The Third Girl E-Book

Nell Goddin

• Herausgeber: Nell Goddin
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A missing girl. An amateur sleuth. And a whole lot of croissants.

Meet Molly Sutton, recently divorced and ready for a new life, who moves to the village of Castillac in France to open a B&B. She’s looking for peace, pastry, and beautiful gardens—an altogether slower life than the one she’d had in Boston. But you know what they say about the best intentions….

Molly has barely gotten over jet-lag when she hears about a local student’s disappearance. In between getting her ramshackle house in order and digging into French food, Molly ends up embroiled in the case, along with the gendarmes of Castillac. And unlike the Nancy Drews she loved as a child, this mystery is complex, stirring up emotions she thought had been put to rest and terrifying the beloved residents of her adopted village.

The Third Girl is the first book of the Molly Sutton Mystery series. If you like engrossing cozy mysteries, real characters you'd want to get to know, and mouthwatering descriptions of scrumptious food, you'll love Nell Goddin's tale of murder and intrigue.

So take a trip to Molly's captivating world of Castillac and get The Third Girl today!

Leseprobe

The Third Girl

Molly Sutton Mysteries 1

Nell Goddin

Beignet Books

Copyright © 2015 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.

Want a free short story set in Castillac? Click HERE.

For my wise aunt, Claudia Teass

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Not ready to leave Castillac?

Molly Sutton Mysteries

Glossary

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

2005

She was being ridiculous, no question about it. Yes, it had been years since she had studied French, and she hadn’t exactly been a top student. But having moved to Castillac just three days before, surely she could muddle along well enough to buy a pastry to have with her afternoon coffee. The shops were there to sell their wares, not judge her accent, right? And with that thought, Molly Sutton perched a straw hat (brand new, véritable Panama the sign had promised) on her wild curls and marched down her short driveway and into the village, determined to get her first éclair.

Three days had not been long enough to learn her way around the rabbit warren of narrow streets, but Molly had a good sense of direction, and she was having one of those moments of elation expats sometimes experience when they are not in the grip of their adopted country’s bureaucracy, or finding out they have just eaten something like lark pie. The golden limestone of the buildings was warm and lovely. It was the end of summer but there was no chill in the air, and she kept up a brisk pace, peering into windows and backyards, drinking it all in. She had no idea where to find a pâtisserie, but steered toward the center of the village.

Interesting how everyone seems to hang all their underwear on the line—doesn’t it dry hard as cardboard, she wondered. She stopped at the stone garden wall of one house, stepping on a rock so she could see over. Clothes were strung out on the line, dancing rather gaily in the breeze. She was tempted to reach in and touch a pair of those expensive-looking panties to see just how soft they were, but maybe trespassing to touch the neighbor’s underthings might not make the best first impression.

She could see that the underwear was La Perla. Soft, well-cut, très cher and probably worth every penny, she mused. I think if I had underwear that nice, I wouldn’t hang it out in the baking sun. It deserves hand washing at the least and should be, I don’t know, dried by the beating of hummingbird wings or something.

Molly stood at the wall, looking at the three bikinis and a cami, neatly clipped with wooden clothes pins. The alley was so quiet. No sound but the steady hum of cicadas. She looked to see if anyone was around and slowly leaned against the wall and reached her fingers toward a pair of bikinis with a pink ribbon running around the top.

Someone shouted something she didn’t understand. Molly jerked her hand back and looked around to see who had spoken. The man next door had come into his backyard and was talking to his neighbor over the fence between their houses.

Quickly she ducked her head and trotted around the next turn. A street of shops was just ahead. A bustle of people out doing errands, having a midmorning petit café, and gossiping with neighbors. Molly wandered along looking at the unfamiliar shapes of the rooftops, at the signage in windows; listening to French but not catching a single word; smelling roasting chicken that smelled so good it brought tears to her eyes.

Everything was not what she was used to, and she loved everything if only for that.

