The Splendour Falls

‘Sure.’ He held the packet out, unquestioning, and struck the match for me. ‘That must have been some conversation, back there. He looked like he could have done with a cigarette, too.’

I inhaled gratefully. ‘Who did?’

‘Who, she says.’ Paul shook his head and looked away, smiling through a drifting haze of smoke. ‘OK, since you don’t want to talk about it …’

‘There isn’t anything to talk about,’ I told him, stubbornly. ‘We’ve fifteen years between us, Neil and I, and he lives in a different country. And he’s a musician, for heaven’s sake.’

‘What’s wrong with musicians?’

‘They’re unreliable.’ I reached to tap the ash from my cigarette, my expression firm. ‘Besides which, he’s blonde.’

Paul didn’t even waste his breath trying to figure out what that fact had to do with anything. He simply looked at me with quiet sympathy, the way a doctor might look at a patient with a terminal disease. ‘You’re not making sense,’ he pointed out.

‘Yes, well.’ I rubbed my forehead with a weary hand. ‘I’ve not been sleeping, that’s the problem. I’m not thinking clearly.’

‘That’s OK. It’s the job of the Great Detective to think clearly,’ he said with a wink. ‘Trusty sidekicks are always a little muddle-headed, don’t you know.’

‘Right then.’ I leaned back, my eyes half closed. ‘What’s on the Great Detective’s mind this morning?’

‘Afternoon,’ he corrected me, with a glance at his watch. ‘It’s twelve-thirty, already. And if you must know, I’ve been thinking about numbers.’

‘Numbers?’

‘Twenty-two, in particular.’ He smiled. ‘There are twenty-two people with the first name Didier listed in the Chinon telephone directory.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I stayed up last night, counting them. It’s a pretty thin directory. So if the man who wrote to your cousin does live in Chinon, he’s probably one of those twenty-two.’

‘Twenty-one,’ I corrected him. ‘Didier Muret is out of it.’

‘Is he?’ Paul sent a smoke ring wafting through the pregnant air. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, too. I asked Thierry what he knew about Martine’s ex-husband, and it’s kind of interesting, really.’

I leaned back, hands clasped around my bent knees. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Yeah. It seems apart from being a colossal drunk, Didier Muret was one of those guys who likes to flash his money around. You know – expensive clothes, expensive car, buying drinks for everybody.’

‘So?’

‘So where did he get the money from?’ Paul asked. ‘The lawyer that he used to work for fired him for stealing from the petty cash, and Martine cut him off completely, except for the house. So how could Didier Muret afford his lifestyle?’

I had to admit no easy answer came to mind. ‘But I don’t see how that connects to my cousin, at all.’

‘It doesn’t, really. It’s just one of those things that I tend to wonder about.’

I smiled, remembering his belief that everything ought to make sense. ‘Looking for the angle, are you?’

‘Always.’

‘What else did Thierry tell you?’

‘Oh, lots of things. It’s hard to shut Thierry up, once he gets going. He said the death was ruled an accident, but the police originally thought someone else was with Muret that evening, because of the number of wine glasses they found. Which probably explains,’ he said, ‘why they questioned poor old Victor Belliveau, and people like that.’ He rubbed the back of his neck, thoughtfully. ‘Your cousin’s not a violent person, is he?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Harry?’

‘Suppose he’d been drinking, or someone made him really angry …’

I finally caught his meaning, and rose bristling to my cousin’s defence. ‘Paul, you don’t think for one minute that Harry killed Martine’s ex-husband?’

He shrugged. ‘Not really. I just think it’s a hell of a coincidence …’

‘It’s ridiculous,’ I argued. Harry would never hurt anyone; he hated fighting, and besides, what possible motive would there have been? Even if Didier Muret had somehow read that article, and written to Harry, and met with him … how could that lead to anything like murder? And even if it was an accident … I shook my head. ‘Ridiculous,’ I told Paul, resolutely. ‘Harry’s got a great respect for justice. He would never run away from something that he did.’

Paul looked at me, amusement in his eyes, and handed me another cigarette. ‘OK, OK. I’m sorry I brought it up.’ His smile punctured the balloon of my righteous indignation.

‘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?’