by Nell Goddin
Dufort gave him a long, level look. Maron glanced away. Dufort stalked around the side of his desk and then back again. “All right. Michel Faure could have dropped a bag of face creams off at the Arbogast house. Perhaps with a note saying You’ve Won a Grand Prize! or some sort of nonsense like that. He rings the bell and walks away. The son is at work and Madame Arbogast comes to the door, sees the bag sitting on her front step—maybe it’s a fancy bag too, from Chanel—and inside is her favorite indulgence and fancy, expensive ones at that. She can’t wait to take her bath that evening and try out her new goodies. Then we have a second cyanide murder, unconnected with Desrosiers as far as we know, and suspicion moves away from the family and towards some nut choosing random victims.”
He walked to the window and raised his arms up, stretching to one side and then the other. “Well? Is it plausible?”
“I think so,” said Perrault. “Although unless Michel knows the Arbogasts, he wouldn’t have known that she was nuts for face cream. But really, what woman wouldn’t try a little Chanel, if it dropped out of the sky? The stuff probably goes for close to 300 euros a jar.”
“That little thing?” said Maron, disbelieving.
“Fantasy can be expensive,” said Dufort. “All right then. Maron, first make some calls and put the word out that no one in Castillac should use any face cream they did not buy themselves. And they should check any jars bought recently for signs of tampering. Get that on the radio and the internet. Then go find Michel. If he’ll let you into his apartment, so much the better. Ask him his whereabouts on Saturday, see if anyone can corroborate. Perrault, you and I are going to see if we can figure out where the source of the cyanide is. There are some factories on the edge of Périgueux, we’re going to drive up and have a look around, ask some questions. Someone is either being paid to hand over a quantity of the poison, or it’s being stolen.” Dufort was already at the door with his coat on. “Come on, let’s move,” he said, his voice still hard. “It’s Monday. I’d like to have someone in custody by the end of the week, not next year.”
Maron and Perrault exchanged a rare glance of comradeship, as Dufort was almost never this testy.
“Yes, I’m aware that it’s none of my business. Also that I’m in no position to offer advice about romance. All I’m saying, Franny—all I’m saying is—don’t break the poor man’s heart.”
“Oh, you’re funny. Nico’s not any more serious than I am. Gracious goodness, we’re just going to hang out tonight and have a good time together, not elope and have a pack of love children,” said Frances. “Do you have any good eyeliner? The stupid security person at the airport confiscated mine. I think he was trying to flirt with me or something because eyeliner is hardly a weapon.”
“In your hands, it sort of is,” said Molly, snorting into her coffee.
The orange cat suddenly appeared from nowhere and jumped up on the kitchen counter.
“Well, hello!” said Frances. “I didn’t know you had a cat. Where have you been hiding, pretty girl?” she said, stepping over to pet it.
“No!” shouted Molly. “It bites! And I don’t know where that hell-fiend came from. I haven’t seen it in over a month. But it is not my cat. It just shows up occasionally to bite me and run away laughing.”
“I’m a cat person,” said Frances. She rubbed the cat’s lips and the cat fell over onto its back, purring. “See? She knows I’m on her side.”
“I was on her side too until she bit me.”
“Just give it up and get a dog, Molls. You can’t make yourself be a cat person when you’re not one on the inside. Cats can tell.”
Molly snickered. “I do want to get a dog. I’ve been sort of thinking one would just show up.”
“Since when do you just sit back and cross your fingers? You’re a go-git-’em kinda girl, Molly Sutton! Is there a shelter anywhere nearby?”
“No idea. I’m not ready to take that on right now. Anyway, today I’m going to paint the hallway, finally. The terrible paint job the last owners did has finally pushed me over the edge. I can’t stand looking at those wavery lines one more second. Plus I got a little crazy and bought mango-orange paint.”
“What, no sleuthing today? Are you feeling okay?”
“Yep. Fine. Well, maybe a little dejected.”
