‘And if that wasn’t enough,’ chipped in Hubert, ‘she then tried to stab me, and managed to hurt Fenella.’
Clément was looking more and more bemused. ‘She is unarmed now, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, get off her, man, and let’s all talk about this downstairs. I can’t have the boys and Estelle hearing all this going on. Come on.’
‘That’s a good point, where is Estelle?’ Fen let Hubert help her downstairs as James held Sophie by the wrists and they all walked down the stone spiral staircase into the kitchen.
With the dying embers of the fire stoked, the four adults sat around the large table and glared at each other.
Clément started speaking first. ‘So explain to me again how Sophie came to be in your bedroom, James.’
‘It’s nothing like that, sir,’ James started and Fen almost wanted to laugh, the thought that this could be something so simple as discovering a secret love affair was light relief indeed. ‘For a few days now, Fen and I have been trying to work out who committed the three murders…’ He paused, catching Clément’s puzzled expression. ‘Yes, three. I’m afraid that I agree with Fen in believing that your son’s death was not an accident.’
‘You see, I’ve been finding some very odd clues,’ Fen carried on. ‘And as you’ve probably all guessed, I’ve been on a bit of a secret mission here – to find out what happened to Arthur.’
‘He was a good man,’ Clément said. ‘And betrayed by someone, indeed.’
‘Well, I believe that, like a good crossword, all the clues are connected, and that what’s happened here in the last few days very possibly has something to do with what happened to Arthur and your sons,’ Fen paused for them to make the sign of the cross, ‘and that their deaths also played a role in the fates of Father Marchand, Pierre and Pascal Desmarais.’
‘Go on?’
‘So I looked at it like I would a crossword, and when I couldn’t work out my ten across, I tried to solve my six down.’
‘What is she talking about?’ Clément looked at Hubert, who replied with a shrug.
‘Carry on, Fen.’ James made eyes at the two Frenchmen, but Clément nodded and Fen kept on talking.
‘So we had no idea who murdered Father Marchand. Except, when Pierre was murdered, we knew it couldn’t be James, so he’s out of the soup.’
‘The what?’ Sophie looked scornfully at Fen and then said to the room, ‘She makes no sense and you’re keeping me here in my nightdress, freezing cold, on this crazy Englishwoman’s theories? Come on, Clément, tell them to let me go!’
‘Shh, Sophie. Let her finish.’
‘Bof!’ Sophie flung her now bound wrists up in the air in frustration.
‘So I started to look at things differently. Find some clues. And I found some all right.’ Fen rummaged around in one of the copious sleeves of her land girl jumper and pulled out her clues. She laid the pieces of fabric on the table. ‘This,’ she picked up the white piece, ‘I found hanging from the rusty hinge of the chemical cupboard in the winery. I think,’ she leant over to where Sophie’s arms were resting on the table, and matched the fabric to that of her nightdress, ‘this might be yours, Sophie.’
The men all gasped as the piece exactly matched a small hole in the sleeve of Sophie’s nightdress.
‘I am in charge of the chemicals, what of it?’ Sophie shrugged off the accusation.
‘Yes, you are. And that’s because you have a degree in chemistry from Paris,’ Fen continued, undeterred.
‘And?’
‘And I found out that one of the most poisonous chemicals that you keep locked in that cupboard is blue fining – or potassium ferrocyanide, to give it its full name.’
‘It’s used, in extreme situations, to stabilise the wine,’ Hubert volunteered.
‘And it would take someone with a background in chemistry to know how to turn the ferrocyanide into common or garden cyanide, yes?’ Fen asked him, as much for the benefit of the others as for herself.
‘Yes, I suppose it would.’
‘Of course, we all thought Father Marchand was killed with James’s kill pill from his agent’s kit. But, actually, I believe Sophie stole the capsule and destroyed it, using her own cyanide to kill Father Marchand.’
‘Why not use my capsule, if she stole it?’ James looked genuinely puzzled.
‘Because I didn’t steal it!’ The others turned to look at Sophie. She carried on, ‘I am not a thief.’
‘So Estelle had stolen it…’ Fen wondered out loud. ‘The little tin I found down the side of the bed…’
‘Did it have a black cat on it?’ James asked.
