The Splendour Falls (10 page)

I believe I’d been preparing myself to dislike her, for her beauty if nothing else, but the moment the door from the hallway flew open all my preconceived notions went out of the window. In place of the coldly glamorous woman I’d
expected, I saw someone who seemed scarcely older than her wayward niece, with cropped black hair and large eyes liquid in her bloodless face. And ‘frantic with worry’, I now saw, was an understatement. Martine Muret was terrified.

‘Armand, I cannot find her,’ she broke in, ignoring me completely in her distress. ‘Lucie, she is gone. I have looked everywhere, but—’

‘Calm yourself, Martine,’ her brother-in-law said, raising one hand to stop the woman’s flood of speech. ‘Lucie is fine, she’s safe in bed.’

‘Oh, thank God.’ Her knees caved weakly in relief and she dropped suddenly onto a tapestry-covered chair by the long windows. Touching a hand to her brow, she seemed to notice me for the first time, and the look she sent her brother-in-law was faintly quizzical.

In a few brief, unembellished sentences, he explained who I was, and how I’d come to be there.

‘I am so grateful to you, Mademoiselle.’ Her smile was a fleeting shadow on that lovely, fragile face. ‘You cannot know how I have suffered these past hours, searching for my niece. One reads such horrible things in the newspapers, you know, and I was so afraid …’ She couldn’t even finish the thought out loud. Her pale hand brushed her temple once again, and she said quietly: ‘I would never have forgiven myself.’

I mumbled once again that it was nothing, that I’d been only too glad to help Lucie, that they’d already been too kind … And pushing aside my empty plate, I glanced down at my wristwatch. ‘But I’m afraid I really must be getting back to my hotel.’

‘I will drive you,’ Martine said, as if determined to repay the debt. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Hotel de France.’

I caught the flicker of surprise, the too-bright smile. ‘Oh, yes?’

‘Martine has friends there,’ said Armand Valcourt. Leaning back in his chair, he lit a cigarette, and the lighter’s click was as violently loud as the cock of a loaded gun. ‘But I think, perhaps, that I should drive you down myself. To see you get back safely.’ He stressed that last word, ‘safely’, and Martine’s eyes flashed a quick response.

I glanced from one face to the other, sensed the coming storm, and diplomatically excused myself to use the bathroom. In spite of the fact that arguing was to the French what complaining about the weather was to the English, I’d never learned the knack of it. I hated arguments. I particularly hated being in the middle of them, and so I loitered as long as I could in the little toilet under the front stairs. Which rather backfired when Martine and Armand came into the hall. Trapped, I could only stand and wait, pretending not to hear the angry voices.

‘I’ve already told you I was sorry,’ snapped Martine Muret. ‘What more do you want?’

‘I want you to behave responsibly, to show some consideration for my feelings, Lucie’s feelings, instead of thinking only of yourself.’ He wasn’t really shouting, but his voice was cold and hard and carried clearly. ‘Do you realise what can happen to a child, alone at night? Do you?’

‘Of course I do,’ she shot back. ‘What do you think, Armand, that I wasn’t worried myself? That I wasn’t sick
with fear when I realised she was missing? Is that what you think?’

‘I think you were too occupied with other things to notice she was gone. Which one was it, this time?’ he asked her. ‘The German or the Englishman? Or have you grown bored with them already, and found someone else?’

‘I don’t see that my private life is any of your business.’

‘When it affects my daughter, it’s my business. My God, Martine, what were you thinking of? We buried him today, or have you forgotten this?’

A silence followed, stung by the echo of those words. ‘I forget nothing,’ said Martine, at last, in a calm and quiet voice. ‘And how dare you judge my feelings, Armand. What do you know of love?’

I heard her cross the foyer and start up the staircase, her footsteps treading lightly over my head. Still, I waited until those footsteps were completely out of earshot, until I’d heard the click of Armand Valcourt’s cigarette lighter, before I decided it was safe to emerge.

He was standing at the foot of the stairs, his expression quite relaxed and natural. Only the jerking movement of the hand that held the cigarette betrayed his anger. By the time I reached him, even that small action had been brought under control. His eyes, on mine, were normal. ‘Ready?’ he asked me. ‘Yes? Then let us go.’ And handing me my jacket, he ushered me out into the waiting night.

He drove a Porsche. That didn’t surprise me overmuch – the flashy red sports car rather suited him – but it did set me wondering. If Armand Valcourt owned a car, why had he taken a taxi from the station yesterday morning? Come to think of it, why had he taken the train? I only wondered for a moment, then I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘I always take the train when I go to Paris. Martine might need the car, you see, if there were some emergency with Lucie. And anyway, I’d be a fool to drive the Porsche in Paris.’ He shot a sideways glance at me. ‘Why the smile?’

