by Nell Goddin
At first she didn’t notice what she was seeing. Another sip of coffee jolted her into the present, and she realized there was a man at the front door of the mansion, his back to her, who seemed to be using a key. He was dressed in blues, a workman’s overalls, and he was carrying a plastic bag with something heavy in it. She wanted to whistle, to call out, anything to make the man turn around so she could get a positive ID. He looked like Jean-Francois, Sabrina’s boyfriend. She was almost certain it was him.
The man finally got the door open, and walked inside without turning around until just at the last second, when he closed the door, Molly saw his profile against the darkness inside. It was Jean-Francois all right.
Molly jumped up from the table with an impulse to do something, but once she was standing, she had no idea what. She couldn’t go running over and let herself in the Desrosiers house…could she? If Jean-Francois was up to something, that could be dangerous. Besides, she had no standing to go in there, no matter who was inside. No connection to Josephine Desrosiers except finding her dead on the tiled bathroom floor of La Métairie and the beginnings of a friendship with her niece and nephew, which even with Molly’s skills at rationalization did not add up to letting herself into the old lady’s house without an invitation.
Even if Josephine were still alive and Sabrina was working there, it would be strange for her boyfriend to have a key to the house, wouldn’t it? thought Molly. Yes, it would. If he came to pick her up from work, he should knock. And if Josephine was the type of woman Molly thought she was, he would be knocking on the back door and not the front.
Molly paid her bill and crossed the street. The shutters to the house were all closed so there was no way to catch a glimpse of Jean-Francois inside. She walked along the side of the house towards the back, peering over the wall to the garden. It was a little difficult to tell in winter, but it looked as though once upon a time it had been a beautiful place. Molly could see an espaliered tree on the back wall of the house, and two circular goldfish ponds, the edges rimmed in tile the same violet-blue as the shutters and front door.
I bet he’s stealing or destroying evidence, Molly said to herself, continuing down the block and turning towards home. But what? And how in the world can I figure it out?
Benjamin Dufort was in a sprightly mood. First of all, after Perrault showed him the will, he was eight-five per cent sure Michel Faure had killed his aunt to inherit her money, and all that remained was finding enough evidence first to arrest and then to convict him. And second, he was going over to Marie-Claire’s for dinner. He wasn’t miserable leading his bachelor’s life, but he appreciated a meal cooked by someone else, especially someone with as much talent in the kitchen as Marie-Claire had. And of course, he very much enjoyed her, apart from the food—her intelligence and forth-rightness, and the sexy-librarian way she dressed.
After praising Perrault for her good work finding Desrosiers’s will, he left the station for the day, wanting to pick up some odds and ends at the épicerie and possibly drop by the florist’s to see if there was anything he could take to Marie-Claire. He whistled on his way down the street. He stopped to chat with the woman behind the register at the épicerie, and the delivery boy. He kept whistling on his way to the florist’s, which was a little out of his way.
“Salut, Ben!” said Madame Langevin, the tiny woman who had run the florist shop for as long as Dufort had been buying flowers. “Have you caught the murderer yet? I can’t believe someone killed poor Josephine! Of course, I say ‘poor Josephine’ only in the way you would speak of the dead, no matter who it was. Because mon Dieu, that woman was execrable! Oh now Ben, you should not look away when someone is telling you the truth!”
Dufort smiled and shook his head. “It is not my job to slander the victim, Mme Langevin.”
“Slander? Who said anything about slander? Slander is untruth, yes? Listen to me. I had dealings with Josephine Desrosiers for years. Years! She was fussy—I didn’t mind that. I’m fussy. Things ought to be just so, I understand that entirely. But Ben, she would keep a bouquet for several days, and then return it! Return it, complaining that it did not look fresh. Well, everyone in the world understands that flowers aren’t going to stay fresh into eternity. Their impermanence is their glory, as I’m sure you understand. Madame Desrosiers understood it perfectly well too. But that didn’t stop her from trying to get her money back.
“I’m not talking about once, Ben, or even twice. I am telling you she behaved this way for many years, off and on. I would have refused to sell to her, but then she would hit a good patch and all would be well for a few months. As you might know, my business has its ups and downs: sometimes people can afford flowers, and in leaner times, they cannot. I couldn’t afford to lose her business, even though I despised her and barely made any profit from her at all.”
“You’re going to put yourself on the list of suspects if you keep talking like that,” said Dufort with a faint smile.
“Oh, I should be on it,” said Madame Langevin, “In fact, it would give me pleasure to be on it!” She collapsed with laughter on the stainless steel counter where she arranged flowers.
Dufort was glad that Desrosiers had been rich enough for someone to kill her for money; if she had been much poorer, the suspect list would have gotten completely out of hand.
He selected a white poinsettia, even though he didn’t like them much. Madame Langevin was waiting on a delivery and didn’t have much else in stock besides some sad-looking carnations. Dufort paid and said goodbye, leaving Mme Langevin wondering whom the poinsettia was for, because she knew quite well that Dufort’s mother was allergic to them so that crossed her off the list of possibilities.
