The Château Murder

Chapter 2

2Molly Sutton, no longer a newly-minted expat but practically an old-timer in the village, was planting bulbs with Frances in the front yard of Molly’s house, La Baraque. They made a mismatched pair, with Molly on the short side with freckles and unkempt red hair, and Frances slender and elegant, her red lipstick flawless. The two had been best friends forever.

“You have to dig deeper, Franny,” Molly said, looking down at what Frances was doing.

“I keep hitting stones. Maybe this is a bad spot.”

“Just pry them out, it’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like gardening.”

“So I gather.”

“It’s so…dirty.”

Molly laughed. “But think how these daffodils will look in March! I’ll bring you a big bouquet. They will smell better than the best perfume, I promise!”

“Well, I do like flowers,” mumbled Frances, pressing her trowel under a stone and flipping it up out of the hole. “I’m just more of an instant gratification kind of person.”

“Really?” teased Molly. They continued to dig in companionable silence for several minutes. Molly was thinking that she had been living in Castillac for over a year, and all in all, the move had turned out better than she’d ever dreamed. Her gîte business was…well, finances were perhaps a bit shaky as she headed into the off-season, but bills were mostly paid and she had some bookings over the next few months. She loved France unabashedly, and her adopted village of Castillac even more.

“So how are the wedding plans going?” Molly asked. Frances had come for a visit that winter, and ended up loving not only French village life but the bartender at their favorite bistro. She and Nico were talking about getting married, though no date had been set.

“Well…”

“I thought you were thrilled!”

“I was thrilled that he asked me—who doesn’t like that part? But look, with my history, it’s hard to get very excited about a wedding. I mean, I’m excited about Nico. I’m ga-ga about Nico. But the wedding part of it…”

“Two divorces is not that many.”

“It’s two more than Nico has.”

“What difference does it make? Is he troubled about them?”

“Not that he admits. Or at least, not that I can tell, what with his English and my French. But really, how could he not be? I think I look kind of…flighty. On paper, anyway.”

“You are flighty,” laughed Molly, jamming a bulb for the white-flowered Thalia into a deep hole and filling it in with dirt. “But honestly? You and Nico are suited to each other in a way that you never were with your exes. I’d be happy to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong and tell him that, if you think it would help.”

Frances sat on the grass, her legs crossed. “It’s not really Nico, it’s me that’s the problem. I’m worried that...what if we get married, and then...you know, it’s hard, sticking with the same person into eternity.”

“You remind me of those cemetery plaques: ‘Care in Perpetuity.’”

“See what I’m saying? Cemeteries aren’t the best association with marriage, right? Something’s wrong with me.”

Molly’s cell phone chirped, and she leaned back on her heels and struggled to get it out of her pocket. She had put on weight since moving to France and practically all her clothes had gotten a smidge too tight. “This guest isn’t even coming for another couple of weeks, and already he’s been totally high maintenance.” She paused, looking harder at her phone. “Wait. It’s from Lawrence. Murder at the château.”

“Whaaat?”

“I know, right? I can’t quite...another one? Really?”

“What else does he say?”

Molly checked her phone. “That’s it. I swear he must be hacking into the gendarmerie system or something—he always knows everything practically the minute it happens.”

“At the château! I’ve always wanted to get invited there for something. Do you know anything about the aristocrats?”

“Never met them. The...Fleurays, I think is the name.”

“Well? I can’t believe you’re just calmly planting another bulb. A murder, Molls! Aren’t you going to head out there and poke around?”

Molly shrugged. “I can’t just show up at crime scenes and start asking questions. I don’t know them or anything about them.”

“So what’s your angle gonna be, then?” asked Frances with a grin.

“Angle?”

“Oh, come on. You know you’re going to get in on this one way or another. Too bad Ben’s not around.”

“Yeah,” said Molly, allowing some wistfulness into her voice. Her romantic relationship with the former chief was a big question mark at the moment. Since he had been at the gendarmerie for many years, he still had an informal authority in the village and had been able to bring Molly into a few investigations on the side. But Ben had left Castillac for many months, off on a midlife crisis trip to Thailand. “I got a postcard from him yesterday with a picture of an elephant. Not much of a note.”

