Martha’s head swam and a feeling of nausea swamped her. How she didn’t collapse in a heap on the spot she had no idea, and before she even registered what she was doing she was hurrying towards this grotesque discovery, screeching Lottie’s name. She reached out automatically and touched the hand of the dangling Bruno Saunier. It was as cold as ice. Then she crouched down and felt Remy’s. Warm, but not as warm as her own. That was no surprise really. It was chilly in here, and the concrete floor on which he was lying was glacial. Remy was wearing only thin pyjamas.
“Lottie!” Martha bellowed again. Where was the woman?
“No need to shout,” came a voice from right behind her.
Martha jumped. She’d been so focussed on the brothers that she hadn’t heard the approaching click-clacking of Lottie’s high heels.
“Is that Bruno or Remy?” Lottie was studying the corpse. “I never could tell them apart.
Martha just gaped at her. She couldn’t decide if she was more incredulous about Lottie’s dispassionate reaction, which, given the way she was now inspecting Bruno so closely, was starting to border on the ghoulish, or the fact that she thought the two completely unalike brothers looked the same. They were different builds, different heights, different everything. She shook herself.
“Bruno,” she replied. “Remy’s still alive, just.”
“Let’s see.” Lottie squatted down and took Remy’s left wrist in her right hand. She then studied the glittering TAG Heuer watch on her own left wrist. More incredulity from Martha. Lottie seemed to know what she was doing.
Lottie glanced up and saw Martha staring at her. “What? I used to be a nurse.”
Lottie had always been vague about past jobs, merely saying she’d done a bit of this and that. She really was full of surprises.
“Did you used to slip all your patients sleeping pills too?” Martha couldn’t stop herself saying peevishly.
“No need,” beamed Lottie, ignoring Martha’s grumpiness. “They were usually drugged up to the eyeballs already. Now, be a dear and go and fetch some quilts and blankets, whatever you can find. We need to warm this old boy up. But phone for an ambulance first.”
Martha rose obediently, trying to get a grip on the situation. Trying to feel something. The initial horror of her discovery had worn off extremely rapidly, making her wonder if she’d turned into an insensitive automaton. Maybe that’s what finding two and a bit dead men in four days did to you. Frankly she felt more annoyed than anything. Annoyed and picked on. Why did the wretched bodies keep ending up under her nose?
Like a seasoned pro, she dialled the emergency services and reported the details of her latest gruesome find, then, slightly hesitantly, pushed the front door of the Sauniers’ house open. She’d never made it past the doorstep before. Remy always delivered the plastic bags containing their financial records to Martha, and called by to collect them when Martha had sorted and processed. She always gave him a print-out of the files she’d created, but she was pretty sure neither brother ever looked at them. She emailed the electronic versions directly to Pierre at the CGA, who seemed to have drawn the short straw and dealt mainly with aged, computer-wary agriculturalists.
She had expected, at best, a smell of dankness, dirty washing-up, pipe smoke and garlic but was met with if not quite freshness, then at least none of the above. She found herself in a wide hallway filled with pairs of muddy boots scattered over the floor and dirty overalls hanging from pegs on the wall. The bedrooms were bound to be upstairs, so she navigated her way through the footwear to the bare wooden staircase and nipped up it. The first door she pushed open was that of the bathroom. There was a bit of a public urinal miasma there so she shoved it shut again quickly, and tried the next. This revealed a large, gloomy room with dingy wallpaper and vast amounts of heavy, wooden furniture. The bed was strewn with a pile of blankets so she grabbed those, dragged them off and bundled them up into a manageable load. She heard a couple of things dropping behind her as she descended the stairs. She looked back and up, and saw a pipe and half a set of dentures on the top two steps. Eyes front again, she kept going, not stopping to investigate any further noises.
Back in the milking parlour, she helped Lottie roll Remy first this way, then that, so they could get a couple of hairy, crumb-coated blankets beneath him and the others on top. Lottie got him into the recovery position, but that was all they could do until help arrived. They sat themselves down to wait on a dressing gown that had been in with the blankets.