The street curved around to the right, and then straight ahead was a large fountain. Several students from the art school were perched on the rim with drawing pads and serious expressions as they sketched. Molly walked up and sat on the rim, people-watching until she remembered the éclair and went off to look for a pâtisserie in earnest. She had loads of work to do; the cottage on her property was nowhere near ready for guests, and she had her first booking coming in a matter of days. She should have been shopping for sheets and pillows, and giving the place a good scrubbing instead of wandering around hunting for sweets. But she was feeling indulgent: after the couple of years she had just been through, she was in France seeking pleasure and calm. And she was going to wallow in it, savoring every delicious moment.

Ahh. Yes.

She found herself in front of a small shop painted on the outside in red enamel, with gold lettering over the doorway in a flourishing script: Pâtisserie Bujold. The smell of butter and vanilla practically grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her inside.

“Bonjour, madame,” said a small man behind the counter.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” said Molly, her eyes wide. Under the glass, row after row of pastries so beautiful they looked like jewels. Delectable, mouthwatering jewels, arranged by a true artist, color-coordinated and symmetrical as a parterre. Should she go for the mille-feuille, with its bajillion layers of crisp pastry sandwiched with custard and swirly icing on top? She leaned forward, nearly pressing her nose against the glass. The strawberry tarts looked amazing, but berries were out of season and probably didn’t taste as good as they looked. The cream puff with whipped cream spilling out of it was calling to her. But she had so dreamed of an éclair…

“Madame?”

Molly snapped out of a sort of trance. She took a deep breath and gathered her courage. “The pastries, she pretty,” she said, wincing at her horrible French.

The man smiled and stepped out from around the counter. His eyes went straight to her chest and lingered there. Molly sighed.

Then, so quickly as to verge on rude, she made her choice, paid, and left with a small waxed bag and a silly grin on her face.

She was in Castillac, her new home, about to eat her first real French éclair in almost twenty years.

I’m finally here.Finally in France, for good.

“Yes, mademoiselle, how may I help?” asked Thérèse Perrault, who had only joined the tiny Castillac police force a few months ago.

“It’s, well, I’m at Degas,” the young woman said, meaning the prestigious art school in the village.

Perrault waited. She was already so weary of dealing with nothing but traffic violations and lost dogs, she hardly dared hope this call would turn into something more intriguing.

“My roommate is—she’s missing. I haven’t seen her since yesterday, I’m getting worried.”

“May I ask your name?”

“Maribeth Donnelly.”

“American?”

“Yes.”

“And your roommate’s name?”

“Her name is Amy Bennett. She’s British. And she’s the most responsible student in the whole school. That’s why I’m so worried. She just wouldn’t run off without saying anything to anyone.”

Perrault was scribbling notes, trying to get the student’s phrasing exactly. “I understand. Have you notified anyone at the school?”

“I—I mentioned it to one of the teachers this morning, Professeur Gallimard. She didn’t show up to his class.”

“Exactly how long has she been missing?”

“I had dinner with her last night. Then I went out with my boyfriend, and she went back to the studio to work on a drawing that’s due. She never came back to the dorm, and I haven’t seen her all day,” the young woman said, her voice catching.

“It’s not even twenty-four hours,” said Perrault, her tone not dismissive but sympathetic. “And I’m afraid the gendarmerie only actively searches for missing minors—can you tell me how old Amy is?”

“She’s nineteen. I’m sorry,” said Maribeth. “I don’t know what the missing-persons procedures here are or anything. I’m just—I don’t want to sound like a flake, officer—but I…I have a bad feeling.”

Officer Perrault told her that almost always these situations resolve themselves happily. She asked if Amy had a boyfriend, if she had a car, if she had access to money—and she carefully wrote down Maribeth’s answers in her notebook.

Before calling her boss, Chief Dufort, on his cell, Thérèse Perrault took a moment to think through everything Maribeth Donnelly had told her, and to fix the young woman’s voice in her head. It was only an impression, and she did not have enough experience to be able to know yet whether her impressions tended to be correct—but Perrault trusted Maribeth Donnelly, and did not think she was a flake, or unstable, or anything but a concerned friend who had something legitimate to worry about. Then, in quick succession, she grinned and looked chastened, as she felt thrilled that something had finally happened in the village of Castillac now that she was on the force, and then felt guilty for being so excited about someone’s else’s potential tragedy.

