Murder for Love

Chapter 4

4Iris Gault finished cutting up the potatoes and slid them into a huge pot of boiling water. It was the last day of school, and while she was happy to be getting off work for a few months, she always missed the children terribly. She checked her watch, always careful to time the cooking so the food would be ready all at once, and then stepped into the bathroom and used a paper towel to wipe the steam from her face.

The mirror over the sink was old and not perfectly clean. Iris looked at herself. She was forty-four and unhappy. She understood this was a common enough state for people of her age—the sudden realization like a thump to the side of the head that the end of life was zooming ever closer…and there she was, wasting time, still waiting for the good part to begin.

Her marriage was no comfort.

She still had her looks, she could admit that to herself, though she guessed their days were distinctly numbered. For a while, when she was young, she had believed that her beauty had significance somehow—that it was a kind of good luck that meant she was going to have an extraordinary life. There was no one she could talk to about these feelings, since, understandably, even her best friends did not want to hear about such things. But—briefly—the world had seemed so welcoming, so happy to have her in it! Where had that feeling gone?

Iris ran a finger down her nose, looking at herself in the spotty mirror. She wiped under both eyes to catch some errant flakes of eyeliner.

What now, she asked herself. What am I going to do now?

“Iris!” her co-worker Ada was banging on the bathroom door. “Don’t mean to disturb you but the purée? It’s gotten too thick and sticking to the bottom of the pans.”

“Take it off the heat,” said Iris through the door. And then she took a deep breath and held it until she was uncomfortable, and squeezed her eyes shut. Turning the cold water on hard, she put her face under the tap and shivered at the cold.

Leaving the bathroom without another glance in the mirror, she appraised the situation in the kitchen to see if they were on schedule for lunch. A big man in blue coveralls came in the back door, his hands and face shiny with plumber’s grease. “Madame Gault,” he said, “I don’t know what you or Ada is putting down that sink, but I can’t keep the thing clear if you keep on like that.”

Iris sighed. She suspected that Hector himself was putting something down the sink just for an excuse to come into the kitchen and bother them.

“I will speak to Ada and make every effort,” she said. “What was it this time?”

“A wadded-up rag, that’s what!” said Hector. He flexed his shoulders and looked intently into Iris’s eyes. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in the kitchen, anyways? Don’t your husband take care of you?”

“Oh, Hector,” laughed Iris. “None of that is your concern. I’m very happy in my job. Thank you for fixing the sink and now I’ve got to get lunch served, the children will be here any moment.”

She directed Ada and the others until the tables were set and all the food—baguettes with butter, courgette and potato purée, pork, salad—was ready. They could hear the laughter and clamoring of the first group of students on their way to the cantine, and Iris glanced at the tables to make sure they were set properly: glasses, cutlery, napkins. Lunch was serious business and considered part of a child’s education; they practiced not only using knives and forks but also conversation, guided by their teachers and occasionally their principal.

“Bonjour, Iris,” said Caroline, smiling as she held the door for the children. “I’ve brought Madame Poirier’s class today—she just went home with a headache.”

“That’s a shame, and no way to start vacation,” said Iris brightly. “Samuel, I have your very favorite cheese today!” She reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder as he went by, grinning at her. “Eveline! Mousse au chocolat for dessert!”

Eveline shrieked and the two girls whose hands she was holding shrieked in response, and they danced in a circle singing a song with “mousse au chocolat” as the only lyric.

“You have any summer plans?” asked Caroline, once her charges were all seated at their tables.

Iris shrugged. “Who knows?” She watched the children scrambling into their seats and felt a pang of missing them in advance. “I feel like a big change, Caro. Maybe I will go to Mozambique!”

Caroline looked startled at Iris’s sudden vehemence. The other classes were led in by their teachers, the children louder than usual from the excitement of having their last lunch of the school year. Tristan Séverin came in just as they were beginning to eat, his pants a little too short for his long legs and a swipe of black marker on his cheek.

“Students!” he cried, and miraculously, they quieted down to listen. “I want first for you all to say thank you to Madame Gault for feeding you so well all year—”

“MERCI MADAME GAULT!” shouted the whole room with glee. Iris smiled and nodded, twisting her braid in her fingers.

“—and then I want you to thank Mademoiselle Dubois for all her work in the office and making sure the buses went where they were supposed to—”

“MERCI MADEMOISELLE DUBOIS!”

Caroline made a bow and waved.

“—and then…well, what about me?” said Principal Séverin, and the children laughed before screaming their thanks to him as well.

After the meal was over and everyone had left but the staff at the cantine, Iris was tempted to go back into the bathroom just to have a moment’s privacy. As soon as the kitchen was cleaned and straightened, her vacation would start. She had no plan, no solid ideas, nothing but a nearly feverish desire to change her life somehow—to go somewhere, to start over, to shake everything up and begin again.

