Was it mistress or rival, or the wife he betrayed?

Was it mayor or copper who wielded a blade?

Was it poison or gun shot or was it a fall?

Did one person do it, or perchance was it all?

Who killed The Little Cat?

Finished at last!  You can now read Murder in the Pays d’Oc from start to finish, right here on this blog — jusr click on the ‘Murder’ tab.

Murder in the Pays d’Oc is the third in my Pays d’Oc series set in Morbignan la Crèbe, a sleepy, eccentric village nestled between the mountains and the Med in the Languedoc, southern France. Gaspard Petit, otherwise known as Le Petit Chat, lies dead at the foot of a stone staircase.  Did someone murder the most hated man in the village?

Murder in the Pays d’Oc is the third in the series which began with At Home in the Pays d’Oc and continued witb Tales from the Pays d’Oc.  If you’ve never heard of Morbignan and would like to know more, click on the tabs above.

Most importantly, I love to hear from readers.  If you have a comment, a suggestion or even a criticism, leave me a message here or visit my Facebook page.  I promise to respond. https://www.facebook.com/Paw-Prints-in-the-Butter-719210834795177/

<><><><><><><><>

Durin g Indie Author Week UK (June 12 – 19) I chatted to two indie authors, one British, one American, and learning what inspires them.

Drop into my Guest Room and meet Allie Cresswell, celebrating the publication of  The Lady in the Veil, a new novel in her Talbot Saga, set in the Regency period, and Stefanie Nici, author of The Smoke Tree and its sequel, Broken Branches.

<><><><><><><>

Read the unfolding story of Murder in the Pays d’Oc here free – just tap on the Murder tab.

<><><><><><><><>

I went to a tea party today. It was a very small tea party at my neighbour’s house, just her and me, in fact. She brewed Darjeeling and I brought a lemon cake and we sat in her tiny, pretty garden – at a respectable distance, of course – and chatted like civilised people. Just strolling down the ginnel (she persists in calling it a twitten) to her house felt like freedom.

Yesterday was gardening day. Time to dead-head the osteospermum. I sat on the low front garden wall and snipped away, careful to let some seed heads fall, careful to garner some fat pods for next year’s crop. It has been blooming non-stop for a year now, truly the gift that goes on giving. And every now and again a couple would walk up our quiet road, and I’d sequester myself behind the garden gate and they’d say ‘thank you’ and we’d exchange a smile.

Later this week a man with a much stronger back than mine will come and tackle the knee- high grass and the front flower bed, which is nothing but a bluebell’s graveyard now.

And, joy of joys, next month we have secured an appointment at Dapper Dogz for Maisie. She’s such a fuzzball at the moment that the local collie keeps trying to round her up. He thinks she’s a sheep.

The panic queues at the supermarket have dwindled, and we wait our turn politely, looking like aliens in our masks and bright blue gloves The assistant monitoring our behaviour is cheerful and has a friendly word for all. The shelves are almost back to normal, with loo rolls and even flour to be seen.

It’s been a long and wearisome lockdown.  I miss pub lunches and strolling into the village to shop, or for coffee with friends; I even miss getting on a train to go to London, to join my oldest friends for lunch or  a theatre.  I miss the groups: even though we exchange poems and stories by email it’s not the same.  There has been talk of Zoom meetings but we have never really got it together. These are tiny, trivial things and others have it far worse.

The weather and the garden have helped, but I grant we have been lucky. Maisie gets her walk early every morning and we shout hello at the other regular dog walkers from a distance. We shop, or not, then go about our chores, usually gardening or, in Himself’s case, tinkering with the van.

The garden is a delight. After the early alarm – help! The garden centres are all closed! What will we do for bedding? – the nurseries and garden centres got their act together. The word went out on Facebook: such and such a nursery is delivering. Sheer relief made us all over-order; I’ve never had such a riot of colour.

Theatre and opera companies have fallen over themselves to entertain us: the National, Chichester, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others have all dug into their archives and streamed productions online free of charge. Television, of course, is in its summer doldrums, but who cares?

