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

He mightn’t have won any prizes for spelling, maths, or grammar, but Georges was handy with his hands. In no time at all, he’d unscrewed the waste and was flushing out the pipe, though he didn’t see what all the fuss was for. A few hairs, a bit of gunge, and bien sar, it would reduce the drainage to a trickle, but that was no reason to go grumbling to his mother. She went to a lot of trouble to make the guests feel welcome. She set vases of flowers in their rooms, left them boiled sweets on the dressing table, and placed mothballs in the drawers. The sheets always smelled crisp and clean and fresh.

But then, some folk were never satisfied, he thought, his big, strong hands spannering the pipes back into place. If they weren’t griping about lumpy mattresses, they were moaning because there wasn’t an ashtray, or could someone change their bedside lamp, it wasn’t bright enough to read by. Still. He mopped up the puddle of dirty water with a towel. Surrounded by such stunning scenery, people probably expected the same level of perfection from Les Pins. Most of the time, they blooming got it, too.

“I don’t believe it!” An hour must have passed before his mother came storming into the dining room, where he was cramming the last of the unwanted croissants in his mouth. “Look what you’ve done to Madame Fouquet’s towels!”

Eh?

She held up the filthy, sopping linen. “She’s absolutely livid, and quite frankly, so am I.”

Oh. Those towels. “Then she should have taken them back to her room,” he said, spraying crumbs over the table. “Instead of leaving them in the bathroom for anyone to use.”

“That’s still no excuse for you to use them as rags. And to just leave them lying there, as well, you lazy toad!”

“Sorry.”

It wasn’t often that he saw his mother angry, and it wasn’t simply because she had endless patience with him. She simply could not afford to lose control. Georges’ father, Marcel, was the chef, and since food was his passion as well as the foundation for his business, he was either shopping for it at the market or else creating magnificent works of art with it in the kitchen. The hotel management was Irene’s responsibility, something she accomplished with a combination of politeness, style, and military crispness, being just strict enough to keep the chambermaids on their toes, but not so tough that they looked for work elsewhere. Welcoming enough towards the guests, but not so sociable that they might be tempted to take advantage.

“Oh, Georgie, it’s not you,” she said, instantly calm again. “It’s that wretched bloody bathroom that’s got me so worked up.” She swiped her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m going to have to call a plumber out, and God knows how long that’ll take in August.”

“Why?” He might be big and slow and clumsy, but Georges took great pride in his work.

“Why?” Her voice rose. “Because that stupid, bloody washbasin’s blocked up again already—”

Wash... basin... “I’ll take another look.”

“Not sure there’s any point, you’ve only just been up there.”

“Yes, but I’ll check further down the pipes.” He turned away, so she wouldn’t see how red his cheeks had gone.

“Will you? Oh, you are an angel. And while you’re up there, would you put clean towels in Thirty-four for Madame Fouquet? I can hardly leave the poor woman with just a hand towel for her bath.”

“Right-oh.”

Washbasin. He wrote it on the back of his hand with a biro, so as not to forget. Second floor, he scribbled underneath. And towels.

Which was just as well, because by the time he’d brushed Minou the cat, topped up the birdbath, and then fed the ducks out on the lake, it was fast approaching midday. Four o’clock before he actually got round to fixing it.

Madame Fouquet never saw her towels.

For all its pine-scented air and picture-postcard views, it wasn’t always easy here for Georges. Life was comfortable enough. Marcel and Irene were the first to think of shipping in sand, to create a private lakefront beach. They revamped the gardens with Mediterranean palms and oleanders, tacked on a veranda, then a terrace, and built moorings for the hotel clients’ boats. This was good. With every improvement, the hotel grew and prospered.

The trouble was, in order to capitalize on a silence broken only by the croaking of frogs and the splash of fish — the very qualities their middle-aged, middle-class guests looked for in a holiday — his parents also banned transistor radios and banished TV to the public lounge. Their intention was that busy Parisians should come down, plug into two weeks of time-warp bliss, then go home refreshed and free of stress. But for Georges, this was his home. And, rather like the resort itself, which had grown up to create its own identity but in doing so had paradoxically isolated itself from the outside world, so he, too, became disconnected.