An Official Killing

Chapter 2

2The mairie, where the mayor worked, was only a short walk from his house. His habit was to have coffee and toast with butter and jam at eight o’clock, and then stroll to his office right around nine. It was a pleasure to work at the mairie, since the various people who worked under him knew what they were doing and made his life rather easy. They knew which forms to fill out for what occasion—and there seemed to be an infinity of occasions, the French government being extremely fond of forms—but Monsieur Coulon didn’t have to worry about any of that, thanks to their abundant expertise.

At the moment, the end of a too-hot July, there was practically nothing for him to do. Sometimes he was asked by the examining magistrate to look into a matter, making inquiries and acting as a sort of policeman. When nothing else was going on he decided his main job should be the promotion of good spirits in the village, and he took that part of his job seriously, walking through the streets and greeting whomever he passed, even going so far as to keep notes in a small notebook he carried about how many people he had spoken to from day to day. At the office, he did not insist on formality, which the others liked him for.

The week after Josette had begun to work for him, Coulon took a call from Charles Mangey, the mayor of Bergerac.

“Maxime, I just heard from a friend, an official in Périgueux who knows about such things, that there’s going to be clamping down on black market activity, just wanted to give you a head’s up.”

“Black market?” said Coulon. “Not sure that’s much of a problem in Castillac. I can’t imagine anyone trafficking in stolen kidneys or exotic drugs at the Café de la Place,” he said with a chuckle.

Charles took a deep breath. “You watch too many American movies,” he said. “The black market isn’t only for things like that. It covers an enormous amount of ground, from pirated software to cigarettes. Essentially, any transaction where the government is cheated out of taxes, that’s black market. How is it possible you do not know this, Maxime?”

“I didn’t realize that’s what you were talking about,” said Coulon defensively. “Perhaps a bit of the work in the village is under the table…ah, you can’t blame people, can you? The VAT has gotten ridiculous.”

“Maxime,” said the other mayor, “I needn’t remind you that we cannot hold ourselves up as protectors of the common good while turning a blind eye to illegal behavior, no matter what you might think of the policies coming out of Paris.”

“Yes, yes, of course, I wasn’t saying that. Though I don’t see how much I can do about the kind of thing you’re talking about. If a homeowner pays the plumber with cash, or partly cash, what am I supposed to do about it? I’m not present during the transaction and there is no evidence of its having taken place.”

“Bank records, Maxime,” André said patiently. “Look out for cash deposits. After all, cash doesn’t just appear out of thin air, does it?”

“Ah, if only it did!” laughed Coulon. “Thank you for letting me know. As I said, I doubt there is much illegal activity here in Castillac, at least on any scale worth worrying about, but I will have a word with the bank manager in any case. Now tell me about the music festival next week—are you making any special plans about parking?”

The two mayors spoke for another ten minutes about upcoming events in their respective towns, and then cordially said goodbye.

After hanging up, Coulon sat for a moment looking out of his window. Rue Balzac was empty except for Madame Vargas’s dog Yves, who was trotting confidently down the sidewalk before turning onto rue Malbec. “Black market” sounded so exotic, like something in a stylish film, Coulon thought. Perhaps there is money to be made here in Castillac in more ways than I have figured.

A slow smile spread across his face as he contemplated a number of targets that instantly sprang to mind. Candy from a baby, he thought, suddenly hungry for lunch.

Over the course of several months, Josette settled into the job at the mayor’s house happily enough, though certain aspects turned a little strange. At first it had been smooth sailing, with Coulon seeming to be the most genial of employers. Each weekday morning, Julien dropped off Josette, and she set about the day’s chores with enough enthusiasm and competence to please her boss. She was meticulous with silver-polishing, making sure to get every speck of tarnish even in the crevices of the ornate flower pattern on the flatware. She made the mayor’s bed fresh every day, plumping the duvet to cloud-like softness and making sure the pillowcases were washed and dried in the sunshine, as he preferred. Coulon set the schedule of what she was to do when, though he liked to fiddle with it, sometimes changing the day’s chores for reasons she did not understand. But what did she care? The job paid well and allowed her to spend the bulk of her day in a stately house, surrounded by beautiful things. It was ten times better than the chicken house, she told Julien, though the truth was that she missed farm life and preferred the company of the birds to that of Coulon by a wide margin.

In the third week, Coulon had led her into one of the guest bedrooms and told her to change into an outfit he had gotten for her to wear during her working hours. “It’s the least I can do, providing appropriate clothes for the job,” he said by way of explanation. Josette did not entirely understand the concept of ‘appropriate for the job,’ and with a shrug put on the black dress with a tiny apron hemmed with a frill. The bodice of the dress was tight but not so tight that she wanted to complain, and the skirt was full, short but not too short, and even had an underskirt of tulle, which Josette considered wonderfully fancy, having never had the chance to wear anything remotely like it before.