‘Yes… maybe…’
‘Well, that clears that up then. Estelle must have decided it might have been of some use. Perhaps Pascal told her what it was and disposed of the poison, but she kept it as a useful bargaining tool.’
‘Or blackmail. And it was pretty useful for her – getting you banged up for the murder distracted everyone from her thieving too. I wouldn’t wonder if she dropped the capsule right in front of your nose, Sophie.’
‘Pah!’ Sophie butted in. ‘I am not a thief, and apart from some hypotheses about my skill with chemicals, you cannot prove I’m a murderer either!’
‘Except I found these…’ Fen pushed the shards of porcelain across the large old wooden table and placed them into the rough shape of the crucible they had once been. ‘A chemist’s crucible. Used to heat the ferrocyanide and produce the deadly poison. And don’t forget, we all thought Sophie was an invalid, as she had apparently twisted her ankle.’
‘Which meant she couldn’t have possibly killed Pierre or Pascal. Or even Marchand,’ James concluded.
‘Or so we thought. Odd how you seem as agile as a mountain goat tonight though, Sophie?’
‘It is healing now, I think.’ Sophie pouted.
‘Hell’s teeth, woman!’ James thumped his fist on the table and even Fen was astounded by Sophie’s ability to keep lying.
‘The dead bees that kept appearing in the kitchen – it was you,’ Fen thought out loud. ‘Stinging yourself to keep the swelling up. I knew it rang a bell. My friend Edith was stung by a bee once and although the swelling on her wrist was immense, she could still use it quite well as she curled her hair later that day.’ Fen mimicked twirling her hair with a rotating wrist action. ‘So you can quite easily have the look of a painful swelling while gadding about quite quickly.’
‘Maybe I was stung too,’ Sophie replied.
‘Shhh,’ said everyone else.
‘So when Pascal figured out, long before we did, that you had killed Pierre and Marchand…’
‘How did he do that?’
Fen thought for a moment. ‘I followed Estelle to the pharmacy the other day and I asked a few questions. Pascal and I talked about Sophie and her education. And I asked him about cyanide too. He must have put two and two together and then realised she was using the ferrocyanide.’
‘Bof,’ Sophie exhaled in a Gallic show of contempt.
‘Something caught my eye in an old leaflet Pascal had from the Great War. Poison gases.’ Fen was very aware that all the eyes in the room were focused on her now. She took a deep breath. ‘Hydrogen cyanide was used in 1916 apparently, but only briefly as it takes too long to, well, kill unless it’s used in vast quantities.’ She paused and noticed how Clément’s eyes were tearing up. He had served in the Great War and it seemed he must have remembered it well. ‘I think that a small quantity wouldn’t be an instantly fatal dose. Instead it brings on nausea and dizziness for a few hours before the fatal effects take hold.’
‘So you’re saying that Marchand wasn’t poisoned at the breakfast table?’ James was quick to catch on to Fen’s theory.
‘Exactly.’
Before the news could sink in, there was a clatter outside the door and it was flung open, with a dishevelled Estelle suddenly appearing at the door.
‘Estelle, help me please!’ Sophie was quick to t
ry, but Clément stood up and glared at her, then demanded to know of Estelle where she’d been at this time of night.
‘The winery.’ She pulled the door closed behind her.
‘Why, Estelle?’ Hubert asked.
‘I needed to check something. The really bad one, the poisonous one, it was gone, you see. I noticed it this morning but was distracted.’ She glared at Fen, as if returning Arthur’s cigarette case to her had been the root of all of their problems. She sat down at the table and only then seemed to notice Sophie’s bound wrists and look of utter fury. ‘What’s happening here?’
‘Fenella is spinning wild stories,’ Sophie spat across the table, but Clément banged his fist on the table and all but snarled at his daughter-in-law.
In the heavy silence that followed, Fen pieced together more of her thoughts before carrying on. ‘The kitchen door, and your phantom, Estelle…’
‘I was brave tonight, yes, going out even though we know the gardens are haunted!’ The housekeeper crossed herself. ‘You saw it yourself, Fen!’