The cows, who had been quiet for a while, suddenly renewed their raucous chorus.
“Do you think we should make a start on the milking?” suggested Lottie.
Martha glanced at her to see if she was joking, but she appeared to be totally serious about it. Uh oh. She must have taken leave of her senses. It had to be delayed stress.
“Don’t tell me – you used to be a dairy farmer too?” Martha said lightly.
“Don’t be daft. You’re the farmery one. Couldn’t you do it?” urged Lottie.
Martha wondered where to start with the very long list of why she couldn’t. “I may have milked a sheep once to get some colostrum for her weak lamb, but that’s as far as my experience with milking animals goes,” she began firmly. “And look at all the equipment! I wouldn’t know what to put where. Plus I don’t think it would be a good idea to usher a herd of large cows in here with poor Remy still on the floor.”
“I didn’t think of that,” nodded Lottie. “We’d better leave it for now.”
For ever, more like. Martha pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts list. There was Etienne’s name. He had meat cattle but he was bound to know someone who had a dairy herd and who could come and deal with the Sauniers’ animals. Presumably the police would cordon off this area where the bodies were found, but surely they’d allow access to some of the milking stalls so that the poor creatures could be relieved of their misery caused by overfull udders. She made the call, being slightly economical with the truth and merely saying that the Sauniers were both too unwell to do the milking this morning. She wasn’t sure how much she could give away until the police arrived. She hoped they wouldn’t be long.
“Do you think he hanged himself?” piped up Lottie next. She was looking at the fallen stepladders beyond Bruno’s body.
Martha started when she saw them. She hadn’t noticed them before. It looked very much like they’d been kicked away by someone intent on suicide.
Or did it? She frowned and got up. Weren’t they rather far from where poor Bruno dangled? He’d have had to have given them one heck of a kick to send them flying that distance away. Could you do that when standing on a not-particularly-stable object? And why hang himself here? There was a whole farmyard of buildings consisting of conveniently positioned beams to use. Why go for one in the milking parlour? And why would he have spent quite a long time preparing a thick plait of many, many strands of blue bailer twine to use as the rope? Farms had ropes and chains all over the place. Something didn’t add up. And why was Bruno dressed, but Remy still in his pyjamas?
She voiced her observations to Lottie.
“Omigod, you’re right!” exclaimed Lottie, enthusiastically getting up to join her in studying the macabre scene of one dead brother and the other unconscious. “It’s another murder! Wow. You just keep coming across them, don’t you!”
“On no, this one should be yours,” Martha corrected her, trying to dampen her zeal. “I wouldn’t have come here but for you.”
“True,” nodded Lottie, and looked quite proud of herself. That wasn’t the reaction Martha had expected.
“I shall have to stop going anywhere,” said Martha, suddenly swamped with guilt, “because wherever I go people are getting killed.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” chided Lottie, giving Martha a quick hug. “They’d get killed anyway. You just happen to keep finding them.”
“Someone else can find them in future,” grumbled Martha. “I’ve done my share. In
fact, more than,” she added with feeling.
Lottie made a vaguely sympathetic sound but then went on, “So what do you think happened here?”
“Well, Bruno got up, dressed and came out to do the milking on his own. Whether that’s normal or not, I don’t know. Perhaps they take it in turns, or perhaps Remy wasn’t feeling well. Bruno came into the shed to plug things in or pull levers or whatever before he went to get the cows.”
“But he didn’t turn the lights on,” Lottie chimed in. “Odd.”
“Either that, or somebody else turned them off,” continued Martha. “Poor Bruno meets his demise, either at his own hands—”
“Pffft!” snorted Lottie.
