It was his tone, and not his words, that made my mouth curve, and though I quickly dipped my head his eyes were keen enough to spot the smile, just the same.
“It’s only that you sound so much like my mother,” I explained, with a shake of my head. “She used to talk to me like that.”
“Ah. Well.” He looked faintly embarrassed. “With you I’m always too familiar, I know. Please forgive me. Sometimes I look at you and see instead my sister—you are very like her. She also had this sadness that does not belong in one so young.” His eyes grew soft, remembering. “Life was not always very kind to Isabelle.”
My smile died. A faint prescient shiver chased along my spine. “Isabelle?”
François nodded. “My sister. There were three of us, born in this house: myself, and Isabelle, and Jean-Pierre, my brother. I was the youngest, and the only one to carry on in service to the family Valcourt. My brother died in the final days of the last war, and my sister…” He shrugged, and looked away. “She left Chinon not long after the liberation.”
It seemed too wild a thought, but having lived enough to know the world could be quite small at times, I asked the question anyway. “Did your sister ever work at the Hotel de France, Monsieur?”
“Why, yes, but how did you…?” His eyebrows lifted and then fell again with a sudden nod of comprehension. “Of course, you’re staying there. You will have heard the story about Isabelle and Hans. It is romantic, don’t you think? I thought so myself, when I was a boy.”
I agreed that it was most romantic. Except for the ending, I added silently. “Where did she go, your sister,” I asked him, “when she left Chinon?”
“She went away.” A door closed, firmly, and I didn’t venture further. Instead I asked him whether the diamonds had really existed. “Oh yes,” he told me, “they were real diamonds. My sister showed them to me.”
“And they’ve never been found?”
“Isabelle hid them well.” His mouth quirked slightly, with a hint of pride. “Monsieur Muret, he always said that he would find the diamonds. It was for him an obsession, the thought of money. He dug everywhere little holes, down in the cellars and up on the hills, looking for that fistful of jewels, but of course he never found them.”
I sent François a curious look. “Why, ‘of course’?” I asked him.
He smiled cryptically, and shrugged. “Isabelle hid them well,” he said again. “She was very clever, my sister.”
“And very beautiful, I’m told.”
“Yes.” He cleared the coffee pot away and set it with the dishes on the sideboard. “I could find you a photograph, if you would like to see one. Perhaps you will see then why I am reminded of Isabelle, when I look at you.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “I’ve a fondness for old photographs.”
“Then I shall find one for you,” he promised me. “Perhaps tomorrow, when I have time to sort through my albums.”
“I believe,” I told him, slowly, “that I’ve already seen your sister, in a way.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Yes. She haunts the hotel corridors.”
His eyes forgave my superstition. “That is a legend, Mademoiselle, nothing more. And it is quite impossible. There are no ghosts.”
I wasn’t so sure. I saw again that gentle shadow drifting past my bed, its soft voice urging me to “Follow…” Follow what?
“Unless,” said François, reconsidering, “you count the living. Then I would have to say that you were right.” His lined face softened as he looked at me. “The Hotel de France this week is filled with ghosts.”
Chapter 26
…notice of a change in the dark world
Was lispt about the acacias,
The hotel’s entrance lobby seemed dim and deserted for the time of day. Most mornings, cleaners bustled round the bar and breakfast room, the hoover doing battle with both typewriter and telephone to see which of the three could outperform the others. But this morning there was silence. Thierry, slouched behind the reception desk, was the only sign of life.
His eyes were strained and rimmed with red, and when he greeted me his voice sounded rough, as though his throat were hurting him. I wanted to say some word of comfort, but my own nerves were still raw and vulnerable and I was much too tired for tears. Besides, I thought, we each of us knew how the other felt. There was no need to say the words. “You’re on your own again, are you?” I asked him. “Where have your aunt and uncle gone?”
“They take Simon up to Paris, to meet his parents at the airport. They will be back tonight, I think.” He paused a moment. “The police came here at breakfast. They have taken everything of Paul’s, everything but this.” He reached beneath the counter and lifted the forgotten item up, to show me. It was Paul’s copy of Ulysses. “I found this in the bar. My aunt said that you finished reading it. You finished it for Paul.”
My own throat felt rather painful, just then. I coughed to clear it. “Yes.”
“I wondered, maybe… do you want to keep it? Because, if you do not, then I would like…” He broke off, frowning, and tried again. “I thought that I might like to read this book. To learn the English better.”
I didn’t bother telling him that Joyce’s tangled prose was not the best source for a student of the language. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, not to Thierry. I knew what he was struggling to say. “You keep it, Thierry,” I said gently. “I think Paul would have liked that.”
“Thank you.” He tucked the book away again, out of sight behind the overhanging counter. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Where are the others?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, uncaring. “Out.”
Thank heaven for that, I thought. Aloud I said: “I’ll just go on upstairs, then. If anyone asks, tell them I’m sleeping, will you?”
“Yes, of course.” He pulled himself back with an effort, and showed me a smile that held a hint of his old cockiness. “Don’t worry,” he assured me, “I will see that you are not disturbed.”
