Death in Darkness

by Nell Goddin

  Bernard Petit called to make it clear what he thought of Ben’s “non-investigation” of the repeated burglaries of his house. Ben stayed on the phone with him, spinning something of a yarn about all the things he was doing to catch the thief, which, to be honest, were at that point intentions rather than actions. It crossed his mind that Petit could be making it all up, just for attention or to garner sympathy. He suffered through the conversation with a lighter heart, now that he and Molly had the Crespelle case.

  Molly, meanwhile, had been talking to Deana Jenkins in the front yard. Deana was a fanatic on the subject of medieval and early-Renaissance architecture, and apparently had worn out her husband on the subject and wanted a fresh listener. Molly found Deana interesting, and on a normal night would have enjoyed hearing about the cathedral in Périgueux and how it was modeled on a Greek cross just like St. Mark’s in Venice. But on that Sunday, all she could think about was Violette Crespelle, and she was fidgety and distracted.

  They were finally free and ready to leave for the village when Molly’s cell buzzed.

  “It’s Anne-Marie,” she said to Ben, who was standing by the door putting on a jacket. “I guess I should take it.”

  Ben nodded, putting the jacket back on a hook on the hat rack and going back to the living room.

  “I’m so sorry to call now, late on a Sunday when I’m sure you and Ben have better things to do,” said Anne-Marie, her voice betraying how upset she was. “It’s Lapin. He’s still not home. I haven’t seen him since…since before the lights went out.”

  Molly stood still. Like everyone who had been at the Valette’s dinner, Lapin was on the list she had started the instant Simon left, noting all the people in the house at the time of the murder, with their whereabouts before, during, and after the murder listed next to their names. The night had been confusing and plenty of details were left to be nailed down, but it had never occurred to her that anyone might still be missing.

  “So okay, after the lights came on,” Molly said slowly, “if my memory is right, everyone was accounted for eventually except for Lapin and Lawrence. I just assumed they went home early, though I did think it a little strange that either of them would willingly pass up a mocha dacquoise cake,” said Molly. “I know Lapin travels a fair amount for his shop, doesn’t he? Could he have run off to an auction or special sale somewhere, and forgotten to tell you?”

  “Does that sound at all reasonable?” asked Anne-Marie.

  “I guess not. Unless he’s been flaky like that before?”

  “Never.”

  The two women stayed quietly on the phone for some time, thinking their own thoughts. Molly was remembering how Lapin had looked at Violette like he wanted to have her for dessert, but she had no idea if that meant anything, and didn’t see how telling Anne-Marie about it would be helpful.

  “Well,” Molly finally said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything or see him. One thing—and I know it might be hard to say, since it was dark—do you have any sense of when he took off from the Valette’s? Was it right after the lights went out, or later on?”

  “I don’t know, Molly. I mean, I was calling for him right after, but have no idea whether he was already gone or just in the next room or something. But he’s a grown man, you know? I wasn’t worried about him—I was thinking of those girls and how scared they might have been, especially having grown up in Paris where they probably weren’t used to power outages and that kind of total darkness. I was looking for them, not Lapin.”

  “Right, I was thinking about the girls too. I wish I could be more help.”

  “I love the man, but oh, he can be maddening!” Anne-Marie tried to laugh off her worry and Molly laughed with her, but it was false humor on both sides. They said goodbye and Molly turned to Ben. “It’s so late, why don’t we skip Chez Papa? Half the people will be gone by now anyway. And according to Anne-Marie, Lapin won’t have been there at all—he’s been missing since Friday night.”

  “Missing? Since when?”

  “Since the lights went out.”

  Ben scowled. He had known Lapin since they were young and been looking out for his sometimes hapless friend all the way along. “Without a word to Anne-Marie?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “I thought their marriage was going well.”

  “Same. And I didn’t get the idea from Anne-Marie that anything was wrong between them. She seems totally baffled about where he might have gone.”

