Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Dead and Breakfast by Marilyn Todd

Marilyn Todd currently sets her work in three different historical periods: Ancient Rome, where we find series heroine Claudia Seferius; Ancient Greece, in which the adventures of High Priestess Iliona unfold; and the 1950s, which the author has chosen for a just-completed novel and a variety of (so far) non-series stories, including last year’s Shamus Award nominee “Room for Improvement.” Her latest published novel is Blood Moon (Severn House), in the Iliona series.

“Georges, have you put those pillows in Number Twenty-two yet?”

Pillows. Pillows. Georges dragged his eyes away from the grebes out on the lake as he remembered the pile of goosedown in his arms.

“Doing it now, Mother.”

But it was so comical, the way they dived for fish. You watch them go down, follow the ripples on the surface, then pick a spot where you think they’ll come up. Except you’re wrong. Every time, it’s that much further from where you expect them to, and this time one of the grebes had caught a fish. A big one. Georges watched, fascinated by the contest between predator and prey. One false move and the fish was gone forever. Both sides fighting for survival.

“And don’t forget to unblock that drain in the second-floor bathroom while you’re up there, love.”

Drain? He looked at the spanner in his hand. Oh. Drain. “No, no,” he called down. “I won’t forget.”

Georges loved this lake. He loved the way the boats bobbed on smooth days as well as in rough weather, their yards clanking gentle lullabies, their hulls gleaming in the sun. He loved the way that spring dawns glimmered hazy and yellow on the surface, like melted Camembert. How fiery sunsets multiplied out and flickered on the water. How autumn mists swirled round the islands and then disappeared, as if by magic, and how the moon reflected double on the lake. And none of this would be possible, were it not for the pines that surrounded it, repelling the winds that drove in from the west, fending off the snows that swept up from the Pyrenees, thwarting the desiccating frosts that gripped the rest of France. In fact, he thought, if it wasn’t for the gulls, flapping round the perimeter in search of tiddlers in the shallows, you’d think the coast was a lot further than eight kilometres away.

Except not everyone enjoyed neat promenades that served up ice creams and carousels, or took pleasure in roasting themselves on broad, white sandy beaches that stretched to infinity in both directions. The people who holidayed at Georges’ lake were more discriminating. Not for them long treks through woods, laden with parasols and picnic hampers, just to then do battle with the highest dunes in Europe. Let others wrestle with deck chairs and drink lukewarm lemonade—

“Oh, Georgie!” His mother jerked the pillows from his arms with a good-natured, but nonetheless exasperated sigh. “Will you ever stop your silly daydreaming?” She gave his cheek an affectionate squeeze, before setting off down the corridor to give 22 their extra pillows. “But if you don’t mind, love. The drain?”

The what? Oh, that. Second floor. Blocked. At last, the grebe managed to turn the wriggling fish and gulp it down. Almost at once, it was diving back down for more.

“Now, if you wouldn’t mind.” She didn’t seem entirely surprised to find her son still staring out of the window when she returned. “Breakfast’ll be over any minute, and the guests are bound to need the bathroom.”

“Right-oh.”

He mightn’t have won any prizes for spelling, maths, or grammar, but Georges was handy with his hands. In no time at all, he’d unscrewed the waste and was flushing out the pipe, though he didn’t see what all the fuss was for. A few hairs, a bit of gunge, and bien sar, it would reduce the drainage to a trickle, but that was no reason to go grumbling to his mother. She went to a lot of trouble to make the guests feel welcome. She set vases of flowers in their rooms, left them boiled sweets on the dressing table, and placed mothballs in the drawers. The sheets always smelled crisp and clean and fresh.

But then, some folk were never satisfied, he thought, his big, strong hands spannering the pipes back into place. If they weren’t griping about lumpy mattresses, they were moaning because there wasn’t an ashtray, or could someone change their bedside lamp, it wasn’t bright enough to read by. Still. He mopped up the puddle of dirty water with a towel. Surrounded by such stunning scenery, people probably expected the same level of perfection from Les Pins. Most of the time, they blooming got it, too.

“I don’t believe it!” An hour must have passed before his mother came storming into the dining room, where he was cramming the last of the unwanted croissants in his mouth. “Look what you’ve done to Madame Fouquet’s towels!”

Eh?

She held up the filthy, sopping linen. “She’s absolutely livid, and quite frankly, so am I.”

Oh. Those towels. “Then she should have taken them back to her room,” he said, spraying crumbs over the table. “Instead of leaving them in the bathroom for anyone to use.”

“That’s still no excuse for you to use them as rags. And to just leave them lying there, as well, you lazy toad!”

“Sorry.”

It wasn’t often that he saw his mother angry, and it wasn’t simply because she had endless patience with him. She simply could not afford to lose control. Georges’ father, Marcel, was the chef, and since food was his passion as well as the foundation for his business, he was either shopping for it at the market or else creating magnificent works of art with it in the kitchen. The hotel management was Irene’s responsibility, something she accomplished with a combination of politeness, style, and military crispness, being just strict enough to keep the chambermaids on their toes, but not so tough that they looked for work elsewhere. Welcoming enough towards the guests, but not so sociable that they might be tempted to take advantage.