Frances waited for an explanation but Molly got up and went to her bedroom to change into old clothes she could paint in. “Dejected about what?” Frances said, following her. “Are you really upset about my date with Nico?”
Molly cracked up. “God, no, it’s not that. I just…I’m afraid for Michel. I get the feeling Dufort has made up his mind, and the inheritance thing seems so damning. I really really in my heart of hearts believe he’s innocent, but what can I do to prove that? Nothing. I’m just praying the cops don’t find a way to tie him to that second poisoning. That would really cook his goose.”
“But Molls, if he’s tied to the second poisoning, his goose should be cooked.”
Molly shrugged. “Here’s my eyeliner. Listen, you haven’t bought any face cream since you’ve been here, have you? Just on the off chance the poisoner is like that Tylenol murderer back home, we should probably be careful about what we’re putting on our faces.”
“Check,” said Frances. “So, give me the lowdown on Nico. Other girlfriends? Other jobs? I know he studied in the U.S. but he won’t say much about it.”
“I know nothing. That’s all going to be up to you to find out.”
“Some detective you are.”
“You know, I knew a private investigator once. Most of his work was stakeouts trying to catch cheating spouses.”
“I bet he had plenty of work.”
“Sure did. Either people are really suspicious or cheating a lot.”
“Or both.”
Dressed in her painting clothes, Molly went to the closet where she’d stashed the paint and supplies and started to get everything arranged in the hallway: drop cloth, paint can opener, paddle to stir up the paint, brushes, roller, and paint tray. Frances talked about Nico, about the time when she and Molly were kids and they had made a magic potion by mixing all of Molly’s mother’s makeup together in a bowl, and about her ideas for a new jingle. Molly dipped the roller in the tray, smoothed it along the bottom, and lifted it to the wall.
“Painting is maybe my favorite job,” she said, just as Frances was waving her arms talking about the jingle and stepped into the paint tray, flipping it over. Mango-orange paint flew everywhere, including all over Frances’s pants and in Molly’s hair.
“Oh!” said Molly, wanting to laugh, but feeling too depressed about the river of paint oozing over the edge of the dropcloth and onto the floor.
After a flood of apologies, Frances went back to the cottage to change and Molly began to clean up. But as she wiped up the paint with a sponge and squeezed it out into a bucket of water, it finally, blessedly hit her: what had Manette said the other day about Josephine Desrosiers having a stillborn baby? Molly was sure she remembered that French law required a substantial share of an estate to go to any children. If that baby wasn’t actually stillborn, and was alive somewhere, then Michel couldn’t be the main beneficiary. Wouldn’t that be enough to move him out from under the cloud of suspicion?
Was this a brilliant idea, the lead of a lifetime—or had she watched too many soaps as a teenager?
For a moment Molly was giddy thinking of the possibilities. A moment later, crestfallen (and covered with paint), she realized that to save him from Dufort, Michel would have to have known about the child. Otherwise he would still have a solid motive, even if it was due to his ignorance of the true situation. But she couldn’t worry about that now. The first thing was to make absolutely sure that Josephine Desrosiers was as childless as everyone thought.
Molly had no ideas about how to do that. But as she swooped the roller up and down the hallway walls, she felt pretty sure something would occur to her. At long last, she had a lead to follow, and all she had
to do was follow it.
30
It was late when Dufort and Perrault finished up at the factories outside Périgueux. They didn’t speak on the drive home, both of them dispirited by an afternoon of dead ends. Managers at all three places had been defensive and uncooperative, insisting that the cyanide at their plants was used solely for electroplating/film development/textile production. They bristled at the idea that any of their workers could be trying to make a few euros on the side by selling the poison to anyone, saying that the material was tightly controlled and all was accounted for.
There was no way to link the cyanide in the face creams to the cyanide at the plants; Dufort had ruled that out with the chemist before making the trip. His only hope had been finding someone who had noticed something suspicious, and was willing to come forward. He had no evidence that the managers were lying and no reason not to believe them.
