The Third Girl (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 1)

by Nell Goddin

  “Maron, you went after Monsieur Vargas, uh, was it Sunday? That taken care of?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Maron. “He was not in his usual place, the bench in the cemetery behind the church. I walked all over the village looking for him and asking if anyone had seen him. Nothing. Then I thought, okay, if he usually goes to the cemetery, maybe I should look in the other ones—and sure enough, he was in that small cemetery on the edge of Salliac, sitting on the tombstone of a Monsieur Pierre Duchamp, eating a baguette with ham, happy as you please.”

  “He came with you without a problem?”

  “None, Chief.”

  “Nice job,” said Dufort.

  At that moment they heard the door to the station open, and Perrault went to see who it was.

  “He’s just gone and I can’t stand it!” an old woman said, her voice loud and quavering.

  Dufort went through to the front room and put his arm around her thin shoulders. “Bonjour Madame Bonnay, it’s nice to see you. Yves is missing again, eh? Run off to chase the ladies?”

  Madame Bonnay let out a sob.

  Maron and Perrault exchanged looks of surprise, wondering at Dufort’s brusqueness.

  “I keep telling you, if you get that fellow fixed, he won’t run off so much,” said Dufort.

  Maron’s eyebrows shot up.

  “But I cannot mutilate him like that,” the old woman cried. “It seems so cruel! Oh Yves, where have you gone?” and she collapsed against Dufort with a fresh barrage of tears.

  Dufort winked at Perrault. “Yves belonged to her husband Raimond, who was a skilled hunter,” he explained. “He has distinguished bloodlines, doesn’t he Madame Bonnay? A sought-after sire for hunting dog puppies?”

  “He is a Grand Bleu de Gascogne,” she answered, drawing herself up. “He’s been very popular,” she said, wiping her nose with a lavender-scented handkerchief. “And I would hate to deprive him of that enjoyment, you understand.”

  All three gendarmes laughed.

  “But on the other hand, every time he gets a whiff of a bitch in heat, he’s off like a rocket. Could be any cur from the alley, you understand—selective he is not. I’m so afraid he will be hit by a car, or stolen.”

  “Of course, I understand,” said Dufort. All three of us are going out in a matter of minutes, and we’ll keep an eye out for him. And he does find his way back sometimes, yes?”

  “Sometimes,” Madame Bonnay said, almost managing a smile. “He’s such a sweet boy. Now that Raimond is gone, I don’t think Yves has enough to do. Well, thank you for looking for him. I’ll let you know if he turns up. I was going to make him liver for dinner, his favorite.”

  “My favorite too,” Dufort said, walking her to the door. “I’m sure when he gets the smell of that in his nose, he’ll run right home.”

  “All right,” said Dufort to Perrault and Maron once they were alone again. “Perrault, go over to Chez Papa and get that video from Nico. I don’t know why they’re dragging their feet but put a stop to it.”

  “Yes sir,” said Perrault brightly, and left.

  “You have anything?” Dufort asked, turning to Maron. “Thoughts? Ideas?”

  Maron did not want to admit he did not. He put off answering, hoping something might occur to him quickly, but finally just shook his head.

  “I would like for you to go out tonight, out of uniform. Chez Papa, or anyplace else you see students from Degas congregating. Obviously this isn’t exactly undercover work and I don’t mean for you to pretend not to be a member of the Castillac force, not that anyone would be fooled anyway—but I do hope that some informality might help with what I want you to do. Which is: find out what you can about Anton Gallimard. What do the students really think of him? What’s his reputation with the female students?

  “Be charming,” said Dufort, with something of a brittle smile since he couldn’t exactly imagine Maron having that sort of magic in his repertoire. “See if you can get them to loosen up and tell you some stories….”

  “Yes sir,” said Maron. “And for the rest of today, any particular assignment?”

  “Take a stroll through the village and see if you can find Yves,” said Dufort. “Black and white mottled coat, long black ears sort of like a Bassett hound.”