“Oh, Georgie, it’s not you,” she said, instantly calm again. “It’s that wretched bloody bathroom that’s got me so worked up.” She swiped her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m going to have to call a plumber out, and God knows how long that’ll take in August.”

“Why?” He might be big and slow and clumsy, but Georges took great pride in his work.

“Why?” Her voice rose. “Because that stupid, bloody washbasin’s blocked up again already—”

Wash... basin... “I’ll take another look.”

“Not sure there’s any point, you’ve only just been up there.”

“Yes, but I’ll check further down the pipes.” He turned away, so she wouldn’t see how red his cheeks had gone.

“Will you? Oh, you are an angel. And while you’re up there, would you put clean towels in Thirty-four for Madame Fouquet? I can hardly leave the poor woman with just a hand towel for her bath.”

“Right-oh.”

Washbasin. He wrote it on the back of his hand with a biro, so as not to forget. Second floor, he scribbled underneath. And towels.

Which was just as well, because by the time he’d brushed Minou the cat, topped up the birdbath, and then fed the ducks out on the lake, it was fast approaching midday. Four o’clock before he actually got round to fixing it.

Madame Fouquet never saw her towels.

For all its pine-scented air and picture-postcard views, it wasn’t always easy here for Georges. Life was comfortable enough. Marcel and Irene were the first to think of shipping in sand, to create a private lakefront beach. They revamped the gardens with Mediterranean palms and oleanders, tacked on a veranda, then a terrace, and built moorings for the hotel clients’ boats. This was good. With every improvement, the hotel grew and prospered.

The trouble was, in order to capitalize on a silence broken only by the croaking of frogs and the splash of fish — the very qualities their middle-aged, middle-class guests looked for in a holiday — his parents also banned transistor radios and banished TV to the public lounge. Their intention was that busy Parisians should come down, plug into two weeks of time-warp bliss, then go home refreshed and free of stress. But for Georges, this was his home. And, rather like the resort itself, which had grown up to create its own identity but in doing so had paradoxically isolated itself from the outside world, so he, too, became disconnected.

While other teenagers were rebelling, flower power passed him by, and whatever the Summer of Love might be, it never came his way. But not being “groovy” didn’t trouble him. To be honest, he didn’t know what groovy was, so it didn’t matter that Jesus might be loving Mrs. Robinson more than she would ever know, much less that Mick Jagger was having his mind and other things blown by honky-tonk girls. But then he turned sixteen and things began to change. Not being clever enough to stay on at school, he quickly lost touch with the few friends that he’d had, and though he took over as the hotel handyman from doddery old Rene, the staff were invariably too busy to stop for idle chit-chat. Naturally, Georges picked up the broad outline of events from the national news, but what he wasn’t getting was life’s rich tapestry of trivia, and this became a problem. All he wanted was to do what the Parisians did, only in reverse. Plug into normal life. But how?

The more time passed, the more his desire — his need — to tap into normality intensified. It wasn’t that he was lonely, exactly. He’d always enjoyed his own company, but there was a hole somewhere, a big black hole that needed to be filled, and whoever said it was the little things that mattered was absolutely right. And it was the little things that were missing from his life.

At least, that was the case until one warm and sunny April morning when his mother asked him to oil the sticky lock on No. 17. And would you believe it, there was the answer. Staring him right in the face. He oiled, he turned, he oiled, he turned. No sticking. No rubbing. No catching.

No noise...

At long last, Georges had found a way to connect to the world beyond Les Pins.

The idea of being called a Peeping Tom would have cut him to the quick. There was nothing mucky about what he was doing. Nothing sinister about his motives. He was simply using his master key to slip into the rooms, and there, just being among the guests while they slept, he was able to note other people’s eccentricities and foibles. The big, black void was filled.

While Irene was just delighted that her son had at last showed some initiative by oiling all the bedroom locks, not just the one.

“Madame Garnier’s eldest daughter’s getting married,” Georges told Parmesan, the heavy horse who used to pull a plough but had long since been put out to pasture. “I saw the telegram on her dressing table.”

MAMAN PAPA GUESS WHAT STOP HENRI PROPOSED AT LAST STOP ISN’T THIS JUST WONDERFUL STOP

“Both Monsieur and Madame Garnier were smiling in their sleep,” he added. “So they must be pleased about it.”

Although he still spent the same amount of time fishing, bird-watching, and watching squirrels in the woods, Georges and Parmesan tended to see a lot more of each other these days. Blissfully unaware, of course, that Marcel was having to drop his bœuf bordelaise and drive at breakneck speed so the Gerards — the LeBlancs — the St. Brices or whoever — didn’t miss their trains. Or that the Duponts, the Brossards, and the new people in 38 had to lug their cases up several flights of stairs, because the handyman had forgotten to reconnect the lift after re-greasing the cogs and chains.

“Mother doesn’t like that Madame Dupont, with the blue-rinse hair, who rustles when she walks. She thinks she’s hard and crusty, but she’s not.” Georges passed the horse an apple. “She’s soft as dough inside.”

