by Nell Goddin
“You trying to get me drunk?”
“Yup. Then I’m gonna take advantage of you.”
They laughed and hobbled arm in arm the rest of the way to La Métairie.
“Gracious heavens, that bartender could be on the cover of GQ!”
“Ha, yeah, that’s Pascal. He’s usually at Café de la Place, I didn’t know he worked here too.”
“You know him? You’re friends with that specimen of manly perfection?”
“Well, sort of. We say hello and kiss, like everyone in the village. But we’ve never really had a conversation or anything.”
“I’d like to conversate with him right this very minute.”
Molly laughed. She was so glad she’d thought to invite Frances—she felt like she was twenty again.
The coat-girl took their coats and Frances and Molly entered the ethereal world of La Métairie. The walls were painted a soothing dove-gray, and there were impressionistic paintings of the sea in the foyer. A small bar with four high chairs was off to the right, manned by Pascal, who really was almost too beautiful for words.
“I bet he’s gay,” whispered Frances, a little too loudly.
Molly shook her head.
“No, really! When’s the last time you met a man that good-looking who was straight?”
Molly thought if she didn’t respond maybe her friend would shut up.
“Never, that’s when!” Frances said, her voice reverberating in the small room.
Molly shot her a look and Frances shrugged. “I’m just sayin’,”she mumbled.
“Salut, Molly,” said Pascal, with a dazzling smile.
“Salut, Pascal,” said Molly, leaning across the bar so they could kiss one cheek and then the other. In French she said, “Allow me to present my friend, Frances. She doesn’t speak French, which is a blessing, believe me.”
Pascal laughed and winked at Frances. Frances gripped Molly’s arm so hard she left marks. They both ordered kirs and turned on their chairs to look out at the dining room and the other diners.
“It looks like the Early Bird Special in Florida out there,” Frances said, her voice thankfully lower. It was true that almost all the diners were gray-haired. Molly noticed one old lady in a black lace dress that looked like something you might wear to an opera singer’s funeral. Her white hair stood on end and she was holding the hand of a much younger man. Not holding it so much as gripping it like a raptor, digging in with her talons.
“Do you think they’re a couple?” Molly said to Frances in a low voice, gesturing with her head at the old lady in lace.
“No freaking way,” answered Frances. She had turned back around and was making embarrassing goo-goo eyes at Pascal, who was smiling at her charmingly.
The chic woman who had greeted them at the door appeared at Molly’s elbow. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, a worried expression on her face, “but part of the dining room is going to be used for a private party. If it becomes too loud and you are unhappy with your service, we will be happy to have you come back to La Métairie, free of charge. I’m sorry but this is an unusual circumstance of crossed communications and I hope you will still enjoy your dinner.”
The restaurant was so calm, so serene, that it was difficult to imagine a party getting so wild it would be any kind of problem. Molly rather liked a wild party, anyway. She and Frances assured the woman that they were fine and the woman looked visibly relieved and went back to the front door.
Not five minutes later a troupe of five people came in singing bon anniversaire, some hilariously off-key. They surrounded the old lady in lace, all smiles, though the old lady was not smiling even a little.
“Maybe they are together, and it’s their anniversary, but he forgot to get her a present,” said Frances, talking in her normal voice because no one would be able to hear her over the noise of the partiers.
“Bon anniversaire means happy birthday,” said Molly. “Good theory, though!”
The chic woman came by with compliments of the chef, a small tray of amuse-bouches: several kinds of clams and something green neither Molly nor Frances could identify. But they gobbled it all up, Molly trying to eavesdrop on the louder conversations of the party and making more wild guesses about how they were all related. Another old lady sat at the other end of the table from the first one; Molly was desperate to know the connection. Were they friends? Sisters? The second old lady had very white hair put up in a braided bun, a hairstyle Molly loved.
She wondered, would it be rude to lean over and tell her so? She knew that generally the French had stricter boundaries than Americans. But what woman doesn’t like to hear a compliment?
5
Molly and Frances were seated close enough to the party that they felt almost part of it. Frances said she intended to help herself to some cake, if birthday cakes were a thing in France. The group crowded around the old lady, leaning down to kiss cheeks; they chatted to each other in low voices, and to Molly it was obvious that everyone was not terribly happy. The feeling of duty was heavy, and the old lady looked petulant and as though she had a bad taste in her mouth. The woman with the white bun at the other end of the table looked alert and wary, like a bird perched on a precarious twig.
A blonde woman with a limp came in last; she looked to be in her mid-thirties, around Molly’s age. She kissed an older woman wearing no makeup (Molly thought she heard “Maman”), and then she went around the table to greet the old lady, who did not look at all happy to see her.
One of Molly’s favorite things was eavesdropping, and she wasted no time.
“Dear Aunt, you must admit I surprised you this time!” said the much younger man whose hand the old lady was still clinging to.
“Oh, I was surprised all right,” the old lady croaked, looking as though she had just bitten into a caterpillar, or worse.
A dark-haired woman with a bandage on her hand stood looking on with a pained expression. Her husband stood with his arm around her protectively. Is she a granddaughter, Molly wondered, never able to say no to a family obligation even though she is a grown woman? No family resemblance though. Molly decided she was a friend, even though she was anything but friendly.
