by Nell Goddin
“Well?” he said, breaking a long silence. They heard some rather frantic piano coming from the music room.
“I…I don’t know. I’ll tell you, I noticed immediately that something was off at that party. People were tense and unhappy. And it did occur to me, probably because of that and my sometimes out of control imagination, that she had been murdered. Once I found her, I mean. But now that you’re presenting me with who might have done it, my brain is resisting and rejecting the idea as hard as it can. I don’t want it to be Michel. Or Adèle. Honestly, Ben, I think they’re lovely.”
Dufort shrugged. “I don’t have to tell you that lovely people can commit murder. People who appear lovely, I should say, but I think you understand what I mean.”
Molly nodded. Intellectually she agreed with him, and she knew that there were serial killers who were known to be especially charismatic and engaging…Ted Bundy, right?
“I hear what you’re saying. I’m afraid I’ve got nothing, no evidence or conversation to report, that would steer you in Michel’s direction or away from it.” She sighed. “I have some questions, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I believe that’s supposed to be my job,” he said, amused.
She grinned at him. “Well, I’m just wondering if money is the only motive you’re considering. I know it’s a pretty good one, I’m not saying otherwise. But what about…what about revenge? What if Desrosiers had been absolutely horrible to the maid, for instance, and the maid snapped? She wouldn’t inherit, obviously, but we’re not talking about a well-thought out crime with a jackpot at the end. We’re talking about the satisfaction of hurting someone who has made your life a misery.”
Dufort nodded. “Of course. For the right person, certainly revenge could be motive enough,” he agreed. “Was there anything about Sabrina’s behavior at the party that would lead you to believe she would capable of seeking it?”
“Well, no. No one behaved badly, at least that I saw. But she really did look like if she had to stay there one more second it might kill her. And her boyfriend was trying to soothe her but she was having none of it.”
“What do you mean, ‘soothe’?”
“Oh, he was stroking her arm and occasionally nuzzling her—I think at one point Desrosiers snapped at him for it. But the whole time Sabrina just looked like she was in agony. But…I guess that could be about anything, right? Like maybe something in her life that had nothing to do with Desrosiers was making her so upset?”
“Could be,” said Dufort. “And was Jean-Francois the last guest?” he asked, knowing he was not.
“Nope. Another old lady was next to him. Beautiful white hair in a braided bun. No idea who she is, though.”
“Claudette Mercier,” said Dufort. “A classmate of Desrosiers’s. Did you happen to overhear any conversation between her and Madame Desrosiers?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Molly. “I mean, I wasn’t paying attention to the table every single second, but I’m not sure they ever spoke to each other.”
She and Dufort sat in silence for some time, blocking out the tinkling of the piano in order to think abut the case, but neither of them had the slightest bit of inspiration.
“I hope it’s not Michel,” said Molly in a quiet voice.
But Dufort only pressed his lips together, and said nothing.
20
Thérèse Perrault left the station in high spirits. The job Dufort had given her was probably not going to be that exciting, she was telling herself, but she was thrilled that he had chosen her to do it, and by herself for once. Especially after she had not managed to find Adèle or find out anything about her bad foot. She grinned at a young boy coming out of the épicerie clutching a package of Haribo gummies. She nodded to a mother pushing a stroller, and then to a workman going into a boulangerie to get some bread to take home for lunch. Her stomach growled.
Just a few blocks away, the Desrosiers mansion loomed up, a floor or two higher than the other houses on the block. The shutters and door were violet-blue; twin topiaries on the front landing had started to look scruffy. Thérèse went around back to look under flowerpots for the key, and found it easily.
It wasn’t until she was inside the house that she got the creeps. She couldn’t stop thinking that the house belonged to a dead woman, a murdered woman, and the thought made her startle at any little sound, a pop of the radiator or a bird chirping outside.
Um, old houses have belonged to heaps of dead people, you idiot. Loads of them. And she wasn’t murdered here, anyway.
