Cupid's Arrow

by Isabelle Merlin

  I looked at her. 'Did you find anything interesting?' I asked neutrally.

  'Well, interesting for people who want to know how he constructed his books, yes. Wayne says they'll be invaluable.'

  'So you've decided to give them to him?'

  'Yes. He seems a good sort of person. Oh, a bit flashy, I know,' she added, with a sharp glance at me, 'and he talks hot air sometimes but his heart's in the right place. He's genuinely interested in Raymond's work. They corresponded for quite a while, you know.'

  'Nicolas Boron said he pestered Raymond.'

  She shrugged. 'It didn't sound like it to me. Wayne showed me one of the letters Raymond had written to him. Perfectly charming. And he did say he gave permission for Wayne to use his notebooks if he wanted. There's no doubt about that. I'm afraid our friendly solicitor's nose is out of joint. All these outsiders coming in. His firm had dealt with Raymond's affairs for a long time. Wayne thinks maybe he's jealous that Raymond did not leave him anything.'

  'What does he know about anything?' I snapped. 'I can sort of understand Boron. Your Wayne just breezes in and takes over and he's supposed to be happy about it?'

  'Don't be rude, Fleur. First of all, he's not my Wayne, and secondly, what business is it of Monsieur Boron's?'

  'Marie Clary said that Wayne wanted to buy Bellerive from Oscar. She said Oscar was likely to sell.'

  'And if he does? At least Wayne has an appreciation of this place and Raymond's work. After all, Oscar could sell it to some idiot who sees nothing special in it. He doesn't really care. He wasn't even interested in looking at his uncle's notebooks. And he asked me whether I had any idea how much those Gustave Doré prints that are hanging in the library are worth. I told him I'd find out. But I ask you, fancy wanting to get rid of beautiful things like that!'

  'Marie said that he spends lots of money, that he probably just wants to make more.'

  Mum laughed. 'Village gossips! Might as well live in a glass bowl.' Her tone changed. 'You haven't changed your mind about today?'

  I shook my head. 'I promised. I can't go back on it.'

  'Hmm,' she said, looking hard at me. 'Nice sort of boy, is he?'

  'I told you. Yes.'

  She sighed. 'Don't get so defensive. I'm just asking. Honestly, you can be so prickly, Fleur. Have a good time, anyway, and make sure you're back well before dark. Okay?'

  'Okay,' I said, meekly. 'No worries.'

  Devil's arithmetic

  I was in the kitchen putting stuff into a small backpack – chicken sandwiches, a bottle of water, apples, and a packet of chocolate biscuits – when Wayne Morgan came in.

  'Oh hello, Fleur. You look very nice. Great to see a pretty girl in a pretty dress. Ready for your day out, are you?'

  'Mmm,' I said, flushing, half-wishing I hadn't worn the green and white dress I'd picked out so carefully this morning.

  'It's a lovely day for it,' he went on, beaming and waving a ringed hand at the bright sunshine outside. 'I suppose I've already wasted a lot of it. But it is such a luxury to be able to sleep in. Things are so busy back home. Crazy. You never get a chance to just be. Take a deep breath. Smell the roses.'

  'Feel the vibes,' I said. I couldn't help it. It just slipped out. But he took it seriously.

  'Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. I feel sometimes like I'm really getting out of touch, you know, with the things that really matter. The heart of things.'

  'Mmm,' I said again, because I couldn't trust myself to say anything else.

  He pushed back his perfectly groomed hair and sighed. 'Ah well, those are the trials of life, I suppose.' He looked around the kitchen. 'Did you find the coffee?'

  'Sure.' I showed him.

  'I don't suppose there is any muesli here? Soya milk?'

  'No. There's bread. Fresh milk. Butter.' I wanted to sidle out but he was in the way and still disposed to talk and I couldn't just push past without being really rude and Mum had already told me off about that.

  'Hmm, well, I suppose we can do some shopping sometime today,' he said, with a little grimace. I groaned inwardly. My God, did that mean he was planning to hang around for a while?

  He said, 'I suppose your mother is already in the library.'

  I nodded.

  'She's a very dedicated woman. Loves her work.'

  'Yes.' I knew I sounded short, but I couldn't help it. I really wanted to get away.

