by Nell Goddin
Adèle suprised Molly by giving her a grateful smile. “Thank you!” she said, looking surprised and a little unsettled.
“Molly!” hissed Frances from her seat. “There’s a crème brûleé sitting here with your name on it! And I ordered you coffee.”
“À bientôt!” said Molly to Adèle as she moved back to her seat. “I’m dying for some coffee, good idea. Although….”
“Oh stop it with the ‘althoughs’!” Frances spooned some white chocolate mousse into her mouth and then gripped the sides of the table while she swooned.
“I wanted to meet the family, to see if there was, well, any dirt to dig up.”
“It’s a family. Of course there’s dirt to dig up.”
“It’s probably not a good idea for me to get involved. It’s not like I don’t have a ton of work to do at La Baraque, getting the new cottage ready.”
“Well, strictly speaking, it’s not you doing the work but the guys you’ll hire. But whatever. Doesn’t the cop do a good job? He’s pretty foxy,” she said, growling.
Molly laughed, her eyes on Adèle and Michel, who had sat back down and were drinking coffee, deep in conversation. The rest of the party had cleared out, and it was only the four of them left in the restaurant.
“Dufort? Yeah, he’s okay. Probably better than okay. He’s had the bad luck to be chief in a village where things seem to go wrong more than seems fair.”
“What’s that mean, ‘things go wrong’?”
“Amy Bennett, the woman I found…she was the third woman to go missing. The other two have never been found.”
“And the guy you nailed? He didn’t do those?”
“Apparently there’s no evidence pointing in that direction. He says he didn’t touch the others. So I don’t know. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.”
“You think the cop is a loser.”
“No! No, I really don’t. He’s a smart guy. And not bad looking…”
“I didn’t miss that.”
“Figured. And he’s really a kind man. I could tell his heart was breaking for Amy’s parents. Really, I have nothing at all to say against him.”
“Except that he sucks at his job.”
“Frances! I’m not saying that.”
“I think I’ll go over to the brother and sister team over there, and just tell them that my friend Lady Sleuthington says that the local guy is crap and if they want to find out what really happened to old granny, they should hire you.”
Molly laughed. “Let’s go home. I swear I’m retiring my civilian badge and focusing on my house and garden from now on.”
“Sure you are,” murmured Frances, grinning at Molly’s back as they waved their thanks to Natalie and hobbled their way back to La Baraque in the cold dark.
7
Thérèse Perrault was the first to get to the station on Friday morning. She was almost always first. She was young and enthusiastic and trying to make a good impression on Chief Dufort, and very pleased to have a job she was interested in, where she could make a difference in people’s lives. Even if, in Castillac, that often meant returning Mme Bonnay’s dog or Mme Vargas’s husband, both of whom tended to wander.
“Bonjour, Thérèse!” said Dufort, striding in. He ran every morning, farther in winter than in summer because he liked working out in the cold. His skin was still bright from the exertion, and he too was glad to come to work, happy for a job where he didn’t have to sit behind a desk but could spend most of the day out on the streets, talking to the people of the village and listening to their concerns, and hopefully helping with their difficulties.
The third officer on the Castillac force was Gilles Maron. He had grown up in the north, near Lille, and worked in Paris for several years before being transferred to Castillac. Dufort valued his work though they had not become close. Perrault had not decided what she thought about him. He was not like the men she was used to—more closed up, sterner, serious.
The three usually met in Dufort’s office first thing, where Dufort handed out any assignments that had come up.
“Well, here we are, on a dreary December day,” he said. “The village is quiet and I have absolutely nothing whatsoever on my desk. Apparently the people of Castillac are without problems this morning.”
Perrault chuckled and Maron did not change his expression.
“Wait, what about Mme Desrosiers dropping dead at La Métairie last night?” asked Perrault.
“She did indeed,” said Dufort. “I got a call from the restaurant at close to ten. I drove over and spoke to Nathalie—you both know Nathalie Marchand?—at any rate, yes, the old lady was dead in the bathroom. I called the coroner and went home.”
