades. She picked up a book but found she couldn’t concentrate. Too much was still whirling around in her head.
Manuel Avore. Michel Cailloux. Like a roll call in a nightmare. The names being intoned. It worried her that this new one had a ring of familiarity about it. Cailloux.
She drummed her fingers on the table. Cailloux. Was it just that she’d heard the French occasionally refer affectionately to their beloved Rolling Stones by that name? Cailloux. Stones, in French. Michel, Mick . . . Jagger.
Suddenly Penelope raised her hand to her mouth. Then she rushed upstairs. She scrabbled for her locked suitcase, under her bed. She opened it with trembling hands and took out the folder containing the notary’s documents, her title of ownership of Le Chant d’Eau.
That was when she had heard the name Cailloux. When the notary had read out the names of all the previous owners.
Penelope flip
ped through the pages, so many pages. She noticed the name of Malpas in the rather sketchy prewar notes, and that of Avore afterwards, just as M. Charpet had indicated. And then, there it was. Michel Cailloux. Owner of the property for only a few months, between March and July 2010, before selling to the Girards from Lyon. She pulled the newspaper microfiche copy from her bag to check, though she was certain of the date: April 12, 2010. Her instincts had told her there was a connection between the two deaths and Le Chant d’Eau, and it looked as if she was right.
The games and card table where she found the newspaper cutting and the pack of cards. If Cailloux had briefly owned her house, then the table could well have belonged to him. Which explained why Avore had not taken it when he moved out.
Piece by piece, it was all starting to fit. But that meant that whoever killed Michel Cailloux must have had access to this house and the pack of cards.
A scraping noise outside made her look up. She went over to the window and peered out. The courtyard and the garden slumbered in the heat, undisturbed. A lively breeze played in the leaves of the olive trees.
“Just the wind,” said Penelope aloud. “That was dried leaves being blown across stone.”
She had almost convinced herself that she was being paranoid when she heard the noise again. It sounded like the scraping of metal. Then a rattling that was definitely not dried leaves.
Penelope was alone again in the house. In all the comings and goings, that had been forgotten.
She crept down the passageway towards the front door.
The door was open. Had she not closed it properly after Clémence had left? Had the wind blown it open? Penelope felt her mouth go dry.
The next moment someone called her name.
31
PENELOPE ALMOST COLLAPSED WITH RELIEF when Didier’s smiling face appeared around the door. The electrician stepped into the hall, carrying his tool kit, the very picture of reassurance. Today’s T-shirt bore a retro image of The Avengers. Diana Rigg gave her a sultry wink.
“I have a free afternoon, so I can make a start on the rewiring upstairs now, if you like,” he said.
“That’s great, thank you! Come on in.”
It was rather wonderful how people here often seemed to arrive at just the right time. She wondered how the mayor was getting on with M. Louchard, and whether the police were on their way up to St Merlot.