by Nell Goddin
“I know it was short notice, thank you for coming,” said Ben to Molly as they stood outside La Petite Nuage, a small restaurant in Bergerac.
Molly bristled, thinking he was talking to her like she was a client or bare acquaintance rather than the woman he was going to marry in a matter of days. “It’s been something of a morning,” she mumbled, saying nothing about being accosted by Fletcher Barstow. “So, what’s the deal? We’re going to have lunch with Petit’s neighbors?”
“Here’s my thinking. We’ve been talking to the group individually, but these people have lived next to each other for decades. Rue Lafayette is like its own little ecosystem. I thought it might be interesting to see how they interact with each other, not just us.”
Molly shrugged. “All right. It’s a decent idea.”
“Just decent?”
Molly shrugged again and looked away. “What about Stephane Burnette? I thought he was your main horse in this thing?”
“He’s one of the subjects I want to bring up.”
“Here comes Blanchon.”
They looked down the sidewalk and saw the man headed their way, a smile on his face and his white hair blowing about in the wind.
They made their greetings and went inside. The place was cozy, with dark wood paneling and a small fire in the grate. Molly smelled onion soup and the prospect cheered her up immensely.
As the server brought menus, Jean Chavanne came in and joined them.
“Thank you all for coming,” said Ben. “At least you didn’t risk freezing your noses off by leaving home.”
“Somebody invites me to lunch, I come,” said Chavanne. “Even when it’s with cops.”
“We’re not—”
“Close enough,” said Chavanne. “Just to put my cards on the table, I thought I had made it quite plain that I have no interest in Petit’s murderer being caught. As far as I’m concerned, our neighbor was a blight on humanity, and I couldn’t be happier about his death.”
“Jean’s never been one to mince words,” said Blanchon drily, as he opened his menu.
“I’m wondering if either of you knew that Petit kept a lot of money at his house. Cash. Heard anything about that?”
Blanchon and Chavanne said nothing at first. Blanchon appeared to be absorbed in his menu, and Chavanne chose the moment to glug down half a glass of water.
“It was always the rumor,” Blanchon said finally. “He was a suspicious sort of man. Probably expected that other people were as rotten on the inside as he was, so it makes a kind of sense. One of the things he used to go on about was how the bankers would steal your money, how they also bought politicians who made laws in their favor, to facilitate this stealing…”
“Oh yes, he would go on about it,” said Jean grudgingly.
“Did either of you ever see it? Or a lockbox, safe, anything like that?” asked Ben.
Blanchon and Chavanne stared. “In his house? We never went in there. Weren’t invited,” said Chavanne.
“Nor did we ever have him to our houses,” added Blanchon.
“What kind of people do you think we are, that we would allow an espece d’ordure such as Petit to our homes?” said Chavanne.
“No insult intended,” said Ben. “Have you eaten here before? What’s good?”
“I’m having onion soup,” said Molly.
“I’ll have the Châteaubriand with truffles, since you’re paying,” said Chavanne.
The server took their orders and disappeared into the kitchen. Ben took a deep breath and tried again. “We’re looking into some of Petit’s business associates,” he began.
“Wouldn’t be a surprise to find out he’d been murdered for money,” said Blanchon. “Fitting, actually. It was all he cared about, apart from the pleasure he took in hurting people. I do appreciate a touch of poetic justice.”
“How about Stephane Burnette?” said Ben. “Ever hear of him, or meet him?”
“Is the wine ever going to come?” said Chavanne, swiveling his head around to search for the server.
Blanchon tapped his chin. “We didn’t socialize with Petit, you know. As we were just saying, no one was going back and forth for dinners or anything like that. And this froideur extended to our entire interaction, no matter where we saw him—though I should not speak for Jean. Oh, I’m taking a roundabout way to reach my point, which is: I had no introduction to anyone who might have been going into the Petit house. This Stephane Burnette included.”
