The Witch Who Mysteries Box Set

by Katie Penryn

  Felix jumped down off my chair, ran around to Dubois’s and leapt up onto it.

  “Ah,” he said. “My favorite.”

  He scooped up Dubois’s prawns with his paw one by one and knocked them onto the floor. He slid onto the ground and munched his way through the lot, shells and all.

  I wanted to tell him off but I couldn’t. I was laughing so hard. Everyone at the nearby tables joined in. The cries of, “Naughty cat!” “Quel chat méchant!” followed poor Dubois across the Esplanade.

  I ate my lunch while Felix ate his. I paid the bill and had to wait for ten minutes while Felix cleaned every trace of mayonnaise off his whiskers. As soon as he’d finished, I picked him up and made for home.

  “That’s nice, boss,” he said nestling into my chest and purring his head off.

  “I should throw you over the wall into the sea,” I said. “You need teaching a lesson. You interrupted me just when I was getting somewhere with Dubois.”

  “You heard what he said. I could tell he was never going to give you the passwords. And I don’t know why you’re so annoyed. I’m sure I can hack my way into their system. It’ll be piece of cake, just you wait and see. Plus, you had a laugh. That’s good for you.”

  I couldn’t keep a straight face when I thought of Dubois running backwards and forwards round the table chasing Felix.

  “Yes, but Dubois was upset. You damaged his amour propre. That’s very important to a Frenchman. He won’t forgive you, and I’ll have to work hard to smooth his ruffled feathers.”

  When we reached Les Dragons we found my extended family sitting round the kitchen table finishing their lunch.

  I put Felix on the floor. He sashayed over to the dogs and sniffed them on the nose one by one. I waited for them to back away from the smell of prawns, but they greeted him back and wagged their tails.

  “Oh,” said Audrey. “I wondered what had happened to your cat. I haven’t seen him around for ages.”

  Sam and Jimbo exchanged secret glances and Gwinny looked out of the window, all three being careful not to give away our family secret.

  “I’ve missed him,” I said. “I found him on the Esplanade. He must have gone on a pussy-cat walk-about and lost his way home.”

  Felix arched his back and hissed at me. I ignored him, filled a glass of water for myself and took it to the study, sure he would follow me. In he came, tail in the air as unruffled as ever. I shut the door behind him and he morphed into Felix the man in one smooth movement of rippling muscles. He collapsed back against the door and burst into laughter.

  When he could speak, he said, “That was so funny. I’ll never forget Dubois dashing about like a demented bullfighter. Is it me he doesn’t like, or is he like that with all cats?”

  “I don’t know him well enough to answer that,” I replied.

  “Let’s keep that way then,” Felix said pushing off from the door and sitting down in the chair opposite my desk. “I’d better get to it. The sooner we get this darned case over the sooner we can all have a life, or in my case, nine.”

  He pulled his laptop towards him and began to type, his fingers flying fast over the keyboard. I sat in my father’s old chair listening to an audiobook while Felix performed his own particular kind of magic. At last he looked up and said, “I’m in. Pretty simple passwords, not difficult to crack at all.”

  “Come round this side of the desk. I can’t move my father’s chair.”

  Felix turned his laptop round and pushed it across the desk towards me. He carried his chair round, and we sat elbow to elbow staring at the screen.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Felix tapped away again. “I’m bringing up a list of the cameras. Ah, got it. What time period do we want?”

  “The killer struck at about 10.20 or just after. The crash team called time of death at 10.27. So we want … the whole morning. That’ll take ages.”

  “We’ll run it at high speed. Ready. Starting at 8 a.m.”

  The recording began. Tiny cars rushed in and out.

  “To recap, Felix. We’re looking for the mayor’s car, the band bus with Joliette driving, the two white vans belonging to Kiki and Marie, and Jonny’s motor bike used by Zach and Petey on Thursday morning.”