‘Was I smiling? Sorry. It’s only that I used to live in Paris, so I understand completely. My father once backed into a Mercedes. The owner wasn’t very … understanding.’

Armand laughed. ‘No, I don’t suppose he would have
been.’ I felt again the flashing glance. ‘How long were you in Paris?’

‘Five years. But it was ages ago. I was only twelve when we left.’

He smiled and swung the Porsche round the hairpin bend that plunged towards the river. ‘I had wondered,’ he confided, ‘where you learned to speak your French.’

It took a minute for his words to hit their mark. I’d spoken French to little Lucie, when I’d first approached her in the fountain square, and then … well, I suppose I’d simply gone on speaking it. In all the confusion, I hadn’t really noticed. I shrugged now, suddenly self-conscious. ‘My father’s in the foreign service,’ I explained. ‘He wanted me to have a second language.’

‘You have one. Your French is very beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’

He didn’t ask me what I did for a living, but then the French didn’t ask such things, as a rule. It was considered impolite, a means of pigeonholing people before one really got to know them. Since the Revolution, everyone was meant to be equal anyway.
Almost
equal, I amended, leaning back against the glove-soft leather of the Porsche.

Armand Valcourt had missed the Revolution. There was a certain feudal gallantry about the way he dropped me at my hotel door, coming round to help me out of the car as if I were royalty. His handshake lingered, by design, and his smile was deliberately charming. ‘You have your key?’ he asked me.

‘Yes.’ I rummaged for it in my handbag, pushing aside a stiff white card with printing on it. ‘Oh,’ I said. I’d
quite forgotten, in all the confusion, about my mysterious invitation to taste wine at the
Clos des Cloches
. ‘This was from you, then, I presume?’ I held it up to show him. ‘It was left for me this morning.’

‘Was it?’ The charming smile broadened, refusing to take responsibility.

‘Yes.’

‘Ah. That is very curious, you know, because we don’t give tours this time of year.’ Taking the card from my hand, he assumed a mock-serious expression. ‘Still, it appears quite genuine. I am sure,’ he said, as he gave it back, ‘that we would honour it.’

‘So you did send it, then.’

His dark eyes held a deep amusement. ‘Well, if I did, I could have saved myself the trouble.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you came to see me anyway.’

Definitely
a flirt, I thought, as he walked back round to the driver’s side of the car. Smiling faintly, I watched the Porsche’s back lights twinkle out of sight along the Place du Général de Gaulle.

It was a lovely night for late September, crisp and clear, filled with the drifting scents of autumn – pungent leaves and petrol fumes and slowly burning coal. My watch read ten past eleven, but there were still people passing me by on the pavement – young people, mostly, in boisterous clusters, making their way to the lively bar on the nearest corner. The mingled sounds of dance music and laughter spilled out across the square. Saturday night, I thought. I thrust my hands in my pockets, feeling suddenly at a loss.
I could almost hear my cousin’s voice reminding me, in disapproving tones:
It’s been six months since you so much as stopped in at the pub for a drink
.

Frowning, I hovered there a moment, trying to decide whether to go out for a drink or go up to my room. In the end I did neither. I crossed to the fountain and sat on the bench where I’d found Lucie Valcourt.

Here, beneath the whispering tangle of acacia branches, it was easy to go unnoticed. I sat back, facing the brilliant glow of the Hotel de France and the bustling bar on the corner, and focused on the pleasantly murmuring fountain in front of me.

The bottom pool was perhaps two feet deep, a stone hexagon raised on a sloping step. Water cascaded into it from a bronze basin set high overhead like an upside-down umbrella, and that basin in turn was fed by the overflow from a smaller bronze bowl above
it
. From the centre of the fountain rose three women, cast in bronze, supporting the entire structure. Back-to-back the women stood, arms lowered to their sides, their fingers linked in an eternal show of sisterhood. There was no mistaking their classical origins – even without their flowing draperies and tightly coiled hair, there was a depth of beauty to their faces that told me they belonged in ancient Greece.

A hopeful nudge against my legs disturbed my contemplation. It was a cat, a rather familiar-looking
black-and
-white cat, and when the green gaze locked expectantly with mine I fancied that I recognised it. It was the same cat, surely, that I’d seen that afternoon perched on the high wall of Christian Rand’s house. It rubbed itself against my
legs a second time, more demanding now than hopeful, and I tapped my fingers on my lap. ‘All right, then,’ I coaxed it, ‘it’s OK.’ Pleased, the cat leapt up and padded round in circles on my knees, pausing once to sniff my face in a delicate sort of greeting.

It was clearly a stray – one stroke of my fingers along the dirt-encrusted back told me that – but it was nonetheless affectionate. And trusting. It stopped circling and curled itself inside my jacket, claws working against the stiff fabric, and within seconds the green eyes closed. Head nestled heavily against my breast, the cat breathed deeply with a steady, rumbling purr that vibrated up through the thick fur to my caressing hand. Surprised, and oddly moved, I crooked my neck to stare down at the sleeping animal.

