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

So summers came and summers went, and even though Georges assumed the Year of the Cat was just one more Chinese holiday, who cared? The same people booked the same rooms for the same two weeks in the season, and simply by taking stock of their toothbrushes, their writing pads, their cosmetics, and their clothes, he was able to follow the changes in their lives and circumstances.

Some guests never changed, of course. Monsieur Prince still put his dirty shoes on Irene’s clean white linen sheets. The Bernards still stashed the hotel’s face flannels at the bottom of their suitcase. Madame Morreau still treated Georges the same way she did when he was seven, only now instead of ruffling his hair and giving him a bag of aniseed, she had to reach up on tippy-toes just to pat his shoulder. But she still brought him aniseed, which Georges had never liked but which he could at least feed to Parmesan, even though it made him kick and swish his tail. And Georges still very much looked forward to her visits.

Which made it doubly hard when Madame Morreau died.

“Take a look at these architect’s plans, love, and tell me what you think.”

From the outset, his parents had involved him in their projects, but to be honest, the squares and boxes on the page confused him. What did it mean, “drawn to scale,” he wondered? Fish had scales. Kitchens had scales. But gardens? And this 250:1 stuff. Georges didn’t understand where bookmakers fitted into plans for new extensions, and whenever he saw things like this, he was glad he hadn’t been forced to stay on at school.

“Ten new bedrooms to be built during the winter shut-down, and what about this?” The excitement in his mother’s voice was catching. “No more trotting down the corridor in the middle of the night for our guests. As of next spring, they’ll all have their own individual, private bathroom!”

“And now the world’s opening up to foreign travel, son, what do you think about including couscous on the menu?” Marcel said.

Would that be meat, or some exotic vegetable, he wondered?

“Every room’ll have its own mini shampoo and soap.”

“Osso buco, perhaps?”

“Hair dryers in the bathrooms.”

“Definitely paella — are you all right, son?”

“Yeah.”

But there was no fooling his mother. “Oh, Georges.” She laid down her fountain pen. “You’re not still upset about Madame Morreau, are you?”

Marcel had brought him up that it was wrong to tell a lie, but for some reason he felt ashamed of saying yes out loud. Madame Morreau had been different from the other guests, somehow. Special. For a start, she was one of the few who weren’t wary of this big, shambling young man, who was constantly wandering round the hotel with a distant expression on his face and a toolbox in his hand. And she didn’t talk down to him, either. In fact, quite often she had to rebuke that weasel-faced nephew of hers for poking fun at him.

Georges is a wee bit slow, Jean-Paul. You need to make allowances.

Jean-Paul. That was Weasel’s name. Jean-Paul. And it was a funny thing, but until Madame Morreau said that, Georges had never thought of himself as slow. And yet, now he came to think of it, he had always been in the tail of any school race. How she knew all that was a mystery to him, but even so, Georges always made a point of quickening his pace when he saw her coming. Especially once Jean-Paul began to mouth Slowpoke at him behind her back.

“A bit,” Georges admitted.

“Don’t be, love.” His mother squeezed his hand. “The old dear had a long and happy life, and you should be pleased she died peacefully, snuggled in her pillows.” She turned to Marcel and pulled a face. “Even if it was in our hotel.”

“The undertakers were very discreet, I thought.”

“Only because you slipped them lorry loads of francs, but it’s the chambermaids I’m proudest of. None of them so much as screamed.”

“They wouldn’t bloody dare,” Marcel muttered under his breath, but Irene wasn’t listening.

“The guests had no idea that anything was amiss, and even Madame Morreau’s nephew carried himself well, I thought. Considering.”

When Georges closed his eyes, he could see Jean-Paul in conversation with the doctor that the hotel had been obliged to call. Saw him showing him the pills Madame Morreau took for her bad heart. Heard him telling how she’d had two seizures this year already.

“Nice boy,” Irene added, with a sigh. “Always so conscientious when he stayed here with his aunt.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

If anyone was an expert on the subject of being chivvied up, it was Georges. But never on account of being lazy.

It’s very good of you to do this for me, Georges.

I like doing it, Madame Morreau. Honest.

Unlike some, who wouldn’t be seen dead supporting an old lady’s arm while she took a walk along the lake.

I don’t know where Jean-Paul’s got to, I really don’t.