The Château Murder (Molly Sutton Mysteries Book 5)

by Nell Goddin

  The Château Murder

  Molly Sutton Mystery 5

  Nell Goddin

  Beignet Books

  Copyright © 2016 by Nell Goddin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  1

  October 2006

  “Don’t mess about with that.” Marcel waved his hand with an effort at nonchalance but his tone had a slightly wary edge.

  Aimed directly at his head, the barrel of the shotgun did not budge.

  “Come on now,” Marcel said, forcing a smile. “It’s a Holland and Holland twelve gauge, you know. Out of London. My grandfather gave it to me when I turned fifteen. Hard to believe I was ever that young.”

  The barrel advanced a few steps. And then, just like that, the trigger was squeezed and the gun went off, sending a spray of birdshot straight at Baron Marcel de Fleuray. With that mysterious sense of premonition we sometimes have, in an infinitesimal fraction of a second, he felt the shot coming and turned to the side, trying to save his handsome face.

  The blast would likely have stung but not been fatal, had not one single pellet happened to nick his carotid artery, which was exposed as he turned away.

  Marcel slumped to the floor of the salon, which was hard stone but covered with two layers of sumptuous carpets. For a moment, speechless, he looked imploringly at the shooter, who lay the shotgun on an antique console table and meticulously wiped it clean of prints. By the time that was done, the Baron had expired, and his murderer calmly went out through the open door and into the chilly darkness of a brisk October night.

  The two-person gendarmerie of Castillac was struggling to get its footing after a series of personnel changes. Gilles Maron was still acting Chief, though unhappy in the job, partly because he strongly disliked the other officer. He found the snobby Paul-Henri to be insufferable, and organized their duties so as to spend as little time with him as possible. So on the morning of October 19th, Maron was making the rounds of the village alone, keeping his eye on the various businesses and chatting with residents, just as the former Chief Ben Dufort had taught him to do.

  Maron was not naturally easy-going or sociable. But he wanted to do his job well, and every morning he walked the perimeter of the main village and by continuing in smaller circles eventually made it to the Place in the center of Castillac, greeting people as he went, and trying to see under the surface in case someone was in trouble but struggling to ask for help. Things had been lately, and a yearning for a more urban posting kept swimming into his thoughts. He liked to imagine himself in a bullet-proof vest, storming into a terrorist enclave on the outskirts of Paris, performing dangerous, important work—anything but monitoring this sleepy village where everyone knew everyone else’s business and the main topic of conversation was what you planned to eat at your next meal.

  Though no one could really call Castillac sleepy, not anymore. The villagers joked that it had turned into the French version of Cabot Cove, with another murder every time you turned around. Like all the best jokes, it came lined with a streak of truth and discomfort, and some didn’t find it respectful, or prudent, to make light of such serious and unfortunate events.

  It was a warm morning, with none of the chill of the past week. The terrace of the Café de la Place was filled with customers, most of whom Maron recognized. It was rather a loud group for mid-morning, he thought as he approached.

  “Bonjour, Maron!” shouted Pascal, the young and very handsome server.

  Maron walked quickly, understanding from his tone that Pascal was not simply greeting him. “What is it?”

  “Have you heard? Babette just came by for a coffee with some news. You know Georgina Locatelli? She’s the housekeeper out at Château Marainte.”

  Maron nodded though he had no idea who Pascal was talking about.

  “Babette said Georgina told her that she found the Baron dead in the salon! Shot to death!” Pascal could not contain his excitement at the news but tried and failed to look appropriately sorrowful.

  “Baron?” said Maron, lost.

  “Yes, yes, the Baron de Fleuray—I am not surprised if you’ve never met him. He didn’t spend much time in Castillac, I don’t think. And when he was here, he…well, I don’t know what he did with himself, but he wasn’t hanging around with the plebes here at the Café, I can tell you that!” Pascal laughed, tipping his head back and showing his straight white teeth.

  “He hunted,” piped up a young man leaning back in his chair. “The Château has that huge forest behind it—the family owned all the land stretching north for many kilometers—where the Baron had hunting parties. I know because I work at the traiteur and sometimes he would order from us. Everything had to be packed in wicker baskets for them to eat out in the woods. Fussy about the menu.”

  Maron was nodding, his mind racing. With relief he thought: hunting accident! And then realized that was fairly unlikely to have occurred in his salon.

  Possibly something happened while he was cleaning his gun?

  “Have you seen Georgina?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” laughed Pascal. “I’m sure she’s making the rounds of the whole village with a story like that. It’s not every day you stumble on a dead aristocrat, after all.”

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “No! I mean, well, the thing is, Maron—the Baron was known to be sort of a jerk. Not that anybody actually knew him. Barely ever came into the village because he didn’t like to mix with the great unwashed, you know?”

  Maron nodded. He was no great fan of the aristocracy himself, having come from a working class family in the north of France who talked reverently about the part their ancestors had played during the Revolution. “All right then, thank you for the information,” he said stiffly, and took off for the station.