Taking a deep breath—and unaware that she was imitating Chief Dufort, who used breathing exercises all the time to calm his stress—Thérèse pulled herself together and explored the house. First she looked around the big kitchen, which looked as though a real meal hadn’t been cooked in it for some time. Then not much more than a glance in the laundry room, storeroom, broom closet, butler’s pantry. The front of the house had a salon on either side of the front door, and she walked through them, looking for anything of interest, but there was little to see. Nothing but furniture, and in one salon, a decanter and some fragile-looking glasses.
No magazines, books, or the usual signs of habitation. The rooms were almost sterile.
Up to the next floor. Therese’s eyes widened when she turned on the light and saw the stuffed ostrich. She turned on a table lamp and saw a delicate desk that had one central drawer and several smaller ones on the sides. Here we go, she thought, sliding down into the leather-padded chair in front of it. Methodically she opened the drawers, starting at the top left and moving down. Two empty ones. Another with pencils and pens and nubs of eraser. The wide central drawer, however, was crammed with papers, so crammed that many were bent up against the bottom of the desktop. Carefully she pulled out the ones on top and placed them on the desk, looking for a lawyer’s letterhead or any indication of a will.
She drew out another handful and made a pile. It was odd for anyone to store their valuable papers like this, Thérèse thought, using her hand to flatten one especially wrinkled paper out. The drawer empty, she riffled through the pile. The deed for the house was there, as well as a note she assumed had been written by Desrosiers listing the hymns she wanted sung at her funeral, grocery lists, and thirty year old receipts from Chanel.
But no will.
The top drawer on the right side was filled with letters. Packets of them, tied in ribbon. Expensive, heavy stationery with no address. Thérèse took the top one out from under the ribbon and opened the letter.
Ma Belle, it began. She skimmed the rest. Well, she may have been a miserable old woman, thought Thérèse, but maybe that’s because she’d lost a husband who was devoted to her.
The other drawers were empty.
She got up and searched the other rooms on that floor: an informal room with a loveseat and armchairs less nice than ones in other rooms, and a large mirror and several armoires and chests, all filled with clothing; a vast bathroom with an enormous porcelain tub with lion’s feet; a stark bedroom with a single bed and a plain bureau, another room with nothing in it at all.
Up to the third floor. There was no mistaking Desrosiers’s bedroom—it was the only room in the entire house that felt as though anyone had spent any time in it for the last ten years. Her dressing table had makeup open on top of it, as though she had just gotten up to leave the room for a moment or two in the middle of getting ready to go out. A dress had been flung across an armchair, and a pair of shoes stood next to the bed, one shoe on its side.
Thérèse could imagine the old woman putting on the dress and deciding it wasn’t right, didn’t fit the way she wanted, and tossing it aside for the housekeeper to deal with later. She could see her slipping off her shoes as she climbed into bed. She could sense Josephine Desrosiers in this room—not just the obvious signs of her physical presence, but there was something else too—something about her personality was in the air: her dissatisfaction and unhappiness, perhaps even desolation.
> A good detective sees what is not present as well as what is, and Thérèse was good. Where is the jewelry box, she wondered? Surely the old lady had some jewelry, and she probably spent some time sitting at the dressing table looking at herself wearing them; Thérèse was correct about this. She looked in the bottom drawers of the mirrored armoire, she looked under the bed, she looked everywhere in that room where a jewelry box might be hidden, but she did not find one.
However, in a shoebox that was tucked into a storage area under a windowseat, she did find a brown envelope with a lawyer’s office as the return address—Blaise and Descartes, of Paris—and she sat right down on the old lady’s bed and read it straight through.
“So, did the copper tell you who poisoned the old lady?” asked Frances, as she and Molly made lunch.
“He doesn’t know who did it,” said Molly.
“Does he think you know?”
“Nah, he was just asking a bunch of questions about the other night at La Métairie. Sometimes people see things, you know, and they don’t know what they’re seeing is important.”
