The Splendour Falls (23 page)

‘Well, anyway,’ I said, softening, ‘the point is moot, isn’t it? You said the death was ruled an accident.’

‘Accident,’ Paul replied, ‘is just another word for chance.’ But when I asked him what he meant by that he only shrugged, turning his gaze thoughtfully across the river. ‘I don’t know, exactly. Just a hunch I have. Tell me again about this theory of your cousin’s. About the lost treasure of Isabelle of Angoulême.’

I told him, and he listened, quietly, attentively. My father
looked like that, I thought, when he was doing crosswords. One could almost hear the wheels at work. ‘So what,’ I asked him, ‘are you thinking?’

‘Nothing important.’ He lifted his cigarette. ‘Like I said, it’s just a hunch. Simon’s paranoia rubbing off again, most likely. Gypsies, Nazis, treasures in the tunnels …’ He smiled. ‘This really is a case for Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Well, don’t get too carried away with your investigations,’ I implored him. ‘I’d hate for you to spoil your whole holiday on my account.’

‘Don’t worry so much,’ was his advice. ‘I’m hardly spoiling my holiday. Here.’ He handed me a hunk of bread. ‘Feed the ducks.’

When all the bread was gone, he stretched and checked his watch. ‘I’d better go find my brother. He said something about having lunch with Christian – I don’t know. Simon thinks that every German is an expert on the Nazi empire.’ Paul smiled. ‘He never gives up, my brother. He’s bound and determined to find one of those treasures, before we leave.’

‘You might never leave, then.’

‘Suits me. Hey, are you going back to the hotel? Could you take this with you?’ He shrugged his jacket off and held it up to me. ‘It’s getting kind of warm, with all this sun.’

‘Sure. Paul …’ I frowned. ‘I know you like playing detective and all that, but you will be careful, won’t you?’

‘What could happen?’ Paul stood up, pitching his spent cigarette away. The breeze caught it and sent it tumbling down the steps into the brackish water, where it landed with a soft and final hiss. For a brief instant, with the sun
at his back, he looked like some young hero from the Old Testament, a David yearning for the battlefield. But then I blinked and there was only Paul, with his black hair flopped untidily across his forehead and his dark eyes deep and quiet as the river at our feet. ‘I’ll be careful,’ he promised. ‘Want to meet for drinks in the hotel bar? Say, three o’clock?’

‘OK.’ I climbed with him to the top of the sloping steps and leaned, half sitting, on the low stone wall, watching him walk back towards the market place. At the other side of the zebra crossing he turned back, grinning, and called out something that I didn’t catch. He seemed to be pointing at the Rabelais statue beside me, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I nodded anyway, and waved. Satisfied, he turned away again and vanished in the crowd.

My cigarette had burned down nearly to the filter. It left an acrid bitter taste upon my tongue, and I bent to crush it out against the wall, holding the torn stub lightly in my fingers while I looked round for a litter bin. There was one not far from me, at the edge of the busy road. Gathering Paul’s jacket in my free hand, I pulled myself away from the river wall with a small sigh, and wandered the few steps forward.

The jacket felt a good deal heavier than it ought to have been. It hung awkwardly to one side, and for a moment I thought he’d left his wallet in it, until one pocket gaped to reveal the dog-eared pages of a thickish paperback, with a cracked disfigured cover. I was smiling as I tossed my dead bit of cigarette into the bin.

The prickling at the back of my neck was my only warning. I barely turned in time to see the gypsy step from
the shadow of the brooding statue and cross the boulevard, walking back towards the market square. He didn’t look at me. I might have been a ghost, invisible. Paranoia, I thought, was a sign of creeping age; and yet I did feel more at ease when man and dog had disappeared, and the shifting sea of faces swirled and flowed to fill the wake behind them.

Thierry set my second
kir
on the low table at my knees, propped one foot against the carpeted step up to my section, and picked up his story where he’d left off. ‘… and they cannot eat or bathe, or do anything for pleasure – not until the sun has set, tomorrow night. It is a most important holiday. Paul calls it Yom … Yom …’

‘Yom Kippur?’

‘Yes, that is it.’ Thierry nodded. ‘The Day of Atonement. Paul says it is a day for remembering the dead, and for confessing sins.’

