The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 21

Chapter 21After lunch Frances went to take a nap in the bedroom next to Molly’s, since Constance was noisily cleaning the cottage. Molly was restless. She was reading a good book but kept getting up and finding chores to do, and finally she gave up and walked into the village, wanting to stretch her legs and possibly procure a few pastries for Frances and herself to eat in late afternoon. Yes, it was gluttonous to have pastries twice in one day, but it was cold and wintry and her best friend was visiting and…well, she could come up with reasons for pastry all day long. It was a real talent, and one she was grateful for.

Castillac looked sad to her in mid-December. Hardly anyone was on the street, for one thing, and the Christmas decorations looked droopy and half-hearted. But her own preparations for Christmas hadn’t even begun, she realized with a little panic. Hurrying to Pâtisserie Bujold, she spoke to the proprietor about reserving a bûche de Noël (that most scrumptious of holiday desserts, a rolled cake made to look like a log), which he reassured her he was glad to do. So distracted by worrying about Michel and wondering how she could help him, Molly didn’t even notice Monsieur Nugent’s usual staring, leaving with a waxed bag of afternoon delights—a Napoléon, two cream puffs, and a strawberry tart.

She nibbled on one of the cream puffs as she wandered around the center of Castillac. Ben had told her Josephine Desrosiers was one of the wealthiest people in the village, and had described her house to Molly, a house she recognized since it was the grandest mansion in the village and a commanding presence on rue Simenon, one of the main streets of the village. Without meaning to, she drifted toward it until she was standing directly outside. The shutters and door were the perfect color blue, Molly thought, although she wanted badly to get at those topiaries with a pair of shears.

She wondered what had made Josephine so mean. Or maybe that was irrelevant. The question was, what had made someone want to kill her? Was it just about the money? Or was it rage? Or something else altogether, something no one will never know?

Molly ducked into a café right across the street and sat at a table where she could look at the house. She felt as though seeing the house was helping her understand Josephine somehow, as though some of secrets were hidden within it. She would possibly have given up her bag of pastries to get inside for a look around.

A waiter brought her a petit café and she smiled at the pleasure of her first sip. The coffee was very strong and bitter, the perfect accompaniment to the sweet and fluffy creampuff, which she ate surreptitiously since she guessed correctly that the café manager wouldn’t be thrilled about her eating food she had brought from somewhere else. Her eyes were turned to the house but she wasn’t really seeing it. Lost in the sort of random thoughts that slosh through our minds when we’re alone, thinking about everything and nothing, looping around and around, murder/coffee/topiary/murder/cream puff…

At first she didn’t notice what she was seeing. Another sip of coffee jolted her into the present, and she realized there was a man at the front door of the mansion, his back to her, who seemed to be using a key. He was dressed in blues, a workman’s overalls, and he was carrying a plastic bag with something heavy in it. She wanted to whistle, to call out, anything to make the man turn around so she could get a positive ID. He looked like Jean-Francois, Sabrina’s boyfriend. She was almost certain it was him.

The man finally got the door open, and walked inside without turning around until just at the last second, when he closed the door, Molly saw his profile against the darkness inside. It was Jean-Francois all right.

Molly jumped up from the table with an impulse to do something, but once she was standing, she had no idea what. She couldn’t go running over and let herself in the Desrosiers house…could she? If Jean-Francois was up to something, that could be dangerous. Besides, she had no standing to go in there, no matter who was inside. No connection to Josephine Desrosiers except finding her dead on the tiled bathroom floor of La Métairie and the beginnings of a friendship with her niece and nephew, which even with Molly’s skills at rationalization did not add up to letting herself into the old lady’s house without an invitation.

Even if Josephine were still alive and Sabrina was working there, it would be strange for her boyfriend to have a key to the house, wouldn’t it? thought Molly. Yes, it would. If he came to pick her up from work, he should knock. And if Josephine was the type of woman Molly thought she was, he would be knocking on the back door and not the front.

Molly paid her bill and crossed the street. The shutters to the house were all closed so there was no way to catch a glimpse of Jean-Francois inside. She walked along the side of the house toward the back, peering over the wall to the garden. It was a little difficult to tell in winter, but it looked as though once upon a time it had been a beautiful place. Molly could see an espaliered tree on the back wall of the house, and two circular goldfish ponds, the edges rimmed in tile the same violet-blue as the shutters and front door.