  “Did you get the impression he knew Violette, or had any connection to her?”

  “Nope. Not that I saw. Violette came through looking for the girls at some point, but I don’t know that any of the guests talked to her at all. But,” she added fretfully, “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying close attention, you know?”

  “Yes. I’ve been beating myself up as well, for not having clearer memories about the evening. It almost feels like the night was cloudy, and the events are sinking back into the darkness, out of reach of memory.”

  “Sounds like a horror movie, if a rather poetic one,” said Molly. “But I do know what you mean. It’s…we were right there, Ben! It happened right under our noses!”

  “I know,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. The pleasure they had felt at Simon’s offering them the job was dulled when they thought of the dinner party, the darkness, and the fact that they had most likely been sitting at the table with a murderer and been unable to lift a finger to stop him.

  17

  Monday morning dawned cool and cloudy. Ben took a shorter run than usual and headed off to Bergerac to meet with Petit, wanting to clear the decks at least for a few days so he could concentrate on the Crespelle case. Molly had a quick cup of coffee and a croissant, quite stale, and went to check on Elise Mertens.

  “Oh, bonjour Molly,” said Todor, opening the door of the cottage and ushering her inside. He looked a little frazzled, his hair sticking out; his clothes did not look fresh.

  “Just wanted to see how Elise is doing this morning, and if I can get anything for either of you when I go into the village in a few minutes.”

  “Much better,” said a weak voice from the bedroom.

  Molly smiled. “Glad to hear it!” she called, not wanting to intrude by going to the doorway.

  “She would like some tea, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Something with mint, and perhaps ginger? To settle the stomach.”

  “Of course. Anything I can get you?”

  “No, no. Well…” he said, with a guilty smile. “Perhaps a pastry from that excellent Pâtisserie Bujold. Poor Elise wouldn’t be laid up like this if we hadn’t gotten that cream puff from Fillon.”

  Molly laughed. “I can’t begin to tell you how happy Monsieur Nugent, proprietor of Pâtisserie Bujold, will be to hear that! And please—I know it’s very hard to be ill when you’re not at home. If there’s anything I can do for either of you, do not hesitate to tell me.”

  She said her goodbyes, remembered to refill the water bowl for Bobo and the orange cat to share, and sped on her way to L’Institut Degas, the art school where Marie-Claire was the director.

  Monday was usually a sleepy day in Castillac, and this one appeared no different. An old woman was sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house on rue Picasso, dressed in a frayed blue housecoat. A couple of cats dozed in the sunshine on top of a stone wall. At Café de la Place, a few people were having breakfast, but nothing compared to the crowds on market day. Molly bumped along the cobblestone streets until she hit a paved section on the far side of the village where she could speed up, trying to organize her thoughts so she would be prepared when she questioned Marie-Claire.

  When Molly first met Ben, almost exactly two years ago, he had been dating Marie-Claire. Molly had learned from past experience that digging around in other people’s romantic history pretty much inevitably led to disaster, so she had never asked him about Marie-Claire or why they had broken up. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious.

&n
bsp; L’Institut Degas was a fixture in Castillac. Though the school was not large, it brought talented students to the village from all over the world, and the artistic education they received had an excellent reputation. Marie-Claire had taken over after a small hiccup involving some funny business with the accounts, and since then, the school had gotten a little bigger and its reputation only more burnished.

  Molly parked the scooter and walked into the courtyard, surrounded by two old buildings and one modern one that had an unusual outer covering that made the building look like it had been swallowed by a jellyfish. Students were lounging around outside, some chatting and others sketching. She found the administration building by looking at a small map posted in the pathway, and went inside.

  “Bonjour, madame,” Molly said to a white-haired woman sitting at a desk, looking at a computer screen. “I’m looking for Madame Levy? I called earlier, I think she’s expecting me.”

  The white-haired woman smiled and gestured to a closed door. “Go right on in,” she said.