‘I see.’ I took a sip of my drink. ‘And this begins tonight, then, does it?’

‘When the sun goes down, yes. Paul and Simon, they will have to eat like giants before then, if they are to fast all day tomorrow.’ Thierry placed a sympathetic hand on his own flat stomach. ‘I would not like to be a Jew, I think.’

‘Didn’t you ever fast for Lent?’

His dark eyes danced with mischief. ‘My sins, they are so many, Mademoiselle – the fasting, it would do no good. Besides,’ he added, ‘the Jewish holiday is more than just not eating. Paul says it is forbidden to be angry, or to hold an argument, or to think bad thoughts about someone. It is not possible.’ He dismissed the notion with a ‘pouf’. ‘Not if I must serve Madame Whitaker.’

One level up, the violin ran through a series of scales and then began its mournful song. Thierry frowned. ‘He has not listened to me, what I said. He plays today the love song.’

Sure enough, the strains of the
Salut d’Amour
came drifting down the empty stairwell and into the bar. I tried to shut it out, leaning back in my chair. ‘Where is Madame Whitaker today, anyway?’ I asked Thierry. ‘I haven’t seen her at all. Does she have another headache?’

He shook his head. ‘She has gone with my aunt and uncle, to see the church at Candes-St-Martin. It is a nice church, very old.’

‘Did her husband go, as well?’

‘I do not think so. But he is also out, somewhere.’

Hiding from his wife, most likely. Happy marriages, I thought, seemed something of a rarity these days. Especially in Chinon.

‘Ah.’ Thierry glanced upwards, approvingly, as the violin shifted tunes. ‘This is the symphony by Beethoven, is it not?’

I listened, and nodded. ‘Yes, the Eroica.’

‘
Comment?
’

I repeated the name more clearly. ‘Beethoven’s Third Symphony. He wrote it for Napoleon.’

Thierry raised his eyebrows. ‘So it is French, this symphony?’

‘Well, in a way. But Napoleon went and had himself crowned Emperor before this piece was finished, and Beethoven wasn’t at all pleased about that.’ In fact he’d been so disillusioned that he’d changed the dedication – no longer for Napoleon, but simply ‘to the memory of a great man’. Every age, I thought, had mourned the loss of heroes.

Thierry smiled. ‘You know much about this music, Mademoiselle.’

‘Not really. I just remember certain pieces, and the stories that go with them.’

‘Me, I do not listen to the type of music Monsieur Grantham plays. I take him into Tours, to the discotheque, so he can hear real music, but …’ The young bartender shrugged again, amiably. ‘He says he likes better the violin.’

Silently, I sided with Neil. ‘What time is it now, Thierry, do you know?’

He turned his wrist to look. ‘It is just after fifteen hours.’ He sighed. ‘Two hours more before my work is finished for today.’

Work or no, I thought, the hotel bar wasn’t the worst place one could spend an afternoon. The long polished windows stood open to the scented breeze and the glowing sunlight of an autumn afternoon fell warm upon my neck and shoulders. Outside, the market crowds had thinned and I could clearly see the fountain scattering its rain of diamond drops through which the Graces gazed, serene.

Thierry was looking out the window, too, and thinking. ‘Yesterday, that was Monsieur Valcourt you lunched with, was it not? I did not know you knew him.’ The trace of envy in his tone puzzled me, until he went on, ‘He has the best car, the very best.’

I smiled, remembering that bright red Porsche that purred like a great cat and gleamed like any young man’s dream. ‘It is a nice car,’ I agreed.

‘Madame Muret, she has promised she will take me for a fast drive in this car one day. When Monsieur Valcourt is gone to Paris.’

‘Has she really?’

‘Yes. He lets her drive the car, when he is gone. She brought it here last week when she came once to see Christian, and she would have given me the ride then,’ he confided, ‘only I could not leave until my work was finished and by that time the police had telephoned.’

I frowned. ‘The police?’

‘Yes. To say they had found the body of her husband.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘It was most sad.’

Presumably he meant his thwarted efforts with the Porsche, and not the death of Didier Muret. I sympathised. ‘I could ask Monsieur Valcourt, if you like. He might have time to take you for a—’

‘No, please,’ he broke in hastily. ‘It is not so important. And besides, it would be more pleasant, I think, to drive with Madame Muret.’

