Rose, Rose Where Are You?

by Nicola Thorne

  Laurent turned away from his brother, his eyes filled with tears. It was a terrible tale we were listening to, more terrible because we had no idea what was true and what wasn’t.

  “Go, brother,” Laurent said. “Go now, right out of our lives. Don’t ever communicate with me again. Communicate with lawyers if you wish but leave me alone. As my brother, I love you, I remember our childhood together, but how can I ever forgive you? What you did in your youth is one thing; but what you have done just recently is something else. You could have come to me and asked me for the jewels; I would have given them to you. I might even have forgiven you for what you were forced to do during the war and for which you were truly contrite. I would have tried to understand.’

  “He didn’t know you hadn’t become as twisted and warped as he had,” Tom said bitterly. “You’d grown up in different worlds – his tainted by his past and the guilt of what he must have known he’d done.”

  Slowly Henri made for the door. Lisa rushed up to him. “I’m coming too,” she said. “Don’t leave me with them.”

  “I don’t want you,” Henri said. “You’ve brought all this upon me, insinuating yourself into the household, to kill my family. If I’d have known ...”

  Lisa threw herself at him striking his chest. “You knew, of course you knew, but once you found out about the jewels you got so greedy you didn’t care what became of anyone.”

  Lisa seized her husband by his neck. The story and the spectacle had so affected me I thought I was going to be sick. Suddenly Henri, in a superhuman effort, threw Lisa to the floor, where she lay sobbing. He went over to the door and stood on the threshold, looking at Laurent.

  “Forgive me, brother? Try. I am just a weak man, not a wicked one. She” – he cast contemptuous eyes at the woman sobbing on the floor – “is the one for the guillotine. She has no pity.”

  Neither, I thought bitterly, had he, if he let Rose cross the bay on foot in the dark knowing quite well the tide was due in.

  No one tried to stop him going. We just stood there staring after him in total silence for a while, in the tired, dejected way of people who have been through a great drama.

  “What shall we do with her?” Tom pointed to Lisa.

  “Leave her,” Laurent said. “They have got nothing.”

  Lisa stopped sobbing and looked up. Again she spoke in German, Tom translating for me. “He has got everything,” she said smiling wickedly. “Piece by piece I took what there was of the Burgunderbeute over to him; it is all in Henri’s house now. Yes, it did exist. He found that out. He traced it through old family archives in the Bibliotheque Nationale. He spent months in Paris, Bruges, and Ghent, doing research. He traced it to the library, the oldest part of the house, and then it was all quite easy. You will find a panel behind the geography section, quite empty now. And he needn’t think he will get away with it. Wherever he goes, I will seek him out.”

  “That should be enough punishment for anyone,” Tom murmured.

  “Poor Nicolas,” I said. “No wonder she was so interested in his boat.”

  “Let’s go,” Laurent said. He stood by the door. “Leave her to find her own way.”

  ‘But …’ Tom looked incredulous ‘You can’t just let them escape. There’s murder …’

  Laurent just flapped his hands shaking his head as if he were too tired to speak. Maybe later he would consider a different plan, but he was too worn out and shocked to know what to do now, and Tom and I certainly weren’t going to do anything dramatic even if it was our business which it wasn’t.

  Henri was no longer in sight as we stumbled out of the house and across the dunes, but as we got to the car park Laurent’s Citroen suddenly leapt forward, Henri driving, and went straight out onto the beach.

  “He’s going to drive across,” Tom cried. “Is it possible?”

  “There’s the canal,” Laurent said. “But he may have a boat there. Let him go, let him go.”

  He turned to the Fiat and sank into the back seat.

  “You drive, Tom,” I said. “I’ve about had it.”

  Tom drove on to the coast road, skirting the trees at the edge of the dunes. As we came round we saw the bay again and in the distance the tiny shape of Laurent’s car heading in the direction of Port Guillaume. Suddenly a Land-Rover started to race towards it, flag flying. We heard from the distance the sound of whistles being blown.

  “Stop!” Laurent cried. “The sluice!”

  “The what?” asked Tom.

  “The gates; they open every day to let the water out, after the tide has receded. Henri will be caught by the water. They are trying to tell him.”