  Molly opened the door, and she smiled too because Marie-Claire’s office was such a pleasant place to enter. Blooming orchids lined one windowsill, and the furniture and the pale blue color of the walls made the place feel soothing.

  “What a night, eh?” said Marie-Claire, coming around from her desk and sitting on a small sofa. “Would you like a coffee?”

  Molly was almost never able to resist coffee, so she nodded and Marie-Claire called to her assistant to bring two cups.

  “Yes, it was a crazy night. On the way over there, Ben and I had been joking about the dark and stormy night, but of course we never…” Molly stopped, suddenly self-conscious about having mentioned Ben, worrying that it might seem a little pointed, given their history.

  But Marie-Claire did not seem to notice, and Molly remembered that Pascal, the movie-actor-handsome waiter at Café de la Place, had seemed very smitten with her at the Valette’s, which would be more than compensation for most women. The assistant arrived with two tiny cups of espresso, and Molly forced herself not to throw it back in one gulp.

  “All right, so…thank you for meeting with me. First order of business, as you might imagine, is to hear everyone’s recollections of that night, both before and after the lights went out. Let’s start with just trying to figure out who was where, if you can do that for me.” Molly pulled out her notepad and showed Marie-Claire a drawing of the seating arrangement. “Does this look right to you?”

  “Yes. That’s what I remember too.”

  “Was everyone in their seats when the lights went out, if you can recall?”

  “I think so. I’m pretty sure, yes.”

  “And what about after? I mean, when the lights came back on?”

  “Definitely not. The party was in complete disarray—the dining room had practically emptied. I remember you were still at the table, and me. Nico and Frances were eating the cake, or maybe that was later…” she stopped, looking up at the ceiling while she tried to recreate the scene in her mind. “Rex Ford was coming back into the dining room from the library, I just realized that now.”

  “Yes! I had forgotten that as well. Talk to me for a minute about him. What sort of teacher is he? Do the students like him?”

  “Oh, he’s a giant sourpuss and not well-liked by anyone. Always has something to complain about. But…in spite of that, he’s an excellent teacher, and the students manage to put aside their personal feelings about him and are genuinely glad to take his courses. He’s always fully booked.”

  “By any chance did he mention any connection to Violette Crespelle?”

  Marie-Claire shook her head slowly. “Not to me. Have you asked him what he was doing in the library?”

  “You’re the first person I’ve talked to. We’re just beginning, and have a long way to go yet.”

  Molly continued through her list of questions, taking notes from time to time while sipping her espresso. The beginning of an investigation was exciting, for sure, and this one was no exception. But there were so many people to interview and so many angles to cover that it was difficult, on a gray Monday morning, not to feel at least a little daunted.

  Paul-Henri was first to the station, as he usually was. He went through his unvarying routine of vigorous sweeping, polishing the windows, and inspecting his uniform in the mirror, making sure there was not the tiniest thing off that would give Chief Charlot an excuse to chastise him. So far though, in the few days Charlot had been there, she had not been burdened by the need for an excuse, but rather fired off criticism with both barrels anytime she felt like it, without bothering about niceties such as having reasonable cause.

  He would have expected to be pleased by the new chief’s attention to detail and her strict adherence to the myriad rules and regulations of the gendarmerie, since that was the direction in which his own inclinations lay. Maron, the former chief, had been far too loose in Paul-Henri’s estimation, willing to throw nearly any rule by the wayside if it served him in the moment. That was no way to run a station, Paul-Henri thought, adjusting his posture to ramrod straight even though he was sitting alone at his desk.

  And yet, as the days working under the new chief piled up, he found himself bristling at her finickyness, and wishing she would loosen her grip on protocol just enough to take in the bigger picture.