  Maron showed no expression but nodded and softly said, “Yes sir,” as he left the station.

  Dufort stood by his desk staring out of the window, his eyes glazed. Well, she may be able to help with the investigation, he rationalized, pulling out his cell, and tapping in the number for L’Institut Degas.

  “Marie-Claire,” he said, and his voice had a little of that charm he disparaged in others. “This is Ben. I wanted to thank you for helping me track down Gallimard—I found him in his office just when you said I would.”

  “I’m so glad. Anything I can do to help.”

  “And also I wondered—would you like to have lunch with me? Perhaps the day after tomorrow, Friday? I have a few questions for you about Amy,” he added.

  There was a slight pause that Dufort started to interpret but stopped himself.

  “That would be fine,” said Marie-Claire.

  “I’ll come for you at noon,” said Dufort, and they said their goodbyes and hung up.

  He slid his cell onto his desk, still looking out of the window, but in his mind he was seeing Marie-Claire, with her slim waist and intelligent dark eyes.

  Perhaps this is a mistake, he thought. But sometimes making a mistake can be the best thing you can do.

  * * *

  Dufort ran a shorter route than usual on Friday morning. He was in a hurry to get to the station, hoping that the day was going to bring some news in the Amy Bennett case.

  He was not disappointed.

  Nico finally came by with the streetcam video from Chez Papa. He was apologetic, it kept slipping his mind, he was busy, he couldn’t figure out how to send a digital copy—a boatload of excuses, none of which was at all convincing to Maron, who knew Nico to be anything but scatter-brained or inept.

  Nico explained that finally he had made a copy off the DVR with his phone, and then copied that onto a CD since the file was too large to send by mail. He had contacted the security company that serviced the camera, but according to him, they were unresponsive apart from telling him to manage it himself if all he wanted was a copy and there was no break-in or evidence of wrongdoing.

  “I tried to tell them that evidence of wrongdoing is exactly what you guys are looking for,” said Nico with a shrug. “But eh, they didn’t want to bother. Customer service isn’t what it used to be.”

  Maron flexed his shoulders and said nothing.

  Cold fish, thought Nico.

  “All right then, if there’s nothing else I can do for you?”

  “Not at the moment. We may want to question you at some point,” said Maron, although he knew of no plans to do so. He liked putting people off-balance.

  Nico nodded. “See you later then,” he said, and left the station.

  Thérèse Perrault came in just as Dufort and Maron were slipping the disc into Dufort’s desktop.

  “Bonjour, Perrault,” said Dufort. “Whatever you said to Nico must have had an effect—he finally got himself over here with the video. Good job. It’s the last one we know of, and the others have been useless as you know. I will admit, my expectations are low.”

  Perrault squeezed in next to her co-workers and they waited for the image to appear. First the sound came on—the sound of a rollicking party, with someone singing, pop music playing, shouting in the background, the clinking of dishes and glasses—all happy enough, the sound of people cutting loose and having fun.

  They did not have to wait long. “There she is!” said Perrault, pointing to a corner of the screen.

  From the back, you could just make out the head and shoulders of a young woman, standing in a group by the bar.

  “Are you sure that’s her?” said Maron.

  “I’m sure,” answered Perrault. I�
�ve been looking at those photographs her roommate sent pretty much every minute. I feel like I practically gave birth to her at this point.”

  Dufort shot her a look and Perrault looked back at the screen.

  The noise of the video was loud and it was impossible to distinguish what anyone was saying, but every thirty seconds or so, someone let out a loud whoop. It all sounded very celebratory. And then the people in Amy’s group clapped, and someone moved into the frame and put his arm around her.

  “Looks like Lapin,” said Perrault. “Always got his mitts on somebody.”

  They kept watching. The tape was twenty minutes long; it was not entertaining to watch a party’s slow progress that way, unable to hear what anyone was saying, and only seeing the blurry drunkenness of everyone increasing as more drinks were ordered, more drinks thrown back.

  “What were they celebrating, I wonder?” said Perrault.

