“With me, ladies,” he said in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.
Martha didn’t have the energy to disobey, and besides, Lottie had sold their souls to the devil with her promise they’d do anything so long as that wretched sofa got moved. So, heart in her boots, Martha trudged behind the others for yet another grilling.
Chapter 13
“You were amazing today.”
With effort Martha peeled her eyes open and blinked in surprise across at Lottie, who was sprawled on the sun lounger next to her, but considerably more elegantly so.
They’d been home an hour or so now, and had spent most of that time at Lottie’s pool, Martha in it and Lottie sunbathing beside it. Martha had thrashed up and down as many times as it took to get the stresses of the day out of her system, then five minutes ago she’d climbed out and was drying contentedly in the hot sunshine.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I think we both coped rather well in the grisly circumstances.”
“Pfft, I don’t mean finding the body.” Lottie flapped aside those minor inconveniences in a gesture that seemed also to consign poor Bruno Saunier’s life and death to meaningless. “I meant at the viewing. You were excellent. You struck up a great rapport with the clients and you came over as genuine and trustworthy.”
“Shouldn’t estate agents actually be genuine and trustworthy?” queried Martha, raising an eyebrow.
“Only if they want to go out of business fast,” snorted Lottie disparagingly. “Moderation in everything. It was great you could tell them so much about running a smallholding, and all the legalities they need to know about. And thank goodness your French is so good.”
The Dutch couple turned out to be a Dutch and Belgian couple. Dutch Cindy had good English but pitiful French, and with Belgian Wout it was the other way round. Martha had come in very useful as a translator for them. She could only assume the couple usually talked to each other in some sort of Dutch variant or their own made-up sign language.
“You should come into business with me,” announced Lottie.
Despite her fatigue, Martha sat bolt upright in a fraction of a second.
“Me? Seriously?”
“Yes, why not? You’re always moaning about how much work the holiday cottage is, and you do seem to get some right morons staying there. You can give that up, like you’re planning to do anyway, and make plenty to live on selling houses with me. You can come on board as my junior associate to start with, and decide if you want to do the training and become a fully-fledged professional.”
Wow. Martha hadn’t expected that. Getting more money for less work was certainly appealing, but the idea of that new start in a low-maintenance, animal-free property in a new location was appealing, as was the prospect of travelling. And she wasn’t sure she could cope with spending more time with Lottie. She loved her friend dearly but she also loved her private time and space. Lottie had the tendency to swamp everything and everyone around her, with the possible exception of Madame Bouvier, with her forceful personality.
Martha chose to side-step the issue for now.
“Do you think Cindy and Wout will buy the cottage and land?” she asked.
They’d seemed very interested, and full of enthusiasm for taking on a smallholding and a self-sufficiency lifestyle. Lottie had been suitably vague about events at the nearby farmhouse. The couple had seen a police car leaving and naturally enquired as to why it had been there. Although they looked fairly robust, the news that possibly a suicide but more likely a murder had taken place there might be enough to deter them from purchasing.
“One of the brothers was taken very ill earlier today,” she’d said, and Martha couldn’t fault her honesty there, even if it was being economically used. “The ambulance was called and, as a formality, the police have had to call by to follow up.” That was stretching things somewhat, but the young couple had bought it.
“They’ll be pushed to find something comparable at the price I’m offering the property at,” Lottie said. “That cottage could look lovely with a bit of decorating.”
And some serious renovating here and there too, Martha added silently. The building was structurally sound but the electrics needed redoing, as was evident from the switches hanging off walls and exposed wiring in places. There was no central heating, only one wood burning stove well past its best, and the window frames were rotting. Martha wasn’t sure if there was a hot water supply. There’d been single taps in the kitchen and one bathroom. Old Madame Saunier had been made of tough stuff.
“I’m pretty sure they’ll be back for a second look,” Lottie went on confidently. “And if they do, then I know I’ve got them.”
“Well, fingers crossed,” smiled Martha.
The two fell silent, Martha hoping that Cindy and Wout really were getting a good deal from Lottie. That cottage needed a lot of work doing, but the couple were young and strong and could do most of the work themselves. They’d need professionals in to sort the utilities out, but everything else was within their grasp so they could do it for relatively little expense but with a lot of hours’ labour. She and Mark had done the same all those years ago. She could remember how long and tiring those days had been, but how rewarding. They’d brought a dying farmhouse back to life.
“So what did you think of that awful judge women?” Lottie suddenly piped up.
Contrary to their expectations of elderly created maleness, the juge d’investigation had turned out to be a young, fiercely pretty woman in a Chanel ensemble of suit, killer heels and matching handbag, and with her blonde hair in a severe yet somehow flattering pixie cut.
Martha shuddered. “Terrifying. I felt as guilty as sin during that interview, and I haven’t done anything wrong. Apart from keep finding dead people.”
“But nice suit, very stylish. Classy haircut too,” mused Lottie.
“Oh, but that lipstick was way over the top. Practically black,” frowned Martha. “It made her look like a vampire.”
