The Sea Garden (8 page)

He nodded gravely. “So are you going back to London?” he asked.

She smiled at the assumption. “Only passing through, but I don't live too far away. Why?”

Gabriel pushed a hand through his hair. “Would you . . . consider doing something for me, to help me with my research?”

She was touched by the way he seemed hesitant about asking, this man who was otherwise supremely confident.

“I'll certainly help, if I can.”

“Some of the material I need is in London. The story concerns both France and Great Britain. It occurs to me that if I could find out in advance which archives hold the documents I need, then it would make my job quite a lot easier when I come over to England.”

“Of course. I'm sure I can do that.” It would mean keeping in touch, maybe even meeting up. She felt a smile spreading. “No problem at all. Tell me what you need to know.”

They found a shady spot and sat down. Ellie made notes as he spoke. It was hard to tell whether his interest in her was romantic or just friendly. They did not touch, even by accident. When he had described the events he was working on, making sure she had enough useful detail, they spoke of other relationships and the difficulty of love disrupted by war. He seemed to understand her need to talk about Dan and, as she did so, it felt for the first time as if she was freeing herself for the possibility of another life.

The afternoon grew hotter. Gabriel leaned back on a tree and closed his eyes. Ellie began a small sketch of him, ready to snap the book shut if he stirred. At last she was living for the moment, seizing the day with an optimism she had not expected to feel again. There no longer seemed any urgency to catch the ferry back to the mainland.

 

A
t the hotel there were two messages. One was to call Laurent de Fayols as soon as she got back. She used the landline on the reception desk.

“What's been going on while I was away?”

She would have told him, but he continued without waiting for an answer. “And you left your phone. Will you come over to get it?”

Reluctantly, she agreed.

The other message was that Lieutenant Meunier was waiting for her in the hotel dining room. Wearied by his persistence, Ellie went to meet him. The door was open, and he filled the space by the window, alert and aware of his power, looking out at the harbour. It was very possible he had seen her with Gabriel.

They greeted each other brusquely.

He was going to ask her whether she had seen the man in the panama hat, she knew it. A question to which he already knew the answer.

“I thought you should know the result of our inquiries into the death of Florian Creys. It cannot have been pleasant for you to have this as part of your introduction to Porquerolles, but perhaps it helps to know. I have come to tell you that Florian Creys had a history of depression and drug abuse from the age of fourteen. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic a month ago. Last week he walked out of a clinic in Strasbourg and headed south.”

“So . . . it was suicide, then?”

“The prosecutor at Toulon seems satisfied that it was.”

Ellie peered at him, the narrowed eyes and bulky shoulders that made the room seem so small around him. “But you're not satisfied.”

He made an expressive sound with his mouth. “It probably is so.”

“Very sad.”

Just another sad story of a young man who found he could not deal with the world; he would not be the first or the last, the lieutenant seemed to imply. “You say that he was standing alone when he climbed over the rail.”

“Yes.”

“You say that there was someone else who saw the same as you—but we cannot find this person.”

Now he was closing in on his point.

“I have seen him again—the man in the panama hat. I saw him today.”

“Where?”

“Here, by the harbour.”

“But you did not call me.”

She sighed. “I haven't got my phone. I lost it. I gave him your name and told him that you wanted to speak to him. I'm sure he will call you.”

Meunier appraised this information. “Do you know the name of this man?” He took out his notebook.

“Gabriel. He didn't tell me his surname.”

“You did not ask?”

“Well, no . . . he said he was attached to the university at Aix. I was going to Google him,” she admitted.

He blew air out of his mouth, shaking his head.

“You could find him that way,” she pointed out.

“And you don't know where I can find him on the island?”

“No . . . I'm sorry, I—”

“This is a serious matter involving the death of a young man. In cases like this we have to be sure that all the witness statements support the conclusion. You do understand that?”

She nodded. It seemed to be more about paperwork than anything else.

 

A
gainst her better judgement, she went back to the Domaine de Fayols. What else could she do? Her mobile held so much information; it felt as if more and more of her life was filed on that phone. Jean-Luc offered to lend her a bicycle from the hotel.

For once the exercise did not calm her mind. The warmth and colour of the landscape had faded. The atmosphere was changing; banks of dark cloud had massed on the horizon; trees whispered in the wind. Was it happening again? Why was it that any connection with the Domaine de Fayols provoked this anxiety?

Dusk was falling early as she pedalled up the drive. The house grew more imposing, its grand facade streaked by the last rays of sunset permitted through the clotting sky. Most of the shutters were closed, and as she looked up, another was pulled shut by an unseen hand, as if the inhabitants were locking themselves in, or securing the house to leave.

Ellie dismounted. She hadn't any time to waste, should have been on the ferry hours ago. She would go in quickly and get out.

The main door was slightly open. Even so, she rang the bell at the side and waited. When no one came after a few minutes, she pushed the door open and entered the hall.

“Hello? Laurent?”

Dance music from the 1940s swelled from somewhere deep inside the house, then stopped. A ticking grew louder, then faded, replaced by a light scratching from one side of the hall, as if mice were invading the wall cavities.

“Hello?”

A faint churchy smell, recent polish perhaps, hinted at order and respectability. She would do everything by the book. It would be foolish to provide the de Fayolses with any reason for finding fault with her professional services. She would not allow them the satisfaction. Returning to the portico, she pulled the door shut and rang the doorbell again, keeping her finger pressed down as she counted to five and released.

The noise continued to ring inside her head, drowning out any other sound.

After a few minutes, a familiar tapping on the flagstones approached the other side of the door, and then stopped. Ellie's heart sank. The tapping began again, but was receding now.

It was a few more minutes before the door was opened.

