Bright Hair About the Bone

by Barbara Cleverly

  “You’ve got it!” said Paradee. “Like horse, like master! That brute belongs to Edmond d’Aubec. With any luck they’ll kill each other one day. But don’t worry—I’m not about to offer you anything to freeze the blood! No! I’m on good terms with the director, but not so good I’m allowed to make free with the flower of his flock. Come on!”

  He strode ahead, leading her out into the sunshine of the courtyard. Gardeners were sweeping gravel and watering flower beds, and grooms were fetching and carrying for the horses, but there in the middle stood a groom patiently holding by the heads, ready saddled, two impressive animals.

  “The bay is mine and the other is yours. His name’s Goliathe.”

  Letty lost her heart at once to Goliathe. He was rich brown, with an unusual gunmetal sheen. Four white socks gave him a jaunty air and he stamped about, impatient to be off. Moments later they were clattering down the street, past her own window and, very abruptly it seemed, out into open countryside. They rode uphill for some time, until, reaching the crest of the hill above Fontigny, they eased off and looked back at the town, now shrinking to the proportions of the scale model she had inspected on her first day. They dismounted, hitched the horses to the branch of an oak tree, and stood, grateful for its shade, enjoying the loneliness of the landscape.

  Paradee was an easy companion who showed none of the English compulsion to keep up a steady polite chatter. As on their first meeting, she felt herself moving at his speed, sharing his enthusiasms, his equal. And this man had been her godfather’s friend. She felt a stab of guilt when she remembered she was deceiving him. Why not confide in him? Ask his help?

  “What in blazes?”

  He stiffened abruptly and, raising his head, looked over her shoulder and down the hill. A rider mounted on a great black horse was cantering easily up the slope towards them.

  “Well, Edmond d’Aubec can certainly ride,” Letty muttered. “He and that murderous horse of his were made for each other.” And, though angered by the unwished-for intrusion, the horse-lover in her wondered at the change she saw in the stallion now moving gracefully and obediently. On and up they came, and passed by the oak tree with never a word. D’Aubec suddenly reined Carnaval back to a walk and appeared to loiter about fifty yards away from them.

  “Well, I’ll be darned! What is he up to? Is he waiting for me to challenge him? I think, Stella, I’d better stroll over and tell him we’ve admired his profile and now what we’d really appreciate is a view of his rear elevation.”

  Oh Lord! The lions were shaking their manes! Concerned to sabotage any such confrontation, Letty spoke sharply. “No, Charles. You’re to do no such thing! He’s just trying to provoke you. Ignore him.” She was uneasy at the quiet anger her boss was showing. “I’ve no idea why he would be shadowing us like this. I resent it, but I advise against meeting him head-on here out in the wilds—precisely because that seems to be exactly what he’s after.”

  Paradee was prepared, even relieved perhaps, to listen to her. “I’ve found out for myself that—as you warned me—he’s a dangerous and unpredictable man. Perhaps even a killer,” she finished.

  He was not alarmed by her thought, but considered it and agreed. “It’s possible. We’re still waiting to hear about that boy in the trench. And there is more, Stella. I ought to have warned you about this earlier…before you took the job…but it didn’t seem at the time to have anything to do with us…the dig, I mean…”

  She could only look at him in silent puzzlement at his hesitations, though she thought she knew what was coming.

  “Seems Fontigny isn’t the tranquil backwater we’ve all assumed it to be, and you ought to know it. There was a killing last year very close by, in the centre, again—at night. One of our team—a linguist, antiquarian, and all-round good egg, as you’d say—was stabbed to death and robbed. Daniel Thorndon. You’d have liked him. We all did. He was working with us—lent to us by the British Museum.”

  Calmly she asked, “Did this man—Mr. Thorndon—have any connection with our shadow over there? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Certainly is. I thought they were friendly. Thorndon—Daniel—had taken to visiting the château at weekends. He seemed to have the entrée whenever he chose. They had a lot in common, he said. Seemed like a pretty warm relationship from what I could gather, but he didn’t discuss his personal life much with the team.” He cleared his throat. “Look, I didn’t interfere, though now I wish I had. Perhaps I could have warned him off, raised his suspicions at least. And why?” Paradee shuffled uncomfortably. “Because, well, I thought—here’s an opening, a crack in the defences.”

