by Katie Penryn
The afternoon sun poured in through the west facing French windows and pooled on the polished floor with not a dust mote to be seen. I found it hard to believe that this woman had a nine-year old sun. Orderliness and tidiness reigned in Francine’s home. She herself was as neat and clean as the flat with her dark hair in a pudding bowl haircut and little makeup. How hard it must have been for someone like her to live on such an unwholesome housing estate.
She offered us a coffee. “Or would you prefer tea, being English?” she asked with a soft laugh.
We both chose tea.
She waved us to the sofa. “Please sit and enjoy the view over the town while I fix it.”
The block of flats looked out over the town down to the sea. Tiring of tracing the streets as they wove between the older houses and shops down to the Esplanade, I picked up some pamphlets lying on the coffee table in front of me and leafed through them. Everyone may dream. They showed a selection of what estate agents call desirable residences: modest chalets, bungalows with gardens and even one or two more impressive buildings with three to four bedrooms and en suite bathrooms. I passed them to Felix one by one. He raised his eyebrows.
Francine came in with a tray of tea things, French style with a saucer of thin lemon slices.
As she put it down on the coffee table she said, “Oh, that’s my fantasy. What I wouldn’t give to move away from here. To take my son to a healthier environment.”
“But I thought you earned a good salary as a nurse at the hospital,” I said.
She handed me my cup and pointed to the sugar and lemon.
“I’ve only recently reached the level of a fully qualified nurse. My wages before that were not generous, and I had to pay off debts incurred by my father before he died.”
“That must have been hard.”
“At least I get housing and some help through the social security system,” she said, “and my new position as deputy ward sister will make a difference to our standard of living. If I save really carefully, I should have the deposit on a small rented property by the end of next year.”
I passed Felix the sugar.
He gave Francine a rueful smile. “I don’t suppose you have some milk?”
“Of course,” she said leaping to her feet. “I forgot most of you English drink milk in your tea. Just a moment,” and she disappeared back into the kitchen.
“What do you make of all this?” I asked Felix softly, sweeping my hand around the room.
“She’s hardworking, conscientious and a good mother,” he replied as Francine arrived with a small jug of milk.
When she had seen we had our tea to our satisfaction, she asked me, “You have some questions for me? About Jonny Sauvage?”
“Yes,” I said, “If you don’t mind. But first I have a bag of cookies for your son … Marc, isn’t it?”
I handed her the bag from my shopping basket.
“How wonderful. I’ll fetch him and he can say thank you.”
She hurried down the hall to one of the bedrooms and returned leading Young Marc by the hand. Once again, the sight of him hit me in the heart. He looked like a miniature version of his father, with the same blond hair and blue eyes.
He thanked me and offered the bag around at his mother’s prompting but Felix and I all shook our heads.
“They’re for you,” I said.
He gave me a broad smile and vanished back down the corridor with his loot.
Francine looked after him fondly. “He’s a good kid.”
“And so like his father,” I said without thinking.
Francine gasped. “You know about that?”
“I couldn’t help noticing when I met him with Natalie and her son Pierre on the beach. The two of them looked like twins and Audrey had told me about Natalie.”
“I thought you wanted to ask me about what happened at the hospital on Thursday because I was on duty. I had no idea you knew that Jonny Sauvage was my son’s father.”
She put her cup down on the tray with a shaky hand and folded her arms as if to ward off unwelcome questions. She sat staring at the coffee table.
I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make the situation worse and looked at Felix for help.
“Francine,” he said, “we’re not here to hurt you. We’re trying to find out who murdered Jonny. You want that for your son’s sake, don’t you?”
She glanced up and away again, but she did relax a little and unfold her arms.
Felix went on, “We have a few questions about your relationship with Jonny.”
She turned to face Felix. “Of course I want Jonny’s killer to be found, but I don’t see how I can help you. I haven’t seen him since he left here all those years ago. He never answered my letters, and it goes without saying that he never sent me any money for Marc.”
“So Jonny and your son never met?”
“No,” she said more loudly than necessary. “How could they have done?”
An awkward pause followed while I searched my mind for some way to ask her about her movements on the Thursday. We knew she’d been at the hospital, but had she been within striking distance of Jonny?
She must have read my mind for she suddenly said, “Can you imagine what a shock it was for me when Jonny was admitted to my ward. And in a coma.” She clutched her hand to her throat. “I hadn’t seen him for ten years and there he was lying prostrate on a gurney. It gave me the shock of my life.”
I hadn’t realized she’d been working on Ward 3.
“You were there when he died then?” I asked her.
“I wasn’t in his room if that’s what you mean,” she answered sharply. “I was in one of the other rooms when the Code Blue sounded.”
“Were you part of the crash team?”
“Not officially, but when I saw the blue light above Jonny’s room I joined them.”
“And?”
She wiped a tear from her eye and rubbed the end of her nose.
“What do you think? It was horrible. The man I had made love with when I was a young woman lay there dead. We tried but we could do nothing. I was devastated,” she said with another sniff.
“Have the police questioned you?”
