The Splendour Falls

‘I don’t remember,’ I hedged, keeping my voice light. ‘Someone at the hotel, I imagine. I thought they said he had a love of history.’

He lifted the cigarette and inhaled smoothly, but I saw the line of his jaw tighten. ‘You have been misinformed, I think. My brother-in-law loved nothing but himself. And money. Always money.’ His voice sounded hard. Didier Muret, I was learning, had that effect on people. ‘He couldn’t keep a job, because he stole. Brigitte, my wife, she once found him work with her own lawyer, for Martine’s sake, but it was no good. The money went missing there, too. Martine left him after that. She let him stay in the house, but he got no more money from her.’

Well done, Martine, I thought. ‘Actually,’ I went on, trying to make the white lie sound convincing, ‘I think it was young Simon who told me your brother-in-law liked history. They’d met each other once, I think.’

‘Simon?’ Armand looked sceptical. ‘The boy with the long hair, who came to tour my vineyard? But he does not speak French, not like his brother. And Didier, he spoke no English. They might have met, but they could not have talked to one another.’

‘I must have got it wrong, then,’ I said brightly. Three people had now told me the same story, and three people, I thought, couldn’t be mistaken. Which meant that Didier Muret could not have read my cousin’s article, would not have had a reason to contact him, had probably never met him. What had Armand said that morning, about his daughter? Lucie, she sometimes gets her story wrong. And a duck named ‘Ar-ree’ was hardly the best evidence, I reminded myself with a wry smile. ‘It must have been some other Didier he was talking about. Simon’s less than clear in conversation, sometimes.’

Not that I was very much better. I really must go easy on the wine while trying to investigate, I thought. It took all my effort, as we left the restaurant, just to walk a straight line without tripping over cobblestones.

I don’t think Armand noticed. He strolled easily beside me, along the half-deserted rue Voltaire. I smiled when I saw he walked with one hand in his pocket, his cigarette held loosely in the other. Most French men walked like that. It was a sort of national identity badge, a wholly unconscious habit they acquired at some early age and carried till they died. In my younger days in Paris I’d often passed a lazy hour at the Luxembourg gardens, spotting the français among the tourists by the way they walked.

‘I have enjoyed this,’ Armand said, when we came out into the fountain square. ‘I enjoy your company. We should have dinner one night before you leave.’

It was a non-committal sort of invitation, and I responded in kind. ‘I’d like that.’

The light goodbye kiss caught me slightly off guard, I must admit. Things naturally progressed this way, of course, among the French: from smiles and nods to handshakes to la bise, the friendly double kiss, but they didn’t usually progress this quickly. Armand Valcourt, I thought, worked fast.

He was only a flirt, and a harmless one, and I was decidedly single, but still I felt a twist of guilty conscience. I cast a quick glance upwards at the hotel, along the row of empty balconies, to where the tall and graceful windows of Neil’s room reflected back the calmly drifting clouds. I thought I saw a flash of something pale behind the glass, but I might have imagined the movement.

I must have imagined it. The château bell was chiming three o’clock when I entered the hotel lobby – it was Neil’s normal practise time, but there was no violin this afternoon. There was only Thierry, looking very bored behind the desk. No, he told me, nobody was back yet. There was only him, and the telephone, and … He broke off, brightening. ‘You would like a drink, Mademoiselle? In the bar?’

I shook my head. ‘The last thing I need, Thierry, is a drink. I’m floating as it is. No, I think I’ll go upstairs and have a nap.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘The naps,’ he said, ‘are for old women, and for children.’

He was quite wrong, I thought later, buried deep beneath my freshly-ironed sheets and soft wool blanket. An afternoon nap was a glorious indulgence, tucked into the middle of a long and active day, with rich food and fine wine fuzzing round the edges of one’s drifting mind. I sighed and snuggled deeper.

Few sounds rose to drown the murmur of the fountain underneath my open window. Now and then a car passed by, or someone shouted to a friend across the square. Nearby a dog barked sharply and was silenced by a quick command. But nothing else disturbed the peace, the perfect peace that filled my shadowed room. The fountain’s voice grew louder still, subtly altering pitch, becoming low and deep and lulling like the darkly flowing river to the south.

It was so close, that sound … so close …

It was beside me. I hardly ever dreamed, not any more, so I was rather surprised to find myself moving in that strange, disjointed way that dreamers do, not in my room but down along the river, where the plane trees wept like mourners in the wind beneath a grey uncertain sky. I moved with no real purpose, no true course. One moment I was standing on the bridge, and then there was no bridge, and I was sitting on the riverbank, my arms hugged tightly round my upraised knees. Across the calm water I could see my cousin Harry, pacing back and forth along the tree-lined shore of the little island. He wanted to cross, but without the bridge it was impossible.

‘No point in worrying about Harry,’ my father said beside me. Smiling, he reached into his pocket and handed me a King John coin. ‘Here, make a wish.’