  All three officers were studying the video intently, watching Amy, and also scanning the rest of the frame for anything, anything at all that might be helpful.

  At about seven minutes in, Amy turned towards the camera. You could see her blurry face, and all three of the officers were struck with how strange it was to see her there, smiling, and throwing her head back laughing—when almost certainly she was dead.

  Because this many days out, what other options were really possible? You can’t ignore the percentages, Dufort would always say.

  The camera was just over the door to Chez Papa, so it recorded the tops of heads as people came and went. At about seventeen minutes in, the eyes of all three gendarmes widened as they saw Amy Bennett put on a sweater and walk unsteadily toward the door.

  They saw the top of her head disappear as she left the restaurant, with Lapin Broussard’s arm firmly around her waist.

  19

  “I don’t really know Lapin,” Maron was saying to Dufort as they drove out to Lapin’s house. “Was that a surprise, seeing him leave with the girl?”

  “Yes and no,” said Dufort. His face looked grim. “He’s notorious for bothering women. Putting his hands on them without any invitation, being rude. Lascivious. But at the same time—he’s part of the village, Maron. People here grew up with him, they feel like they know him. That’s why Perrault looked so stunned when we saw him leave with his arm around Amy.

  “To be honest, I always thought he was more talk than action. That he got off on harassing woman in front of other men but wasn’t actually trying very hard to get alone with one.”

  Dufort was quiet for a moment. He glanced to the right, not wanting to miss Lapin’s house. “I thought he liked to look, and to talk, but not to act,” he said softly. “Several years ago, there was an incident….”

  Maron waited. Dufort did not elaborate. He wanted to jump in and press Dufort but restrained himself. Maron squeezed his hands into fists and counted to himself, at the same time wondering if he would ever be able to tolerate the hierarchy of the gendarmerie. Dufort could be so taciturn and one day it might push him right over the edge.

  Finally Maron said, “So…do you consider him a suspect?”

  “Not precisely. I might call him a Person of Interest,” said Dufort, running a hand over his brush cut. “I want the two of us to talk to him. I have known him for years, all my life I guess. So it falls to you to be the tough one.”

  “Understood,” said Maron.

  Lapin Broussard’s house was right off rue des Chênes, about two kilometers out of town as the road left Castillac heading south. It felt like the deep countryside even though it was walking distance to the village. Fields of fading sunflowers lined both sides of the road. Dufort noticed the forest stretching back behind Lapin’s house, up a hill and over it.

  They turned into Lapin’s driveway. No car in front of the house.

  Dufort and Maron got out, both of them feeling a tingling excitement, trying to anticipate how this was going to go. Would Lapin have a believable story to tell them, perhaps how he had gotten the girl back to school safely? Would he seem nervous, like he was hiding something?

  Was he even home?

  “Lapin is not known for being the first rabbit out of the burrow in the morning,” said Dufort.

  Maron did not smile and Dufort regretted the mild joke. He wished he were alone so he could take some of his herbal drops in privacy.

  The two men strode up to the door and knocked. They listened.

  No sound but birds, and the distant grinding of a tractor.

  “His place is neater than I’d have expected,” said Maron.

  “It’s important not to conflate qualities,” said Dufort. “Just because the man is a bothersome lech doesn’t mean he’s a slob.”

  Maron gave a short nod.

  The rapped on the old wooden door, harder.

  “Lapin!” shouted Dufort.

  Nothing.

  “You stay here, in case he comes out,” said Dufort. “I’ll check around back.”

  As well as he could remember, the house had been left to Lapin by his father, who died when Lapin was still a teenager. Lapin’s mother had died when he was a baby, and he had made his own way after his father’s death. Lapin was older than Dufort by around ten years, and so what Dufort knew about his life was mostly from overhearing tidbits when he was young.

  He remembered the women of his family feeling sorry for the orphan, and that villagers had pitched in to help him out at first, when Lapin was still a teenager and figuring out what kind of work he could do. And he thought he remembered hearing that the father had been something of a tyrant, and that people believed Lapin was probably better off without him.

