From her perch on the ladder Michael had carried down to the church for her, Katherine squinted, then dabbed more blue paint onto Mary’s robe. The painting of Madonna and Child she was trying to repair had been bolted in its frame to the wall, which was one reason it was in such bad shape. Moisture, heat and cold, dirt and crumbles of stone had rendered the original, amateur artist’s work even less appealing than it must have been when it was new in the late nineteenth century. In the cold morning light, the Madonna looked thin and stressed, the baby uninterested, staring blankly away from his mother. No joy, no mystery, no magic. She would give the project another fifteen minutes, then move on to the stations of the cross, a series of faded pieces that were probably older, but no more masterpieces than the one she was working on.
“Jesus’s face,” someone said, and Katherine turned slightly, careful not to overbalance on the narrow step of the ladder. “Jesus looks like an old man.”
It was Mme Pomfort, and with her, Mme Robilier, who nodded vigorously. M. Robilier, wrapped up in a long coat, muffler, and knitted cap, looked up at her, a slight frown on his face. Everyone knew he had dementia and that his wife kept a close watch for fear he would wander off into the forests of the Morvan if left too long on his own. He smiled up at Katherine suddenly, and his smile reminded her of Jeannette’s, a sudden ray of sunshine. She smiled back.
“I’m not sure what I can do about that unless I paint right over the original artist’s work. I’m only touching up the color and bringing a few details into sharper focus.”
“You may paint over that monstrosity. We want a baby Jesus without wrinkles and a long face.”
“Yes, we do,” Mme Robilier said, “bien sûr.”
It wasn’t that Katherine didn’t agree with them, but how was she supposed to get to all those stations and get done by lunchtime? One didn’t just slap on a coat of paint and, voilà, a portrait of the savior of mankind appeared. “I’ll see what I can do.” Maybe the other pieces would have to wait until after Christmas. The stations of the cross were more of an Easter thing anyway, weren’t they? “Have you seen Marie today? I haven’t wanted to be a pest, but I thought she was due a couple of days ago.”
“It’s her first. She will be late,” Mme Pomfort said, with authority.
“The baby Jesus?” M. Robilier said, entering the conversation from a different point on the compass.
“Non, chéri,” his wife said, shushing him with a firm pat on the hand. “I’ll explain later.” He nodded, looked into her eyes with that bland, innocent smile. Katherine thought there were many ways to be a loving couple.
Mme Pomfort announced that she had to freshen the paper wreaths for the mairie’s community room in preparation for the dinner, and the floor there needed a good scrubbing. “The pétanque group met there recently and they left muddy footprints everywhere. I really don’t know why the mayor lets them use the room. A disgrace, really.”
“They weren’t playing the game in there, were they?” Katherine could imagine Emile trying to talk the mayor into letting the men use the room as an indoor court, but couldn’t imagine the mayor agreeing. Of course, Emile might not have asked first. He took his role as president of the club seriously. The three or four farmers who played regularly were happy to let him take the lead on everything including maintaining the smooth sand surface of the court, preferring to simply show up on foot or in their battered cars on late afternoons when the weather was fine.
Mme Pomfort expressed the firm opinion that walking inside in muddy boots was as bad as rolling balls across the floor and that she intended to speak to the mayor’s wife about banning the pétanque members from the building altogether. At that, Mme Robilier looked dubious, but held her tongue.
Katherine had turned back to the painting and was mixing colors for the baby’s skin, wondering if the churchgoers in Reigny would appreciate a swarthy Jesus, or if she had better play it safe and give them a pink-cheeked cherub. When her cell phone rang, she jerked slightly. “Michael, you startled me. Is everything all right?”
“I wanted to give you a heads-up. A couple of cops came by looking for you. One spoke some English. I told them you were at the church. Hope that was okay. Want me to come down?”
Before she could answer, the police in question had come into the church vestibule, a paltry spot only separated from the small church proper by a half wall. Philippe and the captain who had interviewed them and who apparently suspected Pippa of being in love with the butcher. “They’re here. All’s well, sweetie, thanks. I intend to stay on my ladder.”
Mme Pomfort sat down on a wooden bench with an audible thump. Katherine wondered if the police would be able to dislodge her without a direct order when it was obvious that something interesting might happen. M. Robilier looked uneasily from his wife to the uniformed Philippe and back at her again. He began to rock back and forth in agitation. Mme Robilier was clearly torn, wanting very much to hear what was happening, but feeling her husband’s restlessness. True to her promise, Katherine remained on the ladder, paintbrush in hand, and said only, “Bonjour, messieurs.”
