The day was sunny, June getting seriously warm as July approached.
And Carole Seddon could not get out of her head the feeling that she was being watched.
Stephen’s PA had arranged a hire car for Gaby and Jude to pick up at Bordeaux Airport. Gaby drove. She knew the way to Villeneuve-sur-Lot; it was a route she had followed many times before. And, besides, Jude had not been behind the wheel of a car for a long time.
The first part of the journey was motorway, not that different from a motorway in any other part of the world. The service stations, stacked with knick-knacks and souvenirs, were different from English ones, but not as different as when Jude had last been in France. She regretted the homogenization of Europe. How far would you have to go at the beginning of the twenty-first century to find somewhere that felt foreign?
Things improved when they left the motorway and pottered through small towns, past distant vineyards and dusty fields of tobacco. Painted signs to restaurants offered untold gastronomic delights. But even in the countryside, the multinational logos on petrol pumps and hoardings diluted the sense of being abroad. Jude thought back wistfully to her first visit to France as a teenager, when everything, from the bedclothes to the taps, to the sugar-lumps, to the bitter black chocolate, to the previously unheard-of yoghourt, to the corrugated iron cars, breathed the excitement of foreignness.
Conversation with Gaby continued to flow. They didn’t talk of anything momentous, just their shared love of France and the uncompromising arrogance of the French.
They stopped in Villeneuve-sur-Lot to pick up some fruit as a gift for Grand’mère, and found they had arrived on a busy market day. This felt more authentic, the profusion of fruits and vegetables on the stalls, the variegated beans and greens, the strings of plump purple garlic. Huge slabs of unknown cheeses were on offer, giant skin-straining sausages, olive oil in plastic mineral water bottles, infinite arrays of herbs and nuts. Yet even these were not as exotic as they once had been. Most of the goods would be available in any large English Sainsbury’s.
There were a few individual touches. Live chickens with trussed legs, and rabbits shut in tiny boxes defied English sensibilities. A few ancient crones sat over trays offering handfuls of meagre root vegetables. But set against these survivals of peasant tradition were the omnipresent stalls selling replica designer T-shirts, CDs, DVDs and the other initialized technology of the twenty-first century. The music that blared from the speakers was American.
Nor could the crowd of sellers and buyers be characterized as uniquely French. The ethnic mix was much more varied since the last time Jude had been at a French country market. Tall deep black North Africans and women in saris mingled with the locals. In the crowd, bright Romany skirts balanced the severity of Muslim headgear.
Jude knew the development was good, that the only future for the world lay in the celebration of its diversity. But she could not suppress a slight nostalgia for the days when countries felt different, when you could recognize a person’s nationality by theirfootwear, before the ubiquitous trainer achieved world domination.
As she had the thought, she smiled inwardly, thinking of the robustness and lack of political correctness with which Carole would undoubtedly have expressed not dissimilar views.
The retirement home was an old farmhouse, most of whose land had been long sold off, one of those four-square symmetrical buildings with tall windows flanked by neat white shutters. This, at least, thought Jude, as Gaby brought the car to rest in the visitors’ car park, is archetypally French.
The smartly suited woman on reception instantly recognized Gaby, and, once her travelling companion had been introduced, a flurry of voluble greetings ensued. Jude was pleasantly surprised by how readily her understanding of French returned, though she feared fluency of speech might take longer. Despite the unhappiness in which her two-year sojourn in France had ended, she still felt a charge to be back among French speakers.
The receptionist said she’d better show them the way to Gaby’s ‘belle Grand’mère’, because she had changed rooms since the girl’s last visit, “now she cannot move around so well.” Gaby would probably see a change in the old lady, “But she still manages, and is grateful for every day she remains with us.”
The room was at the back of the building. The bed was empty, a wheelchair stood by the French windows, and a blanket-wrapped Grand’mère was propped up in a lounger on a small balcony that looked over fields to the dark green edge of a forest. The balcony could be completely glassed in, but that warm June day one window was open and the room was full of the smells of outdoors.
“Your visitor has arrived, Madame Coleman,” said the receptionist, as Gaby rushed forward to greet her grandmother, wrapping the frail body in her plump arms. After much excited banter and the ceremonious handover of the fruit from Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Jude was introduced. There seemed no problem in her being there. No explanation of her presence was requested or given.
When she got a chance to look at the old lady, she was struck by the family likeness, emphasized by Grand’mère’s fragility. Marie’s prematurely pinched face was uncannily reflected in the old lady’s age-eroded features. The short-sighted vagueness in the faded eyes was also reminiscent of her daughter. And the tight perm – she was evidently very well soignée by the staff at the home – echoed her granddaughter’s bubbly curls.
Grand’mère and Gaby spoke instinctively in French, but Jude did not have too much difficulty in keeping up. She was surprised by how on the ball the old lady seemed. From what Carole had passed on of Marie and Robert’s opinions, she had been expecting someone totally blind and in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. But, though physically very frail and with limited vision, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the old lady’s mental processes.
And for her, there was no question of hergranddaughter being called ‘Gaby’. Her birth name was Pascale, and that is what she was called. Gaby did not argue; she had learnt over the years not to challenge the old lady’s formidable will.
After the initial affectionate greetings, Grand’mère said how shocked she had been to hear of Howard Martin’s death. “It is terrible that once again the happiness of our family should be darkened by the shadow of murder.”
“Yes.” As she agreed, Gaby looked straight at Jude. There was a lot of meaning in her look. Although they had never discussed the subject, the girl knew that Carole and Jude had taken more than a casual interest in the two recent murders and were desperate for explanations. Part of Carole’s motivation for the trip had been removing the threat to her future daughter-in-law, but the two neighbours were also caught up in the fascination of the puzzle for its own sake. Gaby’s look at Jude seemed to say that she knew all that, and that she too wanted to use the visit to find out a few basic truths about her tainted family history.
“You know, Grand’mère,” she said firmly, “that the police believe Michael Brewer killed Dad.”
“That is the way the police think, in every country. Here in France too. The person who has committed one murder is the first suspect when another murder occurs.” She sighed. “Yes. It is thirty years. He has served his sentence for his wickedness, and now is the time for the next stage of the process. Evil cannot be hidden for ever. He caused so much pain to our family.”