After another day of scraping wallpaper and working in the garden, Molly wanted to go to Chez Papa and see friends. Ben was deep in a book about the Napoleonic Wars and so Molly rode her scooter into the village alone.

“Madame Sutton is in the house!” said Lawrence Weebly, seeing her stop to chat with someone in the doorway. Molly grinned and waved, then came over to kiss cheeks.

“What’s the news?” she asked, always ready for a juicy bit of gossip, and knowing Weebly to be not just a good source, but the best.

“I’ve got nothing,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’ve never seen the village so quiet and well-behaved. As far as I can tell, Castillac for the moment is the epicenter of contentment and honest living.”

“For the moment,” said Molly.

“We should be glad.”

“But we’re not,” she whispered, and they both laughed. “Hey Nico!”

“Kir coming right up,” he said, breaking away from a conversation at the other end of the bar.

“Frances coming tonight?”

“I think so,” Nico answered, glowering. “She’s a little hard to pin down.”

Molly laughed. “Yep! That’s our Frances all right. Don’t take it personally, Nico.”

He shrugged.

“Trouble in paradise?” asked Lawrence.

“Eh, wherever Frances goes, there’s trouble. You know I love her like a sister, but I’d kill myself before getting romantically involved with her. She’s…unreliable.”

“Ah,” said Lawrence. “I’m not shocked to hear that. But still, no doubt it’s that very unreliability that attracts our Nico? Frances is unpredictable and a little mysterious. He can’t become complacent. That’s alluring, am I right? Not that I have experience in these matters,” he added, looking away.

Molly shrugged. “I guess so. For sure, if what you want is cozy nights watching television together, Frances is not your girl. Last week she drove all over the Dordogne looking for vintage clothing because she got it in her head to dress up as an heiress from the Belle Époque.”

“Did she find what she was looking for?”

“It’s safe to say Frances almost never finds what she is looking for,” laughed Molly. “Which is probably the point. Anyway, she unearthed a moth-eaten skirt with a bustle but that was it. I think the fever has passed though, so she won’t be driving to Bordeaux or Paris trying to complete the outfit.”

“She’s an heiress for real, have I got that right?” asked Lawrence, sotto voce, after a long sip of his Negroni.

“Yes. Well, maybe. Her family has truckloads of money, that’s for sure. Something industrial, I believe, that the great-grandfather did. But they try to hold that money over Frances’s head, possibly cutting her out of the will entirely—not that it makes any difference to her. She went out and made her own money long ago, so the family shenanigans don’t affect her much.”

“Good for her,” said Lawrence raising his glass. “To independence!”

Molly raised hers, as did others down the bar, who pronounced “independence” pretty well for people who spoke little English.

“Well bonsoir, Pierre, we so rarely have the pleasure!” said Lawrence, speaking over Molly’s shoulder to the mason as he came into the bar. “And the second appearance in one week!”

“Bonsoir Lawrence, Molly,” said Pierre Gault. “Whiskey,” he said to Nico. And then he stood still, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, biting his lower lip with some ferocity.

“Did you just finish up at the Lafont’s?” asked Molly. “How are the circular stairs going?”

For a moment Molly and Lawrence were not sure Pierre had heard her. Then he turned to her, another long pause went by, and he managed to say, “Yes, just left. It’s a big job. I’m not sure when I’ll be free to start your barn.”

Molly was a little taken aback since he seemed to be answering a question she had not asked. “No rush,” she said finally. “I probably shouldn’t do it anyway, not this year. It’s sometimes hard to know how quickly to put my profits back into the business,” she said, looking from Pierre to Lawrence.

“The usual advice is to have a decent-sized nest-egg first, especially since your income is on the unpredictable side,” said Lawrence. “You don’t want to have a bad couple of months and not have money for operating expenses. Or anything to eat.”

Molly sighed. “Well, sure. A nest-egg. That would be the safe path, wouldn’t it? And I do have a nest-egg going, it’s just…small. Pierre, I’ll have to see your estimate first of course, but unless it’s way higher than I expect, I’ll want you to go ahead with it. Once I can get capacity over ten guests at once, I think my situation will be a lot more secure. I’m willing to take some risks to get there.”

Lawrence shrugged, knowing that Molly would do whatever she wanted no matter what advice she was given— and it was something he liked about her. Indecisive she was not.

Pierre stood between them like a statue, still looking at himself in the mirror, which Molly thought was a bit strange since he had never once struck her as the narcissistic type. She considered asking if anything was wrong, but decided it was too nosy a question even for her, since he was a very private sort of man.

Later, she fervently wished she had asked, but of course by then it was too late.