by Aileen Izett
“It is precisely because of the Kumonos that that girl is here.”
He smiled at me. “Yep, the one you call Eveline. Where are those wonderful Dufour panels?”
Tom stood beside the spiral staircase in the middle of the tower’s lower room. He didn’t say anything. He just turned slowly to look as I drew back the curtains from each of the four windows.
“No wonder you’re delighted.”
“I am.” I sat on the bottom tread of the stairs better to appreciate the beauty. “It’s a conservator’s dream, a once-in-a-lifetime find.”
Tom ruffled my hair. I looked up.
He held out his arms. “Am I forgiven?”
“You should have told me there is stuff going on here…” In my mind’s eye, I suddenly saw a young man fall out of a tree in the woods behind the château.
“Are you okay Sis?” Tom asked. “Are you okay?”
When he saw my mattress in the upper room, a look of concern crossed his face.
“Aren’t there any proper beds? I don’t know if my back will take sleeping on the floor.”
“Eveline’s the only one with a bedstead.”
“There aren’t any others?”
“Down in that room I told you about. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. I wondered when you were going to show me.”
So we descended into the nether regions of the château.
Chapter 30
Tom surveyed the rudimentary kitchen. “It’s more basic than I thought.”
“You could have an in-built area for here for cooking.” I showed him where I meant, where the sink and range were.
“Later, I’ve run out of the old spondoolies at the moment.”
It had been difficult to get Tom to transfer funds for the château but the idea that he had run out of money was too ridiculous to contemplate.
“You? Never. What have you spent it on? Another château?”
He laughed. “Well, the state of this kitchen obviously hasn’t bothered you. You don’t look as if you’ve spent much time cooking.”
“You know me. I haven’t cooked properly for years.”
Back at home, Philip cooked. It was his way of relaxing after a day at the office. I liked to grow the vegetables at the bottom of our garden: carrots, parsnips, cabbage, peas, beans… In very small quantities because there were only the two of us.
Thinking about the garden, I realised how much I longed to bite into a fresh green English pea. I’d eaten too many tinned petits-pois.
“You’re a bit thin.”
I could see myself through Tom’s eyes almost as well as I could see him standing in front of me. I knew I was scraggy and unkempt.
“Thanks.” I led him out through the open door and onto the cobblestones of the archway.
He pushed the door open, not commenting on the shattered lock. I watched Tom pick his way over the discarded dustsheets.
“Aren’t you coming?” He asked, over his shoulder.
He spied the bed bases almost immediately. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to get one up to the first floor.”
Absentmindedly, he tilted the rocking chair and the empty chair creaked in the stillness, making me think of the man with no clothes.
“Stop.”
Tom steadied the rocker.
He looked at the cupboard. He gave me a questioning glance.
I nodded. “Eight shelves of clothes.”
He flung open the doors. “Is this what all the fuss is about?”
He picked out a white shirt. It fell out of its folds, and hung in his hands.
“This is crazy Sis. These are just old clothes.”
“One of those shirts belonged to Eveline’s brother.”
“So we’ve got the brother staying here as well, have we?”
Of course he didn’t know. I hadn’t told him. “She’s started talking.”
I told him then about Eveline’s brother and the bullet which Valerie found. I told him Valerie’s tale about the man in the tree. My words rushed out, slipped over each other, giving voice to a suspicion that I was doing my utmost not to acknowledge.
My heart thumped in my chest. There were no extraneous sounds from the outside. No birdsong. Tom refolded the shirt and put it back in the cupboard.
“You’ve been here too long on your own Sis. I’ve asked too much of you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not making it up. The proof’s upstairs, asleep. Eveline.”
Tom started to crack his fingers, one by one, the sound ricocheting in the silence. It was something he’d been doing since childhood when he was at a loss as to what to do or say next.
“Don’t.”
“Eveline. You don’t even know her name.”
He gestured at the cupboard. “So are you trying to tell me that all these men, the men who left these clothes behind… are you telling me that they are all dead as well? Murdered by the Kumonos? Because that’s what you’re implying isn’t it? Right bang here in the middle of France? And when it comes down to it — like when we actually look at the facts rather than supposition — all because of a bullet some Englishwoman found? For God’s sakes!”
I wanted him to be right. I wanted to believe that he was right.
Tom enveloped me in another smothering hug. “You don’t really know anything about the girl. All you have is her word.”
“The passport could be her brother’s.”
He took a step back, disengaging from me. “You did get rid of it, didn’t you?”
I was completely nonplussed. “But upstairs,” I said, “you said couldn’t remember me ever mentioning a passport…”
“Sis,” He shook his head. “You’re in such a muddle you’re worrying me.” That moment of truth was lost.
“Poor old you,” he murmured, “having to deal with all this on your own.”
“I haven’t. There’s Greg.”
We sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Tom looked exhausted, the lines around his eyes and mouth etched. His hands, holding the hot mug, looked very sore.
“Your skin…” I began tentatively.
“Tell me about it. Stress. This business about lost brothers is the last thing I need.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He gave a weak smile.
I changed the subject. “Are you going to be here long?”