“Yes, they are working their way through everyone who was on duty that day.”
The tears came fast now. Time for us to leave. We said goodbye and Felix patted her on the shoulder saying we’d let ourselves out.
On the way down the stairs Felix asked me what I thought.
I shrugged. “Hard to tell. She sounded bitter when talking about how Jonny had given her no help then she cried when she told us about his death. And it’s a strange coincidence that she was working on that ward when he was brought in.”
“Whatever we think, boss, the sticking point is the lack of access. We have to get a look at the CCTV footage to make sure the police haven’t missed someone going in and coming out of Jonny Sauvage’s room.”
“That means I’ll have to sweet talk Dubois. What if he wants to take me out to dinner again?”
Felix stopped abruptly on the step below me and I bumped into him. He spun round.
“Would that be so terrible? Good food and entertaining company?”
“Oh, you!” I said giving him a push to set him moving again. “I suppose you’ll be hiding under the table this time.”
“Now, that’s a good idea,” he said in that maddening way of his and sped up down the dirty stairs.
“I wonder if Jonny knew he had two sons living in Beaucoup-sur-mer.”
“He did. Both Natalie and Francine said they wrote to him.”
“Then I guess he didn’t care.”
*
The first thing I did when we reached home was call Sam into the study to tell me how he’d been getting on with finding an alibi for himself.
“Was the recycling center any good?” I asked him.
“Penzi, it was hopeless. I know they had CCTV before but this new guy doesn’t know how to work them. The head office sent hi
m down to replace Déchet in a hurry and he hadn’t finished his training, so he hadn’t replaced the tapes the police took away when they arrested Déchet.”
“What about cameras along the route you took?”
“There’s only one. As you guessed on the tower over the town gates, but it was down for maintenance on Thursday. Honestly, it’s as if everything is conspiring to find me guilty of a crime I didn’t commit.”
“Don’t get so worried, Sam. We have leeway to find the real murderer. Dubois is still interviewing every member of staff at the hospital. He’s met you. He’s not going to arrest you until he has explored every other avenue?”
Felix asked, “How long does it take to drive to the hospital? Did you time it?”
Sam said, “Yes, it’s a twenty minute drive from here, obeying the speed limit in the town.”
“Did anyone in the street see you with Gwinny’s car between about five past ten and quarter to eleven?”
Sam sighed. “Monsieur Didier in the end house noticed me a couple of times during the morning, but he can’t say at what time.”
That made me anxious. I’d told Sam not to worry, but I knew what Dubois was like once he got a bee in his bonnet. Sam was his default suspect, so to speak.
“We must press on with our investigation,” I said. “I’ll phone Dubois now and see if he’ll meet me for dinner tomorrow.”
“Make it lunch,” said Felix. “We’re getting short of time.”
Dubois answered straight away. He was in a social mood and called me Penzi. That was a good sign.
“Tomorrow lunch? Splendid. I look forward to it. But something tells me you want something from me, calling me at such short notice.”
“Oh, Xavier,” I whispered breathlessly into my phone. “I know how much you like to help me. I would have lunch with you every day if you bring a copy of the hospital car park CCTV tape with you.”
“I knew it,” he said with a chuckle, “but how can I resist?”
I winked at Felix who was mouthing Every day? to me and shaking his head.
Chapter 29
Felix and I spent Tuesday morning working on the stock orders for The Union Jack. We had a spare hour before lunch and so we went down to the shop to help Audrey get things ready.
At lunchtime I left the two of them behind in the shop thinking I would escape Felix’s surveillance of me, but he caught me up.
“You can’t go off on your own like that, boss,” he said. “Anything could happen to you.”
I stopped and confronted him. “Felix, can you see my apricot semper tuens aura?”
He looked sheepish. “It has a few dents in it from the cobra but yes, I can see it.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“I admit it’s supposed to protect you from physical attack, but I don’t trust it one hundred per cent.”
“Why not?”
“It hasn’t been tested.”
“Felix, I’m in the middle of the Esplanade in a sleepy town in France. It’s broad daylight.”
“Boss, please listen to me. Why did Sir Archibald send me to be your bodyguard if you could protect yourself so easily with the semper tuens spell? He knew you were a witch, so he knew what magical powers you would have at your command, and yet he thought you needed me.”
Felix had a point. Being married to Gwinny who was a witch, my father would have known about the abjuration spells especially as magic and witchcraft was his field of specialization.
“I follow your reasoning, but I’ll be with Dubois. He’s a police inspector, for heaven’s sake. It’s embarrassing to have you hovering about when I’m trying to get him to do something for me.”
“I have to insist. Every time you’ve been somewhere without me, you’ve put yourself in danger.”
I laughed him off. “That’s nonsense. Nothing happened to me when I had dinner with Dubois.”
“If you remember, I made sure I was there as Felix the cat.”
I had a sneaky feeling that Felix didn’t like to let me out of his sight, especially when I was with Dubois.
“You can sit at a table well away from us but close enough to see if anyone threatens me.”