Et tu, Brute
, I thought drily. Were there any men around who
weren’t
smitten by Martine? Smiling, I swung my gaze beyond the tumbling fountain. There was that blasted
spotted dog again, I thought. Without its owner, this time. It snuffled round the edges of the phone box at the far side of the square. Now who, I wondered, would a gypsy be telephoning?

When the phone behind the bar burst shrilly into life, I think I jumped as high as Thierry did, then caught myself and smiled. Paul was right, I thought. Simon’s paranoia was definitely spreading.

‘A moment,’ Thierry begged the caller, as a trio of customers came through the door from the street. He cupped his hand over the receiver and sent me an imploring look. ‘Mademoiselle, I wonder …?’

‘Yes?’

‘It is a call for Monsieur Grantham, but he is practising, and when he practises he always takes his telephone off the hook. I wonder, would you be so good …?’

‘You want me to fetch him for you?’

‘Please.’ He flashed the charming smile at me, the one the poor receptionist, Gabrielle, had such trouble resisting. I was a little more immune than Gabrielle to Thierry’s charms, but his dilemma was very real. The new customers settled themselves at the bar, expecting service. I sighed, and rose half-heartedly to go and break up Neil’s practise session.

A shiver struck me on the twisting staircase, but I shook it off again, blaming it on the cool breeze that drifted through the open door to the terrace. On the first floor landing the air felt distinctly chilly. Here the violin was sweeter, stronger, and even though I knocked two times it kept on playing. He couldn’t hear me.

My third knock was so forceful that it moved the door itself – the handle hadn’t latched properly – and I felt like an intruder as I watched the door swing inward on its hinges. It didn’t open all the way, just far enough to show me one angled corner of the room. And Neil.

It was easy to see, then, why he hadn’t heard me. I doubt if anyone could have reached him at that moment – he was locked in a world that no one else could touch or even visualise. He looked a different person when he played. His eyes were closed as if it somehow pained him, the fleeting and elusive beauty of the music that would not be held, but slipped past the listener almost before one’s ear could register the notes. Neil’s hands moved lightly over the familiar strings, sure as a lover’s touch and twice as delicate. And the strings responded in a way no human lover could, singing pure and sweet and achingly true. It was disquieting to watch.

The violin faltered, and stopped, and my ears rang in the sudden silence. Neil opened his eyes. They were brilliant and beautiful, unfocused, the eyes of a dreamer surfacing. And then he looked towards the open door and saw me and he smiled, a broad exhausted smile that included me in its happiness. ‘Bloody Beethoven,’ he said. ‘He does make one work for it.’

It was my own fault, I thought later. He’d as much as told me, by the fountain, that whatever happened between us would be up to me, that I would have to come to him. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he had said. And now here I was, standing in the doorway of his room, not saying anything, trying desperately to remember what message I’d been sent
to deliver, while Neil set down the violin and came towards me. Even when he took my face in his hands, I couldn’t say a word. I only stared at him, and thought
He’s going to kiss me
… and then, in a rush of panic, I remembered. ‘You have a telephone call,’ I blurted out.

My eyes followed Neil’s mouth as it halted its descent. ‘I beg your pardon?’

I cleared my throat, and repeated my message. ‘Thierry sent me to tell you.’

‘I see,’ he said. But he didn’t take his hands from my face, and he didn’t move away. We might have gone on standing there indefinitely, staring at one another, if it hadn’t been for Garland Whitaker.

It was difficult to say which sound came first – they seemed to happen all at once, like tracks laid down upon the one recording. I heard the front door slam, and Garland’s voice half screaming and half sobbing words without apparent meaning; and then somewhere someone smashed a glass and through Neil’s window came the first faint wail of sirens in the fountain square.

Neil moved with calm deliberate speed. He was downstairs in the entrance lobby before I’d even reached the stairs, and by the time I followed, he and Thierry had between them coaxed some sense from Garland Whitaker. Her eyes were still half wild in her pale bewildered face, and her voice held traces of a shrill hysteria, but her words came easily enough, between small sobbing breaths. I heard the words, of course, but I didn’t for a moment believe them. It simply wasn’t possible.

