by Ruby Loren
Monsieur Quebec pressed on with the notices and that was all Constantine became - a small announcement at the start of the weekly meeting.
I hung back at the end to discuss a time with Monsieur Quebec where I’d present my review of the zoo and talk about ways to move L’airelle forward. When the moment came for me to walk out of the room, I found it wasn’t as empty as I’d thought. Mr Flannigan was waiting in a chair at the back of the room and I could tell he wanted to speak to me.
“It’s tragic about Constantine, isn’t it?” I said, figuring that speaking about something sad was the only way I’d manage to remain polite with this odious man.
“Yes, it’s a shame,” he allowed. “I wanted you to know that we’ve moved Mr and Mrs Chanterelle.”
“Ambre?” I asked, and he nodded.
“It seemed like the best thing to do. We've already spent too long in this backwater village. If you can’t be certain of the truth, it’s best to take every precaution."
I inclined my head to show agreement but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Ambre Chanterelle. She had told me that she liked her life in L’airelle and now she’d have to start all over again, someplace new. All because a man who’d known the truth had died.
“Did the police ever find out exactly how Pascal died?” I asked.
Mr Flannigan shrugged his shoulders. “Not really. The impact damaged the cadaver a lot. They think it might have been suffocation or strangulation, but it could just have easily been blunt force trauma to the head. It’s complicated," he said, as if that settled it.
"I don’t suppose anyone found the knife that was used to stab Enzo either,” I said. I knew they hadn’t. The gossip queens would have been all over it, and I hadn’t heard a peep.
“No, but it’s still being investigated. The crime scene was secured but several of the force thought it prudent that they investigate more thoroughly this morning,” Flannigan skirted.
I took that to mean that the police had drunk a little too much last night.
“Mr Argent is already out of hospital,” Flannigan continued.
I knew I should feel bad for not asking, but I'd seen every nasty side that Enzo Argent had to offer over the past few days.
I waited for a couple of seconds before I realised that Mr Flannigan had clearly concluded what he’d wanted to talk to me about.
“If you get the chance, wish Ambre all the best from me,” I said, knowing it would never happen.
Flannigan nodded insincerely and I turned to leave.
“Did you find anything out at the paragliding place?”
I stopped walking and looked at him.
“I watched you and Ms Fleur. The dog food was an interesting idea. That was to represent a body, yes?”
“You were watching,” I said.
It wasn't a question but Flannigan nodded anyway. “That’s the job. We come in, and we watch and wait. Sooner or later, someone does something suspicious.”
I threw him a curious look but there wasn’t a trace of humour on his face.
“If you were watching, then you’ll know we didn’t jump for joy when we discovered who killed Monsieur Devereux. All we learned was that it was possible to drag a body past the paragliding kiosk and jump off without being spotted."
“It was the likeliest theory,” Flannigan said and I tried not to bristle.
“Well, someone has to test these things,” I said, shortly. I was actually rather annoyed that I hadn’t known anyone was watching - especially when I’d managed to drop the bag off the edge of the mountain.
“So, you’re with Lowell Adagio?” Mr Flannigan said, abruptly changing the subject.
“Yes," I said, hoping that keeping my answers short would end this uncomfortable encounter.
"You're aware he worked with Mr Devereux in the past?”
“Yes, he told me.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that Mr Devereux dies one week after his old colleague rolls into town?” Flannigan pressed.
"I think it's strange that anyone could be driven to murder another human being, but it still happened. If you thought Lowell was responsible, you wouldn’t be here asking me questions, you’d be talking to him.” I considered it for a second. “It looks to me as though you have too many maybes and no real answers. My advice would be to stop wasting your time talking to people and look at the facts you have on paper. Perhaps then you’ll see the real picture.”
That was the way I worked when I wrote my reviews for zoos.
“Interesting,” was all Flannigan had to say. “You haven’t known Lowell for long, have you?"
And with that ominous final statement, he nodded at me and walked out of the room.
I watched him go and didn’t spot a single bead of sweat on his neck, despite the thick suit he wore and the stuffiness of the room. Mr Flannigan was a strange man indeed.
I wasn’t sure what to think about what he’d just hinted about Lowell, but I knew it was going to be on my mind for a long time.
As I walked back through the zoo, stopping only to watch the Pallas’s cats in their pursuit of the spider horde, a thought popped into my head. Could the agent be the one doing it all? He’d come to town after the first murder, but since then… the chocolates had arrived seconds before he’d turned up, and the paint on Adele's dog had been after he’d seen us at the vets with Jolie. Had he developed an obsession with Adele and thought leaving these strange offerings were the way to gain her interest?
I pulled a strand of wayward hair back from my face and hooked it over the arm of my red rimmed glasses. I didn’t have much experience with all-consuming obsessions, but could Flannigan have really developed a fascination so instantaneously? Unless he’s been in the village for a longer time, I suddenly thought… a conspiracy theory already forming in my mind. What if he’d been watching Pascal, the ex-detective, to make sure he wasn’t up to anything? Lowell’s coincidental arrival in the same village could have ignited suspicions that the pair were planning something that might jeopardise the secretive agency they’d both worked for in the past. Flannigan might have decided to eliminate one of the conspiring pair to stop the plot from going any further.
