And so I kept an open mind as I followed my companions through the gates. Neil left us there. ‘Sorry, but I promised to meet someone,’ was his excuse, and looking like a man well pleased with the day’s work, he strolled away, head bent and humming to himself.
Simon, happy to be back in charge, turned sharply in the opposite direction and, keeping his shoulder to the high wall of the Clos des Cloches, led Paul and me around a curve of deserted road to a desolate place where the wind wept softly through the long grass. ‘Here it is,’ he announced, proudly.
There was no mistaking it – a sign posted to one side of a raised viewing platform clearly read: Ici I’Echo, and the platform itself, though small, looked rather official.
‘It really does work,’ said Paul. ‘Just stand up there and yell something.’
I climbed the few steps obediently and turned around. The view, as I’d been promised, was a postcard panorama stretching from the château on the one side, out across the silver river and the patchwork roofs and gardens, to the distant hills beyond. Closer than that, across the road, treetops and a tiled roof peeked above an unkempt, rambling hedge. ‘But I’ll be yelling into someone’s yard,’ I protested, and Simon hopped up beside me with a laugh.
‘It’s OK, really. People do it all the time. Here, I’ll show you.’ And he bellowed out an enthusiastic yodel that would have done credit to a native of the Swiss Alps. The sound soared out and came back, crashing loud against the green hills and the ruined walls of the château, like waves striking rocks on a wild shore.
‘Neat, eh?’ Simon grinned. ‘You can even ask it questions, like this …’ Again he filled his lungs, and yelled: ‘Will I ever get Paul to leave Chinon?’
The answer flowed back, faintly questioning in itself: ‘Non …’
‘Very funny,’ said Paul. ‘Why don’t you let Emily give it a try?’
I smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say.’
But they weren’t about to let me off that easily. Put on the spot, I closed my eyes tightly and tried to think of something clever. Perhaps I ought to call out Armand’s name, I thought wryly, in case he was standing on the other side of the vineyard wall, listening. It might be good for his ego. But the dark eyes that smiled at me in my thoughts were not Armand Valcourt’s. I tried to push the image from my mind. Oh, damn and blast, I thought. Oh, help. So that was what I yelled, in French. ‘Au secours!’
It was a foolish thing to do. If I’d been in a public place, I might have caused a panic – people hurrying to help me; cries for the police.
But here, I only startled Paul, who turned to stare at me while Echo stirred in far-off fields and called back her advice.
‘Cours,’ was what she told me.
Run.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
From out a common vein of memory …
‘The day gets better and better,’ Simon said, as we filed out between the houses at the foot of the cobbled stair. I saw straight away what had pleased him.
It was already afternoon, and the sun had grown uncertain, but Thierry, in a burst of optimism, had set the hotel’s tables out around the fountain square. It made a cheery showing, the bright white tables and red chairs. And directly ahead of us, at a table beside the fountain, sat Martine Muret. She was so lovely, so strikingly lovely, with her fashion-model features and cropped black hair. Neil had said that Armand’s wife had looked like that, and pushing back another pang of jealousy I looked more closely at Martine, with eyes that sought to see beyond her to a woman three years dead. Had Brigitte Valcourt’s hair been short as well? The cut certainly suited Martine, and her simple dark clothes set off her beauty as a plain frame enhances an exquisite painting. Head up, she sat watching the idle activity of the square through expensive sunglasses that hid the expression of her eyes. She looked entirely unapproachable.
Undaunted, Simon raised one hand in cheerful greeting and blazed a path across the square towards her.
Paul looked at me. ‘He never gives up.’
‘Well, one can’t really blame him.’ I stopped, and bent to tie my shoe, tipping my face up towards him. ‘Paul, what does Martine Muret do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For a living. Does she work, or …’
‘Oh. She owns the local gallery.’
‘Art gallery?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s just around the corner there, in one of the smaller squares.’ He pointed off to one side of the hotel. ‘You can’t miss it. There’s a Christian Rand self-portrait in the window.’
‘They’re a couple, then, I take it?’ I tried to ask the question quite as if I didn’t care, as if it hardly mattered which of the hotel guests Martine had been out with, when Lucie had wandered off.
Paul shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say so, no. In fact I’m sure they’re not. Good friends, I think – that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ I yanked on my shoelace, tying it too tightly. Which one was it? I’d heard Armand ask Martine, last night. The German or the Englishman? And I’d been hoping, for some foolish reason, that it was the German. I sighed and stood, and looked again at that lovely face. The face that reminded Neil of Brigitte Valcourt. ‘I wonder if she chose that chair on purpose?’ I asked.
‘Why?’
‘Well, she’s sitting next to Beauty.’
‘What? Oh, the Graces, you mean.’ He scrutinised the fountain sculpture. ‘How can you tell which one’s which?’