“Heart attack?”
“Haven’t heard from Monsieur Nagrand yet, but I suspect so. She was seventy two—yesterday was her birthday in fact. No reason to suspect foul play.”
“Except that she was a complete witch,” mumbled Perrault.
“In what way?” asked Maron, looking awake for the first time that morning. “Garden-variety bitch, or the kind of bitch that makes people want to kill you?”
“I said ‘witch’,” said Perrault. “But I’d bet on the latter.”
Dufort shook his head. “I know you two prefer our work to be interesting, but I don’t believe there’s anything there. Seventy two year olds sometimes die, that’s life.”
Perrault nodded and did not let on that she intended to give Desrosiers’s niece Adèle a call. Perrault’s older sister had been schoolmates with Adèle, and Perrault could remember hearing some pretty eye-popping stories about the tricks that woman got up to. Not exactly your kindly grandmother-type, but a real viper. Wouldn’t hurt just to have a chat with Adèle, see if she had anything interesting to say, thought Perrault.
“So for today, let’s get outside, cover the village, look around, talk to anyone who’d like to talk. I think of a calm day like this as an opportunity to take the pulse of our village, and see if there’s anything we’ve neglected that needs our attention. I’ll see you both back here after lunch, unless I hear from you otherwise.”
“Yes sir,” said Perrault and Maron together. All three put on their coats and scarves and headed out in different directions.
Dufort walked the short block to the Place, a square in the middle of town. In the very center, an unremarkable monument to World War 1 dead stood surrounded by a bank of flowers in the summer, now bare ground. The Place was ringed with restaurants, the Presse where you could get newspapers, magazines, and cigarettes, as well as several banks and a number of shops. It was the heart of Castillac, where people congregated on market day but other days as well, but on a cold day in winter it looked desolate and closed up.
Dufort wandered into Chez Papa, a bistro owned by his old friend Alphonse. No one was at the bar, in fact it looked as though the restaurant was completely empty of staff as well as patrons, though Dufort could hear swing music coming from the back.
“Alphonse!” he shouted. “You here?”
The bartender Nico stuck his head around a corner. “Hey Ben,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll be right with you.”
Dufort sat on a barstool and looked around. He couldn’t help staring for a moment at the table by the door, where Vincent used to sit. He shook his head, thinking not for the first time that people were extremely difficult to understand. You just never know what’s brewing underneath the surface, even people who outwardly seem perfectly pleasant and reasonable.
“Bonjour,” Nico said, coming behind the bar and wiping his hands on a towel. “Sorry, no one was coming in so I was in the back, trying to get the pantry organized. Coffee?”
Dufort paused. “All right, yes,” he said. “Petit, s’il te plaît.”
Nico fussed with the machine and then served Dufort his cup of espresso, and then made one for himself.
“Not much business this month?” asked Dufort.
Nico shrugged. “You now how it is, in December everyone is huddled up next to their woo
dstoves, dreaming about spring. Alphonse has been talking about closing the place in January, maybe taking a trip to someplace warm.”
Dufort shook his head. “Castillac without Chez Papa? Even for a month, hard to imagine.”
The door opened with a gust of cold air, and a group of three people came in, followed by another group of two.
“Perhaps Alphonse is being hasty,” said Dufort with a smile, as Nico went to hand out menus. He thought he recognized the three as being related to Desrosiers, though he wasn’t entirely clear on the family tree.
“I can’t say I’m broken-hearted, she was an absolute horror and I’ll say it because it’s true and so what if she is my aunt,” the young man with brown hair falling into his face said.
“Oh now, Michel,” said an older woman affectionately, perhaps his mother. “Some things are just better left unsaid.”
Dufort slid off his stool and went to their table. “Bonjour Madame,” he said to the older woman. “I am Benjamin Dufort of the Castillac gendarmerie. I’m sorry to intrude, but I believe you are related to the departed Mme Desrosiers?”
