“Oh,” Mrs. Griffeth exclaimed, her hand flying apologetically to her breast. “Present company excepted, of course. You young ladies are . . . are not . . . ” She appealed to Caitlin.
“Are mature and considerate,” Caitlin offered with a warm smile. For the first time in days, she felt the familiar warmth of good fellowship that had been the hallmark of her previous tours. And the success of the evening was attributable to Farthing’s absence. The notion that she could ask him to leave, with a full refund, had just occurred to her when the tower door opened. Her heart leapt to her throat, it could only be Farthing, come to poison the evening with his presence.
The missing girls spilled over the threshold on a tide of apologies that were delivered with exaggerated sincerity. Delilah’s ankle, Caitlin noticed, was completely healed.
Mrs. Griffeth flashed a dubious glance from Caitlin to Mr. Piper, as if to say ‘I told you so.’ Piper, blinking repeatedly to bring the girls into focus, adopted them, without ado, as fellow travelers. “Don’t you worry about it,” he announced reassuringly. “Don’t you give it a thought.”
Introductions were made, which Caitlin knew would have to be repeated at their next meeting.
“You know,” Heather declared, once the group had redistributed itself around the fire, “they make a wine from walnuts around here.”
“Quercy Noix,” said Caitlin. “It’s an aperitif.”
“Well,” said Heather,” I don’t know the difference between an aperitif and my elbow, but I’ll tell you one thing . . . ” There was a long pause.
“Tell us what, dear?” Mrs. Griffeth prompted.
Heather looked at Mrs. Griffeth as if she’d just materialized from thin air. “Huh?”
“You were about to tell us something,” Piper offered helpfully.
“I was?”
Delilah surrendered to a fit of giggles, in which she was soon joined by Heather and, to greater and lesser degrees, the rest of the group. The laughter, attached as it was to nothing in particular, subsided gradually, according to the humor of each individual, into a little chorus of sighs and sniffs.
“Hell of a thing to do to walnuts,” Heather decided philosophically, and at once the gathering erupted into full-throated guffaws.
Caitlin, who found herself laughing uncontrollably, despite the fact she didn’t know what was so funny, knew she had surpassed her limit. Wiping tears from her eyes, she pushed her glass toward the middle of the table. As the laughter abated, she said, “Well, we’re glad you’re both safely back among us.” She wanted to add a parental injunction for them to be more thoughtful of their hostess, who had left the room immediately upon their arrival, but felt it wasn’t her place.
Mrs. Griffeth, intoxicated by good company, if not the tea she’d been drinking all evening, stood up with an announcement. “If I don’t get to my room in short order, there’ll be an accident!” Failing to cleanly negotiate the sharp turn between the end of the sofa and the chess table, she bumped one of the pieces to the floor. She picked it up and inspected it. “A knight,” she said, stroking its head. “There, there. Good knight.” Her eyes lit up at the unintentional pun. “Good knight!” She laughed convivially. “Good night!” With a wave and a flourish she departed the room, a none-to-subtle train of AvonRendezvous dissipating slowly in her wake. A general chorus of ‘good-nights’ followed her to the tower door, which opened just as she reached for the knob. “Oh my goodness, Mr. Farthing! You startled me.”
She pressed by him, a little closer than necessary.
The sound of Farthing’s voice had an instantly sobering effect on the little congregation, with the exception of Heather and Delilah who seemed to find everything amusing, and had no previous experience of Farthing to temper their high spirits.
“I have that effect on women,” said the unwelcome guest.
“Oh, Mr. Farthing!” Frances gushed, then, remembering her errand, added, “I really must go. I’ll see you in the morning!” She sang from the stairs.
“Not if I see you first,” said Farthing for the benefit of the celebrants as he approached the fire. “I see you’ve muddled through without me.”
“Mr. Farthing,” Caitlin acknowledged cordially, though the spirit of warm fellowship had beaten a hasty retreat.