  Tom stopped the car and we jumped out; we were about a mile from the town. But Henri sped on regardless, maybe thinking the police were after him, and the Land-Rover suddenly stopped and two men got out and watched. Laurent put his hands to his face.

  “My brother,” he said.

  The first jet of water, which rolled away from the gates at a terrific pace, turned the speeding car over like a matchbox. If one can imagine a dam that suddenly bursts open taking all in front of it, this had the same kind of effect. Henri never had a chance, and as the water rolled on we saw the car first bobbing like a cork, and then it disappeared out of sight beneath the torrent that swept it out to sea.

  ... A YEAR AFTER

  The tide was out and the newly washed bay gleamed in the late August sunshine. The sand squelched under our toes, and the little creatures left by the sea rushed away from under our bare feet. Tom and I were taking what we called my constitutional, because the doctor said I should have plenty of exercise. But the way Tom and I ambled along one would hardly call it exercise. My enormous paunch protruded in front of me, and I rested my arms comfortably on it as I waddled along.

  The pink brickwork of the chateau sparkled with colour and the shutters had been freshly painted white. All the woodwork was white, too, though the grey conical roofs of the twin turrets still dominated the town.

  The doors of the chateau opened, and Tom and I stopped and watched as the children tumbled down the grand staircase, a young red setter pup frolicking in front of them, a companion for Goofy who followed them at a more sedate pace, as though his adventures had aged him. It was days before he’d appeared at the chateau, slightly the worse for wear, and unable to tell anyone where he’d been, but greeted with rapture by his relieved family. When they saw us, the children came leaping over the wall, and Tom stood in front of me to prevent my being overwhelmed by their enthusiasm.

  “Be careful of our heir,” Tom said to the excited Philippe.

  “The what?”

  “Well, you’re an heir, and Clare’s baby will be our heir. The de Trafford heir.”

  The children laughed and scampered after the puppy, Goofy stopping for an affectionate pat from me before loping sedately after them. They looked sturdy, well, and happy – just as I’d seen them a year ago, before the awful tragedies that had cast deep shadows on their lives. As I looked at them, Tom seemed to know what I was thinking and pressed my arm.

  “It’s all over,” he whispered. “They’ve forgotten.”

  Their father had forgotten too. Our gorgeous butterfly, the fairy prince, was honeymooning in the Caribbean with his new wife Alice - a charming socialite from Boston, to whom the children had taken immediately. She was just like their mother, everyone said.

  Tom and I had come over to Port St Pierre on our way back from the States, where we’d spent six months, and we’d slept in the room where I thought I’d never sleep again. But the ghosts had gone – they’d been vindicated. The children had returned to Paris with their father at the same time we’d left Port St Pierre, and the chateau had been closed for the winter until the arrival of Alice, whom he’d known as a family friend for some years, had made Laurent want to open it up again, to banish the sadness.

  The summer house had been levelled and made into an ornate garden with a fountain, and I’d been told that as the workmen had
dug into the ruins they came across stones of such antiquity that there was no doubt they were part of the original chateau, just as Jeanne had said. The first thing we’d done on our return was to go to Jeanne’s grave in the quiet little cemetery outside the town. How vivid were our memories of all that had gone before as we sadly placed flowers at the foot of her headstone.

  During the months away, we’d discussed Jeanne time and time again; we’d spoken to colleagues about her, but we had not come up with any real explanation, any final solution to the mystery. In my heart I felt that she had an extraordinary sympathy with Joan of Arc that gave her the powers she’d undoubtedly possessed. To some extent I felt she had foreknowledge of her early death but, like Joan, she didn’t know how it would be. As it was, she had died in the noblest manner, saving the family; like her namesake, her courage was an example and an inspiration.

  I thought of Jeanne with a great deal of veneration. My feelings about Rose were more complicated, as her motives were much more abstruse and difficult to define. One suspects that Jeanne knew Rose was up to no good and that Rose was either trying to get rid of Jeanne by spreading stories that would lead to her dismissal or by trying to cast some part of the blame on her.

  I privately felt, in the light of my experiences, that the dead Rose had tried to avenge herself on those responsible and, through me, bring them to justice. Tom, of course, thought otherwise, and who could say which of us was right?

