by Serena Kent
She turned to show Didier upstairs, and noticed that he was staring intently at the newly cleaned card table in the hall.
“Do you like it, Didier?”
He snapped out of his trance and looked back at her
“The card table. I found it in the barn. Pretty, isn’t it?”
Didier looked back at the table. “Yes, very nice. I’ll get started, shall I?”
“Cup of tea?”
But he said he wanted to get cracking.
Penelope stood in the cool air at the open kitchen door while she gathered her thoughts. Surely she should tell the chief of police what she had found in the house deeds?
How much had happened since that first day when she stood on this very spot, looking out into the overgrown courtyard. Her dream house in Provence. The heat. The cicadas, the annoying wasps. If only she had known what lay in store.
From above she heard sounds of the electrician at work, interspersed with the odd French swear word.
It was nice to know that she was not alone in the house. She made herself a soothing cuppa and sat at the kitchen table, trying to make sense of what she had discovered on the deeds to the house. She had left them in her bedroom, she realised. She stood to go upstairs to fetch them.
Her phone rang.
“Hello?”
It was Clémence, but not the perfectly controlled version that Penelope had come to recognise. This time the voice was urgent, worried. “Penny, where are you? Are you on your own?”
“Yes, in the kitchen.”
“Thank God for that!”
“Well, apart from Didier Picaud, the electrician. He’s upstairs, replacing the wiring.”
“Mon dieu! Penny, you must listen carefully and say nothing. You have to get out of the house.”
“What?”
“Get out of the house now, and start running down to the road. Go—and stay close to the trees!”
Still holding the phone to her ear, Penelope grabbed her bag in a daze and did as she was told.
The urgency in Clémence’s voice stalled any more questions as she slipped out of the back door. “Penny, are you there? I just got a call from my police contact, who has been checking out the Coustellet connection. Thank goodness I took it before I arrived at Goult. I’m on my way back now. It all fits together: the axe, the tractor competition, the break-ins, the shop at Coustellet . . .”
“I’m listening.” Penelope brushed past a pine tree, scraping her arm.
“The connection we were looking for—”
Two strong forearms grabbed Penelope from behind and gripped tightly around her waist. She gave a scream of shock as her phone was snatched from her hand. She kicked backwards, hoping to reach her assailant’s shins. The arms were so powerful, she could see the sinews straining. Flecked with pale dust. Or was it flour? Baker’s arms. Jacques Correa! But how could he possibly know that she had reluctantly added him to her list of suspects?
“Help! Didier! Help me!” she yelled up at the bedroom window.
“Don’t be stupid,” said the man. “Argh!”
One of her sharp kicks had hit home.
She wrested herself around. It was only then that she could see who her attacker was.
“Didier!” gasped Penelope. “What the—”
Her young friend was no longer smiling. Penelope was no match for him as he jettisoned her phone and pulled her arms tighter behind her back.
“What’s going on? What are you doing?”
He was very strong and smelled of sweat. He frogmarched her round the house to his van.
“For goodness sake, Didier! This is no time to go all James Bond on me!” Penelope joked feebly, trying to remind him of all the friendly chats they’d had. “Besides, Bond was always very well mannered.”
“Shut up! Get in the camionette! We are going somewhere quiet to have a conversation.”
“What about?”
“Your house, madame.”
“Well, talk to me then! Didier?”
Penelope dug her heels in and tried to get free.
“Do not do that! I am much stronger than you are, and you will get hurt, believe me. I can hurt you very badly, madame, but I would rather that we came to a suitable arrangement. I realise that you might take some time to come to the correct decision, so I have decided to look after you until you do.”
“What? We’re friends, aren’t we, Didier? You’re just not thinking straight. We need to talk this through over a nice cup of tea.”
“One more thing, Penny. I hate your English tea with milk—c’est dégueulasse! Disgoosting! No French person can drink it.”
Didier opened the van door at the back and bundled her in. She kicked out again, but he pushed her over onto her front, pulled her hands behind her, and tied them together with what felt like wire. It cut into her wrists. He closed the door on her and went round to the driving seat.
“And now we go on a little trip, Penny. I will show you some of the beautiful scenery of the Luberon.”
“But Didier!”
“Shut up!”
Penelope whimpered as the van bumped along the cart track to the gate of the property, then stopped.
“Merde!”
She tried to get up to see what was happening, but slithered back painfully against the sharp edges of several pieces of electrical equipment.
Didier began shouting expletives to no one in particular, and then reversed the van round in a rapid turn, bumping down into the lower field and throwing Penelope from one side of the van to the other. As they headed back towards the house, Penelope caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror of the panic in her captor’s eyes. They turned up the hill and crunched over rough terrain. Then they screeched to a halt. Penelope bumped her head.
The young man got out and wrenched open the back doors. The van was almost wedged between trees. “We will have to walk. Get out.”
As soon as she managed to scramble upright, he pushed her into the trees that lined the upper side of the track. Branches scratched her face; with her hands tied, she could not clear them.
“This is stupid!” she whispered. “The police will be here any minute. They’re on their way now.”
