Alex Harris 00 - Poisoned

Lucien and Raymond diversified their holdings and opened a fastener factory having the foresight to see iron-ore deposits would not last forever.
    Raymond’s family would also expand. But luck and good fortune would not last for Raymond. Sometime around 1837, Raymond Thiry was found murdered by factory workers arriving for their day. Robbery was the assumed reason behind the murder. The men kept a hefty amount of cash in the company safe and on the morning of Raymond’s murder, the cash had disappeared.
    This event had a profound effect on both the Cournet and Thiry families because of the way all business agreements had been drawn up between Lucien and Raymond. Both men reverted to “Tontine,” an agreement by which all assets, jointly owned, would automatically revert to the survivor. The Cournet family invested their personal holdings wisely. The Thiry family, sadly, had not been quite as fortunate.
    Lucien, devastated by the murder of his friend and business partner, did the decent thing. Though under no obligation to the Thiry family with the death of Raymond, he had always promised his friend that, should anything ever happen, he would take care of his wife and two children. As Raymond’s wife neither spoke English, nor had any idea of the men’s business transactions, Lucien handled all arrangements for her. The years passed; Lucien held to this agreement but with the education of the oldest, a male child, completed, he felt his obligation paid and thus broke ties with the Thiry family entirely.
    Meanwhile, Pascal, now grown, took over the fastener factory and the ever-growing investments of the family. Pascal’s own son, Julian, was born in 1857 but by then both of Pascal’s parents were dead. In the ensuing years Julian, too, proved to be the businessman his father and grandfather before him had been, and eventually the reins passed on to his own son, Edouard. Female children born along the way were inconsequential as far as business matters went and thus ignored.
    Edouard’s wife, Miriam, bore three daughters, effectively ending the male rule of the Cournet family. Roberta arrived first and five years later came May and June.
    Edouard and Miriam bought a magnificent retirement home outside of Farmington situated on a large parcel of land. The land now belonged entirely to Roberta Brissart, but the acreage adjoining it was owned by all three sisters equally .
    I put the papers down and took a few bites of my salad. An image of the Brissart home on the TV caught my attention and I turned the sound up. A reporter said the police had no leads as yet. An image of Roberta at some charity event flashed across the scene and the reporter went on to say how respected she was in the community. The scene changed again, this time back to the newsroom, where the anchor said even in Indian Cove the time had come to lock our doors.
    I turned the sound down again and looked over the pages one more time. An hour later, I came to the conclusion that though exciting, what with the Napoleon connection, nothing in Mrs. Brissart’s family history would bring about a murder in modern times. Not by Mrs. Brissart. Not by anyone. And if there was nothing here, then it seemed totally obvious to me, and would soon be to the police after I got done with a certain detective, that Mrs. Brissart had absolutely no reason to kill her grandson.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

    With Chantal back, I regrettably returned to my office and a mountain of paperwork. All hopes of Chantal staying on in New York a few more days to care for her mother-in-law diminished last night when she called to tell me that her mother-in-law was driving her so crazy that she had come dangerously close to breaking the woman’s other leg, and just had to come home early.
    Sam and I spent most of the morning going over more figures for turning our agency into a professional employer organization, or PEO as it was referred to. It felt exciting to think about a major expansion, but I worried about the faithful clients we already had.
    Sam leaned more and more in the same direction and instead of going all out all at once, we felt it a better business decision to just grow at a slower pace. We didn’t want to become a people mill. We specialized in fitting the right person to the right job and didn’t want to lose that personal touch. We decided that in the end, if our business grew then we would already have a good head start on becoming a PEO.
    “Sandwiches are