I walked past the ocelots without giving them a second glance, I was so distracted. Even if my wild theory was correct, why had Flannigan gone to such great lengths to drop Pascal Devereux’s corpse in the tiger enclosure?
A thought I’d toyed with before hit me hard.
Offerings… what if he’d been around the village long enough that he’d known Pascal had given Adele that unfair ticket? He had needed to kill the man anyway, but delivering him to the tiger enclosure -where he knew Adele would be - could be his twisted idea of doing her a favour.
It was like a cat bringing their owner a mouse.
I chewed on my lip as I hesitated outside the tiki hut. Was this theory completely crazy? If Flannigan really had turned into some obsessive vigilante, Lowell would be the best person to speak to. With his connection to Ms Borel, he might be able to uncover the truth and stop things from going any further.
Unless she’s in on the plot, too! I thought and something else occurred to me at the same time. If the agents had turned up long before Pascal's death, what if Lowell had known about that, too?
I sighed. These thoughts were running wild in my head. I didn't have a shred of evidence that suggested the agents were here for anything more than to investigate the risk to Ambre Chanterelle and her husband. Everything else was just conjecture.
Despite my return to rational thinking, I couldn’t help but dwell upon Flannigan’s last words about Lowell. Was it a strangely formed threat against my boyfriend, or was it a genuine warning about his past?
Either way, Flannigan’s character and motivations remained opaque.
“Hi Madi, how’s it going?” Adele asked when she came into the hut that afternoon.
I blinked and rubbed my eyes, suddenly aware of how much time had passed while I'd been working on my laptop.
I looked at the screen in front of me and realised I was just one paragraph away from completing my review. I would be speaking to Monsieur Quebec tomorrow and then it would be time to go back to England.
“Pretty good,” I said, replying to Adele. “How are things with you?”
“Okay, considering,” Adele said, plumping down onto the sofa. I was suddenly reminded of Constantine’s sorry fate.
“People are more concerned about the new threat of reckless violence than anything else,” Adele said, following my train of thought.
“I don’t think it’s reckless,” I told her and then regretted it when Adele threw me a sharp look. I’d forgotten that Justin had so recently been the victim of the same violence.
“I just mean, I think someone’s doing it for a reason. They must have something against the victims,” I said, as vaguely as possible. I didn’t want Adele to think that she might be the reason these acts were being committed. I would hate for her to blame herself for what her husband had been through.
“No one has anything against Justin,” she protested, looking sad for a moment.
I speculated that he may not be as fully recovered as the pair had presented.
“He remembered something more, you know,” she said and I pricked up my ears. “It’s not really significant, but he thinks he may have seen someone snooping around near the house. Perhaps he surprised them and that’s why they attacked him.” She shrugged. “It could have been an attempted house robbery. I’m just glad…” She trailed off. It somehow seemed in bad taste to be happy that Justin had escaped with his life when Constantine had lost hers.
“Have you heard anything more about what happened last night?” I asked, knowing Adele had been out and about in the zoo, while I’d been stuck inside working on the review.
“Well, I saw Nathan a bit earlier and he wasn’t very happy. The police apparently gave him a bit of a hard time and combed the village hall. He was made to feel like suspect number one, which I think he took really hard. It is scary when the police focus their attention on you,” she said, clearly thinking of the way she’d fallen under suspicion for the bag that had been left on her car.
“They didn’t find the knife?” I prompted.
She shook her head. “No. They scared the life out of Nathan but they didn’t find a thing. He’s off the hook. He was so upset, I gave him a hug. He seemed a bit brighter after that,” she told me with a twinkle in her eye that let me know she knew exactly how Nathan felt about her and knew how to handle it, too.
“Where did it go then?” I mused, thinking about the impossible vanishing act that had occurred.
Adele put her hands behind her head and looked thoughtful. “I was too far away to see, but the theory floating around is that Prideaux spent too much time checking Enzo was okay before he cordoned off the area. Someone could have thrown the knife far away before anyone noticed what had happened. Or perhaps they concealed it somewhere. Even if the police did find it, they have no way of knowing who it belongs to now. They’ve got away with it.”
I didn’t miss the anger in her voice. She was thinking about Justin when she said it.
“So, in conclusion, most people think that it’s Enzo’s fault for making a fuss?” I joked and was glad when it raised a smile.
“Like you wouldn't believe. Apparently, he’s off work today but is hanging out in the café, waiting for the well-wishers to pour in.”
“He might be waiting a while,” I said with a shrewd smile.
Adele nodded, but her good humour was fading again. "I just hope this all gets sorted out, or L’airelle will be a different place. We aren’t used to living in fear. I know it’s old fashioned, but no one locks their doors here. I don’t want that to change."
I nodded in agreement. I hoped that the perpetrator would be caught soon, too, but I had the feeling that the authorities were just as baffled as I was, as to who was responsible.
