The Château Murder

Chapter 3

3Alexandre Roulier stretched out on the hotel bed and put his hands behind his head, trying to think. He had just received a call confirming Marcel’s death and he knew that his next moves were critically important. One false step and Antoinette might bar him from the château altogether, or worse, sic the gendarmes on him. He had to think through the details carefully, painstakingly.

The hotel was a solid two-star in an outer arrondissement of Paris. Hardly shabby—and the concierge was a pretty young woman, the breakfast better than average, the view from his window decent enough. But Roulier was not content with a two-star. He wanted to be at the Georges V, the Shangri-La, the Ritz. He wanted to have so much money that he never had to look at a price tag or comparison shop ever again. And once he had his riches, he had a few ideas about changing his last name to something with a bit more sparkle—Roulier referred to someone using a cart, a distinctly working-class name. But after losing a half hour daydreaming of more elegant possibilities, he sternly told himself to stick to the matter at hand and not get ahead of himself. Alexandre was nothing if not disciplined.

First thing was to take the train down to Castillac, just as he had numerous times with Marcel. He could comfort Antoinette in her time of grief. He could enjoy one last stay at Château Marainte, perhaps even get in a day of boar hunting.

And he could finally, with Marcel out of the picture, search for the box. Alexandre had never had a chance to search Marcel’s Paris apartment, but he very much doubted it was there. For all his worldliness, Marcel had a sentimental streak, and Alexandre would bet his little finger that Marcel had hidden the box somewhere at Château Marainte, his boyhood home and that of his ancestors going back nearly four hundred years.

Alexandre liked to get up at dawn, finding that he did his best planning early in the morning. He enjoyed a long shower, spending a few moments regretting how small the stall was, and tiled in porcelain instead of marble. He was careful to dress in his most casual clothing, knowing that Antoinette would disapprove of his customary Parisian finery.

It was critically important to have her on his side, and as he packed a small bag he came up with a few ideas for winning her over. It was a delicate thing, as the baroness—though provincial and overly attached to her dogs—was quite perceptive and apt to be on her guard now that she was a widow.

He would need to figure out how to get Antoinette out of the way while he searched, and there might be others in the household who would need to be persuaded to look the other way. But this gave him little worry since he had yet to meet the housekeeper who was not open to a juicy bribe.

The one thing causing him anxiety was that he had no idea whether the existence of the box and its contents was widely known. Was Château Marainte going to be crawling with charlatans hoping to grab it? Or were the stories Marcel had told him over brandy late at night been actual confidences? Alexandre could think of no way of knowing except to show up at the château and assess the situation. Perhaps Antoinette did not even know about the box. Certainly that would make the operation easier, he thought, allowing himself to imagine finally holding the box in his hand with no one else around, no one to impinge on the rapture, the rapacious pleasure of holding that much money in the palm of his hand.

The box itself was elaborately decorated in jewels—or so Marcel had told him—but the emerald it contained was the real treasure.

All that remained was breakfast, and then to the train.

His fortune awaited.

Florian Nagrand had been the coroner in Castillac for twenty-six years, during which he had driven his white van to pick up around thirty bodies a year, give or take, the vast majority of whom had died of natural causes; taken countless photographs; smoked an infinite number of cigarettes; and consulted with a long list of gendarmes as they arrived in Castillac and then were posted elsewhere a few years later. At this point, a routine death by shotgun was nowhere near interesting enough to spark his curiosity, no matter that it was murder and not an accident, and had apparently taken place in a salon at Château Marainte.

“No chance the body was moved? He was definitely shot right here in the salon?” asked Maron, squatting down next to the body.

“Well, of course,” answered Nagrand. “The bleeding from a wound like that would be instantaneous and copious. Yet there’s no trail over the rugs or anything like that. I expect he dropped like a stone.”

“Time of death?”

“Last night most likely. Or sometime yesterday at any rate.”

Maron nodded. “Will you be able to be more precise?”

“It’s possible,” said Nagrand, who never liked being pinned down about anything, even on what he would like to have for dinner.

The forensics team had already bagged the Holland & Holland and were looking around the room for anything else that might hide evidence—a glass, an ashtray with cigarette butts—but the room was noticeably tidy. “Did someone clean in here after the murder?” one of them asked Maron. “I don’t think my house ever looks this immaculate.”

“That’s because you’re a foul slob,” said his workmate with a wide grin.

Maron got up and walked to the other end of the room, careful to watch where he put his feet. “If this is where the baron spent a lot of time, then yes, he appears to have been orderly in his habits. I will inquire about the housekeeper’s activities. All right then, I’m going to leave you guys to it. Anything comes in from the lab, you know how to reach me. Paul-Henri, you stay here in case the guys need you.” Maron patted his cell and went back outside to the courtyard.