  Well, what he really wished was that she would stop insulting him. It seemed as though he could not put a foot right, and when he tried to adjust, the adjustment did not suit her either. He was well acquainted with women who were difficult to please, and had thought himself something of a master at handling them; but so far, Chief Charlot had him stymied. He was so distracted by dodging her thunderbolts that he had not been able to give the Crespelle case the attention it deserved. He had driven out to Lapin’s place, but not found him there. Checked his junk shop over on rue Baudelaire, not there either. Paul-Henri knew that the next step would be to swing by some of the village gathering places such as Café de la Place and Chez Papa, but he just hadn’t felt up to it. Instead, he walked the streets thinking about how much he disliked Chief Charlot.

  The dislike was unchanged Monday morning, and sat in his chest like a heavy lump. He put his hand on the phone, considering. Then, without thinking of it as a step in the direction of blackmail, he called up a classmate of his from the Academy, a man who was posted in Paris. Probably not the exact precinct where Charlot had been before coming to Castillac, but hopefully close enough to have heard any gossip, if there was any to hear. The friend got back to him immediately, saying that yes, there was definitely some dirt there, but he didn’t have the details. He gave Paul-Henri the number of a friend of his who might know more.

  He wasn’t expecting to strike gold, or even to have something awful he could hold over the chief’s head. It was more—so he told himself—that when you have an enemy, it is prudent to find out all you can about her.

  He left a message on the friend of a friend’s service, and took out a snowy white tablet of paper and made some notes about the Crespelle case with an ink pen. His handwriting was elegant and flowing, and he enjoyed the sensation of the pen nib scratching across the paper.

  If only he could be the one to solve this case, he thought. Paul-Henri enjoyed police work well enough, though admittedly he had gone to the Officer’s School party because it had irritated his mother so much. He liked going around the streets of the village, seeing if there was a way to make himself helpful. If he could choose to work in a suburb of Paris, where the houses were stately and the cars late model and shiny, it would suit him very well.

  He was just about to drive by Lapin’s house and shop again when the chief arrived.

  “Make me a coffee,” she said, breezing past his desk without so much as a bonjour.

  Paul-Henri set his mouth in a fake smile, and jumped up from his desk. Oh, how he loathed her.

  When the coffee was ready, he set the cup on the corner of Charlot’s desk. She did not look up. Her dark
hair was in a tight, short braid in the back, and she furrowed her thick eyebrows while staring her computer screen.

  Paul-Henri waited. Finally she said, “What about this Lapin? Did you find him? Funny name for a grown man.”

  “I have not. Not yet. I’ve checked his house and shop several times.” The lie fell out of Paul-Henri’s mouth without a pause, and he wondered at it, not being in the habit of lying except to his mother.

  Charlot leaned back in her chair. “I spoke to Simon and Camille Valette at some length yesterday. I found them to be forthcoming, and while of course at this stage of an investigation it is unlikely that any possible suspect can be cleared of the crime, I believe we should focus our attention, and woefully limited resources, in another direction.”

  The junior officer was surprised. “What about the hospitalization?”

  “Surely you’re not going to try to tell me that mental illness, by itself, makes one a murderer? You’re not that much of an imbecile. I hope.”

  Paul-Henri opened his mouth but no words came out.

  “What demonstrates guilt more than absconding?” continued the chief. “I will answer that one for you: nothing. I am going to put aside the long list of tasks I had for myself, and look for Lapin as well. From what I hear, he has been in jail before, and is perhaps involved in some shady dealings of some kind or another. If he killed once, we must stop him from doing it again. Some of these criminals get a taste for it, you know. So come on, Monsour, shake a leg. There’s not a moment to be lost.”

  18

  Molly could not get to Chez Papa fast enough. It had been a long, productive day; she had interviewed Anne-Marie after finishing up with Marie-Claire, and felt she had gleaned a few promising nuggets in those conversations. Work on the ruined barn was due to start in earnest the following morning, and that was definitely something to look forward to. Molly wanted to share her good mood and spend a convivial evening with her friends that would hopefully not end on the same kind of dark note as it had the last time she had seen them.