Like everyone else in the village, Perrault knew about the two other women who had disappeared without a trace, but those cases had been several years ago. The first one, Valérie Boutillier, had actually been part of the reason Perrault had pursued a career in law enforcement. Thérèse had been eighteen when Valérie disappeared, and while she had not known her personally, in the usual way of Castillac, she had friends who had known her, and family members who knew Valérie’s family one way or another. Perrault had followed the investigation closely and tried to puzzle out what had happened. She still thought of it from time to time, and wondered whether new evidence would someday turn up that would allow the young woman’s abductor to be identified.

No body had ever been found, nor even any evidence of wrongdoing. But Thérèse had no doubt someone had killed Valérie Boutillier—no doubt at all.

Valérie had not been the only one. And now there was another.

2

It had taken a full year for Molly to find her new home, La Baraque. On the day her divorce was final, she was handed a check for her half of the proceeds from the sale of their house. The check was big enough for her to buy a house all her own, and she had had no doubt whatsoever that she wanted that house to be in France. She had been extravagantly happy there as a twenty-year-old student, but for one reason or another, had been unable to return since. In that weird, post-divorce phase, when her life was collapsing around her and she felt alternately morose and exhilarated, she spent hours every day looking at websites and reading about different regions of France, learning about notaires and contracts and cooling-off periods, and reveling in the stunning photographs of old stone houses and manors and even châteaux that were for sale. The endlesspages detailed the most glorious habitations ever made, and depending on location, they were sometimes cheaper than a ranch house in the suburb where she lived. It was about the best house porn ever.

After a good friend had been held up at gunpoint and a cousin had nearly been raped in her own living room, Molly had accepted that life, where she lived—a place that until then she had not thought of as a hotbed of mayhem—had become dangerous. Part of the appeal of the French house porn was imagining living in a place where crime was lower, and people weren’t getting shot every three minutes. She could retire the canister of mace she carried in her purse, and just relax. Of course, France wasn’t crime-free—no place was these days—but still she felt she would feel safer there. Chill out, garden, eat some magnificent French food, and put her bad marriage and dangerous outer Boston neighborhood far behind her.

A fresh start in a place she adored. What could go wrong?

It had never occurred to Molly to see if she could find actual crime statistics for the places she was considering moving to. It was grotesquely naïve, she realized later, but she had simply assumed that a village with a pretty historic church, a Saturday market where old people sat in folding chairs selling mushrooms, where fêtes were organized several times a year in which the whole village sat down to eat together—she had assumed all of that charm and community spirit translated to almost complete safety. And how, she had wondered later, when it was too late, how can you correct a faulty assumption if you don’t even realize you’re making it?

She had spent months considering the vast array of house choices and locations. Her check would cover a house a shade better than modest (for which she was extremely grateful), but one big house would take it all. In her new life as a thirty-eight-year-old divorcée, Molly needed an income, and so she looked for places that had at least one separate building that she could rent out. If that went well, and she could find a place with enough old barns and stables to convert, she could expand and run her own empire of vacationers, with a whole flock of gîtes (France’s closest equivalent to a B&B) just waiting to be filled by joyous travelers.

Well, empire might be overdoing it just a little. But she had hoped before too long to at least be able to cover her bills. The trick was finding a house that wasn’t already renovated (too expensive), restored (way too expensive), or in such a ruinous state that it would take more money than she had to put it in working order.

While the glossy websites had incredible pictures, she suspected she might find something more affordable if she looked deeper into the less-shiny corners of the internet, and in fact, one day she saw an interesting listing on a stray expat blog. The blog itself was sort of sketchy, and she wondered whether the writer even lived in France: the grammar was iffy, the design poor, and the posts about French life had a strangely wooden quality about them, as though they were fifth hand or possibly fictional. The photographs of La Baraque were blurry, but she could make out the golden limestone southwest France, and especially the Dordogne, is famous for. She could see outbuildings galore, even though some, like the ancient pigeon house, appeared to be crumbling. She could imagine herself there, in the garden, drinking kirs and eating pastries.

Molly fell in love, hard.

Six months later she was bumping down the driveway of La Baraque in a taxi, having sold almost everything from her old life except a small crate of her most treasured gardening tools and kitchen equipment. The sale had gone through without a hitch, and although what was left of her family and most of her friends thought she was insane, she shipped the crate over and booked a one-way ticket to Bordeaux without looking back.

