The Splendour Falls (26 page)

‘It made a nice enough story,’ said Jim Whitaker, ‘in the bar, the other night. And it was accurate, for the most part – all except the ending. Hans may have died at the end of the war, but Isabelle …’ He shook his head. ‘She wanted to, she thought about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to offend God any more than she had already. So she did the next best thing. She married my father.’

Above our heads the sunlight filtered through a cool and trembling canopy of green and set the shadows swaying, and the fountain sprayed the pavement beside us. The chattering confusion of the patrons at the other tables blended into one soft muted background, like an artist’s wash upon a coloured canvas. And Jim Whitaker, who’d always seemed to me so bland, so indistinct, now stood out clearly in relief.

‘He met her just after the liberation,’ he went on, still in
that calm and quiet voice. ‘Here in Chinon. He felt sorry for her, I think. The French didn’t have much sympathy for collaborators of any kind, and everyone knew that my mother had been fooling around with a German officer. She didn’t have an easy time of it. My father offered her an out. He married her in private, took her home to the States, and that was that.’

The dappled sunlight danced across my face, and I shaded my eyes as I looked at him. ‘So the story has a happy ending, then.’

‘In some ways, yes. She lived a good life – three children, a nice home, a husband who took care of her. But I’m not sure that I’d ever have called my mother happy.’ He slung one leg over the other and leaned back in his chair, considering. ‘I don’t know – is happiness a thing we choose, I wonder? Or is it something handed out to some, and not to others?’

‘A bit of both, I should think.’

‘My mother would have said that it was God’s will she and Hans were separated. But I’m not so sure.’ His gaze swung gently to the open door of the hotel bar, through which he could plainly see his wife’s sharp silhouette bent close in conversation with the Swedish bride. ‘I think we all make choices in our lives that set us down the road to happiness or disappointment. It’s just that we can’t always see where the road is leading us until we’re halfway there.’ There was a hint of regret in his calm voice; regret, too, in the way he dragged his eyes around to look at me. ‘My mother chose her road.’

Somebody laughed beside us and the breeze blew past
a fleeting whiff of roses. I breathed it in and sighed a little sigh. ‘She must have missed it terribly, this place.’

‘I guess.’ His shrug was very French. ‘She never talked about it, not to me. I didn’t know a thing about my mother’s past until she died. The day of the funeral my Dad got drunk, and the whole damn story came pouring out of him.’ He narrowed his eyes in remembrance. ‘Since then, I’ve always wanted to come here, to see the place where it all happened. I should have done it years ago. I was stationed at a base in Germany back then – it would have been so easy just to hop on a train, but …’ His smile also held regret. ‘I just never got around to it, somehow. I kept on saying next year, next year … and then last spring Garland said that she was bored with going to the Mediterranean, she wanted to vacation someplace else, so I said what about Chinon.’ Again his gaze searched out the animated figure of his wife. ‘She doesn’t know,’ he added. ‘Garland, I mean. I’ve never told her about my mother.’

I stared at him. ‘But … I mean, you’ve just told
me
.’

‘Yes. It doesn’t make much sense, I know, but it’s different somehow, telling you. There were times, and I hope you won’t take this wrong, but there have been times this past week when you’ve made me think of her. Of my mother. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but there’s a resemblance.’

I smiled. ‘You’re the second person who’s told me that today.’

‘Oh, really? Who was the first?’

‘This man I know, up at the vineyard … Heavens,’ I broke off suddenly, as the realization struck me, ‘he’d be
your uncle, I suppose. Your mother’s younger brother, a rather nice old man named—’

‘François. Uncle François, yes.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, he used to write us letters, when I was a kid. And then Mom died and the letters stopped coming. I thought he must be dead himself.’ He shrugged, self-consciously. ‘I’m still working up my courage to go and see him. There are questions I want to ask, about my mother but …’ He looked down. ‘Fifty years is a long time.’

‘Well, you needn’t worry about François. He’s sharp as a tack and he speaks very fondly of your mother. I’m sure he’d love to meet you. In fact,’ I said, ‘I think he knows already that you’re here.’ And I told him what François had told me earlier that day, about the Hotel de France being full of ghosts.

The silver eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘And you think that he meant me?’