‘I think you were safe tonight,’ Fen reassured her, ‘as the phantom was here all the time. The night before Marchand was poisoned, you said, did you not, that you couldn’t sleep and you’d seen a ghost walk along the vineyard’s edge?’
The maid nodded, in wide-eyed anticipation of an explanation.
‘Sophie was that ghost, heading to the chemical cabinet in the winery dressed only in her nightgown, where she tore her sleeve on the metal hinge.’ Fen picked up the piece of white fabric from the table and then, once everyone had noted it, laid it back down next to the broken crucible. ‘I think she stashed her home-made cyanide there too. It was she who left the kitchen door unbolted as she’d walked to the priest’s house across the lawns that night and slipped him some poison.’
‘How would I know the priest would drink it?’ Sophie asked indignantly.
‘I never said he drank it…’ Fen pushed her point home and all the others round the table turned to face Sophie, their eyes like Spanish Inquisition pokers, bearing into her.
‘Ha! Fine. Yes.’ Sophie slammed her bound fists down on the table. ‘He was onto me. I had to kill him!’
‘Ah…’ Another realisation came to Fen. ‘The night of the fête, I saw you and Father Marchand leave the church, although I thought perhaps you were having a tryst of some sort, but actually he was—’
‘About to ruin everything, all my plans!’
Clément, who looked like the world was crumbling around him, turned to face Sophie. In a voice weakened with emotion, he simply asked, ‘Sophie, what have you done?’
Twenty-Seven
The night wore on and between them the whys and hows of Sophie’s murderous path were laid out to all. Fen explained how the first murder had taken place, in effect, the night before, with Sophie administering just enough cyanide into the glass of water beside the bed of the sleeping priest so that he would die at some point during the next day.
‘That it was during breakfast was a bonus,’ James added, ‘as Sophie was already laid up by then, with so many witnesses.’
‘I think Sophie had slightly hurt herself,’ Fen allowed Sophie that one small grace, ‘during her dramatic and very public fall, but the bee stings kept the swelling nicely puffy so we all absolutely believed she couldn’t move, let alone run.’
‘Marchand was on our side though, wasn’t he?’ a slightly confused Clément brought the conversation back to the priest’s death.
‘Yours and mine,’ James agreed, ‘but perhaps not hers.’ He nodded towards Sophie.
‘Exactly,’ Fen said, and started to think out loud. ‘Marchand had his finger in all sorts of secret agent pies, as it were. He knew all about Arthur, and you, James. Plus he grew the flowers in the Tricolore colours… I think he had a pretty good grasp as to what Sophie was planning all along and threatened to out you, didn’t he?’
‘Well, what was she planning?’ an exasperated Estelle blurted out. Then she turned to address Sophie. ‘Why did you kill Pascal? To keep me here? Slaving for you?’
‘Don’t get hysterical, Estelle,’ Sophie sighed.
‘No.’ Fen laid a hand on her room-mate’s arm. The most she felt could do at the moment to comfort her was to explain how and why her lover was killed. ‘To solve Pascal’s murder, we have to go back to Pierre’s.’
‘My poor son.’ The now openly weeping Clément was being comforted by Hubert.
‘Pierre was drugged and left to sleep next to the fermentation tanks.’
‘How was he drugged?’ James was fiddling with the clues on the table.
‘A sleeping draught at breakfast?’ Fen ventured.
‘It was much easier than that,’ Sophie spat out the words, and looked around the table, her eyes inviting suggestions from anyone else. ‘No? I followed Pierre to the winery. Fool, he was shocked to see me up and about, but pleased too. Didn’t question it. I limped a bit, of course, just to keep the act up in case anyone saw. Then I insisted that he have some coffee and I was all “oh darling, this harvest will be the best and you need coffee to concentrate”, and he drank it. Fool!’
There was a mixed look of horror and disgust on every face but Sophie’s as they took in how easily she had duped her husband, and quite how unrepentant she was.
She continued, revelling in her cleverness. ‘And then, once he was drowsy, I said, “Lie down here” – and like a stupid baby, he did.’
Clément buried his face in his hands, while most round the table simply shook their heads in disgust and sorrow.
‘You’d brought the quilt with you?’ James asked. ‘But not for him to lie on?’
