A Rather Charming Invitation (36 page)

“Holy cow, you gotta stop him!” I cried involuntarily.

“Easy, girl,” Jeremy cautioned. “If we’re wrong and you queer this deal . . .”

“Gee whiz, you can always find people who want to build condos!” I cried. “But how often do you get a chance to . . .” I didn’t have to complete that sentence. Everyone was thinking the same thing.

Philippe nodded to Honorine. Leonora exclaimed, “Honorine,
vite!
Get David on the phone and tell him to wait!” The three of them jumped up and went into the library to make the call.

“You do realize,” Jeremy said to me in a low tone, under all the excitement, “that we can’t exactly go there and dig up the entire field, to figure out if they’re sitting on a cache of Lunaire gold.”

“No, we certainly can’t destroy those priceless flowers—they’ve been growing for centuries to make some of the world’s finest perfume,” I agreed. “How are we ever going to figure out where Armand hid them?”

D
avid was supremely irritated by the wild phone call he got from Honorine, telling him to delay the deal that he’d been working on for nearly a year, which would have netted him a tidy sum. His wife Auguste was none too happy about it, either. But Philippe serenely believed that his illustrious American relative (alias, moi) would come up with the goods, and, after all, this was basically what Leonora had been hoping for all along, one way or another. So they said they’d hold off the deal . . .

“But hurry!” Honorine advised me.

Jeremy and I went back to the villa, to pore over my photographic jigsaw puzzle of the tapestry. It still had plenty of missing pieces, but I hoped to find some clue we’d overlooked. We spread them out, end to end, across the dining room table, and we kept scrutinizing them until I was bug-eyed.

“I knew it, I just knew that Armand was trying to tell his daughter something,” I muttered.

“I wonder,” Jeremy mused, “if Armand realized that he was about to be implicated in the poisoning plot. Perhaps not. Possibly he just knew he had to hide the gold for safekeeping. I imagine he believed that his hiding place would be temporary. And, when the soldiers came to arrest him, I’ll bet he thought it was simply for the theft of the gold. Imagine his surprise to learn of the more serious charge against him, for conspiracy! Next thing he knew, he was stuck in his house up there around Paris.”

“Yeah, that must have been so frustrating, being locked up far away from here, knowing that the gold was just sitting out in the fields,” I agreed. “Until he thought of using the existing wedding tapestry to communicate. He’d have to be clever, and come up with a coded message that his daughter could figure out, all mixed in there with his nice wedding stories about marriage. But it would be tricky business, because he wouldn’t want anyone else to decode the clues.”

“Keep in mind that this is only a theory,” Jeremy cautioned.

“Phooey,” I said stoutly. I got up from my chair, and went scampering over to a closet. I came back dragging a funny old machine of mine, left over from my earlier research days. Jeremy stared at it.

“What the bloody hell is that?” he demanded, looking bemused.

“Just clear away those lamps from that wall, my good man,” I said, pointing. “I need a nice, big drive-in-movie-sized empty space. This is how we researchers project photographs to make them bigger than life. Which is exactly what we need right now.”

“Ah,” he said. “Foolish of me to forget that I am in the hands of a pro.”

We projected some images, examining their enlarged details. The entire house got so quiet that we could hear Guy’s clock in the nearby drawing room, ticking away the minutes so audibly that Jeremy muttered, “I can’t think straight with that damned thing going like a metronome in my skull.”

“Focus, willya? This would be a lot easier if we had that tapestry,” I groused. “It certainly gives Drake the advantage. He’s probably staring at it right now, trying to beat us to it.”

“Chances are, he doesn’t know where the fields are,” Jeremy reminded me. “So, focus yourself. I do think theses pieces are going to add up to something.”

I kept staring, and zooming in, then stepping back and trying to get some perspective. There was so much to look at it, and it was all too easy to get lost in all the images. But finally, I saw something I’d barely noticed before.

“Hey,” I said, peering at the enlarged photo of the central, bottom section of the tapestry. “Look at that little cartouche, right in the middle of the lower border.”

