That evening, Katherine sat on the chaise with her arms wrapped around her knees while Michael picked out the tune of another new song he was writing. The white dog curled up at the foot of the chair, watching them both with liquid brown eyes while Gracey attempted to climb onto the battered chaise and Katherine’s lap.
“Down, Gracey,” Katherine said, pushing ineffectually at the mass of black fur that leaned its full weight against her shoulder. “Darling, I’m afraid. Remember when Yves and Albert came to blows? If the police hear about that, will they suspect Yves? I mean, should we not tell the police if it will only make things worse?”
Michael looked up at her, pencil poised in one hand, smiling quizzically. “You think Yves snuck up on Albert in the middle of the night because Albert broke a plate over his head? That’s a little extreme. I don’t think you can keep it a secret, Kay. Everyone else saw it.”
“We could ask people not to mention it, couldn’t we? I could call everyone and explain.”
“Explain what? Adele was there, remember? And J.B., who wasn’t even there, threw it out in front of a cop.”
“Oh, damn, that’s right. At least part of the story, not the whole thing. Do you think the policeman understood?”
“I’m not sure he paid any attention. I’m just saying you can’t cover it up.” He plucked a few more notes, strummed a chord, and jotted something on the score paper on the stand in front of him. “I know you have good intentions, Kay, but next thing you know, you’ll be arrested as some kind of accessory. Think about it. I won’t be able to bail you out because I don’t know how the system works and can’t speak a word of the language.”
“Oh.” Katherine was quiet for a minute, looking meditatively at a spot on the wall.
“I was teasing, sweetie, but I don’t much like your look. I have a hunch you’re considering something that will make matters worse.”
“Michael,” she began, drawing a deep breath, “what if—”
Her husband shook his head and smiled at her in exasperation. “This hasn’t got anything to do with us and, unless you start meddling, it won’t. Please, sweetheart, stay out of it.”
Katherine opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again. Michael was only trying to protect her, and she loved him for it. But if he was determined to keep this tragedy at arm’s length, she had her friends to think about, or at least Yves, who had brought suspicion on himself with his bratty behavior, but who was hardly a murderer. Katherine worried that if the story of his quarrel with Albert got around, he might be interesting to the police. Who should she call first? She still had the serving plate Penny had lent her for the lunch party and it was past time to return it. Yes, that would be tomorrow morning’s chore. That and finding those missing silver spoons, which she was sure she had put in the armoire in the kitchen.
* * *
Katherine didn’t have to call. Penny was waiting for her on the patio when she and Michael got home after their early-morning drive for baguettes and coffee.
“Darlings,” Penny said. “Something is going on. Police cars and vans, every one headed up to the castle. I was trying to reason with the builders the whole time, so I missed it. I would have walked over, but they actually proposed bringing the pipes to the new bathroom right through the kitchen, under the ceiling. Can you imagine?”
Michael exited the conversation into the house, as he frequently did when Penny showed up, and Katherine waved Penny to the chairs under the pear tree to fill her in on the tragic happenings at the château. She had hardly begun when a voice called, “’Allo, mes amis,” and a middle-aged string bean of a man in jeans so short his ankles protruded jogged the length of the driveway to join them. Emile had recently retired from his dental practice and was concentrating on his twin passions of pétanque, France’s age-old version of bocce or lawn bowling, and playing music, in which, he said, he was inspired by Michael Goff, the famous American rock star who was now his neighbor. Nothing Michael had said could disabuse Emile of the conviction that Don Henley might show up any day for a jam session with Michael.
“Emile, do sit. I’m glad you’re here,” Katherine said, patting the chair next to her. “Now I can tell you both at the same time.” Emile pulled the women up one at a time to kiss them properly on both cheeks, then dropped into the chair, a nascent potbelly visible under an old striped jersey.
“It is terrible, non?” he said in shocked tones. “Our own Albert, shot to death by robbers in the night. And the thieves tied up poor Madame and took everything from the safe.” He shook his head repeatedly as he spoke.
“What?” Penny said. “Robbers here? And they killed Albert?”
“No, no,” Katherine said. “I mean, yes, he is dead, but he wasn’t shot and Adele wasn’t tied up.”
“Yes, yes,” Emile said. “Madame Durand at the supermarché told me, and she heard it from the man who delivers the baguettes.” Emile began to explain how the bread truck driver had heard, but Penny interrupted.
