The Splendour Falls

‘I beg your pardon?’ Paul cut in, with an incredulous smile. ‘You’re what?’

‘Having lunch with Armand Valcourt,’ I repeated. ‘And you can wipe that smug look off your face, Paul Lazarus, because I really don’t—’

‘OK, OK.’ Paul lifted both hands in self-defence. ‘And it’s not a smug look, I’m just jealous, that’s all.’

Jealous? Heavens, I thought, he surely didn’t think of me that way, did he? ‘Paul—’

‘Hardly seems fair, you eating lunch with a rich guy while I’m stuck with cheese-on-a-bun and Simon.’ He grinned at me. ‘Where’s he taking you?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Somewhere disgustingly expensive, I’ll bet. There are a couple of gourmet restaurants down the rue Voltaire, the kind of restaurants where they have six forks, you know the type. What time are you meeting him?’

‘At noon.’ I turned my wrist to read my watch. ‘Oh, Lord, it’s just gone eleven now, and I haven’t even showered.’

‘Go on then, I’ll cover for you.’ He leaned back in his seat and reached for the tattered paperback. ‘Just remember your mission, Dr Watson.’

‘And that is?’

‘Get the man drunk and ask him about Didier Muret.’

‘Right.’ I smiled, and turned to leave. ‘Let’s hope he tells me something useful, then.’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t. I, for one, would feel a whole lot happier knowing there was no connection between Martine’s husband and your cousin.’

He didn’t need to tell me why. My own mind had already gone this route a few hours earlier, and reached the same unsettling impasse: if my suspicions were correct, then Harry had been here in Chinon last Wednesday, feeding ducks with Lucie and chumming with her uncle Didier. And by Thursday morning, Didier Muret was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

… call’d mine host

To council, plied him with his richest wines,

He didn’t choose a gourmet restaurant, after all, and I only had to muddle through three forks, a simple feat recalled with ease from my days of eating at Embassy dinners. Except for the forks, my lunch with Armand Valcourt bore no resemblance to those plodding Embassy events.

For one thing, the surroundings were more comfortable. The restaurant’s dining-room was rustic, whitewashed country French, its deep-silled windows stuffed with flowers blooming pink and red in the slanting midday sunlight. Pine tables, artfully distressed in keeping with the country theme, were set at discreet intervals around the room, and the russet tile floor gleamed warmly mellow, spotless, at our feet.

They’d seated us beside the fireplace. Not yet in use, it too was filled with flowers, shell-pink roses mixed with ferns and feathered pale chrysanthemums. The smell of roses, delicate, seductive, clung to every breath I took. It swirled around the scent of wine, the whiff of garlic, and the tender tempting fragrance of the shellfish jumbled on my plate.

Exquisite food, a charming ambience, and the close, attentive company of a handsome man who, if not exactly an aristocrat, was clearly near the top rung of the social ladder, as evidenced by the quietly respectful service we’d received. It was a shade surreal, the whole affair, which was perhaps why I felt so terribly relaxed. That, or the fact that Armand had twice refilled my wine glass.

He was holding out the bottle now, dividing the remaining wine between our empty glasses as he finished off an anecdote about his daughter and her bicycle.

‘She looks like you, you know,’ I told him. ‘Not feature for feature, but the smile is the same.’ We were speaking English, mainly I think because it gave us the illusion of privacy, encircled as we were by three tables of French-speaking patrons.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and looked at me. ‘You have no children?’

‘No.’

He didn’t push it, didn’t pry. ‘They are like nothing else, children. Nothing can prepare you for the feelings they create. You would do anything.’ He pried a mussel from its shell and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘I was not sure, myself, that I wanted a child, but when Lucie was born …’ He set his fork down with a shrug. ‘Everything was changed.’

‘It must be difficult, though, raising her alone.’

‘Not quite alone.’ He smiled, a smile that forgave my ignorance of the privileged world he lived in. ‘There was a nurse, in the beginning, to take care of her. Then, when Brigitte died, Martine came back to live with us. And of course, there is always François.’

‘He’s been with you a long time, has he, François?’

‘A long time, yes. His parents worked for my grandparents, and François himself was born the same year as my father – 1930.’ He caught himself and winked at me. ‘Don’t tell him I told you this. He likes to be most secretive about his age. My wife said always François was like those men in films, you understand, the valet faithful to the family who counts their needs ahead of his.’

I told him I could understand her point. ‘He looks the perfect butler, and he does seem rather loyal.’

‘Perhaps. But he is more like family, François, and he stays because the vineyard is his home as much as mine. He does not serve without the questions, like the valet of the films, and if he serves at all it is because he likes the person he is serving.’

‘He must like you, then.’