“Right, Nancy Drew,” teased Frances.
Molly chopped a head of romaine, lost in thought. “I don’t agree with him, though. I just don’t think….”
Frances waited a moment for Molly to finish her sentence. “Um, so…are you talking to yourself or to me?”
Molly shook her head. “Sorry! It’s just that—Ben thinks Michel did it. Do you think that’s possible? Doesn’t he seem like a totally nice guy? Maybe not an alpha, Mr. Successful—but decent, even good-hearted?”
Frances cocked her head while she sliced up radishes. “Yeah, to us he seems that way. But we’re not his family. Who knows what kind of crazy stuff has been going on behind the scenes.”
“Secret babies! Insane first wives hidden in the attic!”
“Well, exactly,” laughed Frances. “Family members can be incredibly vicious to each other. And secretive.”
“You know how much I wanted kids,” said Molly quietly. “But maybe that’s because the picture in my mind is all rosy, like we’d get along like gangbusters and have nothing but laughs and fun together. And the truth is, the little tots might have grown up and wanted to poison me, or I’d get so annoyed I’d want to disown them.”
“No doubt. But I’m pretty sure neither of you would actually do those things. It’s not wanting to do it that makes you crazy, it’s following through on it.”
Molly nodded.
“So does the copper always let you in on police business? And have you let him visit your office of internal affairs?” Frances waggled her eyebrows at Molly.
“Shut up,” laughed Molly. “It’s nothing like that. Only that I helped with that last case, so he’s…and also he actually listens to people, which as you know isn’t all that common. Anyway, he listens to what I have to say and if you ask me that’s a pretty wonderful quality. Doesn’t mean I want to go out with him.”
Frances nodded, not completely believing her friend. “Got any cheese to put in the salad? Mind if I throw some sardines in there?”
“Not at all,” said Molly. “There’s some goat cheese in the refrigerator door, got it at the market on Saturday. Damn! I just realized that when I was talking to Adèle about the guests at the surprise party, I never got around to asking her about the white-haired lady.”
“The one sitting closest to our table? You think she was up to something? I’m not sure white-haired old ladies are prime murder suspects.”
“I don’t think you can exclude people based on hair color.”
“Maybe not,” said Frances, chewing on a radish. “But realistically? Do you really think that sweet-looking old lady offed her friend? They’ve probably known each other since they were kids.”
“It’s possible. Ben said the poison was on her face, they’re thinking maybe a birthday present of face cream. Doesn’t poison face cream seem like the way a sweet-looking seventy-year-old lady would murder someone, if she were going to do it?”
“There’s a fallacy in there somewhere, I just don’t know what to call it. I would say it’s highly unlikely, and by that I mean freaking impossible, that the lady with the braided bun killed anybody. Just no. It’s way, way more possible that your boy Michel did it. Probably he buttered up the old battle-axe so she left him everything.”
“But I don’t want it to be Michel,” said Molly, almost whining.
“He’s cute, I’ll give you that. Pass the salt.”
Molly poured them each a glass of wine and they dug into their gigantic salads.
Someone was banging on the door.
“Probably the murderer,” said Frances drily.
Molly jumped up and thwacked her friend lightly on the back of the head. She opened the door, letting a frigid breeze in, and there was Constance, jumping up and down on the doormat.
“Hiya,” said Constance, using the one American word she had picked up from Molly. She stepped inside, rubbing her arms. “Look, Molly, hey it’s good to see you—and hello to you whoever you are—” she said in Frances’s direction. “Listen, I know I should have called first like you asked, but I dropped my phone on the street and it nicked the curb just so and the whole thing shattered into bits. So I’m totally incommunicado except for in person, which really I like better even though I know that makes me sound totally Amish.