Ben and Molly turned to Chavanne, but he shook his head and kept his eye on the server, who was moving quickly to a neighboring table, her arms loaded with steaming plates.
“Perhaps you saw Petit outside at some point, talking to…to anyone, really. Or overheard an argument or two in the backyard. You could hear conversations over the fence?”
“What do you take us for?” said Chavanne. “You think we go around with our ears pressed to walls, listening for scraps of conversation? I’ll tell you, as far as I was concerned, Bernard Petit could stuff it. I went about my business and ignored him as much as humanly possible.”
“Which wasn’t always easy, since when he was in a mood he might chase you down the sidewalk, ranting about this or that.”
“Which or what?” said Molly. “Were there particular topics of interest?”
“Obsession, more like,” muttered Chavanne.
“Banks,” said Blanchon. “That’s mostly what I got. The bankers were conspiring against everyone, couldn’t be trusted, ran everything behind the scenes. I…”
The server placed a jug of table wine and a basket of sliced bread on the table and hurried back to the kitchen.
“Yes?”
“I hesitate because it’s not fair to speak ill of the dead when he is not here to defend himself.”
“Are you out of your mind?” shouted Chavanne. “Claude, remember who we’re talking about, for crying out loud. Speak as ill as you like, he deserves every syllable!”
Blanchon smiled weakly. “It’s just…when Bernard would get going on the bankers—and let me say, I am not great fan of them myself, I’m a socialist through and through—but for Bernard….”
Molly and Ben waited patiently. Sometimes it felt as though a person’s words were never going to find their way up and out of the throat, not before they were all dead and gone.
“I believed his feelings were anti-Semitic,” said Blanchon, and covered his face with his hands.
“Well, of course,” said Chavanne. “He was a Nazi-lover!”
“Good riddance,” said Molly under her breath, but Chavanne heard her.
“Finally, you seem to be getting the picture,” he said, and smiled a toothy smile in the direction of the harried server who was at last headed their way.
After lunch, Molly and Ben walked the two men back to rue Lafayette and thanked them for their honesty, though nothing Chavanne or Blanchon had said seemed to be particularly useful. Bernard Petit was an awful man who went out of his way to offend and cause harm to others, and the long slog to find his murderer sometimes felt as though they were spending all this effort to get justice for someone who did not deserve it. They walked along, not speaking, pushing themselves to keep at it, if only to be able to close the case and be free of it.
“It’s been a long day, and I have plenty to talk to you about,” Molly said as they walked back toward the center of town. “But before I go home, I want to track down someone Madame Tessier put me onto. Her name is Inès Bériot, do you know her?”
“I do not. Did she know Petit?”
“I can’t say. But according to Tessier, Inès had an affair with Stephane Burnette last year.”
Ben nodded. “Good. Find out if she knows his whereabouts.”
“Of course,” said Molly, with a slight edge.
Ben put his arm around her shoulders. “This will all be over soon. I feel like we’re close, even if the dominos have not yet started to fall. And then—you’re going to make me the happiest man in the entire
Périgord.”
“Is that all?” Molly asked, suppressing a smile.
“No,” said Ben, kissing the side of her head, and then disappearing down a side street where his car was parked.
Molly continued on to the cathedral, where the Wednesday market took place. Though it was midweek in winter, there were more customers than usual, some already buying Christmas decorations or gifts, and Molly let herself drift along, chatting with this or that vendor, and eavesdropping.
When she made the turn after Lela Vidal the cheesemonger, she saw a table with bowls of spices run by an elaborately dressed woman, and guessed she was Inès Bériot. No other customers competed for Inès’s attention, and Molly led her on a long conversation about the merits of various kind of vanilla, and how to roast coriander seeds properly, before finally—and rather awkwardly— getting around to the subject of Stephane Burnette.
“I just love the exotic patterns in your dress,” she said to Inès, who looked very pleased at the compliment. “I heard someone from Bergerac was importing fabric like that, but I don’t think I’ve seen it available in any of the stores, or the market. Do you mind if I ask where you got it?”
