Songs of Blue and Gold (28 page)

She was fighting to prevent any reaction showing on her face.

Dr Braxton reasserted vocal control, but answered her question only with another one. ‘So the nub is, what do
yoou
know?' he asked.

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Do we both know what
I
know?'

The effect of this playground tactic in the circumstances, especially in view of his self-confessed eminence in the academic world and her own wariness, had the effect of making her laugh involuntarily.

Braxton pushed his glasses back to the bridge of his nose again with an index finger and waited intently.

‘I really don't know what you are asking,' Melissa replied at last.

Wrists resting on the table, he made a steeple with his hands, then raised the structure to his upper lip. Great thoughts seemed to be accruing inside his domed head. They would have to be phrased to his satisfaction before release.

Seconds passed.

‘I sent her another letter last fall. I don't suppose she got it.'

‘She might have done.'

‘She never said?'

‘She was ill.'

Dr Braxton closed his eyes and breathed deeply into the steeple.

She watched him for several minutes, determined that she would give no more away.

At last he sighed and spoke:

‘Julian Adie wrote some of the most lyrical, enchanting, life-enhancing celebrations of the human condition. He made personal myths of the places he went, the people he met. But the reality was his life never ran smoothly. Perhaps he wanted too much, too badly. The gifted golden youth of the nineteen thirties gave way year by year to a disillusioned, sour and bad-tempered old man. He had a bad reputation with women, which got worse as he got older. Some said he was violent. He was certainly given to messianic rages, especially when drunk.'

He darted furtive glances right and left, then leaned in to the table.

‘So what happened to him – where did the beauty go, the healthy lust for life? Why did it turn to self-destruction? This had been puzzling me for years. Something happened, but what?'

Melissa sipped her drink, never taking her eyes off his. He gave a couple of toad-like blinks.

‘Then, last year, thanks to the small reputation I have built up as a student and teacher of Adie's work, I was approached by a woman who claimed she was a friend of his daughter, Hero. She chose the simple expedient of sending an email to me at the university site. Would I be interested, she asked, in some papers which had belonged to Adie's daughter?

‘Naturally, I was intrigued. I responded immediately, travelling to London to meet her the following weekend.

‘I met . . . my contact in a public house in North London. She explained that the papers had been given to her by Hero Adie the year before she died. The two women had been good friends. Hero had extracted a promise that the package would be kept private until it was judged that Adie's reputation was once more in the ascendant.

‘The papers were Hero's journals and diaries. These pages stated crudely – but backed by a mass of circumstantial evidence – that Julian Adie was a cruel and violent man. In fact . . . he killed a woman.'

He stopped there, wanting to see her reaction.

Melissa tried hard not to give him one. ‘And this is what you have been investigating? I can see it would make an astonishing new take on Adie's life.'

‘Astonishing? It's explosive!' The voice went squeaky again.

‘But . . . Hero Adie – she committed suicide, didn't she? She was a troubled young woman. She might not have been making a rational judgement.'

‘It might not be true, you mean?'

‘Do you have proof?' asked Melissa.

‘That's what I'm working on.'

‘How far have you got?'

But it was a question too many. He was the one trying to get answers. He crossed his arms and blinked.

‘It must be libellous,' she said. ‘The dead can't defend themselves.'

‘Neither can they sue for libel, that's for sure.'

There was a charged pause.

‘I'm not about to write anything that cannot be justified. I am not about to destroy my own academic reputation with some ill-conceived notion.'

‘I really don't think I know anything that can help you.'

‘You could talk to me about your mother.'

Melissa took a deep breath. ‘But why would I want to do that?'

‘Well . . .' The tone of his voice was disturbing. Again he pushed the glasses back up to the bridge of his nose with a forefinger.

Her hands were shaking. She hid them quickly under the table. ‘Are you trying to say that she knew about a murder? Because that is just . . . unbelievable. If you knew anything about her, you would realise that.'

