Over in the car park, Georges saw Madame Morreau’s ancient Peugeot straddling two bays. The mirror shine had gone, the number plate was black with flies, and rust had begun to creep along the sills. A pair of fluffy dice, one pink, one blue, dangled above the grimy walnut console.
“Thanks for sticking up for me,” the girl said, scuffing her toe deeper into the sand. “But I’m used to being ribbed about my hair.”
The teasing still hurt, though. He could tell by the way her skin had turned bright pink, right down to her neck. “Is that why you tie it back? To hide it?”
“Wouldn’t you?” The greenest eyes he’d ever seen misted over. “I tried dyeing it, but that made it ten times worse.” This time the nose wrinkled in disgust. “It’s horrible hair. I hate it.”
“You shouldn’t.” For some reason, he had an urge to reach out and feel how its curls would spring about between his fingers.“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s bright red!”
“Like maple leaves in autumn,” Georges said, nodding. “The colour of a robin’s breast and squirrels’ fur and sunsets on the lake, and you know what else? Your face. It reminds me of a wren’s egg.”
“Because of the mass of brown freckles on a very white background?”
“Because it’s small and smooth and fragile,” he corrected.
Across the lake? He glanced at the dots that were the village in the distance. She did. She definitely said, across the lake.
“Is it true you know where every swan and heron has its nest?”
Her name was Sandrine and she worked in the boat-hire office that her father had just opened and which, according to her, was doing exceptionally well. Despite her leaving customers lined up outside because she forgot to open up, or else stranded on the open water, having not filled up their gas tanks.
“Are there otters in the lake?” she asked, peering through her binoculars.
“No, but there’s a family in the river that feeds into it.” Her legs were long and slim, and covered in the same pretty freckles that covered her face and arms. “I built a hide to watch them.”
He could have talked for hours, and the odd thing was, he had the feeling Sandrine would have listened, too. But round the door of Reception, he could see a finger being crooked, beckoning him. An arrogant, bony finger, with a weaselly sneer on the end of it.
“Going to carry my cases for me, Slowpoke?”
Through the office, Georges could see Irène had had to take an urgent phone call, and remembered that although he’d serviced the lift earlier this morning, this was yet another occasion when he’d gone off to cut the hedge without reconnecting the blasted electricity.
“Number forty-five,” Jean-Paul said, grinning. “Top floor.”
In many ways, Georges had inherited his mother’s temperament. In many ways, he had not. He chewed his lips. Almost smelled the aniseed.
“Certainly, sir.” A phrase he’d never used before, but one which he’d heard Irène trot out a thousand times each season. “This way, please.”
He glanced at the Out of Order sign. Would that have made things worse, or better? Four flights of stairs made for a long, slow climb, but at least they went up separately. In the lift, they’d have been locked in, face-to-face.
“Here we are, sir. Your aunt’s old room.”
“Nice view.” Jean-Paul let his breath out in an admiring whistle as he stepped out on to the balcony. “Better than that crummy cupboard she used to put me in. I mean, who wants to overlook a bloody car park?”
Georges wanted to tell him that the single rooms weren’t crummy, and they weren’t much smaller, either. It was because they had ordinary windows, rather than French doors, that they appeared darker.
“The view will be better once the new swimming pool’s installed.”
“I can’t swim, so who cares, and in any case,” Jean-Paul sniffed, “wild horses wouldn’t bring me back to this dump.”
Georges had the same urge he’d had when he was eight years old and Jacques Dubois kicked down the matchstick train that Georges had spent all winter building. He wanted to punch him on the nose.
“This is the best room in the house,” he said instead.
Madame Morreau used to stay here with her husband before he died, he’d read that in her diary, too. The reason why she scrimped and saved to come back again each year. To relive the happy memories they’d shared.
“Two weeks of R and R in the best room in the house, all paid for in advance? Not bad, eh?” Weasel threw himself down on the bed. “Not quite the Côte d’Azur I’d had in mind, of course. But since the old girl coughed without a penny, it’s better than bloody nothing, I suppose.”
No money, poor health, and a nephew who couldn’t give a damn.
“Y’know, Slowpoke, I’m betting the beds in this place could tell a tale or two.” He chuckled as he bounced up and down on the mattress.
Georges swore his heart stood still. “That one could.”
The bouncing stopped. “Oh?” Jean-Paul’s eyes narrowed as he advanced across the room. “And just what might you mean by that?”
Never tell a lie if you can help it, son. Marcel’s voice echoed in his head. It’ll only come back to trip you up.
“Honeymooners,” he said. “The last guests were honeymooners.”
Weasel’s shoulders went slack again, but for a second Georges saw the same expression cross his face as when the doctor signed the death certificate. At last, he could put a name to it. Relief.
“Will there be anything else?” he asked in the same neutral tone he’d heard the chambermaids use.
“Just that beer — and Slowpoke?” Jean-Paul dipped his hand in his pocket. “A tip for carrying my cases.”
His generosity took Georges by surprise. “Thank you,” he said warmly.
“Look both ways before you cross the road.”
Weasel seemed to think this was the funniest joke he’d ever heard, while Georges was so ashamed that he’d actually held his hand out to this man that he forgot to switch the lift back on, and once again Marcel had to abandon his canard à l’orange and dash the Brandons to the station, while Irène couldn’t understand what a cold beer should be doing on her desk, but was so glad to see it that she downed it in one go.
“He killed her,” Georges told Parmesan, feeding him the carrots that Marcel had earmarked for his julienne vegetables in garlic. “Jean-Paul murdered Madame Morreau, and it isn’t right.”
It wasn’t right that she should die, simply so he could get his hands on her money. It wasn’t right that he should run around in her beloved Peugeot, letting it go rusty and not even washing it, or that he should profit from a holiday she’d had to make huge sacrifices for.
“Then to come back to the hotel where he killed her, throwing his weight around, bouncing on the bed where she died, and making tasteless jokes. It’s not right, Parmesan. It’s not right at all.”
And so another night passed in which Georges didn’t get a wink of sleep, but this time it was different. Lying on his back, with his hands folded behind his head, he watched the Milky Way swirling across a cloudless sky with only one thought in his head.
She knows what wren’s eggs look like...
The following week Georges took Sandrine to watch the otters from the seclusion of his hide, showed her all the secret places where rare warblers could be found, pointed out the heronry and the favourite perches of the kingfishers, and introduced her to Parmesan at her request.
“I used to slip him aniseed balls.”
Sandrine dug around in her handbag and eventually came out with half a roll of extra-strong mints. “Do you think he’d like these?”