  'Knows a lot too.'

  'Sure.'

  'Has the library been what she hoped for?'

  I stared at him. 'I don't understand.'

  'I mean, she knew Raymond's interests. She must have had an idea of what his library was like. Some of these books in there he must have ordered from her.'

  'Yes, but –'

  'I just wondered if in her work in the library over the last day or two, she found anything – well, anything unusual?'

  My pulse quickened. I tried to keep my voice from changing. 'You'll have to ask her. I don't know.'

  'Did you maybe find anything, Fleur?' The smile was still on his face but not in his eyes. They were cool and expressionless, fixed on me.

  Something lodged in my spine. Something cold and prickling. The beginnings of fear. I said, 'I'm, I'm sorry. I don't know what you mean. I'm not interested in old books. Old things.'

  'It might not be a book. Or at least not a printed book.'

  'I don't know what –'

  'Notebooks,' he said, with a touch of impatience. 'Computer files. Something like that.'

  'But you have his notebooks, Mr Morgan.'

  'Please, don't stand on ceremony with me. My name's Wayne. Did you know that was once short for Gawain, like the knight in the King Arthur stories?'

  'N-no,' I said, foolishly. 'Mr Morg –, I mean, Wayne, I'm sorry, but I –'

  'I've looked through his notebooks,' he said. 'It's not there. At least, not what I thought I'd find.' He looked at me and gave a smile that was clearly meant to be friendly, but which didn't reach his eyes. 'I suppose you must be wondering what this is about.' He didn't wait for me to answer but went on. 'Raymond told me about a very important project he was working on. Something groundbreaking. A huge discovery. It was connected with –'

  'King Arthur,' I said, before I could stop myself.

  He gave me a sharp look. 'How do you know?'

  'Doesn't take much to work it out,' I said grumpily, trying to mask my agitation. 'Raymond was very keen on all that. And you are too, Mum told me. Plus you come from Glastonbury, where it's all supposed to have happened.'

  'That's just it,' he said, his eyes alight. 'Everything may have to be rewritten and rethought. Raymond had, I believed, found strong evidence – real, tangible evidence – that the man who may have been the historical model for King Arthur really did end his days in Avallon – this Avallon here, or its surrounds, perhaps even very close to here. Have you heard anything about that?'

  'No. I mean, I've heard about that man, sure, but –'

  'Really? Where? I thought you weren't interested in the subject of King Arthur, Fleur. Not a lot of the general public know about this side of it.' His voice was quiet but there was an undertone to it that I found disturbing.

  I said, hastily, 'I'm not! But Nicolas Boron was going on about it to Mum the other day when he picked us up from the station and I couldn't help but hear what he was saying.'

  'Nicolas Boron? Ah yes – that sour solicitor who was here yesterday. Of course. I see.'

  'I'm sorry, Mr Mor –, Wayne,' I said, seizing my chance, 'but I've really got to go. My friend –'

  'Will be waiting, I know,' he said, giving me a flashing smile. 'Sorry to have held you up, Fleur, and to ask you so many questions. You see, it's very important that I find what I'm looking for. It's very important that Raymond should be remembered as the man who discovered it and that no-one should steal that credit from him. I think I'll go and pay Mr Nicolas Boron a visit. Perhaps he'll be able to enlighten me.'

  'Mmm,' I said again, and managed this t
ime to get out of the door. Not that I should have worried. He had completely lost interest in me, now that I had told him about Boron.

  I left the house without being held up by anyone else, and hurried through the park to the riverside path. I was feeling all churned up. I hoped I hadn't dropped poor Nicolas Boron in heaps of trouble. I didn't want to think that it might be even worse. Because, after all, if my theory about the PI's death and Raymond's was right – if they really were connected with the secret of King Arthur's grave or whatever it was Raymond thought he had found – then Wayne Morgan had to be, at the very least, what the police called a 'person of interest'. And if he went to see Nicolas Boron and something happened to the solicitor as a result, then I would be partly responsible. I should retrace my steps, go back to the house, tell Mum, or pick up the phone myself and call Boron, warn him that Morgan was coming.

