The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 13

Chapter 13He had been feeling so much better lately. The long winter runs, the relative calm in Castillac, his dates with Marie-Claire…Dufort had not even been to see his herbalist in over a month. Anxiety was so low he had stopped noticing it.

And now, another death, and he was patting his pants pocket for his vial of tincture and feeling disappointed when it was not there. This death—it was nothing like the others. Not a young woman cut down and brutalized in her prime, not related to the unsolved Boutillier and Martin cases, but an elderly woman whom nobody liked. Nevertheless, the thought of her lying on her side on the tile bathroom of La Métairie made him feel queasy.

He had to wonder, even after so many years: am I in the wrong job? He knew other gendarmes with his experience had toughened up long before now. Had gained some resilience, some ways to compartmentalize, joke, anything to make death more bearable. But somehow he had not managed to acquire those skills even after ten years on the job.

Then Benjamin Dufort, chief gendarme of Castillac, pulled himself together and took a walk around the village before dawn. He did not rush but observed the village in the lonely state of a frosty December morning. Life-sized Père Noëls emerged from chimneys, and decorated trees stood outside most of the shops. A huge snowflake that he remembered from his childhood hung from a wire across the main street, looking a little tattered around the edges.

Florian Nagrand, the coroner, had not called with the lab results, but Dufort knew what they were going to say. It was going to be cyanide, as doubtless he had known the minute he saw the flushed face of Josephine Desrosiers, her cheek pressed against the white bathroom tile. He had known but not wanted to face it. Why? Was it as simple as fear that he would not be able to find the murderer and fail at his job? Or was there more to it than that?

He saw the lights on at the station even though it was barely six in the morning and knew Perrault was inside, trying to find something to do. He envied her excitement about her job, and hoped that as the investigation went on, he caught some of her enthusiasm instead of feeling so morose about the state of humanity.

And himself.

“Salut, Perrault,” he said, putting his heavy coat on a peg by the door. He could easily hide his emotional state, but was not sure that was actually a step forward.

“No results yet,” she said, her mouth turned down.

“No matter,” said Dufort. “I think I have a pretty good idea what they’re going to say, now that I’ve given it some thought.” He wanted to talk to Perrault, to tell her that he had avoided the idea of murder and couldn’t understand why, but he knew it would not be an appropriate conversation to have with a subordinate officer. “We need to start talking to Desrosiers’s family. You mentioned knowing the niece? That would be an excellent place to start. And—” he added, on his way into his office, “—early morning is often the best time to talk. People’s defenses aren’t all the way up yet. Especially before coffee,” he said with a small smile.

“Yes, sir!” said Perrault. Not wanting to waste a minute, she slipped on her coat and took off for Adèle’s apartment on rue Tartine, planning to hang around outside and knock the minute she saw the lights go on.

Dufort sat at his desk, his posture straight but his mind in turmoil. Florian must have thought me such a fool, he thought, feeling the unsettlement in his stomach that signaled shame.

The next morning Molly was startled to wander into the kitchen and find Frances, already up and drinking coffee. “Morning!” she said, reaching for a mug.

“I’m awake,” said Frances.

“I can see that,” said Molly.

Molly was wearing a thick flannel shirt lined with fleece, sweatpants, and cozy slippers from L.L. Bean that she’d had for years. But she was still cold. She took a big sip of coffee, pleased that Frances made it strong, and turned her attention to the woodstove.

“Going for more wood,” she said, and let herself out the French doors to the terrace. The first thought she’d had upon waking was about the Desrosiers murder—she had dreamed her new friend Adèle was guilty. Her second thought was no, not Adèle. If she could get the woodstove going and get warm, she wanted to close her eyes and think it all through, go over every moment of the other night in the restaurant, as well as the other times she’d seen the brother and sister.

The morning was frosty, and she paused for a moment to notice the beauty of the white-tipped branches and blades of grass before shivering and walking quickly to the woodpile. She stacked three logs on her arm and turned back for the house, wondering whether she should stop Pierre Gault from working on the pigeonnier in favor of spending the money on a different heating system or some insulation in the main house. Extra bookings won’t matter if I expire of cold, she thought.

“So I dreamed last night that Adèle killed her aunt,” Molly told Frances, while shoving a new log in the woodstove and shivering.

“Interesting. Do you think you’re psychic, or was that just your brain throwing sparks?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream like that before. My dreams are usually crazy, incoherent nonsense. Maybe this one was too.” Molly stood, watching the fire, then squatted down and poked another piece of kindling under the log. “I don’t want it to be Adèle, that’s for sure.”

Frances pulled a blanket around her and sipped her coffee. “Well, we know something bad was happening in that family. The aunt was a tyrant, okay, but what’s the rest of the story?”

“Yeah,” said Molly, her voice flat. “The thing is, she and Michel seem so normal, when you hang out with them. They feel like…like people I already know, somehow. Familiar, in a way.”

France hummed the Twilight Zone theme song.

“I know in the U.S., you’re way more likely to be murdered by a family member than a stranger,” said Molly. “Think that’s true in France, too?”

“Families,” Frances said in a disgusted tone. “Ugh. This is a horrible thing to say, but in some ways, you’re lucky.”

Molly just nodded. She had a younger brother and an assortment of cousins, but that was more or less it for family. Her father had died in a nursing home the year before she moved to France, but in the haze of Alzheimer’s, he had not been able to recognize her for at least three years before that. Her mother had died in a car accident fifteen years ago. Molly’s relationship with them had been decent, if not especially close, and even though her grief at their deaths had long mellowed into some other, less-painful emotion that was difficult to describe, still, she never forgot she was an orphan.

And she knew that people who were not orphans, like Frances, were unable to understand what it was like. No matter how old you were or even how close you had been. No matter that it was the natural order of things to lose your parents eventually.

“I dread spending Christmas with my family,” said Frances. “It’s just one long dreary event with a lot of commentary about how my hair is all wrong, how could I possibly have divorced my second husband because he was so nice, and lots of other special Hallmark moments.”

Molly laughed. “Do you doubt my ability to put together a Christmas that will beat anything you could have at home? Franny, listen: I’ve got pastry, I’ve got duck, I’ve got Pascal. By the time this celebration is done, you’re never going to want to leave.”

“You’ve got Pascal? Can you be more specific please?”

Molly laughed. “I mean I can invite him over. That’s all you need to work your magic, right?”

Frances looked up at the ceiling and a slow smile broke out. “That’ll do,” she said. “Crap, it’s cold in here! Can’t you turn up the heat?”

“This is the heat,” said Molly, gesturing sadly to the woodstove, where the fresh log had failed to catch. “I’m going to have to take the logs out and start over. Please remind me to bring the kindling in at night so I have something dry to start the fire with?”

“Hey, that little electric heater in the cottage works fine, why don’t we go over there?”

Molly poured the rest of the coffee into a thermos, and the two friends walked arm in arm to the cottage, where Molly talked about what to plant in the front garden in spring, and Frances talked about how she had recently discovered that lemonade helped her write better jingles, and no one brought up poison or toxic family ties or anything else that might derail their buoyed-up moods.