“I’m more worried about Dubois, if truth be told. It’s only a few days since you made a fool of yourself over Jonny Sauvage, and your aura doesn’t protect you from that kind of attack.”
How dare he? Felix was my bodyguard. Only my bodyguard.
“You’re not my father, Felix. You have no right to interfere in my social life, and anyway this is business, as you know,” I said with a flounce and walked off.
He caught up with me and took hold of my arm preventing me from hurrying to join Dubois who was waving at me from a table fifty feet away. I spun round and disengaged his hand.
“Felix,” I said in my best icy voice. “Leave me alone.”
“Penzi, your father told me I was to consider myself in loco parentis, so I do have a father’s duty towards you.”
“Be that as it may. I’m twenty-five years old. I do not need a father figure watching my every move. Now, go away because you’re upsetting me, and I need to be calm to get Dubois to give us the CCTV tapes.”
Felix shook his head at me and further exasperated me by saying, “Wow, I love it when you’re feisty,” before stalking off.
I watched his progress as I walked towards Dubois’s table. Felix didn’t stop on the Esplanade as arranged. He carried on walking and ducked into The Union Jack. He’d gone to seek solace from Audrey.
“Lovely to see you in pleasant circumstances, Penzi,” Dubois said after he’d kissed me on both cheeks and held out my chair for me.
“Thank you, Xavier. Good to see you, too, but I wouldn’t call the circumstances pleasant.”
“I was referring to our having lunch together, being social, as opposed to when I have to act in my official capacity.”
“Well, I suppose there’s that. It is a beautiful day and lunch with a charming companion is always a pleasant experience.”
“Ah, now I know you want something, Penzi,” he said.
“It’s this murder, Xavier, that’s what’s unpleasant. I know you don’t really mind my rooting about if I can come up with something helpful, do you?”
“Penzi, it’s not a question of what I think, is it? Madame Fer-de-Lance has every right to find your investigations annoying and even embarrassing.”
I sighed and settled back in my chair, looking up at Dubois through my eyelashes.
“I don’t think she has anything to worry about this time. I’m getting nowhere. I’m just too close to everyone involved.”
I hoped that if I appeared ineffective, Dubois would be tempted to help me.
“Let’s order before we continue this conversation,” he said snapping his fingers to attract the waiter.
With our meal on its way and glasses of champagne in our hands, Dubois began, “You mentioned you wanted me to give you a copy of the CCTV tape from the hospital car park.”
I nodded. “We want to check the vehicles to see if everyone we speak to is telling the truth.”
“You do realize I would be breaking security if I gave you what you ask for?”
“But you’d do it for me, wouldn’t you, Xavier? I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“I don’t think looking at the recordings would help you because no one can be seen going in or out of Sauvage’s room. Even if someone’s vehicle was at the hospital, how could they have committed the murder? And anyway, the security system has been updated.”
Dubois drank down the rest of his glass with a gulp and sat back looking at me as if to say Game Over.
“What do you mean, Dubois?”
“The CCTV cameras at the hospital no longer record to old fashioned tape. They are part of a DVR system which records to a hard disk.”
“Can’t you give me a copy of the hard disk.”
“That I can’t do. The disks hold much more data than the old tapes did and aren’t changed so
often. Plus, there are several levels of security. We ourselves and the hospital security department don’t look at the actual disk. The whole system is now digital and can be accessed from anywhere provided one has the correct passwords.”
“I heard you’d sent the tapes to Paris for examination because you thought someone could have tampered with them.”
“The expert came down from Paris and checked the disk out. No tampering.”
The waiter arrived with our seafood salads giving me a chance to think over what Dubois had said. It was worth a try, and so I tried. I wound my hair round my finger in an effort to look as winsome as possible.
“Xavier, I don’t suppose you’d give me the passwords so I could access the system from my PC?”
He shuddered so violently a lick of his jet black hair fell down across his eyes. He brushed it back impatiently.
“Absolument, non. You stretch friendship too far, Penzi. It’s more than my life’s worth, let alone my job,” he said with a look of horror on his face.
Something furry touched my bare leg making me jump in my seat. What on earth? I looked under the table and there was Felix in cat mode. Of course. I should have known he wouldn’t go quietly. He must have shifted his shape while he was inside The Union Jack and made his way over to our table as nonchalant as only he could be.
I tutted at him and flicked my hand to tell him to get lost, but he batted my leg with his paw.
Meanwhile Dubois had noticed the disturbance. “What is going on?” he asked and bent down to look under the table.
“Punaise,” he exclaimed jumping to his feet and dropping his table napkin on the ground. “What is it with you and cats, Penzi? Animals shouldn’t be allowed here.”
He snapped his napkin at Felix who darted to the other side of the table behind the central leg. Dubois ran round to that side and snapped his napkin at Felix again. This went on for four or five rounds. I wasn’t counting. I was laughing too much.
Felix jumped up behind me on my seat, his green eyes twinkling with merriment as he peered round me at Dubois.
“Ca suffit, Penzi,” Dubois said, throwing his napkin down on the table. He fished some notes out of his wallet, threw them on the table and stalked off.