Cyanide is found naturally, after all—in apple seeds, cassava roots, cigarettes, and myriad other places. How convenient it would have been for a manager to point out a worker and say that he needed money and been seen messing around with the poison in a restricted area…but that was the stuff of Agatha Christie, not real life.
Is one little shred of evidence too much to ask, Dufort thought, feeling sorry for himself as he drove a little too fast down the hill leading south from Périgueux. Perrault looked out the window, hiding her morose expression. She had so wanted to make a splash as a gendarme while she was home, before her first deployment to another département. Be the one to figure out the puzzle before anyone else, spot the thing out of place, the crucial bit of evidence that had been overlooked. Make her family proud, after all the trouble she’d given them when she was younger and a faltering student.
She, and Dufort, were running out of time. In a matter of months they would be gone from Castillac, and neither wanted to be leaving a possible serial killer behind, their duty undone.
Dufort dropped her off at her apartment, and Perrault mumbled “Thanks” and went inside. Dufort felt a painful pounding on the side of his head. He didn’t feel like going home but couldn’t think of anywhere else he wanted to go either. He pulled away from the curb and drove through the village, north on rue des Chênes. He passed Molly’s house and saw that the pallet of stones in her front yard had been moved, and wondered how her project with the pigeonnier was going. He kept driving, taking smaller and smaller roads until he was on a gravel track just wide enough for his car, deep in the forest. He stopped the car and got out.
The drumbeat in his head wasn’t about Desrosiers, although she was in the front of his conscious mind. No, it was those two older cases, Valerie Boutillier and Elizabeth Martin, who had disappeared from Castillac and never been found, whose presences thudded into his brain so relentlessly.
The weather was mild and the moon was out. Dufort started to walk through the forest, bushwhacking, letting branches whip behind him, his eyes barely taking in where he was going.
Imagine how it would feel to be lost, and to know that everyone had given up looking for you.
That was the thought he couldn’t shake out of his mind, no matter how many other cases had come along. No matter how many reports he had written up or matters resolved. He knew that a man in his position should be tougher, not let unsolved cases eat at him like that.
But they did. And Dufort sensed that all the herbal tincture, breathing exercises, and five-mile runs in the world were not going to change that.
He was either in the wrong job, or he needed to succeed 100% of the time. And he knew perfectly well that was impossible.
Circling back to his car, Dufort felt somewhat better thanks to the exercise, and perhaps also because he had faced the truth head on. The road was narrow with high banks on either side, and he was forced to back up all the way to an intersection before he could turn the car around and head for home. He planned to make himself a simple dinner, drink a bottle of beer, and see if he could think over the details of the Desrosiers case and have a flash of insight.
But when he drove near La Baraque, Dufort slowed down, and then impulsively turned into Molly’s driveway.
“Well, hello Ben!” said Molly, opening the door wide. She was covered in mango-orange paint. “Come on in! Sorry that everything’s a mess. I started painting the hallway, as you can see—it looks pretty good, too, if I say so myself, such a nice cheerful color! It was gray before, which I didn’t mind so much, and it went well with the white molding, but the former owners must have hired a painter with palsy or something because the gray was all over the white molding and the white came up on the wall—anyway, it looked sloppy and awful and every time I walked down the hallway, which is about thirty million times a day, I would notice it and grimace.”
Dufort looked slightly stunned.
“I know, I’m babbling. Please, come sit—can I get you a drink?”
Dufort surprised himself by asking if she had any cider.
“Sure, I adore it so I always have some, I’ll get you a glass. Sit by the stove! It’s warmed up a lot—which obviously you know, since you came in from outside…” Molly shook her head, wondering why she was gibbering like such a fool. She uncorked the cider and poured herself and Dufort a bubbly glass.
“I’m sorry to drop in unannounced,” said Dufort. “I was out driving, trying to sort out my thoughts, and just ended up here.”
