Death in Provence

by Serena Kent

  Penelope gestured to the walled garden and was just thinking she wished she had someone to translate when she heard a familiar scrunch of brakes on the gravel.

  Moments later, Mme Valencourt was apologising for being late and initiating another round of handshakes. M. Geret was clearly among her wide circle of acquaintances. She took charge immediately and led the way to the walled garden.

  They all surveyed the swimming pool, except for the punk throwback, who picked at a scab on his hand. Geret père peered at the old pump and then into the dry basin of the pool, pulled faces and shook his head, walked back and forth, and then said he thought it was worth trying to clean it up. He gave no indication that he knew of its recent macabre history.

  He rattled off a string of French that Penelope rapidly gave up even trying to follow. She looked despairingly at Mme Valencourt.

  “He is overjoyed that you have decided to renovate it,” said the estate agent. “In fact, he says he built the pool there some twenty years ago. He and Plastic Bertrand here—”

  Goodness, thought Penelope, was that a joke from Clémence, referencing Europe’s only successful punk act? She definitely seemed happier. Perhaps she had got back together with the mayor.

  “—they are going to clean it with the high-pressure water jet and repair the cracks. Tomorrow they will return to assess if there are any leaks.”

  Penelope marvelled at the sense of continuity. Just like when Didier Picaud the electrician had shown her the sticker bearing his family firm’s name on the fuse box. “I will let you get on with it then,” she said.

  The sullen young man was the only one who looked askance at the pool. For the first time, Penelope wondered if she really was going to feel all right about swimming in a pool where a dead body had been found. In truth, she had been trying not to think too hard about that.

  She took a deep breath and smiled more brightly.

  “Allons-y, mon brave,” Geret said to his son. “I try to teach him the business, madame, but he is more interested in his music. Les Sex Pistols!” He shook his head. “Le punk rock was for my generation, and I never like it even then! Terrible . . . but there is no good music for the young these days. They all look to the past.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Penelope. “About punk, I mean. Though the Stranglers were quite good.”

  “Strangler? What is this?”

  Penelope wished she hadn’t said anything. It didn’t seem right to be discussing any form of murder, in the circumstances. All too easy for a misunderstanding to arise. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  Geret and his uncommunicative son got cracking with the water tap in the garden and the pressure jet.

  * * *

  PENELOPE NEEDED to decide what to say to Clémence. Naturally, the estate agent hadn’t asked whether it was convenient to send the pool men round. Was it really possible that she was in league with the mayor concerning Manuel Avore’s death? It seemed less likely than Frankie’s theory that her appearances at St Merlot were entirely linked to the chance of seeing Laurent.

  As water hissed against the sides of the pool, Penelope visualised how the walled garden would look when she had finished planting it. She could train climbing plants over the walls—scented climbing plants. Her fantasy grew more ambitious, involving statues of contemplative Greek maidens bearing cornucopias of fruit.

  “I’ve just heard the news about the shots! Why did you not call me?” Clémence broke the spell of Penelope’s inner garden designer.

  Penelope wheeled round, startled. Clémence was staring at her phone as if she couldn’t believe what she had heard or read on it.

  “Yes,” said Penelope. “Slight cause for concern when I was shot at by hunters and then found human remains. Just an everyday walk in the park around these parts.”

  “It is unfortunate, yes. But do not worry. The police are in control.”

  “Of course they are.” She wondered whether her estate agent got English sarcasm. “The chief was quite cross that I was making more work for him. Oh, and it turned out that it was blood on the axe, but absolutely nothing to do with M. Charpet. Not that anyone thought it was in the first place. Something to do with hunters and rabbits. I didn’t really take it in. I just want to let the police get on with their jobs now.”

  It must have been obvious that Penelope was a terrible liar, but Clémence had something else on her mind.

  “Have you spoken to Laurent about this?”

  “He was right there when I was receiving my lecture.”

  Clémence seemed to be thinking hard.