  The house was small but well-made. In the cloudy light of the morning the golden limestone almost glowed, and the building looked infinitely sturdy and solid. It was old, probably 17th century. Dufort noticed that the roofers had done a thorough job; there were at least four layers of orange tile, and all the masonry work looked neat and well done.

  Dufort saw there was no kitchen garden out back, not even a pot of herbs, just a patch of scraggly overgrown grass and encroaching underbrush from the forest.

  Dufort walked up the hill behind the house and looked around. He looked at the roof, at the windows, at the garage. He turned and looked at the forest behind him, dark even in the daylight.

  People are capable of anything, he reminded himself—he felt that he had to remind himself because he didn’t want to believe it was so. He had no particular feeling for Lapin Broussard, apart from the fact that the man was part of village life, the only life Dufort knew. But that was not nothing, and it made him sad to think that Lapin could have done something to that girl.

  He dug in his pocket for the blue glass vial and shook a few drops under his tongue, and walked back down the hill.

  For form’s sake he knocked on the back door and peered in, and took a look in the garage, but it certainly looked as though Lapin was not home.

  Whether that meant he had taken off, they could not know yet. But as Dufort came around the house and waved to Maron to get back in the car, he was making a list of other places they might go to look for him. He had not forgotten his lunch date with Marie-Claire Lévy, and he couldn’t help that a small, egocentric voice inside wished that he could arrive at lunch with some real news to tell her.

  * * *

  He knew it was probably the wrong move, but Dufort wanted to counteract the upswell of melancholy he felt on seeing the tape of Lapin going off with Amy Bennett. So he reserved a table at La Métairie, the best restaurant in the village, for his lunch with Marie-Claire. Wrong move, because this was supposed to be a sort of working lunch, and besides that, going to the best restaurant put too much pressure on the first date (because that’s what it was, no matter how hard he pretended it wasn’t).

  He drove his own car, a Renault that had seen better days, to L’Institut Degas and arrived just a few minutes after noon. Before going in to the administration building, he looked around the campus, trying to
get a feel for the mood of the place. He saw a group of students walking from the modern building to the dormitory, a young woman sitting against a tree with a sketchpad, an older man raking leaves. The scene felt normal, everyday. He stopped and closed his eyes, listening, opening his perceptions, but sensed nothing out of the ordinary, not even any particular tension.

  He supposed at a campus that small, there was no need for rallies or a lot of public brouhaha. The faculty and the students were all aware that a classmate was missing. And presumably everyone knew Amy personally, at varying degrees of intimacy. Everyone knew everyone, without exception: one of the great benefits and drawbacks of such a small, insular school.

  Amy Bennett was by all accounts a seriously talented artist. Dufort wondered how the school handled issues of jealousy: did they leave the students to work things out on their own? Make efforts to get the students to compete with themselves and not each other? Or the opposite—did they fuel rivalries, push them, incite them to competitive fervor?

  Dufort could remember how it was in the gendarmerie training, how ruthless some of the cadets had been, stepping on anyone they could to get ahead and claw their way to the top. He didn’t see any reason why it should be any different with artists. It’s human nature, he thought, wanting to stand out and be noticed, to win. And when you add the financial divide between a very successful artist and one not so successful…he could see that the bucolic setting of Degas might seem more serene on the surface than it might be to experience as a student.

  He wondered how Lapin had gotten anywhere with Amy. Level-headed, a planner, an ambitious and talented young woman—she did not sound like the type of young woman who would respond to the coarse attentions of someone like Lapin. Was it simply a matter of drinking too much, and making herself vulnerable that way? Amy did not seem to be someone who would drink too much, either.

  Lapin was the last person to be seen with her, and she had now been missing for eight days. Yet Dufort felt decidedly mixed about the break in the case. He did not understand why Amy had left with him, and on top of that, he did not see Lapin as someone capable of doing something so terrible.