Castillac was a large village with a weekly market and a lively square. It had the orange-tiled rooftops, narrow streets, and ancient stone buildings she loved so, but no particular attraction like a château or cathedral, so while a few tourists were drawn to its quiet charm, the streets were not deluged with visitors, which Molly thought might get tiresome if you lived there full-time. Southwest France was known for its caves, its duck and mushrooms, its truffles; the weather was temperate, real estate prices low, and the pâtisseries plentiful. The perfect place to recover from a marriage turned bad.

Months before moving, she’d set up a website and began to get bookings almost right away. Once in Castillac, Molly had two and a half days to get things ready for her first guests, which was not remotely long enough, time management not being one of Molly’s particular talents. Those two and half days had gone by in a flurry of sweeping and painting and scrubbing, when she received a text saying the guests were forty-five minutes away.

Molly managed to get the cottage looking spiffy in time, but barely. The old stones were beautiful, but they seemed to exude dust so quickly that everything was covered again before she had even put away the vacuum cleaner. The windows were small and she rubbed them violently with newspaper and a vinegar solution so that they let in all the light they could. When she was done, she tried to stand back and look at the place critically.

Well, she thought, I hope nobody sues me after smacking his head on that beam. But it is charming, in its way. I think. Maybe.

She staggered out with a mop and pail, sweaty and grubby and looking forward to having a shower and a drink before doing any greeting.

She was just pouring the white wine into some crème de cassis and admiring how the dense purple color swirled up when she heard a car honking.

Not much of a praying woman, nevertheless she looked heavenward and said to herself: Please don’t be loud people. Or pushy. Or too chatty or quiet. Or scary. And, um, please don’t let this entire idea have been a huge mistake.

“Bonjour!” Molly said as the couple climbed out of a grimy-looking taxi. The taxi driver pulled himself out of the car and nodded and smiled. “I am Vincent,” he said, grinning. “I know English, Molly Sutton!”

Molly was taken aback by this stranger knowing her name, but she managed to say “Enchantée,” and then “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Lawler!” She was glad they were American, so at least on the first time she didn’t have to struggle to communicate. Plus they’d be as jet-lagged as she still was.

Mr. Lawler strode up and shook Molly’s hand vigorously. “So happy to be here,” he said. “And please, call us Mark and Lainie.”

Mark shook hands with the taxi driver and paid him. “Now give us the grand tour!” he said to Molly.

Molly smiled and chattered away as she showed them around La Baraque and got them settled. But underneath her bright expression, she was wondering what the deal was with Lainie Lawler, who never said a single word the entire time, and whose face was apparently so Botoxed she appeared to be frozen in a state of childish astonishment.

Not for me to judge, thought Molly. Repeat 60,000 times. And really, this is a good way to have an income. A little chat, some handshaking—easy peasy. I just need to get enough bookings that I can hire a cleaning woman and leave the dust-busting to her.

A day. That could be everything. Or nothing.

Chief Benjamin Dufort of the three-person Castillac gendarme force walked around his desk and picked up the phone, then put it down again. He looked at Perrault and pressed his lips together, his thoughts inscrutable. “Maron!” he called to the officer in the adjoining room.

Gilles Maron appeared in the doorway, an easy expression on his face although he did not like the way Dufort barked at him. He was in his late twenties, an experienced officer, having moved to Castillac from his first posting in the banlieue of Paris. Dufort had been pleased at his arrival and happy with his performance so far.

“Bonjour, Maron. Perrault took a call at 3:00. Student at the art school, said her roommate was missing. Perrault judged the caller to be level-headed and not just drumming up drama the way students that age sometimes do.” Dufort paused, rubbing a hand over his brush cut. “Unfortunately, as you know, we no longer search for missing persons unless they are children.”

“Stupid bureaucracy,” Perrault muttered under her breath.

“I happen to agree with you,” said Dufort. “I had a case a few years ago, a woman came in to report her husband was missing. Do you remember, Perrault? It was in the papers and on local television. Turned out the poor man had been put on a new medication and the stuff was giving him delusions. Three days later we found him in a cave, up off the road that goes up by the Sallière vineyard.