So we have endured the Covid crisis with a certain amount of good grace – but oh, the joy of normal things! Tea with a friend. A picnic planned. A visit from the gardener. A long- overdue appointment at the beauty parlour – for Maisie at least, if not for me. And now the weather seems to have settled; the wind has died down and the sun is coaxing out colour on the petunias and violas and fuchsias. Even the weeds look pretty.

Here comes summer. And with it the first green shoots of hope.

Today (January 16) is Dragon Appreciation Day. There are, as we all know, three types of dragons – but do you know how to tell them apart?

A little ditty:

DRAGON CASTE

The Imperial dragon, the prince of the blood
To which our traditions are owed,
Can be seen at a glance to be lord of them all:
Imperial dragon – five toed.

And how do you ascertain a dragon’s rank?
Count the claws, dear, count the claws.
How tell the monarch from the mountebank?
(I’ve said it before) count the claws.

The Mandarin dragon is second in line.
Though not as elite as the first,
Four claws on his paws his degree clearly show:
By no means of dragons the worst.

And how do you ascertain a dragon’s status?
Count the claws, dear, count the claws.
How to tell which one is second-rate is
(I’ve said it before) count the claws.

The thrice-digital dragon – that’s three-toed to you –
Who was wont upon maidens to dine,
Got a lot of PR from his fight with St George
But he’s last in hierarchical line.

And how do you ascertain a dragon’s caste?
Count the claws, dear, count the claws.
How tell which should be first and which the last?
(I’ve said it before) count the claws.

Five, four and three, the dragon’s claws
Assign to each his place.
But dragons, whether great or small
Are still a noble race.

Does it matter what a dragon’s caste is?
Damn the claws, dear, damn the claws.
Of snobberies, I think the nastiest
Is counting claws, dear, is counting claws.

He was 40-ish. I was 12-ish. He was an ordinary bus conductor on the number 49 bus from Battersea to South Kensington. I was a child riding to school on that number 49 bus.

The conductor was saying all the usual things, the right things. ‘Hold very tight please.’ ‘Mind the stairs!’ ‘Watch how you go, love.’ And so forth. Then, suddenly, he must have got bored with it all.

‘Here we are for where we’re going. All in there for here, get off,’ he announced to the startled passengers.

That must have been 50 years ago. (‘And the rest’, says Himself unkindly). And have I forgotten that bus conductor? No, I have not.

Then there was the inspired Big Issue seller, outside Bond Street Station. ‘Help the homeless, such as me,’ he chanted. ‘Buy Big Issue, fifty pee. If you don’t, I’ll get no tea.’

Well I don’t have to tell you how long ago that was. 50p for a Big Issue? I should coco. But I’m sure he got his tea that evening. And have I forgotten that enterprising young man? Nope.

Another day, another ordinary chap going about his business. A lift conductor (remember those?) in a major department store (remember those?) ‘Going up…’ he droned. ‘Going up…’

Then, just like that bus conductor, he decided to spice things up a little ‘Going up. Going up. Going… sideways.’ Did no-one in the lift notice? Or were they too English to comment? Himself and I were lucky enough to be in that lift, and hopefully our delighted grins made that lift operator’s day just a bit brighter.

And, needless to say, I have never forgotten him.

People talk about small random acts of kindness – never let us stop doing them. People talk about acts of heroic self-sacrifice – they leave us all in awe.

But let’s hear it for the little random acts of humour which have given us pause, and a smile, and a lasting memory.

We thought the world had ended the day we lost our beautiful Purdey. Anyone who knows us, or who has read my book ‘At Home in the Pays d’Oc’ will know her story. How she came into our lives almost by accident, how overnight we became dog people. Her death was sudden and quick. She didn’t suffer, we made sure of that, but the days and weeks followed were agony.

We vowed we’d never do it again, would never put ourselves through that heartache. But as the months went by, I came to realise something. You can miss a dog – and I do, bitterly. Purdey’s portrait hangs on our sitting room wall and I look at it every day. But you also miss just the fact of having a dog, something warm and furry to sit on your knee or take up more than her fair share of the duvet.

And so we began the search. This would be a new dog, we promised, a dog in her own right, never a replacement. We saw dogs. Patrick was frantic, almost any dog would do, he wanted one so badly. I couldn’t commit. Every dog we saw I loved – that is the nature of dog people. But still something was wrong. It was only gradually that I came to realise that what I needed was a Purdey type – fluffy, affectionate, strong-willed and demanding. In short, a Brittany, like Purdey. And a rescue. About this we were adamant.

