“Oh, yes. He’s the driving force of the family company. If I’m the figurehead, Auguste is the engine. And this,” he said, moving on to the last portrait, “is the man who should be standing here now. The last soldier. My older brother. Guy. Became count on my father’s death. All Guy ever wanted to do was farm the land but when the bugle sounded, off he had to go. Ypres. He didn’t survive Ypres. And as for me—too young in 1914 to be accepted, I was straining at the leash. My mother held me back as long as she could. The heir and the spare. The younger son came in useful on this occasion.”
His dismissive tone barely concealed his bitterness. Looking at his sharp, aggressive profile, Letty could only imagine the havoc he would have wreaked on a battlefield.
“I see no portrait of the present count?”
“No. All in good time. An engagement portrait, I think. But perhaps it would be thoughtful to allow my fiancée to choose her own style and moment?”
“Always a good idea.” She moved away, unwilling to show a deeper interest in the count’s domestic arrangements.
And then they were standing before the great oak door of the library. It opened on an interior smelling of beeswax and lavender. The walls were entirely covered in bookshelves holding ranks of leather-bound books, and a vast polished table occupied the centre of the room. All was immaculately neat apart from one end of the table. Letty thought she recognised her godfather’s untidy nesting habits. The table was piled high with books, most with bookmarks protruding, and sheets of paper, some of which had spilled onto the floor. A paper bin overflowed with screwed-up pieces of discarded notes and sweet wrappers.
No promise of supper could have held her back from an instinctive step forward to see for perhaps the last time her godfather’s handiwork, the familiar scrawl laced with crossings-out and exclamation marks.
“Some of the books he was working on are very ancient, you understand, handwritten and decorated by the monks of Fontigny. Precious and delicate,” warned d’Aubec, gently slapping the covetous fingers she reached out towards them. “Go and wash your hands. There’s a cloakroom next door.”
“The monks?” said Letty when she returned. “Why are they then in your possession? Why aren’t they in the abbey?”
He smiled. “Don’t concern yourself. My rapacious ancestors didn’t steal them. This was a sort of summer place of residence for certain of the monks throughout the Middle Ages. They used to come up here to get away from the heat and doubtless filth and plague of the town each summer, and their distraction consisted, as far as we are able to judge, of creating books, some—unusually—not on religious subjects. The illustrations are quite wonderful. They were probably done as a gift for the count, their host.”
At his consenting nod, Letty took from the pile a heavy, leather-backed volume which fitted easily into her hand and began to leaf reverently through it. A Book of Hours. The black Gothic text on a page she selected at random was surrounded by a richly painted tapestry of Burgundian life: cornflowers of dazzling blue, white daisies dedicated to Athena and Diana the virgin and moon goddess, a purple iris, emblem of royalty, and shy heartsease, the source of love potions. And, in the margin, just alighted, a fly. A fly so realistically rendered that, her throat tightening with emotion, Letty, in mime, flicked at it with her forefinger, hearing in her imagination the approving laughter of a long-dead artist. She was silent, no words adequate to carry the impressions of ancient and rare beauty in her hands.
“Well, there you are. Do you think, Letty, that if you came here each evening after your work, you could go through all this? I’ve no idea how long it will take.” He paused and continued in a firmer tone, “In a fortnight’s time Maman and I have to go to Lyon for several days—the annual meeting of my family company—but I am free until then to spend my evenings here with you. Do you think in two weeks, together we might be able to trace this so important discovery your godfather was excited about? Will you try?”
“Oh, Edmond, I will.” She smiled in delight, her eyes not moving from the books. “Nothing would please me more.”
CHAPTER 21
The curtained darkness of the town was reprimand enough for her late return; Letty had no wish to add a ticking-off from Gunning. She asked the silent Jules to set her down at the entrance to the rue Lamartine and approached the front door quietly, hoping that it would have been left unlocked. It eased open at her touch and she crept into the hallway, slipped off her boots, and made for the stairs.