“Well, that’s no help,” said Frances, standing up and brushing dirt off her knees. “But I have faith in you, my dear Miss Marple. If there’s a dead body anywhere within fifty kilometers, you’ll figure out how it got there...one way or another.”

“Thanks for the confidence.” Molly settled the last of the bulbs into a hole and scraped soil on top of it. “But enough about murder. Let’s get back to Nico. Are you worried that once you’re married, he’ll turn out to be someone else, someone you don’t know? That you’ve fallen for some kind of, I don’t know, illusion?”

Frances pushed her straight black hair behind her ear and looked out across the road to the oak woods. “That’s probably part of it.” She took a deep breath and then spoke in a rush. “And also...what if it’s me who’s pushing an illusion? What if he finds out I’m not who he thinks I am?”

“Interesting,” said Molly, pressing down on the newly-planted bulb and standing up. “So who is the real Frances, if you’re not the wayward kook I’ve known since I was seven?”

“What if that’s who I am to you, but to other people I’m someone totally different? What if I’m just a big giant fake and he figures it out right after the ink on the marriage license is dry?”

Molly stood with her hands on her hips, looking at her friend. “You’ve got mud on your chin,” she said. “And I think you should just enjoy Nico and stop worrying. You’re both clearly smitten, so why not appreciate that and stop trying to pick it apart?”

Frances bit the inside of her mouth and considered. “Eh, you’re probably right. Got any pastries? All this backbreaking labor has me half-starved.”

“Silly woman. Of course I have pastries.”

The women walked arm in arm back to the house, Frances missing Nico even though she’d seen him only three hours earlier. Molly wondered about her ex-husband, and whether this theory explained why that marriage had failed. Had she missed seeing who he really was until it was too late?

People are mysteries, that’s all there is to it, she concluded as she opened the bag of almond croissants bought that morning at the beloved Pâtisserie Bujold, breathing in the buttery, almondy aroma and grinning in anticipation.

Long before they reached it, the officers could see the imposing Château Marainte looming up before them, a red flag flying from a turret on the east end of the building. The 13th-century edifice stood on a hill surrounded by farmland, visible for many kilometers in nearly all directions. Maron turned into the drive, which wound up the hill through a wood and then straightened into an allée lined with two-hundred-year-old plane trees.

“To be clear, Paul-Henri, we are not here to interrogate anyone right now. We’ll secure the crime scene for forensics and make whatever observations we can, and that’s all. I do not want to hear you firing questions at the housekeeper or babbling on to the baroness about your mother’s social connections. These situations take planning and strategy, and we can’t do that on the fly.”

Paul-Henri nodded, his jaw working. They pulled into a white-graveled parking area and got out. The château, a defensive building with slits for archers and two crenellated towers, was not in his favorite style. He much preferred the more delicate and artful architecture of later centuries such as the chateaux at Chambord or Challain. He rubbed a spot on one of the buttons of his uniform while waiting for Maron to decide what to do next.

Maron was looking at the vast building with his mouth open. The stone was dark and the place felt unfriendly to him. A wooden bridge crossed a dry moat, and he set off that way, wondering if the baroness was waiting for them inside, and what kind of person she would turn out to be.

The officers went through an immense gate and into a large courtyard planted with parterres outlined in boxwood, with an old well in the center, closed in on all four sides by the gray walls of the château, five stories high.

“Messieurs!”

They turned to see a middle-aged woman coming toward them, dressed in a long wool skirt and a velvet blazer.

“Bonjour, madame,” said Maron politely. “I am wondering if you could direct me to the baroness?”

The woman smiled. Maron noticed that she wore no makeup, as though she had accepted the plainness of her face as fate, and did not fight against it. She looked pale and her cheekbones jutted sharply. “I am the baroness,” she said, “though please, simply call me Antoinette.”

Paul-Henri had been about to speak, but whatever it was, he choked it back.

“I must have spoken to one of you when I called. Marcel...my husband Marcel…has been shot.” She held out a palm and bowed her head, taking a moment to collect herself. “It’s quite horrible,” she said, almost too quietly to hear.

“Can you show us where he is?” asked Maron, unsure how to behave, having had no experience around aristocrats and feeling pretty sure there were rules and protocols for what to say and how to say it, even if you were a gendarme.