There are not many Brittanys in the UK. If you are not prepared to order one, sight unseen from abroad, like a parcel from Amazon, it’s hard to find one to adopt. So we tuned our attention to springers. There are lots of springers on the greensward where we used to walk Purdey. They are gorgeous dogs – outgoing, friendly, with an ever-wagging tail that I have come to call the springer semaphore. Surely there must be springers locally in need of a new forever home?

There weren’t. We pestered all the rescue charities, who promised to get back to us, but didn’t. Himself, who is the Internet king, went looking, and found a springer rescue charity in the north west. I was sceptical: did we want to go that far? And would they let one of their dogs go to the soft south? Still, at his insistence, we pestered some more.

The telephone call came. ‘We do have one, her name is Maisie and she is 11.’ This gave us pause. Purdey was almost 16 when she died – could we take on an 11-year-old and face the same devastation when we lost her only a few years later? Another phone call: ‘My mistake, she’s 9. But I have to warn you, she’s a biter.’ By this time we had seen Maisie’s photos, including the muddy ones, and we were in love. A biter? We could deal with that. Could we have her? Please? They agreed.

It wasn’t simple. First there was the home check. We nearly fell at this hurdle: the charity didn’t have anyone in the south to check us out, and this was a sine qua non of adoption. Wonderful Wadars, the Sussex animal rescue charity http://www.wadars.co.uk , very kindly agreed to do the home check, even though Maisie wasn’t one of their dogs. I shall be eternally grateful to them.

     The next problem wat that the kennels were a good six hours’ drive away: it would involve an overnight stay. To make matters worse, our van was out of commission, so we had to borrow a friend’s elderly Mondeo.

On November 25th 2018 we finally met her. After a chat with the rescue people she was brought in – or rather she exploded into the room, a tiny round furry butterball with short bandy legs, a madly wagging tail and a great interest in Patrick’s pocket (it was stuffed with treats). She didn’t look a bit like the elegant, long-legged springers we had seen. I had already told the man at the rescue charity that we didn’t mind a ‘sprocker’ (springer-cocker cross) and he had got very sniffy about it: ‘Oh no, Madam, we are a springer rescue.’ About Maisie I had my doubts but it was too late – we were both captivated.

Poor little mite: we loaded her into the back of the car and off we set on our six-hour trek down south. She must have been so bewildered. She probably thought she was being taken ‘home’ to her previous family.

We knew very little about her history. We had been told that she had lived with a man, who subsequently acquired a partner and a child – clearly the dog had been pushed aside. Then she had been offloaded onto the mother in law, who, by all accounts, was not a dog person, and had spent a year or so with her before being put up for adoption.

Maisie came home with us and embarked on a year-long journey. We’d been told she was OK with other dogs – not a bit of it. She tried to eat every dog who attempted to make friends. Our walks consisted of Himself playing ball while I was on dog-alert. If another was spotted on the horizon poor Maisie had to go on the lead.

We took her to an animal behaviourist at the brilliant Sussex dog training  https://www.sussexcountydogtraining.com/ . The behaviourist brought out a realistic but definitely stuffed black Labrador. Maisie tried to kill it. After about a dozen sessions she had improved a lot, though she still regards most other dogs with suspicion. We suspect she had never been socialised.

She’d obviously been strictly brought up. She wouldn’t venture upstairs at all at first. We assured her this was OK, so eventually she would come up at night for a cuddle, always going downstairs to sleep. It was six months before we could persuade her that it was OK to sleep on the bed; now she goes upstairs ahead of us and gets very cross if we don’t follow soon.

She wouldn’t go in the kitchen – well, this was a rule we liked, and she is still gently shooed out if she tries to go in. More difficult to deal with is the fact that she wouldn’t, and still won’t, poo in the back garden. This will be a problem when she gets older, but we’ll deal with it.