‘You’re the only person here with ties to Hans and Isabelle.’

‘Am I?’ He frowned and squinted briefly upwards at the canopy of green. ‘I wonder,’ he mused, so quietly I almost didn’t catch it. ‘Yes, I wonder …’

A flash of motion from the hotel bar distracted him. Garland had moved to the open doorway and was beckoning her husband to come inside and join her at the bar. He caught her eye and nodded slightly, exhaling on a tight-lipped sigh. ‘Excuse me please,’ he told me, ‘I’m being summoned. Listen, I’d hate for her to know …’

‘I won’t say anything, I promise.’

‘It isn’t just the privacy, you know. It’s self-preservation.
Especially after that storytelling session Sunday night.’ A smile faintly creased the corners of his mouth. ‘If Garland ever knew that the Isabelle we talked about was my mother, I’d never have a moment’s peace.’

‘Why not?’

‘The diamonds, honey.’ His tone was dry. ‘Garland has a thing for diamonds. She’d be like a dog with a bone – she’d never let it go. She’d have me out there digging little holes in the hills, hoping to find the damn things.’

Like Simon, I thought. ‘Your mother never told anyone … I mean, she never mentioned—’

‘Where they were?’ He smiled sadly and pushed himself to his feet. ‘She told my father they were stained with blood, they’d only bring unhappiness to anyone who touched them. She didn’t want them to be found.’

I watched him walk across to the hotel, his shoulders very straight as though he’d braced himself to carry something heavy. It must be difficult, I decided, for a man like that to spend his life with Garland. He seemed to have no peace at all – she hadn’t even left him alone long enough to finish his drink. His glass was still half full of
Pernod
. I looked at it, my forehead creasing in a slight frown. I’d seen a glass like that just recently, I thought. Now where …?

And then I remembered. I remembered coming down from the
Clos des Cloches
on Sunday afternoon with Paul and Simon, and finding Martine Muret sitting all alone beside the fountain. There had been a glass of
Pernod
on her table, then – half finished, just like this one. And Garland … my eyes moved thoughtfully to the shadowed figures in the hotel bar … Garland had been in bed with
one of her headaches, as she had been on Saturday night. The night Lucie Valcourt slipped away from Martine and her ‘man friend’. ‘He stays at this hotel,’ Lucie had told me. And I’d assumed that it was Neil, or Christian … but I’d never thought of Jim.

The puzzle pieces slid and fitted, locked in place, and I felt the oddest sense of satisfaction, to think that Jim might find some happiness in spite of Garland. He was right, I thought, not to tell her the truth about his mother. Garland was the sort of woman who’d be dazzled by the thought of diamonds, the promise of riches. Like Didier Muret, who’d married for money.

I frowned again. There was something else that Jim had said, that also made me think of Didier Muret. Now what on earth …?
Digging little holes in the hills
, that was it. François had said that, too, this morning – he’d said Didier had dug holes everywhere, looking for the diamonds. An obsession, François had called it. Only Didier hadn’t found them.

Or had he?

A sudden, creeping thought took hold and turned within my troubled mind. Everything makes sense if you look at it from the right angle, that’s what Paul had promised me. And Paul, last time I’d seen him, had been searching for the right angle from which to view Didier Muret. Unpleasant out-of-work Didier Muret, who still had money left to throw around. That’s what had bothered Paul. But then if Didier
had
found the diamonds, that might explain a great deal. Where he got his money from, for one thing, and maybe … maybe even why he’d died, last Wednesday.

I heard again Garland Whitaker’s decided voice, saying ‘Nazis’. I’d thought her foolish at the time, but now it seemed less fanciful. Not Nazis, necessarily, but someone who had known the tale of Hans and Isabelle, someone who had come to find the diamonds, and found that Didier Muret had been there already. People did murders for less, I knew, and greed was a powerful force.

Paul, I recalled, had thought that Harry might have been with Didier last Wednesday night – the night Didier died. And if it had not been an accident, if someone had pushed the unpleasant Monsieur Muret down the stairs … what then? Had Harry seen the culprit? Was he now himself in danger, and had he dropped his King John coin on purpose, as a warning to me? And Paul … had Paul perhaps guessed all this yesterday, and pressed too close upon the murderer? I pressed my fingers to my forehead, trying to make sense of things.