  The mayor’s car appeared at 8.50 for his nine o’clock appointment. He parked and walked across to the medical center.

  Felix made a note on our list of suspects.

  At 9.15 Joliette appeared. The bus slowed down as it passed the front door before speeding up and zipping out of the car park.

  Felix made another note. “Okay, that’s what she said, but she could have parked outside the car park and walked into the hospital round the back. So that’s inconclusive.”

  Jonny’s motor bike tore into the car park at 10.00. Felix slowed the recording down. We watched Zack walk into the hospital entrance and Petey walk away off camera, presumably to the gardens.

  We hit 10.20 and had not seen either of the two white vans.

  Again Felix mentioned that either one of them could have parked outside the camera area.

  I realized something. At 10.20 the mayor’s car was still there but Felix had checked his appointment and it had lasted only an hour. I pointed that out. We ran the recording on. The mayor left at 10.45, with Zach and Petey leaving at 10.50.

  “We’ll have to ask Monsieur Bonhomie to account for the extra twenty minutes,” Felix said.

  “I’m not looking forward to that.”

  “We can check Zach and Petey out on the café camera. Hold on while I find it.”

  Zach had been telling the truth. The camera picked him up a couple of minutes past ten. Petey joined him at 10.35 so he could have had time to murder Jonny Sauvage.

  Felix closed his laptop and looked at his list.

  “That wasn’t so helpful. Zach has an alibi. Monsieur Bonhomie we’ll have to question again. Joliette, Petey, Kiki and Marie are all still possibles for the murder.”

  “Even so, I don’t see how they could have done it … or anyone for that matter. Let’s have a look at the recording for Ward 3. Dubois says it shows nothing, but you never know.”

  Felix opened up his laptop again and repeated his keystrokes, bringing up the camera for Ward 3.

  As Dubois had warned us, no one entered Jonny Sauvage’s room in the critical minutes before the Code Blue was called. It wasn’t possible to count the people leaving his room with the crash team. We saw two orderlies enter with a gurney and exit with Jonny’s body on board on their way to the mortuary in the basement. After them the cleaner went in with a cleaning trolley and clean laundry and came out with the bed linen and towels. A few minutes after that Felix and I appeared in the camera’s view, went into the room and came out again. For the rest of the day there was no movement in or out. If anyone had been hiding in the cupboard Dubois mentioned, he or she would have had to spend twenty-four hours there.

  We could have widened our search backwards and forwards but it seemed pointless. Sometimes you have to trust the police to have done a good job.

  “Now what?” asked Felix when we gave up. “Monsieur Bonhomie?”

  I sighed a sigh drawn from the bottom of my lungs. “We can’t avoid it. Let’s go and get it over with.”

  Chapter 30

  The mayor bridled with annoyance when his secretary showed us into his office.

  “They said it was urgent, monsieur,” she said when he demanded to know why she hadn’t asked him if he was ready to receive us.

  “It won’t take long,” I began.

  “It had better not,” he said staying in his chair and not getting up to greet us in his usual friendly way. “What do you want this time?”

  “Monsieur, you told us about your dental appointment on Thursday morning. When we checked—”

  “You dared to check what I’d told you?” he said, turning crimson.

  “We have to clear you, monsieur.”

  He shook his head and stared at me for a few seconds. “I sup
pose you do. Go on.”

  “When we checked with the dental surgery, they said you left when the next patient went in at ten, but your car doesn’t leave the car park until 10.45. What were you doing in the interval? It would take you ten minutes at the most to walk back to your car?”

  He stared at me again, blankly this time. I thought he was on the point of having us thrown out of his office, but his eyes wandered away as he searched his memory and suddenly he gave me a weak smile.

  “Now, I remember. You are quite right. I walked through the passage into the hospital foyer — to the gift shop, you understand. I wanted to buy a little something for Emmanuelle, to cheer her up. Her endless lovesick tears were driving me mad.”