“Oh my gosh, are we safe? Maybe I should go lock my front door.” Penny stood up suddenly. “My car’s not locked either, and my jewelry—”
“Sit down, Penny,” Katherine said in a sharp voice so unlike her normal one that Penny sat as abruptly as she had stood, and both she and Emile stopped speaking. “Adele is fine, well, not fine, of course, but not injured. She told me she simply found him on the stone steps at the back of the upstairs hallway, which they use to go down to the kitchen, when she went for his morning coffee. She told me she thought it might be a heart attack.” For an instant, Katherine saw Albert, his crumpled, fragile body as it must have been, and the reality of his death as something other than a test of her social standing washed over her again. She shivered and jumped up to straighten the oilcloth on the rickety table between her and her guests. “It’s terrible,” she said with a lump in her throat, and plopped down in her chair again.
Penny and Emile sat silently for a moment, absorbing this new information, Emile looking stricken that his unimpeachable source at the supermarket might have gotten her facts mixed up. Penny looked worried.
Penny broke the silence. “I hate to say it, darling, but while Albert may be pitiable in death, he was hardly loved even before he hit Yves over the head with a plate.”
“Quoi?” Emile said in a shocked voice. “What? Albert and Yves were fighting? But, do you think that Yves, he perhaps—”
“No,” said Katherine and Penny at the same moment.
“It wasn’t—”
“You mustn’t—”
“Oh dear, this is what I was worried about,” Katherine said. “The police may not understand how trivial their quarrel was, and I think it would be better not to mention it at all.”
“Agreed,” Penny said, the anxiety in her voice making Emile look at her appraisingly.
Katherine took comfort in the realization that Emile wasn’t good friends with anyone who had been at the party. He was unlikely to probe elsewhere. Unless, of course, the bread deliveryman had heard it from Marie, the young cheese maker who had recently moved to Reigny. Marie and her husband lived within sight of Emile’s house, so he might well run into them on the way to the café or the poubelle, the only communal gathering places in Reigny.
“Even if the police didn’t put much faith in the idea that someone killed him, they’d have to at least check out people’s motives if there are rumors,” Katherine said. “We don’t want them wasting time looking at anyone in the village.”
“Of course not,” Penny said.
“But who would do such a terrible thing?” Emile whispered.
“Tourists are in and out all summer,” Penny said, jumping on the idea of alternative suspects too quickly for Katherine’s taste. “Maybe someone saw something worth stealing and … Oh well, best not to speculate,” she added, seeing Katherine’s frown and slight shake of the head. “I guess I’ll go back to Chicago without stories of dining with the landed gentry in their châteaux. Not that I thought they’d invite me. They snubbed me even before Yves flirted with their daughter.” She shrugged.
“He never spoke to me.” Emile’s look said he was insulted by this slight in village propriety.
“Nonsense, Emile. He spent a long time talking to you at the last pétanque event, remember?”
“Ah, but that was to tell me that my friends were too noisy and that one of them drove into his hedge.”
Katherine attempted to bring the conversation back to her point. “So, we’re agreed we won’t say anything about the little fuss at the lunch party?”
Emile shook himself. “I myself am inclined to believe the bread man’s story, although I must keep an open mind until all the facts are known, no? Perhaps I shall stop in to visit with Henri. The sheriff and I, we need to discuss the maintenance of the pétanque court while I am on vacation in Spain in any case.”
Katherine hid a smile. Emile relished his self-appointed role as the town’s living newspaper almost as much as he enjoyed putting together the annual pétanque competition, where he played the accordion for three days straight and sang French café songs in an increasingly boozy voice. At the moment, she was sure he was trying to convince himself that no robbers would break into his little house, with its modest garden patch and the old Renault in the dirt driveway.
“I am not worried,” he said bravely when she asked. “My accordion is hardly the thing a robber would want, is it? Of course”—and here his voice took on a serious tone—“it might be something a mec could sell in Paris. Perhaps in the future I should keep it in the armoire, although that would mean finding somewhere else to put my suit. My dear Katherine,” he said, leaning forward, “I have the thought. It is not nice, I know, but Jean could have done this, non? Should we tell the police?”
“Why on earth would you think that?” Katherine said. “He’s not a violent man, and anyway, Jean would hardly creep into the Bellegardes’ house in the middle of the night.”
“He is a thief,” Emile said, his voice becoming heated. “One of these days he will wind up in the detention center in Joux-la-Ville, you will see. Last year, my new automobile tools disappeared from my shed.”
“And?” Penny drawled.
“The very next week, that Jeannette was using a brand-new wrench on her bicycle. When I asked her, she denied it was mine, but she would not let me inspect it.”
