She dropped her hands and called after him, “I obviously failed as a parent. I thought I’d done a good job bringing you up, but I’ve raised a ghoul.”
Jared grinned back at her through the doorway and extended a hand to help her out. Lottie had parked at a rakish angle on the sloping ground.
“Five minutes, that’s all,” frowned Martha, although why she was bothering to still dictate terms was a mystery to them all. She and they knew they’d simply ignore her.
“Yeah, yeah,” agreed Jared vaguely.
Lottie refused to commit herself to anything.
They set off down the road. They were dogless, for a change. Lottie had left hers at home, concerned that it would interfere with her sleuthing if she had to keep an eye on them. They could be rather boisterous. Martha had allowed Flossie to continue snoozing at home. It was a hot afternoon and it wouldn’t have been fair to drag her off for a walk in these temperatures.
“There’s a green lane off to the right in about a hundred metres,” Lottie told them, energetically striding ahead. “I often bring the dogs here. The path goes alongside one of Lecerf’s fields, so we can cut across it to the farm.”
Martha let out an exasperated sigh.
“Well, we could have driven to the farm entrance to save ourselves the trek but someone objected to that,” snapped Lottie impatiently over her shoulder.
“Your bright white, gigantic Range Rover isn’t exactly subtle,” retorted Martha, jogging to catch up with her sometimes friend, sometimes bane of her life. “People would see it from miles away.”
“What people?” snorted Lottie.
The women glared at each other.
“Now, now ladies,” smirked Jared from behind them.
“You keep out of it,” warned Martha and Lottie in unison, whirling round in perfect synchronisation.
“Do you want to be invited to my wedding or not?” he riposted calmly, folding his arms.
“Martha’s your mum, you can’t not invite her.” Lottie surprisingly stood up for her. Martha was touched.
“And Lottie’s practically family. You can’t not invite her,” said Martha, putting her arm through Lottie’s.
“Don’t bet on it. It’s my wedding,” Jared reminded them, “well, and Blandine’s, so you’d better be nice to me.” He beamed, certain in his despotism.
Rolling their eyes, Martha and Lottie swung round and continued their march.
“You suck at raising kids,” observed Lottie. “This one of yours is far too uppity.”
“But he was such a sweet baby,” reminisced Martha. “Good as gold for the first three weeks. It’s been downhill ever since.”
They smiled at each other, not needing to look round to see that it was Jared’s turn to roll his eyes.
They reached the point where they needed to cut across the newly-mown hay meadow. Jared and Martha were in greens and creams and blended in quite well with their surroundings. Lottie was in a sundress sporting bright pink, red and purple flowers on a cerulean blue background that seemed to glow. Martha mused that her friend’s movements could probably be tracked from space. Still, it seemed quiet enough in this vicinity.
As he stepped from the green lane into the field, Jared’s foot clipped something in the undergrowth. He bent down to pick up a cyclist’s water bottle. He recognised the colours and logo of the internationally famous pro cycling team Cofidis.
“We’re not the first nosey parkers to come by here,” he remarked, brandishing the bottle. “Some guy’s been by on his bike and dropped this.”
“Serve him right,” frowned Martha, conveniently forgetting for the moment that she was being just as nosey, if not more so.
“It’s practically new,” Jared noticed, turning it in his hand and scrutinising it. “Think I’ll hang onto it.”
He slipped his small rucksack off his back and stuck the bottle in, then trotted to catch up with the women.
“Remind me again, what are we looking for?” he asked.
“God knows,” came his mother’s unhelpful reply.
Lottie’s wasn’t much better. “I don’t know, anything out of the ordinary. You’ll know it when you see it,” she added vaguely.
Jared felt none the wiser, but who knew. Perhaps they’d stumble across a fingerprint-encrusted knife that the police had somehow missed and which would bring the killer to justice, or find an unaccounted-for small part of Martial Lecerf and thus enable the poor guy to at least be interred in his entirety.
“Did they find all of old Martial?” he asked, to clarify.
