The Murder Farm Read Free

job. She didn’t want to go out there alone, because she didn’t know the way. So I gave her my promise. Gave her my promise . . .
    It was fine first thing in the morning. But it was midday before we started off at last. The weather was nothing special by then. My mother-in-law came to look after the kids while I was gone.
    My husband, Erwin, was still at work. He has to be on the building site early, he’s a bricklayer. Never comes home until late on a Friday. Not that he has to work such long hours, no. But he gets his wages on Friday, and then he goes to the pub after work.
    Usually he comes home late and drunk. That’s men for you; drinking in the pub they forget everything, wife, children, just about everything.
    When we set off, Marie and me, it hadn’t begun raining yet. The weather was still reasonable. A lot of dark clouds in the sky, but on the whole the weather wasn’t that bad. We’d had nothing but rain and snow over the last few weeks.
    I carried the backpack, and our Marie strapped her bag on the carrier of the bike. Now and then I helped her to push it.
    I’d borrowed the bike and the backpack from my neighbor the miller’s wife. Erwin takes our own bike to work with him, and I didn’t want to walk the whole way back. I thought I’d get home quicker on a bike.
    Frau Meier who keeps the shop, she told me just how to get there. She told me about the vacant position in the first place.
    “Your sister Marie’s a good strong young woman. She can turn her hand to anything, and she’s not work-shy. Over at the Danner farm their maid’s walked out. They’re looking for a new one. Just the thing for your Marie.” That’s what she said.
    Frau Meier in the shop always knows everything. People come from all around here to see her when a new maid’s wanted, or a farmhand, and they tell her all the news, too, who’s died, who’s had a baby. Even if you’re looking for someone to marry, you just have to go to her. She can get the right couple together. Then her husband is the go-between and fixes up the wedding.
    Marie had been with us in our little place since January. She’s not demanding, well, you can’t be, not with us.
    Our place has two bedrooms, one for the children and one for us. It has a kitchen that’s our living room, too, and its own bathroom, not one for the whole floor of a building where you have to stand in line and wait for the others to be finished.
    The place is big enough for Erwin, our three children, and me, but with Marie as well space was very tight.
    Marie was sleeping on the sofa in the kitchen living room. It wasn’t going to be forever, really not, just for the time being. That’s why I was so pleased about the job.
    And after she came to us, our Marie was with my brother for three weeks. In February, that was. My brother has a little farm, just a smallholding. Our parents left it to him. My brother’s wife wasn’t well, so our Marie went to help out. Marie was a good girl, you see. A really good girl. She could work hard, oh yes, she could, and she liked to work, but she was a simple soul, too.
    I mean, she was a little bit backward. Not mentally handicapped or anything, just a bit simple, and she was good natured.
    When our sister-in-law was better, Marie came back to us. Marie never got on too well with our brother. He was always going on at her, she couldn’t do anything right, not for him. He’s been a grouch all his life, he won’t ever change.
    I’m younger than Marie, that’s true, eight years younger, but to me our Marie was always the little sister I had to look after. When our mother died, I mothered Marie instead of the other way around. Our father died a long time ago, too, he died just after Mother. Consumption, that’s what the doctor said.
    It’d be easy for anyone who wanted to take advantage of our Marie. She always did as she was told, she never asked questions. Like Mother always said, the easy-going are usually good at heart, too.
    Well,