Before she could reach them, however, the parlour door opened and Gunning’s imperious forefinger beckoned her inside. She went to stand, defiant and rebellious, watching impatiently as he closed the door and placed himself in front of it, arms behind his back, the expression of a severe but understanding schoolmaster on his face. “No need to creep about. No one is aware of your assignations. It’s Madame’s birthday and the family have all gone off to celebrate at the Lion d’Or. With thirteen courses much anticipated, they won’t, I think, be back until after midnight. The boys are still out at the café, so I can raise my voice.” He proceeded to do just that. “Where in Heaven’s name have you been, you selfish idiot? I’ve been sitting here all evening imagining you dead in a ditch! Well? Account for yourself!” he thundered.
Though she was wincing with dismay, Letty recognised the desperate tones and language of a parent worried out of his wits, and bit back an angry response. She employed a device which had often proved successful in the past: distraction.
“Goddess hunting! That’s what I’ve been doing. So glad you waited up! Top shelf, William!” She pointed to the rows of reference books. “I think I saw a book on Celtic mythology up there and I know there’s a copy of The Golden Bough. Get them down, will you? If you’re not too tired, that is? I’ve really no right to be keeping you up! No? Very well…let’s look up someone whose acquaintance I made this evening—Lady Uffington, otherwise known as Epona.”
Gunning was, as she had expected, immediately drawn in despite his show of anxiety. Growling unconvincingly, he settled down with her at the table, a pile of heavy books between them. Feeling his still-unresolved tension, she reached over, impulsively put an arm around his shoulders, and dropped a light kiss on his cheek. “There! You’re the third man I’ve kissed in earnest in six hours,” she lied. “That’s good going even for me.”
“And you’re bidding fair to be the first girl I’ve smacked in thirty years! Explain yourself!”
“Well, I wonder if you were aware that it was Paradee who asked me if—”
“You were last seen heading for the hills with the boss. He returned hours later by himself in pensive mood. Having pushed you off the cliff of Solutré? Can’t say I’d blame him, but it would have been good not to have been kept in suspense. Carry on.”
“Very pleasant ride. It helped to get the area in focus. We must do it one day, William. I kept an eye open for Magdalene’s perspective but I didn’t see it. No hanky-panky with my handsome American escort, I regret to say, was on offer either, because we were chaperoned throughout by d’Aubec from a distance of a few yards. But when we got back to the stables…”
Gunning’s expression of deepening astonishment was all she hoped for as her story unfolded. “And Paradee let him whisk you off like that? He simply stood by and watched you ride away with a man we know to be violent and possibly a murderer?”
“Not easily, no. He tried hard to stop me, but…well…you know what I’m like when I’ve got the bit between my teeth.”
Gunning glowered. “It’s not good enough, Letty. Amounts to dereliction of duty. I shall take this up with Paradee.”
“You will not! This isn’t the 1890s. I can look after myself. Please don’t start fouling up my relationship with Paradee, William. We get on well. We’ve been watching each other and I think we both like what we see. Daniel admired him and so do I.”
She hurried on with her account of the château, not setting out to emphasise the glamour of the ancient setting or the ric
hness of the furnishings, but hearing the awe in her voice as she spoke—and sensing Gunning’s mounting scorn.
“And whom do we see surrounded by these Louis Seize chiffoniers, these Boulle cabinets? The inhabitants of this so civilised establishment? Not, then, the Count and Countess Dracula we had supposed?”
“Oh, come off it, William! I can’t say they’re normal, everyday folk, but d’Aubec and his mother were very welcoming and friendly.”
“It would be interesting to know the source of their apparent wealth. Were you able to form any impressions?”
“Yes, in fact, I was. I knew you’d see I haven’t been wasting my time once you’d got off your high horse and calmed down. As Paradee said—‘the count’s got his fingers in every pie in Burgundy.’ Estate sources, rents, farm revenue, vineyards all providing but, equally, his outgoings must be enormous. That’s an expensive place to run. He keeps a large staff—servants everywhere you look and a male secretary of a superior sort. D’Aubec maintains a generous stable, and he and his mother appear to have expensive tastes—cars…jewellery…and the old girl was sporting the very last tea-leaf in tea gowns. Lanvin, I’d say. They don’t stint themselves! I’d guess there’s some other strand to his finances. And I couldn’t help noticing…”
“Do go on, Letty. I’m aware of your keen eye for detail.”
