“All right…” Luc rubbed his jaw in thought. “But is this actually getting us anywhere?”
“It explains his unease and reluctance to provide an alibi.”
“Because he was protecting Natalie Delaville.”
“Absolutely.” She locked the door and tested the catch. “Now all we have to do is prove how that bitch killed Martine.”
“Metamorphosis is a wonderful thing,” Luc observed, stretching his pace to match hers. “One minute she’s a mouse, the next she’s a bitch – what? What have I said?”
“Honestly!” Marie-Claude stopped outside the baker’s and shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t know where you get your ideas, sometimes! Not Madame Delaville, Luc. She didn’t kill Madame Montaud.”
It was Madame Baret, of course. Alexandre’s wife.
“And she killed the wrong woman.”
As the hills slowly turned to russet and gold and the French populace finally came to terms with defeat in Indochina, the Empire State Building had been eclipsed as the world’s tallest structure, civilization was facing extinction from something called Rock and Roll, and Luc had been proved right about Suez, especially in light of that botched attempt earlier on the Egyptian president’s life.
“By the way, Marie-Claude, I received a letter from the Commissioner this morning.”
More and more these days Luc had taken to joining her on walks along the tow-path, although sometimes their route took them through the town hall park or onto the islands, where they would take a picnic providing they wrapped up warm.
“He writes that he has finally rounded up everyone involved in the blackmail and extortion ring. Some seven police officers are awaiting trial, he says, and commends me for a job well done.”
“That the letter?” Marie-Claude tossed it into the Charente, where a squadron of ducks came steaming in, mistaking it for a bread roll. “You know my opinion of the Commissioner.”
“For the life of me, I can’t imagine why.”
“He said I was truculent, selfish and a pain in the cul.”
Luc laughed. “Well, if you overheard that much, you’d have also heard him qualify his statement by adding that you were spirited, funny, and I was lucky to have you.”
Couldn’t agree more, sir, Luc had replied, and damn those horrid children upstairs for drowning out the Commissioner’s words.
“He congratulated me on the Montaud murder, as well.” Luc stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Being a high-profile case, I suppose word found its way back to his desk, but what I’m getting to is that he ended by saying that, now the corruption ring’s been wrapped up and my life is no longer in danger, there’s a job for me in Paris, should we want it.”
“You never told me your life was threatened!”
“Hell hath no fury like a Chief Inspector jailed. So, then. Do we? Want that job, I mean.”
“It might have been high-profile, but it wasn’t exactly brain surgery, Luc.”
All those late nights in the distillery, indeed! I did not conduct an affair down here with Madame Montaud, the cellar master had insisted, that’s simply too sordid to contemplate. Quite right. It may have been his employer’s sister he’d been carrying on with, not his employer, but he wouldn’t have dreamt of taking the delicate, browbeaten Natalie to the distillery had it not been the only place where they could meet and not be either seen or overhead. His office was too close to the main works. They dared not be seen in public. So they either sat down there, talking long into the night, or they sneaked off in his car to plan their new life together, and what a lot of planning there was. For all that cellar masters are handsomely paid and live in grand houses, they still don’t live like the Montauds! There would be no majestic mansion for Natalie once she left Delaville. No parklands, no servants, no prestigious balls. Alexandre had wanted her to be one hundred percent sure before making the leap. He knew there would be no going back.
For her part, of course, Madame Baret hadn’t believed for a second that her husband had been required to work late.
In the way of deceived wives everywhere, she followed him, saw the lights in the distillery, knew about the bed, heard him whispering on the telephone in the hall. She’d had no trouble tracing the number to the Domaine and knew immediately who he was carrying on with. (Who else was there, for goodness sake? Hardly that pale, downtrodden sister!) So, again in the way of deceived wives everywhere, she hoped and then prayed the affair would blow over. Until the day she overheard him talking about their new life together…
From that moment on, revenge was all that consumed her. Revenge on the woman who had destroyed her life. Revenge on the man who discarded her.
“The marble bust might look like the instrument of a crime of passion, a spur-of-the-moment decision, grabbing the first object to hand,” Marie-Claude said, as they paused to watch the churning waters of the millrush merge with the stately river. “But equally it smacked of a squeamish reluctance to be facing the victim.”
A uniquely feminine approach to murder. As was the cold-blooded planning.
“It was easy enough to get a set of her husband’s keys cut.”
“One of the locksmiths confirmed it straight away, but as evidence it was still far from conclusive.”
“No, but it all mounted up.” She kicked the fallen leaves as she walked. Alder, willow and poplar. “Madame Baret’s mistake was planting the desk key in Marline’s pocket.”
Good heavens, women as elegant as Madame Montaud don’t use pockets! They tuck them away tidily in their Chanel handbags, which meant someone had used that key to get into her desk and replaced it in a hurry. And if it wasn’t to take something out, then it must be to put something in.
A quick check of the keys proved that the letter had been typed on the Barets’ private typewriter, not in the office at the Domaine, but it had been a clever move on Madame Baret’s part. If the head of a cognac house wanted rid of their cellar master, this would not be made public knowledge. A gentleman’s agreement between the two parties, however bitter underneath, would not show on the surface. Both had too much invested in the business to jeopardize their reputations.
“She was smart about fingerprints, too.”
Taking care the only ones lifted were her husband’s, and who would think anything odd about seeing a lady of quality going round in evening gloves? Exactly. And whatever excuse she’d used to lure Madame Montaud down to the cellars, she must have thought it was her lucky day when Martine agreed so easily. But then, of course, she didn’t know she was setting a trap for the wrong woman.
“Too smart about the fingerprints,” Luc said. They had stopped to watch one of the wooden, flat-bottomed gabarres pass through the lock, laden with casks lashed with ropes. “That was one of the things that bothered me from the outset. That if Martine Montaud was exerting so much passion in the cellar master’s quarters, why weren’t hers there, too?”
“She misjudged the calibre of Madame Montaud’s jewellery, as well.”
How cold must her heart have been, as she stood over the corpse, unscrewing the emerald cluster? Extracting the key from Martine’s handbag, placing the letter of dismissal in her desk, then walking out as if nothing had happened and secure in the knowledge that her husband would not plead crime passionel. Why should he, after all? The man was innocent.
“Never mind Madame Baret,” Luc said. “Just tell me whether we want that job in Paris.”
Marie-Claude watched the gabarre sail round the bend and disappear from sight. Above, the sun shone through the falling leaves and blackbirds foraged in the litter. Next week “Dial M for Murder” would be running back to back with “Rear Window” and in subtitles, plus she still hadn’t finished those curtains for the bathroom, the cellar really needed a new blind, the old one was a disgrace, the bedroom could use fresh wallpaper, ditto the salon now she came to think about it, and she’d promised Madame Garreau two more days a week with the winter collection.