“That’s hardly persuasive,” Penny said. “You’ll never convince the police that Jean murdered the old man to steal car parts. Honestly, you let your imagination run wild sometimes, Emile.” She turned to Katherine. “Adele and I aren’t friends, but if there’s anything I can do, you’ll let me know?”
“Sophie has arrived, so it may be best to wait until things have settled down,” Katherine said. “The policeman in charge seems sharp. Unfortunately, he didn’t share any information with us. The doctor came to verify that Albert was truly dead, which I guess they have to do legally, and there were two uniformed gendarmes there when Michael and I went over.”
“You went to see what was happening?” Penny’s eyebrows shot up and Emile looked envious.
“No, I mean, we went over, but only because Adele called in a panic and asked us to come. And now I’m a tiny bit worried.” Penny looked her question. “They may have misunderstood Michael and J.B., for one thing. J.B. said something about the little upset at my ladies’ lunch.”
“Damn him,” Penny said. “What did the detective say?”
“What was this?” Emile said at the same time. “This is the fight you tell me about?”
“It wasn’t a fight, really,” Katherine hastened to say, realizing she had made a tactical error. She turned to Penny. “Actually, he only made reference to the argument, didn’t even say Yves was involved. And it was in front of a gendarme who didn’t appear to be taking any account of our conversation, and I stopped J.B. right away.”
Penny’s frown had reached the line between her perfectly shaped brows and she was gently chewing her lower lip. Emile was sitting on the edge of his chair, his head snapping back and forth between the two women and his expression alert.
Katherine sighed inwardly, but realized she had better finish her thought before Penny left. “I think the best thing you can do is to keep Yves away from them, and away from Sophie. Last time I saw her, I got the feeling she was still quite upset with all of us.”
“Not with you, surely?” Penny said.
“Yes, I think so. You know how it is—a person who’s been rejected imagines everyone is against her. Anyway, tell Yves to behave, will you? It is awkward that he and Albert had such a public falling-out right before Albert died.…” Her voice trailed off. She wished she knew what to do about Emile, who had a passion for gossip and was absorbing everything, as attentive as a cat with a new toy.
“That won’t be hard,” Penny said, getting up and pulling her cardigan around her shoulders. “He called this morning to tell me he went to an estate sale near Paris yesterday and stayed at a hotel there. He wanted me to have his assistant sit the shop today since he’s not sure when he’ll be back.”
“But no, he was in Chablis yesterday,” Emile said. “I saw him when I was driving to the new music store after lunch.”
“Not him,” Penny said, kissing Katherine and making her way to the steps, calling out as she went. “He went up to Paris before lunch so he could have a look at the man’s library before the sale began. Au revoir, I’ll see you later, Katherine. Let me know if I can do anything.”
“I think I must tell the police about Jean,” Emile said, sitting down again and running his fingers through his hair, which looked afterward as if a squirrel had used it for a nest.
Katherine, who had been hoping Emile would leave when Penny did, sat down too. “I agree with Penny, Emile. It wouldn’t be right. After all, you have nothing concrete to back up your suspicion, and think of the children. What if the police took Jean in for questioning? Who would take care of them? It would be hard on Jeannette. Everything would fall on her shoulders.”
Emile sniffed. “Ah, that one. She is her father’s daughter. She sneaks around, you know, spying on people. I have told you, you need to watch her, dear Katherine. She takes things. Last week—”
“Jeannette’s a child, for heaven’s sake,” Katherine said sharply, remembering her own moment of doubt and feeling obscurely guilty for it. “Please, Emile, leave the investigating to the police. Remember, there’s no proof that it was anything other than an accident.” She hesitated. “And, Emile, mon ami, I must ask you to keep our conversation about the little spat between Albert and Yves to yourself. It could so easily be misunderstood, and we don’t want that. Reigny is too small to cope with people turning against each other.”
“‘Spat’?” Emile said, looking confused, which might have been, Katherine realized with a stab of something like annoyance, a ploy to avoid responding to her request.
“An argument. Emile, you must give me your word. Don’t discuss it with the grocery checker or the music store clerk or anyone, promise?”
Pinned down by her look, he said, “Bien sûr, my dear Katherine. Of course not.” Eyes twinkling, he made a little zipping motion over smiling, pursed lips, a gesture that didn’t entirely reassure her. He unfolded himself from his chair, waved gaily, and loped up the driveway, elbows high and out to his sides, almost as though he intended to take off flying any moment. Katherine sighed as she looked after him. She knew he was not thoroughly satisfied with the outcome of the conversation and had a hunch his mind was full of crackpot ideas to better protect his possessions from whomever was roaming his village looking for people to murder in their beds.