“Follow me,” she said. Antoinette crossed the courtyard and stopped before an ancient wooden door that was partly open. “This is his private salon,” she said. “The place where he spent most of his time when he was here at Château Marainte. A man’s place, you understand, where he kept his guns and cigars and that sort of thing.”

Maron nodded, having never seen an aristocrat’s man cave but figuring the concept was the same.

The baroness pushed on the door, and the three of them stepped into the dimly lit room. Old tapestries covered the stone walls, and a table lamp with a green shade pooled light on an antique desk. On the walls hung various hunting trophies: antelope and deer heads, a leopard skin, the impressive twirling horns of a kudu. An enormous fireplace held ashes and a few charred logs, but no fire was lit. Looking around, Maron noticed the shotgun on the console table, and when he moved farther into the room, he saw the baron lying in a pool of dark blood on a Turkish carpet.

Paul-Henri gasped and then tried to pretend he was coughing.

“All right, then,” said Maron. “The coroner is on his way and forensics should be here any minute. Paul-Henri, go out to the gate so you can direct them in here when they arrive.”

Paul-Henri glumly walked off.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” said Maron to the baroness, who inclined her head slightly and thanked him.

“I’m in rather a state of shock,” she said. “We’ve been married, oh, close to thirty years. Raised two sons. I can’t even begin to understand this. I’m struggling to grasp what has happened even though my eyes are looking right at it.”

“Yes, madame. It sometimes takes the mind some time to catch up. Your sons? Are they on their way? Have you called a friend or anyone to give you some support during this difficult time?”

Antoinette waved off his concern and Maron worried he had been too familiar. “My sons live in Paris. I called them right after I spoke to you earlier. Not a phone call I relished making, I will tell you.”

“I can imagine, madame. Is anyone else here at the château?”

“Georgina was here this morning. My housekeeper. She found Marcel, actually. I rather think it made her day.”

Maron tilted his head inquiringly.

“Oh, I just mean that she likes a bit of drama. You know how people are.” She looked over at her husband and Maron saw tears spring to her eyes.

“Anyone besides Georgina?”

“Hubert is around somewhere. He works for the château, doing whatever needs doing. Some carpentry and repairs, managing the hunting grounds, a gamekeeper of sorts.”

Maron, who had grown up in a city, had no idea what that might entail. “What is Hubert’s surname? And does he hunt as well?”

“Hubert Arnaud. And oh, of course, certainly he hunts. I don’t know what kind of arrangement Marcel had with him about using our land for his own hunting, but he…are you thinking that the shotgun is the murder weapon?” she asked, her voice rising as she gestured at the Holland & Holland lying on the console table.

“Don’t touch it!” barked Maron. “It will need to be dusted for fingerprints. There is some chance that another gun was used, and the coroner will have the final say. But I would guess, looking at your husband, that this gun was…the gun that killed him. Shotguns aren’t the most efficient way to go about killing someone,” he muttered, and then looked up to see that the baroness was staring at him aghast.

“I’m sorry, I just meant that most often a shotgun blast isn’t fatal.”

Antoinette nodded. “Made for killing birds,” she said, a bit harshly. A border collie ran into the room and eyed Maron suspiciously.

“It’s all right, Grizou,” Antoinette said to the dog, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. The baroness’s face relaxed for the first time since Maron had met her, and he had a fleeting glimpse of what she had looked like as a young woman.

The dog started to go around the table to inspect Marcel, but Antoinette held him back. “If it’s all right, may I go? I don’t mind if you have more questions but I would like to continue somewhere else, if we could?”

She’s so polite, Maron was thinking. He had thought aristocrats were imperious and went around with their noses in the air, but here is Antoinette, not the least bit haughty and asking to be called by her first name, and doing her best to be helpful in what must be the most shattering time of her life. He was trying to put her in a category and failing.

“But of course,” he answered, gesturing to the door.

“Grizou!” called Antoinette, and the dog shot through the door and into the sunny courtyard.

Florian Nagrand, the coroner, was just making his way into the courtyard, flanked by several forensics men who had made it from Bergerac in record time.

“Just sitting down to lunch,” growled Nagrand to Maron, and the baroness burst into tears.