“Sssh!”
He obviously didn’t believe her. He pushed her again, even more roughly, as they penetrated deeper into the copse of holm oaks and pines.
“Oww, that hurt!”
Didier’s profile was grim as he gripped her arm and marched deeper into the trees. They tramped in silence for a few minutes. When they stopped, it was in front of a large dog rose bush. With one hand he reached in and pulled some branches aside.
“Get in.”
Penelope looked around, wondering if there was any way she could make a break for it. His grip tightened as he dragged her behind him into a structure within the large bush. A dim light filtered through a long rectangular slit at eye level.
She realised they must be in some kind of hunting hide on the hill above her land.
Didier was sweating profusely now, obviously nervous. Penelope thought that if she could only speak to him in a civilised manner, there might be a way out for both of them.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” she said. “We’re friends, aren’t we? There’s no need for any unpleasantness. Please, Didier, why—”
“Shut up.”
He produced a large, slim-bladed knife. “Silence. Understand?”
Penelope nodded.
She couldn’t understand what had happened to this previously pleasant young man. But the more she stared at him, the more she realised that his slightly geeky awkwardness was an indication of more serious problems.
“There is not much time, madame. I want you to listen to me. I have a proposition for you that will help us both. First, you need to understand the history of Le Chant d’Eau. You need to understand who the house belongs to, and—”
“But I do—”
“Be quiet and listen, madame! Your electrical wiring, it is very old
. Very old and very dangerous. There could easily be a fire.”
“What? But you said it was fine!”
“It is not fine, Mme Keet.” All amity and first-name terms were disposed with. “The wiring is no good. It could spark a fire that would leave the house a wreck. No one will be surprised. And that is what is going to happen—a big fire. You will be OK, of course! The insurance will cover the costs—and we, the Malpas family, will make you an offer for the ruin, at a reasonable price.”
“But if it’s my house you want, why burn it down? And what do you mean—we, the Malpas family?”
His eyes blazed. “My mother was a Malpas. I told you right at the start that my family had a long association with the house. That JRM Électriciens had looked after it for years. As we look after so many homes in St Merlot.”
She didn’t understand.
“JRM. Jean-Jacques and Roger Malpas. It is now my business. I continue the tradition. And it was our house!” Didier shouted. “The house and the land my family owned for generations before that bastard Avore and his Nazi friends took it!”
“What on earth do you mean?” said Penelope. This was the story M. Charpet had told her, but she knew how important it was to keep him talking. Could he possibly be referring to the treasure said to be hidden in the grounds? She wasn’t going to let on that she had heard the story.
“My grandfather and his brother were in the hills with the Resistance. My two older great-uncles were shot after a sabotage raid. Their parents were caught helping the maquis fighters and taken by the Gestapo. No one ever saw them again. That filthy collaborator Gustave Avore, Manuel’s father, had informed on them. All to get his grubby little hands on the house and its land.”
“Why didn’t you try to get it back after the war?”
“Aah, if only it were that easy, madame. But after the war no one wanted to speak of the treachery that ran through all the villages around here. It was all about forgiveness, a break with the past . . .” Didier spat on the floor. “So the Avores stayed in the house, and we had to start again with the pathetic reparations that they offered us.”
“If it meant so much to you, why didn’t you try to buy it back later? You’ve been successful—you could have afforded it.”
“Why should we pay good money for a property that was rightfully ours? We decided to wait. Everyone knew that things always went wrong for the Avores. Sure enough, old Gustave died; Emile, his son, crashed his car while drunk in the 1970s. Manuel Avore started drinking and gambling his way through all his money. We knew he would need to sell up sooner or later. Then, a few years back, came the moment. Avore was up to his eyes in gambling debts.”
“A few years back?”
“About seven years ago. My uncle Jean-Luc approached Manuel with an offer to settle his debts in exchange for Le Chant d’Eau. He refused, but then we made him an offer no gambler could refuse. We would play for the house. If he won, we would pay off his debts. That’s when we put our plan into action.”
“Your plan?”
Didier’s voice took on a hint of pride. He was a psychopath, thought Penelope. He wanted her to know how clever he was. She was furious with herself for not spotting the signs earlier—but had there actually been any, beyond his obsessions and slight awkwardness?
“It was a brilliant plan. We knew he could never resist a game of cards. But we had a secret weapon.”
“What was that?”
“Not what—who. A friend of a friend who was known as the best gambler in the Luberon Valley.”
“But you didn’t win the game,” said Penelope.
“Oh, but we did!” Didier examined the knife. It looked lethal. “Or at least we would have won, but for that cheat Michel.”
Penelope felt the pieces of this jigsaw of malice begin to fall into place.
“Michel?” She affected a disingenuous tone. “Who’s he?”
“Michel Cailloux, card shark and cheat. Cailloux joined the game. It was high stakes, set up to look as if he too was playing to win the house, or to settle Manuel’s debt—Manuel was greedy and stupid enough to agree. But we had arranged with Cailloux to defeat Avore together in front of witnesses. A perfect solution. We get the house, Cailloux gets paid off, and Avore gets what was coming to him.”
