Chapter 6
1603 Words
Chapter 6The chief gendarme of the village, Benjamin Dufort, arrived at La Métairie in less than ten minutes. He lived on the edge of the village but Castillac was not large, and at ten o’clock at night there was little traffic to slow him down.
He kissed the woman in charge on both cheeks, greeting her warmly. “Very sorry about this, Nathalie. No one has been allowed in the bathroom, I hope? You’re quite sure the woman is dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Nathalie, looking rather pale. “One of the diners found her. She came straight to me saying there’s a dead body in the bathroom, and I called you first and then went to see if she could use first aid. Sadly, there was nothing I could do for her.”
“Was she here with anyone?”
“Oh yes, a whole party. They were celebrating her birthday—seventy-two, I believe.”
“They’re still here?”
“I believe all of them are, yes. We’re trying to get dessert out of the kitchen if it won’t get in your way.”
“Not at all. No need to interrupt your service. And thank you, Nathalie. I will go see her now.”
“Right down the hall on the left,” said Nathalie. “I’m just…it’s upsetting, having this happen. Death is part of life, I know this. Yet—who wants to be reminded?”
Dufort nodded and went down the dove-gray corridor to the bathroom. He looked out to the dining room on his way, and saw at least one person he knew. “Molly!” he said with surprise.
She waved weakly. Not a month after she had moved to Castillac, she had found the body of a missing woman. She was embarrassed to have stumbled upon a second corpse barely two months later.
Dufort went on to the bathroom and pushed the door. Since neither Molly nor Nathalie had moved her, Josephine Desrosiers was still blocking the way and he had to give her a shove before he could get through. Dufort was thirty-five and had been on the force for over ten years; he had seen his share of death. But unlike most in his line of work, he never got used to it.
He took a series of slow breaths through his nostrils, expanding his belly, and then pushed the air out forcefully through his mouth. Then he took a small blue glass vial out of his pants pocket and tapped a few drops of an herbal tincture under his tongue. His anxiety more under control, he knelt down beside the old lady. He pushed two fingers against her carotid artery searching for a pulse, though he had no doubt from the first sight of her that she was dead. Dufort did not have the expertise of the coroner, but he did have a fine intuition about life, and he could see that the woman lying on the tile was no more.
It was true she did not have the pallor he normally saw in a dead person; her cheeks were almost ruddy, as though she had been out in a bracing wind. She was not yet cool to the touch. Her black lace dress was hitched up above her knees but that was the only sign of disarray. Dufort guessed that she had collapsed in the bathroom, alone. Perhaps not the most dignified way to go, but at least it had been quick, which is all any of us can hope for.
He stood up and walked around Josephine Desrosiers, looking with curiosity, noting details of the way she was lying, her jewelry, her shoes. Something about her feet in their dark stockings and low heels seemed poignant. Dufort rubbed his hand back and forth over the back of his head, feeling the prickles of his brush cut. He called the coroner on his cell, and then went to look for Molly Sutton.
“You look a little pale, even for you,” said Frances, c*****g her head at Molly. The waiter had come around with tiny glasses of cognac for everyone in the dining room, as a way to acknowledge the difficulty they were all going through. No one makes a reservation at the most expensive restaurant in town expecting to have the place crawling with gendarmes and corpses.
“I just…yeah. What can I say? At least she probably died of a heart attack. Although…”
“I can see the rusty wheels in your brain turning. Although what?”
“Funny. It’s just that…” Molly leaned across the table and lowered her voice, “didn’t you get the feeling that almost everyone at the party hated that woman? Like, really hated her?”
“I was focusing on the food, Molls. This grotesquely expensive, heavenly food. But okay, I saw there were some less-than-happy faces, once you pointed them out.”
“I don’t think they were joking around,” said Molly. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out one of them killed her.”
Frances c****d her head. “Come on, Molls, you really think so? I mean, people in families not getting along—that’s not exactly headline news.”
Molly shrugged. “Just a feeling,” she said. And instantly got a flash of her ex-husband yelling at her. “Donnie used to get so mad at me. He’d yell ‘Feelings aren’t facts!’ as though if something wasn’t a fact, you didn’t have to pay any attention to it at all.”
“Donnie was a moron,” Frances said, and swishing a mouthful of cognac before swallowing. “I will say this, though: I’m pretty mad at that old lady too, because I think she may have cost me that white chocolate mousse I had my eye on.”
Molly turned to look for the waiter, wondering if the arrival of Dufort had put the brakes on the service or whether the restaurant was going to try to muddle through.
“Sudden heart attack—that’s like my dream death,” the young man who had brought the old lady was saying.
“She was always very lucky,” said the dark-haired woman.
Molly stood up. “Back in a sec,” she said to Frances.
She tapped the young man on the arm. “Please excuse me for bothering you,” she said, in her vastly improved French. “But I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry about what has happened, and give you my condolences.”
The man was clearly taken aback but he recovered himself and said, “Thank you, madame. I am Michel Faure, her nephew.”
“Molly Sutton, pleased to meet you. And I do agree with you—I overheard what you said about a sudden heart attack being your dream—I mean, not that I dream of dying, thank God, but only, yes, since we have to go sometime, that does seem like one of the better options.”
The blonde woman approached, one foot dragging. She nodded at Molly and said to Michel, “Is there any reason I should stay? I can think of a million places I’d rather be right now.”
“I suppose it would be tasteless for us to sit down and have dessert, and a couple more glasses of cognac? The dinner’s on Josephine’s bill, after all.”
“Michel,” said the blonde woman warningly, nodding at Molly.
“Oh. Right. Sorry!” he said to Molly. “Please forgive me.”
“I’m Molly Sutton,” said Molly, holding out her hand to the blonde, who grasped her fingers gently and gave them a mild shake. Molly had never quite figured out how to greet someone you did not know well enough to kiss. She had gotten so used to the cheek-kissing that not to touch someone in greeting felt weird.
“Adèle Faure,” said the blonde. “This crétin is my brother. Apologies for airing our family business out in public where it doesn’t belong.”
Molly smiled and barely restrained herself from saying, “No, please do air it out! I want all of it! More please!” but instead she blurted out, “No worries, Adèle. I hope you won’t think it’s the wrong moment to say that I love your bag, and it goes perfectly with your complexion.”
Adèle surprised 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 brûlée 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.
- Writer