Maisie was shy at first. Like most dogs in a new and bewildering situation, she was subdued, and wouldn’t eat if she was the slightest bit anxious. This was a revelation: Purdey would eat – and steal – everything in sight. To begin with, I was tolerated; Patrick got the lion’s share of the cuddles. We think that ‘dad’ had been the prime cuddle giver in her former home: women were to be treated with great wariness. Now she seeks me out, sitting at my feet – and sometimes on them – when I am busy at my desk.

And the biting? No, she has never bitten, but we think we know why she got that reputation. She is very possessive of her toys and treats, and if she thinks something is going to be taken away, she gives an almighty, shrill yelp and pounces on the object in question. We think she was teased in a former life, probably by a child. It was disconcerting at first, now it’s funny: it’s a game she plays with us.

But she has come a long, long way. She is affectionate, trusting, playful and very funny. A gentleman we met on our walk yesterday summed it up. ‘That’s a cracking little dog you’ve got there.’ Yes, she is a cracking little dog. She’s come out of her shell, she’s accepted us as her forever home, she adores us and we adore her. We have come on an amazing journey together over the past year and we are a true family.

Happy gotcha day, lovely Maisie.

Hey, NASA.

I hear y’all have been worried about me these past few months, so I thought I’d touch base one last time. I’ve been up here 15 years now, and I’ve been pretty busy sending you pictures of where I’m at. And thanks for giving me the credit for discovering water on Mars, it’s nice to get a bit of recognition for a job well done. I haven’t seen any signs of actual life, though, and I have to admit it was getting kinda lonely.

That’s why I was so pleased when you sent up Curiosity to keep me company. My, she’s a busy old gal! Never stands still for a moment. Reminds me of myself in my younger days.

Well, I guess you are wondering why I’ve stopped writing. It’s like this, see, I’ve been working pretty hard for a long time now, and I think I have earned a rest. Me’n Curiosity have been getting kinda close over the last couple of years – when she wasn’t off exploring, that is. And, it being Valentine’s Day back on Earth, it seemed a good time to pop the question. And she said yes!

Of course I had to agree to her carrying on with her work. She’s a lot younger than me, and no way is she ready to retire. But I think we may be starting a family some time soon, what with her electronic clock ticking and all.

So carry on the good work down there. You won’t be hearing from me again, but I guess the old girl will be in touch, and keep you up to date with our adventures. And keep on sending up the Rovers – until the kids grow up, that is.

Y’all have a nice life now.

Warm good wishes

Opportunity xxx

This weekend I have been entertaining the Blues, standing around in the freezing cold, talking France (and French), patting dogs, doling out croissants and selling books.

It started with the Blues.  Friends of mine are active in the local Conservative party group, and they were looking for a speaker for their coffee morning.  Now historically I am not of that persuasion, but let’s not get political here.  It was a gig.

Moving swiftly on.

On Friday morning there I was, clutching a stack of flash cards and dressed to suit – not quite twinset and pearls, but I had abandoned my usual jeans and tee shirt for a skirt and respectable jacket.  And facing an enormous audience of, oh, at least 20 people.  It was, I realised, my first attempt at solo public speaking since I stopped doing a proper job and became an author.

I was, of course, speaking to my second favourite subject:  life in the Languedoc.  My first favourite, of course, being dogs,as any friend of mine who has been bored to tears by me will attest. Luckily everyone was kind and supportive.  I was careful to look round the room as I talked, and I saw smiles and even some laughs, and a lot of sagacious nods:  they knew, they had been there.  Even more delightfully, many of them came up and bought the book afterwards, and its sequel collection of short stories.

Well, I thought, that wasn’t so bad.  Then realisation dawned.  And dawned was the operative word, because the following day I was up well before the sun had climbed out of bed.  Patrick, my stalwart and self-styled roadie, was about to ferry me, my banner, my croissants and my books (to say nothing of the dog) to East Grinstead.  East Grinstead!  It’s in East Sussex! A long, long drive from my neck of the West Sussex woods.  I should have thought of that.  But, truth to tell, I was so excited and delighted to be invited to sign books at the lovely East Grinstead bookshop that I had given little thought to actually getting there.

The day hadn’t boded well.  The trusty BBC Weather app had said fine all week – except for Saturday, when it was going to rain.  Typical!  In the event, rain only settled in from about two o’clock.  The morning I spent, at my request, at a table out on the pavement, ‘engaging’ as modern parlance will have it (or, worse still, ‘reaching out’).

