Margot had been drinking.

Not a lot and not conspicuously but it was after all only 10:30 in the morning so she had time.

She took another swig from her large elderflower liqueur and tonic – which had been cleverly disguised in an old lemonade bottle and which contained roughly equal parts of liqueur and tonic – then glanced down to check that her cooler with its half-dozen back-up ‘lemonades’ was still in place.

It was.

Excellent.

She was going to get through today with a minimum of remembering it afterwards and if her cunning ruse couldn’t quite account for the pungent smell of alcohol on her breath, well… by lunchtime she’d be too merry to care.

Surveying the collection of old toot crammed randomly onto her table, she wondered what on earth she was doing this for. Or who. Her mum had always taken part in the annual village brocante, like it was some sort of sacred responsibility, but spending a scorching hot day – or worse, a drizzly-to-tipping-it-down-and-back-again day – sitting by the roadside while neighbours and strangers picked over the refuse of her life wasn’t really Margot’s idea of a good time. Still, at least it might mean she would get rid of some of this rubbish without having to actually go anywhere. A lot of it had belonged to her mother and she just hadn’t been able to figure out what to do with it so taking part in the flea market seemed like a good call. The old lady had kept some really peculiar things. As Margot was musing over the possibility that others would think much the same of her when the time came, she noticed something odd.

One of the ‘family heirlooms’ her mother had been most fond of was the piece of junk Margot most wanted to see on its way today. It was horrible. Someone had taken a blue doll’s house bicycle and glued a large, taxidermied weasel to it in an ill-advised attempt at …what? Humour? Satire? Who knew. Whatever the reason, it was a mangy old thing; how it had survived as long as it had, she couldn’t guess. Mother had claimed it was vintage so the bicycle was probably a later addition, some bright spark thinking it would be a good idea to take a bad thing and make it worse. There was no denying that the taxidermy itself was decidedly poor quality. Maybe someone would want it for the bicycle? Either way, she wasn’t quite sure how to explain how it was that right now it appeared to be doing her a favour and taking itself off her hands.

As she watched, the weasel apparently cycled its way along the length of the table and suddenly dropped out of sight off the edge. Her eyes widened as it disappeared. She hadn’t planned to be actually hallucinating until at least mid-afternoon and she didn’t think she was that far ahead of schedule. She looked around to check whether anyone else had noticed but the people at the neighbouring stalls were oblivious. There weren’t that many browsers around either, the mid-morning lull possibly due to a combination of coffee breaks and the changeover between the early morning guard and the slightly less motivated crowd. No-one looked above-average suspicious. Margot frowned and checked the table once more. Nope, definitely gone. No more weasel. Unsteadily, she lifted the ancient beige tablecloth (her mother had kept it for this specific activity) and poked her head under the table. Nothing. No-one. Just a couple of boxes full of replacement toot she’d placed there earlier.

Weird.

Rather than hurt her brain trying to figure out what had happened or report the theft to the police (what would she say? that a dead weasel cycled away? She might have been drinking steadily since seven in the morning but she didn’t need everyone to know it), Margot shrugged, decided to just be grateful it was gone, took another couple of healthy slugs from her lemonade bottle, and proceeded to forget all about it.

2.

“Walter? Have a look at this. Isn’t it amazing?” Sadie Hithertoe prompted her husband, pointing at a spectacularly revolting portrait of a woman in a field who was doing something unidentifiable but vaguely countrified.

Walter looked. Then he turned to his wife with a betrayed expression on his face.

“Why?” He asked.

“I didn’t see why I should suffer alone.” Sadie replied mischievously.

“You’ve got Tabby with you.” Walter reminded her.

“Yes, well, Tabby’s not nearly as much fun as you are. I think she likes it.”

“Hmph.” Was Walter’s only comment.

Sadie’s sister Tabby – short for Tabitha – wasn’t nearly as oblivious as her relations would have liked to believe. She might be a little hazy sometimes but she recognised from long familiarity the tone Sadie used when about to hurt people’s eyes and had learned to blank out the focal point of her sister’s attention whenever she heard it.