“She was my sister. I am Murielle Faure,” she said, with a slight nod.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” said Dufort.
“Thank you, Chief Dufort. May I present my son, Michel, and daughter Adèle,” said Murielle. Michel and Adèle showed their good manners by telling the Chief they were pleased to meet him.
“Had your sister been ill? Of course it’s always a shock, no matter how old a person is. I was just wondering if there had been any indication something was amiss, health-wise?”
“Oh no,” said Mme Faure, brightening. “We always thought Josephine would live forever, didn’t we children? Healthy as a horse. So yes, we’re all quite shocked.”
Michel’s pinkie finger had a long nail, and he was sliding it along the edge of the menu, fraying it slightly. Dufort thought he saw Adèle kick her brother under the table, rather odd behavior for an adult.
“Well, again, my condolences. It is never easy to lose someone no matter the age.”
Dufort went back to the bar and sipped his espresso. He thought about Mme Desrosiers lying on the bathroom tile at La Métairie, on her side as though taking a nap. He felt his throat start to close up.
But then he remembered someone once telling him that “dirt nap” was a term for death, and let out a guffaw before pulling himself together and leaving a few euros on the bar on his way back out into the cold.
8
Molly was an early riser and Frances a late one, so Molly got up and had coffee and breakfast by herself. She screwed up her courage for a phone call, still a difficult hurdle even though her French had improved dramatically over the months she had been in Castillac. There was something about that disembodied voice over the phone, with no facial expression or body language to help the communication along—dread was not too strong a word for how Molly felt about phone calls in France.
She was calling a mason, recommended by her neighbor Mme Sabourin, who she hoped would be able to repair the external wall of the pigeonnier down in the orchard, the first necessary step towards turning the outbuilding into a habitation she could rent out.
“Bonjour Monsieur Gault, I received your name from my neighborhood, pardon, my neighbor, Madame Sabourin. I wonder if…if…you have a moment to talk with me? I think of a project.” She shook her head. Molly liked talking to people—adults, children, strangers, it didn’t matter—and it made her very uncomfortable to come out with such stilted sentences. But the mason understood well enough and said he would be out at the end of the afternoon, if that was convenient.
Whew, glad that’s out of the way.
“Molly!” shouted Frances as she came through the front door. “I need coffee, stat!”
“Tell you what,” said Molly, checking the big clock on the wall that said it was quarter to 12. “Why don’t we stroll into town and eat at Chez Papa? The coffee is better than mine, for sure, and I’ll introduce you to another hot bartender. You up for it?”
“Sure,” Frances said. “I should probably take a day, or at least a few hours, to get work done, at some point anyway. Not feeling like it has to be this minute. You have a piano?”
“Actually,” Molly said, with a slightly embarrassed grin, “I have a music room. I’ll show you.” Frances followed Molly in the other direction from the living room and into a room that contained nothing but a dusty piano and a couple of chairs. “I feel silly having this, because I don’t play. But the piano came with the house, and I don’t need the room for anything else, so here it sits.”
“Awesome!” said Frances. She wrote jingles for a living—an extremely good living—and needed to be able to noodle around on a piano for ideas to come to her. She walked over and played a few chords, pronounced it in tune, and said she was ready to go into the village. “I’m starving. Last night’s dinner seems like it was a million years ago. And you know,” she said thoughtfully, “I’m sort of disappointed that I didn’t get to see the body of the old lady in the bathroom. I’ve never actually seen a real live dead person before.”
Molly started laughing and she laughed so hard she had to lean on the wall for support, gasping for breath. Frances was puzzled until Molly managed to choke out, “Real…live…dead person…” in between gales of laughter.
“It’s not that funny,” said Frances, giving her hair one last comb before they went into the village. “Sometimes you can be so literal-minded.”