“Or at someone else’s, who makes it look like he’s hanged himself, with the fallen stepladders etc. The cows aren’t getting milked so they get noisy. This rouses Remy from bed to come and see what’s going on, and he finds his dead brother. He collapses.” She crouched down next to Remy. “What might he have collapsed of?” she asked Lottie. “If he’d just fainted, he’d have come round by now, surely?”
“I suspect he’s had a stroke,” said Lottie grimly, kneeling beside her. “Old rickety guy, ghastly shock, it would be enough. He’s warmed up a bit, pulse still faint,” she observed, feeling his neck. “All the damage is done early on in a stroke. If he comes round at all then it could take months of rehabilitation to get him back to anything like he was before.”
“So he’ll be unlikely to be able to give the police any helpful information for a while,” concluded Martha.
“Quite possibly.”
“You know, you’re taking this really well,” remarked Martha. “Must be from the years of nursing.”
“Oh no, this is my first dead body. Well, apart from Mum and Dad in their coffins. I was only ever a trainee veterinary nurse, and only for a few weeks. I got bored.”
“But that checking his pulse rate thing you did!” exclaimed Martha.
“Just doing what I’ve seen them do on telly in the hospital soaps,” Lottie shrugged. “You were freaking out a bit. I did it to calm you down.”
Martha had thought she’d been coping extremely well in the circumstances, but there was no point starting an argument over it.
“That was nice of you,” she said graciously.
“That’s what friends are for. Oh, and I did do my First Aid badge when I was a Girl Guide. That’s how I know about the recovery position,” Lottie explained.
“Your Brown Owl would have been proud,” smiled Martha.
“Brown Owl was brownies. Don’t you know anything?” sighed Lottie. “But we’re getting off the subject. Why murder Remy, and why here?”
“There’s a farming theme, like with the other two murders. What we need to find out is if the Sauniers had been getting warning letters or phone calls, like Damien and Martial had. If they did then that would suggest it’s the same nutcase at work again. And why here, specifically, in the milking parlour? I guess it’s as good a place as any. People aren’t generally at their brightest and best first thing in the morning, so not as observant and easier to overpower.”
“Bruno’s looks wiry,” said Lottie, dispassionately sizing up the corpse. “Small but strong. Not easy to overpower at any time, I’d have said.”
“Maybe he was knocked out,” suggested Martha. “Does it look like he’s been hit on the head?”
“Can’t really see.” Lottie strode towards the stepladder.
“What are you doing?” shrieked Martha.
“Well, if I stand it up next to Bruno I can have a proper look,” she pointed out.
“Don’t touch anything! That’s interfering with a crime scene, plus putting your fingerprints everywhere.”
“Ah, didn’t think of that,” admitted Lottie. Then she perked up. “Oh, but I’ve got driving gloves in the car. I’ll get those.”
“We mustn’t move anything that’s here, Lottie. We’ll just have to wait for the official autopsy report. I’m sure Philippe will tell me as soon as he hears.”
“OK. But talking of Philippe, where the heck is he? I thought the flics would be here by now,” grumbled Lottie. “Certainly the ambulance.”
“The nearest ambulance is Bousseix, and that’s twenty minutes at least,” said Martha. “And the gendarmes could be coming from anywhere in the département. Depends which station is actually manned today. None of them are close to here.”
“So we’ve probably got about another ten minutes then.” Lottie consulted her flashy watch again. “I’ll nip and have a rummage around for threatening letters.”
Before Martha could stop her, Lottie was off. “Wear those gloves!” she bellowed after her.
And so Martha was left alone with the two inert brothers. She wished she could stop herself looking at Bruno, who was rotating very slowly in the current of air that swirled in through the open dairy parlour doors, but her eyes were drawn to him in horrified fascination. She studied the plaited rope. That must have taken many hours to make. She was sure Bruno hadn’t done it. Farmers didn’t have time to waste. He wouldn’t bother knotting together loads and loads of bailer twine. He’d go to the farm supply shop and buy ready-made rope of the size he needed, if he didn’t already have some lying around. He probably used to go to Damien’s shop, Martha realised. Or maybe the one at Sarjon. That might be fractionally closer to here. There were plenty of small farm supply shops dotted around the area. A few larger ones had sprung up on the outskirts of big towns, but for the time being the little local ones were holding their own. Their clients were short on time so needed somewhere close by. Also, given the demographic of the clientele, they preferred friendly, local service that included a nice chat.
