Maurice Fabron was right. Twenty minutes later, as Isobel helped him to clear away the remnants of the day’s business, the phone rang.
The tall man murmured quietly into the receiver, leaning his head against the cold stone of the shop wall, his lips hardly moving as he took in the information that was being relayed before hanging up.
‘What is it?’ Isobel cried, taking in the baker’s pallid face and tearful eyes.
‘That was Madam Paradis, my sister-in-law’s housekeeper,’ Maurice explained, his voice still no more than a whisper. ‘The woman on the train has been identified. It was Cecile.’
Izzy paused for a second, running the name through her head. Cecile Vidal was Maurice’s late wife’s sister, wasn’t she? The one who had been burgled last weekend. That was right.
‘Oh, Maurice!’ she cried, rushing to put an arm around her boss’s shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, that must be such a shock. How dreadful.’
Monsieur Fabron bent at the waist, allowing Isobel to guide him to a chair as he pulled a clean white handkerchief from his trouser pocket.
‘I cannot speak,’ the baker muttered. ‘Oh poor, poor Cecile.’
Izzy fetched a glass of ice-cold water, wishing to make herself useful in the midst of such a desperate situation, and then reality dawned on her. There was a murderer out there on the loose, either living in or around Saint Margaux. Suddenly, her new, idyllic life felt vulnerable and threatened. If whoever had murdered Cecile was still out there, he could kill again. And still, a rational part of her mind was turning over a question. Where was Telo?
‘Maurice, perhaps you should go home and check on Telo,’ she suggested tactfully, her heavy heart hoping that the young man was employed in some innocent venture. ‘He might have seen the news and be concerned.’
Maurice stood, shakily at first, but then, with determination, using both hands to pull himself upright as though the effort took every last ounce of energy.
‘You are right, of course, I should go to him. Telo is very fond of Cecile. Was. Oh, how am I going to tell him? And of course, then I must go to Hubert, he will need me. Who could do such a terrible thing?’
The baker strode towards the door, allowing Isobel to reassure him that she would take responsibility for locking up the boulangerie. His shoulders were hunched, features taut.
‘I am so sorry,’ Isobel told him sincerely as they parted company. ‘Maybe
you should rest tomorrow. I’ll look after things here, I’m sure everyone will understand.’
‘We will stay closed tomorrow,’ Monsieur Fabron announced, suddenly straightening his back and looking Izzy in the eye. ‘As a mark of respect to Cecile.’
‘Of course. I’m sorry, Maurice, I didn’t think.’
As Maurice stepped out into the late afternoon breeze, Isobel looked over to the baker’s residence, half expecting Telo Fabron to appear. The young man did just that, although he was not alone. Telo was accompanied by a handsome man of around thirty and they were exiting the front door together, each holding a parcel under their arm.
‘Oh, do you have a guest, Maurice?’ Izzy blurted out, her eyes following the men as they turned left towards the church.
‘That’s just Gaston,’ the baker informed her. ‘He’s an artist and stays here with Simone Dupuis each summer. You’ll meet him soon enough. I must hurry to catch up with them. Good night.’
Izzy watched her employer stride purposefully across the square, calling out to the men and beckoning them to return to the ‘Maison de Maitre,’ before closing the bakery door, turning the key in the lock and switching off the lights.
Upstairs, realising that her head was pounding with irrational thoughts and a slight sense of fear, Isobel Gilyard popped two painkillers into her mouth and washed them down with a glass of orange juice. She had triple-checked the boulangerie doors, front and back, before coming upstairs, and Monsieur Fabron was right across the street, but still she knew that she would find it impossible to sleep that night. The knowledge that it could easily have been her on that train to Bordeaux was the most troubling aspect of her anxious thoughts. A local train, travelling just two stops, with passengers who probably encountered each other on a regular basis… It didn’t bear thinking about.
She stood at the window, contemplating whether to bolt the shutters, too. It seemed that even the local dogs were too rattled to stay outside that evening and Isobel couldn’t blame them. It seemed that Saint Margaux was not quite the crime-free community that she had been led to believe after all.