He knew this because of the soppy romances Madame Dupont read, and more than once he’d had to pick up a paperback that had fallen from her hand, replacing the bookmark and laying it gently on the cover next to her.

“You wouldn’t think it, but Twenty-seven wears a toupee.” It gave Georges quite a fright, seeing it draped over the footstool. He thought it was a rat. “Someone should tell him he looks a lot younger without it, though.” Unlike Madame 27, whose teeth snarled at him from the glass beside her bed. “She snores, as well,” he said.

In fact, it was quite a revelation, seeing what the guests were really like, as opposed to what they wanted you to think. For instance, Georges could tell who was putting on a front, pretending to read highbrow literature when they were sneaking tabloid news inside their daily papers. He knew who was sloppy and who was not from the way they folded their clothes or tossed them on a chair, and, even more importantly, by squeezing the towels, he knew who took a bath every day and who only took one once a week and disguised their lack of personal hygiene with cologne.

Darker secrets came out, too. Major Chabou, for instance, swapped dirty pictures with the banker in the room upstairs. Suzette the chambermaid was having an affair with No. 14, even sleeping in his bed after his poor wife had had to rush back home to see to her sick mother. Mind you, Suzette didn’t sleep in curlers, like the other female guests. Or wear a hairnet, either, for that matter.

So summers came and summers went, and even though Georges assumed the Year of the Cat was just one more Chinese holiday, who cared? The same people booked the same rooms for the same two weeks in the season, and simply by taking stock of their toothbrushes, their writing pads, their cosmetics, and their clothes, he was able to follow the changes in their lives and circumstances.

Some guests never changed, of course. Monsieur Prince still put his dirty shoes on Irene’s clean white linen sheets. The Bernards still stashed the hotel’s face flannels at the bottom of their suitcase. Madame Morreau still treated Georges the same way she did when he was seven, only now instead of ruffling his hair and giving him a bag of aniseed, she had to reach up on tippy-toes just to pat his shoulder. But she still brought him aniseed, which Georges had never liked but which he could at least feed to Parmesan, even though it made him kick and swish his tail. And Georges still very much looked forward to her visits.

Which made it doubly hard when Madame Morreau died.

“Take a look at these architect’s plans, love, and tell me what you think.”

From the outset, his parents had involved him in their projects, but to be honest, the squares and boxes on the page confused him. What did it mean, “drawn to scale,” he wondered? Fish had scales. Kitchens had scales. But gardens? And this 250:1 stuff. Georges didn’t understand where bookmakers fitted into plans for new extensions, and whenever he saw things like this, he was glad he hadn’t been forced to stay on at school.

“Ten new bedrooms to be built during the winter shut-down, and what about this?” The excitement in his mother’s voice was catching. “No more trotting down the corridor in the middle of the night for our guests. As of next spring, they’ll all have their own individual, private bathroom!”

“And now the world’s opening up to foreign travel, son, what do you think about including couscous on the menu?” Marcel said.

Would that be meat, or some exotic vegetable, he wondered?

“Every room’ll have its own mini shampoo and soap.”

“Osso buco, perhaps?”

“Hair dryers in the bathrooms.”

“Definitely paella — are you all right, son?”

“Yeah.”

But there was no fooling his mother. “Oh, Georges.” She laid down her fountain pen. “You’re not still upset about Madame Morreau, are you?”

Marcel had brought him up that it was wrong to tell a lie, but for some reason he felt ashamed of saying yes out loud. Madame Morreau had been different from the other guests, somehow. Special. For a start, she was one of the few who weren’t wary of this big, shambling young man, who was constantly wandering round the hotel with a distant expression on his face and a toolbox in his hand. And she didn’t talk down to him, either. In fact, quite often she had to rebuke that weasel-faced nephew of hers for poking fun at him.

Georges is a wee bit slow, Jean-Paul. You need to make allowances.

Jean-Paul. That was Weasel’s name. Jean-Paul. And it was a funny thing, but until Madame Morreau said that, Georges had never thought of himself as slow. And yet, now he came to think of it, he had always been in the tail of any school race. How she knew all that was a mystery to him, but even so, Georges always made a point of quickening his pace when he saw her coming. Especially once Jean-Paul began to mouth Slowpoke at him behind her back.

“A bit,” Georges admitted.

“Don’t be, love.” His mother squeezed his hand. “The old dear had a long and happy life, and you should be pleased she died peacefully, snuggled in her pillows.” She turned to Marcel and pulled a face. “Even if it was in our hotel.”

“The undertakers were very discreet, I thought.”

“Only because you slipped them lorry loads of francs, but it’s the chambermaids I’m proudest of. None of them so much as screamed.”

“They wouldn’t bloody dare,” Marcel muttered under his breath, but Irene wasn’t listening.

“The guests had no idea that anything was amiss, and even Madame Morreau’s nephew carried himself well, I thought. Considering.”

When Georges closed his eyes, he could see Jean-Paul in conversation with the doctor that the hotel had been obliged to call. Saw him showing him the pills Madame Morreau took for her bad heart. Heard him telling how she’d had two seizures this year already.