  Felix looked at me. We hadn’t checked the camera for the gift shop, but we couldn’t leave now and then come back again after checking out his story. There was only so far we could push an unofficial investigation.

  I decided to press him for details. “What a lovely thought. What did you buy her?”

  “I kept away from all the feminine stuff like bath oils and such. I found a huge stuffed rabbit. Don’t ask me why teenage girls love those things so much, but they do and Emmanuelle is no exception. She adored it.”

  A thought struck me. “You wouldn’t happen to have the till receipt, would you, monsieur?”

  “I should have,” he said taking out his wallet and ferreting through the slips of paper it contained. “Ah, yes,” he said holding one up with glee.

  He passed it to me and I checked to see if there was a time stamp. I nodded at Felix and handed it back to the mayor.

  “You’re in the clear, monsieur. You paid for the rabbit at exactly 10.18. There’s no way you could have murdered Jonny Sauvage, much as you may have wanted to.”

  He laughed and put the slip back in his wallet. “I told you, Penzi. I told you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Thank goodness. I was Penzi again and not Madame Munro.

  “Monsieur Bonhomie, I never doubted you for a second, but we had to prove it so we can move on to the other suspects.”

  “You’ll stop for a cup of tea?” he asked going to the door to call his secretary in.

  How could we refuse in the circumstances?

  Minutes later we were all friends again, sipping our thé à l’anglais and eating buttery madeleines, the little shell-shaped sponge cakes much loved by the French.

  *

  Martine arrived with the post earlier than usual the next morning. As she took a seat and accepted the cup of coffee Audrey handed her, she asked, “How are you getting on with your investigation into the murder of Jonny Sauvage?”

  “We aren’t making much progress. We’re finding it difficult to verify alibis.”

  “That’s when you check people were where they said they were at the time of the murder?”

  I nodded. “We’ve crossed Monsieur Bonhomie off our list.”

  “You mean to say you suspected the mayor?”

  “No, of course not, but he had a good motive. All that nonsense with Emmanuelle.”

  “Can I help? Anyone on my mail run? You know how nosy I am.”

  “Well, there’s Janine Desert. She lives on the other side of the bay, near the mayor. She refuses to give us her alibi. Says it’s private.”

  Martine laughed so hard she nearly choked on her coffee.

  “Oh, my,” she spluttered. “That one. Every Thursday morning her lover visits her. His car has a Bordeaux number. I have the number if you want it,” she said pulling her notebook out of her pocket.

  Audrey looked shocked. “You make a note of people’s visitors?” she asked.

  Martine wasn’t fazed by the question. “It’s part of my job to know if people are safe or not. I watch for cars. If a car doesn’t move for several days, it’s time to make sure the person living in the house is all right.”

  “Martine, the number,” I said before she continued with her explanations of public good. “Please give it to Felix.”

  Felix made a note. I offered Martine another cup of coffee which she accepted. I left Audrey pouring it and dragged Felix off into the study.

  As the door closed behind us, Felix asked, “What now, boss? What’s so urgent?”

  “Today’s Wednesday.”

  “So?”

  “It’s Jonny’s funeral tomorrow afternoon. I’d like to have made some progress before then. Can you hack into the vehicle registration system again and find who owns that car and get his address. We need to eliminate Janine Desert even though it’s unlikely she’s the murderer unless she can fly.”

  It didn’t take Felix long as he’d done it before. We had the address and decided to visit Monsieur Alain Toussaint, Madame Desert’s lover, that evening after office hours.

  *

  Felix and I set off for Bordeaux at five o’clock. Alain Toussaint lived south of the city which meant a long car ride round the ring road. His property proved to be a ranch, the drive to the house running between fields filled with grazing horses. His Porsche had already told us he was wealthy. I wondered why he would travel so far every Thursday to visit his middle aged girlfriend, a journey of around 150 miles.

  Felix knocked on the door while I parked the car. A woman of about fifty answered the door. Her designer jeans and silk shirt told us she wasn’t the maid even before she asked what we wanted.