‘No.’ Sophie flashed her eyes at him. ‘No… I had left that outside, though if he’d seen it I would have said that I was feeling frisky, you know?’ The looks of disgust amplified around the table. ‘Eh, la, once he was asleep, I fitted the quilt up and bolted the door behind me. He was dead within the hour. Before any of you had even had your breakfast.’ She laughed to herself, seemingly oblivious to the pain she was causing to her father-in-law, who was now murmuring ‘my poor boy, my poor boy,’ over and over.
‘Why did you want to kill Pierre though?’ Hubert asked quietly, his arm still around the grieving Clément.
‘Because,’ Sophie’s voice was low and almost unrecognisable, ‘I did not love him. Not for years. Not since I found my true love again.’
‘The letter written in German!’ Fen exclaimed. She pulled it out from her nightdress’s pocket and opened the envelope. ‘You are the S.’
‘What does this mean?’ Clément was shaking with anger and Hubert was doing all he could to keep his arm around the old man, now in restraint as much as comfort.
Sophie sighed. ‘Heinrich Spatz…’
‘The Weinführer?’ Fen was aghast.
‘Yes. The Weinführer. When he arrived in this town, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My Heinrich! I thought I’d never see him again. We’d been lovers, you see, when we both studied at the Sorbonne. And he was so civilised.’ Sophie, though bound and captured, had a dreamy, faraway look in her eye. She continued, ‘He was a wine merchant before the war. He wanted to commandeer this château, but I knew we couldn’t carry on our affair in front of all the workers, and you,’ she nodded to Clément and Hubert.
The old man made to lunge at his daughter-in-law, but the fight seemed to have gone out of him and he sank back into his chair, exhausted, as Sophie continued.
‘Heinrich and I stayed in touch after the liberation of Dijon in forty-four. He had to retreat with the army but was biding his time, waiting for us to be together again. When old memories had died…’ she spat the words across the table to Clément.
‘You did help the château hide its wine though.’ Fen nodded towards the journal sitting on the shelf of the dresser.
‘But of course I hid the wine from the Germans, I did not want our wine to go to the Eagle’s Nest to be wasted on some puff-chested little man from Austria. I wante
d it safe, here in the château, for when my Heinrich returned and we could run the business together!’
‘The quilt is German, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. A present from Westphalia.’
‘And Benoit is…’
‘German too,’ Sophie admitted, almost triumphantly. ‘Well, half German. He has his father’s hair.’ She chuckled as if she was merely telling fellow mothers of her angelic little boy.
‘But you still haven’t answered me!’ Estelle was fuming, staring boar-like at her employer. ‘Why kill my Pascal?’
‘Like she said,’ Sophie nodded towards Fen, ‘he had found me out. He wrote me a note, the one you delivered to me the other day.’
‘I did…’ Estelle couldn’t finish speaking. She closed her eyes and covered them with one hand as she took in the consequences of what she had done, however unwittingly.
Sophie continued, ‘He threatened to tell Clément and the police. So he had to die.’
‘And you used your ankle as your alibi again,’ Fen confirmed everyone’s suspicions. ‘You pretended to go to your cousin’s for fruit…’ Fen paused and looked to the ceiling for inspiration. ‘Ah, yes, I thought the basket seemed heavy, even before you had collected any fruit. You had the bayonet in it.’
‘Easily taken from Clément’s unlocked memorabilia cabinet in the library. And when you left me in the square, I waited until you were gone and doubled back to the vineyards. I’d sent a message to Pascal to meet me there, you see. Silly oaf thought I would pay for his silence. Well, I paid all right, but with steel, not gold!’ Sophie almost seemed to be enjoying herself, but a frown was still firmly set on Fen’s forehead.
‘You gave him seven inches of bayonet blade.’
‘And hoped the wild boar might hide the cause of death, but there you go, he was found too soon for that.’
‘You disgust me!’ Estelle snarled at Sophie.
‘Ha, I disgust you? The thief who was stealing from me? It was self-defence! I was protecting my assets from you thieves! Candlesticks hidden in the wine press – come on, Estelle, what sort of amateur are you?’
A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1) Page 22