The senior officer clasped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat, looking pointedly at the old woman dressed in black, seemingly attached to her seat. She sat staring back at him implacably, her lips pursed, her posture straight. Katherine turned back to the painting to hide a smile, applying a beige base coat to the oval of the baby’s face, rounding it slightly so it looked less like that of an aggressive lawyer’s she remembered from L.A. “Already better,” she said under her breath.
The standoff below her continued and the policeman blinked first. “Madame Goff, I thought you might know where your friend is, the Englishwoman? She’s not in her house.”
Katherine wanted to believe they were returning the car and not in Reigny to harass her again. “I don’t. She hikes the area and, stuck without a car, I imagine that’s what she’s doing. It’s a decent day for a walk.”
“Have you seen her today?” It was Philippe speaking this time, and there was a worried note in his question.
“No,” came the answer. Mme Pomfort had spoken before Katherine could, pleased to have an opportunity to inject herself into the importance of a gendarme inquiry.
“No,” Katherine said, “but I don’t see her every day, you know? It’s only because she needs rides into Avallon while you have her car—” She stopped. If Mme Pomfort didn’t know Pippa was a suspect in the murder, Katherine didn’t want to let it slip.
The older woman’s body twitched and she rotated her head between Katherine and the gendarmes, triumphant. This would be news worth having, whatever it was. Katherine hoped the police knew a busybody when they saw one, and that they would be more careful than she had been. Poor Pippa wouldn’t last long in the shunning Mme Pomfort could orchestrate if it was known she was a suspect in a murder case.
“Have you brought back her car?” Katherine said, hoping her nosy neighbor would assume it had merely broken down somewhere.
“May we speak with you privately?” the older policeman said in French, looking up at Katherine and then down at Madame. Since Mme Robilier and her husband had slipped away as soon as the policemen planted themselves in the church’s aisle, the implicit message could only be aimed at Reigny’s leading citizen, and she didn’t look as though she was going to go without a direct order.
Katherine wasn’t going to budge either. “I’m in the middle of painting this and the pigment will get harder to manipulate if I stop now. And, anyway,” she switched to French, “Jesus needs a face and I’m running out of time.”
“Madame,” the captain said, turning to the old woman. “We need the building. I must ask you—”
“I am late for the mairie as it is. You shouldn’t have kept me here,” Mme Pomfort said, “if you did not need me. Sometimes I wonder why we even have gendarmes if they cannot carry out their duties without inconveniencing people. Mme Goff, you may continue with the Madonna and Child.” She swept out of the church, head high, her role as the unofficial art committee chair—and her dignity—intact.
Philippe went to close the heavy, battered door, and then came back. Katherine put the base coat on Jesus’s hands and feet. The Madonna’s makeover would have to wait for next year. She decided to come down off the ladder. Her feet hurt from standing on the narrow step, and her hands were cold.
She sat on the bench Madame had vacated and the captain came to stand in front of her. “We have brought her car back, although there are still questions. We hoped you might be able to clear a few things up.”
“What can you still want to know that I can help with? I’ve told you I think it’s impossible, stupid, really, to think of her as a possible murderer. She is, I admit, a bit clumsy explaining herself. She wishes she had more French. But she is a sincere person who only wants to be careful in her research, and I think she needs protecting right now rather than being badgered as a suspect. Someone is trying to frighten her and even to frame her. That seems obvious to me.” Having said her piece, Katherine took a deep breath and waited.
The older policeman nodded at Philippe. The younger man looked so handsome in his blue bomber-style jacket and narrow trousers, standing at attention, that Katherine was reminded of an old World War II image of RAF pilots. No wonder Pippa stammered when she mentioned him, and blushed.
“We are coming to the same conclusion,” he said in English. He must have been designated beforehand to interpret, which meant her own French wasn’t anywhere near as good as she thought. “We cannot share details of our investigation, Madame, but je vous assure, our investigation is turning in different directions. However, we must speak to Mademoiselle Pip—your friend. It is essential that we ask her a few things that will help us go forward.” He shot a look at his boss, who did not seem to have noticed the slip into Pippa’s first name.
“Then I’m especially sorry I don’t know where she is at the moment. I’m sure it will relieve her mind greatly. It certainly eases my concern. Will you leave the car at her house?”
“I myself will be waiting with the car for her return,” Philippe said, straightening his shoulders and lifting his chin.
The captain grunted again and spoke rapidly to his junior officer. Philippe translated. “The captain wishes to know if you saw anything unusual when you were at the museum the day he came upon you?”