‘No.’ My voice, half strangled, made Neil pause and turn his head, but for all his swiftness he was not in time to stop me.

I didn’t seem to touch the ground. I felt the heavy door swing to my desperate push, and heard the screech of tyres as I dashed across the narrow road. At the edge of the fountain square, where the château steps wound
down between the lovely ancient buildings, the bright red ambulance stood waiting, blue light flashing, doors flung wide. The square was crowded, full of people, questioning and murmuring and elbowing each other for a better view. I pushed my way with purpose to the fountain, searching for one face among the many …

‘What is it?’ asked a man, ahead of me, and his companion answered, ‘Someone’s hurt.’ Just hurt, I thought. I knew it. Somehow Garland Whitaker had got the story wrong.

But then my eyes found Simon.

They had moved him to one corner of the square, to one of the benches, where he sat huddled like a child with a blanket round his shoulders. Someone had given him a cup of coffee, and a kind-faced man in uniform knelt by him, talking, but Simon didn’t respond. He looked so young, so unutterably young, his frozen face beyond emotion. I shivered in the chill spray of the fountain as the gathered crowd increased the tempo of its murmuring, excited.

The medics were bringing the body down.

‘No, don’t look.’ Firm hands took hold of me and turned me round, away from the spectacle. Above my head Neil’s voice spoke low and steady. ‘
Don’t
look.’

Dry-eyed, I focused on the weave of his crisp white cotton shirt, and the tiny frayed bit at the point of his collar, and the way it moved with his breathing. He didn’t speak again, didn’t try to comfort me or stroke my hair, and yet the comfort flowed out from him anyway and kept me standing still.

Around us the voices swelled, loud and confused. The doors of the ambulance slammed shut, an engine roared
and rumbled off, and then it was all over.

Neil let go of my arms, breaking the spell. My gaze shifted upwards from his collar, and our eyes locked. For a long moment we just stood like that, staring.

‘He isn’t dead,’ I said, at last.

His voice was gentle. ‘Emily, don’t.’

‘He isn’t dead!’ I felt the bitter sting of tears at that, and pushed him off, stumbling blindly up the square towards the château steps. It was a foolish thing to do, I knew, a foolish thing to say. I’d caught a glimpse of the stretcher as they brought it down the steps, and I’d seen as well as anyone the swaddled figure strapped to it. The sheet had been drawn up over the face, which plainly meant …

But I couldn’t bring myself to even think the words.

The crowd of people on the steps had thinned, and those remaining moved obligingly aside to let me pass. It must have been my face that made them move aside with quiet words and pitying glances. My face, I thought, must look a bit like Simon’s: cold and bloodless, empty-eyed. I pushed on, lungs burning, to the uppermost angle of the steps, where the high cliff wall rose stark and merciless in front of me, sharply outlined in the harsh sunlight. A bit of street lamp and a sign peered over the wall’s top edge, and at its base the cobblestones spread rough and jagged in the shadows.

There was very little blood on those stones. I consoled myself with that, and with the knowledge that it would have happened quickly. For all it was a wicked drop, he would have fallen faster than his mind could register the fact. It helped a little, thinking that.

There were people talking round me and from both below and overhead the noise of traffic rose and fell, but oddly enough the only sound that truly penetrated was the closer whining of bees – not the portly languid insects so familiar to my garden, but a smaller, nastier-looking variety, as pale as the stone of the high wall behind them. They were everywhere, those bees, drifting amongst the white mist-like flowers of a grasping vine hanging from the weathered stone. The flowers were nasty as well, and the smell of them clawed at the back of my throat. It was an evil putrid scent, like roses left to rot on the rubbish heap.

I turned away from it. Neil was standing two steps down, his shoulders propped against the wall. He straightened as I came back down towards him, but he didn’t say a word – he just fell into step beside me, understanding. With one last ragged backward glance, I turned and let him lead me down to the fountain square, away from the place where young Paul Lazarus had died.

The brandy burned. My second sip was much too large, but I coughed a little, forced it down, and raised the glass again. It was odd, I thought, how the mind behaved so differently in times of stress. Mine grasped at detail, any detail, anything that might distract it from the thoughts that brought it pain.