Farthing cast a caustic eye on Mr. Wagner, who had produced a camera and was framing a close-up of Robespierre and the fish. “Take care you don’t stare at the bubbles too long, Wagner. I doubt any of us are qualified to break the spell if you should hypnotize yourself.” He challenged the harmless man with a glance, but Wagner ignored the bait.
Jill, returning from the kitchen to deposit cheese sandwiches in front of the girls, added another log to the fire. “Would you care for a drink, Mr. Farthing?” she asked perfunctorily.
Farthing sank into a plush leather chair to Piper’s right and regarded Heather and Delilah, who were still giggling privately, at which he seemed to take personal offense. “Looks like this group could use a designated driver, so I think I’ll just have coffee, if it’s not too much trouble.” He turned to Jill and smiled broadly. “Decaf, please.” He knew Jill had already cleaned the kitchen and that making a whole pot of decaffine was both a nuisance and a waste.
“The coffee’s gone, Mr. Farthing,” Caitlin interjected, before Jill could respond.
“Gone?” Farthing said mockingly. “You mean, there’s no more coffee in the place?”
“You know what I mean,” Caitlin replied. “There’s none made.”
“Good!” said Farthing, slapping the arm of the chair. “I prefer fresh.” He looked at Jill. “Cream and sugar, please. No rush.” Piper inhaled mightily to protest, but his brain, befogged by the recent Bacchanalia, wasn’t equal to the task. He lapsed into a study of his glass, in the rusty gold liquid of which he fancied he saw one of Mrs. Griffeth’s fairies, one that bore an uncanny resemblance to Jill, who, upon closer inspection, it proved to be.
“So, these are our bad pennies,” said Farthing, directing his attention to the girls. In the corner of his eye he noted with satisfaction that Jill had gone to fulfill her commission. “You’ve given us a lot of worry these last two nights.”
The girls, who were huddled in pleasant conspiracy, seemed oblivious to the statement. Farthing, accustomed to being the center of attention, leaned toward the girls and repeated himself, a little louder.
Delilah looked up at him. “I beg your pardon? Are you talking to us?” she said with a bright smile.
“You’ve been wandering the countryside after dark, with wild boars and murderers roaming the shadows. We’ve all been worried about you.”
The girls looked at each other in mute surprise, then burst out laughing for no apparent reason.
For once, Caitlin was pleased to see, Farthing was completely nonplused. To the girls he was just a nameless, faceless middle-aged man.
“Caitlin,” said Mrs. Griffeth from the tower door, her voice tinged with urgency. “Could I see you for a moment?”
Caitlin got up and crossed the room. “Mrs. Griffeth? I thought we’d seen the last of you ‘til morning.”
“Someone’s been in my room,” Mrs. Griffeth’s rejoined in a mirthless whisper.
“What?”
Mrs. Griffeth took Caitlin’s elbow and tugged her up the stairs.
Her room, the largest in the chateau, looked out over the rear of the estate, where a long, steeply sloping meadow disappeared into a thick overgrowth of forest. The large canopied bed had not been occupied since morning. Indeed, the whole room, aside from a night dress laid purposefully upon the Queen Anne armchair, might be a set-piece in a museum, and reflected a fastidiousness which contrasted sharply with Caitlin’s impression of Mrs. Griffeth’s customary feather-headedness.
“It looks perfect,” said Caitlin.
“Thank you,” Frances demurred. “I enjoy orderliness.” Caitlin always found housekeeping a challenge, and resented its demands on her time, with every task belying the adage �
�a job well done need never be done again.’ “Well, we’ve been here three days, and this room looks like no one’s been in it. Mine, on the other hand, looks like a mobile home after a tornado. You’d make Martha Stewart green with envy.”
Mrs. Griffeth evidently took this as a great compliment, and protested modestly.
“But, how can you tell someone’s been in your things?”
“There are footprints on the carpet,” said Mrs. Griffeth, bending toward Caitlin and lowering her voice to a confidential whisper. “I always check.”
Caitlin would not have checked. It never would have occurred to her. “Really? Maybe it was the maid.”
“No. I know her footprints. These are larger. A man’s, I dare say.”