“Well of course she’s happy, everyone’s paying attention to her!” whispered the blonde to her mother, who was standing close to Molly and Frances’s table. She was well-dressed and carrying a nice handbag. The older woman nodded and they both rolled their eyes. So chalk up another pair who did not appear to be fans of the guest of honor.
But fans or not, they had brought presents. They were arranged in front of the birthday girl like offerings, mostly small boxes with extravagant ribbons, and one large box that Molly guessed held some kind of clothing.
“Hello, Molly!” said Frances. “Should I just take my plate to the bar and eat with Pascal for company? Actually I wouldn’t mind that one bit.”
“Sorry.” Molly leaned forward and whispered, “It’s just fascinating seeing how this family interacts. So much history bubbling up, you know?”
“You know my opinion on families. Most of ’em suck. But this fish?” she said, pointing with her fork. “I swear to Lord Jesus I have never tasted anything so good. I may have to give up Cheetos and just eat this for the rest of my life.”
Molly realized she’d barely touched her starter. The members of the party were settling down to the long table and she couldn’t make out much of their conversation anymore, so she turned her attention back to her meal. Her sweetbreads were grilled, with a thin layer of crispy breading and a sauce so complex and wonderful she closed her eyes to savor it.
“So what are sweetbreads, anyway?” asked Frances. “I have a feeling the name is kind of a fake-out.”
Molly laughed. “Thymus gland, I think.”
“So like, guts. You’re sitting over there willingly putting guts into your mouth.”
“Actually guts are tripe. More or less.”
“Same diff.”
The waiter came by and p
ut another roll on their bread plates with tongs. Another waiter came by and poured them more wine.
“I could get used to this,” said Molly.
“I bet half the people who come here say the same thing. And I agree with all of them.”
“And to think—this place doesn’t even have one star! What must the restaurants be like that have three?”
Frances just shook her head. “Can’t imagine. Looks like it’s all been a little much for the old lady,” said Frances, glancing over at the party table.
Josephine Desrosiers’s face was bright red under her caked-on rouge. She said something to the young man that neither Molly nor Frances could hear, but they saw the man lean away from her, and guessed that whatever she’d said had not been welcome.
“She looks like a bitch on wheels,” said Frances, a little too loudly.
“Frances, I have to tell you—French people, generally…they’re not loud. They don’t shriek in public places. So can you keep your voice down? At least when you’re insulting people or making guesses about their sexuality?” Feeling annoyed when she started to speak, by the time she finished she was laughing and shaking her head. It was fun having Frances visit, and interesting seeing Castillac through someone else’s eyes. Even if those eyes were half-nuts, probably thanks to all the Cheetos.
The friends moved on to a rich chestnut soup that they could barely sip without moaning inappropriately. Then to plates of roast duck with several sauces to dip the perfectly cooked slices in, along with a mound of sauteéd mushrooms that were so good Molly was convinced some sort of actual magic was involved. They finished their bottle of Médoc, reminisced about youthful hi-jinks, and enjoyed their splurge immensely.
“I’m too full for dessert.”
“Well, of course. But we won’t let that stop us.”
“No. Pass me the menu, will you?”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” said Molly. “Back in a flash. I’m thinking the lavender crème brûlée might be in my future.”
“Yum,” said Frances.
Molly’s feet cried a little when she shoved them back into her heels, but La Métairie was not the sort of restaurant where you could pad to the bathroom without shoes. Molly made her way over the dove-gray carpet to the short corridor where the bathrooms were.
Ah, what a fantastic meal. It was worth it to move to Castillac just for that one perfect dinner.
The door seemed to be a bit stuck. Molly shoved harder. Then an extra-hard shove, and she stumbled into the room to see that it was the old lady blocking the door. She was lying on the tile floor of the bathroom, on her side, eyes closed, as though she had decided to choose that spot out of all the possibilities to take a nap.
6
The chief gendarme of the village, Benjamin Dufort, arrived at La Métairie in less than ten minutes. He lived on the edge of the village but Castillac was not large, and at ten o’clock at night there was little traffic to slow him down.
He kissed the woman in charge on both cheeks, greeting her warmly. “Very sorry about this, Nathalie. No one has been allowed in the bathroom, I hope? You’re quite sure the woman is dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Nathalie, looking rather pale. “One of the diners found her. She came straight to me saying there’s a dead body in the bathroom, and I called you first and then went to see if she could use first aid. Sadly, there was nothing I could do for her.”
“Was she here with anyone?”
“Oh yes, a whole party. They were celebrating her birthday, seventy-two I believe.”
“They’re still here?”
“I believe all of them are, yes. We’re trying to get dessert out of the kitchen if it won’t get in your way.”
“Not at all. No need to interrupt your service. And thank you, Nathalie. I will go see her now.”
“Right down the hall on the left,” said Nathalie. “I’m just…it’s upsetting, having this happen. Death is part of life, I know this. Yet—who wants to be reminded?”