  “You sent this Mr. Thorndon in as a spy? You used him as a cat’s paw? Is that what you’re saying?” Letty couldn’t keep back the sharp comment full of distress and accusation.

  “No! No! I didn’t send! No chance of directing old Daniel to do anything he didn’t want to do. He was about as open to influence as you are! Seems to be an English trait…smile agreeably, say ‘Yes, of course you’re right, Director,’ then go straight off and do the opposite. But it did occur to me that this was our best chance of finding out what the possibilities of the castle site were. I can’t imagine a more experienced eye being cast over it short of getting in there myself.”

  “And did he have much of value to tell you, your discreet informant?”

  Paradee shook his head. “You’d need to have known the feller to understand why I couldn’t even ask! It would have been ‘prying, don’t you know,’ and English gents don’t talk about their friends behind their backs. Oh, he spoke of the layout of the building, the age, the architectural features…but told me nothing I didn’t already know from the aerial photos.”

  “Are you putting into my head the idea that perhaps the death of this Englishman may be connected with the boy in the trench? And that both deaths are linked to the count?”

  “Yes,” he replied bluntly. “And I’m giving you the chance to hang up your trowel and retreat back to London. There’s something evil swirling about in this oh-so-peaceful little burg. I don’t like the feel of it. I wouldn’t want you caught up in it. I have a duty towards a young and vulnerable girl in my employ. I hold myself in loco parentis.”

  “Lord! I hope not!” said Letty. “Look, I have absorbed the information and the warning. But I think you’re making a bit of a leap there. Shall we wait and see what the police come up with and have this conversation again?”

  “Okay, but I’m more concerned that this little display,” he waved an arm in d’Aubec’s direction, “is something to do with you. I know we ambled up here, but he arrived pretty soon after us. He must have had someone alert him, don’t you think? Someone hanging around the stables? But he wouldn’t have had me followed. It’s you he’s hunting. Now, look, Stella, does he have any hold over you? If I’m out of line here, you must tell me.”

  “He has no hold over me. I don’t know him. I don’t want to know him. I have no idea why he should be shadowing us like this. I wish he’d go away!”

  “Well, that’s clear enough,” said Paradee, laughing. “Come on, let’s mount up and ride. I have some more wonders to show you, and these I don’t mind d’Aubec witnessing. Two archaeologists together—we shouldn’t have too much trouble boring the pants off his lordship.”

  They swung along together, easy companions, finding much to admire in the countryside until, abruptly, Letty reined in Goliathe and exclaimed, pointing at a rock formation in the distance.

  “What’s that over there? It looks like an enormous cliff. You’d expect to see the sea at the base of it instead of a valley rolling away.”

  “That’s the Rock of Solutré. Sinister place! At the foot of that overhang they found the skeletons of thousands of horses. It’s thought that Stone Age hunters herded wild horses up the slope of the cliff, driving them to their death over the top. Horses smell fear. What a scene it must have been, but what a simple way of restocking the larder.”

&nbs
p; Letty shivered at the thought of the wild despair—the shouts, the screams of the horses, the snap of bones, and the smell of blood in that primitive abattoir. “I think we’ve gone far enough,” she said. “We’d better turn for home now if I’m going to be in time for supper. The lodgings you found for me are wonderful, but the Huleux are very particular. Mealtimes are sacrosanct. Not even the vicar dares wander in late.”

  The countryside in the slanting sun had taken on a menacing note, echoed by the dark figure which, as they moved off, left the shelter of a tree and continued to trail them, just out of earshot, until they regained the town. Back in the stable courtyard, Paradee dismounted and turned to give a gallant but unnecessary hand to Letty. Before she could accept it, he was tapped lightly on the shoulder. He turned around to confront a pleasantly smiling Edmond d’Aubec, lowering his riding crop and saying apologetically but firmly, “No need to put Goliathe to bed just yet. I think Miss St. Clair has further need of him.” Greeting Letty with the same charming smile, he said invitingly but formally, “My dear, there is, at my château, someone you have been longing to meet again. You remember your old friend Lady Uffington? She is staying with us now. My mother has asked me to bid you to supper. Good old Goliathe is well named—he is far from used up and won’t object to a farther five kilometres. Good-bye, Paradee. We must not keep her ladyship waiting. Come, Miss St. Clair!”

