Chapter 10
901 Words
Chapter 10Dufort hardly ever sat at his desk if he could avoid it, but that’s where he was on Saturday morning, catching up on paperwork, when the coroner called.
“Bonjour, Ben,” Florian Nagrand said in his deep voice, raspy from cigarettes. “I got some news on Desrosiers. Figured you’d want to know right away. Still waiting on some results, but it’s not looking like a heart attack.”
Dufort’s eyebrows went up.
“She was poisoned. Sorry to toss this at you on the weekend. I’ll know more when the lab sends me the results.”
“Wait, poison? I’m…I wasn’t expecting that at all. You’re sure?”
“No, I won’t be sure until the lab results are back of course. But the signs were not consistent with heart failure. Organs showed a pink lividity—didn’t you notice her skin was reddish, far more so than any other corpse you’ve sent my way?”
“I did notice. I thought perhaps because I got there quickly…do you have ideas about what the poison is?”
“Cyanide. But again, Ben, patience. We should know in a day or two, maybe even later today.”
“Can you tell me when she was poisoned? Right before she died? Last week? Can you narrow it down at all?”
“Gotta wait for the lab. Sorry.”
They hung up. Dufort stood up and walked around his office. Why had he insisted the old lady had died a natural death? Simply because he wished it were so? A stunning lapse in judgment. He felt a wave of shame go over him and then he stood up straight, cleared his throat, and called Perrault to come into his office.
“Some news. Nagrand just called. He thinks Josephine Desrosiers was poisoned.”
Perrault’s eyes got bright and she grinned, and then mastered her emotions and made a neutral expression. “Is there any chance it was accidental?”
“It’s possible. We’ll know more when the lab tells us what kind of poison we’re talking about. But we must act quickly even though we don’t have all the information we need. I’m going to send Maron over to La Métairie. Perrault, you go over to the coroner’s office and pester him for that lab report. I want it in our hands the instant it arrives.”
Dufort reached Maron on his cell and told him the news. “Get over to La Métairie and talk to Nathalie Marchand. She manages the place. It’s a longshot for sure, but ask if everything—plates, cutlery, even tablecloths and napkins—has been washed from Thursday night. We need to begin testing anything we can find for residue, working backward from the last moment Desrosiers was alive.”
“If it was her birthday,” said Perrault, “there were probably presents? Or maybe not. I know my grand-mère would not like opening things at a restaurant. But some people like to.”
Dufort gave her a small smile and a nod. She was improving, Perrault. Her thinking was getting clearer. “Thank you,” he said. “Now get over to the coroner’s. If we don’t keep an eye on him, he’ll go home for a long lunch and not come back to the office. Babysit him until you get that report.”
Perrault nodded. “Yes sir,” she said, grabbing her heavy coat on her way to the door. “Chief? Is there any chance this is connected to the Boutillier and Martin cases?”
“Unfortunately for those of us who love logic and finding patterns, events in the world tend to be more disorganized and unconnected than we would like them to be. In other words: highly doubtful.”
Perrault nodded and the door closed behind her.
A poisoning, thought Dufort, leaning back in his chair. Never been one in Castillac, not that he remembered as a child, and not since he’d arrived at the gendarmerie three years ago.
At least, not one we’ve known about.
“You came home with eggplants? That’s it? Jeez, Molly, I thought you had some sense of priorities.”
“I know. And I was two steps away from Pâtisserie Bujold, too. In my defense, this has never happened before.”
Frances took a long glug of her coffee. She looked disgruntled and her usually sleek hair was sticking up in back. “Eh, sorry Molls. I’m stuck on a jingle, and the deadline is two days from now.”
Someone banged on the door and Frances jumped up to answer it. “It’s the mason,” said Frances, gesturing to him to come in. She said bonjour with an appalling accent, and then gesticulated in a way that she thought was a friendly greeting. “See you, Molls. I’m going to mess around on the piano and see if I can whip that stupid jingle off in the next hour.”
The mason looked confused, no doubt in part because of Frances’s continued waving of her arms and flapping her hands.
“This way,” said Molly to the mason, Pierre Gault. “As I was telling you, I’d like to convert my pigeonnier into a living space. I’ve got some ideas and I’d like you to tell me if they’re going to work.”
Pierre nodded, relieved to be able to understand the American’s French, which was a little disjointed but got her point across. His wife had been joking around and acting out scenes at breakfast in which Pierre was utterly lost while the American woman chattered away in French-sounding nonsense and then flew into a rage when he did not do what she asked.
But Molly was ignorant of Pierre’s wife and her jokes, and walked with him out to the meadow where the pigeonnier stood, crumbling a bit on one side, thinking only that she hoped Pierre didn’t charge too much for his services, since bookings had been nonexistent for over a month.
She did not think about the corpse she had found in the bathroom at La Métairie, nor of Benjamin Dufort, but the afternoon in the meadow with Pierre was the last time she was able to think about anything else for quite a while.
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