Fen dabbed her eye with the hanky and decided to stop herself from getting too maudlin by exploring the rest of the corridor.
Most of the doors were locked, which seemed odd to Fen in a family home, but then she had to admit that nosy parkers like her could be exactly the reason why they were. She could only imagine that each room was like her and Estelle’s – high-ceilinged and rather stark, but all with that glorious view over acres of green vines. After trying a few locked doors, she had, much to her relief, found a bathroom.
Why Estelle had made such a fuss about the potty was beyond her when the château was home to one of the most impressive thunderboxes Fen had ever seen. The contraption – a flushing lavatory, the seat of which was solid wood and throne-like in its size – was in a bathroom that also contained a wide, old metal bath with a geyser hung unsteadily above it. So baths could be had, but your life might be in danger with every drip of steaming water, Fen thought. She noted the large, but cracked, basin too and wondered if any money had been spent on the château before the war.
She chided herself for comparing the place to her accommodation back in West Sussex – the farmhouse there had been updated by the landlord shortly before the war and the bathroom had had every convenience, from hot running water to a detachable rubber hose for washing your hair.
Fen nipped back to her bedroom and picked up the large porcelain pitcher from the chest of drawers. She tested the geyser and stood back as it spluttered and spat into action, dispensing steaming water into the jug. She topped it up with cold water from the basin and walked with it back to her bedroom.
Fen closed the door behind her and then washed her face and fixed her hair, her chestnut-brown unruly curls never quite sitting perfectly no matter how carefully she pinned them. She looked at her reflection and saw her hazel green eyes with their dark lashes stare back at her. They looked weary, though, and Fen wished she’d been able to bring some of the make-up that Edith had left at the farmhouse. A dab or two of that concealing cream would do nicely right now! She still lived by her mother’s maxim of ‘it’s nice to look nice’ and she wondered if there was a touch of Parisienne about her after all?
Content enough with her little fix – a dash of lipstick finished off her tidy-up – she sorted out the last few bits and pieces from her suitcase and remembered what Estelle had said about where to store it.
‘Off you go,’ she said to the sturdy old case as she knelt down and pushed it right to the middle of the space under her bed. Then ‘Ouch!’ as a splinter from one of the floorboards caught her finger. Sucking at it hard, Fen began to get up, but something caught her eye. Under Estelle’s bed, she noticed not just a suitcase, much like her own, but a metal strongbox, a cardboard archiving box and a whole heap of newspapers. ‘Aha,’ Fen took her finger out of her mouth and looked at the splinter.
A hoarder after all, she thought as she prised the slither of wood out from under her skin, and I bet one of those boxes would exactly fit that dust-free space in the wardrobe…
Fen’s sense of duty to her new employer and to the privacy of her new room-mate had curbed her natural curiosity about whether the boxes under Estelle’s bed had recently been moved, and she retraced her way back down the spiral tower staircase to the kitchen. Sophie Bernard was nowhere to be seen, but Fen noticed that one more place had been set at the dining end of the long farmhouse table. This simple act of welcome cheered her heart, and almost brought another tear to her eye. She was so far from home, in a place where she knew no one, on the hunt for her fiancé, who was, she had to face up to it, more than likely dead. But perhaps, just perhaps he isn’t… She’d almost expected him to be in the kitchen when she came down the stairs, so convinced was she that she’d cracked his code. Everything pointed towards this being the village…
Fen let that tear slide down her cheek as she leant against the long table. The Archangels of Death had more than likely been here and taken her Arthur with them. A shiver went down her spine and she had no sooner wiped the tear from her eye than Sophie Bernard appeared from a doorway near the stairs.
‘Are you all right, Mademoiselle Churche?’
Fen felt embarrassed, but far from stiffening her resolve, this act of kindness seemed to weaken it, and it was all Fen could do to nod her head and press her lips together in a vain attempt to stop the tears from coming.
‘There is not much time to set you a proper task before dinner.’ Sophie’s tone was soft and motherly and Fen was grateful that she hadn’t pushed her to explain herself more. ‘But go and get your bearings. You know the way to the church, yes?’
Fen nodded, if she spoke, she worried the words would get caught up in sobs.
‘D’accord, well if you leave by the gatehouse or go around the terrace away from the church, you’ll find the vineyard. Maybe you saw it from your bedroom? There is a winery too. I will serve dinner at six o’clock. It’s early, but it suits the hungry men and the children.’
Fen nodded again and as she took her leave of Madame Bernard, her emotions got the better of her. The heat from the stove and the smell of cooking onions had made her feel quite nauseous, and she was barely out into the fresh air and late-afternoon sunshine by the time the real tears came and she couldn’t help but have a little cry.
‘Come on, old thing,’ Fen gave herself a talking-to as she walked across the courtyard of the château, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. What would Kitty have told her? Or her brother for that matter? ‘Don’t be a fathead, silly.’ The sound of her own voice uttering such a childish phrase in these grand surroundings caused Fen to giggle; absurdity always made her laugh. But at least she had managed to cheer herself up a bit and she kept up the good work by whistling a jolly tune as she crossed the courtyard, dodging under the washing still hanging on the line.
