The Château Murder

Chapter 5

5Sundays were quiet in Castillac, especially now that summer was long over. Families spent the day together, some going to church and some worshipping at the altar of a well-stocked lunch table. The roads were empty as Acting Chief Maron trudged through the village, wandering the streets and thinking over the details of the murder, at a loss for how to proceed.

It had been difficult to take over when Ben Dufort resigned as Chief, but at least Dufort had stayed in town and been available for consultation. Now he was on the other side of the world cavorting with elephants, and Maron was stuck with another murder that so far was offering up nothing but dead ends. Nagrand had called the day before to tell him he approximated the time of the baron’s death to be eleven o’clock the night of the 18th. He might easily have survived, but a single ball of shot had caught his carotid artery, and he had bled to death in a matter of minutes.

Not the worst way to go, said Nagrand, but Maron had no interest in pursuing that line of conversation with the coroner, whom he viewed as a necessary vulture but not a friend. Not that Maron had many friends at all in Castillac, or prospects either.

In theory, death did not especially bother him as long as it wasn’t his, and having a murder to solve should have brought some welcome excitement from the usual round of parking tickets and petty theft that was Castillac’s normal fare. But to Maron’s surprise, it was decidedly not welcome. Ironically, the pressure of the being the top guy—even if only provisionally—in such a small village was far more difficult for him than the very real dangers of urban counterterrorism would be. It felt as though all eyes in the village were trained on him and him alone as everyone waited for results.

All right then, he thought, trying to bring some order into his straying, jumpy mind. Let’s be methodical about this. We have the murder weapon, the expensive, antique Holland & Holland twelve-gauge shotgun, belonging to the victim. No prints. No one known to be at the château except the baroness, who appears to have no motive for killing her husband—though of course more interviews are necessary—and the housekeeper. Got to see what the opinion of the village is on that one, at least if the couple mingled enough with the village for anyone to have an opinion. Maybe I should go see Madame Tessier, the font of all knowledge...

He let himself into the station and went to his desk to read Nagrand’s report once more. Time of death, eleven o’clock. Penetration of the carotid artery. Otherwise fit and in good health for his age. Some arthritis in his left thumb. An ingrown toenail. Not overweight; defined musculature.

He heard a rustling at the door and Maron looked up to see Paul-Henri come in, his uniform immaculate.

“Bonjour, Paul-Henri.”

“Bonjour, Chief. Any word from Nagrand?”

“Yes, I just emailed you his report. I’ll reserve comment until you tell me your thoughts.”

Maron leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms up over his head, and waited for Paul-Henri to read what Nagrand had written.

“Okay. Well,” Paul-Henri began, looking up from his computer after a few minutes, “obviously there’s not much here. But in my opinion, what we’re dealing with is some kind of attempted robbery or burglary.”

“Explain.”

“Well, you’ve heard about the emerald, of course. That, to me, is the most obvious motive. I mean, you don’t keep something of that massive value at your house, with no security to speak of, and expect that you’re never going to run into trouble.”

Maron had not heard of any emerald but did not want to say so. “So in your opinion, someone went to the château on Friday night looking for this emerald, and ended up shooting the baron?”

“He probably had to, didn’t he, if he had just forced the baron to hand over the goods? Getting rid of the witness, you see.”

“I see,” said Maron sarcastically. “And your evidence for this dramatic tale?”

“A murder is dramatic, Chief, it’s not me trying to make it so. And a murder at that gloomy château—even more so.”

“Oh, you don’t approve of Château Marainte? Not your style?”

Paul-Henri wanted very much to explain the features he believed to be the most aesthetically pleasing in château architecture, but had no confidence Maron would appreciate a word of it, so he steered the conversation back to the case.

“Certainly the jewel would have been hidden somewhere, not sitting out where anyone could snatch it. So I believe the baron was alive long enough to show the thief where it was—at gunpoint, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” said Maron, sneering.