I counted three pink petals clinging to the lone geranium that drooped against the window of the hotel bar. Four cigarette ends jumbled in the ashtray in front of me: two left there by Madame Chamond, edged with rich red lipstick; two taken from the pack I’d found in Paul’s coat pocket,
stuffed beside
Ulysses
. I had smoked them to the filter, till the paper curled and burned. Another sip of brandy washed the acrid taste away.

The Chamonds had moved off a discreet distance to the cushioned bar stools, respectfully out of earshot, yet near enough to lend support. Madame Chamond had cried. I saw the smudge of shadow at the corner of one eye, and the specks of black mascara that bore witness to her tears. Monsieur Chamond, grim-faced, reached out to shield her hand with his. I looked away.

Across from me the young policeman with the tired eyes made one more scribble in his notebook. He was sitting in the place where Paul usually sat, and I hated him for it. But then, I thought with a sigh, I was tired myself and still in shock and anything but rational. And we’d gone over all these questions once, already.

The policeman glanced up, reading my mood. ‘I know, Madame, this must be trying for you, but it’s necessary that I ask these questions, you understand. The boy’s brother can’t tell us much. He was in the château when it happened. And you have spent much time with the … with Monsieur Lazarus.’

‘Enough time to know he didn’t kill himself.’ The police, I knew, thought differently. It didn’t take an expert to interpret all those questions. Was Paul a happy person? Had he been depressed of late? Did he have a stable family? On and on the questions probed and prodded, dozens of them, variations on a theme. ‘He wouldn’t kill himself,’ I said, to make it absolutely clear. ‘He was very happy with his life.’

‘I see.’

‘He loved his family very much.’ I looked away again, and focused on the pink geranium. The sun was nearly gone now, and the light was weak. It would be early afternoon in Canada. Paul’s mother would no doubt be busily at work somewhere, preparing for the holy day of Yom Kippur, not knowing that her son … I struck a match and the flame trembled as I touched it to my third cigarette. ‘I can’t believe,’ I said, ‘that no one saw what happened.’

‘It is unfortunate.’ He nodded in agreement. ‘But this is market day, of course, and most people are down here, in the Centre Ville. They aren’t up visiting the château.’

‘But there must be residents, surely. People who have houses on that road.’

‘They saw only your friend sitting alone on the wall. It’s a low wall, where the road is – waist-height, but on the other side …’ He shrugged, and let the image form itself. Not that I needed reminding. I’d seen the deadly drop, myself – I knew the likelihood of somebody surviving.

‘If he did not jump, this friend of yours,’ said the policeman, ‘then he must have fallen. Perhaps he lost his balance, sitting there.’

‘Or perhaps someone pushed him.’

‘Perhaps. It is my job to look at all the possibilities.’ His face looked almost kind at that moment, and I gathered my courage, drawing a deep breath so that my next words came out on a kind of endless rushing current.

‘Then you might want to ask questions of another man, Monsieur. A gypsy, with a dog, who often hangs about the fountain square.’

‘Oh, yes?’ The pencil halted on the page, and he raised his eyebrows expectantly. ‘And why would I wish to question him?’

I told him everything, beginning with the man who’d written to Harry – the man Paul had believed was Didier Muret – and ending with our final conversation by the river, just that morning, when the gypsy had followed Paul into the market-day crowd. The young policeman took notes politely. He even asked me, once or twice, to clarify a point. But it was plain from his expression, so
carefully-schooled
, so bland about the eyes, that he thought I was off my trolley.

‘I see.’ He flipped back a page in his notebook. ‘You say your cousin left a message, Madame? And that you did not worry about him, at first, because it was his habit to change his mind, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’ The single syllable spoke volumes. ‘I can make enquiries, if you like, about your cousin. And I know this gypsy well, I’ll talk to him, although I don’t think he will tell me much. I know he looks rough, but he doesn’t make much trouble.’ He glanced at me. ‘Perhaps, Madame, your cousin’s absence …’

‘Disappearance.’

‘… has made you, how shall I say, sensitive to things that are not there?’