“Bonsoir,”
said Jeanne, no longer bothering to speak in English.
“Venez avec moi.”

Ellie followed her across the hall.

In the large sitting room the doors to the terrace were half closed. The lamps had been lit. Outside, the taller trees were bending in an increasingly heavy wind.

The
tap-tap-tap
of a cane began again.

Laurent bounded in from the terrace.

“Ah, you're here! I was making sure the boat was moored properly. Better to be safe if there's going to be a storm.”

Relief at seeing him so unperturbed, so
normal
, allowed Ellie to give him a genuine smile. For a moment he was silhouetted against a sickly yellow-grey sky as he moved towards the drinks tray.

“Will you take an aperitif?”

“No, thank you.”

He poured a glass anyway, and held it out. “A kir made with our own rosé.”

She shook her head, then took it because there were more important issues to settle.

“My phone, do you—”

“Ah, yes.”

He made no move to fetch it, far less explain how it had left her possession. Instead he raised his glass.

“Let's talk. I want to persuade you to accept the commission. Surely you won't go without reconsidering?”

She watched him carefully, holding her glass but not drinking.

“I'm sorry I had to leave for Paris,” he went on. “But now I'm back, we can resume our work,
non
? While I was on the move I had some good ideas, and there are various details I think would appeal to you.”

“My week here is up, I'm afraid. I have a flight booked tomorrow, and commissions back home that need my attention.”

“But we can discuss further, at least.”

“Perhaps.” The lies we tell, she thought.

Tap-tap-tap.
Ellie's heart sank.

“Maman,” said Laurent.

Mme de Fayols leaned on her cane. Her eyes were hollows in the candlelight. Laurent leapt over in time to steady the sway and led her tenderly to her high-backed armchair.

“You look frightened of me, Miss Brooke,” she said, staring at Ellie. Her head was skull-like.

“No, not at all. I'm tired, that's all.”

Tired of your games, she wanted to convey.

“I tried to tell you, didn't I?”

Ellie forced herself to stand still, though her legs trembled with the urge to run. She looked to Laurent. “I really can't stay. I just—want to collect my phone. Please.”

But he was in no hurry to indulge her ahead of his mother. She asked for her drink, and he poured a tiny flute of purple liqueur.

“We were like animals hunting at night,” said Madame, still addressing Ellie. “It was all instinct. My instincts have always been acute.”

Ellie stood uneasily rooted to the spot, wondering where she had heard a similar phrase recently. She glanced at Laurent, but he was oblivious.

“We had to spot minute differences,” his mother went on. “A glimpse, a flicker, a peep, did not carry the same weight as an observation or a stare or even a gaze. We were all deciphering symbols . . . these traps. But we all see in different ways.

“If you saw someone arrested, you had to pretend not to know them, to have no connection. It was life or death. We were silent and helpless in the countryside, where all the winds have names but none of us could whisper ours. Our names were not our own. Our lives were not our own. Can you understand that?”

Ellie shook her head. She had no idea what the woman was talking about.

“Secrecy was everything. It informed the shame of defeat and underpinned our fears for the future. I am old enough now to be cynical, but even then I knew that we all see things in different ways, even when we are on the same side.”

A clock ticked loudly, though Ellie could not see one in the room.

“You concern me, Miss Brooke. You don't seem to want to know about this, and you need to know it.”

Ellie sighed, looking impatiently to Laurent for help. But he was flipping through one of his books in the same way he had when he was searching for a particular image to show her, fired by another of his big ideas, no doubt. If she wanted her phone, she would have to interrupt.

“I'm sorry to have to—”

“He was a traitor, and she helped him. I hate them both for what they did. It stays with you and poisons what comes after.”

The reedy invective broke with such aggression that at last Laurent seemed concerned. He came over and put his hand on her thin arm. “Have you taken your pills, Maman?”

“The treacherous Xavier, who left me to fend for myself and betrayed so many others. He threw us to the dogs!” Mme de Fayols spat on the floor.

“Maman—”

As Laurent addressed his mother, Ellie saw the boy he must once have been, the enthusiasms, the eagerness to please, the incomprehension, and, ultimately, the ineffectiveness.

Jeanne came in with a tray. Had she been listening outside, judging when to intervene? Was this the subject that marked the tipping into a barely-contained madness and the trigger for intervention?

Mme de Fayols waved the housekeeper away imperiously. Her voice was becoming a snarl, shocking from so tiny a person. “War is brutal, Miss Brooke. It unleashes man's inhumanity, shows a man's true character. And that's why any connection to Xavier had to be treated as suspicious.”

“Madame, tenez!”
Jeanne held out a glass of water and a small porcelain bowl in which a selection of pills had been arranged.

The handle of the cane cracked down. Glass shattered on the stone floor, accompanied by a howl of fury from the old lady. The housekeeper took a deep breath but said nothing. She turned to go out of the room, presumably to fetch a dustpan and brush.

Laurent bent over his mother, his back blocking her from sight.

“Go. Go as soon as you can,” Jeanne whispered to Ellie as she passed.

“Where's my phone?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Did you take it?” asked Ellie incredulously.

“No! Why would I do that? Madame said she found it in the library.”

“What?” This was beyond exasperating.

“I will bring it now.”

In the flash of light that followed—was the storm finally breaking?—Laurent looked frail as he tried to calm his mother. For the first time, Ellie wondered whether he was more worried than he had seemed. His face, when he looked up, was drained of its colour.

“He's here!” cried Madame.

“Who is, Maman?”

“You brought him,” she said, pointing to Ellie.

“I came on my own. To collect my mobile.”

Madame looked past her, out at the terrace.

A slight movement beyond the doors could have been rain, or leaves or distant lightning.

“The priest came today,” she went on. “He performed an exorcism. He said there would be no more trouble.”