Katherine admitted to herself that she was uneasy also, beyond the shock of the old man’s death, although she couldn’t quite name what was bothering her. The possible tearing of the fabric of shared history that held the little town together, perhaps, if someone was guilty. Even the accusations were pulling at the threads that bound Reigny-sur-Canne into a community. They might not have accepted her yet, but Katherine was determined that she would find her place here. It would be too awful if Reigny was torn apart before it had become her community too. As she put out a plate of scraps from yesterday’s lunch for the yellow cat and snipped some parsley from the patch next to the kitchen door, she worried that the sudden death would affect everything until the mayor and sheriff told everyone all was normale. Meanwhile, she told the cat, “The best thing is to focus on Reigny’s fête, agreed?” It would be good for the village and show everyone, once and for all, that she was one of them. “Truth is, little one,” she muttered, looking down at the oblivious animal, “we really don’t have anywhere else to call home. You’re stuck with us, mon petit.” Thinking about their lack of financial options made her momentarily breathless. When her American friends e-mailed her—because no one ever wrote real letters anymore, “And don’t get me started on that,” she said to the cat—they told her how envious they were of her life in close proximity to Paris, eating at two-star restaurants, immersing herself in the sophisticated lives of the French.
“We make what we can of it, don’t we?” she said. “And right now, I must prove my worthiness to this sophisticated crossroads in the middle of nowhere by shining at my job for the fête.” It made her nervous to realize the weekend was only a month away. The townspeople would have absorbed the news of Albert’s death by then, milked it for all its gossip value, and moved on, as people do. “The first battle is down the hill in Mme Pomfort’s garden.” She frowned at the cat. “You must wish me luck.”
* * *
Katherine had looked everywhere for her shoe, half of her favorite red pair, and now she was late. She pulled on her black boots, humming tunelessly in irritation under her breath. If one of Jean’s offspring had taken it … but why would they? Who wants one shoe? None of Jean’s brood was one-legged, at least that she had noticed. Don’t be unkind, she scolded herself. You sound like Emile. Their mother is dead, their father’s no help. What you should do is invite the children over for American-style ice-cream sundaes. She added it to her mental list of small gestures that might help civilize the feral creatures, even though reason suggested hot fudge was a dubious antidote to total parental neglect.
Snatching up her straw basket, she eased past Fideaux, napping in his usual spot in front of the door, and down the slate steps. It was only a few minutes’ walk downhill to Mme Pomfort’s, but the woman was a stickler about promptness, and Katherine didn’t want to give her something else to complain about. Mme Pomfort wasn’t crazy about Americans. Mme Pomfort wasn’t crazy about anyone who wasn’t French. She was even suspicious of Parisians. But she must be courted and placated because she had the highest hereditary standing in the village. If Mme Pomfort decided you were not comme il faut, you might not get your firewood delivered until after the first cold rain, or a good seat at the pétanque dinner, or her help with decorations for the fête, which was why Katherine was rushing, not even pausing to admire the clusters of tiny purple flowers that had sprung up to decorate the edge of the road.
“Here I am, Madame,” Katherine called out as she reached the iron gate that guarded a neat rectangle of stuccoed house with its ground-floor shutters closed against the daylight. The door opened and the solid shape of Mme Pomfort stood framed in it, almost filling the low doorway. Madame was a widow, with nieces who came bearing covered dishes once a year. She had no pets, because, she had told Katherine sternly one day when Katherine was being dragged down the road by her two shaggy beasts, “Animals are unhealthy.”
“Bonjour, Mme Goff, you are only a few minutes late,” the old lady said with a pinched smile.
“Ah, I’m sorry, but I brought you a little something from my garden.” Katherine pulled a plastic container from the basket and held it out. “Strawberries, the first of the season.”
“Merci, Madame. How lovely,” Mme Pomfort said, pulling up a corner to peer at them. “But they do not look quite ripe.”
Katherine smiled energetically, all the while thinking that’s because they are the first and probably the only strawberries the little patch will produce, and we had cold days last week, and it breaks my heart to give them to someone who doesn’t even want them. “It’s been a cold summer.”