Inès’s expression turned sour. “I do love the fabric,” she said, reaching down and taking the hem of her dress between her fingers. “Feel it—it’s not only that the pattern is beautiful and unusual, but the quality of the material itself is very high.”
“So soft,” Molly agreed, touching a blue elephant near the hem. She waited a moment, trying to gauge whether Inès needed another nudge.
“Well, despite the dress being so fabulous, I don’t even like wearing it anymore,” Inès said. “I got the fabric from a…a friend. Who turned out to be one of the least trustworthy people I ever met. Broke my heart, he truly did.”
“Oh my,” said Molly. “I know all about that.” All right, she thought, so far so good. Let’s see if she’ll keep talking. “Now I don’t want to give him any business at all, no matter how desperately I love these blue elephants.”
“You’re a darling,” said Inès. “But you couldn’t get anything from him even if you wanted to. He’s left town, long since. Was due at my house for my birthday dinner, if you can believe that, and never showed up.”
“Well, he’s horrid. I’d say you’re well rid of him, but that never feels like much of a consolation.”
“No, it really doesn’t. Especially when you find out he’s taken up with someone else, that old hippie Alaina Petit. You at least want to be replaced by someone young and good-looking, right?”
Molly nodded, struggling to contain her excitement at this news. Of all people for Burnette to have cheated with! “I don’t know. Is that really better?”
“Well, it’s bad all the way around.”
“Yes. I hope you’ve been able to move on, at least?”
“Indeed I have,” said Inès, and the wide smile was back. She and Molly talked for another five minutes about Inès’s new lover and all the ways he was superior to Stephane Burnette. Inès had no idea where Stephane had gotten to, but Molly wasn’t worried about that, not yet.
Here go the dominos, she thought happily.
Did Burnette go after Petit’s wife as revenge for getting burned in the business deal? Or did Petit double-cross Burnette because of the affair?
Chicken or egg?
Either way, at long last she and Ben were getting somewhere, and she hurried home to La Baraque, eager to make her report.
34
Ben burst through the door of La Baraque, finding Molly at the stove.
“I’m so late, very sorry—I got stuck on the back road behind a broken-down tractor. Sat there for hours, with no cell service.”
“I did wonder,” said Molly, stirring some buttered carrots in a copper saucepan. She held out her cheek for him to kiss and went back to stirring. “I had invited the gîte guests for dinner. I know the timing’s bad, but I needed to talk to them, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But forget that, it doesn’t matter! Let me tell you what the adorable Inès Bériot had to tell me.”
Molly finished setting the table while relating the conversation. When she got to the connection with Alaina Petit, Ben clapped his hands together, very pleased.
“Well, it’s obvious what happened,” he said. “Burnette’s a womanizer who slept with Petit’s wife. Petit then played dumb and made a business arrangement with him, expressly to get revenge. And continuing this game of tit for tat, Burnette then came over and conked Petit on the head. Burnette wins! Too bad about having to savor his victory while in prison.”
“You might be making a few assumptions in there,” said Molly. “But I agree, your version of events seems plausible at least. We haven’t heard from Petit’s wife yet? She should be able to shed some light on your idea. I…”
“Yes?” Ben put his hands on Molly’s waist as she stood at the stove, and kissed the nape of her neck. “Do you see any holes in my scenario? I really think Burnette could be the one.”
“I’m just feeling tired for the moment, tired of all these terrible people who just react to everything, always selfishly. I got a pang just then of feeling like—who cares who killed Petit, he was horrible anyway and his murderer, whoever he or she is, is just as horrible.”
“When we go on our honeymoon, we’ll have a break.”
“No murder? No awful people?”
“Not if I can help it,” said Ben, kissing her on the top of her head. “So what do you have to talk to the guests about?”