“Is there much down the Petite Rue? Should we go down there?” Sadie asked.

“Nah, not really. Mostly tools and agricultural junk.” Walter said. “I wouldn’t bother if I were you.”

“You have remembered you have underwear to put away when we get back, haven’t you?”

“What?” Walter faltered at the non-sequitur. “Er… Yes, of course. Why does that matter now?”

“It doesn’t, I suppose.” Sadie acknowledged. “Just thought I’d remind you.”

Walter simply stared at her. She was an attractive woman who had retained much of her youthful charm in middle age and he still loved her – but sometimes he just didn’t understand her at all.

“Isn’t it hot?” Sadie continued. “I wonder what the temperature is?”

No-one answered her and Walter simply groaned internally. Sadie’s general interest in external degrees Celsius had definitely taken a turn for the obsessive since they moved to France just over four years ago.

The trio moved on, Tabby’s tall, rumpled form drifting slightly further away as she clocked a particularly plush cushion she felt sure her cat, Cuddlesnoot, would love.

“Oh look! There’s Tilly!” Sadie remarked with pleasure.

Ms Tilda Necsthyme had lived in St-Julian-au-Bois for several years before the Hithertoes and Tabby Catmore arrived. She and Sadie quickly became very close and Walter had been pleased that his wife had found herself such a good friend so swiftly in their new home. At present, Tilly seemed to be striding with some purpose toward the Petite Rue and was just a little too far off to be called without turning heads, so Sadie merely shrugged and commented that she would probably see her later anyway. She and Walter caught up with Tabby, who had rejected the cushion on the basis that nobody’s cat needed home decor covered with a Christmas pattern of mating reindeer. The decision was made that they’d seen enough and since tea was calling loudly, they turned back to the comfort of their own home.

3.

Shortly after lunch, Sadie was napping in the back parlour and Tabby was closeted in her rooms on the top floor. Walter was pottering around outside the back door and saw Tilly approaching, as was her habit – she never used the front. She was walking fast and appeared flustered, if not tooth-grindingly agitated. He waved as she got closer and she waved back but it was clear her heart wasn’t in it.

“Hello Walter. Where’s Sadie?”

“Taking a nap. Anything I can help you with?”

“I really need to talk to Sadie.” Tilly pressed.

“I don’t think she’ll be able to help you.” Walter told her.

“What do you mean?” Tilly exclaimed, startled. “You can’t possibly know why I’ve come!”

“Lower your voice!” Walter warned her. “I do know why you’ve come and I might be able to help you – but not if you go yelling all over the place… and not here.”

Tilly stared at him uncomprehendingly then continued in at a much lower volume.

“But how… I don’t understand?”

“I overheard you making plans for today so I know what you wanted. I know you didn’t get it. I might be able to make sure you do. Meet me by Lovers’ Oak in the Wild Wood tonight at eight. Okay?”

Bemused, Tilly agreed. Her head was spinning as she walked home from her encounter. Did he really know? More importantly, how much did he know? Had he only overheard her telling Sadie about her plan to get her hands on the weasel or had he heard… well… everything else. And if he had, why would he help her now? Was she being reckless, agreeing to meet him in an isolated location after dark? Maybe he was more interested in payback than helping her out. On the other hand, her prize had disappeared and she had no other leads – so what was she to do?

Tilly continued her internal argument all the way home, even as she knew she couldn’t give up now. So fixated was she, first on sharing the awful news with Sadie, then on Walter’s unexpected proposition, that she never even noticed their conversation had not been as private as they thought.

Concealed behind a bush in the Hithertoes’ back garden, Benoit du Jour lurked, fuming and determined to be revenged.

4.

Benoit du Jour was the sort of man whose perception of reality seldom had much to do with reality itself. He viewed himself as a successful and sought-after ladies’ man, whereas in actual fact most people – and the ladies especially – viewed him as a bit of a nuisance and a slacker but basically harmless. As a young man, he’d not done badly but he was now in his fifties. While not making him intrinsically ‘past it’ as one young woman had put it when he’d hit on her after a few too many pastis, it should have at least made him reconsider some of the less forgiving fashions of his youth to which he still clung. Or more precisely, which still clung to him.

