Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Jean-Paul squinted towards a dark lump in the distance. “Wake me up when we get there.” He leaned back and pulled his cap down over his eyes.

Georges listened to the slapping of the oars and the pounding of his heart. It wasn’t too late. He could turn round. Tell Jean-Paul he had a headache or stomach pains, even admit he’d made the whole thing up...

It’s so nice to be able to take a walk, while I’m still able.

Madame Morreau’s sad smile hung in the air like the Cheshire cat’s.

Will you run?Will you, Georges?

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Madame Morreau was never going to feel the wind in her hair. He looked at the shoreline, growing thinner with each stroke. Glanced over his shoulder, at the island looming closer. She’d never see the sunset from the room where she’d shared so many good times with her husband. Never smell the leather of the seats of her old Peugeot, or run her hands across its walnut dash. She wouldn’t even have the chance to chide her nephew, or wonder where he’d got to when she needed him.

“We’re here.” He nudged Jean-Paul with his foot.

“It’s the middle of bloody nowhere!” Lights from the villages twinkled like miniature fireflies around a lake as black as soot. “Still, for three hundred smackers, it’s worth getting spooked, eh, Slowpoke?”

“Stop calling me that, my name’s Georges.”

His tone made Jean-Paul look up. “Right.” Both smile and voice were unusually tight. “Georges.” He shifted in his seat. “So how long do you reckon it’ll take to track down our little winner?”

“Depends.” Georges pulled out a flashlight and leaned over the water. “Could be minutes, could be hours — whoa! Look! It’s—”

“Give me that.” Jean-Paul’s unease vanished as he grabbed the torch from Georges’ hand. “Where? I can’t see any—”

The rest was drowned by the splash of two giant hands tipping him over the side.

“Hey! Hey, I can’t swim!”

“I know,” Georges said, rowing out of range with a speed that would have surprised Madame Morreau’s nephew, had he not been gulping so much water. “You told me.”

“All right, all right, you’ve had your fun. You’ve humiliated me, shown me who’s boss, and fair do’s. I called you names, bullied you a bit, and now you’ve got your revenge — but for Chrissakes, man, I’m drowning.”

“No, you’re not. Not if you kick your feet about a bit.”

Jean-Paul had nothing to lose. He kicked his feet about a bit, but the fear of being sucked in wouldn’t leave. “Enough’s enough, you stupid bloody halfwit.”

“You killed her,” Georges said, pulling out a piece of paper and reading it by flashlight.

“What?” Jean-Paul’s arms flailed and flapped in the water. “Is that what this is about? My stupid bloody aunt, you stupid moron?”

“My mother thinks she had a long and happy life, but Mother’s wrong.”

For one thing, Madame Morreau was only sixty-eight. Georges saw her identity papers lying on the table once, and sixty-eight was no age at all these days. Also, reading her diary, he saw that she’d never got over the devastation of not having children, sinking all her love in her husband instead.

“When he fell ill with cancer, she had no qualms about spending every last centime on finding him a cure.” He didn’t know what a qualm was, but it sounded so good that he’d quoted it anyway. “She even mortgaged her house.”

“I know that, you stupid idiot.”

“Not when you killed her, you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now listen to me, Georges. You’ve had your laugh, you’ve made a fool of me, so come back and pull me out before I drown, you bloody retard.”

“She was too proud to let people know she hadn’t got two francs to rub together—” Or, more accurately, too ashamed to admit she’d blown their entire fortune on charlatans and quack cures. “—and like everybody else, you assumed she was well off. You were her only heir, and so you killed her. For her money.”

“Yeah, well, prove it, dumb-ass.” But the fight had gone out of Jean-Paul as the struggle of trying to keep afloat began to tell.

“You smothered her with her own pillows, then tried to make it look like natural causes, and because she was old and because you convinced the doctor that she had a bad heart, you thought you’d got away with it.”

“All right, all right, I killed the old bitch, so what? She was like a bloody succubus, Can you fetch this, I forgot that, Would you mind giving me a hand to the table. I lost my temper that night and rammed the pillow over her face, all right? She was sick and old. I was doing her a favour — oh God, help—”

The water glugged and gurgled as it covered his head. Georges felt his stomach turning somersaults.

“Please,” Jean-Paul said, bobbing up at last, and Georges could tell that he was crying. “Help me—”

“You didn’t lose your temper. You planned to kill her long before you left Paris.”