“I’m really not sure,” replied his mother. “They’ve got the main big chunks of him. Whether all the fingers and toes are accounted for I don’t know.”
“Or his wil—”
“Lottie!” shrieked Martha. “You have a mind like a gutter.”
Lottie sniggered.
“Omigod. You don’t think we actually might come across his… wotsit, do you?” Martha was now truly alarmed. “No, I’m sure his murderer wouldn’t do that. That’s really not nice.”
Jared laughed. “For goodness sake, Mum, the murderer hacked this poor old chap into pieces. I don’t think he was nice, full stop.”
“You know what I mean,” huffed Martha. Large portions of dead bodies she could cope with, just, but the thought of such smaller-scale, sadistic mutilation made her feel sick. Or maybe that was just from being a complete pig at lunchtime.
“Watch where you’re treading,” advised Lottie. “You don’t want to trample on his todger.”
“Or jump on his John-Thomas,” Jared added.
They both laughed.
“You’re disgusting!” complained Martha, striding ahead, but despite herself a smile tugged at her lips. Talk about tasteless humour though.
“Eeeuuuww!” exclaimed Lottie suddenly.
Martha’s froze. Oh Lord, had her friend actually trodden on a private part of poor Martial Lecerf. She hardly dared turn round but forced herself to.
“What’s up?” she asked half-heartedly.
“Poop. I trod in some wild animal’s poop.” Lottie was hanging onto Jared for balance and swishing the soiled white sling-back over the grass to get the mess off. “What is it with the wretched creatures? Can’t they poop out of the way somewhere and not where people have to walk?”
Jared and Martha exchanged an amused glance but kept quiet.
“Why are we coming this way anyway?” Jared piped up.
“Because there’s bound to be a police ‘keep out’ sign at the main entrance to the farm, but if we sneak in this way then we don’t need to ignore it or pretend we didn’t see it,” explained Lottie.
“But we’d have ignored it in any case, wouldn’t we?” asked Martha, puzzled.
“Of course we would, but not having to ignore it in the first place is better morally, don’t you think? And definitely better legally. You know, if we get caught snooping around.”
“That’s it, we’re going home,” announced Martha firmly. “I’m under suspicion for enough crimes as it is. I don’t need to add a real one to my list. I have a wedding to be at soonish and I don’t intend to miss it because I’m languishing in prison.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Mum,” chided Jared. “We simply strayed off the path and, to our great surprise, found ourselves at the Lecerf farm, not that anyone is going to see us, let alone arrest us.” He had clearly caught Lottie’s amateur detective bug and wanted to poke around the place. “Lottie and I can claim we were just following you,” he added with a grin.
Martha had been leading the way, she realised. “In that case, I’m bringing up the rear,” and she strode grumpily around her companions to the back.
Cleanliness had been restored to Lottie’s stricken footwear and so they resumed their walk, Lottie studying the ground attentively as she progressed and Martha grumbling to herself. Jared was smiling cheerfully, enjoying the entertainment.
They reached the first farm building and slowed down.
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br /> “Where first?” Lottie asked the others in a loud whisper.
“No idea,” Jared whispered back unhelpfully.
Martha was still sulking. “This was all your idea,” she hissed. “You choose. And why are we whispering?”
“Oh,” Lottie said, in an almost-normal voice, but still more subdued than her normal strident tones. “I didn’t realise I was. Well, let’s check this barn out first, since we’re here.”
That was a short-lived investigation as the huge oak door of the stone building was firmly padlocked shut. The ground in front of it was either tightly-packed crushed rock or grass, so there were no interesting footprints to discern and no casually discarded vital clues. The police would have been over the place with a fine-toothed comb anyway. They were wasting their time, in Martha’s opinion. Still, while lightning had been known to strike twice it was exceedingly rare, and since pour Martial Lecerf was no more then that made it even more unlikely that the murderer would turn up here again. This was probably the safest place for Jared to be, which was Martha’s main concern.