Rat-a-tat-tat. A sharp knocking on the back door alerted Izzy to a visitor and, quickly putting down the hot cup of instant noodles she was about to start eating, she ventured downstairs. Through the pane of patterned glass in the rear entrance, a man’s face was peering in, as though wondering whether the occupant had heard his rapping knuckles. Isobel unlocked the door and pulled it open a fraction, leaving the brass chain secured.
‘Bonsoir,’ a dark-haired hunk said, his voice husky and soft. ‘Isobel?’
‘Yes.’
Immediately, Izzy recognised the man as the artist that had been with Telo Fabron just an hour earlier. He wore a pair of smart navy shorts and had several leather wristbands on his bare forearms.
‘I am Gaston. I’m sorry to disturb you,’ the visitor was explaining, his dark eyes peering into the dark corridor behind Isobel, ‘but Maurice is preparing a light supper and cannot find his bread knife. Is it possible that we could borrow…’
‘Ah, yes, of course, from the bakery…’
The man nodded, gesturing to the boulangerie kitchen. ‘Oui, merci.’
Isobel couldn’t help but fix her eyes on the few stray hairs that protruded from the artist’s white linen shirt, alluring in their darkness as they curled around an unfastened top button.
‘I’ll just get it for you,’ she told him, turning to leave but still not unlatching the door.
A minute later, Izzy was back, the long, steel-handled bread knife in her hand, its sharp length wrapped carefully in a tea-towel. ‘Here you go. I hope everything is alright over there, with Maurice and Telo.’
‘Naturally, we are all very upset,’ Gaston said, taking the blade through the gap in the door. He sighed deeply. ‘Madam Vidal was a wonderful woman. Thank you for this.’
‘Please, tell Maurice to let me know if I can help in any way at all,’ Izzy said, more of an afterthought than with real conviction.
The young man leaned forward, a whiff of perfumed soap escaping from his warm skin. ‘Thank you, I will tell him.’
As Isobel’s hand let go of the bread knife, a flicker of red caught her eye. She squinted, wanting to be certain of what she was seeing and then let out a gasp. On the cuff of Gaston’s shirt was a thick, dark streak of red that curved upwards and disappeared, almost as though the wearer had folded the cuff up and over the stain in an effort to hide it. Such a dark red mark could only be blood.
‘Are you alright?’ the man asked, hearing a slight shriek from Izzy’s lips.
‘Yes, just caught my nail on the door latch. Good night.’
Gaston raised a hand before turning back towards the Fabron’s house, seemingly unaware that he’d caused Isobel Gilyard’s heartbeat to skip more than one beat. The woman’s eyes followed him out of the courtyard, taking in the thick dark hair and confident air with which he walked.
Izzy eventually fell asleep that night, but dreams came erratically, causing her to toss and turn as she struggled for wakefulness. The image of the blonde woman with a black handbag was the clearest of the illusions; for some reason, she was laughing at Isobel, showing perfect teeth and bright red lipstick. The station clerk, Jean, was chuckling loudly too, causing Isobel’s ears to ring so loudly that, when she did finally bring herself to the surface, she found her own hands clasped tightly to the sides of her head.
Beads of perspiration trickled down between her breasts as she lay gasping on top of the cotton sheets, the name ‘Cecile’ foremost in he
r mind. Had that really been the murdered woman that she’d seen this morning, she asked herself, trying desperately to remember. She wished that she’d taken more notice now, especially of the other people standing waiting for the train. The perpetrator could quite easily have been there, too, she realised, hiding in plain sight without anyone wise to his identity.
At three in the morning, she gulped a glass of water and sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to straighten out fact from fiction in her head. Fact: she had seen Cecile Vidal at the station that morning. Fiction: she hadn’t been laughing. Isobel remembered the racing police cars and figured that the time might have coincided with the discovery of the murder. It was strange, too, that she hadn’t seen Telo that morning, when on the previous two days he had been loading up the delivery van with orders. Of course she couldn’t suspect Telo of anything untoward, simply based on the fact that he was a little strange – Maurice had already explained about his son’s learning and social difficulties –but nevertheless, it was an odd coincidence.
