Susan C. Shea - Murder Visits a French Village

Contents

Also by Susan C. Shea

Dani O Rourke mysteries

MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT

THE KINGS JAR

MIXED UP WITH MURDER

French Village mysteries

LOVE & DEATH IN BURGUNDY

DRESSED FOR DEATH IN BURGUNDY

MURDER VISITS A FRENCH VILLAGE

Susan C. Shea

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023

by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023

by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

This eBook edition first published in 2023 by Severn House,

an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

severnhouse.com

Copyright Susan C. Shea, 2023

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Susan C. Shea to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1018-0 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1050-0 (trade paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1025-8 (e-book)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

This eBook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

For Rhys, and for Tim, always

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always, there are so many people to thank for bringing a book into being. My dear friend Isabelle Breton, a charming Frenchwoman who lent me her surname and suggested the exact right first name for that character, merci. Rhys Bowen, one of the most generous authors in our crime fiction community, who has been a cheerleader, an inspiration, and in this case, the friend who one day over coffee came up with the theme for this series. At Severn, Carl for seeking me out, Joanne for her brilliant suggestions to make this a better book, Katherine for her eagle eye on the manuscript, and everyone else at Severn for a warm welcome. Bouquets to Christine Hogrebe, my wonderful agent; author Keith Raffels zoom writing group; dear Alice for introducing me to Noyers-sur-Serein and its history and for taking me on long walks during my many visits; my family for their constant support and encouragement; and Covid 19 for keeping me home and at the computer when I might have slacked off. If Ive twisted anything a bit far for my fictional purpose or gotten anything wrong in the telling, its all on me.

ONE

A riel Shepard peeked at the casserole bubbling in the oven. The beef, bacon, mushrooms, and red wine had merged into something that smelled earthy and mouthwatering. Her first boeuf bourguignon , thanks to Julia Child. Hey, girl, she said, licking the wooden spoon, theres hope for you yet. Her glasses had fogged up from the casseroles steam, but a swipe with a clean towel and she could admire the warm baguette sliced in the cloth basket she had brought back from France. Dan was due home any minute and she was ready with her first French country dinner.

Ariel wasnt used to serious cooking. Take-out Chinese and pizza had sufficed through grad school, followed by basic recipes for roast chicken and mac and cheese. Luckily, her inherited metabolism kept the evidence of her calorie-heavy diet from showing up on her hips. Cooking buttery, herb-laced French dishes like those she ate every day during her college study-abroad year hadnt been a thought until she and Dan decided to drive the length of the country on their honeymoon.

Shed been married almost four years, but it still felt like a dream. Daniel Shepard had materialized in her life at someones dinner party in Manhattan, a gift from the universe. She had lots of boyfriends, some best forgotten, in her twenties. No keepers, she had explained to her friends. Being single past thirty might not have been her first choice, but this was the twenty-first century and it wasnt anything to fear, right? So she was ready to believe his phone call to her the day after the party was nothing to get excited about. Neither were the flowers that arrived at her studio apartment after their first date, nor the invitation to a party at his beach house in the Hamptons a month later. By the time she was ready to admit her defenses had been breached, he had made it plain he was in love.

He was older, forty-six years to her thirty-four. Hed been married before an alarm bell and he had two almost grown sons and an ex-wife who seemed to appreciate her handsome settlement and left him alone. He was apparently rich another alarm bell. Ariels parents had lectured their children about the evils of capitalism from the safety of their funky A-frame home near a small Vermont town. She did some online investigation from the closet-sized campus office she shared with another faculty member of the Queens College English Department. Dan was earning his money by directing a reputable hedge fund in the heart of Wall Street. Not that I know what a hedge fund is, she texted to a friend, but it may be as close to printing money as a private company can get.

For all that and for the intensity he showed when talking about big money, she noticed Dan enjoyed browsing in her favorite used bookstore and ending up at the slightly dingy coffee bar in her Chelsea neighborhood. It took some mental gymnastics to accept that he also felt at home at four-star hotels in Paris and the Bahamas, both of which featured in their extended honeymoon.

Ariel smiled at the memory. Her first stay at a famous Paris hotel, her first sail on a catamaran, her first time dozing under an umbrella on a pebbly Riviera beach. She married for love, but the prize in this yummy box of caramel corn had been beyond her imagining. Her cell phones photo bank was full of pictures of her with Dan, her straight blonde hair half covering her face in a breeze or done up in a casual knot, his grin lighting up his tanned face against a backdrop of blue Mediterranean skies.

She had given up teaching for now. Im exchanging one kind of research for another, she giggled when her faculty friends toasted her at her going-away party. Instead of reading about Sartre and his literary crowd, I plan to sip aperitifs while soaking up the atmosphere at Caf de Flore, where he and Simone de Beauvoir hung out. Ill write a book some day. The room full of academics groaned as one.

Now, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that framed the birds-eye view of uptown Manhattan, the stream of light from taxis and trucks far below broken only by the nighttime black of Central Park, a block away from their apartment. The Christmas holidays were over. Decorations in the apartment windows she could see from her own had been taken down. It was a new year, and she was looking forward to longer days and the end of slush and the biting winds that rushed through Manhattans artificial canyons. Up this high, it looked pretty. There was no sound accompanying the twinkling lights of the traffic. She had been unsure of those windows and the vertigo they threatened when they bought the apartment, but time had eased her fear, as it had her concern that he might think she was bedazzled by the money and not the man.