The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 8

Chapter 8Molly was an early riser and Frances a late one, so Molly got up and had coffee and breakfast by herself. She screwed up her courage for a phone call, still a difficult hurdle even though her French had improved dramatically over the months she had been in Castillac. There was something about that disembodied voice over the phone, with no facial expression or body language to help the communication along. Dread was not too strong a word for how Molly felt about phone calls in France.

She was calling a mason, recommended by her neighbor Madame Sabourin, who she hoped would be able to repair the external wall of the pigeonnier down in the orchard, the first necessary step toward turning the outbuilding into a habitation she could rent out.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Gault. I received your name from my neighborhood, pardon, my neighbor, Madame Sabourin. I wonder if…if…you have a moment to talk with me? I think of a project.” She shook her head. Molly liked talking to people—adults, children, strangers, it didn’t matter—and it made her very uncomfortable to come out with such stilted sentences. But the mason understood well enough and said he would be out at the end of the afternoon, if that was convenient.

Whew, glad that’s out of the way.

“Molly!” shouted Frances as she came through the front door. “I need coffee, stat!”

“Tell you what,” said Molly, checking the big clock on the wall that said it was a quarter to twelve. “Why don’t we stroll into town and eat at Chez Papa? The coffee is better than mine, for sure, and I’ll introduce you to another hot bartender. You up for it?”

“Sure,” Frances said. “I should probably take a day, or at least a few hours, to get work done, at some point anyway. Not feeling like it has to be this minute. You have a piano?”

“Actually,” Molly said, with a slightly embarrassed grin, “I have a music room. I’ll show you.” Frances followed Molly in the other direction from the living room and into a room that contained nothing but a dusty piano and a couple of chairs. “I feel silly having this, because I don’t play. But the piano came with the house, and I don’t need the room for anything else, so here it sits.”

“Awesome!” said Frances. She wrote jingles for a living—an extremely good living—and needed to be able to noodle around on a piano for ideas to come to her. She walked over and played a few chords, pronounced it in tune, and said she was ready to go into the village. “I’m starving. Last night’s dinner seems like it was a million years ago. And you know,” she said thoughtfully, “I’m sort of disappointed that I didn’t get to see the body of the old lady in the bathroom. I’ve never actually seen a real live dead person before.”

Molly started laughing and she laughed so hard she had to lean on the wall for support, gasping for breath. Frances was puzzled until Molly managed to choke out, “Real…live…dead person…” in between gales of laughter.

“It’s not that funny,” said Frances, giving her hair one last comb before they went into the village. “Sometimes you can be so literal-minded.”

Molly recovered herself and pulled on a coat. Both women looked in a long horizontal mirror on the foyer wall while they tied on scarves. “I saw a friend of my father’s when I was a teenager,” said Molly. “Open casket at the funeral. But that dead body looked sort of like a doll, even though it was an old man. His face was all waxy and he had on more makeup than I did. Madame Desrosiers…well, the way her body was, curled up on her side, I thought at first she was asleep or had passed out or something. But when I looked into her face…”

“You knew she was dead.”

“Pretty much. Something about her eyes…they just didn’t look like they were going to open again.”

The day was bright and cold. Frances and Molly blinked at the sun and wished they had worn sunglasses. On the other side of rue des Chênes, almost at the village, was a small cemetery, and Frances walked more slowly, looking over the wall at the stone mausoleums and complicated ironwork of the gate.

“What does Priez pour vos morts mean?”

“‘Pray for your dead’,” answered Molly.

They walked on in silence, stomachs growling.

Walking into Chez Papa, Molly inhaled deeply, always appreciating the smell of coffee and humanity therein. Nico waved from the bar and a few tables were filled—nothing like the crowds and gaiety of summer, but still a welcoming, homey place.

“Nico, this is my American friend, Frances Milton.”

“Very nice to meet you,” said Nico.

Frances grinned at Nico and then gave Molly a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Look, Molls, it’s that family from last night—”

And sure enough, there were Michel and Adèle, niece and nephew to the newly departed Madame Desrosiers, deep in conversation at a table nearby.

“La bombe!”

“Oh, brother,” said Molly. Lapin Broussard swept into the room, waving at Nico and giving Molly a wink. “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got some business to do,” he said, and continued on to the back room.

“Who’s that? And what’s a bohmb?” asked Frances.

“If you don’t wanna find out, just keep your arms over your chest.”

“Ha—one of those. So who is the guy, anyway?”

“Long story. Sort of decent, sort of a pain. He’s a junk dealer.”

“Such blasphemy! I deal in original antiques, Molly!” said Nico, imitating Lapin.

Frances ordered a café grand, and Molly had an espresso because why not, but she stopped talking to Frances and Nico, hoping to hear whatever Michel and Adèle were saying. As she sat on her stool, she hoped it wasn’t obvious that her antennae were completely focused on the pair at the table, and she turned her head so that one ear was directly facing them.

“—what she did to that housekeeper from a few years ago? She was never right after that, I swear Michel. I think she had to move back in with her parents and hasn’t had a job since. Nerves totally shattered.”

Michel nodded. “I don’t know what makes a person that twisted,” he said, and then the next bit was garbled and Molly couldn’t follow it.

“Hel-lo, Molly Sutton!” said Frances, annoyed. “I’m talking to you, Nico’s talking to you, and you’re sitting there with your eyes glazed not answering.”

Something was up with that old lady, was what Molly was thinking. And now that she had that thought, she couldn’t let it go.

Murielle Faure got up early, as she usually did, and put on a pair of sturdy canvas pants and a heavy, man’s flannel shirt. Over that, a workman’s coat, then a wool scarf covering her head and tied around her neck. It was cold again, but she longed to be in her garden. She sat down on a bench beside her front door and bent one long, gangly leg up to tie her boot, and then the other.

It was beautiful outside. The sun was just peeking up over the trees and it cast a sharp glow where it hit: the crazy, wiggly branches of a Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’; a six-foot Vitex agnus-castus with a few straggling leaves still hanging on; a bank of hydrangeas, the leaves long gone, but a few flower heads dead and shimmering with frost. Murielle stamped her feet to bring some blood to them, and walked down a garden path made of broken pieces of slate she had gotten at a discount from a building supply store, to the back garden where the fruit trees stood.

They too were bright in the early morning sun, every twig outlined in gold. She reflexively checked the bark for insect damage even though she had done so almost daily and it was not the season for insects anyway. She patted their trunks, considered where she would need to prune in the spring, and then, since it was barely dawn and none of her neighbors were early risers, she spoke to the trees out loud.

“You are my friends,” said Murielle, reaching up and wrapping her bare palms around a cold branch. Now that her children were grown and out of the house, she was lonely and it was more difficult than ever for her to get through the winter while the garden was dormant. It was like having your husband sleep for four months straight, never saying a word, but lying next to you in bed with his back turned, his body cold.

She clapped her hands together for warmth and headed back to the house, thinking for the millionth time that if she only had a greenhouse, she would be able to accomplish amazing work. Next to the small house was a tiny shed containing her gardening tools, and nestled against the south wall was a cold frame where she nursed along several botanical experiments. In a neat row was a line of rose grafts, combinations of her seedlings and a stronger root, which she hoped would make quite a splash if they turned out the way she expected.

It was the day after Josephine died in the bathroom at La Métairie. Murielle did not miss her sister. She was a little surprised that she did not, since she imagined that sisters were supposed to miss each other when one died even if they did not get along, but that was how she felt and she did not dwell on it.