Dufort reached his place in the gendarmerie and went inside to put his odds and ends away and to shower and change before going to Marie-Claire’s. In the shower, allowing himself some extravagance with the hot water, he felt a pang of uncertainty. He often did his best thinking in the shower and had learned to pay attention when anything occurred to him while the water was beating down on him.
Michel may want the money, but is there any particular reason why he couldn’t simply wait? True, she was not that old, as Dufort kept reminding Perrault and Maron. But still, another ten or fifteen years maximum and Michel would have gotten the whole eight million euros without taking any risk at all. He was out of work, but he could get by on social services and he has a supportive family. It’s not like he was living on the street with nothing to eat.
Some people can’t wait, Dufort thought as he toweled himself off, struggling to understand a man who could take the life of an old woman, even a tremendously disagreeable one, simply to make his own life more comfortable.
22
1966
Albert Desrosiers slammed his desk drawer shut and stood up suddenly, scowling. I’ve been a fool, he thought. A ridiculous, damned fool.
He had been working on one project for the last two years and it was nearly finished. If he managed to pull it off, it would make him a very rich man, no question about that. There had been problems, of course—delays, many times pursuing a path that turned out to be fruitless, brick walls that took him a week or even months to find a way around—but Albert had every confidence he would succeed. Even though his invention did not yet exist, he could physically feel it somehow, the shape of it was so clear in his mind. Its essence was alive to him and all he had to do was make it concrete with wires and solder, and investors would be falling over themselves trying to get a piece of it. Money was never his prime object and it was not his focus then either, although he did find himself thinking of things he would be able to buy that he had never been able to before. Instruments, mostly.
And also, perhaps, the right piece of jewelry might bring her around?
Albert strode to the window and opened the shutters, looking out at the sidewalk in front of his modest house.
Where is she? Why does she not speak to me? Ma belle, I need you….
; With a shuddering sigh, he went back to his desk and picked up his tiny pliers and swiveled his magnifier back into place and went to work. He needed to have tremendous control over his body to do the work because it was so painstaking, and the slightest jiggle would wreck the whole enterprise. Over time he had trained himself to be still, to keep from trembling, but a large part of the secret to doing that was maintaining an emotional equilibrium that for the last few hours had been impossible.
I bring her flowers but she looks away from me. Are the flowers the wrong ones? Is it hopeless?
Albert was thirty-six years old. Too old to be so much in love, he believed. Too old to be chasing after a woman who was never going to relent.
23
2005
The Castillac police force was in Dufort’s office on Thursday morning, having looked at everything Perrault had brought back from the Desrosiers mansion: the will, a stack of letters, a stuffed bear.
“Nice work, Perrault, although I don’t see the significance of the bear.”
“Well, me neither,” said Perrault. “I’m not saying it means anything. It’s just that it was propped up on a pillow on her bed, and I got the feeling it was important to the deceased, so I brought it along.”
Dufort gave the small bear a quick inspection, palpating it to see if anything was inside besides stuffing, and then put it on a shelf. “He can be our mascot for the duration of the case,” he said.
Maron rolled his eyes when Dufort’s back was turned, and then bent back to the pile of letters, reading with no comment.
“Since she bequeaths nearly everything to Michel Faure, obviously he’s our top guy,” said Dufort.
Perrault nodded. When she had sat on Desrosiers’s bed and read the will, and saw that Michel was the major beneficiary, a flash of heat had gone through her. The fact that she found him charming and attractive made him seem all the guiltier, though she did not share that thought with her boss.
Maron had put the letters aside and was studying the final page of the will. “Hey now,” he said, going to his desk and pulling out the letter he had taken from Claudette Mercier’s living room floor and not yet entered into evidence. “Look at this. He smoothed the handwritten letter out on Dufort’s desk, and put the last page of the will right beside it. “I can’t call myself an expert, but I did take a handwriting analysis course when I was in Paris,” Maron said. “Look at the capital “D” here, and here,” he said pointing to places in each document. “And also the small ’s’—see how on each one there’s a slight squiggle on the bottom, as though the writer’s hand hesitated for a moment?”
“You’re saying Desrosiers wrote the poison pen letter to Mercier?” said Perrault breathlessly.
“It sure looks like it,” said Maron, trying not altogether successfully to keep his feelings of smugness out of his voice. “They knew each other well—don’t forget, Mercier was at the birthday party.”
“I thought people quit doing that kind of crap in middle school. Gave me chills when I read it.”
“Maybe it gave Mercier chills too, or worse,” said Maron.
“Why would Desrosiers write a letter like that by hand, anyway? Everybody knows handwriting can be matched, don’t they?”
“I can’t see her sitting at a computer,” said Maron. “That generation, you know it’s hit or miss when it comes to computer skills. And typewriters, who even has those around anymore?” He paused, looking back and forth from will to letter. “There’s definitely something here.”
Perrault studied the note, then added, “And listen to this part: ‘you’re lucky you didn’t end up a scullery maid’. Either the writer is good at throwing false clues or it’s someone old. Who even knows what a ‘scullery maid’ is anymore?”
Dufort asked, “If Desrosiers hated Mercier enough to write the letters, why was Mercier at the party?”