Wishful thinking, Caitlin thought. “Did you lock the door when you came down to dinner?”
“Goodness gracious, no. I never lock my door at home, I can’t think why I should do so in the middle of a foreign country. That wouldn’t seem very trusting, would it?”
Caitlin refrained from emphasizing the obvious in flaws in this magnanimous philosophy. “Did you find anything missing?”
“Well, I haven’t looked,” said Frances. “I mean, I came right down to you. I was so upset. Who do you suppose would do such a thing?”
“Why don’t we look around?” Caitlin suggested.
Frances readily agreed. “Yes, yes.” She began to run her hands distractedly over the furniture, a sort of Braille investigative technique in which Caitlin didn’t feel much confidence, and talked incessantly, which was her way of coping. “I’ve always been very particular about footprints on my carpets.
“Did you know there’s a town somewhere hereabouts called Condom?” She asked the question as if it followed logically.
“Condom,” said Caitlin, putting the emphasis on the second syllable. “Yes. It’s a lovely town. A friend of mine does wine tours, and takes his people there for the Armagnac.”
Frances had broadened her absent-minded search to the bedposts, which apparently provided little in the way of evidence. “Terrible name. I can’t think what they were thinking naming a town after a prophylactic.” She massaged the bedpost. “Of course, they’re French,” she allowed.
Caitlin let her eyes wander toward the window for relief. She wondered if everyone, in all the history of this ancient part of France, had had such a conversation. Her attention was arrested suddenly by the brief flash of a light from the fringes of the forest at the top of the pasture.
“What on earth to do you suppose that is?” she said, walking toward the balcony.
“What, dear? Have you found what’s missing?”
Caitlin let the illogic pass without comment. “I thought I saw a light up there, at the top of the hill.”
“Again?” said Mrs. Griffeth. She joined Caitlin at the window.
“Again? You’ve seen it before?”
“Yes. Last night after I came to bed.”
“That’s the way the girls came home,” Caitlin said to herself, at the same time recalling Heather’s mention of someone following them with a light.
“Is it? Well, someone must be looking after them then,” Mrs. Griffeth rationalized. “How sweet.”
The reflexive shudder that gripped Caitlin’s shoulders was not sponsored by sweetness. Her first thought was to get photographic evidence. “You have Max film in your camera, Mrs. Griffeth?”
“Yes. Yes I do,” Frances replied, toddling toward the ornate bureau on which her treasures were arrayed in descending order, according to size. “That’s what I bought in that little village today. As you suggested.”
“Good,” said Caitlin, her eyes fixed on the spot where she’d seen the light. “May I see it, please?” She held out her hand.
“Why, that’s odd.”
“What?” Caitlin snapped impatiently.
“The film counter says ‘one’.”
“So? It’s new film, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Griffeth, still not relinquishing the camera. “But I’d taken at least four shots with it.” Caitlin turned from the window as the older woman continued. “There was the one of the old farmer relieving himself by the roadside that I took from the van on the way back here – my husband would never believe such a thing unless he saw a picture; then there was one of the field of wilted sunflowers. They looked like they were praying. Then the little wheelbarrow down by the gate that’s filled with pansies. Then another shot of the gatehouse. I just think that’s the most picturesque . . . ” She looked at the camera quizzically and handed it to Caitlin. “You don’t think it’s broken, do you?”
The counter was definitely on ‘one’. “Turn off the lights for a moment. I’m going to open it.” Frances did as she was told. Caitlin pressed the film advance with practiced fingers and the door popped open. She stuck her thumb in the film cradle. “It’s empty.”
“Empty?” said Mrs. Griffeth. “How can that be?” She turned on the light.
Caitlin thought of something. “That’s what the person who came to your room was looking for!”
“My film?”
“I think so.”
“But, why?” said Mrs. Griffeth with profound amazement. “As I said, the only pictures on the roll were . . . ”
“I know. I know,” said Caitlin quickly, wanting to be spared the chronology. “But did . . . whoever it was . . . know you’d put a new roll in, or did they think they were stealing the one that was in there before?”
