by Katie Penryn
The truck edged its way down the track with little clearance on either side and came to a stop past the gate.
It took all four men to prize the old wrought-iron gate open. It had rusted onto its hinges on one side and onto the latch in the wall on the other.
They accepted a glass of wine each from Jimbo, stripped down to their singlets and launched into their work all muscles bulging.
Gwinny sighed, “Oh my!” and for once I had to agree with her.
It was oh my and a half. So taken were we with the sight of that manhood hard at work that Zag scrambled up the window, jumped down onto the verandah and disappeared out of sight in the forest of discarded metal.
Accompanied by much Gallic jostling and joking, not to mention a couple of wolf whistles, Gwinny and I succeeded in capturing him and dragging him back into the house where we locked the two dogs up in the downstairs cloakroom.
Even male eye candy palls after a while though. Boredom plus the heat of a July afternoon wore us down. Gwinny and I collapsed on a sofa in the living room, but Jimbo stayed on station doling out glasses of wine whenever called upon to do so.
I swear those men were sweating red wine, but they earned it. After two hours they had made a dent in the mountain and called for coffee. Small cups of treacle as far as I could judge. Then it was back to work again for three sunburned torsos and one English rose.
Gwinny and I watched from the relative coolness of the kitchen as Sam pulled away an old wooden crate from the side wall. A scene from the Pied Piper erupted. Huge brown rats the size of terriers flew into the air. Such a screeching and a scrabbling started up all over Sam’s feet as he danced a terrified jig trying to dislodge his attackers. The other men scrambled onto the side wall, desperate to get away from that nightmare creature — the territorial urban rat in competition with mankind.
The driver ran for his truck and snatched a gun from the back of the cab. Bam! Bam! Bam! Fur and tails spun off in all directions. Within ten minutes the rats had either disintegrated or disappeared down their secret escape routes.
Everyone collapsed onto the verandah, the men wiping their faces with their sopping wet kerchiefs. Jimbo had shot back through the window at the first sighting of the vermin. The tension had reached the dogs who barked themselves into a frenzy trying to get out of the cloakroom to save us.
“Phew,” said the driver, an unusual understatement for a Frenchman. “They haven’t gone away. They’ll be down in the tunnels and caves underneath the rampart.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said still breathing rather fast after all the excitement.
“You’ll have to tell the mayor, Monsieur Bonhomie.”
The two laborers broke off their side chat to tell Camion they should leave until the rat problem was sorted out. “Too dangerous,” they said. “We could be bitten and then what.”
Camion went through the motions of checking the space left in the dumpster and looking at his watch and at the sky. No clouds, dumpster half full, only four o’clock.
“We continue. We’ll move that stuff over there,” he said pointing out some ancient kitchen appliances.
A five-foot long range whose enamel had worn through and gone to rust, a wringer and tub combination, and one of those old style fridges with all its workings on view at the back.
Gwinny, Jimbo and I moved away from the windows and set about tidying up the lunch things. I washed and Jimbo dried. It wasn’t worth using the new dishwasher for a few plates and glasses. I let the dogs out of the cloakroom. They lay at our feet while we relaxed in the cool of the living room.
Jimbo fell asleep, tired out after the excitement of the day and the long road trip the day before. Gwinny nodded off over a magazine and I felt myself becoming drowsy.
A screech of alarm jolted me awake. For a few seconds I couldn’t remember where I was, but the continued shouting and yelling from the back garden anchored me in Beaucoup-sur-mer. Whatever could be the matter?
More rats? I fell over my feet rushing to the window, reaching it just before Jimbo.
The three men stood staring at the fridge with their hands clapped across their noses while Sam leaned away from them vomiting up his guts.
“What the hell’s the matter?” I called out as I made to move out into the hall.
“No, lady, stay there. Do not come out. Do not bring the child out,” Camion said holding up his hands to push me back before I had even reached the hall.
The men ran out of the garden to the sea wall where they bent double and clasped their stomachs taking in great gulps of ozone.
I had to see what was wrong. Telling Gwinny to keep Jimbo inside I opened the hall door and walked cautiously out into the garden.
Sam screamed at me over the wall. “Go back, Penzi. Don’t look.”
But I ignored him. I picked my way over the rubble and rubbish round to the front of the fridge which now stood with its door open.
What had I expected to see? Stinky stale food rotting in the abandoned fridge? A mouse or a rat which had got itself trapped when the door slammed shut. Anything but what met my eyes. This was sunny Holidayland without a cloud in the sky but facing me, curled up like a small child, was a young woman. A dead young woman as far as I could judge.
Chapter 7
Even my non-professional eye could see she was dead, but I had to check her pulse. Of course, there was none.
I hadn’t a clue who she was. It was difficult to judge her height in that position, but she was slight, dressed in a bright blue and green summer frock. Her black hair was cut in a bob, flapper style. Her shoes had been thrown in after her. No handbag. No beach towel.
I snapped round at a touch on my shoulder. It was Camion.
“We have to phone the police,” he said taking out his cell phone and putting the call through.