“Hah! I like that. The Vampire Judge. I still haven’t managed to track down what shade it was,” sighed Lottie, looking up from her tablet. “Midnight Snake by Adagioso is the closest I’ve found, but hers was definitely darker. Bother, I should have asked her where she got it.”
“You mean, you liked it?” Martha was incredulous. She wasn’t a lipstick fan at the best of times, but something of such a startlingly deep shade didn’t appeal to her at all.
“Not particularly,” confessed Lottie, “but if that’s the latest trend, then I need to catch up.”
“I much prefer the nice pale, pearly shades you usually wear,” said Martha firmly.
“So passé,” sighed Lottie, ignoring the fact that such a lipstick had been on her lips until about an hour ago.
“Anyway, whatever her bizarre taste in cosmetics, at least she believes I’m innocent.” Martha got them back on track to what was important.
“Yes, she seems very sharp, very shrewd,” nodded Lottie. “She’ll soon have our unfriendly local killer behind bars.”
“I do hope so,” said Martha with feeling. She just wanted to be back home getting on with her life. It may not be a terribly exciting or glamorous one, but she loved it and already felt terribly homesick.
“What’ll you get up to tomorrow with your policeman?” probed Lottie with a smirk. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
Martha rolled her eyes. “He’s not—”
“Your policeman, yeah yeah, I know.” She was still smirking. Martha knew that Philippe would remain the topic of this one-sided conversation unless she did something about it.
“So how about we look through the Saunier brothers’ most recent financial dealings?” she suggested deviously. She was referring to the plastic bag of invoices and receipts Bruno had dropped round earlier in the week, and which Martha had retrieved from her spare-bedroom office this evening, after finishing the round of livestock feeding and watering before Lottie drove them both home.
“Absolutely!”
Lottie was back in amateur sleuth mode immediately. That was infinitely to be preferred to teasing friend mode. “Outside on the patio table though,” she added firmly. There had been something that looked suspiciously like dried mice poop on the bag. Lottie didn’t want that in contact with her interior furnishings. “I’ll get wine.”
Martha slipped her cardi over her now-dry swimsuit, stuffed her feet into her Crocs and fetched the bag from the boot of the Range Rover. She settled herself on one of the aesthetically pleasing but butt-punishingly hard metal patio chairs. Each one weighed a ton and was practically impossible to move. Rather than give herself a hernia trying to reposition one, and make a lot of unpleasant scraping noises in the process, Martha selected the chair that was pushed in closest to the matching table and perched on the edge of that.
She began to extract the grimy invoices. A breeze rippled into life, stirring the leaves of the night-scented jasmine and honeysuckle that clung to the wooden latticework pagoda under which the table and chairs sat, and sent a couple of pieces of paper fluttering to the ground. Martha bent down and picked them up. She scouted the flower beds, all immaculately maintained by a gardener who called by twice a week, all year round, but there wasn’t a stone that might serve as a paperweight to be seen anywhere. She’d have to use hers and Lottie’s wineglasses to keep the papers from blowing around. There were enough stains on the latter already, so a few more wouldn’t hurt.
“Right.” Lottie appeared with a bottle of Chardonnay and two heavy, cut-glass goblets. Martha would normally have winced at their grotesque pretentiousness but today she smiled as they’d be perfect at stopping things from blowing away. “What are we looking for?”
She plonked herself down opposite Martha and sloshed generous amounts of wine into the two glasses.
“You’re asking me? You’re the Miss Marple wannabe,” teased Martha.
“I’m neither spinster nor elderly,” Lottie pointed out. “I’m more Stephanie Plum or Phryne Fisher.”
Martha refrained from pointing out the obvious differences between her friend and those youthful and feisty fictional amateur detectives. She settled for the suitably vague, “I suppose we’re just looking for anything a bit odd.”
She actually had no idea how anything in the bag might possibly help them, but it would keep Lottie quiet, and she could do a bit of sorting out as she went through the paperwork to save time later when she did the accounts properly.
They shuffled through the paperwork in companionable silence for five minutes or so. Then Lottie piped up, “Can they claim boots as a business expense?” She handed that invoice to Martha.
Martha scanned it: €51 for a pair wellingtons. Pricey, but Martha recognised the brand name. All the farmers round here wore those boots, and they were good. Mark had had a pair and they’d lasted ages.
“Yup, that’s legit,” she said, adding it to the pile she’d already sorted through. “But this one for two bottles of Jameson’s isn’t.” Bruno had always said that they needed a tot of whiskey to keep the chill out when they were doing the evening milking in winter (and, Martha suspected, the morning milking too) and so was a bone fide business expense. Martha had always disagreed, and filtered out the invoices Bruno shoved in every time. Well, he wouldn’t be doing that anymore.
“I think you’re being harsh. Sounds quite reasonable to me,” shrugged Lottie.
“I let them get away with a few dubious items each time, so long as they’re not too expensive, but not alcohol,” said Martha resolutely.
It had become something of a game. The two old brothers would try it on, progressively more over the years, and she’d let them score a minor victory now and again for the sake of their pride, but generally she stood firm.