  “Even so, you probably know more about it than I do,” said Penelope.

  The Frenchwoman gave her a withering look.

  “Anyone gone missing hereabouts in the past ten years?”

  Clémence raised her palms. “Idiot hunters! And there will be an explanation about the bones.”

  “I’m sure there will,” said Penelope, with more heavy sarcasm.

  “I have some other news. Penny, the day that you met Pierre Louchard, when we drank his plum brandy, did you notice how he became very angry when we mentioned Manuel Avore?”

  “Notice? His hands were clenching into fists—I thought he was going to break his glass!”

  “I know why, Penny! Laurent told me.” The Frenchwoman’s eyes lit up. “It is because M. Louchard is a man in love!”

  “A man in love? With whom?”

  “He loves Mariette Avore. He has loved her for many, many years.”

  “So why didn’t she marry him in the first place? He seems much nicer than that awful old drunk.”

  “Hélas, the two families of Louchard and Avore hate each other. There has been bad blood between them for generations. And Mariette was a cousin of the Avores. It could not be allowed.”

  “Like the Montagues and the Capulets.”

  “Exactement! Roméo et Juliette!”

  “So poor Mariette had to marry her cousin? Marrying a cousin, even a second cousin, is never a good idea.”

  “It was arranged by the family. She was very young. She had no choice. They wanted a bride for Manuel, and no one else would have him. But think of all the life she has missed!”

  “How do you know all this, suddenly?”

  “The mayor, he might have whispered it in my ear.”

  I’ll bet he did, thought Penelope.

  “Anyway, the two young lovers, Mariette and Pierre, were forbidden by their parents to marry. Pierre Louchard went off to join the foreign legion. A very old-fashioned reaction, but it showed how much he cared. No one heard from him for a long time, not even his parents. He only returned ten years ago when his father died, to take over the farm. His mother passed away last winter, since when he has lived alone. And apparently he is still in love with Mme Avore.”

  “Well, she’s a widow now, so . . . Surely nothing is so bad between the families that they couldn’t make up?”

  “Around here, there is one thing that is that bad. The family of M. Avore were suspected of being collaborators during the war. Most things can be forgiven. But not that. It is the reason why M. Charpet could hardly bring himself to speak to the man. He lost so many friends, many betrayed, and he will never forgive.”

  “Hang on a minute. I thought everyone in the village tried very hard to support M. Avore, even though he tried their patience again and again?”

  “That was the mayor’s idea. He thought that if the village showed it had forgiven Manuel Avore, other family feuds would end.”

  “Is the mayor a very religious man, then?” Penelope remembered the priest. “Forgiveness and all that.”

  Was there a ghost of a smile on the Frenchwoman’s lips? “No, the mayor is not religious.”

  “So would you say that—”

  But Penelope’s opening to a trickier conversation about the Avore/Louchard draft contract was interrupted by a shout from the walled garden. The punk youth came running out, belligerence lost to panic.

  “For goodness s
ake, what now?” asked Penelope.

  “La piscine! Il y a un—”

  The two women looked at each other aghast. They hurried in the direction of the pool.

  M. Geret was standing frozen in the empty pool, looking towards the corner of the deep end where some leaves remained. They followed the direction of his outstretched arm.

  This time the unwelcome guest was a live one, and it took a while to dispose of it. It was a brown snake, about a metre long. The ensuing palaver gave Penelope no chance to ask Clémence any more about the Louchards and the Avores, and any vested interest of her own in Le Chant d’Eau.

  * * *

  ALONE AT last, Penelope made herself a cup of tea and fired up her laptop. Amazingly, the Internet connection was a lot faster than BT had been in Bolingbroke Drive. It was a matter of seconds before Google came up.

  There was no news online about bones being found at St Merlot. Neither was there anything she hadn’t already seen in the papers about the death of Manuel Avore.

  Penelope turned to her next subject for research. She had no intention of letting herself be ridiculed without fighting back. Pages of axe images came up immediately. She scrolled through them and eventually found what she was looking for. She double-checked it against the picture on her phone.