It did not.

Benoit was now something of a figure of fun in the village and surrounding area, not that he knew it, and it was difficult to take him seriously. He did, however, have a temper and not much in the way of self-control. When he spied Tilly apparently making plans to secretly meet a married man, and one he considered a complete nonentity, to boot, he thought of his long-standing and futile attempts to engage her affections – or at least get his leg over – and filled to the brim with frustrated indignation. How could she? How could she continue to rebuff his advances for years and then get involved with a grey little Englishman like that? He genuinely couldn’t wrap his head around it. It didn’t seem possible. Well, all he could think was that Monsieur Hithertoe had tricked her in some way and he wasn’t going to let that stand, oh no! Something would have to be done!

***

At six o’clock, a note was pushed through Tilly’s front door. It read:

Have to re-schedule. Meet at 20:30. Same place. W.

Tilly read the note, huffed her annoyance and pocketed the slip of paper. Brain whirring, she went back to Glenda Jackson playing a grumpy and somewhat frightening Elizabeth R, the later years. Very little of it penetrated her brain. She could think of nothing but the coming meeting.

***

At eight p.m., Tilly wrote a short note.

Gone to meet Walter Hithertoe at Lover’s Oak. He may have an object of value for me. If I don’t return, question him first!

She dated and signed it with a flourish before placing it on the coffee table next to her favourite armchair. She might be taking a chance but she wasn’t going to let him get away with it if events took a turn for the worse! She’d read too many crime thrillers for that.

Once she was satisfied that no sudden gust of wind could possibly contrive to hide the note from interested parties, she left the house and forced herself to amble toward the Wild Wood. It sounded very grand, Le Bois Sauvage, but really it was just a small parcel of land, uphill from the centre of the village, which had been allowed to run wild many decades ago and was now covered in self-seeded trees of all descriptions. Most well-known was the 200-year-old oak near the centre of the plot under whose canopy it had become tradition to propose to one’s sweetheart or at any rate spend some quality canoodling time. It felt weird to be meeting Walter there, of all people, but it was just another step on the road to getting her hands on that weasel so Tilly shelved her uneasiness, clenched her jaw determinedly, and picked up the pace.

She arrived at eight-thirty on the dot. She like to be punctual, even to dodgy meetings like this one. Tilly scanned the area for signs of Walter but saw nothing. Her brows drew together and her lips pursed in disapproval. He was the one who had asked her to come, it would be beyond rude to be late or worse, not show at all. She circled round the tree in case she’d missed something but there was no-one waiting.

Coming back around, however, she noticed something odd. One of smaller, lower branches of the oak appeared to have been snapped off and was lying on the ground some feet away from where it would naturally have fallen. She walked over to inspect it and something white caught her eye a little further off. Drawing near, she could see what looked like a boot with an engraved metal toe cap and it was… still… being… worn!

The realisation made her emit a tiny squeak but she had never been described as faint-hearted so it was more from surprise than fright. Tilly bent down to see whether she could determine the identity of the boot’s owner but she was fairly sure even before she saw his paler-than-usual face who it would be. He was rarely seen without those fashion tributes on his feet.

Sure enough, it was Benoit du Jour lying motionless on the ground. For form’s sake, Tilly checked for breathing and a pulse but the uncanny stillness of his body, coupled with the discouraging quantity of blood that was decorating the side of his head, strongly implied it was a waste of time. They weren’t wrong. Benoit was quite dead.

5.

M. du Jour hadn’t been dead for very long. He was still warm. Tilly pulled out her mobile and tried to dial 17 for the Gendarmes but, typically for the Wood, there was no reception there. Torn between not wanting to leave Benoit and wanting to tell someone in authority as quickly as possible, Tilly finally gave in and walked back down the hill a little until she could call for assistance. Told to stay where she was, someone was on the way, Tilly trudged back up to ensure the scene didn’t become contaminated by anyone else. She leaned her back against the trunk of the oak and with a sigh, slid down to sit at its base, and wait.