“There was a newspaper on the telephone table in the library. D’Aubec left me alone when he went to check whether supper was ready. It was a copy of the London Times and it was open and folded. Folded as you do when you’re intending to spend some time reading the contents. Anyway, I took a closer look. It was open at the business pages. He’d been studying the stocks and shares reports. There were circles around the shares he was interested in and there was a telephone number scribbled in the margin. I copied it down.”
She took a notebook from her pocket and read out a series of numbers. Gunning solemnly recorded them in his own notebook.
“That’s a London number. City exchange, predictably. Look, Letty, if you don’t mind I’ll do a bit of investigating of my own. In my life before the war—I know you first saw me as a down-and-out and I’m sure that’s how you’ll always see me…but…”
“William, I won’t say I know who you are, but I know where you were born, who your parents were, where you were educated. You’ve noticed that prying comes naturally to me. Start from there.”
“Well, you can imagine, then, that should I choose to reanimate them, I have contacts in some high and influential places in London. And the telephone is a wonderful instrument. Tomorrow I shall get the car out and drive to Lyon. From there I can make a few calls which I can be certain will go undetected. But do carry on with your account. I find the d’Aubecs most intriguing.”
“I didn’t perhaps stress sufficiently how friendly they both were. His mother is charming. I liked her. She does her best to present that son of hers as halfway civilised…excuses his overbearing manners by making fun of them. And he seems genuinely fond of her. And they spoke warmly of Daniel. William, he was still there! Or traces of him. D’Aubec had left all his things right there in the library where Daniel had been working on them. He said he was intending to get around to examining them himself.”
“Really? How very odd!” said Gunning. “I’ve never met the maid who would be prepared to polish around clutter of that kind every day for eight months!”
“It is a bit strange.” Letty shivered. “Almost as though they were expecting someone…me, do you think? It was so…so…intimate, so trusting and unremarkable. Daniel was obviously at home there, William. I think that’s what d’Aubec wanted me to understand. And I’ll tell you something else! To all appearances, the wastepaper basket hadn’t been emptied. Look…” She scrabbled in her pocket. “It was in what you might call the top stratum. It’s his last chocolate bar wrapper. I stole it!”
Where she had expected derision there was a slow, sympathetic smile. “I don’t blame you. It’s the little personal things we need to keep by us. Memories. Is this all you have of Daniel—apart from the postcard?”
“Oh, William! You didn’t know? Didn’t my father mention it?” She was suddenly uncomfortable in the face of Gunning’s asceticism and uncertain whether to continue. It was no business of his, after all. “…And I didn’t know for certain until some weeks ago when the Probate Court finally pronounced. I have quite a substantial souvenir of Daniel. Astonishing. We’d always assumed he was comfortably off but not rich—he was ever a modest spender. What we didn’t realise—because he never spoke of it—was that some years before his death he’d inherited large sums from two old bachelor uncles. Even Pa was kept in the dark about that. Daniel didn’t allow his change in circumstances to affect his life; he just carried on as he always had, living for his work. We’d always known he looked on us as his family—whenever he came back from foreign parts, it was our home he came to—but he did have cousins…a nephew or two…We just assumed, as far as we ever thought about it, that his estate would be divided between them. But he willed everything to me. Many thousands of pounds but with instructions that I was not to inherit before my twenty-fifth birthday. So, in a couple of years’ time, I’m going to be a rich woman. Undeserved and unearned, I know,” she hurried to stress, “so you needn’t feel you have to point it out.”
“Oh, my good Lord!” Gunning’s jaw sagged in mock horror. “This is terrible news! Every rogue with a mention in Debrett will be alerted. Squadrons of penniless younger sons will be buzzing in like wasps to a mulberry in summer. You’d better employ me on a permanent basis to shoot them down. And don’t, for goodness’ sake, let d’Aubec get a scent of this—he’s acquisitive and still a bachelor.”