She looked up at the windows of what she thought of as ‘the bedroom wing’, though, of course, it was the landing windows that looked over this courtyard. The bedrooms had a view of the vines on the other side of the building. And it couldn’t all be bedrooms, surely? Not the whole wing?
Fen decided to have a peak and stood on tiptoes to look inside the elevated ground-floor windows. As she strained to see in through the dusty glass, her fingers grappling with the creeper that hung tantalisingly over the windowsill, she heard footsteps behind her. Losing her balance, she quickly let go of the wide stone sill and stepped back to solid ground before turning around. But there was no one there, only a jackdaw pecking at the dried grass.
Fen looked up at the building once more and noticed the late-afternoon sun glint especially brightly in the window of one of the tower’s four precarious corner turrets. She stared at the turret a while longer, wondering if she’d see the bright reflection again, but there was nothing to see up there apart from a few birds circling overhead, probably finding their roost for the night.
Fen shrugged and turned. She tried whistling and found herself holding the old familiar tune to ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. She’d remembered her grandfather singing it as he bounced her on his knee; it had been popular just before she was born, during the Great War, the war to end all wars, until this one came along that was. Fen kept whistling, determined to jolly herself up before she met her new workmates. It was over now, the Allied Forces had won, the Nazis had retreated and Herr Hitler was dead. Fen made a promise to herself – when she’d found out what had happened to Arthur, she’d give herself a new start. ‘No more looking back, only forward.’
‘Talking to yourself is a sign of madness.’ The gruff but educated English voice startled Fen, who hadn’t realised that she’d been vocalising her thoughts.
‘And interrupting a lady while she’s talking is a sign of terrible manners.’
‘Even when she’s only talking to herself?’
‘Especially then.’ Fen paused and looked at her companion. He was tall and fair, and if his voice hadn’t sounded like it was from the classrooms of Eton, she’d have described him as looking like a g
rubby tinker or a labourer. There was ingrained dirt in the creases of his once-white linen shirt and his dust-covered, greenish-grey woollen trousers were wrapped tightly around his calves with dark green puttees.
Before Fen could introduce herself or ask for his name in return, the Englishman was gone, striding off towards a small door at the base of the tower.
‘How rude!’ Fen muttered to herself. She was shocked by his bluntness but was pleased to see him; surely it was a stroke of luck to come across a fellow Brit about the same age as her, and, judging by his clothes, demobbed from the army. When he had the grace to hold a proper conversation with her, she’d be sure to ask him about Arthur.
Fen carried on walking around the walls of the old house, trailing her fingers along the brick and stone and keeping her thoughts to herself, along with any jaunty tunes going round her head. Had Arthur been here? She thought back to his letter. He’d told her about this village, identified it by its name and church and then… ‘A glass of Burgundy soon saw me right, though, and the other fellows here are second to none.’
She took a deep breath in as she realised that Arthur had actually pointed her towards this very château. What had Sophie Bernard said? There was a vineyard and a winery right here. A glass of Burgundy… This was the place, if anywhere, in Morey-Fontaine that you would find one! As for the other fellows being second to none, she wasn’t quite sure, but that Englishman sure as hell was her best lead to finding Arthur so far.
Fen soon found herself at the base of another tower, this one a gatehouse with a wide archway running through it. She slipped out of the late-afternoon sunshine and into the cool of the stone-chilled shade.
‘Halloo,’ she called into the vaulted ceiling, but the only reply was the soft cooing of a dove, sitting high up in one of the corners.
‘Coo to you too,’ she said to the dove, before checking her watch. Time enough to keep exploring.
She walked across a small lawn and through some trees to a track, which followed along the side of a vineyard towards a winery building. If the house and its courtyard had been a quiet and contemplative sort of place, the opposite could be said about the hum of activity happening in the vines. Along with the late-afternoon bird calls, Fen could hear the buzzing of the bees in the nearby hives, the crunch of the dirt track beneath her feet and the sound of men and women singing, the voices far apart but joined in unison in the jaunty little tune.
As Fen looked between the rows of vines, she saw the workers with heavy-looking wicker hods on their backs, each person cutting bunches of grapes and tossing them gently into them. Fen didn’t want to be caught staring, so hurried along the path towards what she thought must be the winery. It was a modern, single-storey, cinder-block affair with a few small windows up near the roofline. Its large concrete slabs were a poor relation to the stone used for the château and the town.
As she got closer, she heard men’s voices raised, not in anger, but shouting directions and generally barking orders. ‘Lift, lift, wait… All right, yes, now!’
She was about to mosey on in and introduce herself when out of the corner of her eye she spotted something that made her catch her breath. ‘Hell’s teeth!’ she swore. There, parked in front of the winery was the grey Citroën truck that had run her off the road only an hour or so ago. It was identical, down to the canvas cover she’d seen flapping around as it drove off at speed and the tow hitch that was, for whatever reason, painted red. ‘You little blighter.’
Fen stood with her arms crossed for a while, working out what to do. She was about to charge into the winery and find out who owned the vehicle, when she heard the deadened clank of the church bell chime the quarter-hour. Taking a deep breath in, and exhaling slowly, she decided not to storm into the winery and find the culprit of her brief stint in a ditch there and then and instead turned back towards the house.