“Not sure.”
“Do you know,” I said jollily, trying to lighten the mood, “that this is the first time in I don’t know how long you haven’t been plagued by the phone?”
He smiles and pats his jacket pocket. “Switched off.”
The phone upstairs began to ring. I stood up.
“Don’t bother,” Tom says, “it’ll be for me.”
“It could be Philip.”
“Philip can leave a message like anyone else.”
There was something in his tone which made me sit down again. Tom tilted back on his chair, hands in his pockets. We waited until the phone stopped ringing.
“What about Samantha and the children?”
“Just let the answering machine pick up. For a few days, that’s all.”
“Is everything okay?”
He smiled, a wide smile which didn’t reach his eyes. “You know me.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“Sam doesn’t know about this place, remember? Unless you’ve let slip?”
I shook my head. “I’ve only spoken to her the once.”
“She will only call if there’s an emergency with the kids. Tell me,” he changed the subject adroitly, “are there any other skeletons in the cupboard you have to show me?”
A cup of coffee and my brother was reenergised.
“Not real ones, you nit,” Tom squeezed my hand affectionately.
*
I showed him the basement, where the washing machine was housed. “In there,” I pointed beyond the ironing boards, “I’ve never explored. It gives me the creeps.”
Tom had to crouch to get past the doorway. “Come on, I dare you.”
“There’s a torch on the washing machine.”
“Scaredy cat,” he mocked, blinding me with the light. I waited as he manoeuvred himself past the ironing boards and out of my sight.
“There’s a door here,” he called back, “bolted. Do you know where it goes?”
“I’ve only ever gone as far as the washing machine.”
“So you didn’t even know that there was a door? Have you got a wrench? Hang on…” He started hammering with something like a stone. There was the sharp clink of metal.
I heard juddering noises of an ancient door being forced open. I strained to hear what Tom was doing. “What luck!” His voice floated on an echo, like he was very far away. “It’s all been left!”
There was a noise, a faint noise of glass smashing and I thought I could hear a gurgle. Then a deathly silence, save for a bird perched on the windowsill, cheeping.
I rushed past the washing machine, through the door Tom had found, and I stumbled, lurching over an unexpected step. A hand steadied me. The light from the torch in Tom’s other hand danced across the walls. Then it was up on my face, dazzling me.
“Gotcha,” Tom was shaking with pent-up laughter. “Are you okay?” He directed the beam downwards onto a broken bottle which had smashed against the side of a packing case, a dark stain on the earthen floor. The split wine smelt like Christmas cake.
“Is there a light?” He swung the torch around.
A single bulb illuminated racks and racks of bottles which stretched into the darkness, past the light’s reach. They were curtained in cobweb. I sat down on the crate. The chill damp air made me shiver.
Tom pulled away the cobweb. He rubbed the dust off the labels, showing me dates which went back to the early years of the last century. I worried about the door closing behind us and being entombed forever.
“What a find,” Tom crowed.
He handed over two grimy bottles of Mouton Rothschild. “Don’t drop.”
He selected a Château Lafitte off the rack. “I’ll come down for some more later. But for now, I’m sorry Sis, I’m done in. I’ve got to go to bed.”
He followed me, hauling himself up three flights of stairs. The house was utterly silent, totally unconnected to the outside world. Greg didn’t appear. Eveline must have been still be asleep. In the corridor leading to the gym room, I saw a shadow detach itself from a wall and linger in broad sunlight for a second. I looked back to see if Tom had noticed, but he was stumbling along, like a drunk.
I offered him Greg’s mattress as a bed. I didn’t think he would make mine, up another flight of stairs. He swayed slightly because he was so tired but he was also punch-drunk with delight. Never in a million years, he repeated over and over again, could he have amassed such a collection of wine — the scarcity, the rarity, the value — not to mention the time and knowledge involved. “What a stroke of luck.”
“I expect by rights it belongs to the embassy,” I righted the fresh sheet I’d found for the mattress, and smoothed out the wrinkles. “I don’t suppose the Kumonos bought it.”
“No self-respecting Frenchman would have left that cellar.” His face loomed into mine, upside down until I straightened up. He put his finger to his lips, backing away slightly, making a silly face. He flopped clumsily onto the mattress.
“Finders keepers,” he winked. He pulled off a sock and shoe. “Never mind your panels. The wine alone,” he pronounced, “makes the château worth it. You don’t want the château, do you Sis, he added anxiously. “I know I said you could have it…”
He had fallen asleep. I pulled off his other shoe. One big toe with a little tuft of black hair on the joint protruded out of his silk sock. The skin between his toes was red and weeping. It made me feel sore just to look at it.
Something was up. I remember thinking that Tom was not a man to have holes in his socks.
Chapter 31
Tom was fast asleep on Greg’s mattress by ten o’clock that morning. I needed fresh air to clear my head. I walked through the woods behind the château, listening to the rhythm of my feet, too tired at first to think of anything until I turned around to catch a glimpse of a buzzard in flight. Then I saw the view which Valerie had described, of a château with a tower and two lozenges of water: the ornamental pond and the smaller oblong of the swimming pool. Valerie must have been using binoculars to have seen Eveline.
