Colours of the South Read online

  COLOURS OF

  THE SOUTH

  First in the Gil and Bridget Honeyman mystery series

  By

  Leah Hope

  Copyright © Leah Hope 2017

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  The moral right of Leah Hope has been asserted.

  ISBN-13: 978-1975913274

  ISBN-10: 1975913272

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter One

  It was almost nightfall by the time the old man finally heaved the last item onto the back of the old, rusting truck. Head bent against the driving wind and rain, he had made his way slowly to the rough patch of ground at the front of the little farmhouse, where the vehicle stood. He could have sworn he heard it groaning under the weight as he approached. It was already piled perilously high with cardboard boxes and battered old trunks packed full with everything he had, precious little to show for a lifetime’s existence he thought bitterly. He stood back a little, cocking his head from side to side as he tried to assess whether the load was evenly balanced. As satisfied as he could be, he puffed out his cheeks and let out a low whistle. He knew only too well the risks he was taking. Embarking on such a long journey in a vehicle that was barely roadworthy was madness. But what other choice did he have? As he made a final adjustment to the position of one of the larger trunks, he cursed his own stupidity for not getting at least a basic maintenance check done. After all, he’d known this day was coming for almost two months; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had the time. He’d had all the time in the world for a while now. It was far too late to do anything about it now and besides, he’d have to settle an old debt at the garage before they would even look at it. The idea of leaving whilst owing money rested heavily on him but he needed all the spare cash he could lay his hands on. Taking one last look at the precarious load he knew that there was only one thing left. A fat lot of good it had done him lately though. But old habits die hard. He cast his closed eyes skywards, he wasn’t even sure it was heavenwards any more, and mouthed a silent prayer as he made his way slowly back into the house.

  It had taken him all of that day and most of the previous day to empty the house and load up the truck. But he didn’t mind, the job would be done, and it would be done right, and it would take as much time as it needed, no more no less. He had approached everything in life in the same way. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well his father had told him as soon as he had been old enough to understand. The lesson had stuck with him and had served him well, or so he used to think. Unlike his father who worked at a speed that would have killed most other men, he was strictly one-paced and that pace was slow. It had never ceased to amaze his family how an unploughed field in the morning would somehow be finished before dark and ready for sowing at first light, just as he had promised. Always the tortoise, never the hare, his wife had teased, but at the same time bursting with pride at her husband’s tireless efforts to support the family.

  On an old piece of lino on the floor of the truck the old man had stacked the better bits of furniture, a TV, his favourite but battered old armchair, a small walnut side table inherited from his mother-in-law and a rolled-up rug, now faded but surely still good for a few years, he thought. Neatly piled in one corner of the truck lay an assortment of old farming tools lovingly crafted by his father and which he still used, or rather had done, until yesterday. In his calloused old hands, he now gently cradled the last of the objects that would accompany the family on its journey from the old life to the new. He glanced down but didn’t need to lift the lid of the old cardboard box to remind himself what was inside. The contents hadn’t changed much over the years, save for when a new item was added with almost ceremonial reverence. If he had looked inside the box, he would have seen that the yellowing tissue paper was still doing its job of protecting the objects that it held snugly within its crinkled folds. Faded photographs, letters, birthday cards, locks of the girls’ hair and school reports; the usual collection of items that families keep and put away for the next generation, of no value to anyone but themselves.

  The box’s most treasured possession would have been hidden from immediate view, safely nestled on the soft, velvet lining of an old leather jewellery case. His wife’s heart-shaped gold locket that she had never taken off had been his wedding gift to her and now, as if he had suddenly acquired x-ray vision, the image of the tiny photograph inside leapt in front of his eyes. His eyes creased as he mentally gazed down on them both, happy, proud and smiling on their wedding day. But then, just as if an unseen hand had snapped the locket shut, he blinked and the image was gone. As he rounded the corner of the house, a sudden gust of wind almost knocked him off his feet and he momentarily let go of the box. Miraculously, he was able to grab hold of it again before it hit the muddy ground. Cursing quietly to himself, he went back inside the house to look for something to protect it from further mishap. He returned to the truck moments later with the box, now safely wrapped inside a plastic bag, and stashed it securely beneath the driver’s seat.

  He was annoyed to find that the girls were still fussing over Kalli. She had been reprieved only yesterday when the old man had finally given in to their pleas to take her with them. Kalli was a working dog, not a pet (so why had he allowed them to give her that damn silly name?) and as far as the old man was concerned, there was no room for sentiment. The dog was to be sold, along with the other farm animals, to the new tenants, but seeing the girls’ distress, he gave in. This wasn’t an entirely noble gesture as he had a soft spot for the dog himself, although he would never admit it to the girls. There would be no room for Kalli in the cab of the truck so she would travel in a make-shift kennel in the back which the girls had spent the morning putting together out of an old table covered with plastic sheeting. The younger girl was about to ask if she could change places with Kalli but seeing the stern look on her father’s face, she decided that she had pushed him as far as she dare; any further compromise would be out of the question.