***

The Gendarmes didn’t take long to arrive and they went about their business as efficiently as might be expected for a set of people wholly unused to dealing with this level of crime. They didn’t get a lot of murders in and around St-Julian-au-Bois.

Inexperience notwithstanding, they had the crime scene squared away in short order and busied themselves taking statements. It might have been reasonable to suppose they’d only have the one to take but word had somehow spread through the village and any number of bystanders were only to happy to contribute their mite, regardless of whether they actually had anything useful to say.

Tilly was very aware of the sly glances being shot her way. As the Finder Of The Body, she was, of course, the prime suspect. Not that it made any sense but the suspicion that she might have reported the death only to throw people off her scent was a hard one to shake. She wasn’t alone in having read too many crime thrillers.

Once she’d given her statement and been warned to keep herself available, Tilly made her way back down the hill. She had meant to go home but instead found her feet taking her to the Hithertoes’ house. She really wanted to speak with Sadie and hoped Walter wouldn’t be around: it was too awful to contemplate but she knew he’d intended to be at the crime scene around the time Benoit was murdered and she couldn’t help but wonder…

Luckily for her, Sadie seemed to be on her own in the Little Parlour, Walter not having reappeared since going ‘for a walk’ some time earlier and Tilly walked straight in, closing the door behind her.

Sadie took one look at Tilly’s face and folded her into a comforting embrace. They stayed like that for a couple of minutes then Sadie drew back a little, gently cupped Tilly’s cheek and gave her a tender kiss. Tilly felt she could breathe again and some of the tension, that had been building up since she’d first realised the weasel wasn’t where she’d expected it to be, evaporated.

It was always like this between them. Almost from the very first, they’d shared an unspoken bond that went beyond the equally immediate physical attraction. Sadie might be a bit silly and a bit eccentric but she fitted Tilly like no-one else she’d ever met. Benoit could never have understood why Tilly wasn’t interested in him, even if he’d known about the affair. She had no words to explain how this felt.

Sadie led Tilly to the sofa and sat them both down.

“What on earth has happened?” She queried, concerned.

“I’m not really sure…” replied Tilly.

She proceeded to describe the events of the day as far as she knew them.

“Do you think Walter overheard more than just my plans for the weasel?” Tilly finished, anxiously.

They were both silent for a moment, remembering the rest of what had happened during that encounter. If he’d heard everything Walter would certainly have good reason to feel violent but why take it out on Benoit?

“I don’t know.” Sadie answered. “He didn’t seem any different.” She suddenly had a thought. “You know, I’m sure he left around seven forty-five. Tabitha and I were watching television and that stupid soap opera was about to finish. You know the one, with the shrimp enthusiast and the woman who trains peas up public monuments. That seems a little early, doesn’t it? Do you have the note?”

“I should have.” Tilly fished around in her pocket and pulled out the crumpled note she’d stashed there earlier. “What about it?”

“Let me see.” Sadie directed.

Tilly handed it over and Sadie scrutinised it for all of five seconds before exclaiming, “This isn’t Walter’s writing! Not even close!”

Tilly took it back and perused it again herself. She assumed Sadie knew what she was talking about – she hadn’t really had any opportunities to see Walter’s handwriting – but then if it wasn’t his…

“Logically,” she said slowly, thinking out loud “the only other person who’s likely to have written this is… Benoit. But why would Walter involve him? I’ll give Walter the credit of believing he wouldn’t deliberately harm Benoit but if they fought and things got out of hand… Oh God, do you think…?”

Tilly stopped, unable to formulate the suspicion which had been growing since she first saw the body. Sadie merely looked at her, mouth slightly open, also unwilling to consider what this might mean.

“I don’t want to think about it.” Sadie said, finally.

“I’d better get home.” Tilly replied. Before Walter gets back was the unspoken end of her sentence.

“Yes, of course.” Came the distracted reply.