“Indeed.” The hostess parked the container on a table outside the door but didn’t invite Katherine in, instead leading the way across the narrow road to a wood-fenced patch of land next to the ancient, crumbling church that sat at the center of Reigny. The building, made of undistinguished local stone, was pockmarked from centuries of exposure and neglect. The local commune opened the locked doors a few times a year for subdued christenings, weddings, funerals, and special Masses, presided over since Katherine had arrived in Reigny by a distracted African priest who had the air of someone running badly behind schedule. Mme Pomfort made a great show of producing a key to unlock the low gate into the side yard and closing it with a clatter behind them. “We’ll take the sun in my garden.”
Yves had explained that the Pomforts laid claim to this spot, about sixty by sixty feet, through Mme Pomfort’s extended family. “Trouble is, the Robiliers insist they have a stronger claim. Mme Robilier, the woman who works in my shop, says this piece of land was granted to a great-great-great-someone-or-other when it was taken from the Church during the Revolution.” Apparently, Mme Pomfort’s parents erected the fence and the gate one week forty years ago during an upheaval in the Robiliers’s lives, and Mme Pomfort now tended the space for at least a few minutes almost every day of the year to protect her family’s position.
Yves said that this feud had been going on for generations, with the occupancy seesawing back and forth. The current resident Robiliers, whose grown children had fled for livelier places, had not been able to figure out how to strike back. There had been a spectacular move made right before World War II by M. Robilier’s father, something involving a large number of pigs and chickens, that had temporarily, at least, turned the land over to them. The war, the damage done by the hated Nazi occupiers—who had taken all the livestock—and the senior Robiliers’s deaths of old age had given the current Pomforts an opening; hence the fence, the gate, and the lock.
On one side, a tidy herb garden laid out in medieval fashion, its sections separated by small stones, sent out a spicy fragrance. Scraggly tomato plants leaned against the church wall behind them. On the other side of the raked path, two rows of roses, the ground under them almost scrubbed clean. Circling the perimeter on three sides, tall hollyhocks, red geraniums, and espaliered jasmine. Not a leaf out of place, Katherine thought, wondering what Madame would make of her own wild space.
“You’ll have lots of flowers by the time of the fête, I expect,” Katherine said, to steer the conversation toward the point as quickly as possible. “Your gladiolas are budding and your roses are blooming so much more than my own.”
“One never knows. The weather, the soil. I wouldn’t want to say prematurely.”
“Yes, well, you see, I’m hoping that I can count on you to contribute some of your bounty to decorate the front of the stage for our little show. Your flowers are the most beautiful in the village. I could ask Mme Robilier, I guess.…” Katherine thought the silence might stretch to ten seconds, but Madame couldn’t resist that long.
“Oh, I am sure I shall have enough to do the decor. One wishes to do one’s part. Indeed, Mme Goff, I am not entirely sure I understand how you came to have such a role as you do this year. The mayor appointed you, I believe?”
Katherine was on touchy ground here. The mayor had indeed appointed her, but only after Katherine spent several months during the winter flattering him to excess, painting a portrait of his ten-year-old daughter for free, and promising Michael and Betty Lou as entertainment. Mme Pomfort would never approve of an American taking such an important role as entertainment producer, so Katherine had had to lobby for it away from the widow’s hawklike attention.
“Oui, Madame, I am so honored, but I think it was most likely because of my husband’s talent and the famous singer with whom he is recording a new album, you know.” She dared to lock eyes with the old woman for a moment.
“A commune festival with a foreign entertainment. The next thing we know it will be Gypsies. What is to become of poor little Reigny, once the home of great families?” Madame cocked her head to one side and sighed like a true tragedienne.
“Not at all, Madame, je vous assure. After all, Michael and I live in Reigny, don’t we?” Katherine bit her tongue to stop from mentioning Penny, who might be called a resident but who was surely on Madame’s list of alien invaders. On the spot, Katherine decided the inclusion of another foreigner would have to wait. Pippa would not be asked to sell wine.
“Yes, well,” was all Mme Pomfort said before moving as swiftly as politeness allowed to the real reason she deigned to speak to Katherine this morning. “I have already delivered some potted jasmine to poor Adele. You have seen her? She was resting when I called on her.”
“She’s terribly upset,” Katherine said. “She’s not seeing anyone. Sophie is with her.”
“Ah, Sophie, yes,” Madame said, making it sound like a problem, which, Katherine supposed, it probably was, Sophie being so dramatic and so delicate.
“Poor Albert, it was a horrible way to die.” Katherine waited for the village’s unofficial social leader to press discreetly for details so she could emphasize the accidental nature of the tragedy.