  It would have made sense to wait until morning before setting off but none of them wanted to delay any longer than they had to, preferring tiredness to spending another night at the farm. Their thoughts turned to the long journey ahead and the old man’s turned also to the sort of welcome they could expect from his mother. True, she hadn’t hesitated in offering them a home for as long as they needed it, so why was he so anxious? He would have his old room in the eaves, his mother would move into his sister’s old
room at the front of the house and the girls would have Grand-maman’s cosy pine-clad bedroom overlooking the mountains that she had shared with Grand-papa. But was that a faint note of disapproval or, even worse, disappointment he had detected in his mother’s voice over the telephone? He couldn’t blame her if she did harbour such thoughts. His own sense of shame and humiliation at running back home at his age, tail between his legs, was almost too much to bear. But when he saw his mother’s face and looked into her eyes, he would know.

  None of them had seen Grand-maman for a number of years. Work on the farm rarely left them with any spare time and holidays or trips away were out of the question. There was never enough money to pay someone to look after the animals. The girls remembered Grand-maman visiting them at the farm just once, shortly after Grand-papa died. Both their parents had taken a break together from farm work, a rare treat which had delighted the girls, and the whole family spent a blissful, hot afternoon picking fruit from the small orchard behind the farmhouse. Their hands and faces had been stained deep red with fruit juice - was it from cherries or plums? – they couldn’t quite remember. They could remember though, quite vividly, Maman chasing them around the orchard, in a vain attempt to clean their hands and faces, before collapsing into an exhausted, hysterical heap on the grass. Then, if they closed their eyes, they could almost smell and taste the light-as-air clafoutis that Grand-maman had made for their supper that night from the freshly picked fruit.

  Grand-maman’s age and increasing frailty meant that she could no longer make the long journey north to see her son and family, but they kept in regular touch, taking it in turns to telephone on Sundays. The girls had never visited Grand-maman’s house but they had seen photos and their father had told them so many tales of his childhood that it felt almost as familiar to them as it was to him. They had learned all about his life on his parents’ little farm in the mountains which he had shared with his older sister. They learned early on that their grandmother was a gifted cook and they loved to hear mouth-watering tales of her kitchen filled with jars of goose and duck confit, shelves of fruit bottled in cognac, jams, honey from their own bees, sacks of dried beans, whole hams, sausages and salt pork from their own pigs, and of the wonderful meals she made for her family day after day. As he got older, their father made his own contribution to the table by hunting the rabbits, pigeons and wild boar which abounded in the forests around the farm and with fish he caught from the crystal-clear streams. Even though there had been plenty of hard times when there wasn’t enough money, he could never remember a time when there wasn’t enough food. He had never known what it was like to go hungry and he was thankful for that. That idyllic childhood suddenly seemed worlds away; things were different now, very different. Maman was from another generation and he couldn’t gauge how she really felt. One thing they were all certain of though, there would be something warm and welcoming on the stove to greet them.

  The girls’ cheerfulness over the last couple of days had surprised the old man but now that their departure was imminent, he saw it drain from their faces as if a plug had been pulled out somewhere. Slowly and silently the girls climbed into the cab of the truck, speech beyond them. An overwhelming sense of the treachery and betrayal which had brought them to this hung heavily in the air like a pervading mist, sucking out any words before they could reach their lips. Neither were there tears, they had long since run their course.

  The old man tied a tarpaulin over their belongings in the back of the truck, kicked the tyres and clambered into the cab alongside his daughters. He started the engine. None of them dared look back as the truck slowly made its way through the farm gate and into the muddy lane before starting the long journey south.

  Chapter Two

  Bridget Honeyman couldn’t help breaking into a broad smile, as she always did, as her brother Gil swung the blue Mercedes off the main road and up the short, dusty track which led to Les Cerisiers. She glanced briefly over to her right, and noticing that there was no car parked outside their neighbours’ house, hoped that Heather had remembered to switch on their fridge before she and Tony left.

  “Doesn’t it look so much prettier in the sunshine?” Bridget gasped.

  Gil nodded silently in agreement as he got out of the car and walked around to the boot to start unloading luggage and provisions. They had spent the previous night in a little hotel just south of Rouen and, after breakfast, they had stopped off at a supermarket to stock up. Carrier bags of vegetables, fruit, bread, butter, milk, cheese, a couple of steaks for their supper and bottles of wine were soon littering the little cottage’s front step, together with enough suitcases to put a Hollywood prima donna to shame.