‘But I don't know her,' he pointed out. There was a hint of a threat in his words. ‘That's why I would very much like to talk to you about her.'

He stared intently and, heart thudding, Melissa realised how clever he had been. He had never even asked if her mother had ever been associated with Julian Adie. But somehow the fact of it was under discussion.

She had nowhere to go but to say, ‘She would not have been party to anything that harmed another person – or even an animal. It was not in her character.'

‘I'm not saying that.'

‘What then?'

‘Simply that . . . she was one of the people who was known to have been with him, the summer it happened.'

Clenching her hands, remembering Elizabeth's gentleness, Melissa stared into his thick glasses. Her own reflection coiled tight in each lens.

‘What do you know about the
Songs of Blue and Gold
, Melissa?'

‘Songs of blue and gold?' She had never heard of them.

Dr Braxton observed her reaction with fierce concentration. ‘Your mother never spoke about them, ever?'

‘No.'

He eased back a little, but in the manner of an actor. ‘What if I were to say to you that Julian Adie confessed?'

‘It would mean nothing to me.'

There was a pause. ‘I am going to give you my card. I would sincerely ask you to consider whether . . . there is a possibility . . . you would allow me to see Elizabeth Norden's papers.'

He slid the card across the table. She let it lie there, with its string of academic endorsements and a list of telephone numbers.

It was only then it occurred to her. ‘How did you get my telephone number?'

‘It was on a letter from her to him, in university archives.'

The number for the
bergerie
was the same as it had ever been. ‘And her address here too, I suppose?'

‘She wrote him many times when he was living in Sommières. She used to go see him there.'

Melissa felt winded. What else was she about to discover
about her mother? How was it that complete strangers knew more of Elizabeth's life than she did? The questions were profoundly unnerving.

She stood up, cornered but ready to fight. Somehow she managed to sound almost normal. ‘You will have to let me think about this. And let me do it in my own time. If I am going to help you, I will contact you not the other way round. Do you understand that?'

He inclined his head. In his beard was a damp pink half-smile like a tiny newborn animal in a nest.

Melissa drove back to St Cyrice, shaken.

Would Dr Braxton appear unannounced at the door of the
bergerie
? He had disturbed her peace of mind, already fragile as it was. She was rattled, and resentful that there was nowhere to hide from him.

He was looking for papers, but Elizabeth did not have any papers, as such. Not in the sense that he meant. As an academic he seemed to have lost sight of the fact that most people were not like the old writers he studied; they did not keep documents of every encounter, correspondence with other old writers, journals and philosophical exchanges. If any of Elizabeth's papers did exist, they would only have been records of pictures sold or designs executed in other people's houses. And these would have been in the house in Kent. But Melissa had cleared the study, the desk with its bulging drawers, the cupboard and the bookshelves. There had been very little of interest to find.

At six o'clock Melissa phoned Richard.

‘Are you coming back?'

‘Of course. It was only a couple of meetings. You knew it was always on the cards that I'd have to go back at some stage. At least it's only as far as Paris. I'll be back soon.'

He seemed able to act as if nothing had changed, whereas for her, everything had altered.

‘Tomorrow?' she asked, dreading the answer.

‘With any luck,' he said.

Dr Martin Braxton. Who was he, and was he trustworthy? Melissa was used to dealing with facts. She was thrown by the messiness, the probable unreliability of human testimony.

She thought about her own trail to find Elizabeth's connection to Adie in Corfu. Manolis and Eleni; the memory of their unconditional kindness made her smile. She wondered how Alexandros was, how his trip to Egypt had gone – and what had happened with his wife. She wished she could speak to him. She wanted to tell him about her encounter with Braxton – Alexandros might have provided her with some desperately-needed reassurance, but his number and email address were in a drawer back in England.