“I finished that after I took the picture of the butterfly on Joan of Arc. I can’t wait to see if pictures really turn out in such low light without a flash.” Her recent loss was washed away on a brief tide of enthusiasm.
From the corner of her eye, Caitlin caught another flash of the light. This time, though, it was closer. Not fifty yards from the back of the barn.
Chapter Seven–Missing Things
The guests had dispersed into smaller groups by the time Caitlin returned to the dining room – Mrs. Griffeth was too distraught to face her companions when any one of them might have purloined her film. Messieurs Piper and Wagner were playing cribbage in the cozy alcove at the back of the room. Jill had unfolded a well-used map on the floor in front of the fire and was giving Heather and Delilah directions to Domme, which they planned to visit the following day.
“Jill,” said Caitlin, approaching the group. “Do you have a torch I could borrow?”
Jill got to her feet. “A torch?” She was too practiced a hostess to add, ‘what on earth for?’, but Caitlin, reading the question in her eyes, said she wanted to check the tires on the van.
“We seem to be two guests shy,” Caitlin observed, as Jill produced the flashlight from the games cupboard and handed it to her.
Jill took a quick inventory of the room. “Amber took tea up to her mother some time ago. I don’t expect we’ll see her again tonight.”
“And Farthing?”
“I didn’t notice him leave,” said Jill, mildly perplexed. “When I saw him last, he was over there.” She pointed to an overstuffed chair in the corner, surrounded by bookcases. “He was reading quietly, so I thought it best to . . . ”
“Let sleeping dogs lie?”
“A lot of sense in those old maxims, don’t you think?”
Caitlin smiled. “I won’t be a minute.”
Outside, the night was profoundly still. The breeze was busy looking under leaves, more from habit than interest. Large drops of dew condensed on leaves and, like bungie jumpers too loosely tied, plunged to their fate, producing a rhythmic patter falling about her like an indecipherable tapping from a nearby cell. Geese and ducks clustered in the reeds, exchanging guttural ‘goodnights’ and, overhead, not a star to be seen. The low clouds, propped in place by the taller trees, were heavy and fat with rain.
For a moment, in the comfort of the chateau, Caitlin entertained the notion of asking Mr. Piper to come with her. She had fought back the impulse as helpless and female. Now though, as she climbe
d the slippery fences and negotiated the cow path made unfamiliar by darkness, she wondered if the impulse mightn’t have been simple good sense. Even in his present condition, Mr. Piper’s presence would give any wandering boar or marauding serial killer second thoughts.
Skirting the pig sties off the kitchen yard, Caitlin felt her way up hill, steadying herself on the rough rail fence, toward the general area where she’d seen the light. Only when she’d secreted herself in a pool of deep shadows under a walnut tree did it occur to her that she was completely defenseless. Too late, the realization that a murderer was wandering the countryside presented the possibility that her fact-finding mission could easily metamorphose into a life-and-death struggle. She withdrew further into the shadows, listening, waiting, fighting the urge to turn on the flashlight – or to run back in the house like a frightened schoolgirl.
In contrast to the gathering gloom, the big bedroom windows overlooking the hillside punctured the night with warm, oblong rectangles of light, slices of which lay on the ground in rumpled blankets of woven gold and green.
A motion in one of the windows caught her eye. It was Amber, wrapped loosely in a towel, apparently returning from her bath. She retrieved her pajamas from the end of her bed and let the towel drop carelessly to the floor, exposing herself to the prying eyes of the night.
It was the perfectly natural action of someone utterly free from any fear they might be seen. Caitlin had done the same thing herself. No doubt so had Heather and Delilah, whose bedrooms were also at the back of the chateau. It would have been a beautiful shot.
A sudden sound, like a low-throated growl just uphill from the lean-to that sheltered the hay, arrested Caitlin’s attention. She held her breath and listened. For a moment, all she could hear was the throbbing of her pulse in her ears. Then she heard it again, though more distant this time, and not a growl, but the muffled laughter of men.
Dead and Breakfast (Caitlyn Craft Mysteries Book 1) Page 6