  And my book? That had been difficult to write, and was still unfinished. I had excuses, of course, America and pregnancy, but the real reason was that I couldn’t yet separate the two identities of Jeanne and Joan, and as I wrote about one I kept on seeing the other.

  “You’re day dreaming,” Tom said looking at me. “Tired?”

  “No, just thinking. We must get back, Tom. Michelle is coming to dinner. She’s bringing a nice young doctor from her faculty in Amiens, and I’m hoping for big things.”

  “She’s never got over Laurent,” Tom said, as we turned towards the chateau where we’d been invited to stay for as long as we wanted.

  “Oh, yes, she has; she’s much too practical a girl. That was just fantasy. Laurent wasn’t for her, or for me,” I added slyly. “I’d never have made a marquise. Alice has the style and the inclination. She’s also got money to enable the de Frigecourt family to continue their ducal kind of life.”

  “I should think the jewels would take care of that.” Tom picked up a stick and threw it for Goofy who was still dawdling; the children were way down the bay now with the puppy, paddling in the warm pools.

  “Oh, but they’re heirlooms; you can’t sell those, darling. I think Laurent’s going to lend them permanently to the nation.”

  The discovery of so much of the missing Burgunderbeute, though veiled in mystery as far as the public was concerned, had been one of the stories of the year. A fortune in jewels, uncut stones, rings, clasps and even some of the famous hats of Duke Charles, the last of the Valois dukes, encrusted with gems. The story was that they’d been hidden for centuries in the library, the oldest part of the house, and photographers came and took pictures of the panel in the alcove where the jewels had allegedly been found.

  In fact, they’d been found in Henri’s house, together with an amazing selection of old maps and documents that he’d amassed over the years in his quest for the missing fortune, as he’d gone from country to country, museum to museum, in search of the missing clue to the Valois dukes of Burgundy and their wealth.

  Henri’s body was yielded up by the sea near Dieppe, and a quiet ceremony preceded burial in the family vault in the church opposite the chateau. Laurent was grieved about his brother, but his feelings were undoubtedly mixed, and I imagine he put it all out of his mind as quickly as he could and went off to propose to Alice. Dear Laurent, ephemeral but charming, and always a friend.

  Lisa vanished without a trace, and as for the rest of the business, as in any real life story , some things can be explained and some can’t. Some events were obviously accidents – the boys’ falls, for example – and some were clearly an attempt by Henri or his wife to destroy his family.As Tom had said murder was involved, but how could you ever prove it? I knew Laurent would never want to implicate his brother.

  We who were closely involved knew this, but others could only guess. Everyone had said how ridiculous it was to have made a fire in the summer house in winter, when the chimney must have been clogged up with leaves and old birds’ nests. But if the town and the citizens of Port St Pierre knew the truth, and I suspected they did or some of it , they stuck loyally to their premier citizen, their lord. The de Frigecourts, they reasoned, had had enough trouble already. Why should they have more?

  “Tom, go after the children. I’ll sit here for a while and wait for you.” The exertion of the walk up the slight sandy hill had me puffing, and I sank onto the keel of an upturned boat, while Tom went off after Goofy towards the shoreline. They had a new nanny now, a sensible girl from Harrogate with impeccable references, carefully chosen by me before we left for Chicago. She’d be helping to get their tea, and dear Madame Barbou would be doing her usual magical things in the kitchen.

  I sniffed the air, utterly content. Tom and I deeply happy with each other and the thought of our baby. Yes, it was a heavenly day, hot, breezy, my beautiful bay at its shimmering best, just like this time last year. I glanced up at the chateau and the child in my womb seemed to jump in tune with the shock I had. By the window in Jeanne’s old room, the turret room, now unused, I saw a movement; then a woman dressed in black appeared and stared out fixedly, first down at me and then over at the children splashing in the water. Despite the day, I felt my flesh grow so cold that goose pimples stood out on my bare brown arms.

  I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked again, just to be sure, but there was no one there.

  Contents

  ROSE, ROSE, WHERE ARE YOU?

  Publishing History

  Praise for Rose, Rose, where are you?

  Synopsis

  Authors preface 2012

  Author’s Note

  A LONG TIME BEFORE . .

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  ... A YEAR AFTER