Tilly kissed Sadie on the cheek and let herself out. It wasn’t far to her own house but her thoughts were buzzing around in her head like so many annoying flies the whole way there. Once back in her armchair, with a strong coffee in her hands, she came to a conclusion. There was no way she could not report this development to the gendarmes. She’d only told them she’d been in the woods for a walk and that she’d had no idea Benoit was going to be there. She was going to have to come clean about what she was actually doing by Lovers’ Oak and it wasn’t going to look great but…. it was the Right Thing To Do.

She’d been given a number to call in case she thought of anything else so she rang it straight away, before she could talk herself out of it. The voice at the other end was very helpful and seemingly completely non-judgemental and it took no time at all to relay the additional facts.

Tilly sighed deeply after the phone call and prepared herself for a sleepless, anxious night.

6.

The next morning, after about as much sleep as she’d expected to get, Tilly was staring at herself in the mirror, wondering whether her face might be considered a public menace, when the phone rang. It was the voice she’d spoken to the previous evening, calling to give her an update. It seemed that in spite of what she’d told them, and even with corroboration from a curtain-twitching neighbour, Madame Fouine, that she’d observed Walter leaving the house at around a quarter to eight, there was to be no follow-up at present. Walter had given a perfectly reasonable explanation of his whereabouts which could be neither proved nor disproved and without either a murder weapon or a motive, they had no compelling reason to pursue him as a suspect. They’d keep him in mind but for now, that was that.

Disappointed, Tilly barely had time to sit back in her chair to mull over what this might mean before the phone rang again. This time, a much more welcome voice filtered down the line: Monsieur Lefiable.

Monsieur Lefiable was the proprietor of a high-end pawn shop in Touchepas-la-Belette, one of the larger nearby towns. When Tilly had first settled in the area, believing it to be the most likely place she’d find the weasel, she’d made a point of forming good relationships with anyone who might, during the course of their normal business, either hear whispers of its whereabouts or come into possession of it themselves. Monsieur Lefiable was one such person and very aware of the Tilly’s depth of feeling – not to mention pocket – when it came to this particular item. He’d had no hesitation in alerting her after a man had entered his premises that morning, looking a little the worse for wear, and brusquely demanded to know what he might get for the small item in his hand. Even without either weasel or bicycle to identify it, Monsieur Lefiable had known immediately what he was looking at and promptly offered a small amount of money on the basis of its being something completely different. He was very proud of his haggling skills and, having convinced the man that most of the gems were fake and the rest of minimal value, he’d acquired the item for less than a hundred euros. When encouraged, he described the man adequately enough to leave Tilly in no doubt at all that Walter was the man in question.

Tilly drove the speed limits all the way to Touchepas-la-Belette and approached the pawn shop with equal measures of excitement and trepidation. She’d never thought to be so conflicted at this moment but she was not experiencing the unalloyed joy she’d anticipated. Part of her was still worrying away at the possibility that, after all this, it wasn’t the actually the real deal. Another part of her was anxious about the length of time it might be taken away from her if it became material evidence in a homicide investigation. She was deeply tempted to keep her mouth shut and longed to follow her baser instincts but realistically she knew that once she had her spoils and had spent at least a whole hour stroking it, she would give the gendarmes this piece of the puzzle too.

Monsieur Lefiable greeted her with a broad smile and his hands held out in welcome. After the initial pleasantries were concluded, Tilly watched, tense, as he extracted a small, perfectly-formed jewel-encrusted gold dagger from his safe and placed it on a square of velvet on the counter.

Tilly sucked in a sharp breath. She’d have to give it some examination, of course, but even now she was sure: this was the ornamental weapon gifted to Eleanor of Aquitaine by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus during her stay with him on the way to the Second Crusade and which had been thought lost on the troubled return journey to France. All the searching, the tracking, the deciphering of barely readable primary sources, the interpretation of unreliable oral histories… they’d all led to this. Tilly reached out to touch the cold metal and lightly ran her fingers the length of the blade. She traced the gems along the hilt to the smooth pommel, then lifted the dagger to take a closer look. It was no longer than her hand. It was perfect.