“You won’t be reassured, then, to hear that his family has a history of marrying English heiresses!” She laughed to see the concern in his expression. “No—I exaggerate. Just one, in fact. And that was a long time ago. I hardly need you to alert me to the dangers when there’s the Awful Warning of Countess Charlotte plastered all over the château walls! But, don’t worry, William, you can stop growling and come off watch—I gather he has, in his aristocratic French way, a long-standing engagement to be married.” Frowning, she added, “They seem to emulate the royal dynasties of Egypt—you know—one of those families that prefer to marry close relatives.”
“No wonder they’re a bit strange. About time for a bit of fresh blood, perhaps? You’re not to go volunteering your services!”
He listened intently as she took up the tale of her tour of the château, but it was her encounter with the lady emblazoned on the d’Aubec coat of arms that was of greatest interest.
“Ah! The lady Daniel’s card told you to follow? Fair hair, you say? White horse? Seated sideways? Was there a hound following her? There usually is.”
They leafed through the books, on the trail of Epona. “Goddess of Horses,” said Gunning, running a finger down a page. “But much more. She was the Celtic expression of the Mother Goddess. She’s often portrayed carrying a sheaf of corn or a cornucopia. Earth Goddess, Corn Goddess, Moon Goddess…seems to have been one of the harder-working members of the pantheon. Areas of responsibility: trees, crops, all living creatures, with specific interest in horses. Oh…and no rest for the virtuous—she was required to take an interest in the underworld in her time off, which I suppose was the winter. And as if that wasn’t enough to keep a girl busy, here’s the author handing her yet another role—Mistress of…”
“Mysteries! The Enchantress! William, I know this lady already! I met her some years ago when she was going by a different name.”
“Demeter? Ceres? The Romans obviously recognised this goddess, so important to their Celtic enemy, as one of their kind and voted her straight into their own club. Very open-minded and welcoming, the Romans, when it came to absorbing foreign gods. Hedged their bets, placated the local community…and Epona had the advantage of echoing their own deep love of horses. She was worshipped by the cavalry units of the legio
ns based in this region. In fact, looking at the references in these books, she was particularly strong on the ground in this area. If we were to plot the mentions of shrines and statues on a map of Burgundy from, let’s say, Alésia in the north down to Lyon, the concentration would be very evident.”
“No, William. I was thinking of a goddess more ancient even than Demeter.” A prickle of excitement ran along her spine.
“Ah! I think I can guess where you’re going with this. And I know someone who can help you. You met him briefly the other day. The priest of St. Mary Magdalene. Father Anselme’s a considerable scholar and I think he may well have the knowledge we need to guide us through the labyrinth I see stretching out before us. Don’t be alarmed by his presence—he’s quite intimidating on first acquaintance. But he’s very agreeable and unusually open-minded.”
Gunning hesitated for a moment and then confided: “If he feels he can trust you, he may well introduce you to the lady you’re chasing after. That other Mistress of Mysteries: the Green Goddess—Egyptian Isis.”
Paradee’s reaction when she went to see him the next morning was far more rewarding. “No! You don’t say! D’Aubec’s given you the keys to the château? You’re kidding!” He couldn’t disguise his excitement. “So his defences have finally been penetrated!”
“Well, he’s left a side door open,” she said, feeling she’d over-steered and ought to dampen down his enthusiasm. “It may not be as straightforward as it looks. We’ll see.”
Quick as ever to pick up her mood, Paradee frowned and said seriously, “Of course, Stella—you’re right to be cautious. And you know I don’t like the idea of you getting too close to that rascal. Ask anyone in town—they’ll tell you he’s a ruthless horseman, employer, and…yes…I have to say it, lover. He’s had affairs with some pretty fancy ladies hereabouts, and none of them has lasted longer than a season.” He took a deep breath and Letty felt his turmoil and indecision. Finally he said quietly, “No. It’s not worth the risk. I want you to stay away from there. And I’ll make that an order if you like.”
Bright Hair About the Bone Page 20