The Pool by Sarah Edghill

Author:Sarah Edghill [Edghill, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

They sat around the kitchen table like naughty children being told off by their teacher. Hannah stared down at her hands, pretending she didn’t know that Alice and Nick were glaring at her; Suzy was smirking, which was just as bad.

The inspector stood at one end of the table, hands behind his back, as if about to deliver a sermon. He had told them that he came bearing news, but was clearly enjoying their discomfort. ‘So, mesdames et messieurs,’ he said at last, when they were quiet. ‘When we raised la victime from the piscine, we were able to do the proper testing on her.’

‘It wasn’t a her, it was a him,’ whispered Alice.

‘We have found that death occurred plus tôt – a little earlier – than we had expected.’

‘He means victim is feminine,’ said Marcus. ‘La victime.’

‘But it was a man, Uncle Marcus,’ said Jimmy.

‘Yes, old chap, but in French the word for victim is la victime,’ said Marcus, running his hand through his hair and looking pained. ‘It’s a feminine noun.’

‘So.’ The inspector glared at them. ‘This early death explains certain things.’

‘That’s why I hate French,’ said Suzy. ‘Why does it have to be masculine and feminine, why can’t a thing just be a thing?’

‘It explains,’ said Inspector Moreau, raising his voice slightly. ‘Why the body was floating in the piscine.’

They all stared at him.

‘After many hours, when a body dies, there is a… liberation de gaz. So, we know this man was dead for at least ten hours in the piscine, so his body must rise to the top.’

‘God,’ said Lizzie. ‘That’s a bit grim.’

‘Just imagine how hard it is to learn German,’ Alice said to Suzy. ‘I’m doing German GCSE and their nouns are masculine, feminine and neuter.’

‘We believe this man died vendredi soir.’

‘Friday evening,’ translated Marcus.

‘How awful to think that he’d been in there for such a long time,’ said Hannah.

‘Don’t you mean neutral?’ asked Suzy. ‘I thought neuter was something they did to cats?’

‘No, it’s definitely neuter. I should know, I’m the one who’s studying it.’

‘So, when he drowned in the pool he would have sunk to the bottom,’ said Nick. ‘But then his body filled with gas overnight, which meant he floated to the surface on Saturday morning, or at some stage before we arrived?’

They sat looking at the inspector, waiting for him to continue. But he looked around the table slowly, his face as expressionless as when he’d been standing watching Hannah float naked in the pool. She looked down at the table when his eyes moved round to her, pulling her fingers through the strands of wet hair that were falling across her shoulders.

Every time she thought about what had happened, she felt herself blushing again. Alice had eventually run off to find a towel, but it felt like ages before she came back – although it was probably less than half a minute. Unwilling to remove her hands from the parts of her body she didn’t want on public

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