  Then she keyed the make of the axe—Strauss—into the web search. The page loaded. She clicked around the website. Astonishingly, the Germanic name belonged to a firm in Dagenham, England, that exported across Europe. She ran a finger down through the countries listed until she reached France. Another click.

  There were only seven shops that stocked Strauss axes and knives. Penelope’s excitement grew as she went through the list. Three around Paris, far too distant to be significant. One in Lyon, ditto. One near the German border, which could also be discounted. That left two. There was an outlet in Nice, which was a possibility, albeit a slim one.

  “Yesss!” Penelope gave a most unladylike punch to the air. Vaucluse, the last on the list. “Darrieux SARL, Rue des Monts Sauvages, Coustellet, Vaucluse.”

  Coustellet was a large, flat, almost industrial village on the main road from Avignon. She had driven through it but never stopped there. It seemed too good to be true, but surely it was possible that this was where the axe had been bought.

  She allowed herself a single glass of rosé that night. She had work in the morning.

  20

  PENELOPE JUMPED INTO THE RANGE Rover after a black coffee breakfast. If she could help the police—not catch a murderer all on her own, obviously, but show she was an upstanding citizen—she would be accepted all the sooner in St Merlot. That was how Penelope rationalised her plan. All she wanted was a normal life, but to get that she had to do something, especially as she still had a gut feeling that her suspicions about the axe were correct. It was all very well for Chief Reyssens to laugh at her, but that didn’t make him right.

  Professor Fletcher had always trusted her instincts. Penelope’s excellent memory and great grasp of detail had sometimes led to connections that senior professionals had overlooked. She couldn’t override her sense that this was yet another example of a busy man, in this case the chief of police, being too quick to seize on what he wanted to believe.

  Coustellet announced itself with a hypermarket and a cluster of bakeries, one of which had a lengthy queue outside and a small forecourt that was heaving like a bumper car rink at a fairground. The other was deserted. She turned left at the crossroads and found herself a space in a vast car park.

  This large, workaday village where the Petit Luberon mountain ridge came to an end was an odd mix of wine cooperatives, modern streets, and business premises. A butcher’s shop stood between a sushi restaurant and a store that seemed to market a combination of organic food and hard bread at eye-wateringly high prices. A computer shop was shuttered.

  Penelope consulted the map she’d sketched roughly from the Internet, walked on, and found a road that joined at a right angle: rue des Monts Sauvages. And there, a long yellow sign: Darrieux. An ironmonger’s with a display of power tools and a hundred-and-one varieties of hammer. The premises next door had posters of agricultural machinery in the window and an office.

  Inside the shop were long rows of shiny new tools, hanging on pegs. And there, halfway along one wall, was a selection of axes. Her heart pounded as she searched for an exact match.

  There it was.

  She approached the large man at the service counter. “Bonjour, monsieur. I am looking for an axe to use in my garden.”

  “Oui, madame.”

  “Could you show me the axes you have, please?”

  “Oui, madame.” The shopkeeper made no effort to move from behind the counter.

  This is not going well, thought Penelope. How am I going to be able to engage him in conversation about the virtues of various makes of axe, if he only knows how to say “Oui, madame”?

  “Could you help me select an axe—which do you think is the best make?”

  “That depends, madame.”

  Penelope felt a glimmer of hope at having upped his vocabulary, and launched in, hoping her French was up to the job.

  “I have a friend who came in here a while ago and purchased a Strauss axe. For general work in the garden. She lent it to me, and I found it was exactly what I needed. Ivy! Very good for cutting down ivy,” embellished Penelope as inspiration struck. “Perhaps you have one of those?”

  The man exhaled, rather impertinently in Penelope’s opinion, and eased his belly round the side of the counter. He led her over to the wall where the axes hung.

