“Amazing,” Luc said, turning the page of his paper to avoid creasing. “It says here construction’s underway on the St Lawrence Seaway that’ll allow deep-draught ships direct access to the rich industrials of the Great Lakes. Direct access. Can you imagine?”
Marie-Claude switched off. Her husband was clever, conscientious, honourable, but dull. Handsome, rugged, muscular and tall, yet he lacked passion where it really counted. And now, it seemed, he was a failure into the bargain.
At Angoulême they changed trains.
She blamed herself for marrying him.
A week later, the vineyards around Cognac sprang into leaf and an Englishman called Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes. Less than two months down the line, once the vines had been pruned and tied back, an Australian beat the Englishman’s record, but by the time the summer sun was swelling the grapes on the hillsides, the Englishman had once again reclaimed his crown in Vancouver, Little Mo’s tennis career was cut short by a riding accident and a pair of Italians were the first climbers to reach the peak of K2. These things seemed to excite everyone except Marie-Claude, but it didn’t matter, because she kept herself busy making the house nice for Luc.
It was pleasantly located in the old quarter, halfway between the chateau and the covered market, where the streets were narrow, hilly, twisting and cobbled, and the houses built of thick stone to keep them cool in summer, retain heat in the winter, and with fireplaces large enough to secrete a small army. But an old man had lived alone here for the past twenty years and she was damned if she’d be accused of leaving her husband to a place which looked (and smelled) like a pig-sty.
A week’s scrub with carbolic transformed it no end, but the shutters could use a coat or three of paint and although she’d considered returning to Paris in August, the weather was perfect for strolls along the tow-path, and whilst Marie-Claude knew of lots of people who didn’t bother with curtains and just used the shutters, Luc worked so hard that the very least he deserved, if he wasn’t to have a decent dinner waiting on the table, was to be able to pore over his paperwork in a house that was cosy. One or two rooms, that was all. Bedroom. Salon. Enough to lend a bit of warmth and character where it mattered the most.
By the time workers had been drafted in for the harvest and Pope Pius X had been canonized, the Algerians had started a guerrilla war against their French protectors, “This Ole House” was on everyone’s lips and Marie-Claude had run up another pair of drapes, this time for the kitchen, and accepted the offer of part-time work in an upmarket dress shop.
“I’ll be late tonight,” Luc announced one lunchtime, as he washed his hands in the sink. Close by, the bells of St Léger pealed merrily. “The proprietor of one of the smaller Cognac houses has been murdered.”
Marie-Claude laid the cassoulet on the table and lifted the lid. “Good.”
“Good?” He chuckled as he sniffed appreciatively through the steam. “Some poor woman has been battered over the head and all you can say is good?”
“Not good that she’s dead.” She heaped his plate. “Good that you’ve got some proper detective work to do at last.”
All he’d been called upon to investigate over the past five months had been robbery, the inevitable smuggling and once, right at the beginning, an art theft that turned out to be a simple insurance fraud. Luc was a first-rate detective and at last this would give him something to sink his teeth into. In fact, with such a high-profile case demanding his attention, Marie-Claude doubted he’d notice she’d left, although she might as well wait until the warm weather ended. Paris was desperately wet in October.
“Marie-Claude, this duck is delicious.”
It was the market, she explained, scraping out the dish for him. So close it made shopping each day easy, and you could buy the freshest produce without it having been hanging around in a vans for several days as it made its way slowly up country. Luc shot a covetous glance at the second pot on the stove.
“Tomorrow?”
“Certainly not!” Tomorrow she was planning coq au vin. “I made that for Suzette next door. Her husband died last year from an accident in the boiler room in one of the distilleries down on the quay, so with three small children and no work, I thought it might help.”
“That’s very generous.”
“Nonsense. We can easily afford one extra duck. My job, your pay rise-”
“No hat bills, no theatre tickets.” He wiped both cassoulet and smile from his mouth with a serviette. “Do you miss them, Marie-Claude? Honestly?”
“If you’ve finished, I need to get back to the shop,” she said briskly. “Madame Garreau’s visiting her mother and I’m all on my own this afternoon.” She scraped the bones into the bin while he brewed the coffee. “So who died, then?”
“A woman by the name of Martine Montaud-”
“Madame Montaud?” She wiped her hands on the dishcloth and set out a plate of palmiers still warm from the oven. “Handsome, late forties, with dark hair?”
“You know her?”
“As one would expect of the owner of a cognac house, she was one of Madame Garreau’s best customers.” Marie-Claude sat on the table and began swinging her legs. “Very elegant lady,” she said. “Exquisitely made up, hands neatly manicured and I wouldn’t like her hairdresser’s bill, I can tell you.” She sighed. “I shall miss her coming in, though,” she added. “She never took offence when I told her what didn’t suit her-”
“Marie-Claude, that’s the reason Madame Garreau adores you. You give her clientele an honest appraisal and you don’t hold back. People respect that.”
She wondered how he could possibly know her employer’s opinion. As far as she knew, Luc had never met Madame Garreau, but that was beside the point. No woman wants to be told lilac suits her when it makes her look bland, any more than being sold the concept that wide stripes will flatter her hips. Especially Madame Montaud, who invariably left the shop hundreds of francs lighter, but every inch looking the successful businesswoman she was.
“She never struck me the type to get herself murdered,” Marie-Claude said, sipping her coffee. “Well, not bashed on the head, anyway. It seems so… vulgar.”
“You’d have preferred she was strangled?”
She shot him a look to say that wasn’t funny. “Who killed her, do you have any idea?”
“Everything points to the cellar master,” he said sadly. “Like that art theft back in May, there’s very little detective work involved in this case, – oh, and talking of art, I suppose you know Matisse is dead?”
“Cellar master? Luc, the cellar master of a cognac house is just one step below God. He’s not just responsible for the blend, he oversees the whole process of distillation from beginning to end, he even chooses the oak trees from which the barrels are made that will store his precious cognac, for heaven’s sake!”
“And you know this because…?”
“Suzette. I told you. Her husband died in a boiler room fire.” She brushed a curl out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “We spend a lot of time talking when she picks up the kids.”
“You babysit?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. It gives her chance to do a typing course and – hein. The point is, you’re looking at the wrong person, Luc. The cellar master couldn’t possibly have clonked Madame Montaud on the head. That wouldn’t have been his style, either.”
“Ah. You’d have preferred he strangled her?”
“That wasn’t funny the first time, and besides! What motive would he have for killing his employer?”
“Something sexual probably, it usually is.” Luc shrugged as he reached for the last pastry. “Money or sex lies at the root of most murders, plus his were the only fingerprints that we lifted and I found one of her ear-rings in his bed-”