  He walked off and in seconds had swung into the saddle and clattered out of the yard.

  Eager though she was to track down the mysterious lady mentioned on Daniel’s final postcard, she’d been about to refuse this peremptory summons, and turned to Paradee for support. It came in a torrent. “What the hell!…Stella, get off that horse! No way will I allow you to ride off with that rogue!”

  He put a firm hand on the bridle and prevented the horse from moving forward.

  She looked from Paradee to the retreating back of d’Aubec, undecided but keeping her seat in the saddle. When she could make Paradee listen to her, she spoke calmly. Such a nuisance but Lady Uffington was an old and very dear friend of the family…but more than that…perhaps Paradee was aware that Lady Uffington was also the patroness of Professor Merriman? she improvised, now determined on her course. Andrew had rather thought the old nuisance might be passing through on her way from one watering hole to the next, going south for the summer, and Letty had promised him to meet her if the opportunity arose. And here it was arising. It would not be wise to decline contact with such an influential and wealthy woman. Letty’s light stress on the word “wealthy” produced a gleam of understanding at last.

  And anyway, she added, seeing his fingers relax their grip, wasn’t this just the opportunity they’d been hoping for? As a guest, she could take in details of the château with an archaeologist’s eye and report back tomorrow morning. With d’Aubec’s mother, the countess, and old Lady Uffington both present she would be perfectly adequately chaperoned.

  His hand dropped to his side and he grinned. “You English! You’d take tea with the Devil if he sent you a correctly worded invitation. I can see you’re determined to chase down this rich old biddy, but you’re not leaving without a further warning…”

  He raged on, assuaging his guilt and unease, and Letty listened dutifully, understanding his concern and glad of it. Finally, she turned Goliathe. A gentle kick was the only urging the horse needed to set off in pursuit of Carnaval.

  As she passed under the arch into the road she heard Paradee’s voice shouting after her, “Take care! Don’t trust him! Or his mother!”

  CHAPTER 20

  Curiosity clashed with irritation as she cantered along behind d’Aubec. He knew she would follow. He’d attempted no persuasion and had avoided any confrontation with Paradee simply by ignoring him. It had appeared to be her choice to accept his invitation. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her willing company, and she controlled Goliathe’s speed enough to keep him a good fifty metres behind d’Aubec until, at last, they rounded a spur in the road and came within sight of his stronghold.

  The threatening bulk of the thirteenth-century defensive walls towered over her, warning her off, and it took all her pride and obstinacy to keep her on the track winding through the guardian ranks of vines marching upwards to the moat’s edge and its bridge. She rode over, expecting to hear at any moment the clang of a portcullis descending, into the jaws of the imposing entrance.

  Once through the curtain wall, Letty reined in to gaze at Brancy le Château sleeping in the June sunshine. Her first impression was of how kindly time had dealt with the great building; how gently the ochre wash, faded to milky whiteness where the sun struck and darkening to amber under the eaves, was dappled by reflections from the moat, how the formal march of tall windows across the front was softened by the cracked and faded blue of their shutters, some discreetly closed and speaking of coolness within and some hospitably open on a tall interior. She took in the swelling corner turrets, their arrogant purpose contradicted by the fairy-tale peaked roofs. As she watched, the impression of mighty but comforting informality was completed by a flight of fat white pigeons, which circled the blue sky and settled prettily on the cascade of rosy tiles among the ranks of round dormers that climbed the roof.

  At least the house welcomes me, she thought, heartened. The perfect proportions had concealed the great size of the château. Within the entrance door, with its shell pediment, lay an inner courtyard—neatly bisected to sunlight and shadow by the declining sun—and beyond that a rising jumble of roofs and chimneys; of turrets and battlements reaching up to the sky and back into a turbulent past.