I bet he’s stealing or destroying evidence, Molly said to herself, continuing down the block and turning toward home. But what? And how in the world can I figure it out?

Benjamin Dufort was in a sprightly mood. First of all, after Perrault showed him the will, he was eighty-five percent sure Michel Faure had killed his aunt to inherit her money, and all that remained was finding enough evidence first to arrest and then to convict him. And second, he was going over to Marie-Claire’s for dinner. He wasn’t miserable leading his bachelor’s life, but he appreciated a meal cooked by someone else, especially someone with as much talent in the kitchen as Marie-Claire had. And of course, he very much enjoyed her, apart from the food—her intelligence and forth-rightness, and the sexy-librarian way she dressed.

After praising Perrault for her good work finding Desrosiers’s will, he left the station for the day, wanting to pick up some odds and ends at the épicerie and possibly drop by the florist’s to see if there was anything he could take to Marie-Claire. He whistled on his way down the street. He stopped to chat with the woman behind the register at the épicerie, and the delivery boy. He kept whistling on his way to the florist’s, which was a little out of his way.

“Salut, Ben!” said Madame Langevin, the tiny woman who had run the florist shop for as long as Dufort had been buying flowers. “Have you caught the murderer yet? I can’t believe someone killed poor Josephine! Of course, I say ‘poor Josephine’ only in the way you would speak of the dead, no matter who it was. Because mon Dieu, that woman was execrable! Oh now Ben, you should not look away when someone is telling you the truth!”

Dufort smiled and shook his head. “It is not my job to slander the victim, Madame Langevin.”

“Slander? Who said anything about slander? Slander is untruth, yes? Listen to me. I had dealings with Josephine Desrosiers for years. Years! She was fussy—I didn’t mind that. I’m fussy. Things ought to be just so, I understand that entirely. But Ben, she would keep a bouquet for several days, and then return it! Return it, complaining that it did not look fresh. Well, everyone in the world understands that flowers aren’t going to stay fresh into eternity. Their impermanence is their glory, as I’m sure you understand. Madame Desrosiers understood it perfectly well too. But that didn’t stop her from trying to get her money back.

“I’m not talking about once, Ben, or even twice. I am telling you she behaved this way for many years, off and on. I would have refused to sell to her, but then she would hit a good patch and all would be well for a few months. As you might know, my business has its ups and downs; sometimes people can afford flowers, and in leaner times, they cannot. I couldn’t afford to lose her business, even though I despised her and barely made any profit from her at all.”

“You’re going to put yourself on the list of suspects if you keep talking like that,” said Dufort with a faint smile.

“Oh, I should be on it,” said Madame Langevin, “In fact, it would give me pleasure to be on it!” She collapsed with laughter on the stainless steel counter where she arranged flowers.

Dufort was glad that Desrosiers had been rich enough for someone to kill her for money; if she had been much poorer, the suspect list would have gotten completely out of hand.

He selected a white poinsettia, even though he didn’t like them much. Madame Langevin was waiting on a delivery and didn’t have much else in stock besides some sad-looking carnations. Dufort paid and said goodbye, leaving Madame Langevin wondering whom the poinsettia was for, because she knew quite well that Dufort’s mother was allergic to them so that crossed her off the list of possibilities.

Dufort reached his place in the gendarmerie and went inside to put his odds and ends away and to shower and change before going to Marie-Claire’s. In the shower, allowing himself some extravagance with the hot water, he felt a pang of uncertainty. He often did his best thinking in the shower and had learned to pay attention when anything occurred to him while the water was beating down on him.

Michel may want the money, but is there any particular reason why he couldn’t simply wait? True, she was not that old, as Dufort kept reminding Perrault and Maron. But still, another ten or fifteen years maximum, and Michel would have gotten the whole eight million euros without taking any risk at all. He was out of work, but he could get by on social services and he has a supportive family. It’s not like he was living on the street with nothing to eat.

Some people can’t wait, Dufort thought as he toweled himself off, struggling to understand a man who could take the life of an old woman, even a tremendously disagreeable one, simply to make his own life more comfortable.