The back door opened, and I shouted at Sam to stop Gwinny and especially Jimbo from coming out to join us. This was not a scene I wanted Jimbo to experience in his new home at the tender age of nine.
Camion turned away to make more calls, phoning his wife I guessed to say that he was unavoidably detained.
Sam came back and put his arm around my shoulders, drawing me back towards the house. “We can wait for the police inside.”
Camion had the same idea. He directed his men up onto the verandah and I invited them into the house. “We should keep away from the site now we know there’s a body there. It’s locking the stable door after the horse has gone as far as forensic traces are concerned, but we must preserve anything that’s left.”
Jimbo and Gwinny rushed out into the hall as we all pushed into the house.
“What’s happened?” Jimbo asked his face bunched up with anxiety. “It’s something awfully serious, isn’t it? I could tell from the shouting and the look on your face. You look as if you are about to be sick, Penzi.”
That did it. I barely made it to the kitchen sink in time.
By the time I had pulled myself together and splashed cold water on my face, Gwinny had seated the three men with Sam and Jimbo round the kitchen table. She still didn’t know what had upset us all so much.
“Tell me, Penzi. What is it? The fridge was empty when the men moved it out there last week. What’s got into it?”
“Gwinny, it’s a body.”
“Oh, a rat or a fox?”
“Gwinny it’s a human being. A young woman.”
“Is she dead?” asked Jimbo.
“Oh yes, she’s dead.”
Gwinny swayed on her feet and would have fallen if Camion hadn’t clutched hold of her and gentled her into a chair.
“Have you got anything stronger than wine, Gwinny?”
She swallowed and pointed a wavering finger towards a cupboard to the left of the sink. Jimbo darted towards it and pulled out a bottle of cognac. Meanwhile I had readied glasses on the table. I poured out a generous tot for everyone and gulped mine down so fast it burned a layer of skin off my throat. I coughed and set my g
lass down.
“Did you recognize her?” I asked the driver and his men, but they shook their heads.
Camion drained his glass and held it out for a refill. “Worst thing I’ve ever seen. Do you think it was an accident? Those old fridges are dangerous.”
He turned to Gwinny, “Madame, you do know that the door should have been taken off? Those antiques snap shut and can’t be opened from the inside. It’s one of the first things we do when we clear a house – take off the fridge door – even the modern ones with no catch.”
Gwinny cowered down in her seat. She was already suffering from shock. She didn’t need to feel responsible for what could be an accident. But was it?
Sam read my thoughts. “It couldn’t be an accident. No adult would willingly get into an old fridge. Everyone knows they’re death traps. And what could she possibly have been doing there? Playing hide and seek?”
I agreed. It didn’t seem likely. No self-respecting young woman dressed as she was would ever have ventured out into our pit of detritus.
So, if it wasn’t an accident?
“It’s murder,” Camion burst out. “That’s the only solution. Someone killed her. Such a beautiful girl. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
We all lapsed into silence. Even Camion and his men were shaken, their shock gradually giving away to annoyance at having to stay until the police had interviewed us all. Sam pulled out the chair next to Jimbo and took hold of his hands to stop him trembling. The dogs had slunk under the table and crouched as close to me as they could get.
For me, seeing my first dead body was sobering enough, but worse was the knowledge that evil lay in wait for the unsuspecting even in pretty Beaucoup-sur-mer.
The wailing of the police siren sounded off in the distance, growing more and more strident as it neared the house. A sole officer arrived. I let him in and took him through to the kitchen where everyone was waiting.
“I am Inspector Xavier Dubois,” he announced in a clipped Parisian accent.
We all said bonjour and waited for him to take control of the situation.
“Now, what’s all this nonsense?” he asked positioning himself on the threshold with his legs apart in a power stance.
“There’s a body outside in the yard,” said the driver standing up. “Let me show you. It looks like murder.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous. We don’t have murders here in Beaucoup-sur-mer,” Dubois said taking out a notebook and pen.
Camion shrugged. He wasn’t going to argue. I didn’t blame him. Inspector Dubois had done nothing to put us at our ease. He exuded arrogance. At any other time I would have found his tall Norman bearing arresting — oh dear, wrong word — attractive. He towered a good six inches above Camion. With his jet black hair, icy blue eyes and aquiline nose he couldn’t have been more different from Camion and his men who were shorter and swarthier like their regional compatriots.
He paused for a moment, nodded at Camion and snapped his notebook shut. “Very well. Show me this murder.”
Camion led him out into the garden and round to the front of the fridge while we all watched him from the kitchen window.
A disbelieving shake of his head and Dubois marched back into the house with Camion straggling along behind him.
“This is grave,” he said. “Very grave. I shall have to inform head office. No one is to leave this property, and no one is to go outside.”
He went out into the hall for privacy. When he came back into the kitchen he asked for the front and back door keys and shooed us all into the living room, saying he would interview us one by one while he waited for the forensic team to arrive.
“This is the first time to my knowledge that we have ever had a forensic team in Beaucoup-sur-mer. I’ll take you first,” he said pointing to Camion.