“Let’s look in the tractor shed,” announced Lottie.
That solar-panel-roofed, huge, open hangar was across the yard. That one had police tape across the front but it had been done half-heartedly. You could easily duck underneath it. Which was what the two people must have done who suddenly appeared from behind one of the behemothic tractors just as Lottie, Jared and Martha reached the tape. Both parties stared at each other in alarm.
“Oh, hello.” Lottie was the first to recover from the shock. “Our dog ran off so we’re looking for it,” she lied blatantly. “Have you seen it? Big and white with a black splotch over one eye and a brown ear?”
“You don’t have a dog lead with you,” pointed out the pinched-looking woman, glaring at them and their empty hands.
“It’s still attached to the dog,” Martha jumped in with a forced smile.
“Oh. Well, we’re looking for our… cat,” said the woman’s companion, a stout man in his mid to late sixties.
“Yes,” agreed the woman, who Martha decided must be his wife, “our cat.”
“You take your cat for walks?” enquired Jared, jovially but sceptically.
“Um, no,” dithered the woman. “It was in the car. We stopped, since Maman felt sick, and the cat dashed out into this farm. So Monsieur and I came looking for it.”
“I hope you left the car window open,” said Lottie in mock solicitude. “Your poor mother will be getting very hot. You should probably go and check on her.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re quite right. Come, Madame. The cat clearly isn’t here.”
The man took his wife’s arm firmly and steered her towards the short farm drive. From where they were they could all see a mother-free, small car pulled into the end of it.
“Nosey parkers,” snorted Lottie scathingly. “All that nonsense about a cat and her mother feeling ill.”
“And what about your fictitious dog?” Martha reminded her.
“Far more plausible than an escaped cat,” Lottie defended herself.
“Yes, that was a bit lame,” Martha agreed. “But come on, have a quick look round and then we can get out of here, in case they call the cops on us.”
“They won’t,” said Lottie airily. “However, if they’ve been here snooping, I imagine other nosey old dears are likely to turn up for a poke around.”
Lottie seemed oblivious to the fact that she and Martha could fall into that category, at least in some people’s eyes. An ‘old dear’ was generally someone who was twenty years older than you were. Jared must be certain his two companions dwelt in that subset of the population.
Somehow that encounter with the cat people had dinted their enthusiasm, not that Martha had much to start with, and the rest of the search was lacklustre. It seemed to have rattled Lottie. Maybe she realised that they were really just being nosey and so were no better than those two elderly folk, even though their motives might be more worthy. They didn’t cross the cordon that the others had and made do with peering through dusty windows into a couple of wooden outbuildings. They stared forlornly at a field of hay bales, each one carefully unravelled by the police, just in case these too were the work of the sadistic murderer. They were, however, the result of Martial Lecerf’s last afternoon’s work. Two cars drove very slowly by during this time, the driver and passengers peering out to scrutinise the deserted farm of the unfortunate Monsieur Lecerf. Each time Martha and the others hid from sight, or at least hoped they had done so effectively.
“We can’t look properly, not with all this passing traffic,” grumbled Lottie.
Here in rural France, two cars within a quarter of an hour did indeed count as heavy traffic. And as the afternoon wore on there would inevitably be more visitors. Country-dwellers made what entertainment they could. A Sunday afternoon drive past a crime scene made for a very exciting outing.
Jared and Martha hastily agreed with Lottie. Martha hadn’t wanted to be here in the first place, and the novelty had quickly worn off for Jared. Martha had watched his face growing more serious the longer they remained. He was starting to become aware of the reality and brutality of what had happened here. There wouldn’t be any more todger jokes now.
They were silent during the walk back to the car. Martha surmised, correctly, that they were all thinking about exactly how the dreadful things that had happened to Martial Lecerf at his own farm had happened, and she made no effort to mop up the tears that started trickling down her cheeks. It was horrible to contemplate, and she felt they owed it to this inoffensive man to recognise his suffering and be upset by it.
Oh, but she could do with a hug from Philippe right now.