Two niggling thoughts came pushing their way to the forefront, things so damning that Isobel just couldn’t ignore the implications. The stranger, Gaston, had only appeared that afternoon, from where, she had no clue, and the same soapy smell that had filled her car came from the man’s body. Not only that, but there, as plain as day, was a huge red blob of dried liquid, blemishing an otherwise spotless shirt.
CHAPTER SIX – A MURDER INVESTIGATION
Paul Theron washed his large rough hands in an industrial-sized sink before pulling off the latex rubber gloves and clinical mask. He breathed deeply through his nose and gestured for the two men to follow him through into a small, cluttered office. Lighting a filtered cigarette, he offered one to Mallery and Hobbs, but only Max accepted.
‘As you know, she was stabbed to death, but there are actually seven deep wounds, the most fatal of which punctured her left ventricle,’ Theron admitted, speaking in English for the benefit of the younger detective. ‘The murder weapon was a knife of some kind, with a serrated edge.’
Max Mallery rubbed his stubbled chin, slightly ashamed that he’d had to forgo his usual pristine appearance that day. ‘Serrated… you mean something like a hunter’s knife?’
Paul Theron exhaled and shook his head. ‘No, nothing quite as wide as that. This was longer in the blade, but thinner, I think more like a domestic bread knife.’
‘Poor woman,’ Jack Hobbs remarked, looking back to where Cecile Vidal’s cold body lay prostrate on the autopsy table. ‘Are we looking for a left- or right-handed suspect?’
‘Most definitely right-handed, I should say, given the angle of entry and the force with which the weapon was applied. Although the victim put up a good fight. She has lacerations on both hands, no doubt from trying to defend herself.’
Max coughed slightly, trying to rid himself of the nausea that had begun as soon as they’d stepped inside Doctor Theron’s workspace. ‘Right-handed. That’s about three-quarters of the population of France. Great. Are there any other clues at all that you can give us, in particular anything specific to go on?’
‘One strange matter is the pastel candy that was stuck in the victim’s throat,’ the doctor told him, pointing to his own larynx to demonstrate the exact positioning. ‘An unusual type, square and striped.’
Theron left the room, immediately returning to the stainless-steel bench where he retrieved a clear plastic bag containing a hard-boiled sweet. ‘Here we are.’
‘Have either of you seen anything like that before?’ Mallery asked the other men, holding the small bag up to the light.
‘Not since I was a lad,’ Hobbs answered, looking closely at the object, a pink and white square candy. ‘Our local sweet shop used to have jars of those when I was a kid. I haven’t seen any for years, though.’
‘I don’t suppose there was…’ Max started.
‘Nothing to connect it to your killer,’ Paul Theron confessed, his bald head shining under the fluorescent office lighting. ‘Although no other confectionery was found in the victim’s handbag, either. No empty wrapper or paper bag to suggest where it came from. I can only surmise that the murderer gave it to her, perhaps as a way to start a conversation?’
The detectives pondered the theory, admitting that it could easily have been a friendly gesture between two passengers.
Theron gestured to another, larger bag containing the deceased woman’s personal effects. A small vial of perfume spray, black purse, set of house keys, a few items of make-up, a small compact mirror and a cigarette lighter made up the entire contents. It didn’t give the investigators much to go on at all.
‘As you see, just the regular items one would expect to find inside a lady’s bag.’
Max lifted the plastic carefully between two fingers, turning it back and forth. ‘Do you see that? The lighter?’ he asked his colleague, frowning slightly.
‘Yes, sir, but why would a Frenchwoman have a Union Jack lighter?’
‘Why indeed, Jacques?’
‘So, in the carriage,’ Jack questioned after completing his notes, ‘nobody saw or heard anything? Have we interviewed everyone?’
‘I spoke to several passengers myself,’ Max said, ‘and Gabriella has been through the background of each. Just regular people going about their business. It was a quiet time of day. Most commuters catch the later train at eight-thirty.’
‘What about the murder weapon?’