“Nice boy,” Irene added, with a sigh. “Always so conscientious when he stayed here with his aunt.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

If anyone was an expert on the subject of being chivvied up, it was Georges. But never on account of being lazy.

It’s very good of you to do this for me, Georges.

I like doing it, Madame Morreau. Honest.

Unlike some, who wouldn’t be seen dead supporting an old lady’s arm while she took a walk along the lake.

I don’t know where Jean-Paul’s got to, I really don’t.

Georges did. As soon as she said she wouldn’t mind a stroll, Weasel had been off. Greyhounds on a track don’t run that fast.

It’s so nice to be able to take a walk, while I’m still able. He remembered the sad little smile she’d shot him, as she patted his arm. I’ll be in a wheelchair next year, Georges.

That’ll be good, though, won’t it? I’ll be able to push you round the lake. In fact, I’ll run.

Will you? Will you, Georges? Her laugh suddenly became happy and girlish, and for a moment he saw how she must have looked sixty years ago. You’ve no idea how exciting it’d be for an old woman to feel the wind in her hair again.

You bet, he’d promised, and he meant it.

“Jean-Paul thought fetching things and looking after her beneath him,” he told Marcel and Irene.

It wasn’t because he sneered at him, or called him names behind her back, that Georges despised the nephew. More the way he scowled at having to trek upstairs to fetch her cardigan because her legs weren’t up to it, or screwed up his face when she forgot things. Georges scuffed his foot. He knew all about forgetting things, and saw how much it embarrassed Madame Morreau, being dependent on someone else to put it right. Especially someone who resented doing it...

“I don’t think he was even sorry that she died.”

Georges had never encountered sudden death before, so he couldn’t be certain. But that look on Weasel’s face when the doctor signed that piece of paper—

“I wish I could put a name to that expression,” he said, but his parents were back poring over their plans, discussing colour charts and debating whether the floor tiles in the bathrooms would be better white or cream. To them, the incident was closed. But for Georges, the misgivings wouldn’t go away, and though the winter gales came lashing in from the Atlantic, bending the pines around the lake and causing them to hiss like angry snakes, his mind remained on aniseed and ruffled hair. On cardigans that smelled of lavender, and happy, girlish giggles.

People imagined Madame Morreau was as well-heeled as the other guests, but Georges knew otherwise. Her suits were quality, but seconds, he’d seen the crossed-out labels. Also, her petticoats had worn thin, her stockings were darned, and her shoes, although good quality and polished to a shine, were almost through to holes. And even he, who didn’t understand figures very much, knew that red ink on a bank statement was bad news. Which is why he thanked her so politely for the candy every year, and refused a tip for carrying her bags. She’d had to really scrimp and save for her fortnight at Les Pins, and go without a lot of things to pay for her nephew to come with her. He knew all this, because he’d read it in her diary.

And her diary said nothing about heart attacks and seizures—

“Oh, Georgie. You’ve let the paste go hard.”

Paste? Then he remembered why he was up this blooming ladder. Sticking fresh wallpaper on No. 21. “It’s not right, Mum.”

“Not now it isn’t, love. It’s set like concrete in this wretched bucket.”

“I don’t mean the glue. Madame Morreau.”

But by the time he’d trundled down the ladder, both his mother and the tub of paste were gone, and he’d painted the whole of the first-floor corridor and was halfway through emulsioning the ceiling in Reception before it dawned on him.

“You said pillows,” he said, laying down his brush.

“No, I didn’t, love. I said windows. Can you wash the windows when you’re done? Only Suzette’s gone and got herself pregnant, and God only knows who the father is. But the point is, I don’t want her up a stepladder, not in her condition.”

“You said she died snuggled into her pillows,” Georges said, except she couldn’t have. Madame Morreau never used a pillow, stacking all four neatly in a pile beside the bed, and that’s where she used to rest her diary when she’d finished writing up her day. On the pile of pillows, with her specs. “She liked to sleep flat,” he added. For her neck.

“Suzette?” Irene looked confused. “Anyway, the thing is, the hotel inspector’s coming down to view the new extension, and I would really like to have the whole place looking its best for when he comes. Sparkling from roof down to the cellar!”

Georges tried to imagine the roof sparkling, but couldn’t. “Madame Morreau had a good heart.”

“Indeed she did, love. She was kind and patient, just like you, and I know you were fond of her, Georgie, but you have to accept that her poor old heart was simply worn out with age.”

Was it? All night he couldn’t sleep for worrying, because who could he tell? Who’d listen to the ramblings of a daydreaming handyman who couldn’t spell and couldn’t add up, either?

Who would believe a man who crept in people’s rooms at night?

“Hey, Carrot Top!”

The season was in full swing again.

“Fetch me a cold beer, will you? I’m absolutely gasping.”

Georges paused from emptying the hedge clippings on the compost. That voice — He peered round the corner and could hardly believe his eyes. Madame Morreau’s nephew!