Dufort nodded and went down the dove-gray corridor to the bathroom. He looked out to the dining room on his way, and saw at least one person he knew. “Molly!” he said with surprise.
She waved weakly. Not a month after she moved to Castillac, she had found the body of a missing woman. She was embarrassed to have stumbled on a second corpse barely two months later.
Dufort went on to the bathroom and pushed the door. Since neither Molly nor Nathalie had moved her, Josephine Desrosiers was still blocking the way and he had to give her a shove before he could get through. Dufort was thirty-five and had been on the force for over ten years; he had seen his share of death. But unlike most in his line of work, he never got used to it.
He took a series of slow breaths through his nostrils, expanding his belly, and then pushed the air out forcefully through his mouth. Then he took a small blue glass vial out of his pants pocket and tapped a few drops of an herbal tincture under his tongue. His anxiety more under control, he knelt down beside the old lady. He pushed two fingers against her carotid artery searching for a pulse, though he had no doubt from the first sight of her that she was dead. Dufort did not have the expertise of the coroner but he did have a fine intuition about life, and he could see that the woman lying on the tile was no more.
It was true she did not have the pallor he normally saw in a dead person; her cheeks were almost ruddy, as though she had been out in a bracing wind. She was not yet cool to the touch. Her black lace dress was hitched up above her knees but that was the only sign of disarray. Dufort guessed that she had collapsed in the bathroom, alone. Perhaps not the most dignified way to go, but at least it had been quick, which is all any of us can hope for.
He stood up and walked around Josephine Desrosiers, looking with curiosity, noting details of the way she was lying, her jewelry, her shoes. Something about her feet in their dark stockings and low heels seemed poignant. Dufort rubbed his hand back and forth over the back of his head, feeling the prickles of his brush cut. He called the coroner on his cell, and then went to look for Molly Sutton.
“You look a little pale, even for you,” said Frances, cocking her head at Molly. The waiter had come around with tiny glasses of cognac for everyone in the dining room, as a way to acknowledge the difficulty they were all going through. No one makes a reservation at the most expensive restaurant in town expecting to have the place crawling with gendarmes and corpses.
“I just…yeah. What can I say? At least she probably died of a heart attack. Although…”
“I can see the rusty wheels in your brain turning. Although what?”
“Funny. It’s just that…” Molly leaned across the table and lowered her voice, “didn’t you get the feeling that almost everyone at the party hated that woman? Like, really hated her?”
“I was focusing on the food, Molls. This grotesquely expensive heavenly food. But okay, I saw there were some less than happy faces, once you pointed them out.”
“I don’t think they were joking around,” said Molly. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out one of them killed her.”
Frances cocked her head. “Come on, Molls, you really think so? I mean, people in families not getting along—that’s not exactly headline news.”
Molly shrugged. “Just a feeling,” she said. And instantly got a flash of her ex-husband yelling at her. “Donnie used to get so mad at me. He’d yell Feelings aren’t facts! as though if something wasn’t a fact, you didn’t have to pay any attention to it at all.”
“Donnie was a moron,” Frances said, and swishing a mouthful of cognac before swallowing. “I will say this though: I’m pretty mad at that old lady too, because I think she may have cost me that white chocolate mousse I had my eye on.”
Molly turned to look for the waiter, wondering if the arrival of Dufort had put the brakes on the service or whether the restaurant was going to try to muddle through.
“Sudden heart attack—that’s like my dream death,” the young man who had
brought the old lady was saying.
“She was always very lucky,” said the dark-haired woman.
Molly stood up. “Back in a sec,”she said to Frances.
She tapped the young man on the arm. “Please excuse me for bothering you,” she said, in her vastly improved French. “But I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry about what has happened, and give you my condolences.”
The man was clearly taken aback but he recovered himself and said, “Thank you, Madame. I am Michel Faure, her nephew.”
“Molly Sutton, pleased to meet you. And I do agree with you—I overheard what you said about a sudden heart attack being your dream—I mean, not that I dream of dying, thank God, but only, yes, since we have to go sometime, that does seem like one of the better options.”
The blonde woman approached, one foot dragging. She nodded at Molly and said to Michel, “Is there any reason I should stay? I can think of a million places I’d rather be right now.”
“I suppose it would be tasteless for us to sit down and have dessert, and a couple more glasses of cognac? The dinner’s on Josephine’s bill, after all.”
“Michel,” said the blonde woman warningly, nodding at Molly.
“Oh. Right. Sorry!” he said to Molly. “Please forgive me.”
“I’m Molly Sutton,” said Molly, holding out her hand to the blonde, who grasped her fingers gently and gave them a mild shake. Molly had never quite figured out how to greet someone you did not know well enough to kiss. She had gotten so used to the cheek-kissing that not to touch someone in greeting felt weird.
“Adèle Faure,” said the blonde. “This crétin is my brother. Apologies for airing our family business out in public where it doesn’t belong.”
Molly smiled and barely restrained herself from saying, “No, please do air it out! I want all of it! More please!” but instead she blurted out, “No worries, Adèle. I hope you won’t think it’s the wrong moment to say that I love your bag, and it goes perfectly with your complexion.”