“It’s magnificent.” She whispered.

“But of course.” Agreed Monsieur Lefiable in his strongly-accented English.

Tilly looked up at him and broke into a luminous grin.

“Thank you.” She said firmly. “Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me.”

“I think I ‘ave some idea.” Came the wry reply.

Tilly simply smiled. She didn’t seem to be able to stop. The sunlight stroked the gold and together they warmed it to body temperature until she couldn’t tell where she ended and the dagger began.

“Would you like to step into the back room?” Monsieur Lefiable asked her.

“Ah… no, thank you. I need to get back.” Tilly reluctantly put the dagger down long enough to pay for it. She gave far more than she’d thought to pay Margot but still nothing like as much as she’d set aside. She’d still have a pretty decent nest egg when all was said and done, after all those years of adding obsessively to the weasel fund.

Monsieur Lefiable concluded the transaction, folded the dagger into the velvet and placed it into a small wooden box. There was nothing extraordinary about the box. No-one looking at it would ever guess there was something of such value inside.

Tilly thanked him again, then one last time, then took her leave, grinning all the way.

7.

Tabitha Catmore, otherwise known as Tabby, was looking for her cat, Cuddlesnoot. She wasn’t worried about him, she simply wanted a cuddle and Peter the Plush Alligator just wasn’t cutting it.

Since Cuddlesnoot had a habit of regularly exploring the outbuildings on the property and finding his way into all sorts of places you wouldn’t normally expect to contain a cat, Tabby was busily opening and closing anything that looked vaguely designed to hold things. She’d already gone through the Old Stable and the Goat Shed and was currently perusing the contents of what had once been the still room.

Though there was still no sign of the cat, what she certainly hadn’t expected to find in an old cyder barrel was a blue doll’s house bicycle and a mangled, taxidermied weasel.

They had both benefited from liberal applications of blood.

Tabby may have been occasionally hazy but she was no fool and called the gendarmes without delay and without touching anything further. Within half an hour, the unappealing mess had been whisked away in evidence bags and Cuddlesnoot, whose presence had finally been detected in the hydrangea bush, was happily purring on his human’s lap.

Neither Walter nor Sadie were aware of any of this; Walter had gone out to clear his head and Sadie was lying down, completely unable to clear hers and so attempting to ignore it instead. A generous dose of mead had helped with this and she was snoring gently, oblivious to any noises in the house.

***

Everything was coming down around Walter’s ears.

When the gendarmes had picked him up for questioning, he’d thought it was all over but it seemed they were only acting on the vaguest of suspicions which were quickly put to rest in a very civilised ten-minute meeting.

Now, it was a different matter.

He’d heard through a friend who knew someone who had a cousin in the right department, that an object had been found in the victim’s hair. A tiny blue bicycle pedal, to be precise. Of the sort found on doll’s house bicycles.

Heart thumping, Walter had suddenly ‘remembered’ an appointment and hoofed it back to the house. He had to properly dispose of that vile bit of tat before it cost him his liberty. It would just be typical!

He’d hared straight into the still room and ripped open the barrel where he’d left the remains of the murder weapon, then frozen. To his horror, there was nothing there. Totally empty. Desperately, he’d opened a couple of barrels nearby, tipped up a bucket, pried open three paint canisters… just in case he’d misremembered where he’d left it in his panic.

Nothing.

The silence had seemed to envelop him, making it hard to breathe. What had happened? Who had found it? Whoever it was couldn’t have failed to notice the copious splashings of Benny-juice; it was only a matter of time before they came looking for him again.

Through some subtle enquiring, he’d managed to discover that the gendarmes had, indeed, been there that day and taken the wretched thing with them.

Walter had left the room, slightly dazed. His feet had taken him spontaneously to the back door, heading for the garden, but when he’d got there the way was blocked by a large, uniformed man who’d seemed unnecessarily obstructive. He was there to obtain the clothes Walter had been wearing at the time of the murder. Walter asked when that was, just to appear extra innocent, then collected the items in question and handed them over. He knew he’d been seen in them because they’d told him during his questioning, so there was no point in trying to fob them off with something else. He was pretty confident there was no blood on the clothes but a little niggle at the back of his brain pointed out that he couldn’t possibly know that for sure. He could hear Sadie breathing in the corridor, listening to the exchange.