The outfit was not to last, however. After two weeks, Coulon led her into the guest bedroom once more, and told her that given the heat of August and the lack of air conditioning in his house, he thought it only kind to provide her with a summer outfit that would make her strenuous work more comfortable to perform. She looked doubtfully at the bed, where he had laid out a camisole and pantalettes made by La Perla, a name not familiar to her.

“They are the finest money can buy,” he said, trying and failing to sound casually authoritative. “It was cruel of me to expect you to run up and down stairs all day in this heat without any concession whatsoever to your comfort. This should go a long way to ameliorating the situation. And,” he added, going to the Empire chest of drawers and sliding open the narrow top drawer. “I have provided more selection, so that you may decide for yourself what you feel like wearing on any particular day.”

Josette was taken aback, as any young woman might have been, though other young women would likely have understood Coulon’s motivation more clearly. “You want me to…clean house wearing underwear?”

Coulon chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think of it as underwear,” he said, as though the suggestion was silly. “I think of it simply as something luxurious, something of great quality and high-class, that will make your day much more pleasant. Tell you what: try it for a week, and then decide. If you find there is anything about wearing La Perla that you do not like—if it impedes your work in some way, or you feel self-conscious, anything at all—then I will whisk it all away without another word. After all, the point is to make your day better, Josette. How does that sound?”

Josette did not feel she could go against him, and did not feel especially strongly about it in any case. She was used to the freedom of living deep in the country, where she could skinny-dip in the pond or strip off her clothes to feel the spring sun on her skin. And raising various farm animals over the years gave her that sort of matter-of-fact physicality typical of people whose early years are spent close to nature. Given all that, the young woman did not have an abundance of modesty, and while she regretted the loss of the fancy underskirt, these new items did look very beautiful, and were heavenly to touch.

She agreed to try it. And when Coulon left the room and closed the door behind him, she hurried out of her jeans and T-shirt and into the sumptuous underwear, marveling at its softness. It was like wearing nothing at all, she thought, taking a look at herself in the mirror in the armoire door, and liking what she saw.

Thus the new normal began. Julien continued to drive his sister back and forth to work, even on the days there was no market at which to sell the farm’s bounty. On market days, he continued to skim a bit of the profit for himself and usually took himself out to lunch, and Josette spent the five days of the work-week cleaning the mayor’s house with industry, while wearing very expensive lingerie.

Neither of them said a word to their mother about what went on in Castillac. Madame Barbeau asked a thousand questions of them both, but without having to say a word to each other, they answered with a stream of blandness along with a nearly complete lack of detail, and the poor woman was frustrated to the point of apoplexy. She insisted Josette hand over her earnings when she was paid, bi-weekly, but Coulon paid in cash and Josette had learned from her brother to hold back a little each week, gently adding to her nest-egg, which was wrapped in plastic bags and hidden in the rafters of the chicken house.

Toward the end of September it was still hot, and Josette was grateful to be wearing something light, especially on the days when her work was strenuous. She kept the black dress hung up in the guest room armoire in case someone rang the doorbell, or she needed to put something on so she could go outside to hang the wash.

On one wash-day, she had the dress on over the La Perla underwear and was on the point of opening the door to go out, holding a heavy basket of wet laundry, when she noticed a woman in the alley, lurking by the back gate. Josette set down the basket and moved out of sight, then peeked from behind the curtain. The wall to the back garden was high, but the woman must have found something to stand on because her head popped up; she was staring at the clothesline, at the silk pantalettes and camisole that Josette had hung out earlier that morning. Josette saw her reach a hand out—was she going to steal them right off the clothesline? The nerve of this strange person!

But one of the neighbors shouted about something and the woman pulled her hand back. She looked up at the house and Josette stayed very still, willing her to move on.

What business is it of hers, she thought crossly, waiting a few minutes after the woman had walked on down the alley and out of sight. She yanked the basket up and went outside, pegging the wash to the line aggressively, then carefully taking the dry La Perla things inside, folding them, and putting them in the narrow drawer where they belonged.

“I’m still not used to village life,” she said to Julien on the drive home that day. “Can you imagine, a stranger about to reach out and touch the wash on the line? I didn’t know whether to run out and yell at her or say nothing. I don’t…I don’t know the rules.”

“Eh, it’s not that complicated,” he answered. “It’s just the same as you learned in school. How to greet people, when to keep your mouth shut. Just pretend—who was that teacher in primaire, Monsieur Séverin? Just imagine what he would tell you, and do that.”

“I don’t like people being nosy,” she said, raking her fingers through her hair.

“You get that from Maman,” her brother said, rolling his eyes. “People are naturally interested in other people. Doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Of course, Maman thinks it is bad, but you do know she is crazy as a loon?”

Josette looked out the window and did not answer.