I swallowed that small rebuke, along with a mouthful of brandy, and felt the muscles of my jaw tighten. No point in wasting my breath, I told myself. It was obvious that my suspicions hadn’t been taken very seriously. I watched
in silence while he made a final entry in his notebook and flipped it closed.

‘I must thank you, Madame, for your time and for your patience. You’ve been most helpful.’ It was a lie, I knew, but he told it well. I hadn’t helped at all, unless he counted holes poked in his suicide theory as evidence of my helpfulness. I smiled faintly at him and he nodded, rising to take his leave of the Chamonds with both respect and muted sympathy.

He hadn’t been gone from the bar thirty seconds when Garland Whitaker swept in, looking rather like Lady Macbeth, with just the proper touch of
déshabillé
and an air of drama hanging over her. Behind her Jim moved silently, tall and stoic.

Garland took the chair the young policeman had been sitting in. Paul’s chair. She leaned in closer, placing one hand on my sleeve in a gesture that was meant to be comforting. ‘Oh, Emily, how
awful
for you,’ she sympathised. ‘I simply couldn’t have done it, not this soon after … Well, you know. Did he ask very many questions?’

I looked sideways, at the wide blue eyes so greedy for a breath of scandal, and felt my patience slipping from me. ‘No,’ I said, ‘he didn’t.’ Something of my contempt must have shown in my face, because she dropped her hand and shifted a little further away from me on the plump cushions.

Madame Chamond crossed over from the bar and took a seat, her warm low voice like balm upon my blistered nerves. ‘You must be tired,’ she said. ‘And you have finished your brandy. Edouard …’ Turning, she called her husband’s attention to my empty glass, and in an instant he was at my side as well, bottle in hand. He had brought
glasses for his wife and the Whitakers as well, but when Garland urged him to take a seat he straightened up with a courteous shake of his head, and tightened his grip on the brandy bottle.

‘No, I cannot stay. I must go back and see how Simon is, if you will please excuse me.’

He went out through the door behind the bar, into the passageway that led back past the office to the Chamonds’ private quarters. ‘Simon spends this night with us,’ Madame Chamond explained. ‘We could not leave him in that room alone. Tonight he sleeps in Thierry’s room, and Thierry keeps him company.’

‘Poor kid.’ Jim Whitaker frowned. ‘Shame it had to be him that found the body.’

‘Another five minutes,’ his wife said, ‘and it would have been
me
, darling. Oh, what a horrible thought.’ She shuddered with feeling, and I looked at her again.

‘What were you doing on the steps?’ I asked her. ‘I thought you were in Candes-St-Martin.’

‘I was. Monsieur Chamond wanted to stop in at the hardware store, you see, to do some shopping, so I said they should let me off at the château, and I’d walk back. It’s not far, I said, not when you use the steps. And I thought Jim might be lonely.’ She sent her husband a vaguely questing look. ‘But of course, you weren’t even here, were you darling?’

‘No.’

I thought she hesitated, waiting for some explanation, but it was clear Jim Whitaker was not in a communicative mood. ‘Well, anyway,’ she went on, ‘I started down the
steps and ran smack into Simon and … well, you know. It was a horrible shock, let me tell you.’

For a brief moment I thought I caught the faintest glimmer of distaste in Madame Chamond’s normally immaculate expression. ‘It is a shock for all of us.’

‘It just doesn’t seem real, does it?’ Garland went on, unable to leave the wound unprobed. ‘I mean, one minute you’re talking to someone, and the next …’ Her eyes moved to the low round table at her side, and her train of thought was interrupted. ‘Isn’t that Paul’s book?’ She reached to grasp
Ulysses
. I’d had to pull it from the pocket of Paul’s jacket to get at the cigarettes.

Garland didn’t ask how the book had come to be there. She simply turned it over, with a sigh. ‘I guess he’ll never finish this, now. Not that it really matters. Poor Paul, I can’t believe—’

‘For God’s sake, Garland.’ Jim Whitaker leaned back against the window wall, and rubbed his forehead with a weary hand. ‘Just shut up.’ He spoke the words quietly, as though he had exhausted all his energy. To my surprise, it worked. Garland actually stopped talking, but her jaw compressed with irritation and I knew she’d give him hell come morning.