The Splendour Falls

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.’

‘Thierry,’ I asked him, slowly, ‘could you play that one again, just for a moment?’

‘Sure.’ He touched the button, and the stirring strains of Beethoven’s Eroica swept past me into the hallway. Not the full, orchestral version, but a solo violin – the part Neil practised nearly every afternoon. The part he’d told me he knew like the back of his hand.

‘He likes to play it loud, yes?’ Thierry raised his voice above the piercing sound, and I nodded. Only that was somehow wrong, I thought. Neil didn’t like to play it loud. Can’t set the volume higher than three, or it makes your ears bleed, he’d complained. Thierry went on talking, proudly. ‘It gives a good sound, this stereo. It sounds exactly like Monsieur Neil playing, does it not?’

It did, at that – exactly like Neil. I hugged myself, trying to ward off the cold cloud of suspicion, refusing to admit the possibility. ‘All right,’ I said to Thierry. ‘That’s enough.’

Flashing me the irrepressible grin, he switched the recording off. He looked round suddenly, remembering something. ‘Oh, there is a message for you, downstairs.’

‘A message?’

‘Yes, an envelope. The man who brought it, he came while you were sleeping, and he said I should not wake you up. He said it was not urgent.’

‘Who was it, do you know?’ I asked, cautiously.

Thierry shrugged. ‘The valet from the Clos des Cloches. I do not know his name.’

François? Hugging myself tighter, I followed Thierry downstairs. I could hear Garland, still sitting in the bar, her high-pitched laughter grating like a nail drawn down a blackboard. But her laughter was the only sound that rose above the din of German voices – all those young men, I thought, that I’d seen from outside. Thierry rolled his eyes at the noise. ‘There is a … how do you say it? A congress this week, here in Chinon. These men do not like the bar at their hotel, so they come here instead. Poor Gabrielle, she should have Neil here, yes? To take the orders for her. Neil speaks good German,’ Thierry told me. ‘Christian says so. But me, I do not like to learn that language. It is not pretty.’

Not pretty, no, but powerful. I started feeling cold again and closed my eyes a moment, letting the jangle of voices mixed with laughter swell around and over me. These walls, I thought, had heard those sounds before: the voices of the German officers who’d lived here in the war. Like living ghosts, the German tourists went on talking, laughing …

‘Ah,’ said Thierry, jolting me back to the present. ‘Here is your message.’

It was in truth from François. Not so much a message as a bit of handwriting wrapped round a faded photograph. I thought that this might interest you, the writing read, in French. You see how you resemble her.

There were two people in the photograph, a man and a young woman. The woman was laughing, looking off to one side as though the photographer hadn’t been able to hold her attention long. The picture was black and white, a little scuffed and taken on an angle, but the image was very clear. I had to admit that I did look a bit like Isabelle. We weren’t by any stretch of the imagination twins, but there was something similar about our eyes, the way we held our heads, the line of our noses.