Everyone made it down to breakfast the next morning. Having staggered away from Inspector Moreau’s kitchen conference the previous afternoon, Marcus hadn’t been seen again for the rest of the day and Nick had only made a brief reappearance in search of yet more painkillers. But following a good night’s sleep they were both feeling human again and taking charge in the kitchen – loud, cheerful and keen to make up for lost time.
‘I’m starving!’ said Nick, breaking eggs into a large bowl. ‘Pass the bacon, someone. I’ll just scramble these, shall I?’
‘I may do a few dozen lengths of the pool this morning, however cold it is,’ said Marcus. ‘Although it can’t be that bad – didn’t stop you from some skinny dipping, did it, Hannah? Nipples rather pert, were they?’
She glared at him. ‘Shut up, you’re pathetic.’
‘Bit of a touchy subject, is it?’ he said, sniggering. ‘Not surprised. A woman of your age, showing off her tits to a French policeman!’
‘I was not showing off my tits!’ Hannah snapped, before realising Jimmy was looking at her with interest. ‘Just stop going on about it, will you?’
‘I must have shed a couple of pounds yesterday, going without food all day,’ said Marcus, tapping his stomach.
‘Losing weight because you’re too hungover to eat, isn’t something to be pleased about,’ said Lizzie. ‘You probably destroyed a few million brain cells as well.’
‘Killjoy,’ said Marcus.
‘Drunkard,’ muttered Lizzie.
Nick threw a knob of butter into a saucepan and poured in the eggs, while Marcus laid slice after slice of bacon into a frying pan.
‘I wonder what happened to Mr Hugo?’ said Lizzie. ‘I was worried when the inspector said they couldn’t find him. I hope he turned up.’
‘If his head felt anything like mine, he probably spent the day in bed,’ said Nick. ‘What a nightmare.’
‘Well, I hope he didn’t hurt himself. He was unsteady on his feet when we kicked him out of here. We should have followed him down the lane when we heard that bottle smashing – to make sure he made it home.’
‘He would have been fine. I bet he drinks so much pastis that he doesn’t get hangovers from it anymore,’ said Hannah. ‘Anyone who carries around a bottle in his jacket pocket, has to be able to take it in large quantities.’
‘Can we not talk about pastis?’ said Nick. ‘Just the thought of it makes me feel ill. I’ll never touch the stuff again.’
‘I bet he’s gone off in search of Madame Gerard,’ piped up Alice, who was sitting in the sun, just outside the French doors.
‘He might be trying to spring her from jail!’ said Suzy, lying beside her on one of the pool loungers.
‘He’s probably bribing one of the guards to let him in to see her! He’s hiding outside the police station in the bushes with a ladder, waiting to put it against the wall and climb up to her window!’
‘Ma cherie!’ intoned Suzy in a French accent. ‘Ma belle! Mon amour! I have come to save you!’
‘She must have a name?’ said Lizzie. ‘He won’t call her Madame Gerard when they’re together.’
‘Not unless she’s a dominatrix,’ said Marcus, and the two men snorted with laughter.
‘What’s a dominatrix?’ asked Jimmy.
‘I reckon she’s called Bernadette, or Antoinette,’ said Hannah. ‘Something strong and typically French.’
‘Madeleine?’ suggested Alice.
‘Estelle?’ added Suzy.
‘Fifi,’ said Jimmy. ‘There’s a poodle called Fifi on CBBC.’
‘Marguerite!’
‘Clothilde!’ said Marcus, and they all roared with laughter.
‘It’s got to be that,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ve never known anybody who looked more like a Clothilde.’
Hannah again wondered about the woman on Derek’s arm. She hadn’t heard her speak, so had no idea where she was from, but felt she would have had a similarly strong name. Maybe a Marjorie or a Hilda? Something old-fashioned and unyielding, with no trimmings or flourishes; a reliable, dependable name, from another era.
Nick was serving the scrambled eggs onto plates when there was a rap on the front door.
‘Oh, what now?’ asked Marcus. ‘For a house that’s stuck out in the middle of nowhere, this place is bloody busy.’
The knocking continued as he got up and went through to the dining room. They heard him shoot back the bolt on the front door, and open it to a cacophony of noise. At first Hannah couldn’t work out what it was. There were loud clicks and raised voices, shouting over each other, asking questions. After a heavy thud, the noise became muted again.
Marcus walked briskly back into the kitchen. ‘It’s the bloody press!’ he said, his face ashen. ‘There are dozens of them out there with cameras and microphones. They must be here about the body. What do we do?’
They stood in stunned silence, as the knocking began again.