“I saw Malcolm this morning. He told me that the person moving around Lucie Severin’s gnomes is none other than Daisy McPherson, who’s staying in the pigeonnier.”
“The woman who dresses like she’s in a play?”
“Well, I guess you could say that.”
“When I was introduced to her, she was wearing some kind of medieval get-up, a long dress with a corset or some such? Why in the world was she messing around with Lucie Severin’s gnomes?”
“No idea. And come on, any explanation she’s going to give—if she can even express one—is going to be nonsense. Because there is no reason that would make any sense.”
Ben nodded. “I know we had that big lunch, but I’m starving. When are they coming over?”
“Any second. I thought—maybe it won’t do any good, but I’m resisting the idea of confronting her directly. It seems like that wouldn’t be productive—she’d either deny it or get upset, don’t you think?”
“Probably.”
“So I thought I’d have everyone over, and make a short speech about respecting property, and maybe she’d take the hint.”
“Honestly, Molly—I’d just let this one go. So what if she played with some gnomes? What’s the harm, really? Lucie might be bothered, I suppose I can sort of understand, a stranger coming into your garden without asking. But Daisy will be moving on at the end of the week, yes? We’ve got the Petit case to deal with.”
Molly opened the oven to check on the pork tenderloin. “Not this week, she’s not leaving until next. I’m usually thrilled when guests ask to stay a second week, especially this time of year. But you’re right. This is not a big deal. Maybe I can find time to swing by and talk to Lucie—explain that one of my guests is a bit of a kook but harmless.” She straightened up and looked into Ben’s eyes for the first time since he’d come home. “Thanks for talking me down. I’m still glad I hired Malcolm, it gave him something useful to do, though his father is none too pleased with me. And now we’ve got this dinner to get through. The Tanners are absolutely lovely, you’ll like them if you can understand their beautiful Virginia accents.”
“I can just sit here and look pretty.”
“That too,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder and grinning, just as a knock sounded on the French door and they could see the Tanners waving through the glass.
Ben drove the half hour back to Bergerac the following day. He had tried without success most of the morning to find an addr
ess or phone number for Stephane Burnette, and decided it was time to have a chat with Léo, who had far more resources at his disposal at the Bergerac gendarmerie. Ben hoped to have an informal chat and so tried the café next to the Cyrano statue. Bingo: there was the big detective, sitting at a table with a dainty cup of espresso, holding court with two reporters, who were not known to Ben but identifiable by the notebooks and small recorders taking up room on the small table.
Ben circled around to the back of Lagasse, trying to be inconspicuous, observing and trying to overhear the conversation. Maybe this was a sort of press conference, and the detective was about to make an arrest, or had just taken someone into custody? Ben fervently hoped not.
“You know I’m not going to give out that kind of information,” said Léo, leaning back in his chair and smiling benevolently at the reporters.
“Of course we’re not asking for anything that would compromise the investigation,” said a young woman in glasses with small round frames, dressed in plaid. “But come on, Léo—we’ve got deadlines, and more important, readers hungry for news about the murder.”
“Yeah, throw us a bone, Léo!” said the other, an older man with the stereotypical pencil behind one ear.
Léo smiled widely. “Just a small tidbit…would that satisfy you rabid dogs?”
“Anything!” they clamored.
Ben watched, amused by how much Léo was enjoying himself. He knew the detective wasn’t going to give them anything worthwhile—he might not even have anything worthwhile.
Léo turned his head to stretch and was about to speak when out of the corner of his eye he saw Ben and jerked his chin in Ben’s direction. “All right now, I’ve got some business to attend to,” he told the reporters. “Come back in an hour. I’ll give you something tasty then. Promise.”
They grumbled but moved off, and Ben slid into the chair across from Léo.
“I hope you’re showing up because you’ve got something for me,” said Léo. “This damn case has me backed up against a wall, I swear, and you know the last thing on earth I want to do is admit that. To you of all people.”