“So what happened?”
“I was winning, just about to clean up. And Cailloux tricked me! He took the game and the house. Before we could do anything, he had the deeds signed over to him, in front of the honest witnesses, and the house was on the market. Oh, we tried to reason with him, to buy it for a marked-down price, but he wouldn’t listen. We were outbid.”
“By the Girards from Lyon?”
“Yes.”
“And Cailloux?”
“He paid for his sins.”
Penelope visualised the skeletal hand clawing at her from the chapel floor. Her blood ran cold.
“Was he from St Merlot?”
Didier gave her a baffled look. “No, he was from miles away. The other end of the valley.”
“But why did you not buy Le Chant d’Eau when it was for sale this year?”
“It was too expensive. You outbid us.”
Had the Malpas family been the other interested party Clémence had mentioned?
“These days only those who come from outside have the money to buy and then restore these old houses. We should have started a fire, partly destroyed it. If it was a ruin, then we could have afforded it. Perhaps we should have done it then, but we did not. Not then.”
Penelope grappled with this dark logic. The spectre of an electrical fire, the blackened walls.
“And why would you want to stay anyway,” he asked aggressively, “after a body is found in your swimming pool? That would have been enough to make most women run away fast.”
“I don’t give up easily.” Penelope sounded a lot braver than she felt. “Whatever this is about, it’s just got a bit out of hand.” Make that a lot out of hand.
“It should have been enough.” A tic was pulsing in his cheek. The knife glinted in a shaft of light. He moved closer.
“OK,” said Penelope, trying not to upset him further. “We can talk about this.” But she wondered what on earth she could possibly say.
She thought she heard the faint wail of a siren. Could it be the police, coming up to St Merlot to see Pierre Louchard?
Neither of them said a word. They listened as the sirens grew louder.
Didier moved closer. “Did you call the gendarmes? How did you manage to call them?”
“I didn’t.”
The sirens reached a crescendo and stopped.
Penelope tried to think clearly. The police had arrived, but no one knew where they were hidden. Didier was rattled. He could lash out at her with his blade in a second.
“I can understand,” she said, in a wobbly voice. “I can understand why you felt so strongly that the house was morally yours . . .”
The knife trembled in his hand.
“It was an accident,” he said. “Avore came to my uncle Jean-Luc’s house. Making trouble as usual, taunting us with the news that the new owner of Le Chant d’Eau was moving in. Asking why we didn’t have the money to buy it. Were we so unsuccessful that we couldn’t even get the house back this time? We were cutting wood that morning. They had a fight, and Avore went down when I hit him.”
“Hit—with an axe?”
“It might have been.”
“It was an accident, then?” Penelope knew it was always better to disarm an assailant by offering sympathy.
“We put him in the back of my van to take him home. We thought he was only knocked unconscious. But when we got to his house, and we opened the doors to get him out, he was . . . not breathing. We panicked. I wanted to call for an ambulance, but Jean-Luc disagreed. He had an idea that could make everything right. It was only justice for us.”
“To scare me away from my house?” Penelope was incredulous.
Didier moved closer.
&nb
sp; Penelope had to keep him talking. With any luck, someone might hear. “When was this—you said it was the morning?”
“Early, for Avore, before nine o’clock.”
“The day I arrived at Le Chant d’Eau?”
“Jean-Luc was outside his garage later and saw you arrive in your big English car.”
“But . . . then, Manuel Avore apparently came into my garden at about six o’clock that evening. But how could it have been him?”
Didier stared hard.
“Perhaps the blow didn’t kill him. You didn’t kill him,” said Penelope.
“No,” said Didier. “You did not see Avore that day.”
“But I was supposed to think I had!”
“You saw Jean-Luc.”
“Eh?”
Didier was regaining his poise. He began playing with the knife, looking at her and then at the blade. Penelope had worked on enough cases to know when a psychopathic perpetrator was needy for recognition. She shivered.
There was a rustle of branches behind him.
Abruptly, Didier’s expression changed. It registered incomprehension, then fear. Penelope peered through the shadows of the hide, unable to make out what was going on.
The knife fell from Didier’s hands. He slowly raised his arms.
“Do not move, Didier. I have my favourite rifle in your back. I am taking off the safety catch.”
A loud click sounded. Pierre Louchard emerged from the darkness.
“Get on your knees, Picaud.”
Didier dropped to the ground.
Penelope felt dizzy. The adrenaline that had buoyed her up to this point drained away. She felt herself swaying.
“Sit down, madame. All is now well. The police are on their way.”
M. Louchard kept the rifle trained on Didier.
Didier let out a grunt of rage. Louchard dug deeper with the rifle. “Don’t tempt me,” he warned.
Penelope tried to thank him, but no words would come.
From outside came the sound of cracking twigs and boots on the ground. Several gendarmes pushed their way in behind M. Louchard. Didier flailed around in a hopeless bid to escape. He was removed by two large men in blue uniforms.