A crowd of young men came jostling around the corner and funnelled into the hotel bar, their voices raised in energetic conversation. They were mostly blonde, and their words weren’t French. Germans, I identified them. It all kept coming back to Germans, and the Hotel de France.

The Hotel de France was full of ghosts, this week, so François said. Living ghosts. Like Isabelle’s son, who might have had his own good reasons for wanting Didier Muret out of the way; who might have come back for the diamonds; who had been out somewhere, alone, when Paul was killed. But I couldn’t cast Jim Whitaker as a murderer, somehow, and I doubted he’d have told me who his mother was if he’d wanted to avoid suspicion.

My thoughts turned over, slowly. If Isabelle was here in spirit, through her son, then what of Hans? Was he here, too? In Christian, maybe – of an age to be his grandson, to have heard about the diamonds. It couldn’t be Neil, I thought, with a feeling of relief I preferred not to analyze. Neil’s father worked for British Rail, he’d said. And anyway, he’d been in his room when Paul was killed. I’d seen him there, I’d heard him playing the Beethoven. It couldn’t have been Neil.

The thought was still resonating in my head like the final quavering note of a sonata, when Neil himself came out of the hotel – not through the main door, but the small, half-hidden door beside the garage. The same door I had used last Saturday, when I’d fallen asleep on the terrace and found myself locked out. It made a rather handy escape route, actually – if I hadn’t been looking straight at that corner, I might not have noticed Neil at all.

As it was, he didn’t notice me. Head down, his movements purposeful, he passed by swiftly on the far side of the fountain and vanished up the rue Voltaire, beyond my line of vision. I was unprepared for the sudden stab of longing that twisted in my chest at the sight of his long tall figure, pale hair ruffled by the wind, his hands tucked deep within the pockets of the weathered leather jacket. Oh,
hell
, I thought. I hadn’t asked for that, it simply wasn’t fair, it wasn’t … I broke off suddenly, in mid-thought, as the significance of what I had just seen finally penetrated.

Turning, I stared hard at the hotel, at the wall by the garage, at the little door. I nearly hadn’t seen him, I reminded myself. He had left the hotel, and I nearly hadn’t
seen him. Which meant that someone from the hotel could have done the same thing yesterday … could have climbed the steps, to where Paul sat …

I rose and crossed the square. The door creaked inwards at my touch, then gently closed behind me as I started up the winding stone stairs. I had just set foot upon the broad deserted terrace when the violin rose suddenly in plaintive song, from inside the hotel. And then, as unexpectedly as it had started, the tune was silenced. A prickling shiver struck between my shoulders. There were no such things as ghosts, I reminded myself … and yet, that couldn’t be Neil playing, because I’d just seen Neil leaving the hotel.

I heard a snapping sound, a whir, and then the eerie performance was repeated – two bars of music, and a queer unfinished ending.

Gathering my courage, I moved to look around the corner of the open terrace door. Neil’s door was also open, but he wasn’t in his room. Instead it was Thierry who looked up as I came to stand in the doorway.

‘Hi,’ he greeted me, looking none the worse for wear from his afternoon of being questioned by the police. ‘You are looking for Monsieur Neil?’

‘I thought I heard the violin.’

‘That was just me.’ He held up a cassette tape, to show me. ‘I am looking for the tape I gave for Monsieur Neil to listen to. My friend Alain, he wants to make the copy.’ There was a small stack of home-recorded tapes piled neatly on the dressing table beside the sprawling hi-fi, and Thierry shuffled through them with a frown. ‘I thought that I had found it, but no … maybe this one …’ Choosing another
from the stack, he slotted it into the machine and pushed the play button. A full orchestra sounded the opening strains of a Strauss waltz at an alarming volume, and Thierry quickly punched ‘stop’, his frown deepening.

I took a small step forward, staring at the hi-fi. ‘I thought this was broken.’

‘What?’ He glanced up. ‘No, I fix it for him two days ago. Ah!’ His hand closed round the errant tape with satisfaction. ‘
This
one, this is mine.’ A brief sound check confirmed the fact, and he returned the first recording to its rightful place in the tape player. ‘
Bien
, I put everything back as it was, and Monsieur Neil will not be missing my tape, I think.’