She stopped. That was the first time she’d thought of needing someone other than Mark. That brought a few more tears. Was she abandoning his memory? Giving up on him? What did she actually feel for Philippe?
It was all too much to process at the moment. She gratefully accepted the tissue Jared put in her hand, blew her nose hard into it and wiped her eyes, realising belatedly with a wry smile that it would have been better the other way round, and allowed herself to be nursemaided by the others back to the car.
“Well, it wasn’t a totally wasted journey,” Jared piped up, five minutes into the muted trip home.
“No?” Martha raised an eyebrow.
“No. I found this.” He brandished the bike bottle with a smile.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Lottie. “I didn’t think you cycled.”
“Gosh, I hope not,” dived in Martha. “Not round that busy city.”
“Don’t panic, Mum,” Jared assured her. “I walk to school from our flat. My bike got nicked ages ago and I haven’t bothered getting another one. I shall give it to Blandine as an engagement present,” he teased.
“She’ll be thrilled,” teased Martha back. She was starting to feel better now that they were putting distance between themselves and the Lecerf farm.
“Don’t mock,” said Lottie crisply. “That’s more than I got when Roger proposed.” She sniffed indignantly.
Martha’s eyebrows rose so fast they nearly shot off her head. She distinctly remembered being told about a diamond bracelet, a week’s shopping trip to New York and a holiday in Italy. Not to mention the engagement ring itself that was worth a small fortune. Lottie must have a short memory.
She caught Jared’s eye, which was a fatal mistake. The two of them spent the rest of the ride home trying not to giggle like schoolchildren.
Back at Lottie’s, after a detour via the farm to feed and water the animals, check on the hatchlings and collect Martha’s bike and kit for the next day, it took Jared about two minutes to work out how to get the cycling machine to function as Martha wanted it, which was anything other than going permanently uphill. Martha pedalled away gently for half an hour on it by way of final training for the next day. She resisted Roger’s attempts to stuff her full of high-carb food for tea, opting instead for
a light salad since she had definitely overdone it at lunchtime. Roger humphed, saying she’d have no energy stores for the next day but Martha was pinning her hopes on that tummy fat. That would pull her through. Or slow her down. Time would tell.
Chapter 17
As with many events in summertime in France, the fun race was carefully scheduled to take place during the hottest part of the day. Kick off, or more appropriately push off, started at 2 p.m. The various categories of riders were being sent off at different times, starting with those deemed to be slowest, namely the over-50s women. Both sexism and ageism hard at work there, thought Martha ruefully. She would have thought they’d get the youngsters off first and out of the way and then feed in the slower groups, staggering the arrival times and making more of an afternoon of the whole thing. However, the organisers had arranged matters so that everyone would be arriving at the finish line at more or less the same time to cause maximum confusion and congestion.
All that differentiated each group of cyclists was a coloured silicone wrist band. Martha’s cohort had an orange one, and their male counterparts green. The female 35-49s had pink and the men blue. The 20-35s had yellow for women and purple for men, and the under 20s had white and black.
Standing under the tiny bit of shade provided by a heavily pollarded lime tree in the town square, Martha scrutinised her fellow cyclists, hoping to spot her orange-braceleted rivals. The first one she saw made her heart sink. This woman was whippet thin, tanned from cycling all day every day by the looks of things, and had a sleek bike that even a pro racer would have been impressed by. It was ultra modern and gleamed in the sunshine. It had more gears than Martha had had hot dinners. So, Martha wasn’t going to win her age-group race. She searched around for less athletic riders that she might have a vague chance of beating, but saw nobody else sporting an orange band. Darn, she was going to be second out of two. Less ignominious than hundredth out of a hundred perhaps, but still last.
Her self-confidence wilted. Then she caught sight of her loyal groupies waving to her at the conveniently situated café table they’d grabbed from which to watch proceedings. They had an afternoon of sipping ice-cold drinks ahead of them, while she had a very hot, sticky one stretching before her. Not to mention exhausting.
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