“Michel did the inviting,” said Perrault. “It was a surprise party, not something Desrosiers planned. Maybe she was horrified to see Mercier there?”
“Or maybe Mercier got herself invited, so she could bring a very special present,” said Maron.
“Maron likes Claudette Mercier for the murder,” said Dufort, grinning, unable to help himself. What was it about Maron that brought on such an urge to tease?
“It’s not a ridiculous idea,” said Maron. “Poisoning is a woman’s weapon, after all.”
“Oh, please,” said Perrault, rolling her eyes. “Where did you get that stupid idea? Maybe from your misogynist handbook?”
“Actually that is incorrect, Maron,” said Dufort. “A quick glance at the history will show you that more men have been convicted for poisoning than women. Men kill vastly more often than women, no matter what method is employed. Over ninety per cent.”
“Okay, fine. Let me say it this way: if Desrosiers was bullying and threatening Mercier, and Mercier got pushed to the breaking point and wanted to kill her, how do you think she would do it? I don’t think she’s going to go over to the Desrosiers mansion and strangle her, do you? Do you really picture the two of them grappling in the salon, a fight to the death? No. No, she’s going to use poison. It’s more genteel, it’s something she can physically manage.
“And just because men are more likely killers, that doesn’t mean that every murder was done by a man, as you both well know.”
“But seventy-year-old women are generally not the first cohort one suspects,” said Dufort.
“Agreed,” said Maron. “But I still say we shouldn’t count Mercier out. You’re being sexist, really,” said Maron, drawing himself up. “You’re making generalizations about her because of her gender and age, and I think that’s wrong.” And he left Dufort’s office and went to sit at his desk.
Perrault and Dufort exchanged glances. “How about you?” asked Dufort. “How do you see this murder happening? Have you got any ideas other than Michel?”
Perrault thought a moment. “To me, it’s got to be about the money. It’s easy for people to lose their heads over an inheritance, you know? Especially one that big. They might do something that in the rest of their lives would be unthinkable. And in the Desrosiers case, a killer would have the easy rationalization that by getting rid of a horrid old woman, he was doing the world a favor. A favor he would profit from, but still.”
Dufort nodded. “What if the contents of the will were unknown to everyone—are there other family members that might have believed they would get something if Desrosiers died?”
“I don’t think there’s much family left. It was only the two girls, Murielle and Josephine. Their parents of course are long dead, and they were both only children. I’ve looked for extended family and found none so far besides a couple of cousins up in Franche-Comté.”
Dufort walked to the window and looked out. It was gray and drizzling, perfect for a run. Perhaps he would leave work early and get another one in before dark. Sometimes he had better ideas when running than he did in uniform.
“I know it’s not a horse race,” said Perrault. “But if I were betting? I’d put my money on Michel. Even if he didn’t know about the will.”
Dufort agreed. “He had opportunity. As for means, cyanide is not something you can buy at the épicerie but it is not so terribly difficult to get hold of. As I’ve said, his organizing the party is definitely a strike against him—it looks as though he wanted to plump up the list of possible suspects.”
“Exactly,” said Perrault. “And plus, he’s been out of work for a long time. Never really got going in any job, from what I can find out. He might have been looking at his aunt like she was a fat goose, prime for the slaughter.”
“No, of course this isn’t an arrest,” Dufort was saying to Michel Faure, whom he had found having coffee at Chez Papa. “I’d just like you to walk over to the station with me so we could talk about a few things. If you have a moment?”
Michel cocked his head. He had never met Dufort before and he wasn’t at all sure what to make of him.
&nb
sp; “I think you might be able to give us some important help in the matter of your aunt,” Dufort added, his expression pleasant.
Michel nodded and slid off his stool. “All right then, I’m free just now.” He tossed some coins on the bar—not quite enough for his bill, never mind the tip, and followed Dufort out to the street. It was cold and both men wrapped their coats tighter and raised their shoulders up.
“You’ve lived in Castillac all your life?” Dufort asked Michel as they walked.
“Yes. Well, I don’t actually know for sure, but I think so. I was adopted just after being born, but I have no reason to think that I was born anywhere other than Castillac.”
“Ah,” said Dufort. “So, you’re not a blood relative of the Faures or Desrosiers then?”
“No.” Michel shot the gendarme a glance, wondering if Dufort knew something he didn’t. What he had been thinking about constantly—but didn’t dare ask—was whether or not Aunt Josephine’s will had been found. All those dinners he had endured with her, all those Dubonnets poured into the tiny glasses while he went thirsty, all the criticism and abuse he’d allowed her to heap upon him…had it paid off? Was he named in the will, even if not as the main beneficiary? Please God?
Michel kept his eyes on the pavement. His coat was thin and he was shivering, and one shoe had a hole in it that he kept putting off getting fixed.
“I’m going to speak plainly,” said Dufort. “Your aunt was not a great favorite of anyone, have I understood that correctly?”
Michel laughed. “Spot on,” he said. “A nasty bit of business, she was.”
Dufort thought Michel was perhaps being clever by owning up to his distaste for the woman he had murdered, because what murderer would admit such a thing?