The Château Murder

Chapter 4

4It was Saturday morning, market day, and Molly was out of coffee. She dressed haphazardly, raked a comb through her tangle of red curls, fed Bobo, and zipped into the village on her scooter, planning to spend the first half hour at Pâtisserie Bujold getting her caffeine fix and feasting on the freshest and best pastry in the entire département. The air was chilly at eight in the morning. Leaves were turning color and summer gardens drooping, the sight of which always left Molly feeling melancholy. The problem with October was that the whiff of death was up in your face every time you went outside.

“Bonjour, Molly!” boomed Monsieur Nugent from behind the counter as he packed a box of pastries for an older woman at the front of the line.

“Bonjour, Edmond,” said Molly with a wave. She walked over to the case and looked over the day’s selection, always a wide variety on market day. As usual, the rows of delicacies were perfectly neat with not a crumb out of place. Cream puffs, Napoléons, religieuses, palmiers, éclairs, apricot tarts...impossible to decide.

“How are you?” asked Molly when it was her turn.

“Terrible,” answered Monsieur Nugent with a smile. “My knee has been swelling up each night to the size of a succulent melon,” he said, glancing at her chest. “I have to sit with ice on it for hours.”

“What does the doctor say?” Molly said, ignoring his glance.

“Who has time for doctors? I have to be in the bakery at three in the morning, and so much work to accomplish. I cannot leave my customers unhappy, Molly!”

“We are grateful for your dedication, Edmond. I’ll take four almond croissants, and what’s that green thing in the second to last row to the right? Looks like white chocolate shavings on top?”

“Pistachio cream with white chocolate on an almond wafer. Gluten free. Something for everybody!”

Molly paid and moved to let the throng behind her have a turn, and since the tables were full, she walked back to the Place where the market stalls were set up, sipping coffee and nibbling a croissant along the way.

When she had first moved to France a little over a year before, market day had been both thrilling and intimidating. So many things she had never seen back in Boston: a fellow walking around with vials of vanilla beans attached to his clothing, selling them for four euros a pop; an old man sitting at a card table selling walnuts he had gathered in his yard; more varieties of cheese than seemed humanly possible. But Molly was not satisfied just being an observer—she wanted to be in the thick of it, laughing and talking to everyone. Which she had managed, in time, but those first few months had been a bit like jumping off the high dive and belly-flopping over and over, since her language skills had been pretty dismal.

But that was then. As with many pursuits, a willingness to make mistakes leads to fast progress, and a year later, Molly would still not have said she was fluent, though she really was. She understood jokes most of the time, and could almost always find a way to say what she meant and understand what someone was saying to her.

“Molly!” called her friend Manette, who presided over a vast array of vegetables, both imported and locally grown.

“Bonjour, Manette,” said Molly. “I was hoping you’d be here.”

“When have I ever not been? Oh, that one time when my brother-in-law took my place because I had the flu. I think he sold three potatoes and that was it for the day.”

Molly laughed. “Those radishes look very good. Give me a bundle of those and two handfuls of beets, if you please.”

“So let’s get right down to it,” said Manette, leaning in close to Molly as she loaded beets on a scale. “You heard about the baron?”

“Oh, I heard all right.”

“Any ideas?”

“Ideas? The poor man’s been dead for fifteen minutes and I know absolutely nothing about the case! Nor will I, now that Ben’s left town.”

“Eh, you’ll find a way. Well, look who it is,” said Manette, still whispering.

Molly raised her eyebrows.

“Antoinette!” Manette boomed out.

Molly whirled around to see a slender woman dressed in a quietly smart wool suit, wearing an expensive pair of leather boots.

Manette came around from behind the counter to hold the baroness firmly by the arms and kiss her cheeks. “Antoinette, I was so, so sorry to hear about the baron. What can I do? Would you like me to deliver some things to the château? Surely you don’t need to be here at the market, not with everything you’re going through.”

“It’s helpful to me, actually,” said Antoinette in a low voice. “I’m so…it’s just such a shock, you understand. So a bit of normalcy…it’s a good thing to be out and about, and just carry on with things.”

Molly stood with her eyes wide and her ears open, hoping Manette would introduce her, but after talking a minute more, the baroness bought an eggplant and four potatoes, waved goodbye, and moved back into the throng in the center of the Place.

“Manette!” hissed Molly.

“I know, I know. But after what’s happened, I felt I had to respect her privacy. She’s a baroness, after all, and doesn’t really mingle with villagers. It just didn’t seem like the right moment to make an introduction. I hope you understand.”

“Well, not really,” Molly answered, scowling. “Besides,” she added under her breath, “I thought all the aristocrats got the guillotine.”

Manette grinned. “You’re going to the gala this year? Perhaps you’ll meet her there.”

“Oh, the thing at L’Institut Degas?”

“Of course. It’s, let’s see, I think it’s next Friday. They’d best get to work on their advertising, I’ve barely seen any notices about it.”

Molly kissed Manette goodbye and tried to think about what to make for dinner. Sausages and sauerkraut? With a dry cider?