Suddenly, Katherine was on shaky ground. That was the day she found the scrap of paper, the clue she hadn’t shared with the police. Both she and Pippa had made things more difficult for themselves by holding back their finds but, like Pippa, she couldn’t see how to admit it without bringing down the wrath of the gendarmes. And, she argued with herself, who knew if it was evidence of anything? “Not that I can recall. There were bits of things all around, weren’t there? Hard to know if anything had special meaning. By the time I entered the salon, the police had been through it more than once, Madame Roussel told me.”
“You didn’t see, for example, regular women’s clothing?” Philippe said.
“No.” Katherine was taken aback at her own stupidity. “Oh, of course. What could have happened to what she was wearing? I hadn’t thought of that at all.”
“It wasn’t visible when you were there?”
“There wasn’t anything more than some long gloves, I recall, shoes and odd bits, and everything was vintage. I’m curious. Can you tell me what you decided about the wig?” Katherine spoke in French, not ready to admit linguistic defeat, or how to communicate the planting of evidence versus what she knew better, the planting of roses.
Whatever he thought she meant, the senior policeman only said, “That is police business, Madame.” He turned and spoke rapidly to Philippe, and the two thanked her and hurried out.
Odd, Katherine thought, slowly climbing back up the ladder. Good news that they didn’t think Pippa was credible as a killer, but nothing to hint at what they had learned from the wig or the horrible defacing of Pippa’s car. She was torn between a desire to know more and the shame of having deliberately held back information. Not lying, exactly, she told herself. If they had enough to point them in some other direction, they could hardly need her little religious tract, if that’s what it was. She wished she could talk to Pippa but, having no idea where the writer had gone, and recalling Philippe’s declaration that he was, in effect, staking out Pippa’s house, she couldn’t think of anything to do that would be more useful than giving the baby Jesus pink ears, a turned-up nose, and a smile she hoped wasn’t insipid. A definitely European infant, undoubtedly what Mme Pomfort had in mind.
* * *
Later, over a cobbled-together lunch of leftovers, Katherine shared the good news with Michael.
“Wait. Someone thought she killed the butcher’s wife? I thought she was the potential next victim.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Michael said as he wiped his mouth and stood up. “The less I know, the better, I think. I’m headed over to Noyers to pick up the wood. Need anything?”
“Something nice from Millésimes? With the Sabines’ shop closed, I don’t know where else to go other than the supermarché in Auchan.”
“I guess we can splurge a little with Christmas coming. The big chain doesn’t have my sausages, anyway.”
“Do you have to bring the wood back in the car? I was hoping your new friend would deliver it.”
“He’ll deliver the rest, but you may have noticed we’re about one fire away from freezing on the next cold night, which is six hours from now.” He put on his Stetson and called to Fideaux, whose idea of Christmas and birthday wrapped up in one was to ride along in the front seat with the window open and his ears flapping in the breeze.
The house was quiet after Michael left and Katherine felt restless. She had done all the painting she was up to this morning in the church, although she would go back to look at it later to see if she’d made a mess of it. She picked up the costume book, but it couldn’t hold her attention.
She knew what it was. The little piece of paper. Was it important, a clue the police should have? And the gold cross Pippa found? And, the big question, who were the police looking at? Maybe they had found fibers they could tie to someone else on the wig that someone had stuffed in Pippa’s car. She picked up a sketchbook and on the back of a clumsy sketch of Jeannette’s face, she began to write.
Mme Sabine’s missing clothes
The cross
The mannequin in the river with no wig
The wig in P’s car
The religious note
The locks on the doors
The trash pickup?
The last item puzzled her. She could understand why the captain thought the path the trash men took was important, but, unless the killer lived in the house next door, not why he was so upset. Maybe they had found footprints or DNA on the gate, although from the little she had seen, she didn’t think the local gendarmerie was anything close to the flashy CSI shows on American TV.
Actually, as she squinted at her list, everything puzzled her. She was glad that she had no pretentions as a crime writer because she would never get past chapter one. That reminded her of Pippa and Pippa’s determination to make her own lists and solve the mystery à la Hercules Poirot’s “little gray cells.” She wondered if Pippa had gotten home by now. If she had, perhaps she and Philippe were having a romantic moment, so maybe Katherine shouldn’t intrude. But if not, there was a lot to talk about. Michael wouldn’t be home for an hour and she and Gracey could use a walk.
From the top of Pippa’s driveway, she glimpsed the car, and Philippe leaning against it, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone. Her watch marked midafternoon, so Pippa was still hiking. She’d better be on the way home. Clouds were massing again, and it was getting colder.