Her eyes slipped down the rope to Bruno’s head. He was facing away from her at present, thank goodness. She scrutinised the shape of his skull in the dim light. Yes, just there, high up on the right at the back. She could clearly make out an interruption to the rounded contour. There was a distinct dip where there shouldn’t be. So someone had dealt poor Bruno a massive blow to the head. She hoped it had been enough to kill him instantly so that he wasn’t aware, however remotely, of what happened next.
Martha suddenly realised she was freezing. She was almost tempted to drape the end of one of Remy’s blankets over her shoulders, but the poor old man needed all the warmth he could get. She made do with getting up and striding briskly round in circles while blowing on her hands and clapping them together.
The forces of law and order in the form of Philippe swept in moments later. Martha hurried to the door of the parlour on hearing an engine. Philippe was half out of the car when he caught sight of her and stopped immediately, arm draped over the door to keep his balance.
“What on earth are you doing here?” he demanded furiously, anger taking over from initial gobsmackedness. “You’re meant to be with your friend.”
Martha opened her mouth to protest but, before she could begin her defence, “She is with me,” came Lottie’s voice tersely from the doorway of the house.
Philippe swung his head to look that way.
“Well, what are you doing here? And specifically, why have you been inside the victims’ house?”
“I’ve been to the loo,” snapped Lottie.
“With gloves on?” Philippe wasn’t buying it.
“I didn’t want to leave fingerprints,” said Lottie with a forced sweet smile, but finally able to tell the truth.
“I’ll bet,” murmured Philippe. “Where are the brothers then?” he sighed, getting completely out of the car and slamming the door rather harder than was necessary.
“Is it just you coming?” asked Martha hopefully. Even an angry Philippe knew she was incapable of murder. He was preferable to a bevy of supercilious, suspicious cops. Martha was perfectly aware of how bad her continual presence at places where bodies, or bits of bodies, kept turning up must look.
“No, the others are on their way.”
“How many others?” she probed. N
ot that it really mattered but the way Philippe had said the word made it sound like the massed forces of France’s gendarmerie were hurtling here from all directions.
“More than enough. And the investigating magistrate will be coming too. So—” Philippe looked towards Lottie, but she’d disappeared back indoors. “For goodness sake get her out of that house!” he bellowed at Martha. “And quick. Now which way do I go?”
Martha pointed into the milking parlour and replied icily, “You can’t miss them. And apart from covering Remy and moving him into the recovery position, we haven’t touched a thing. And there’s no need to shout!”
She stalked past him huffily towards the house. He stalked huffily the other way. Great, thought Martha. Her only ally, because Lottie was proving to be way more of a liability, was in a strop with her. She needed his support to keep her out of a cell.
She found Lottie in a small room at the back of the house. It contained a plastic chair and a battered picnic table, strewn with mainly sheets of paper, letters and empty envelopes, but there were also a few jiffy bags, old batteries, a dead flower in a pot and, bizarrely, a pair of socks.
“This is the office I reckon,” said Lottie, continuing to rifle through the paperwork, but knocking a lot of it on the floor in the process. “There must be something here.”
“You’ve got to come out,” urged Martha. “Now!” she added, when Lottie completely ignored her. “Philippe’s mad at us, and the judge is about to arrive.”
That made Lottie look up. “The judge!” she exclaimed, in genuine alarm. “What, are they going to try us here?”
Martha rolled her eyes. “Not actual judge, juge. Juge d’investigation You know, the investigating magistrate guy, the one in charge. The police will be reporting to him.”
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