Antoinette was kneeling beside one of the parterres, pulling some weeds, no longer crying.

“Excuse me once again,” said Maron, trying and failing to find the right tone, something that expressed firmness of purpose, authority, and also a degree of personal warmth. “I apologize for the crudeness of Monsieur Nagrand. He…he makes light because death is so familiar to him, not because he’s callous about your situation. I am sorry if he upset you.”

“Oh no,” said Antoinette, getting to her feet and brushing the dirt off her hands. “I didn’t take offense. It’s just…please understand, I’m still very much in a state of shock. This whole thing…when you’re married to someone for a long time, as Marcel and I were, inevitably you consider…you think about things like, who will go first? What will life be like if I’m left all alone? But as you might imagine, Officer Maron, all the considering in the world makes no difference when the thing finally happens. So far, it’s not a bit like I thought it would be.”

“I understand,” said Maron, though he did not. He looked around at the dark gray walls of the château. Instead of feeling protected there in the courtyard, he felt suffocated, even though he was standing in the sunshine and could feel a light breeze.

“Just a few questions, if you don’t mind. Was anyone else here last night besides you and the housekeeper?”

Antoinette c****d her head. “Let me think. Georgina and her husband live in a cottage partway down the hill—you passed it when you drove in. I have no idea whether he was home last night or not. Hubert lives about four kilometers away, between the château and Castillac. Or do you mean right here, inside the gates of Château Marainte?” Antoinette paused and looked at Maron.

He looked into her hazel eyes. For a brief moment he had an urge to brush a stray strand of blonde hair out of her face.

“It was just me, as far as I know,” she said, with a shrug. “We had dinner at about eight-thirty, then Marcel went to his salon. I went to our bedroom and got into bed with a book.”

“And you heard no cars come up the drive, no one walking in the courtyard?”

“No. But the château walls are thick.”

“Did you hear the shot?”

Antoinette shook her head. “I heard nothing. I read for a while, then went to sleep and slept like a baby until seven-thirty in the morning when Grizou woke me up with his wet nose in my ear.”

Hearing his name, Grizou got up from a shady spot under a miniature peach tree and trotted to Antoinette’s side.

“Did you and your husband usually breakfast together?”

“Oh, sometimes. Not if he was up early to hunt. But otherwise, yes, we would have coffee together in the lounge next to the kitchen. Marcel liked to watch the news on television first thing.”

“And would the cook be here to take care of breakfast?”

“Oh heavens, Officer Maron, we don’t have a cook! Yes, we have this immense pile—” she waved a hand at the château. “But in terms of cash flow, life here is not nearly as grand as one might think. I make the coffee in the morning, and cook all the meals for that matter.”

“I see. How about trouble with burglars, anything like that?”

“Well, you should know as well as anyone,” she said with a short laugh. “I’d certainly have reported that kind of thing to the gendarmerie. You know, I’ve always considered Castillac to be the safest place imaginable. I can’t understand this recent rash of crime at all—it’s almost as though an infection is spreading through the population—suddenly you hear of murder and abduction and all sorts of things that used to be common in big cities, but not here. Never here.”

“Yes, madame.” Maron paused to gather his confidence. “You’ll understand that I must ask—how were things between the two of you, baroness?”

“Call me Antoinette, please,” she said, putting her fingers lightly on Maron’s arm. She tipped her face up to the sun, “Oh, marriage. Are you married, Officer Maron?”

Maron shook his head.

“Well, I suppose it’s like anything else. It ebbs and flows. To be very honest, since that is obviously what is required, we did not have much interest in each other anymore. We knew each other as children, you see. Grew up together, raised a family, a lot of years went by. And so at a certain point it was as though all the feeling that could be wrung from sentiment had been gotten, you understand, and there was just not much of anything left.

“Which is not to say we were unhappy. We got along fine, Marcel and I. He did not try to order me about like some husbands do, and I was not a nagging wife as some become, at least I don’t believe I was. For the last few years, he spent most of his time in Paris. First for his work as minister, and then because he enjoyed it. Had a good friend with a place in Berry, very good hunting apparently.”

“You are not interested in hunting?”

Antoinette laughed. “Not in the least,” she said. “At any rate, as you’d imagine I’ve been thinking all day about who in the world could have wanted to kill Marcel, and…for the life of me, I can think of no one. Where does that leave us?”

In a bad way, thought Maron, but kept the thought to himself.