“La Bombe!” called out a familiar voice.

“Good morning, Lapin,” said Molly, stopping to let the big man dodge through the crowd to catch up to her. They kissed cheeks and exchanged how-are-yous. Market day took three times as long now that Molly had so many friends in the village.

“Are you rushing back to do changeover?”

“Alas, not this week. No guests coming. I’m expecting someone next week though, and he’s super fussy so at least I’ll have a whole week to get the cottage just so.”

“I know you’ve heard about the poor baron.”

Molly sighed. “Look, I’ve very much enjoyed being involved in past investigations, but I’m afraid that’s all over now. I don’t know the family and apparently won’t be getting to know the family, so let’s just move on and talk about something else.”

“You’re adorable when you get snippy.”

“I’m not being snippy!”

“Have you finished your marketing? Walk with me to my shop, I have something juicy to tell you.”

Molly looked at her friend and narrowed her eyes. “Yes?”

“Come on, walk this way.” He took her arm and pulled her along in the direction of his antique shop on rue Baudelaire. “I won’t torture you by dragging it out. The rumor is that the late baron, Marcel de Fleuray, owned La Sfortuna, the famous emerald. It was kept in a jeweled box—also extremely valuable—hidden somewhere at Château Marainte.”

Molly rubbed her chin. “How do you know this?”

“Well, it’s true that the Fleurays have never hired me to appraise anything at their estate. But still, people in my business talk. I have at least two associates who claim to have seen the box, if not the emerald itself.”

“And how widespread is this rumor?”

“Oh, everyone in the village knows about it.”

“You do realize you’ve just given pretty much everyone a rock-solid motive for killing him?”

“I knew you’d know valuable information when you heard it,” said Lapin with satisfaction.

“La Sfortuna…is that Italian? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Do you keep up with jewelry news, ma chérie?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“You stick to the sleuthing, Molls, and let me cover the antique side of things. We make a great team, if I do say so myself.”

Molly nodded glumly and said her goodbyes before reaching the shop. She had left her scooter parked beside Pâtisserie Bujold and she gratefully entered the store and bought a loaf of sourdough and an almond croissant to have for breakfast the next day.

Because really, a village murder, and at the château no less? And here she was, shut out entirely. It was hard to bear. As she sped home, she told herself not to be so selfish, that plainly it was the baron and the baroness who had the worse end of the stick by far. But sometimes, all the self-criticism in the world doesn’t budge you an inch, and she walked into La Baraque, tossed the bakery bag on the counter, dropped to the floor and let Bobo lick her face until she couldn’t help smiling just a little.

Nico and Frances had skipped the market that Saturday, preferring to spend all morning in bed and then linger over coffee and the newspaper. But by lunchtime Frances was starting to get a little antsy.

“How about a bike ride?” she said with enthusiasm.

“We don’t have bikes. Plus—don’t take this the wrong way, petite chou—but is athletics really your sort of thing?”

Frances rolled up the paper and bopped him on the head. “Well, we can’t just laze around for the entire day. Isn’t there some secret magical place somewhere that you’ve forgotten to show me?”

“Like what, a tourist attraction?”

“Nah, you know, a witch’s cottage or something. A house where a whole family died of typhoid.”

“You have a grisly imagination.”

“All the best people do.”

Nico laughed and stepped into a pair of blue jeans, then pulled a T-shirt over his head. “There are plenty of chateaux around if you’d like to do some sight-seeing.”

“What about the one right outside the village?”

“Château Marainte?”

“I think that’s it. Is it open to the public?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Nico went into the bathroom and loudly brushed his teeth. Then he came back into the room, scooped Frances into his arms, and said, “Marry me.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at Chez Papa by now?” said Frances, giggling.

“Ten minutes ago,” answered Nico, kissing her on the neck.

“Alphonse is going to blame me for your lateness.”

“Let him try.” He put his hands on her thin shoulders and ran his palms all the way down her arms. “You are a bony thing. If you won’t marry me, then let me cook a big lunch for you.”

“Nico! You’ve got to get to work!”

“Who knew you were such a slave to convention?”

“I like paychecks. Learned that one early.”

“I thought your family was mega-rich?”

“Oh, they are. But we, uh, well…I figured out pretty early that it would be best if I made my own money and didn’t depend on them. I got my first job—wait a minute, nice try, I’m not falling for your delay tactics! Get your silly butt over to Chez Papa on the double!” She reached under his T-shirt and tickled him.

“Okay, I’m going, I’m going. But one more try. Frances,” he said, his voice serious, putting his hands on either side of her face. “Elope with me. Right after I’m done with this shift. We’ll go to Bergerac, get married, and take a month of honeymoon. Alphonse will be fine with it, you know he will. And you don’t have any contracts at the moment, right? Nothing is in the way!”

Frances looked at Nico with love, successfully hiding the panic his words had stirred up. “Just go to work, monkey,” she whispered. “We can talk about all that later.”

He looked momentarily crestfallen, but pulled himself together, kissed her unhurriedly, and left the apartment.