“What’s a cartouche?” Jeremy asked, intrigued.

I pointed to a small ornate rectangle. It resembled a miniature work of needlepoint on a cream-colored fabric, that was “mounted” in a brown frame. The “frame” was woven to look as if it was made of decorative ribbons that were tied into two bows, one at the top, and one at the bottom. This frame overlapped beyond the inside edge of the border, right into the body of the tapestry.

Inside the frame was embroided, elegant lettering that appeared to be a Latin proverb, written in black and gold, with violet flowers and silver-green leaves twining around its letters like a vine.

To me, the whole thing was like a tiny, fancy, ancient version of a framed “Home Sweet Home” or “Bless This House” that a lady might stitch and then frame and hang in her living room. This little framed picture in the border was flanked on each side by white swans and cupidlike figures known as putti. These decorations also overlapped beyond the border’s edge, into the main body of the tapestry.

I peered closer to scrutinize the Latin lettering. Usually such inscriptions are archaic admonitions on the order of
A stitch in time saves nine
or
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
. The sort of advice that makes you feel somewhat doomed anyway. I carefully copied down the Latin words that were inside the cartouche. Here is what it said:

“You studied classics, didn’t you?” I asked, pointing.

Jeremy squinted at it, then re-copied it on another piece of paper. “Hmmm. Hmm. That’s the verb ‘drink’, I think . . . hmm . . . don’t know what this word is, but . . . it’s about a ‘wife’ . . .” He glanced up at me. “Have a drink with your wife?” he suggested facetiously.

“Surely you can do better than that, Mister,” I said.

“Wish I had my old Latin schoolbook around,” he muttered. “Wait a minute.” He went over to the computer and did some rapid searching and clacking. Every now and then he’d stop and jot down a few words on his paper. Finally he came sauntering over to me, and slapped down his translation on the table. It said:

“I made it rhyme,” Jeremy said modestly. “If I had been literal about it, that last line would have been on the order of, ‘A faithful wife be your treasure’.”

“That figures,” I said, temporarily distracted. “Just once I’d like to see a work of art exhorting
men
to be faithful.”

“Let’s concentrate. Look up here, in the main part of the tapestry. On the bedspread where the flower fields are,” Jeremy said, pointing to one of the oval insets on the left. “There’s a water-well, see?”

I peered at it. Yes indeed, it was the scenario with the young man and woman carrying a bucket of water to the well, like an elegant Jack and Jill.

“You get it?” Jeremy said triumphantly. “
Drink deep from the well of life
. With so little time to act, Armand may have just thrown his treasure down that old well—”

“Of course!” I cried. “Armand could be saying, ‘Drink deep and find the
treasure
of your faithful wife’s dowry.’ It makes sense, because a well is the perfect place to chuck your valuables, if you’ve got the king’s soldiers on your trail, and no time to spare! Why, they used to do that back home in Connecticut, you know; the American colonists would throw the family silver and jewels down the well so the rotten Redcoats wouldn’t be able to steal it.” I paused. “Whoops,” I said. “My apologies, but you must admit you Brits behaved very badly indeed in our Revolution.”

“On the contrary,” Jeremy said. “We English, in the end, simply decided to let you rowdy colonists go free, because Americans are clearly a far too troublesome lot.”

“While we are arguing about history,” I suggested, “Parker Drake is out there stealing Honorine’s dowry. Let’s go find out if there really is an old well in those fields!”

“I think we ought to have Monsieur Felix with us,” said Jeremy, “so he can watch out for trouble and make sure we’re not followed.”

 

 

When Jeremy called him, Monsieur Felix quickly cautioned against saying anything on the telephone, just in case. He drove over, but met up with us out on the road, and he followed us at a slight distance. As we reached the turnoff for Mougins, he flashed his lights to signal that we weren’t being followed, and it was okay to proceed.

We drove on to the château, with Felix still not far behind us. Jeremy warned me, “If this well really existed, it would have been centuries ago, so remember to tell Leonora that it’s just a guess on our part, nothing definite.”