Left in the living room we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We couldn’t settle to reading or watching TV. We couldn’t even break up the tension with a cup of tea or coffee because Dubois had commandeered the kitchen.
Camion returned as the forensic team arrived with much bustling and shoving. They taped off the end of our road and disappeared into the garden to carry out their search. Time dragged on while we went into the kitchen one by one to be interviewed by Dubois.
There was little we could tell him. No one knew who the woman was. No one knew what she was doing there.
Gwinny was shaking when she returned to the living room. “He asked me how she could have got into the house. Did I give her a key?”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t know her, so how could I have given her a key? That the key is always left underneath the stone to the left of the front door.”
“Did he accept that?”
Gwinny nodded. “Apparently, there is little crime here, and it’s common for people to leave their keys handy or even leave their doors open. He asked me why I was here, and I told him I’d come down from Brittany to supervise the renovation of the house.”
“Did he ask you about the fridge? How long it had been out there.”
Gwinny winced. “I had to tell him that when the new fridge was delivered last week, I asked the delivery man to put the old one out back ready for the dumpster. He said he would take the old one away. I wish I had let him then all this wouldn’t have happened, but I thought I would save him the trouble as I was having the yard cleared this week.”
“A big old fridge like that would have been too much for one man to move. You didn’t help him, did you?”
“No, no. The man from The Union Jack, just up the road, was delivering the English goodies I had ordered for you. He was happy to help.”
Jimbo called out, “They’re packing up. I think they’re going to move the body now.”
“Come away from the window, Jimbo. You shouldn’t be watching.”
“Here they come,” he said dashing over to the living room to go out into the hall to watch the gurney come through.
I grabbed the back of his T-shirt and pulled him away from the door. “No! This isn’t a game, Jimbo. This is serious. This is a real murder.”
I couldn’t stop him from running back to the front window and following the progress of the unpleasant load down the steps and across the road to a police van.
The leader of the forensic team came into the living room with Dubois who had finished his preliminary interviews. “A pity you all churned the garden up so much,” he remarked to Camion.
“We didn’t know there was a body there, officer. We’d been clearing up all day.”
“Well, all we have is the fingerprints on the fri—”
Gwinny gasped and put her hand to her mouth. She looked at me with horror in her eyes.
“What?” I whispered to her.
“I touched it.”
The forensics officer continued, “—dge and whatever we can glean from the body. My assistant here will take everyone’s fingerprints for purposes of elimination.”
Gwinny gasped again.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’s only natural for your prints to be on the fridge. You did tell them it was moved out into the garden recently.”
At long last the police, Dubois included, had left and we could relax.
“Madame,” said Camion approaching me with a querulous look on his face. “This has taken three hours and I shall have to pay my men. I’m not even sure they will return tomorrow to carry on the work.”
I couldn’t keep back a sigh. “All right. You know I will pay you the extra time. But please, promise me you’ll return tomorrow. I’m desperate to get that mess cleared up so all the rats can be exterminated.”
He bowed and gestured to his men to return to the garden. “What?” they both said. “More work?”
“Just fill up the dumpster and we can empty it tonight,” he told them.
With much groaning and moaning the team went back out. Half an hour later we heard their truck start up and watched it pass the windows at the front.<
br />
It was so late by now and Gwinny so disturbed that I summoned up the good will to offer her a place for the night. I didn’t think she was in any condition to drive back to her cottage.
“Thank you, Penzi,” she said, making me feel rotten for not being more accepting of her efforts to worm her way back into our lives.
Jimbo didn’t settle down when I put him to bed. I read three bedtime stories to him before he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Sam and I took the dogs for a long walk before we turned in knowing that Gwinny was only too happy to babysit him for the first time in seven years.
We strode down the road towards the Esplanade allowing the sea air to clear away the evil that had pervaded our new home on our first day. Sam suggested we stop for a coffee at one of the cafés. The dogs settled at our feet, happy to be close to us after being locked up for most of the day. The balmy on shore breeze blew away the horrible memory of that body in the fridge. Surely it was all over now and we could get on with our lives?
Chapter 8
Camion and his gang returned the next day and by the evening they had cleared everything out of the back yard except the fridge. Dubois had told them to leave it there in case the forensic team needed it for further tests. All day long it sat outside as a grim reminder of the tragedy that had taken place while Sam, Jimbo and I had been on the ferry crossing over the Channel.
*
Gwinny’s mood darkened as the day went on. Now and then I would catch her glancing out of the window before wrapping her arms around herself and giving out little moans. In the end I decreed that all shutters at the back of the house were to be closed to cut out the sight of that dangerous and aging piece of antiquated household machinery.
We tried to keep occupied but there wasn’t much we could do. The bulk of our belongings wasn’t arriving for several days yet. The house was already spotless. We couldn’t go out into the garden and, anyway, no one wanted to while that white container of erstwhile death stood like a funeral monument outside the back windows. We could have started cleaning and sorting out the brocante which Gwinny hadn’t touched, but that would have meant opening up the large doors at the back and daring the yard and the garden.