Molly recovered herself and pulled on a coat. Both women looked in a long horizontal mirror on the foyer wall while they tied on scarves. “I saw a friend of my father’s when I was a teenager,” said Molly. “Open casket at the funeral. But that dead body looked sort of like a doll, even though it was an old man. His face was all waxy and he had on more makeup than I did. Mme Desrosiers…well, the way her body was, curled up on her side, I thought at first she was asleep or had passed out or something. But when I looked into her face….”
“You knew she was dead.”
“Pretty much. Something about her eyes…they just didn’t look like they were going to open again.”
The day was bright and cold. Frances and Molly blinked at the sun and wished they had worn sunglasses. On the other side of rue des Chênes, almost at the village, was a small cemetery, and Frances walked more slowly, looking over the wall at the stone mausoleums and complicated ironwork of the gate.
“What does ‘Priez pour vos morts’ mean?”
“‘Pray for your dead’,” answered Molly.
They walked on in silence, stomachs growling.
Walking inside Chez Papa, Molly inhaled deeply, always appreciating the smell of coffee and humanity therein. Nico waved from the bar and a few tables were filled—nothing like the crowds and gaiety of summer, but still a welcoming, homey place.
“Nico, this is my American friend, Frances Milton.”
“Very nice to meet you,” said Nico.
Frances grinned at Nico and then gave Molly a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Look, Molls, it’s that family from last night—”
And sure enough, there were Michel and Adèle, niece and nephew to the newly departed Mme Desrosiers, deep in conversation at a table nearby.
“La bombe!”
“Oh, brother,” said Molly. Lapin Broussard swept into the room, waving at Nico and giving Molly a wink. “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got some business to do,” he said, and continued on to the back room.
“Who’s that? And what’s a bohmb?” asked Frances.
“If you don’t wanna find out, just keep your arms over your chest.”
“Ha—one of those. So who is the guy, anyway?”
“Long story. Sort of decent, sort of a pain. He’s a junk dealer.”
“Such blasphemy! I deal in original antiques, Molly!” said Nico, imitating Lapin.
Frances ordered a café grand, and Molly had an espresso because why not, but she stopped talking to Frances
and Nico, hoping to hear whatever Michel and Adèle were saying. As she sat on her stool she hoped it wasn’t obvious that her antennae were completely focused on the pair at the table, and she turned her head so that one ear was directly facing them.
“—what she did to that housekeeper from a few years ago? She was never right after that, I swear Michel. I think she had to move back in with her parents and hasn’t had a job since. Nerves totally shattered.”
Michel nodded. “I don’t know what makes a person that twisted,” he said, and then the next bit was garbled and Molly couldn’t follow it.
“Hel-lo, Molly Sutton!” said Frances, annoyed. “I’m talking to you, Nico’s talking to you, and you’re sitting there with your eyes glazed not answering.”
Something was up with that old lady, was what Molly was thinking. And now that she had that thought, she couldn’t let it go.
Murielle Faure got up early, as she usually did, and put on a pair of sturdy canvas pants and a heavy man’s flannel shirt. Over that, a workman’s coat, then a wool scarf covering her head and tied around her neck. It was cold again but she longed to be in her garden. She sat down on a bench beside her front door and bent one long, gangly leg up to tie her boot, and then the other.
It was beautiful outside. The sun was just peeking up over the trees and it cast a sharp glow where it hit: the crazy, wiggly branches of a Corylus avellana Contorta; a six-foot vitex agnus-castus with a few straggling leaves still hanging on; a bank of hydrangeas, the leaves long gone but a few flowerheads dead and shimmering with frost. Murielle stamped her feet to bring some blood to them, and walked down a garden path made of broken pieces of slate she had gotten at a discount from a building supply store, to the back garden where the fruit trees stood.
They too were bright in the early morning sun, every twig outlined in gold. She reflexively checked the bark for insect damage even though she had done so almost daily and it was not the season for insects anyway. She patted their trunks, considered where she would need to prune in the spring, and then, since it was barely dawn and none of her neighbors were early risers, she spoke to the trees out loud.