I tried to be mindful of his caveat, but when Honorine came to the door, I figured there was no time to waste on social niceties. So I blurted out, “Honorine, we’ve got to see if there’s an old water well out in the flower fields in Grasse. Armand may have hidden his treasure in it!”

She let us in, and brought us to see Philippe and David in the library. They looked mildly surprised to have us pop in on them unexpectedly, even though we were working on their case. Honorine spoke to them in rapid-fire French, to which they responded just as quickly, and I couldn’t keep up. There was a long pause as she listened to them; then Philippe glanced up and realized that I couldn’t make out his answer, so he translated, with an amused gleam in his eye.

“Yes, there was an old well, out in the fields,” he said slowly. “I remember playing there, and stumbling on it when I was a boy. My governess scolded me for going too close to it, and nearly falling in; so, after that, it was boarded up.”

He turned to David, and said, “Get the map of the fields, and I will show you. Then, we go and dig for buried treasure,
oui
?”

W
hen we arrived at the flower fields in Grasse, it was late afternoon, and most of the field workers had gone home. David rounded up a few of the remaining men, and, without explanation, he told them we needed to do some work on an old well. They armed themselves with shovels, spades and other equipment, then followed David, Jeremy, Honorine and me, with Philippe leading the way. Monsieur Felix remained by the gate, so he could keep an eye out for any unwanted newcomers.

Philippe headed down the main path, then crossed the fields with a purposeful stride, as if, even at his age, the boyhood memory of discovering the old well was seared into his mind. The earth was still warm from the day’s sunbath, and the plants still plump from their irrigation in a land where water—and soil—is a precious commodity. The heady, mingled floral and herbal fragrances were mesmerizing; in particular, the lavender was so soothing that the act of marching across it became almost hypnotic.

As we veered off toward the western side of the field, Philippe came to an abrupt halt, and pointed at an area which received partial shade from ancient nearby trees. The rows of plantings simply ran right by and around the area, as if detouring around a boulder.

I gazed at where Philippe was gesturing and I could see a low, circular stone wall, topped by splintered wooden planks. As we came closer, I realized that the wall was actually an extension of the well itself, the very top of the stone cylinder. Some of the wood planks that covered it appeared to have fallen into the well. The earth directly around the well seemed to be turned over, raked up, occasionally clumped in mounds here and there; and some of the plantings nearby were a bit flattened, as if they’d been stepped on or rolled over by a vehicle.

“Has this ground been disturbed?” I asked.

Philippe shrugged. “Perhaps. But that is not unusual. Workers come and go here, and sometimes the earth is dug for use elsewhere.”

“What about the planks?” Jeremy asked. “Have they been broken into?”

David examined them, then said, “Hard to say. They could just as well have deteriorated and fallen in on their own.”

Under his direction, the workmen began to tear aside the remaining planks. Philippe’s men assessed the well to be about thirty-two inches across and about twelve feet deep. One of the men, wearing a helmet with a light on its front, tossed in a rope ladder and hooked it over the top, then began to lower himself into the well, all the way down to the bottom.

“These old wells were originally dug by hand,” Philippe told us, peering in.

“Is there any water still in there?” Jeremy asked, fascinated.

The man in the well said something in French that I couldn’t hear. Philippe smiled and said, “He says there are tree roots pushing into it, but it’s pretty much intact. A little water, yes, but not much.”

One of the other workers handed a shovel to the fellow inside the well, who dug and explored for a while, while the rest of us waited to hear any news. The sound of his spade echoed back up to us.
Chip, chip, chip.
Honorine and I spread out a blanket that Leonora had given us, and we sat there, waiting. Philippe pulled a pipe out of his pocket, and stood apart from us, smoking thoughtfully, gazing out across the fields.

Jeremy was seeing these fields for the first time, so he went hiking around, pausing every now and then to gaze about, taking it all in. David, obviously a city boy at heart, paced along the path restlessly, then pulled out his mobile phone for messages, sending a few.