“Yes, you. Gingernut.” Jean-Paul was addressing a girl, whose bare feet were half buried in the sand. “You wouldn’t allow a man to die of thirst, would you?”

“She’s not staff,” Georges said. “She’s—” For the first time he took a good, hard look at her. “She’s—”

“Recently moved in across the lake.” Her little snub nose wrinkled in apology. “Sorry. Am I trespassing? Only I was curious to see what our village looked like from this side.”

“No. I mean, yes, but—”

He could see how Jean-Paul mistook her for a waitress. Black skirt, white blouse. Red hair tied back from her face.

“What he means is, can’t you read?” Weasel pointed to the big, bold sign that proclaimed PrivateProperty. “It specifically says ‘No Carrot Tops Allowed.’”

“Don’t call her that.” Georges felt something stir inside. “It’s mean.”

“True.” The nephew winked, then turned and walked off whistling. “I’ll stick with Gingernut instead.”

Over in the car park, Georges saw Madame Morreau’s ancient Peugeot straddling two bays. The mirror shine had gone, the number plate was black with flies, and rust had begun to creep along the sills. A pair of fluffy dice, one pink, one blue, dangled above the grimy walnut console.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” the girl said, scuffing her toe deeper into the sand. “But I’m used to being ribbed about my hair.”

The teasing still hurt, though. He could tell by the way her skin had turned bright pink, right down to her neck. “Is that why you tie it back? To hide it?”

“Wouldn’t you?” The greenest eyes he’d ever seen misted over. “I tried dyeing it, but that made it ten times worse.” This time the nose wrinkled in disgust. “It’s horrible hair. I hate it.”

“You shouldn’t.” For some reason, he had an urge to reach out and feel how its curls would spring about between his fingers. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s bright red!”

“Like maple leaves in autumn,” Georges said, nodding. “The colour of a robin’s breast and squirrels’ fur and sunsets on the lake, and you know what else? Your face. It reminds me of a wren’s egg.”

“Because of the mass of brown freckles on a very white background?”

“Because it’s small and smooth and fragile,” he corrected.

Across the lake? He glanced at the dots that were the village in the distance. She did. She definitely said, across the lake.

“Is it true you know where every swan and heron has its nest?”

Her name was Sandrine and she worked in the boat-hire office that her father had just opened and which, according to her, was doing exceptionally well. Despite her leaving customers lined up outside because she forgot to open up, or else stranded on the open water, having not filled up their gas tanks.

“Are there otters in the lake?” she asked, peering through her binoculars.

“No, but there’s a family in the river that feeds into it.” Her legs were long and slim, and covered in the same pretty freckles that covered her face and arms. “I built a hide to watch them.”

He could have talked for hours, and the odd thing was, he had the feeling Sandrine would have listened, too. But round the door of Reception, he could see a finger being crooked, beckoning him. An arrogant, bony finger, with a weaselly sneer on the end of it.

“Going to carry my cases for me, Slowpoke?”

Through the office, Georges could see Irene had had to take an urgent phone call, and remembered that although he’d serviced the lift earlier this morning, this was yet another occasion when he’d gone off to cut the hedge without reconnecting the blasted electricity.

“Number Forty-five,” Jean-Paul said, grinning. “Top floor.”

In many ways, Georges had inherited his mother’s temperament. In many ways, he had not. He chewed his lip. Almost smelled the aniseed.

“Certainly, sir.” A phrase he’d never used before, but one which he’d heard Irene trot out a thousand times each season. “This way, please.”

He glanced at the Out of Order sign. Would that have made things worse, or better? Four flights of stairs made for a long, slow climb, but at least they went up separately. In the lift, they’d have been locked in, face-to-face.

“Here we are, sir. Your aunt’s old room.”

“Nice view.” Jean-Paul let his breath out in an admiring whistle as he stepped out onto the balcony. “Better than that crummy cupboard she used to put me in. I mean, who wants to overlook a bloody car park?”

Georges wanted to tell him that the single rooms weren’t crummy, and they weren’t much smaller, either. It was because they had ordinary windows, rather than French doors, that they appeared darker.

“The view will be better once the new swimming pool’s installed.”

“I can’t swim, so who cares, and in any case,” Jean-Paul sniffed, “wild horses wouldn’t bring me back to this dump.”

Georges had the same urge he’d had when he was eight years old and Jacques Dubois kicked down the matchstick train that Georges had spent all winter building. He wanted to punch him on the nose.

“This is the best room in the house,” he said instead.

Madame Morreau used to stay here with her husband before he died, he’d read that in her diary, too. The reason why she scrimped and saved to come back again each year. To relive the happy memories they’d shared.

“Two weeks of R and R in the best room in the house, all paid for in advance? Not bad, eh?” Weasel threw himself down on the bed. “Not quite the Cote d’Azur I’d had in mind, of course. But since the old girl coughed without a penny, it’s better than bloody nothing, I suppose.”

No money, poor health, and a nephew who couldn’t give a damn.

“Y’know, Slowpoke, I’m betting the beds in this place could tell a tale or two.” He chuckled as he bounced up and down on the mattress.