  “May we speak to Monsieur Alain Toussaint please?” I asked in my most diplomatic tone of voice. We hadn’t called to warn him we’d be calling.

  “I’m more used to people asking for my husband as Maître Toussaint,” she said. “Please come in and wait while I fetch him. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Mpenzi Munro. It’s a private matter.”

  She showed us into a sitting room looking out over the fields.

  “What’s all that mettra stuff?” Felix asked. “And why private?”

  “Her husband’s a lawyer. Lawyers are called maître in France. It’s a courtesy title. It means master – of law, I suppose. I said private because our guy’s married. We don’t want to upset his marriage if we don’t have to.”

  A tall and handsome man came into the room, his well-cut gray hair giving him an air of distinction. He was older than his wife by a good ten years. He closed the door behind him.

  “Bonsoir. What can I do for you? Madame Munro, isn’t it?”

  “I’m an English barrister, monsieur, but I’m here to ask you an awkward personal question.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “It is not customary to disturb me in my own home, madame.”

  “May we sit?” I asked.

  “Of course, please.”

  While we took our places I had a good look at Monsieur Toussaint. I could see what Janine Desert saw in him, but what did he see in her?

  “Monsieur, I would like to ask you about your friendship with Madame Janine Desert.”

  “Has something happened to her?” he asked in alarm.

  “No, nothing like that. But she is involved in a murder case we are investigating. I should like to be able to eliminate her as a suspect by verifying her alibi.”

  “And how do you expect me to do that?”

  “I understand you visited her last Thursday morning. Can you confirm that please?”

  “Oh, I see. Someone’s been talking.”

  “Monsieur?”

  “Yes, I can confirm in confidence, of course. I’ve known Janine since we were children together in Beaucoup-sur-mer, but we both married the wrong people. It’s a long story. She is now widowed, and we make the best of our lives with one day a week in each other’s company. Now, is that all you want to know?”

  “Thank you, maître.”

  He stood up to show us out but paused with his hand on the door.

  “What is a little town like Beaucoup-sur-mer doing with murderers in its midst?”

  I shrugged. What could I say? It wasn’t paradise.

  “If I were you, Madame Munro, I would follow the money,” he said. �
��Have you done that?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much.”

  “It’s always money or sex. Check it out.”

  We shook hands, and I thanked him for seeing us without notice.

  “Anything to keep my friend Janine safe,” he said and showed us to the front door.

  *

  “What did you make of that?” asked Felix as we drove away.

  “He could be right. Just because no one in the case has any money at the moment, doesn’t mean that money wasn’t involved in the past.”

  “I’d like to know what happened to the money the band was paid for appearing at the Blues Festival. You know how I hate loose ends. How much do you think they earned?”

  “I would guess anything between a hundred and two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “So where’s it gone? That bloke was right. The band members say Jonny Sauvage was paid, but they’ve never seen a centime.”

  “You’ll have to do some hacking, Felix. You could start tonight. Tomorrow we have to interview Marie’s friend at the market, and the funeral is in the afternoon.”

  “I don’t suppose any of the band members know where Sauvage banked. It’s going to take me longer to crack a bank in the States anyway, even if I knew which bank.”

  “Can’t you start with the records of the festival and work backwards?”

  “Good thinking, boss.”

  Chapter 31

  Felix had made little headway with his hacking the night before. It would have to wait until after the funeral. We were on our way out to visit the market on Thursday morning when Martine drew up in her yellow van.

  “Where are you off to so early?” she asked.

  “The market to question Marie Renard’s friend. Do you know Marie?”

  “I don’t know her personally, but I remember the case.”

  “What case?”

  Felix opened her door, and she struggled to shift her bulk out of the car.

  “I’ve got to lose some weight,” she said.

  “You’re always saying that, Martine. But what case? Something to do with Marie Renard?”