I ceased to be aware of time. I don’t know for certain how many minutes had passed before I heard the footsteps coming down the steps from the château, between the shuttered buildings.

Neil Grantham’s hair was almost white beneath the street lamps, white as his shirt beneath the soft brown leather jacket he was wearing over faded jeans.
Oh, damn
, I thought, feeling again the unwanted stirring of emotion, like a persistent hand tugging at my sleeve. I shrank back further into shadow, hoping he’d go straight into the hotel without seeing me. His head came round as if I’d called to him, and with easy strides he crossed the square to join me on my bench beside the fountain.

‘You’ll get fleas,’ he said, looking at the cat.

‘I don’t care,’ I tightened my hold protectively, lifting my
chin. ‘He just wants some attention, poor devil. I’ve a soft spot for strays.’

He smiled and stretched his long legs out in front of him, elbows propped against the top rail of the bench’s back. His presence, like the cat’s, was very peaceful, but for some reason that only made me more nervous. If only he would flirt, I thought, like Armand Valcourt had, then I’d be fine. But Neil was not Armand. He just went on sitting there, perfectly still, as though he were waiting for something.

I stroked the cat’s head, and cleared my throat. ‘Were you just up at the château?’

He nodded. ‘My nightly walk. It’s the only exercise I enjoy, really – walking. You ought to come with me some time.’ I glanced at him then, but he still wasn’t flirting. His face was dead serious.

I made a non-committal noise and swung my eyes back to the trickling fountain with its trio of lovely bronze women.

Neil followed my gaze. ‘Enjoying the fountain, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and then because the silence stretched so long I cleared my throat again and told him, childishly: ‘There used to be a fountain in our garden when I was very small. My father worked in Rome, then, and we had this marvellous house, with a courtyard and everything, and the fountain in the middle of it. A wishing fountain, my father called it – he used to give me a coin at breakfast, every day, for me to make a wish with. Anything I wanted.’

Now why, I thought, had I told him that? It was a foolish thing to tell a total stranger.

Neil went on looking at the dancing fall of water. ‘And did it work?’

Did it work? I remembered the day I wished for a kitten, and found one wandering in our back lane. And the day the horrid girl next door fell off her bike. I tucked my jacket round the sleeping cat and shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

He brought his quiet gaze back to my face, and I hastily changed the subject. ‘Are these women in the fountain sculpture Greek?’

‘That’s right. Splendour, Joy and Beauty. The three Graces.’

‘Oh, I see.’ I peered more closely at the downturned faces. ‘Which one is which, do you know?’

‘Lord, no.’ His smile was disarming. ‘I only know their names because I looked them up last Tuesday. Simon asked me, and I didn’t want to appear ignorant, not when I’ve been coming to Chinon for so long.’ His eyes slid from me, looking at the figures with new interest. ‘Still, I imagine there’s some way to tell them apart, if we approach it logically. Splendour means brilliance, doesn’t it? So the lady facing into the sunset would be my choice for Splendour – she’d get the best light, vivid colours. And the prettiest one is round the other side, facing the hotel, so I’d say she’s Beauty. Which leaves Joy, and that fits,’ he decided, ‘because she’s got the widest smile.’

I frowned. ‘She’s not smiling.’

‘Of course she is. They all are. That’s what Graces do, you know. They smile upon you and make life beautiful.’

‘Oh.’ The man was seeing things, I thought, as I stared back at the nearest statue, the one Neil had pegged as Splendour. She certainly wasn’t smiling. Not at me.

High above, in the ruined château, the midnight bell
began to toll, disturbing the sleeping cat. The green eyes opened and stared at me with a deeply disappointed air, then in one fluid motion the cat rose and stepped, stretching, from my lap onto the pavement. Stiff-legged, it wandered off into the shadows.

Neil watched it go, then looked across the square at the noisy corner bar. ‘Listen, since we’re both still up, can I buy you a drink?’

Five years ago, I would have told him yes. Five years ago, I would have done a lot of things.

Tonight I stammered some excuse about being tired, and faked an unconvincing yawn.

‘Another time, perhaps,’ he said.

‘Perhaps.’ I rose from the bench, and said goodnight, and his dark eyes gently called me coward.

‘Goodnight, Emily.’

It seemed a long walk across the little square to the hotel door, mainly because I felt those eyes upon me every step of the way, but when I turned at the door to glance back, Neil wasn’t watching me at all. He wasn’t even looking in my general direction. His face was turned the other way, towards the château steps.

The black-and-white cat had returned, weaving itself nimbly around Neil’s outstretched ankles. As I watched, he leaned forward and scratched the animal’s ears absently, but he didn’t look down. He just went on looking with narrowed eyes at something … or someone … I couldn’t see.