A pause, during which they looked at each other frankly, and with affection. He said, “Have you ever wondered whether the path you’ve chosen for yourself has turned out to be a huge mistake?”
Molly let out an undignified hoot as she handed him a glass and sat down on the sofa beside him. “Have I made huge mistakes? Are you kidding me? Didn’t I tell you about my marriage, my job, my whole life in the U.S. that I gave up to come here? One long string of unfortunate choices.” She slapped her palms on her thighs and grinned.
Dufort nodded. Molly waited for him to elaborate but he did not.
“Would it be indelicate of me to ask how the Desrosiers case is going?” she said softly.
“No. Horribly,” said Dufort, and for some reason he started laughing. It felt as though being able to admit his failure to Molly lifted some of the weight off his back and he laughed harder at the relief of it. “We’ve got nothing!” he said, and cracked up again, though by the time the laughter died out, most of the pressure was back.
“The case has some features I can’t make any sense of. For instance—the Arbogast poisoning. The poison was in a face cream jar, just as we suppose Desrosiers’s was. But Arbogast was given several other jars of very expensive cream, and the cream was switched—Guerlain in the Chanel jar, for example. These other jars also had poison in them, but nothing lethal.
“I absolutely don’t get it. What would be the point of going to all that trouble?”
Molly was looking off into space, not moving. “Wait,” she said. “That reminds me of something…” She snapped her fingers. “Got it! Adèle told me that Josephine was really awful to anyone who worked for her. And that once she took all the gardening chemicals and switched them all up so they were in the wrong containers, and the gardener got seriously hurt. Acid burns, I think.”
Dufort and Molly looked at each other. “So we have the modus operandi of a dead person.”
“Less than helpful. Sorry.” Molly topped off their glasses and then leaned back into the sofa cushion and sighed. “Okay, listen,” said Molly, combing her paint-spattered hair back from her face. “I know I’ve no right to say this but I’m just going to say it anyway. I don’t think it’s Michel. I think it will be a terrible miscarriage of justice if you arrest him. And I know it’s none of my business and I have not one single bit of proof to give you.”
“You like him?”
“Well, I…yes, of course. I mean, I don’t like-like him, if that’s what you mean.”
“I am not sure what like-like means,” said Dufort, amused.
“I mean he’s a friend. On
ly a friend. Not a…a romantic interest.”
“Ah.”
Molly smiled to herself, because when she said it she knew it was true, which was something of a relief. It was easier to trust her thoughts about the case if her interest in Michel was only a friendly one.
“Have you checked out Jean-François, Sabrina’s boyfriend?”
“He’s an activist, Molly. That arrest record has nothing to do with violent crime.”
“I’m not talking about that. I saw him going into the Desrosiers mansion long after Josephine’s death. I mean, I don’t know the protocol about these situations, but I expect once the owner of a house dies, she isn’t going to continue to pay for a housekeeper to come clean up when no one is living there? So why would the housekeeper’s boyfriend be letting himself in the front door, carrying a bag?”
“I will talk to him,” promised Dufort. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
They drank their cider and talked of other things, until Dufort glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. He apologized for staying so late, they kissed cheeks, and he drove home on the empty streets of Castillac, feeling more confused than ever.
31
Molly was up early the next morning. She wanted to talk to her friend Lawrence and tried texting him in Morocco, but heard nothing back.
At least maybe that means there hasn’t been another poisoning.
She drank two cups of coffee while staring into space, trying and failing to come up with a way to find out any information at all about Josephine Desrosiers’s baby. Most of her mind knew that it was a total longshot, thinking that the baby had actually lived—a longshot that belonged in a melodrama, to boot. But families were weird and people were secretive, and that was true enough for her to proceed.
She showered, mostly succeeding in getting the orange out of her hair, got dressed, and started the walk to the village. Because what thorny problem did not seem easier while eating a pastry? Zero, was Molly’s firm opinion. She was going to try a beignet for the first time, along with a third cup of coffee, thinking that was going to be a magic combination.