‘Why do they want to talk to us?’ asked Lizzie. ‘It’s nothing to do with us, we’re just staying here.’
‘We did discover the body,’ pointed out Nick. ‘The police may have told them that.’
‘What did they say?’ asked Hannah.
‘Not really sure, they were all shouting at me at once,’ said Marcus. ‘I didn’t wait to find out.’
The thumping at the front door stopped suddenly.
‘Perhaps they’ve given up and gone away?’ said Lizzie hopefully. ‘Go and look through the window, Marcus, see if they’re leaving.’
He walked through to the dining room again. ‘Can’t see anything, maybe you’re right.’
Alice shrieked from her seat outside the French doors, and they looked out to see an enormous telephoto lens bearing down on the house across the lawn.
‘Go away!’ shouted Alice, putting her book up in front of her face.
‘For fuck’s sake, this is ridiculous!’ said Nick, marching to the doors. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ he yelled. ‘Get away from these girls!’
The young man who was wielding the gigantic camera had stopped several feet away and, having rattled off shots of the outside of the house, moved the lens down until it was pointing at Suzy’s yellow bikini.
‘Go on, get away!’ shouted Nick, walking towards him and trying to grab the camera. ‘This is private property!’
Marcus now joined him on the lawn, but several more photographers and journalists had appeared. They were talking animatedly to each other and a couple were speaking into mobile phones. With bags of equipment over their shoulders and headphones and microphone leads dragging along behind them they were a threatening rabble. Hannah could see at least ten, but more were still coming around the corner of the house.
Marcus and Nick stood shoulder to shoulder on the grass, facing the oncoming mob.
‘Get inside!’ Nick shouted to Hannah, over his shoulder. ‘Take the kids with you and shut the doors.’
The two groups of men squared up to each other on the lawn: the French armed with cameras, tape recorders, microphones and notepads, the English wielding an empty packet of bacon and a plastic spatula. The journalists were poking microphones into Marcus’s and Nick’s faces and shouting out questions.
Hannah grabbed Alice and pulled her inside the kitchen, and tried to do the same with Suzy, who fought back with remarkable strength. ‘Leave me alone!’ she hissed. ‘I’m fine here.’ She turned back to the first photographer, who was standing slightly apart from the crowd, trying to get the perfect angle on her teenage breasts. Reclining on the lounger, she threw him a dazzling smile and lightly knocked the strap of her bikini top, so it slipped off her shoulder. The photographer grunted, approvingly, and flicked a lever on the side of the camera so that it rattled off shot after shot, the shutter opening and closing like gunfire.
‘Suzy, stop being a little tart!’ said Hannah, before she could stop herself.
‘What? How dare you call her a tart!’ Lizzie appeared behind her.
‘Get off our lawn!’ yelled Nick.
‘Ceci est un proprieté privée!’ shouted Marcus. ‘You are trespassing on private property!’
‘Mademoiselle! Ici, ma belle mademoiselle!’ called the photographer, clicking away.
‘We’ll call the police!’ threatened Marcus.
The huddle of French reporters moved nearer, clearly not threatened in any way by the English tourists and their kitchen implements.
‘Quelque questions, monsieur!’ called a middle-aged man in a shiny jacket, thrusting a microphone against Nick’s chest. ‘Quand avez-vous trouvé le corps…?’
‘Get off me, go away!’ Nick swiped left and right with the spatula, as if swatting flies.
‘Arghhhh!’ Jimmy came thundering out through the French doors, brandishing the leaf skimmer. As he shot past her, Hannah was suddenly reminded of a scene in The Last of the Mohicans, which they’d watched only recently on Netflix. An Indian had been charging at the enemy, holding a spear, his face stretched into a grimace, tendons pulsing on either side of his eyes, tanned skin stretched taut over sharp cheekbones. His gaping mouth had produced a blood-curdling scream – rather like the one that was coming out of her son’s mouth now.
‘Arghhhh!’ continued Jimmy, hurtling onto the lawn towards the pack of men. They scattered to either side, startled, and turned to watch him career past them, down the lawn towards the fence. He picked up speed as he went down the slope, unable to stop his legs from pumping away beneath him.
‘Jimmy!’ shouted Hannah.
‘Oh shit,’ said Lizzie behind her.
‘Ooh-la-la,’ said one of the photographers.
There was a thump as the front edge of the leaf skimmer hit the fence and Jimmy catapulted over it in a flash of red swimming trunks and a tangle of legs and arms, still yelling as he flew through the air.
‘Ça va faire mal,’ said one of the journalists thoughtfully.
‘Too right it’s going to hurt,’ said Marcus.