“And so,” continued Paul-Henri, ignoring Maron’s glares, “on the assumption that the murder did not take place until the emerald had been secured by the thief, and thereby that the thief has the emerald in his or her possession—because otherwise why kill the baron?—we should monitor all avenues of jewelry sales, auctions, and that sort of thing. Though I suspect the thief is too clever to try to sell it on the open market. It’s probably a private sale, and if our luck is very bad, it’s already changed hands, the money untraceable.”

A long quiet moment in the station while Maron digested this explanation and Paul-Henri straightened his posture, looking very pleased with himself.

“So you’re saying a professional jewel thief killed the baron?”

“I am,” said Paul-Henri, puffing out his chest.

“And this professional jewel thief just happened to find a loaded gun at hand at just the moment he needed it?”

Paul-Henri started to speak but stopped. He looked up at the ceiling as though a movie of the murder scene was playing on it. “He could have brought his own weapon, of course, perhaps a dagger? But decided to go with the shotgun since obviously it’s better to kill someone with his own gun if it can be managed.”

“Is it now,” mumbled Maron, rolling his eyes. “Did you by any chance think about going to film school instead of the police academy? Perhaps you were writing screenplays? Your imagination is certainly…vivid. Daggers and jewel thieves, huh? How much does a ticket to the matinée cost?”

“Very funny,” said Paul-Henri. He turned back to his computer and pretended to be looking over the report again. “Shame the baron had such bad luck. According to Nagrand, the guy was in very good shape for his age.”

“Fifty-seven,” said Maron. “Not exactly an old man. Spent a lot of his time hunting, so I suppose that means a lot of walking. Do you hunt?”

“Me? Oh no. I grew up in the suburbs and liked going to museums and cafés in Paris. Forests aren’t anyplace I’d choose to be.”

Maron had little interest in nature either, but the shared opinion did not make him look at Paul-Henri with any less contempt.

“All right, one thing we can agree on: someone else was at the château the other night. So let’s get out there, chat up everyone we can think of, and find out who it was, shall we?”

Molly felt a little lonely that Sunday. It seemed as though the entire village was snuggled up on that chilly morning with their families and lovers, and she had no one, not even any guests. Which—forget loneliness for a minute—was the much bigger problem, she thought, looking over the numbers for her gîte business for the last month. Her bank account wasn’t empty, not all the way, but dwindling by the day. After a booming summer when she’d been fully booked most of the time, with a delightful cash flow, the booking calendar for November looked bleak.

She had used much of the summer money for improvements around La Baraque. That would pay off, eventually…but how to keep food on the table in the meantime?

“Come on, Bobo!” she said, getting up from her desk and heading to the kitchen to top off her coffee. She had learned from sore experience that sitting around the house checking her email every thirty seconds did not actually produce more bookings, and it was better to get out of the house, away from the temptation.

She put on some sturdy boots which made Bobo leap about the room because she knew that meant a long walk, and then off they went, down the meadow behind the house, past the empty pigeonnier, and into the woods. Of course, she wondered about the baron’s murder, but those thoughts fizzled quickly since she had no knowledge at all of any of the details, and could not even picture where it had taken place since she had never even been up the driveway to Château Marainte.

Probably his wife did it, she figured, or a disgruntled relative. Fighting over an inheritance or something.

But such ruminations were not very entertaining since they were based on nothing at all, and soon Molly was not seeing the woods and the bright day but instead worrying over her financial situation and what to do about it. She had spiffed up her website and taken out a few ads. She had joined a site that represented many hundreds of gîte businesses, but so far had only produced one booking. What could she do to make visiting Castillac in the off-season more appealing?

And then she stopped, spilling coffee on her jeans. “Yes!” she said to Bobo, “That’s what I’ll do: I’ll have a series of dinners, with different themes, and put notices up in Bergerac and Périgueux. It won’t be like running a restaurant because I’ll only be making one menu—everyone eats the same thing. An event where tourists and villagers get to mingle for an evening. What do you think—will it be enough to keep the wolves from the door until spring?” She bent down and rubbed Bobo on her speckled chest, where she loved being petted the most. And then Molly apologized for cutting the walk short and turned and ran back to La Baraque, full of enthusiasm for the new idea, and the murder most happily forgotten.