‘Fools rush in…’ she counselled herself, fully aware that this whole escapade could be classed as some fool’s errand of sorts. She took another couple of deep breaths and then whispered to herself, ‘… Where perhaps archangels have feared to tread.’
Six
Estelle was nowhere to be seen when Fen got back to their shared bedroom. She still had a few minutes to spare before dinner and thought she should at least change out of her dusty travelling clothes.
Compared to the activity in the vineyards and the commotion in the winery, the house was quiet, and the bedroom even more so. The silence was almost overwhelming and Fen suddenly felt very isolated, very alone and as if her mission, which had once been so clear-cut in her mind, now seemed such a risky folly. She had never been homesick in her life before, and she wondered if this feeling of being unsettled and a bit unsure of herself was that, or just plain old loneliness.
She sat on her bed and bounced up and down a few times to make the springs squeak and the sound of it, though not at all pleasant, was at least some sort of noise in the emptiness of the room. She reminded herself that she had to be careful with the family and other workers she might meet over the dinner table in a few moments. If Arthur had been posted to this town, well, then there would be a reason why he wasn’t here now. A rather fatal reason.
Fen shuddered, then shook herself free of the icy sensation that had run down her back. She mustn’t be late to the communal dining table and she had to get herself together. Yes, she was alone in this vast old château, there was no sign of Arthur and she may well have walked into the vipers’ nest.
Better make the best of it, old thing, she thought to herself as she rose from the bed, giving the springs one more chance to speak their mind, and then opened the armoire.
She changed her blouse for a less grubby one and took her headscarf off and pulled a comb through the curls that fell down the back of her neck, loosened from her hairgrips. She walked over to the mirror and pouted her lips ready for a top-up of the red lipstick that she decided no girl should be without, be it in the fields of Burgundy or on the Champs-Élysées. As a finishing touch, she pinned a small cameo brooch, made of ivory and edged in gold, to her cardigan. It had been her grandmother’s and her mother had given it to her when she left to start working in London before the outbreak of the war. She wasn’t sure if it was quite her thing, it being Victorian and not entirely à la mode, but it meant a lot to her as a connection with home, with her parents and with a happier time.
Walking down towards the kitchen, Fen heard the church bell chime the hour. It was six o’clock on the nose and she braced herself for meeting more of the château’s occupants.
Someone here must know what happened to Arthur, she thought and then set herself the mental task of merely observing tonight and not start asking awkward questions before she’d taken the lie of the land. It would be like having a good read-through of all the clues in a crossword, sitting on your hands so you weren’t tempted to jot things down, before starting the actual clue-solving. And not to mention excellent fodder for another letter to Mrs B and the girls.
Fen entered the kitchen and smiled at an elderly man who was sitting at the head of the long, well-scrubbed wooden table.
‘Good evening,’ she greeted the old man in her perfect French and was relieved when he looked up at her and smiled. His skin was deeply tanned and even more deeply wrinkled and his white hair floated like a halo above his head, the bald patch in the middle making him look like a medieval monk. How apt, for the setting of this vast medieval kitchen, Fen thought.
Before he could say much more than a quick greeting back, Sophie Bernard strode into the room, shouting at the man behind her, who held a young boy in his arms while another was being dragged along by his mucky hand. Both were dirty with soil and dust and Fen caught the end of the conversation and realised that the man was being told off for letting the young boys play out in the vines so late in the day.
‘Now there is no time to wash their dirty faces, Pierre. And today we have another English…’ Sophie had paused as she noticed Fen standing near the tabl
e. ‘Well, good, here we have you and on time. Pierre, for goodness’ sake, get those children to the table.’
Fen stood aside and let the children past. The youngest one peered up at her, frowned, and said, ‘Who dis, mama?’ at least that’s what Fen thought he said; her ability to understand French was one thing, but toddler-speak was quite another. Fen looked down at the blond-haired child and winked, while, luckily, Sophie Bernard took the cue and introduced Fen to the family.
‘Miss Churche, this is my youngest, but perhaps loudest, son, Benoit.’ She walked over to him and ruffled his blond mop, then patted him on the bottom and encouraged him into the old man’s waiting arms. ‘And Jean-Jacques is there hiding behind my husband, Pierre.’ At this point, Pierre lifted up the larger boy, still by Fen’s estimate only about six years old, into his arms.
Fen waved at him but got nothing but the back of his head in reply as he buried his face into his father’s shoulder. She smiled as she noticed Pierre absent-mindedly play with the little curl of brown hair that sat at the nape of his son’s neck, before he gently set him down on one of the chairs around the table.
‘I wouldn’t worry about him,’ Sophie reassured Fen. ‘Ever since he was a baby, he’s been in my skirts and hiding behind chair legs. Our little coward, eh, poppet?’
Fen wasn’t sure if she should nod and agree with Sophie’s comment about her son, and judging by the expression on her husband’s face, he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of his eldest son being introduced to a stranger in such a way. He looked like he was about to speak up for the child when Sophie continued.
A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1) Page 5