  I was about to turn back when a sudden thought struck me. What if I was looking at it all wrong? I was assuming now that Boron might have the papers Morgan was looking for. But I had no idea if Wayne Morgan had been in the country at the time of the PI's death, let alone Raymond's. He had apparently arrived from Paris only yesterday morning. But Nicolas Boron – he'd been around, all right. He could have driven to Vezelay the night before last, and killed the PI. He could have got into the house the day of Raymond's death without being observed and searched the place. Then, unfortunately, Raymond came home unexpectedly.

  Why? Why would he do these things, if he had the papers already? The simple answer was that he didn't have them. Because Raymond had told him enough to make Boron think the writer was sitting on a goldmine, but not enough to entrust him with the papers that proved his shattering discovery, whatever it was.

  But surely that was ridiculous. Why on earth would an ordinary middle-aged country lawyer suddenly go crazy like that? I thought of Morgan's calling him the 'sour solic-itor' and thought, maybe that's why, because he's soured by things, by disappointments, maybe he's having a midlife crisis or something.

  Shut up, Fleur, you dork. That's soap opera stuff, not real life. I was just imagining things, building up a case out of nothing, against both Boron and Morgan. Suddenly I remembered something my French grandmother used to say, when she thought someone was getting carried away with something. She'd say they were doing the 'Devil's arithmetic'. That's what I was doing, getting carried away with Devil's arithmetic.

  So I didn't go back to the house. I just kept walking down the path, and I got to the willow waterhole a short time later. Remy wasn't there yet. I sat myself down on the grass, rummaged in my pack and swigged a bit of the water. I took out the other thing I'd put in there – Raymond's dream book. I read the words. I looked at the pictures again, thinking, what if this has something to do with the missing papers? I mean, there was no way in the wide world I'd have told Wayne about this – but it was something I'd found. Something that had – maybe – been hidden deliberately behind those cookery books. Maybe the words or the sketches or both were a kind of cipher, a secret code. I stared at it.

  Last night, I dreamed I was back in the forest. Back? Back like when he had that other dream, the one of the dying king, being carried through the forest to the Lady's House? I was on my horse again – well, last time he was on that stretcher, wasn't he? But maybe he meant in the past when he was strong. Hang on, I was going on here as if the 'he' wasn't Raymond but actually the dying king of his dream! I was going crazy too ...

  A wet nose nuzzled into my side and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I snapped the book shut. 'Patou! You gave me such a fright!'

  Patou grinned at me, tongue lolling, eyes bright. Remy's voice said, behind me, 'She comes in on soft little feet. She would have been a good hunter.' I hadn't heard him coming either and my heart started racing like mad.

  'Oh, hi,' I said, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

  He sat down beside me and smiled. He also had a pack with him. 'Hello, Fleur. Is everything okay?'

  'Fine,' I mumbled. I saw his eyes flickering over my dress, but he said nothing about it. I suddenly felt terribly shy. If I could have got my legs to obey me I would have run away as fast as I could. As it was I couldn't move, and I could hardly look at him, though I was so totally aware of him next to me. He smelled nice, some sort of light cologne smell, but kind of woody too, if you know what I mean.

  'Are you sure you're okay? You seem a bit – well, nervous. Has anything happened?'

  I nodded, still not trusting myself to look at him. I said, in a voice I knew sounded shaky and a bit squeaky, 'Remy, I want to show you something. Something I found at the house. Something I don't understand.'

  He didn't say 'what the hell are you talking about?', or anything like that. He just said, 'Okay. Show me.'

  I picked up the book and handed it to him. I said, 'Two people have written and drawn in this, I'm sure of it. I just wondered what it –'

  But he cut across me before I could finish. He said, 'I can tell you what that is straightaway. I had a couple of strange dreams a while back – last year, even, I think it was – and I happened to mention them to Raymond. He was fascinated by them, especially because he said they were similar to dreams he'd had. He described one to me, about being a king carried in a litter through a forest.'

  'I saw that one,' I said, 'in his notebooks.' I swallowed. He and Raymond and I, we had been having very similar dreams, I thought. I remembered what Dreaming Holmes had said in his email about it. How very strange it was.