‘Still no sign of it. The knife disappeared along with the perpetrator,’ his boss answered candidly. ‘We’ve had men out searching the tracks since yesterday morning as you know, in case something was thrown from a window. I’ve told Thierry to call me immediately if they find anything.’
‘Tragic,’ Theron commented, slowly rubbing his forehead. ‘That’s what it is.’
The detectives stood silent for a few moments, desperately seeking inspiration for more questions, yet each wrapped up in their own thoughts.
‘If you think of anything else that might be of any relevance, Paul...’ Mallery sighed. The slightest clue would be much appreciated.’
‘Naturally, Max. I will be in touch.’
Paul Theron shook hands with the detectives, although Max couldn’t shrug off the image of the man’s huge hands cutting open Cecile Vidal’s body just an hour earlier. He’d met Theron a few weeks previously at a conference and the two had instantly hit it off, despite their twenty-year age gap and conflicting interests. The Inspector instinctively knew that Theron would have done a thorough job of examining Cecile Vidal and had no reason to question his findings.
‘Where to now, boss?’ Jack Hobbs asked, as they left the clinical-looking Coroner’s building with its long, dark windows and glass double doors.
‘Didn’t that bother you at all?’ Max scowled, hunching over to quickly light another cigarette. ‘That place makes me so… so queasy.’
‘Of course it did, sir, but there’s a fair bit of knife crime in Leeds. Not that I’m used to it, I just kind of shut off my feelings for a while. I also stick Vicks menthol rub up my nose and then keep my mouth closed.’ He proudly produced a round blue and green jar from his jacket pocket.
‘Hmm, you’ll have to teach me how to do that. I never get used to that smell, it’s like iron and blood. Well, I suppose the first place to visit is the vineyard. We need to plot Madam Vidal’s movements since we last saw her.’
‘Yes, sir. Do you want me to drive?’ Jack offered, gesturing towards the practical Ford Mondeo. ‘I really don’t mind if you’re tired.’
‘No chance,’ Mallery huffed. ‘I need at least another three cigarettes on the way, and I take it the ‘baby policy’ still stands. Leave your car here and we’ll take mine. I’ll drop you off later.’
‘I’m sorry I missed your call this morning, sir,’ Hobbs told his boss, as they got out onto the open highway. ‘Angélique and I had been up all night with…’
‘Oui, oui,’ Mallery interrupted, ‘but don’t make a habit of it.
When it comes to a murder investigation, the more pairs of eyes, the better, Jacques. Your record is exemplary in this field and I need you to be, how to say, on the ball? Nevertheless, we covered a lot of ground yesterday and have made a good start today, although I can predict a lot of long working days ahead of us.’
‘I’m fine with that, sir, it won’t happen again, I promise.’
Max inhaled deeply. He wasn’t immune to the plight of the new father but, not having any children of his own, didn’t completely empathise, either.
‘Finding it tough?’ Max prompted, realising that perhaps he’d spoken too sharply to his new foreign recruit.
‘Not exactly, sir, but with the move and Thomas teething, I’m a bit knackered.’
‘Knackered,’ Mallery repeated, the word playing on his lips as though it tingled. ‘What a great expression.’
Hobbs rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t arrived home until well after nine the previous night and Angélique had immediately handed Thomas over to him. Not that Jack minded, but he’d spent the whole day at the murder site and had hardly eaten anything. As Angélique ran herself a hot, bubbly bath, Jack had been left to reheat some soup and deal with his red-gummed child.
‘How come there wasn’t a single witness?’ Jack asked, trying to tactfully steer the conversation back to the investigation.
‘Well, as we saw, there were four carriages on that train,’ the Inspector explained, ‘yet only a handful of passengers. It is quite strange that nobody heard a cry for help, though, but Madam Vidal was seated at the rear of the train so perhaps her screams were muffled.’
Hobbs mulled the information over in his mind for a few minutes.
‘Something just doesn’t add up. Somebody must have seen something.’
As the duo arrived at the gates of the Saint Margaux vineyard early that afternoon, they noted several other vehicles parked outside the entrance to the main house. A group of workers were huddled together, looking solemn and tired, evidently feeling shocked by their employer’s demise.
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