Georges swore his heart stood still. “That one could.”

The bouncing stopped. “Oh?” Jean-Paul’s eyes narrowed as he advanced across the room. “And just what might you mean by that?”

Never tell a lie if you can help it, son. Marcel’s voice echoed in his head. It’ll only come back to trip you up.

“Honeymooners,” he said. “The last guests were honeymooners.”

Weasel’s shoulders went slack again, but for a second Georges saw the same expression cross his face as when the doctor signed the death certificate. At last, he could put a name to it. Relief.

“Will there be anything else?” he asked in the same neutral tone he’d heard the chambermaids use.

“Just that beer — and Slowpoke?” Jean-Paul dipped his hand in his pocket. “A tip for carrying my cases.”

His generosity took Georges by surprise. “Thank you,” he said warmly.

“Look both ways before you cross the road.”

Weasel seemed to think this was the funniest joke he’d ever heard, while Georges was so ashamed that he’d actually held his hand out to this man that he forgot to switch the lift back on, and once again Marcel had to abandon his canard à l’orange and dash the Brandons to the station, while Irene couldn’t understand what a cold beer should be doing on her desk, but was so glad to see it that she downed it in one go.

“He killed her,” Georges told Parmesan, feeding him the carrots that Marcel had earmarked for his julienne vegetables in garlic. “Jean-Paul murdered Madame Morreau, and it isn’t right.”

It wasn’t right that she should die, simply so he could get his hands on her money. It wasn’t right that he should run around in her beloved Peugeot, letting it go rusty and not even washing it, or that he should profit from a holiday she’d had to make huge sacrifices for.

“Then to come back to the hotel where he killed her, throwing his weight around, bouncing on the bed where she died, and making tasteless jokes. It’s not right, Parmesan. It’s not right at all.”

And so another night passed in which Georges didn’t get a wink of sleep, but this time it was different. Lying on his back, with his hands folded behind his head, he watched the Milky Way swirling across a cloudless sky with only one thought in his head.

She knows what wrens’ eggs look like...

The following week Georges took Sandrine to watch the otters from the seclusion of his hide, showed her all the secret places where rare warblers could be found, pointed out the heronry and the favourite perches of the kingfishers, and introduced her to Parmesan at her request.

“I used to slip him aniseed balls.”

Sandrine dug around in her handbag and eventually came out with half a roll of extra-strong mints. “Do you think he’d like these?”

Like was a moot point. With the aniseed, he used to kick and swish his tail. The effect of the extra-strong mints made him snicker, buck, and, considering his age and size, practically gallop round the field, his nostrils snorting out peppermint strong enough to fell an oak. But since he kept coming back for more, they made a point of packing them with the carrots, oats, and apples every time they paid a visit.

“I think he’s addicted,” she giggled.

“Guess that makes us pushers,” Georges quipped back, because her laugh was as magical as rainbows, hoarfrost, and snow-melt waterfalls, and he was as hooked on its sound as this old plough horse on mints. Sometimes he feared he would drown in those freckles.

And in return for otters, squirrel drays, and badger setts, Sandrine introduced Georges to the Bee Gees, Star Wars, and the thrills of racing powerboats, courtesy of her father’s hire business.

“Night fever, night fever,” they’d sing together, Sandrine clicking her fingers, while Georges sped the sleek blue-and-white “Hire Me for 30F an Hour” advertisement past the new resorts that were springing up around the lake.

He’d never known anything like it.

It’s just your jive talkin’, you’re telling me lies...

Music that stirred his feet and his blood.

Tragedy.

A girl with hair the colour of the rich, red, Gascony soil and eyes greener than pastures in spring.

When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on, it’s tragedy...

And now this. Scenery whizzing past in a blur, shirt billowing wide, and the wind in his hair — Georges cut the motor. The powerboat went dead.

“What’s wrong?”

“Madame Morreau,” he said sombrely. “All she wanted was to feel the wind in her hair.”

Instead, Jean-Paul was feeling it in his for thirty francs an hour. Using Madame Morreau’s money.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of any fishing competition.” Irene looked up from her accounts. “Funny time of year, isn’t it?”

Never tell a lie if you can help it.

“This is something new they’re trying out for tourists.” Georges crossed his fingers behind his back. “You’re not allowed to keep the fish, you have to throw them back, but there’s a prize of—” He’d been going to say a hundred francs. “Three hundred francs.”

“Goodness me, I think I’ll dash out and buy a fishing rod myself,” Irene laughed. “Who’s putting up the money, do you know?”

Georges was prepared for this. “The man who runs that new boat-hire company.” He sneaked a peek at the notes scribbled in the palm of his hand. “He says the prize money is nothing compared to what he’ll fetch, renting out his boats to the competitors.”

“Sharp,” Irene said admiringly. “Maybe I should try to find something that’ll attract more visitors to Les Pins. Afternoon tea? Aperitifs on the terrace?”

“You will tell Jean-Paul Morreau, won’t you, Mother?”

This was how the conversation had started. With him asking her to pass the message on.

“I don’t really see him as the fishing type,” she said doubtfully.