***
I did sleep, as it happened—a restless sleep of troubled dreams that ended as the sun was striking full upon my window. My first thought was that the château bell had woken me, because even as I turned my face from the light I heard the deeper echo of the sister chime from City Hall.
It didn’t penetrate too fully. The memory of sleep lingered like a drug, tangling my thoughts and weighting me to the wide bed. I was still lying there, listening to the fourth and final chime fade ringing through the rooftops, when I heard somebody moving in the room next door. A faint thump, followed by the unmistakable crash of a curtain rod falling from its hooks. I smiled faintly into the pillow, and thought: The boys are back. And then, in a painful rush that burned like blood returning to a frozen limb, I remembered.
I opened my eyes.
The noises in the next room had grown louder, now. I heard a scuffling footfall and a burst of boyish laughter, and the creaking of the window swinging inward on its aging hinges. Stumbling to my feet, I tugged on jeans and a loose sweater and went out into the hall to investigate. I’d probably not have done it if I’d been awake; but I wasn’t awake, not really, and this tiny part of me still hoped… still hoped that…
“Yes?” The door to the boys’ room opened to my knock and a tall young woman, blond and florid and full of life, peered politely out at me. “Can I help you?” She spoke in English, but it wasn’t her first language. Swedish, I decided, or perhaps Danish. Something Scandinavian.
I shook my head, my smile an unconvincing cover for the stab of disappointment. “No, I…I was looking for someone else. I’m sorry.”
That only made it worse. She looked at me with feminine suspicion. “There is only my husband.”
I rushed to fix the blunder. “Oh, no, I meant that I must have the wrong room. Sorry t
o have bothered you.”
I don’t think I completely reassured her. The round blue eyes were rather glacial when she finally shut the door, and I felt a twinge of guilt. Her husband, poor chap, was no doubt going to be called upon to answer a question or two. Stupid, I chided myself. What had I been expecting? Some sort of miracle, that’s what—Paul Lazarus… Lazarus, risen from death… only I was old enough to know that miracles didn’t happen.
I suddenly felt very much alone.
Downstairs, the cool and shadowed bar was empty. On the radio, a folk-rock balladeer was strumming out a sad poetic tune, and the candles burned for no one on the low round tables. The tall glass doors stood open to the afternoon breeze. I walked on through and crossed into the fountain square, into the sunlight, where the bright white tables and red chairs were clustered, waiting, underneath the acacias.
I wanted to sit alone, but Garland wouldn’t hear of it. She all but dragged me to the table she was sharing with her husband, and I was much too tired to argue with her. Apart from which, I rather liked Jim Whitaker. He smiled kindly at me as I took the chair beside him. “Can we buy you a drink?” he asked.
“No, thank you. I’m quite fine.”
“Well, I could use another,” he confessed, raising his hand to catch the server’s eye. To my surprise it wasn’t Thierry who came over, but the flustered pretty Gabrielle.
“Such a bother,” Garland said, as Gabrielle went off to fetch Jim’s Pernod, “when Thierry isn’t working. I mean, he’s a pain sometimes, but at least he gets your order straight. I ask you, does this look like a Manhattan?”
I confessed I’d never seen one. “Where is Thierry?” I asked.
She took a look around, leaned forward and stage-whispered the answer: “Police. They came to get him after lunch, to ask him questions. About Paul. Do you know,” she leaned in closer, “they’ve started an investigation. That’s what Martine said. They don’t think that it was an accident, Paul falling off that wall.”
“Garland…” Jim warned.
“What? It’s common knowledge, dear, she’s bound to hear about it. Nazis,” she said, turning back to me.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s who did it, just you watch. They’ve come back for the diamonds, the way they did in Germany, where Jim and I used to live. Don’t you remember? I told you all about—” She paused, distracted by a scene just past my shoulder at the entrance to the rue Voltaire. “Well, well, well, isn’t this interesting? Look who’s here.”
Jim and I turned to look, as we were meant to. In front of the phone box, two police cars had drawn up to park against the curb. The drivers got out first, young officers in uniform who both deferred respectfully to an older plain-clothed colleague whose calm unhurried movements marked him as a man of high authority.
“His name’s Prieur,” said Garland, when I asked. “I think he’s a Chief Superintendent, or something—someone important, anyway. From Paris. He came to the hotel this morning, during breakfast, to ask us all some questions about Paul. Very nice man,” was her considered opinion. “Real class, if you know what I mean. And he smiles at you when he’s talking, not like those other policemen. I gather,” she added, leaning toward me, “that the local boys aren’t too happy to have him sticking his nose into their investigation.”
I glanced again at the two young officers. They didn’t look disgruntled, but appearances meant nothing. One of them was walking back toward the second patrol car. “But surely,” I said, frowning, “if they called the poor man down from Paris, they’d be pleased to have him here.”
“Well, that’s just it, darling. They didn’t call him down. He was already here, at his country house… where did he say it was, Jim, do you remember? Oh well, anyway, it’s near Chinon. And he heard about Paul’s accident, and thought he’d see if he could be of any help. It’s because of him,” she told me, “that they started the investigation. Or at least, that’s what I hear.”