  Remy looked curiously at me, but he didn't ask any questions. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'Raymond asked me to tell him the dream, and then he tried to draw it, but he wasn't that good at it – you know. He paused an instant, and went on, softly, 'so when he showed it to me, I just did a couple of quick sketches for him and I filled in the rest of it.' He flipped the pages. 'He asked me if I'd mind if he used it in one of his books and I said no, of course I didn't mind. And that's the last I heard of it. I haven't seen this for ages. Did you find it in his library?'

  'No. In the pantry.'

  'What?'

  'Behind the cookery books.'

  'How very strange. Why would –'

  'I think it was hidden so no-one – or someone in particular – wouldn't find it,' I said. I hadn't known I really thought that until that moment but now I was sure. Raymond had hidden it. He'd hidden it because someone was after it.

  'But why on earth ...? It was just a dream. Nothing important.'

  I took a deep breath. 'I had thought. I wondered if it was a code. A secret code.'

  He stared. 'A what?'

  So I told him. Everything. All that had happened, what I suspected, what I'd heard, what I'd thought. I even told him about my own forest dream, though only that I'd been running from someone towards a place I thought looked like the Lady's House. I didn't say anything about the hunter with the bow and arrow or anything like that because I was afraid of what he might think.

  It took quite a while, but he didn't interrupt me. Not once. He just sat there and listened to me, his hand resting gently on Patou's head as it lay in his lap. I finished by saying, 'And now I don't know what to think, maybe I'm going mad, I'm seeing things and imagining things and dreaming them and maybe I'm just too stressed or something or I'm scared because there's a real killer out there, and I want to try to understand what's going on in case he goes for me or Mum and we –' I gulped, and couldn't go on. I was shaking.

  'Oh, poor Fleur, my poor, poor Fleur,' said Remy softly, in French, and suddenly I was in his arms and he was holding me tightly, his head resting on top of mine. For a little while I forgot about everything else as we clung together, and then he said, in English, 'We must find out. We've got to.'

  'So you, so you – you don't think I'm mad?'

  'I hope not,' he said, smiling down into my face, 'or else I'm in trouble, no?'

  'You don't think I'm imagining things?'

  'Maybe. But two imaginings are better than one, don't you think?'

>   I took a deep breath. I said, 'Oh Remy, thank you. I–I'm so glad you –'

  'There's nothing to thank me for,' he said. 'We understand each other, you and me. I knew it from the moment we met. Didn't you?'

  I was trembling again but not from fear. I whispered, 'Yes, but I don't know why, it scares me a bit too, Remy, I don't know if we –'

  'And now there's something I want to give you,' he said, interrupting and letting me go. He put a hand in his pocket and brought out something loosely wrapped in a little piece of soft cloth. I looked at him. 'What is it?'

  'Open it, have a look.'

  I unwrapped the cloth, my palms prickling, the back of my neck tingling, my heart hammering under my ribs. And there, lying in the folds of the cloth, was a little oval brooch. It was made of glossy painted wood and showed a delicately painted pale pink flower against a dark green background, edged with black. 'It's an eglantine,' he said, 'the wild rose of the woods. Do you like it?'

  'Oh, Remy.' No boy had ever given me a present like that before. Hell, no boy had ever given me a present before, unless you counted buying a burger at Maccas or a milkshake at the café a present. 'It's so beautiful.' That wasn't quite true. I mean, yes, it was pretty and it just bowled me over but it looked homemade and it wasn't really my kind of thing, I mean, I don't wear brooches and stuff like that normally, they're more for older people, I think. But I couldn't say so and didn't want to because suddenly I loved that homemade brooch so dearly it made me want to cry. I repeated, 'It's really, really beautiful,' and I pinned it to my dress and looked up at him and said, 'There. What do you think?'

  'I think you're beautiful,' he said, and suddenly we were kissing, there under the willows, locked in each other's arms and I thought this was the most perfect, the most gorgeous, the best moment of my life. It was also the most frightening thing I had ever known because things like this are only supposed to happen in stories, not in real life. Romance is just a story and people don't really have soul mates they understand at once, it's all just imagination. Dreams. But dreams can come true. I tell you, they can be true. And that enchanted moment on the river-bank, I knew it like I knew I was alive and breathing.