“Anyway—Molly! I’m dropping by because Thomas and I are dying to go to this concert in Toulouse. There’s gonna be like four bands and we love all of them with a complete passion, but the thing is, we’re broke as all hell and can’t afford the gas to drive down there. So I was wondering, hoping actually, really really hoping, that you could afford to have me clean today. I know your bookings have been off with the cold weather and all, but this concert, it’s like our dream, the best dream of my entire life, it really is. So what do you say?”
Frances was smirking, able to guess more or less what Constance was saying just by the tone of her voice, and knowing that whatever it was she wanted Molly to do, she was going to get her way.
“Constance, this is my friend Frances,” said Molly, trying to buy some time.
The two women smiled at each other, unsure of what other greeting they should do.
“Oh, all right,” said Molly, unable to say no. “Just make sure you mop the cottage really well?”
Constance rushed into Molly’s arms. “Thank you so much, Molly, you’re the best! I’ll make that place shine! And maybe I’ll work so hard you’ll want to give me an extra tip. Gas is ridiculous lately.”
“Pushover,” said Frances, when Molly sat back down at the table.
“Eh, she’s young and she wants to work. Why not support that?”
Frances shrugged. “All the great detectives have a cold-hearted side,” she said. “fearlessly objective, something like that. You, my friend, are a marshmallow.”
Molly threw a hunk of bread at Frances and hit her on the forehead. There was a slight pause as both of them considered regressing all the way back to having a real food fight, but in the end they decided they were more interested in eating the food, which they did with much gusto, continuing to talk over the details of the Desrosiers murder but getting absolutely nowhere.
21
After lunch Frances went to take a nap in the bedroom next to Molly’s, since Constance was noisily cleaning the cottage. Molly was restless. She was reading a good book but kept getting up and finding chores to do, and finally she gave up and walked into the village, wanting to stretch her legs and possibly procure a few pastries for herself and Frances to eat in late afternoon. Yes, it was gluttonous to have pastries twice in one day, but it was cold and wintry and her best friend was visiting and…well, she could come up with reasons for pastry all day long. It was a real talent, and one she was grateful for.
Castillac looked sad to her in mid-December. Hardly anyone was on the street, for one thing, and the Christmas decorations looked droopy and half-hearted. But her own prep
arations for Christmas hadn’t even begun, she realized with a little panic. Hurrying to Patisserie Bujold, she spoke to the proprietor about reserving a bûche de Noël (that most scrumptious of holiday desserts, a rolled cake made to look like a log) which he reassured her he was glad to do. So distracted by worrying about Michel and wondering how she could help him, Molly didn’t even notice Monsieur Nugent’s usual staring, leaving with a waxed bag of afternoon delights—a Napoleon, two cream puffs, and a strawberry tart.
She nibbled on one of the cream puffs as she wandered around the center of Castillac. Ben had told her Josephine Desrosiers was one of the wealthiest people in the village, and had described her house to Molly—a house she recognized, since it was the grandest mansion in the village and a commanding presence on rue Simenon, one of the main streets of the village. Without meaning to, she drifted towards it until she was standing directly outside. The shutters and door were the perfect color blue, Molly thought, although she wanted badly to get at those topiaries with a pair of shears.
She wondered what had made Josephine so mean. Or maybe that’s irrelevant. The question is, what made someone want to kill her? Was it just about the money? Or was it rage? Or something else altogether, something we may never know?
Molly ducked into a cafe right across the street and sat at a table where she could look at the house; she felt as though seeing the house was helping her understand Josephine somehow, as though some of secrets were hidden within it. She would possibly have given up her bag of pastries to get inside for a look around.
A waiter brought her a petit café and she smiled at the pleasure of her first sip. The coffee was very strong and bitter, the perfect accompaniment to the sweet and fluffy creampuff, which she ate surreptitiously since she guessed correctly that the cafe manager wouldn’t be thrilled about her eating food she had brought from somewhere else. Her eyes were turned to the house but she wasn’t really seeing it. Lost in the sort of random thoughts that slosh through our minds when we’re alone, thinking about everything and nothing, looping around and around, murder/coffee/topiary/murder/cream puff….