All we could do was wait and hope the culprit didn't kill again.
9
A Grave Occasion
I'd forgotten that it was the day of the funeral.
Monsieur Quebec had reminded me when we’d scheduled our meeting at the end of the previous day. I’d been about to suggest the next morning when he’d reminded me that we’d all be going along to Pascal’s funeral.
I still didn’t feel as though I should be going along to the funeral of a man I'd never met, but Lowell had known him, and I didn’t want to make him go alone. I knew what he'd told me of his shared past with Pascal, but I had no idea if they ever had been close.
I was also unwilling to let him go alone whilst I still retained my suspicions about Mr Flannigan. I hadn’t had a chance to voice my concerns to Lowell, as I hadn’t been able to think of a way to say it without bringing into question his past and my faith that he’d been completely honest with me.
I’d dressed in my one and only black dress, which I couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious in. It was a black cocktail dress and hardly appropriate funeral attire. I just hoped no one would notice me, hiding behind Lowell.
To my relief, we sat at the back of the little chapel, which was already packed with the rest of the village. It didn't escape my notice that no one seemed too upset by the occasion. I got the sense that the majority of people were here to witness any further drama Nicholas Devereux might have to dish out. Perhaps there were some well-wishers, too, but despite not knowing Pascal, I’d still got the impression that he hadn’t been particularly well-liked.
Just like Constantine, my brain supplied, drawing parallels. Perhaps if it had just been Pascal, Constantine, and Enzo who’d been targeted I might have believed that all of this was just some long-suffering villager who’d finally snapped and decided some social cleansing was in order. But Justin, to my knowledge, didn't fit the remit. I sighed silently and tried to focus on what the vicar was saying.
Louis Devereux got to her feet and walked over to the lectern, delivering a few words in French. My knowledge of the language wasn’t good enough to follow along but I could see plain as day that Louis Devereux was blooming. The difference between her appearance when Adele, Luna, and I had visited her after her husband’s demise and now was astonishing. Her cheeks had colour in them and she’d lost the pinched, starving look which had marked her face.
I wondered what her children thought, knowing what they did about their father’s drinking problem and the abuse it had brought with it. Did they now regret not stepping in after bearing witness to how much their mother had benefitted from their father’s absence?
Nicholas Devereux got to his feet and a ripple went through the congregation as people sat up and hoped for a show. The frown line between Nicholas’ eyes showed he knew it, too. The speech he gave can’t have been what the villagers were hoping for as a lot of them returned to snoozing halfway through.
It was a relief when the service finally came to a close and everyone filed out of the church.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Lowell said, touching my arm before moving through the crowd. I watched him go and my gaze collided with that of Ms Borel’s. Something about her gave me the creeps. I wondered what Lowell was going to say to her and knew that Flannigan’s words were still on my mind.
I turned to walk out of the church and found myself face to face with the agent himself.
“Do you have any more investigating planned for the rest of the day?” he asked. There was something I thought was meant to pass for a smile on his face.
I threw him a sideways look, unsure if he was making fun of me. “No. I’m handing in my review of L’airelle Zoological Park and then it’ll be time to go back home,” I told him.
“Back to not so sunny Sussex, eh?”
I tried not to think too much about how obvious it was that he'd investigated me. I’d known about it before, when the police had revealed their knowledge of my past brushes with the law, but here he was, flaunting his knowledge.
“Probably,” I said, h
oping it would end the conversation.
It didn’t.
Instead, he continued to walk next to me out of the church.
“Could we go for a drink before you leave? I like you,” he told me.
I was so surprised I made full eye contact with him.
“No thank you,” I said.
“Is it because you’re with Lowell?” There was something nasty in his voice.
“No,” I said, astonishing myself with my frank answer.
“Okay," he said and I was equally astonished when he drifted off through the crowd.
This must be the reason why he’d chosen to single me out all the time. I'd thought he had something against Lowell, but really he’d just taken a liking to me.
I shook my head, mentally striking out my wild conspiracy theory about his fascination with Adele. I'd got the focus of his attentions completely wrong.
The autumn sun streamed down on the graveyard and I found myself wandering amongst the headstones of long gone villagers. I thought there was a certain sort of peace to be had, living in a village all of your life, knowing that even after your spirit left the earth, some part of you would forever remain in L’airelle. Surrounded by so many markers of the past, I spared a thought or two to wonder about what came after. Unfortunately, the only method to find out for sure was a very final one. It was one mystery I hoped I wouldn’t solve any time soon.
“Lovely service,” I heard the owner of the boulangerie say.
I looked round to find that Luna and Alcide had also just wandered into the graveyard. A few others must have also felt the call of the past, or simply the good weather, and were also dotted around. I spotted Detective Girard talking animatedly to Sage, while Nicholas Devereux was deep in conversation with Monsieur Quebec.
“I'm glad that's over and done with,” Luna said to greet me, uttering the first honest opinion I thought I'd heard all morning.
“I’m glad for Madame Devereux,” I said, and then bit my tongue, hoping I hadn’t said the wrong thing.