“None of the other guests is interested, I’ve asked,” he cut in quickly, because the last thing he wanted was for her to broadcast it round the hotel, only to discover it was a better work of fiction than the Harold Robbins he was reading. Also... “It would be good publicity for us, too, if he won.”

“Good heavens, Georges, you do surprise me sometimes!” Every mother is proud of her children, but at that moment Irene thought her heart would burst out of her chest. “But you’re right, and what young man could possibly resist the lure of such a competition, given the right motivation by his hotelier!” Irene cocked her head. “Pity you’re not a tourist. I’ll bet you know exactly where the big fish live.”

Bingo! The moment he’d been waiting for.

“Oh, yes,” he said, unable to hide the big, broad beam that cut his face in half. “I know where to find the winner.”

As the door closed behind him, Irene became aware of hot tears coursing down her cheeks. She couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment when her son had grown into a man. But she was fiercely proud of what he had become.

Fishing is as much about patience as anything else. Having baited his hook, Georges sat back, ready to reel in Jean-Paul, but even he was surprised at the speed with which he bit.

“Got a proposition for you,” he said, less than one hour later. “You help me catch the winner and I’ll go fifty-fifty with you.”

Georges swallowed. “The best time’s dusk. That’s when they rise to the surface.”

Weasel looked suspicious. “I thought they sank to the bottom.”

Never tell a lie if you can help it. Suddenly, they were trotting out like ants. “Not the big ones.”

“Dusk it is, then.” Jean-Paul rubbed his hands together. “Tonight?”

Georges studied the sky, confident the weather would hold. “Perfect.” The only thing that could have spoiled his plans was a storm that whipped up the water. But on a moonless night there’d be no tourists on the lake, and with his parents busy serving dinner, there’d be no one around to notice that two men went out, but only one came back.

“What was that about?” Sandrine asked Jean-Paul, seeing him swagger out of Georges’ shed. She was about to get on her scooter to ride home. He was off to the coast for livelier entertainment than what was on offer at Les Pins.

“That, my little Gingernut, is about winning a competition, and you know the best thing?” He chuckled as he unlocked the car. “We’re going fifty-fifty.”

“What’s fifty-fifty?” Sandrine wasn’t good with maths.

Jean-Paul slung his jacket on the passenger seat and winked. “It means he catches me a fish and I give him a hundred and fifty francs.”

“I wish someone would give me a hundred and fifty francs,” she sighed. “I’d buy myself a haircut just like Farrah Fawcett’s.”

“Bloody dark out here. Sure you can see to row?”

“I’ve fished loads of times at night,” Georges said truthfully, but all the same his hands were clammy. “I know this lake like the back of my hand.”

“Not surprised, considering they’re the same size,” Jean-Paul sniggered. “Where’d you say the big boy lives?”

Georges couldn’t meet his eye. “Far side of the island.”

Jean-Paul squinted towards a dark lump in the distance. “Wake me up when we get there.” He leaned back and pulled his cap down over his eyes.

Georges listened to the slapping of the oars and the pounding of his heart. It wasn’t too late. He could turn round. Tell Jean-Paul he had a headache or stomach pains, even admit he’d made the whole thing up...

It’s so nice to be able to take a walk, while I’m still able.

Madame Morreau’s sad smile hung in the air like the Cheshire cat’s.

Will you run?Will you, Georges?

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Madame Morreau was never going to feel the wind in her hair. He looked at the shoreline, growing thinner with each stroke. Glanced over his shoulder, at the island looming closer. She’d never see the sunset from the room where she’d shared so many good times with her husband. Never smell the leather of the seats of her old Peugeot, or run her hands across its walnut dash. She wouldn’t even have the chance to chide her nephew, or wonder where he’d got to when she needed him.

“We’re here.” He nudged Jean-Paul with his foot.

“It’s the middle of bloody nowhere!” Lights from the villages twinkled like miniature fireflies around a lake as black as soot. “Still, for three hundred smackers, it’s worth getting spooked, eh, Slowpoke?”

“Stop calling me that, my name’s Georges.”

His tone made Jean-Paul look up. “Right.” Both smile and voice were unusually tight. “Georges.” He shifted in his seat. “So how long do you reckon it’ll take to track down our little winner?”

“Depends.” Georges pulled out a flashlight and leaned over the water. “Could be minutes, could be hours — whoa! Look! It’s—”

“Give me that.” Jean-Paul’s unease vanished as he grabbed the torch from Georges’ hand. “Where? I can’t see any—”

The rest was drowned by the splash of two giant hands tipping him over the side.

“Hey! Hey, I can’t swim!”

“I know,” Georges said, rowing out of range with a speed that would have surprised Madame Morreau’s nephew, had he not been gulping so much water. “You told me.”

“All right, all right, you’ve had your fun. You’ve humiliated me, shown me who’s boss, and fair do’s. I called you names, bullied you a bit, and now you’ve got your revenge — but for Chrissakes, man, I’m drowning.”

“No, you’re not. Not if you kick your feet about a bit.”