By the time dinner rolled around, Walter was a mass of nerves. How long would he have to wait for Christ’s sake?

Sadie was even moved to ask him if everything was alright, which it plainly wasn’t.

“I don’t know.” Walter answered, then refused to explain what that meant.

Sadie didn’t really want to know so she didn’t press him. She had the horrible presentiment that she knew what was wrong and she didn’t want to have to confront it any earlier than she had to.

It all came to a head later in the evening.

Loathe though she was to see or speak to Walter, who she was now convinced must be a murderer, however accidental, Tilly had work to do and so braved the Hithertoe household .

When she arrived, all three of the inhabitants were in the salle de s?jour sitting in tense silence. Tabby greeted her with a smile, Sadie with a smile tinged with anxiety, and Walter with a black look. She thought she might have interrupted something and was about to excuse herself but Sadie exclaimed “Hello Tilly, why don’t I get you a drink?”

Tilly asked for a coffee – though she might need something stronger before long – and followed her lover into the kitchen.

Sadie dropped all pretence of making coffee the moment she set foot in the room and instead turned to Tilly in an alarming flutter.

“Oh, Tilly!” She whispered. “I think Walter’s in trouble!”

Understatement, thought Tilly.

“They came to take his clothes today.” Sadie continued. “The ones he was wearing when Benoit was killed. They must think he did it, Tilly! What will I do?”

Privately, Tilly thought there wasn’t anything Sadie could do and a certain amount of self-interest prompted her to acknowledge that she wouldn’t at all mind if Walter were permanently removed from the scene. Out loud, she simply said: “I don’t know, love. But I think you might be right.”

“How dare you!” Walter screeched at her, startling them both.

Unbeknownst to either of the women, he’d followed to the kitchen doorway and eavesdropped on the whole conversation.

“First you lure my wife into cheating on me and now you’re trying to get me locked up as well? What’s the matter, tired of sharing?” He challenged, in a tone that made the whole thing sound much more sordid than it actually was.

Walter was turning an unhealthy shade of red but between Sadie’s betrayal, accidentally killing a man, and the probability that he was going to land in prison very soon, it could not be said that he was in any very great control of his faculties.

“I heard you that day, did you know?” Walter forged ahead, well and truly worked up now. “Not just your stupid plan to get the stupid weasel from stupid Margot but everything that led up to it. I heard you and Sadie having the time of your lives in my house, making all sorts of disgusting noises and laughing about me behind my back.” They hadn’t even mentioned him but that seemed neither here nor there now. “How long has this been going on? Huh? How long?”

Sadie was making a face like a fish out of water and clearly wasn’t going to answer him so Tilly replied, as calmly as she could.

“Nearly four years.”

“Nearly…!” Walter’s speech ceased to function for a moment as he digested this. “You mean, almost all the time we’ve lived here, you’ve been at it behind my back?”

Tilly nodded.

Walter looked to Sadie for confirmation and she nodded her head weakly.

“Since the day we borrowed that hedge trimmer from her.” She added, unnecessarily.

Walter stared at his wife in disbelief, then at Tilly, then back at his wife. Then he turned to Tilly and bellowed: “This is all your fault!”

“What is?” Tilly asked.

“Everything!” Walter proclaimed comprehensively. “If you hadn’t made Sadie cheat on me, I wouldn’t have wanted to get back at you by stealing that ridiculous weasel. None of this would have happened!”

“So it was you!” Tilly cried. “I wasn’t sure if you’d found it or stolen in – to hear Margot tell it, it might have been abducted by aliens!”

“Oh, that part was easy.” Walter boasted. “All I had to do was get a magnet on a long enough stick, wait for a lull in browsers and stand just off behind her – she was so sozzled by mid-morning that if actual aliens had come down and introduced themselves, she wouldn’t have known what was happening. I just ran the magnet under the table and the bicycle came right to me. I swear she looked right at me afterwards and didn’t even know I was there. No-one ever notices me.” He added, bitterly.