I didn’t think to question where she’d heard it. Women like Garland Whitaker always seemed able to tap into the local grapevine with shocking efficiency, unhindered by barriers of language and culture. She’d been kept well occupied, this morning. “This Prieur man,” she went on, having fortified herself with a sip of her unsatisfactory Manhattan, “was the fellow who came to drag away poor Thierry, for questioning.”
Her husband smiled. “Come on now, honey, I’d hardly call that dragging. The man was pretty polite about it, from what I could see.”
“Well,” Garland sniffed, “Thierry didn’t want to go, you could tell. And anyhow, my point was that since Mr. Prieur was the one who came for Thierry, I’d have thought that he’d be busy right now asking Thierry questions, but it looks as though he’s found some other person now… look, just who is that, I wonder?”
She meant the middle-aged man climbing from the rear of the second patrol car, straightening his back with a motion that spoke of weariness and apprehension. I could have told her, from that distance, who the man was. I could have said: “That’s Victor Belliveau. He’s a poet, quite a famous poet, and he lives just up the river.” It might have been my own distaste for gossip that kept me silent, or the fact that it satisfied me knowing and not telling her, denying her that bit of information. Whatever the reason, I said nothing.
“He must be somebody.” Garland lifted her chin like a hound sniffing the quarry’s elusive scent. “A suspect, maybe, do you think? Really, it’s just so exciting, to be in the middle of a murder case.”
“If it was murder.” Her husband took the rational point of view. “In which case, we’re probably all under suspicion. Even you.”
She looked vaguely surprised at the thought. “Me? Oh, I don’t think so, darling.” The four men had moved off now, out of sight, along the rue Voltaire. Deprived of her entertainment, Garland sighed and turned round again in her chair, facing me across the table. She was drawing breath to speak when voices raised in argument came filtering down through the feathery branches of the acacias, from an open hotel window. The voices spoke neither English nor French, and so I didn’t understand a word of what they said, but the passionate delivery promised some fresh scandal, and Garland tipped her head appreciatively. “That sounds like the young couple that just arrived. The ones that Gabrielle put into the boys’ room—and Thierry isn’t going to like that, I can tell you, there’ll be feathers flying when he finds out what she’s done. But like I said to Jim, it’s just a room, and you can’t keep shrines when you’re supposed to be making a profit.” She paused, and listened to a few more lines of unintelligible arguing, and clucked her tongue. “Such a shame, they were a cute couple. Swedes, I think she said. On honeymoon. I wonder what she’s mad about.”
I rather suspected she was giving the poor chap the devil on my account, demanding to know why some other woman had come knocking at the door, but I kept my suspicions to myself. Fortunately, Garland Whitaker wasn’t seeking my opinion.
“Maybe it’s the room that’s unlucky,” she mused. “Maybe Thierry was right after all, about that French girl killing herself in that room at the end of the war. You know, we only have Monsieur Chamond’s word for it that there isn’t a ghost. I think…” A glimpse of movement through the windows of the hotel bar interrupted her train of thought. I twisted round and saw, as Garland did, the tall proud figure of the Swedish woman, seating herself at the deserted bar with an indignant flip of her long pale hair. Garland’s eyes grew predatory. “Will you excuse me for a minute? I think I need to freshen up my drink.”
She bustled off, clutching her empty glass with purpose. Across the table, Jim Whitaker’s gaze held kind apology. “She can’t help it,” he said. “It fascinates her, other people’s lives.”
I summoned up a smile for him. They were very different, Jim and Garland. I’d rarely met a couple so ill-matched. The stray thought made me look again toward the open window of the ro
om beside my own, where the honeymooning husband was presumably now sitting by himself.
“She’s wrong about the room, you know,” I said, remembering what François had told me earlier about his luckless sister. “Isabelle didn’t kill herself there. In fact, I don’t believe she killed herself at all.”
“I know.” He lifted his drink, slowly. “She died of cancer in Savannah, Georgia, twenty years ago.” Above the glass, his eyes swung calmly round to lock with mine. “She was my mother.”
Chapter 27
See that there be no traitors in your camp:
“It made a nice enough story,” said Jim Whitaker, “in the bar, the other night. And it was accurate, for the most part—all except the ending. Hans may have died at the end of the war, but Isabelle…” He shook his head. “She wanted to, she thought about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to offend God any more than she had already. So she did the next best thing. She married my father.”
Above our heads the sunlight filtered through a cool and trembling canopy of green and set the shadows swaying, and the fountain sprayed the pavement beside us. The chattering confusion of the patrons at the other tables blended into one soft muted background, like an artist’s wash upon a colored canvas. And Jim Whitaker, who’d always seemed to me so bland, so indistinct, now stood out clearly in relief.
“He met her just after the liberation,” he went on, still in that calm and quiet voice. “Here in Chinon. He felt sorry for her, I think. The French didn’t have much sympathy for collaborators of any kind, and everyone knew that my mother had been fooling around with a German officer. She didn’t have an easy time of it. My father offered her an out. He married her in private, took her home to the States, and that was that.”
The dappled sunlight danced across my face, and I shaded my eyes as I looked at him. “So the story has a happy ending, then.”
The Splendour Falls Page 25