“People think if their doctor gives it to them, it’s perfectly safe, whatever it is. They don’t question anything.” Dufort shook his head. “At any rate, that’s another subject. We found the man and got him home unharmed.” He pressed his palms together, then clapped his hands.

“Bon, I don’t see why we can’t keep our eyes open in regard to this art student. Just don’t neglect your other duties.”

He did not mention the two older cases of missing persons, the first of which had occurred just after he was posted to Castillac. He had investigated both and solved neither. Doubtless Perrault and Maron knew all about them, as unfortunately, the cases were now part of the lore of Castillac. When he was by himself again, Dufort reached into his drawer and pulled out a small blue glass bottle and a shot glass. He uncorked the bottle, which contained a tincture of herbs prepared for him by a woman in the village, and poured himself a careful ounce. He grimaced as he tossed it back. He did not like this news of the girl. Somehow, he could sense something was wrong, even though he had not been the one to take the call and had no idea where the bad feeling was coming from.

But it was there, no question about that. It was there. Same as the other times.

3

Early the next morning, Molly walked into the village to get croissants for the Lawlers’ breakfast. She could feel a nip in the air and wore a sweater for the first time, and shoved a cap over her red hair, which was crazier than usual. About halfway to the village, on the other side of a road, was a small cemetery. Molly hurried past its mossy wall with only a glance at the mausoleums on the other side. She took a peek at the neighbors’ gardens to see what kind of fall vegetables they had put in, and admired the cauliflower and ruffled kale. The French way of gardening was so neat, so orderly, so un-Molly. She passed one garden and stopped for a moment to appreciate its late-summer lushness, cucumber vines overrunning a trellis, zinnias in a profusion of orange and red, and the slight yellowing of leaves hinting at the end of the season.

She had big plans for her own garden, but had been too busy with the house to do anything yet; the real work was going to have to wait until spring. A neglected potager was right off the kitchen with an ancient rosemary bush in the corner, and a perennial bed along the stone wall in front of the house had a few sturdy things—black-eyed Susans and coneflowers, mostly. In fact, maybe she could find an hour to spend in that bed this afternoon, just to get some of those nasty-looking vines out. It would be bliss to kneel in the grass and get her hands dirty.

She had been up and had coffee, but never minded having another, so she took a seat at the Café de la Place in the center of the village and ordered a café crème from the very good-looking waiter whom she heard the hostess call Pascal. And well, why not just get the breakfast special—a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a croissant to go with the café crème? Why not, indeed.

Pascal set down the oversized cup of coffee. It had a deep layer of milk froth, and Molly beamed at it and then at Pascal, who smiled back and disappeared into the kitchen. She sprinkled a little sugar over the froth and drank deeply, in a state of ecstasy, moving from coffee to juice to croissant. Some Brits at a nearby table started talking loudly enough for her to eavesdrop, making her breakfast even more delightful.

“I really think we ought to consider taking Lily home right now.”

“Come on, Alice, you’re overreacting. Lily is doing well and this is her dream, remember? Her work has been quite impressive here, don’t you agree? Degas is doing an excellent job.”

“Don’t tell me not to mind it. That girl’s been missing nearly two days.”

“Oh, I really wouldn’t worry, my dear. Girls run off for a million reasons, don’t they. Probably nothing. A boy, I’ll wager.”

“I heard she is a very serious student. Not flighty. And if she had gone off with a boy, she’d have contacted her mates! You know they text each other every minute. Someone would have heard from her.”

A family with two young children sat at the table next to her, and Molly had to stop herself from shushing them so she could hear the rest of what the couple were saying. But they had moved on to an aunt’s lingering illness, and Molly stopped listening.

For a moment she wondered about the missing girl, and which parent was right—nefarious abduction, or romantic getaway?

She didn’t want the Lawlers up and about, hungry and unattended, so she washed down the last of her breakfast special, gathered her bag of croissants, and headed back down the cobblestone street to La Baraque. She was flooded with memories from twenty years ago, when she had been a young student in France. There had been that weekend with Louis, the one with green eyes and the sly sideways look, who could make her laugh like no one else…

The officers usually met unofficially in Dufort’s office about an hour after arriving at work. Dufort had come in early after a run even more punishing than usual, wanting to clear his desk so he could focus on the missing art student.