There was a silence while Madame examined her hands. Her left hand, Katherine noticed, held the thinnest of gold bands. Then she said in a murmur, “One does not like to speak ill, one wishes to be polite. He was, however, a German.”
Katherine squeezed her jaws together, willing herself not to leap into this and further threaten her relationship with Reigny’s arbiter of social life. She had to remember the plaques she saw everywhere, nailed over doorways and on posts at the intersections of the smallest roads, memorials to French patriots. Maquisards, they were called, locals organized into de Gaulle’s French National Resistance, who had been summarily shot on this or that spot by the Nazis during the occupation. The people here, living on the edge of the Morvan’s forested hillsides, had paid dearly for their support of the Resistance fighters and were, Katherine understood, still sensitive, especially the ones whose fathers, aunts and uncles, or grandparents had not survived. Who was she to criticize them?
“Albert would have been awfully young to have been a soldier even if he had still been in Germany,” she said in hopes of softening any implied guilt without ruffling Madame’s feathers. “His family was living in Switzerland, Mme Bellegarde told me.”
A sniff, and then, “The Nazis sent very young officers into the occupied zone near the end. There is no proof of where Monsieur was living. Read your history, Mme Goff, read your history. But of course a naturalized citizen is not the same thing as a French person in any case.” Madame said this dismissively and with another audible sniff. “I would not be surprised if his death was traced back to his business. You have heard about it?”
“The police haven’t told Adele anything different from what she believes, that he fell on those uneven stone steps in the back quarter of the château, perhaps even had a heart attack which caused him to collapse.”
“He was a merchant,” Madame continued as if Katherine had not spoken, “of German-made guns and ammunition. Young Yves told me last year that he is known as a man whose riches came directly from supporting police states. A man like that must have many enemies.” Mme Pomfort spoke with triumph, as if she had parsed a secret reason for Albert’s death while sitting among her rosemary and roses.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Katherine managed. “He lives—lived—here so quietly.”
“Monsieur Robilier, that is, the Robilier who died before you arrived, not the current one, was a German sympathizer. I believe his mother was German.”
Katherine waited for some explanation of why this was relevant, but Madame merely looked at her with an expression that seemed to say this explained everything, or at least something. Katherine fiddled with the fraying brim of her straw hat, wondering how to get back to a neutral topic before she offended Madame. Michael would be furious if the firewood was late again this year, so soon after Katherine had figured out what to do to ensure delivery by early October, when the nights got chilly.
There was nothing to do but plunge in. “Well, thank you so much for offering to do the stage flowers. I am sure everyone who comes will notice how elegant they are.”
“Will the gendarmes be interviewing anyone in town, do you think?” Madame said, not ready to let go of her conviction that an enemy of a war profiteer, or perhaps another German—her theory was a bit fuzzy—had snuck into Albert’s castle in the middle of the night and dispatched him.
“I really don’t know. There is an officer from the gendarmerie assigned to investigate, so perhaps he will ask Henri to check with everyone about their whereabouts.” Maybe that was it. Mme Pomfort wanted an excuse to grill the sheriff, and the suggestion of foul play might be her strategy to get Henri’s attention.
“My whereabouts are hardly the issue.” Madame’s veined hand flew to the scarf neatly tied at her throat.
Katherine’s shoulders slumped. Really, she could not seem to avoid insulting her neighbor. It was bad enough being American, having a French accent that sounded more like Paris than Burgundy when it didn’t sound like California. But to also have a husband whose guitar playing, gentle as it was, managed to trickle in Madame’s open windows on warm summer nights was too much. Mme Pomfort had instructed Henri the sheriff to demand that Michael be silent by dinnertime, Madame’s five-o’clock dinnertime. Henri had been unwilling to go that far, but he had hesitantly asked the celebrity musician living among them if he could choose only “les ballades tranquilles” in the evenings. She wondered if Pippa, hidden away in her cottage at the opposite end of town, annoyed Madame as much as she, Katherine, seemed to, or if the young woman cared half as much as Katherine did.
“Of course not. I only meant that they will ask all of us whatever they think will help explain what happened. Adele is miserable, and Sophie is struggling with what needs to be done.”
“C’est tragique,” Madame said, more in judgment than pity, rising to walk Katherine to the gate, which she opened with a flourish. “It may well prove to be a criminal associate come to get revenge for a double cross. Or something like that,” she finished, less certain of the specific motive than of the truth that a stranger had invaded Reigny-sur-Canne’s peaceful existence. “In any case, he will have fled long ago.”