“If I’d let them get away with the two bottles, then that would have become three, then four, and so on,” she explained. “Besides, I—”
“I’ve got something!” interrupted Lottie with a squeak of excitement. “Look, look!” She waved three invoices at Martha frenziedly.
Once her arm had stopped becoming a blur, Martha was able to grab the invoices to look at. All three were for ‘Tractor repairs’, and all three were for €299. They were dated the 3rd, 4th and 5th of May.
“Now that’s definitely suspicious,” Lottie beamed. “Not murder-wise, but fiddling the accounts-wise. Isn’t it?” she added, a touch desperately as she saw Martha’s initial excitement disappear.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s perfectly normal,” Martha said. “They recently brought in a law saying you can only pay cash for transactions less than €300. If it’s more than that, then it’s cheque or credit card only. So-called anti-money laundering legislation.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s just stupid, and it’s hit the farming population hard as these are people who prefer to use cash. So this is a way round it – what used to be one bill now becomes several.”
“Devious,” nodded Lottie approvingly.
Martha returned her attention to her share of the invoices. And that’s all they were. There were no notes along the lines of ‘I’m going to kill you on Saturday’ with a helpful signature at the bottom, or any kind of threat, or torn up photos, or anything at all that might hint at nefarious goings-on or deadly enemies. She finished sorting through at almost exactly the same time as Lottie.
“There. All done.” Lottie patted her pile in an attempt to tidy it up a bit, but one near the bottom stuck to her fingers and so the stack of papers ended up in a more disorganised state than before. “Eeeuuuw, I don’t want to know what that was,” she said, pulling a face and looking in distaste at her now sticky hand. “I’ll go and wash my hands. Oh, and I’ve put the bank statement at the top of the pile for you. Crafty beggars, aren’t they? Nice tidy sum stashed away, and still claiming their socks as business expenses.”
She saw the surprise registering on Martha’s face.
“Well, you let them get away with boots,” Lottie reminded her defensively, “so I assumed socks were permissible too.”
“No, no, I don’t mean the socks,” Martha shook her head. “There’s a bank statement? They know I don’t need those. They’ve never put one in before.”
Lottie’s face lit up. “Gosh, do you think it’s a clue? Here.”
Forgetting about the unpleasant, tacky substance on her hand, she sat down and then scooted her solid chair round the table to be closer to Martha’s, making a dreadful scraping sound as she did so. Martha was sure she must be taking chunks out of the patio surface.
“Goodness me!” chuckled Martha when her eyes landed on the balance of €273,492. “Who’d have guessed! I thought they were practically penniless. Hmm, I shall have to raise my fee by a fiver.”
“I suppose a lot of old folk are sitting on a large pile of rainy-day money,” said Lottie. “It’s their way. Just think, if I sell the cottage and land, that’s another €150,000 for them.”
“And add the value of the farm, then they’re sitting on at least three-quarters of a million in assets. Possible even more,” added Martha.
The two women looked at each other.
“Motive?” they said in unison.
Lottie sat back in her chair but then realised she couldn’t reach the wine bottle, so with more eye-watering sound effects she heaved her chair closer to the table.
“Who stands to inherit?” she demanded, still unable to reach the bottle, which was in her original place across the table. She leaned over and picked it and her glass up and poured herself a generous measure. She offered the bottle to Martha, but she politely refused. “Any children?”
“No. Remy’s the heir, assuming he lives. But he wouldn’t have killed Bruno. OK, they bickered all day long, but they were close. They’ve lived together all their lives.”
“Maybe Remy finally had enough?” suggested Lottie, but not very convincingly. “Killed his brother, but the effort made him collapse?”
“No, I’m sure his stroke was brought on by seeing his brother dangling from tha
t beam.” Martha wished she hadn’t conjured up that image of the dead Bruno. It was now dancing clearly in front of her eyes.
“So next in line after Remy?” demanded Lottie.
“Now, I know there was a married sister, but she died years ago. I’ve never heard them mention a brother-in-law so I’m guessing he must be dead too.”
“So it would be her kids that would inherit?”
“Kid. Just one son apparently. Mind you, hardly a kid. He’d be our age. I’m pretty sure he lives in America. He’s in construction, runs his own business.”
“So hardly a candidate to be our perp.” Lottie sighed at the dead end they’d reached.
“And anyway, Remy is still with us,” Martha reminded her, hoping that was still true.
Lottie sighed dramatically. “I thought we might be on to something there. Bugger.”
Martha couldn’t help feeling disappointed too. It would have been handy to have wrapped the crime up nice and tidily so that she didn’t have to be permanently babysat. But of course, there were three crimes in total to account for, and it did seem like they were the work of a serial killer who hated all things agricultural. Why would Bruno and Remy’s nephew go on a killing spree if all he wanted was his uncles’ money and estate? And surely he’d have bumped the pair off properly at the same time? Poison, or sabotage the car, or… Good grief, she didn’t need to start thinking like a cold and calculated killer.
They were barking up the wrong tree entirely.
Hate Bale Page 16