“Bonjour Perrault, Maron. I’ve just spoken to the school and listened to a list of platitudes, help any way we can, blah blah blah. I’m afraid the president over there is more concerned with the school’s reputation than with what has happened to the girl.”

“You do think something has happened? Other than she went off on some lark?” asked Maron.

“You know the percentages,” said Dufort quietly. “She’s too old for this to be a custody matter or something of that sort. Either she’s taken off by herself without a word, or there’s been an accident or abduction. Perrault, I want you to make some calls—airports, hospitals, car rental agencies, etc. Maron, you go around town, talk to people, look around, see what you can find out. We’ve got a description from the roommate. If it comes to that, I will call the parents, and we can get a photo from them. But I don’t want to call them just yet. They can’t help beyond the photo, and we’re not even supposed to be investigating this.” He paused. “First we need to find out something about her movements that night. Make sure you check the bars,” he said to Maron, even though from the description the roommate had given, it did not sound as though Amy Bennett would have been in any of them.

Dufort headed to L’Institut Degas. He walked through the village, greeting old friends and acquaintances, taking his time, keeping his eyes open. Sometimes information came from unexpected sources, and he wanted to make himself available to it. On one side of the main square were three places that stayed open late: a wine bar that served “small plates”; La Métairie, an expensive place that hadn’t yet earned a Michelin star, but was trying hard for it; and a bistro called Chez Papa that was run by a much-loved inhabitant of Castillac, which is where Dufort turned in.

“Alphonse!” he shouted over the din of pop music. Alphonse was mopping with his back to the door. “Bonjour, Alphonse!”

Alphonse startled and turned around. “Bonjour, Ben! I would offer you some lunch but the hour is all wrong, and I can see besides that something is the matter. Tell me!”

“You tell me,” said Dufort, with a faint smile. “What about last night? Anything unusual?”

Alphonse leaned on his mop. “A Dutch family was here with twelve children, if you can believe that. You don’t see big families like that anymore, do you?”

“Not so much. Many students? From Degas?”

Alphonse looked up at the ceiling and thought for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said finally. “I hate to admit it, but my memory isn’t what it used to be. The nights, they start to run together.” He shrugged.

“I understand. I wish I could sit and have a glass with you, but I’ve got some work that can’t wait.” And with a wave, Dufort was back on the street, alert, looking around for anything out of place, anything calling out to him, no matter how subtly.

Dufort had grown up in Castillac, and his mother and Alphonse were old friends. He could remember how Alphonse would come to dinner on Sundays, and make his parents laugh themselves sick with his imitations of other villagers. He brought homemade gooseberry jam that was Dufort’s all-time favorite. Most people in the village were known to Dufort his whole life, except of course for the tourists who passed through and the occasional new person such as the American woman who had apparently bought La Baraque and moved in recently.

It had taken some doing, getting himself posted to his hometown. Officers in the gendarmerie were routinely moved from place to place precisely so that they did not get too close to the communities they served. At first, he had been told it was impossible, but Dufort had a way of convincing people to do what they did not necessarily want to do, and in the end, he got sent to Castillac. Perhaps he suffered from nostalgia, or was just a man who belonged in one place, but he had been happy there for the last six years.

When young Perrault had gone off for her training, she begged him to figure out a way for her to come back too. He had called in some favors and pulled some strings, and Perrault was allowed to come, but only for six months. They both expected to be posted to another village by the first of the year; their time in Castillac among the people and places they had grown up with was coming to an end.

L’Institut Degas was a short ways out of the village, just a little over a kilometer, and Dufort covered the distance quickly. He was not a large man but he was fit and athletic, and he arrived at the main building where the administration offices were without breaking a sweat. He did not call ahead, and he did not expect to get much help.

4

The Lawlers only stayed for two nights, and then Molly was back in the cottage for another round of dusting, scrubbing, and mopping. At least they weren’t slobs. And oh look, a tip for the maid!

Molly snatched up the five-euro bill and shoved it in the pocket of her jeans. More bookings were coming in every day, but she needed to sit down and write a budget before running out to hire a cleaner. She went back to the house, got her phone and some earbuds, and listened to Otis Redding while she worked, singing along with “These Arms of Mine,” her voice cracking in a satisfying way. She hoped the neighbors couldn’t hear.