  Not for the first time he wished Ben Dufort was still the Chief. He would know how to talk to the people out at the Château. Maron jammed his hands into his pockets as he walked, brow furrowed, planning out the first steps in the new investigation.

  “Bonjour, Paul-Henri,” he said, entering the station.

  Paul-Henri returned the greeting, his expression animated. “I just took a call from Baroness Antoinette de Fleuray out at Château Marainte. Her husband has been shot to death.”

  “I know,” said Maron, thankful that Paul-Henri hadn’t surprised him with the news. “Let’s get going.”

  “My parents might know them,” said Paul-Henri as he put on his coat. “I believe the Baron spent most of his time in Paris, and you know my family has very many associations with the—”

  “Let’s get to the Château, shall we?” said Maron.

  “But the—”

  “Paul-Henri, just stick to the matter at hand, if you will. A man has been shot here in Castillac. It has nothing whatsoever to do with who your mother knows in Paris.”

  Paul-Henri opened his mouth to answer but changed his mind. It was difficult having a boss who understood so little about how the world worked, but he had learned that Maron did not listen when he tried to explain, so he pursed his lips while delivering a short lecture inside his head as they drove out to Château Marainte.

  2

  Molly Sutton, no longer a newly-minted expat but practically an old-timer in the village, was planting bulbs with Fr
ances in the front yard of Molly’s house, La Baraque. They made a mismatched pair, with Molly on the short side with freckles and unkempt red hair, and Frances slender and elegant, her red lipstick flawless. The two had been best friends forever.

  “You have to dig deeper, Franny,” Molly said, looking down at what Frances was doing.

  “I keep hitting stones. Maybe this is a bad spot.”

  “Just pry them out, it’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t like gardening.”

  “So I gather.”

  “It’s so…dirty.”

  Molly laughed. “But think how these daffodils will look in March! I’ll bring you a big bouquet. They will smell better than the best perfume, I promise!”

  “Well, I do like flowers,” mumbled Frances, pressing her trowel under a stone and flipping it up out of the hole. “I’m just more of an instant gratification kind of person.”

  “Really?” teased Molly. They continued to dig in companionable silence for several minutes. Molly was thinking that she had been living in Castillac for over a year, and all in all, the move had turned out better than she’d ever dreamed. Her gîte business was…well, finances were perhaps a bit shaky as she headed into the off-season, but bills were mostly paid and she had some bookings over the next few months. She loved France unabashedly, and her adopted village of Castillac even more.

  “So how are the wedding plans going?” Molly asked. Frances had come for a visit that winter, and ended up loving not only French village life but the bartender at their favorite bistro. She and Nico were talking about getting married though no date had been set.

  “Well….”

  “I thought you were thrilled!”

  “I was thrilled that he asked me, who doesn’t like that part? But look, with my history it’s hard to get very excited about a wedding. I mean, I’m excited about Nico. I’m ga-ga about Nico. But the wedding part of it….”

  “Two divorces is not that many.”

  “It’s two more than Nico has.”

  “What difference does it make? Is he troubled about them?”

  “Not that he admits. Or at least, not that I can tell, what with his English and my French. But really, how could he not be? I think I look kind of…flighty. On paper, anyway.”

  “You are flighty,” laughed Molly, jamming a bulb for the white-flowered ‘Thalia’ into a deep hole and filling dirt in over it. “But honestly? You and Nico are suited to each other in a way that you never were with your exes. I’d be happy to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong and tell him that, if you think it would help.”

  Frances sat on the grass, her legs crossed. “It’s not really Nico, it’s me that’s the problem. I’m worried that…what if we get married, and then…you know, it’s hard, sticking with the same person into eternity.”

  “You remind me of those cemetery plaques ‘Care In Perpetuity.’”

  “See what I’m saying? Cemeteries aren’t the best association with marriage, right? Something’s wrong with me.”

  Molly’s cell phone chirped and she leaned back on her heels and struggled to get it out of her pocket. She had put on weight since moving to France and practically all her clothes had gotten a smidge too tight. “This guest isn’t even coming for another couple of weeks, and already he’s been totally high maintenance.” She paused, looking harder at her phone. “Wait. It’s from Lawrence. Murder at the Château.”

  “Whaaat?”

  “I know, right? I can’t quite…another one? Really?”

  “What else does he say?”

  Molly checked her phone. “That’s it. I swear he must be hacking in to the gendarmerie system or something—he always knows everything practically the minute it happens.”

  “At the Château! I’ve always wanted to get invited there for something. Do you know anything about the aristocrats?”

  “Never met them. The…Fleurays, I think is the name.”

  “Well? I can’t believe you’re just calmly planting another bulb. A murder, Molls! Aren’t you going to head out there and poke around?”

  Molly shrugged. “I can’t just show up at crime scenes and start asking questions. I don’t know them or anything about them.”

  “So what’s your angle gonna be, then?” asked Frances with a grin.

  “Angle?”

  “Oh come on. You know you’re going to get in on this one way or another. Too bad Ben’s not around.”