IT WAS EXTRAORDINARY
that she had not made the connection before. She had realised, of course, that Sommières – Julian Adie's last and longest-standing place of exile – was close to Nîmes, but not that it was so close to where she was now.

But there it was on the Michelin map: mid-way between Montpelier and Nîmes, barely twenty kilometres away: the small town where Adie lived for thirty years.

If Dr Braxton was in the south of France, this had to be the trail he was following. Melissa had no idea what she was looking for, only that – for Elizabeth's sake – she had to keep up with him.

As she had managed so many times before, she put all thoughts of Richard out of her head, and got in the car. Taking the main road across the
garrigue
, she was in Sommières in a little over half an hour.

The proud Roman bridge of stone arched across the Vidourle river, each leg with its own elegant smaller
arch which reflected in the water as a teardrop. A V-shaped weir broke the water's smooth glassiness.

On the hill above, wearing a rolled sleeve of trees, rose a tall defensive tower, square and strong, as if the old town were flexing a bicep, in a warning not to overlook its strength and purpose.

Melissa turned on to the embankment road and parked.

The river was green and sluggish. Large brown fish drifted fitfully, until they fought for deeper water near the Bar Vidourle, a café-bar with a terrace across the road hanging over the river.

Sommières was not a smart little town made bijou for Parisians and northern tourists. This was a place of crumbling stones and fortunes, of tall narrow alleyways, cool and damp, with the smell of drains, built on Roman walls and ramparts. Some of these medieval passages were buttressed by primitive arches of pitted stone; walking through them was a country dance under linked arms.

These houses had been inhabited for centuries. Generations of families squeezed into damp, angular spaces. In one passage, washing was strung across from an upper window. A history and continuity prevailed, but not the one she was looking for.

At the ends of alleys were bright snapshots of the streets running across: the red awning of a newsagents bearing the ubiquitous masthead of the
Midi Libre
; a kebab shop from which came the aroma of grilling meat. On all sides, sun-blistered plaster cracked into mosaic.

The main square was signposted: La Place Jean Jaurès.
Ice-cream parlours and bars reached out to visitors, but the bustle seemed purposeful and home-grown. Above the shops, plaster facades were patched and peeling. Shuttered windows hinted at mysterious interiors.

Melissa went on through, her eyes drawn upwards. By a church, balustraded terraces rose up to the castle and to the blue ribbon of the sky. Inside, high above, noon's bright hot light pushed and pulsated through intricate stained glass. She emerged blinking. Opposite, a house formed the corner of the alley, its stucco in such a state of decay that a rusting metal strut was exposed, evidence of previous repairs decades ago. A metal street sign, raw and powdery brown with rust, announced the Rue Docteur Chrestien (1758–1840).

A screech came from a blue-painted window. Behind a screen of chicken wire was a jungle of willow and olive branches, in the middle of which sat a huge macaw, green and blue, and squawking out its raucous commentary.

A few steps away hid l'Ancienne Impasse du Paradis. A round sticker of a dollar sign had been smacked on it. Below, a silver spray of graffiti read
Screw You
in jagged psychotic letters. It had competition across the narrow street, where a great devil head in red snarled from a facing wall, with the legend to the side of one jutting cheekbone:
On sort faire des bêtises
– we go out making mischief.

She suspected Julian Adie would have been amused by that.

Then, back in the Place Jean Jaurès, she saw it.

Stuck to the glass of a shop door was a small poster advertising an exhibition of sculpture, currently running at the Espace Julian Adie.

She pushed at the door and it opened with a smooth click and the ping of a bell.

Inside it was a narrow
librairie
, lined with shelves of magazines and books, stationery and plastic toys. The smell of paper and felt pens brought back breaths of her childhood.

‘Can I help?' The woman behind the counter wore half-moon reading spectacles perched on her head like sunglasses. Her expression managed to convey helpful efficiency as well as abruptness.

‘I'd like a street map, please.'

She indicated a circular stand. ‘We have a selection.'