When she turned to leave, an orange cat was standing in the doorway looking at her.

“Hello, little puss!” Molly was happy for the company. “I’ll get you a little saucer of cream if you come with me.” The cat not only followed, but wound itself between Molly’s legs, nearly causing her to trip and split her head open on the slate walk. She put her cleaning stuff away in a closet, and got together a saucer with a bit of cream and set it down. The orange cat looked at her, then walked slowly over to the saucer as if it didn’t really care one way or another, and took a lick. Then the tail went straight up but with a little kink at the end, and the cat polished off the cream in under a minute.

“Thought so.” Molly smiled and reached out her hand. The orange cat bit her on the finger and ran into the bushes. “Fiend!” she called after it.

The house was still unfamiliar and exciting, and she spent some time not accomplishing anything but wandering through its rooms, most of which had low ceilings with ancient beams. The original structure had been added on to several times so that the building was something of a hodgepodge, stuck together at odd angles. The staircase turned almost in a spiral, its treads worn, and Molly wondered at how many families had lived here, how many feet had trudged up to bed stepping just where she stepped.

She thought of walking around in the meadow behind the potager, but decided she had better get some more work done, so she spent the next hour at her desk, confirming bookings and emailing friends at home, sounding a little sunnier than she actually felt.

Back in Massachusetts, after the divorce, she usually ate lunch at the sink, or even just crammed in any old thing while standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open. But in her new French life, she was trying to change her habits and pay more attention to the small ceremonies of the day. She took a butter lettuce out and washed a number of leaves, broke up some goat cheese she had gotten at the market that morning along with the lettuce, sliced some carrots, opened a can of sardines and crumbled those in along with a few little potatoes from last night’s dinner. For a dressing, she chopped up plenty of garlic and whisked it together with lemon juice, an egg yolk, more mustard than seemed right, and lots of salt and pepper and olive oil.

She stepped out the kitchen door to the garden, searching for herbs, but there was nothing besides rosemary. How can a French garden have no tarragon? What sort of infidels used to live here, anyway? she thought, stomping back inside.

After tossing the salad and pouring herself a glass of rosé, she went out to a terrace off the living room, pulled a rusty chair up to a rusty table, and had a long, luxurious, lonely lunch.

Jet lag had finished having its way with her, so she didn’t feel like a nap after eating. Instead she put her dishes in the old porcelain sink and went out to the garden. Just inside the garage was the crate she had sent from home, minus the kitchen equipment which was unpacked and put away. She selected a tool whose name escaped her. It had a sort of fork on one end and a pick on the other—great for weeding out the nastiest garden invaders. Molly knelt in the grass and got to work on a patch on the side of the house, more Otis Redding coming out through the window, the sun on her back. That sort of weeding can be a kind of meditation, and as the pile of ripped-out vines and grass grew, her thoughts quieted down until she wasn’t having any at all, nothing but the sound of Otis and the smell of plants and the feel of dirt on her hands.

“Bonjour madame!”

Startled, Molly sprang to her feet and turned around. Standing at the stone wall that separated her property from the neighbor’s was, well, the neighbor. A small, bird-like woman dressed in a housecoat, her white hair flying out from a bun.

“Bonjour madame,” Molly answered, her hands becoming clammy at the prospect of a conversation in French. It had been too long since college, when she’d studied it last.

“I would like to say hello and welcome you to Castillac,” the neighbor said.

Okay, I actually understood that, Molly thought, feeling a little surge of optimism. “Thank you very much,” said Molly. “She pretty.”

The neighbor nodded vigorously and then spoke so quickly, and with a stutter, that Molly was hopelessly lost. “S’il vous plaît,” she said, “Speak slow?”

The two women worked hard for the next ten minutes, both of their brows beginning to glisten from the effort of communicating the simplest things, and by the time they said à tout à l’heure they at least had each other’s names, although Molly forgot the neighbor’s more or less instantly. What did stick in her mind was the mention for the second time that day of the girl, the art student, who was missing. The neighbor had looked solemn, and said it might be a good idea to lock her doors, living alone and all.