Jean-Paul had nothing to lose. He kicked his feet about a bit, but the fear of being sucked in wouldn’t leave. “Enough’s enough, you stupid bloody halfwit.”

“You killed her,” Georges said, pulling out a piece of paper and reading it by flashlight.

“What?” Jean-Paul’s arms flailed and flapped in the water. “Is that what this is about? My stupid bloody aunt, you stupid moron?”

“My mother thinks she had a long and happy life, but Mother’s wrong.”

For one thing, Madame Morreau was only sixty-eight. Georges saw her identity papers lying on the table once, and sixty-eight was no age at all these days. Also, reading her diary, he saw that she’d never got over the devastation of not having children, sinking all her love in her husband instead.

“When he fell ill with cancer, she had no qualms about spending every last centime on finding him a cure.” He didn’t know what a qualm was, but it sounded so good that he’d quoted it anyway. “She even mortgaged her house.”

“I know that, you stupid idiot.”

“Not when you killed her, you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now listen to me, Georges. You’ve had your laugh, you’ve made a fool of me, so come back and pull me out before I drown, you bloody retard.”

“She was too proud to let people know she hadn’t got two francs to rub together—” Or, more accurately, too ashamed to admit she’d blown their entire fortune on charlatans and quack cures. “—and like everybody else, you assumed she was well off. You were her only heir, and so you killed her. For her money.”

“Yeah, well, prove it, dumb-ass.” But the fight had gone out of Jean-Paul as the struggle of trying to keep afloat began to tell.

“You smothered her with her own pillows, then tried to make it look like natural causes, and because she was old and because you convinced the doctor that she had a bad heart, you thought you’d got away with it.”

“All right, all right, I killed the old bitch, so what? She was like a bloody succubus, Can you fetch this, I forgot that, Would you mind giving me a hand to the table. I lost my temper that night and rammed the pillow over her face, all right? She was sick and old. I was doing her a favour — oh God, help—”

The water glugged and gurgled as it covered his head. Georges felt his stomach turning somersaults.

“Please,” Jean-Paul said, bobbing up at last, and Georges could tell that he was crying. “Help me—”

“You didn’t lose your temper. You planned to kill her long before you left Paris.”

“I swear to God, it was the heat of the moment. For God’s sake, don’t let me die! I’ll give you anything. The car. Take the car...”

“You brought the medication with you. That’s premeditated murder.”

“Whatever you want, name it, it’s yours.”

“A confession,” Georges said. “I just want to hear you admit it.”

“All right, all right.” Jean-Paul was spluttering words and water in equal amounts now. “I thought she was rolling, I bought heart pills from a chemist’s in Paris, I held the pillow over her face and—”

“Did she struggle?”

“Yes, of course she bloody struggled! I had to wake her up to get her to unlock the door, spinning some cock-and-bull story about needing to talk, put her back to bed, and guess what? No pillows.”

“She used to pile them on the floor.”

“I know that now, but at the time I had to search for them, so yes, the old bitch put up a fight — oh, Christ.”

His head went underwater, and once more, it took forever before it surfaced. Even Jean-Paul, who couldn’t swim, knew the third time was his last.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he screamed. “Do this, do that—”

“You wanted her money, you just didn’t want to earn it.”

“I’m young! I’m not cut out for fishing false teeth out of glasses, just because the stupid bitch forgot to put them in before going down to dinner! I killed her, and the only thing I’m sorry about is that she didn’t have the money. Satisfied?”

“We certainly are,” boomed a voice from nowhere, and suddenly the night was filled with blinding sunshine. It took Jean-Paul a few seconds to realise they were searchlights from other boats.

“Help,” he spluttered, and it didn’t matter the water was swarming with police uniforms. He was saved. “Help me, I’m drowning!”

“No, you’re not,” Georges said. “If you put your feet down, you could walk to the island.”

Autumn came, and the leaves on the trees turned the colour of her hair, fluttering across the ground like the freckles on her skin. Out on the lake, grebes dived, the last of the swallows fattened up on flies, and in a rowboat a young couple talked of wedding rings and babies.

Irene was already converting the old barn into a cottage.

“I’m so proud of you,” Sandrine said, dabbling her fingers in the water. “The way you went to the police, told them the only way to prove Madame Morreau had been murdered was by a confession by her killer, and then offering them a way that they could get it.”

She hadn’t cut her hair like Farrah Fawcett, why would she? Not when a big man with a broad smile loved to run his fingers through it, telling her it shone like fire and smelled of lollipops and roses.

“I may have thought up the competition, but you gave it substance by saying your father was sponsoring it.” He’d had to lie, telling Sandrine that Madame Morreau confided in him on their walks. But this would be the last lie he ever told, he promised himself. “Without you to hold my hand, I’d never have plucked up the courage to walk into the commissariat.”

“In that case, come over here and show your appreciation properly,” she giggled.

“I’d rather do it improperly,” he grinned back, “but first.”

He prised the master key from his ring and, with great solemnity, consigned it to the lake. As it sank, a breeze sprang up, rippling across the open water and ruffling his hair. Georges swore it smelled of aniseed.