  D’Aubec had already handed his horse to the care of a dark and unsmiling man, and he gestured to Letty to do the same. “Jules, see to the horses!” And off he strode across the gravelled courtyard.

  Letty gave Goliathe into the care of the groom, thanking him as she did so and venturing to add, “Monsieur Jules, I noticed that Carnaval has a loose shoe on his near hind.”

  The groom looked surprised to be addressed by a guest and in such an open English manner, but gravely acknowledged the information and the brilliant smile which had accompanied it.

  She joined d’Aubec, who had paused to watch the exchange. “How’s your courage holding out, Miss Talbot? Ready for an assault on the inner sanctum?”

  “Why should I not be? I see no hostile hordes repelling invaders. If I had a suspicious mind, I would say I was expected. Shall we proceed to the second act of your charade, d’Aubec? After you.”

  She hurried after him through a wide door to the coolness of an entrance hall and the sweep of an ascending stair, and passed under the detached regard of a marble ancestor in a curled periwig to a pair of high doors and an airy room.

  “The summer salon,” he announced.

  Faded green panelling, an intensely patterned inlaid floor, a curtain that stirred in the wind, and, in a tapestried chair by the window that gave on to a broad terrace, an elegant woman wearing a blue silk tea gown. She sat listening to the last notes of a Strauss waltz swirling to a finish as they entered and Letty had time, before she became aware of them, to take in the once beautiful face, the hair, dark as d’Aubec’s but now streaked with iron grey, and a frame of a delicacy amounting to fragility.

  On catching sight of them, a young man stepped to the phonograph, flipped back the arm and removed the record, and stood quietly by, watching Letty. A manservant? His gaze was rather bold, she thought.

  Edmond’s mother rose and hurried forward to greet her. She spoke very fast in an oddly accented English.

  “Laetitia, dear Laetitia! What a joy to meet you at last! And you are every bit as bonny as your godfather told me. Your poor godfather! We were desolated to hear of Daniel’s death. He had become a great friend of mine also, and I shared many an evening with him when he came over to work on those documents, full of dust, in the library. He was here the evening he died, did you know that? And such a happy evening we had passed! With Edmond away, I had
Daniel all to myself. We played a game or two of belote, we listened to the gramophone…” Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible murmur as she remembered: “We danced a tango…He was a very good dancer, Daniel.” She fell silent.

  Letty was witnessing a tangle of emotions and was struck by the sly thought: Tango, eh? Could it be that she was looking at the dashing Daniel’s last conquest? Recovering, the countess raised her chin and confessed. “If I had only insisted on his spending the night here he might not have been attacked!” She grasped Letty’s hands tightly to convey her concern. “But I ramble on. Let me introduce Constantine.”

  The dark young man stepped forward and briefly bowed his head. Not a manservant, then.

  “Constantine is my son’s secretary and right hand. Without Constantine there would be no sanity in this household.”

  Letty smiled a greeting and murmured, “Monsieur Constantine, I’m delighted to meet you,” receiving a cool: “Mademoiselle,” in response.

  But Letty could not deny the warmth of the twinkling lady before her and hid a smile when, without pausing for breath, the countess addressed her son: “But, Edmond, you great lout, what do you do standing there, staring? Go, fetch the champagne! We must celebrate Laetitia’s arrival.” D’Aubec flashed a smile so full of affection and humour at his mother that Letty was taken aback.

  “My son speaks excellent English, do you not find, mademoiselle? He had the benefit of a Scottish governess. We are so hoping you will stay and have a simple supper with us,” the countess went on when d’Aubec, accompanied by Constantine, had left the room. “No, no! You are not to concern yourself that you are dressed for the outdoors,” she hurried on, interpreting correctly Letty’s dismayed glance at her trousers and boots. “This is a horse-worshipping house, as you will find. My son has stolen you shamelessly from your evening pursuits and we are pleased to take you as we find you. Think of this as a ‘come-as-you-are’ party! You are in good company—my son, you will have noticed, looks and smells like a groom.”