  “I think it might be this one,” said Penelope casually, pointing at the medium-weight Strauss. “I don’t suppose you have a record of everyone who has bought this axe from you—just so I can be absolutely sure it’s the correct one?”

  He shook his head.

  “Ah,” said Penelope. “Is it a popular model?”

  “Not really.”

  A man of few words, clearly. He stared, but then said, “Why are you so interested in this Strauss axe?”

  Was she acting very suspiciously? However, Penelope had anticipated this and prepared her cover story. “Ah, you are too clever for a Secret Shopper, monsieur! I am from Dagenham in England,” she said with graceful self-importance. “I work for the excellent toolmaking company of Strauss. We wish to know the social profile of all the customers who buy our axes in France. This is part of a Europe-wide marketing assessment, most important for future designs!”

  The shopkeeper nodded sagely, and Penelope breathed again, until he spoke again.

  “Your company is indeed most diligent, madame. One of your agents has already spoken to me this week!”

  “What?” Penelope snapped to full attention. “Ah, I must apologise for our . . . overenthusiasm. As you can see, we take our duty to customers—and retailers—very seriously indeed.”

  “Yes, one of your colleagues came in asking the same questions about the same axe.”

  Penelope grew flustered.

  “One of my colleagues . . . oh . . . yes, of course . . . he was due to come down here . . .”

  “She, madame.”

  “Of course, she! What was I thinking? She was due to come down here to help me—and she must have started early, been passing . . . something like that!” Thinking on her feet, Penelope added, as casually as she could, “She must have been our French agent. I have never met her—what did she look like, madame, madame—”

  “Very elegant. I must admit I was surprised that such a petite, elegant woman would have an interest in Strauss tools. Mme Val . . . Valin, something like that I think—blond hair, a typically Parisian look and accent.”

  Penelope wasn’t sure she managed to hide her shock. “Ah, yes. Mme Valencourt. I will talk to her and explain that you can send all the details you find to me, as I am from the parent company.”

  “I have given her all the help I can.”

  Penelope felt as excited as she was irritated. S
o Clémence Valencourt was also on the case, was she? The same busybody who was always telling her to drop it and leave it to the experts was doing her own information gathering on the quiet.

  “We shall see about that!” she said as she got into the Range Rover and slammed the door.

  21

  PENELOPE STARED AT THE HANDSET for her newly installed landline, working out what she wanted to say to Clémence Valencourt, and whether it might be better just to present herself at the estate agency in Ménerbes, when it rang in her hand.

  “Bonjour, Mme Keet. This is Laurent Millais.”

  “Oh!” she squeaked. How on earth had the mayor got her number? “Hello.”

  “I was wondering if you would like to come to lunch with me. It is very short notice, I am sorry.”

  Penelope surveyed her kitchen table, on which was arrayed a shocking amount of food, purchased on the trip home. She shook her head once again at her inability to control herself in the face of French temptation. “Now, you mean?”

  “I hope to entice you away from your house. I would be most pleased if you would have lunch with me today. There are a number of matters we should discuss. Shall we say, about one o’clock?”

  “Let me consult my diary,” Penelope said, and waited a few seconds as she rustled the pages of La Provence. “Yes, monsieur le maire, I find I am free, and I would be delighted to lunch with you.”

  “Excellent. Shall we meet at Le Sanglier Paresseux?”

  The lazy boar? “Is that a restaurant or an item on the menu?”

  The mayor laughed. Was he buttering her up for something? “It is a restaurant not far away, in Caseneuve,” he said. “It is very good.”

  “I’ll see you there, then. One o’clock?”

  “Impeccable.”

  Penelope moved swiftly. There was major work to be done, not least on her face. This time she was going to meet him with immaculate makeup. She had washed her hair that morning, and for once it had fallen into the style it was supposed to. She selected a burgundy linen dress that showed off her waist and worked well with the red-gold of her hair. Though why she was bothering to make an effort, she really didn’t know. Just her own pride, she supposed, as she slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals. A chunky gold necklace completed the look.