The British public is a curious beast.  Have you ever shaken a tin for charity at a street corner and watched people scuttle by, casting furtive glances at you from the corner of their eyes?  What, I often wonder, are they afraid of? So it was with my modest little stall.  On the other hand, many people did stop to chat, even accept a cautious croissant (free) and even, bless them, to buy the occasional book.  These were the people who made it all worthwhile.  My blessings go to the young couple who stopped to let me cuddle their dog and stayed to talk dogs and France.  When I offered the husband a bookmark he said no, very firmly.  He wanted a book!

I recall with fondness the French lady who stood patiently while I trotted out my rusty French.  And the German lady who wanted something not too difficult in English – she pronounced ‘Tales from the Pays d’Oc’ to be ‘not too complicated’ and promptly bought the book.  Another elderly lady stayed for a long chat, bought ‘At Home’, went off and found her gentleman friend (‘he has money!’) and came back and bought ‘Tales.’

I learned two things that morning:  I like people – most of them – and I can even stand the cold when I have interesting company and endless cups of tea.  A word here has to go to John, who owns the bookshop, and his wonderful team who made me feel welcome, even when the rain forced me indoors and I was taking up a table in their café.

If you are ever in East Grinstead I urge you to visit the wonderful bookshop – not only is it friendly but it is a proper bookshop in the old-school sense.

I just wish it was a bit nearer.

One year ago today we lost our beautiful Purdey, the Brittany spaniel who had shared our lives for almost 15 years. If you have owned and loved a dog you will know what that means. Quite literally it tore the heart out of us. Her portrait hangs on our living room wall; we think of her every day, more with laughter than tears nowadays, but there are exceptions.

But time passes. On November 25th we welcomed Maisie into our family. She’s an eight- year-old rescue Springer Spaniel – at least, that’s what the rescue charity told us. We think there is more than a dash of cocker spaniel in her: she’s got bandy little legs and a plumy tail which never, ever stops wagging and a high-pitched, girly little bark.

She’s also well-mannered and undeniably pretty. Pretty in a different way, though: Purdey had film star looks that made strong men go weak at the knees and old ladies stop in the street and exclaim. Maisie’s compliments come more into the ‘what a sweet little dog’ category. And of course we love her to bits.
In six years, or eight if we are lucky, Maisie will leave us, and break our hearts all over again. Will it have been worth it? Absolutely.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> 

Imagine… water on stone, sunlight in an eye-blue sky; the dart of a friendly lizard, the lurk of a scorpion on a whitewashed wall.
I’ve just spent a week in magical Tuscany – and I had to work, goddammit!

• 
• Angela and Maurice Petch were our attentive hosts: nothing was too much trouble. Sonja Price was the wicked witch of the west, calling us to order with a smile and a daunting exercise: what does this picture say to you? Can you create a piece of scintillating dialogue? What comes after this opening sentence?
• 
  It all seemed such a good idea, way back in grey February, when Angela dropped by with some flyers.
  ‘A writer’s course in Tuscany? I’d love to do that,’ said Himself. I looked at him agape. What, mix with a bunch of writers? Lay the pearls of his hard-core sci-fi before our swinish incomprehension? But I wasn’t about to discourage him.
  Getting there involved flying, not something either of us care to do, followed by a gut-wrenching drive over mountainous bends for what seemed forever.
  Il Mulino – the mill – made up for it all. An ancient stone building with every mod con imaginable, waking up to the sound of the river, coffee on our own little terrace, morning writing sessions in the garden, afternoons free to develop our own masterpieces. There were wonderful meals taken at home or in local restaurants, sometimes a little too wonderful, with eight or ten or more courses to negotiate – thankfully not every day.
  Amazingly, for a group of eight total or near-total strangers, we all got on. We discussed writerly things without feeling self-conscious and helped each other out with tips and wrinkles.
  Six weeks ago, struggling with the final stories in my work in progress, I announced to himself ‘I’m never going to write again.’ One day in Tuscany and I was mapping out the plot of a new book. For that, and for so much more, if you ask me if the trip was worthwhile my answer will be a resounding yes.
•