“And… Benoit…?” Tilly prodded.

“Benoit was as big a fool as I am, apparently.” Walter scorned. “He heard us making arrangements to meet and thought you’d turned him down all this time in favour of an affair with me! Hah! He had the wrong Hithertoe, didn’t he?”

Tilly closed her eyes briefly at the idiocy of it all.

“He thought he could see me off then meet you at the ‘new’ time for one last attempt to get in your knickers. How he ever thought he could get the better of me, I don’t know. I had ten years on him and at least twenty on his liver. When he went for me I just lashed out – and happened to have the weasel in my hand. I didn’t know it had a bloody dagger in it, did I? He went down like a lead balloon! And then he didn’t get up. I checked him for a pulse. I did – I ‘m not a murderer, no matter what anyone will think. It was too late. I think he hit his head on something when he went down, too. Double whammy. What was I supposed to do? I hid the weasel and the bike and sold the dagger. Seemed only right I should get something for my trouble, don’t you think?”

Tilly thought it was possible he was talking himself into insanity. Sadie had just gone blank, as though the man in front of her were suddenly a complete stranger.

Walter was breathing heavily and eyeing them both with a strange light in his eyes.

“I thought you were keeping quiet for some nefarious reason of your own,” he said to Tilly, “but it was you, wasn’t it, who told the gendarmes about me the first time? You who told them I’d sold the dagger? That’s why they came for my clothes, isn’t it? How did you know?”

“Monsieur Lefiable is a friend of mine.” Tilly replied, keeping it simple.

Walter snorted.

“Well, much good may it do you.” Walter spat.

“More good than it’s going to do you.” Came a soft voice from the doorway.

Tabby was standing there, phone in hand.

“The gendarmes are on their way. Don’t do anything stupid, Walter.”

“Why not? They still don’t have enough on me!” Walter insisted.

“Don’t they?” Tabby asked. “You just confessed.”

“So what?” Walter blustered. “It’s your words against mine and once everyone knows what you’re up to, no-one will believe you!”

“Do you think they might believe the conversation as recorded by the 112 emergency line… I called them as soon as you started to become hostile and they’ve been listening to it all.” Tabby explained.

“What?” Walter exploded.

“I never thought you were right for my sister.” Tabby said, then turned and left the room as quietly as she’d entered it.

The three remaining parties stood, unsure what to do next. Walter had the strong urge to run, somewhere… anywhere. Realistically, though, where would he go? He’d always hated camping and it wasn’t as though he had any grand sums of money stashed away that he could live off. They’d sunk most of what they had into moving here.

The decision was made for them, in the end, by the sound of sirens approaching. The arrest itself was almost anti-climactic. Walter seemed to have deflated, having blown himself out with his accusatory tirade, and put up no resistance.

Once he was gone, Tilly made coffee for them all and they settled down in the salle de s?jour.

“Did you really never think Walter was right for me?” Sadie asked her sister.

“Nope.” She replied.

“But why did you never say anything?”

“Not my business.” Tabby stated firmly.

Tilly rolled her eyes and snuggled in closer to Sadie.

“Never you mind, love.” She said soothingly. “It’s all over now.”

Epilogue

It wasn’t over.

The case had to be built and the trial take place. The discovery on Walter’s surrendered clothes of several weasel hairs which had, in accordance with the wisdom of the time, been treated with arsenic to repel insects, set the seal on the already fairly airtight evidence.

Sadie started divorce proceedings.

Tilly had moved in with Sadie and Tabby but now had a new obsession: the dagger came with a heretofore unknown inscription along the blade which read “Mon visage cach?, J’y suis contenu“. Loosely translated, it meant “My hidden face, I am contained there.“

Tilly could think of any number of layers of meaning for this but one stood out above all others; she was as sure as she could be that there was a very literal, tangible meaning. The dagger had a sheath somewhere and she was going to find it.