Once Eveline’s name popped into my head, I saw her everywhere — in my mind’s eye, not in reality, not on the walk — stumbling up the scrubby path in the storm with Greg chasing after her. I managed to lose my bearings completely. I followed one woodland track and then another, looking up to see if I could tell into which tree the naked man had climbed and looking down on the ground for the little oyster silk pouch that Eveline had lost — was it only two nights before?
Eventually, I found the path back down to the stables.
Greg was repairing one of its walls. He looked at me truculently, a large furrow between his eyebrows.
“Do you want me gone?”
“And hello to you. Why should I want you gone?”
“With him about…”
“His name’s Tom.” I was sharp. Tom was due some respect. He was, after all, Greg’s employer. “He hasn’t told me how long he’s staying,” I added more softly.
“Well it’s his gaff I suppose. The more the merrier.”
“He’s delighted with the house.”
“Good.” Greg looked grudgingly pleased.
After a while, he broke the silence. “You know the taxi driver? The one who brought him?”
I nodded.
“Sent him off without so much as a coffee.” Greg mimed patting someone on the back, thrusting money into their hand. “There you are my man.” Greg grinned, catching my expression. “No, he didn’t say that. He didn’t have to.”
“He’s not like that, Greg, honestly. And he’d have given a very generous tip.”
My calves ached. A haze shimmered over the grass, it was so hot. I sat down awkwardly, in the ribbon of shade provided by the wall. I pressed my back into the cold of the stone. I thought about my garden back at home: a long narrow high-hedged strip of land with sycamore trees at the bottom, where the shade was always cool. I wondered how my husband was managing to fill empty evenings without me. Philip had always been such an industrious man. I expected that our lawn had been mown to within a millimetre of its life.
Greg gave up any pretence of work and joined me, his arm rubbing companionably against my shoulder.
“What’s he like then, Tom?”
“How do you mean?”
“I dunno. Is he nice?”
I had to think. Nice wasn’t an adjective I had ever associated with Tom.
“He’s just Tom and he’s a good brother. The best.”
*
Tom had an uncanny ability to know when I really need him. When I was leaving for France, for instance. He picked up my call immediately.
“Where do I get the keys Tom?”
He knew exactly what I meant. He didn’t say ‘How come you’ve changed your mind?’ or ‘What time of the night do you call this?’
All he said was that as far as he knew, there was only one key to the château. “I’ll find out and give you a ring in the morning.”
Philip phoned me non-stop all the way down to Dover. He had come home from the park to find the house empty. I don’t know what he had expected. It couldn’t have been that I’d stay: not after being made to feel totally and utterly redundant, of no consequence whatsoever. Not after what I had done. I pulled over onto a lay-by and put the phone into silent mode. It didn’t stop the blue light in my handbag pulsating in the darkness like a miniature siren.
Tom finally did call back just before I drove the car into the bowels of the ferry. When I’d finished the call, I hurled the phone with its blinking light into the sea.
*
Greg nudged me with his elbow. “Have you told him about Eveline?”
“Who?” For a second, I don’t know whether he meant Tom or Philip.
“Tom.”
“He doesn’t believe the brother but he hasn’t met her yet. I’ve told him about the passport.”
“She could just make out that the passport was her brother’s.”
“But why would she?”
He shrugged. “Search me. She’s a rum one.”
The skin on Greg’s fingers caught on my palm. My hands were almost as rough as his. He helped me to my feet and his eyes lingered on me. I could feel his eyes watching as I made my way up to the swimming pool terrace. I wondered how long it had been since Greg had a woman — a long time I remember thinking, if he was finding me suddenly attractive.
Eveline wasn’t in the kitchen. I went up to the library and took the passport out of the desk. I thought that if I surprised her with the passport, I’d be able to gauge the truth in her reaction. I opened her bedroom door. Eveline was not in the room nor had she made her bed. I opened her curtains and caught sight of a shape down by the chapel which could have been her. I couldn’t be sure. I put the passport back in the library, back in the desk, under lock and key.
I went up to my tower room. I was tired. Worn out by long nights and early mornings. I lay on my mattress, not meaning to fall asleep.
It took me a while to realise what had woken me; the acrid smell of smoke clogging my nostrils. A thick pall drifted past the open windows. For one panic-stricken second, I thought that the house was fire, then I realise that it couldn’t be. The smoke was coming from outside.
A bonfire raged by the chapel, nowhere near the house — only there was a breeze which could lift a spark and set an old timber alight. Greg was at the scene, wielding a hose, dampening the flames, shouting at Eveline who was standing nearby, too close, doing nothing to help. I went down the stairs two at a time.
From the archway to the chapel, I followed bits and pieces of men’s clothing, dropped on the ground. The stench of burnt plastic and leather was noxious. Greg and Eveline stood in silence by a smouldering heap. The fire had burnt a ragged shape into the grass, and blackened the chapel’s one remaining wall. There were a few bits of singed cloth scattered about, blown back by the ferocity of the flames.