  “Give us a hand then!” shouted Gil, but it was too late. His sister had disappeared indoors and was already busily throwing open windows and shutters. That’s better, Bridget said to herself, as she flung open the last of them, allowing bursts of light to flood into the ground floor. She sighed in dismay though as a beam of sunlight hit the kitchen table and perfectly illuminated a large expanse of dust. Hmm, that’s my first chore taken care of, she thought, as she looked around for a duster.

  As Gil continued to take the luggage upstairs, Bridget brought in the bags of shopping from the step and began to methodically arrange their contents in the kitchen cupboards. Good old Heather, she thought to herself as the light came on when she opened the fridge door, and some milk as well, how thoughtful of her. As she packed the groceries away, Bridget cast an expert eye over the contents of the cupboards and made a mental note that she would need olive oil, caster sugar and plain flour soon. Hearing Gil moving about on the floorboards above her head, she shouted up to ask if he wanted tea. She didn’t know why she bothered to ask, he rarely refused a cup, especially if there was some of her homemade cake to go with it.

  “Down in ten minutes,” he replied which would just give Bridget time to have a quick look at the garden and to dust off the table and chairs on the little terrace. She opened the French doors and as she did so, two beetles, with the air of impatient callers who had been waiting to be let in, marched boldly over the threshold. Smiling at their nerve, Bridget gently shooed them out again with her duster.

  Even though it wasn’t yet quite as she wanted it, Bridget couldn’t wait to have a look at the garden, or her garden as she referred to it. Gil was no lover of anything horticultural and his efforts were confined to mowing the lawn and weeding if he was in the mood, so progress was slow. Bridget initially had great plans for the garden, which included an ambitious vegetable plot, but as time would allow them to spend only a few months of the year at the house, she reluctantly had to modify them. She was however determined to have as much colour as she could and had decided that the most practical way to go about this was to plant up a wide variety of bedding plants in pots. This would also cut down on the need for constant weeding, mainly for Gil’s benefit as he had made it very clear that he didn’t want to spend all of his holiday on his increasingly creaky knees.

  As she stepped out onto the terrace, Bridget let out a little gasp of delight as her eyes were met with a riot of colour in the shape of pots of geraniums, petunias, marigolds, and pansies (which her friend Helen had very kindly potted up for her in the spring) and which now filled almost every corner. Bridget had never worried if the vibrant reds clashed with the fiery oranges or if the palest pinks were a match for the deepest purples. She was firmly of the view that if such a wonderfully random, haphazard mix of every shade under the sun was good enough for Mother Nature, it was good enough for her little patch of paradise. As she took in the heady scent of the blooms, her gaze wandered to the pergola which she and Gil had bought from a local garden centre during their second summer at the house and which they had positioned at the top of the shallow steps leading from the terrace to the lawn. She had filled every square inch of the soil around the base of the wooden structure with climbing plants, roses and clematis in every colour, honeysuckle and winter jasmine and now, in their
third summer, the entire trellis had disappeared from view under an abundance of fragrant, bushy foliage and blooms.

  As Bridget was torn between lingering amongst the scents and colours, which spelled summer in her book, and exploring the rest of the garden, her eyes were suddenly drawn to two magnificent peacock butterflies which had alighted on the buddleia at the far corner near the fence. The garden looked onto farmland, currently given over to sunflowers, and was separated from it by a rickety old fence. Gil had intended to replace it but had somehow not yet got round to it. Thinking it a bit of an eyesore, Bridget had splashed out on some very expensive mature shrubs in an attempt to conceal it, knowing full well that the fence would never get fixed. She had been determined to plant shrubs that would attract wildlife, particularly butterflies and bees, which she loved, hence the buddleia. She had also planted lilac, a couple of climbing cotoneasters (also for the bees) and a Russian vine which, with hindsight, had been something of a mistake as it now threatened to take over the world.

  The familiar cry of a couple of buzzards soaring leisurely overhead suddenly caused Bridget to glance up, and she hurriedly shielded her eyes from the sun. In contrast, a group of swallows (or maybe they were swifts or martins, Bridget could never tell them apart), darted above her at breakneck speed as they feasted on an early supper of flying insects.

  Bridget’s stroll back to the house took her past the cherry trees in the middle of the lawn which had given the house its name. The blossom and the fruit had now sadly finished but she hoped that Tony and Heather had been able to make use of the cherries, as she had invited them to. Bridget glanced towards the house just in time to see Gil step through the French doors ready to settle himself into one of the garden chairs, lean back and exclaim that this really was the life, as he always did.