  “Yeah,” said Molly, allowing some wistfulness into her voice. Her romantic relationship with the former Chief was a big question mark at the moment. Since he had been at the gendarmerie for many years, he still had an informal authority in the village and had been able to bring Molly into a few investigations on the side. But Ben had left Castillac for many months, off on a midlife crisis trip to Thailand. “I got a postcard from him yesterday with a picture of an elephant. Not much of a note.”

  “Well, that’s no help,” said Frances, standing up and brushing dirt off her knees. “But I have faith in you, my dear Miss Marple. If there’s a dead body anywhere within fifty kilometers you’ll figure out how it got there…one way or another.”

  “Thanks for the confidence.” Molly settled the last of the bulbs into a hole and scraped soil on top of it. “But enough about murder. Let’s get back to Nico. Are you worried that once you’re married, he’ll turn out to be someone else, someone you don’t know? That you’ve fallen for some kind of, I don’t know, illusion?”

  Frances pushed her straight black hair behind her ear and looked out across the road to the oak woods. “That’s probably part of it.” She took a deep breath and then spoke in a rush. “And also…what if it’s me who’s pushing an illusion? What if he finds out I’m not who he thinks I am?”

  “Interesting,” said Molly, pressing down on the newly-planted bulb and standing up. “So who is the real Frances, if you’re not the wayward kook I’ve known since I was seven?”

  “What if that’s who I am to you, but to other people I’m someone totally different? What if I’m just a big giant fake and he figures it out right after the ink on the marriage license is dry?”

  Molly stood with her hands on her hips, looking at her friend. “You’ve got mud on your chin,” she said. “And I think you should just enjoy Nico and stop worrying. You’re both clearly smitten, so why not appreciate that and stop trying to pick it apart?”

  Frances bit the inside of her mouth and considered. “Eh, you’re probably right. Got any pastries? All this back-breaking labor has me half-starved.”

  “Silly woman. Of course I have pastries.”

  The women walked arm in arm back to the house, Frances missing Nico even though she’d seen him only three hours earlier. Molly wondered about her ex-husband, and whether this theory explained why that marriage had failed. Had she missed seeing who he really was until it was too late?

  People are mysteries, that’s all there is to it, she concluded as she opened the bag of almond croissants bought that morning at the beloved Patisserie Bujold, breathing in the buttery, almondy aroma and grinning in anticipation.

  Long before they reached it, the officers could see the imposing Château Marainte looming up before them, a red flag flying from a turret on the east end of the building. The 13th century edifice stood on a hill surrounded by farmland, visible for many kilometers in nearly all directions. Maron turned into the drive, which wound up the hill through a wood and then straightened into an allée lined with two hundred year old plane trees.

  “To be clear, Paul-Henri, we are not here to interrogate anyone right now. We’ll secure the crime scene for forensics and make whatever observations we can, and that’s all. I do not want to hear you firing questions at the housekeeper or babbling on to the Baroness about your mother’s social connections. These situations take planning and strategy, and we can’t do that on the fly.”

  Paul-Henri nodded, his jaw working. They pulled into a white-graveled parking area and got out. The Château, a defensive build
ing with slits for archers and two crenellated towers, was not in his favorite style. He much preferred the more delicate and artful architecture of later centuries such as the chateaux at Chambord or Challain. He rubbed a spot on one of the buttons of his uniform while waiting for Maron to decide what to do next.

  Maron was looking at the vast building with his mouth open. The stone was dark and the place felt unfriendly to him. A wooden bridge crossed a dry moat and he set off that way, wondering if the Baroness was waiting for them inside, and what kind of person she would turn out to be.

  The officers went through an immense gate and into a large courtyard planted with parterres outlined in boxwood, with an old well in the center, closed in on all four sides by the gray walls of the Château, five stories high.

  “Messieurs!”

  They turned to see a middle-aged woman coming towards them, dressed in a long wool skirt and a velvet blazer.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” said Maron politely. “I am wondering if you could direct me to the Baroness?”

  The woman smiled. Maron noticed that she wore no makeup, as though she had accepted the plainness of her face as fate, and did not fight against it. She looked pale and her cheekbones jutted sharply. “I am the Baroness,” she said, “though please, simply call me Antoinette.”

  Paul-Henri had been about to speak but whatever it was, he choked it back.

  “I must have spoken to one of you when I called. Marcel…my husband Marcel…has been shot.” She held out a palm and bowed her head, taking a moment to collect herself. “It’s quite horrible,” she said, almost too quietly to hear.

  “Can you show us where he is?” asked Maron, unsure how to behave, having had no experience around aristocrats and feeling pretty sure there were rules and protocols for what to say and how to say it, even if you were a gendarme.

  “Follow me,” she said. Antoinette crossed the courtyard and stopped before an ancient wooden door that was partly open. “This is his private salon,” she said. “The place where he spent most of his time when he was here at Château Marainte. A man’s place, you understand, where he kept his guns and cigars and that sort of thing.”