Chapter Fifteen–The Unexpected
“Not at all.” he placed a hand softly on her elbow and guided her back to the van. “We must consider the possibility that the suspect could stop a car and force the driver to take him where he wanted to go. If that were the case, then having you get out of the van would get you out of harm’s way.”
Caitlin climbed back behind the wheel.
“To be honest, we don’t believe he presents a threat to anyone. It was a crime of passion. Still, who knows what he might be driven to if he feels himself trapped?”
Caitlin started the engine, and the officer – whose name tag she now noticed, identified him as Jean-Claude Valliers – rested his hands on the window ledge. “Where are you going, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Sarlat. I need to get some film developed.” Suddenly her little mystery of the fairy shaped smudge seemed a juvenile and trivial. All her minor frustrations collapsed into perspective.
“You’ll be coming back this way then?”
There was no other way from Beaulieux to Sarlat. “Yes.”
The officer nodded. “I’ll be here until midnight. Of course, we won’t have to stop you on the way back, since that’s not the way our suspect wants to go. But should he surprise us and for some reason threaten you, just flash your brake lights as you passed by, and we will follow.”
“Thank you,” said Caitlin suspecting that he hadn’t made the same arrangement with every driver. She wouldn’t mind being stopped again, at least not by Jean-Claude. One can never be too safe.
“Drive carefully,” said Jean-Claude, as he directed her back into the road. “Try not to run anyone down.”
She returned his smile. During their brief exchange, the sun had set beyond the hills so the populace had nothing to fear from her driving.
He called after her as she began to pull away. “Incidentally, where are you staying? I may need to question you some more.”
She looked in her exterior rearview mirror. Even in the gloaming light of dusk his smile, though friendly enough, had an unsettling effect. She leaned out the window and looked back. “Chateau D’Arnac,” she called. “Plessy”.
He yelled at her in sudden alarm, and she turned back just in time to swerve and avoid colliding with the patrol car and Jean-Claude’s wide-eyed partner.
“Sorry!” she called as she flew by – the sudden infusion of adrenaline setting off a tingling chain reaction throughout her body, heightened by a red glow of pure embarrassment. She waved out the window and sped down the hill without a backward glance.
“Grace Kelly you ain’t, old girl,” she said.
In Sarlat, she waited at a sidewalk cafe in the little manmade canyon of thePlace de la Libertefor the print to be developed. Nursing a tiny cup of strong espresso, she watched as a crowd of evening revelers, mostly couples arm-in-arm, slowly filled the square. Once she would have identified with the carefree, comfortable spirit of joie de vivre. She’d been in love. Engaged to be married. Then her world was turned upside-down and shaken on its axis, and had wobbled off into the coldness of space, isolating her from joy.
Now, she simply went through the motions – outwardly the confident, worldly photographic instructor and tour guide; inwardly, an emotional automaton, disconnected from her feelings for fear they would consume her. Of course it was preferable to the alternative: succumbing to the overwhelming sense of non-being and pointlessness that assailed her at times like these. She drained the bitter cup, tucked a five euro note under the saucer, and went to complete her business.
In the shop, she removed the enlargement from its sleeve and examined it there on the counter beneath the bright fluorescent lights. Once again, Mrs. Griffeth had composed a modest little masterpiece. The cold, black fluid of the moat reflected an impressionist’s inverted interpretation of the chateau, which was not in the shot, and the swan, of which every feather was etched in perfect detail. These things she took in at a glance. It was the smudge she was interested in.
In the accompanying negative, the fairy-shaped aberration had seemed on the same plane with the swan, hovering just above and behind. In the enlargement though, it was clearly in the extreme background and because of the sharpness with which Mrs. Griffeth had captured the foreground, hopelessly out of focus. Only two things were evident: first, the figure was probably – or at least could be – that of a woman who, judging by her posture, was either dressing or undressing in the shelter of the gatehouse at the edge of the basin into which the moat tumbled. If so, the copper-colored smudge crowning the figure might be reddish hair. She bent closer to the picture.
Was it that evident? In truth, it might be a stump, or an indentation in the gatehouse wall . . . or dancing bear. It was impossible to tell. She’d have to inspect the scene herself first thing in the morning. She might still find evidence there. Something. “As if I’d know evidence if I saw it,” she said aloud.
As she drove back toward the chateau, she considered the obvious question: Was the fairy-shaped smudge, in fact, the individual Mrs. Capshaw later saw floating in the moat? The time and place were right. The distance indicated by the print made it likely that whoever it was wouldn’t have seen Mrs. Griffeth skulking about the remote edges of the pond, or that Mrs. Griffeth, nearsighted as she was, would have been aware, at more than a subconscious level, given her obvious concentration on the foreground, of vague movements in the distance.
Apart from Amber Capshaw, whose presence in her stepmother’s bedroom only seconds after the sighting eliminated her from consideration, a quick inventory of the women at the chateau turned up no redheads. A wig, of course, would accomplish that little subterfuge. Furthermore, that the subterfuge – if that’s what it was – was directed at Mrs. Capshaw there was no doubt: she’d been awaken from a sound sleep and drawn to the window at an hour no one else is likely to have been awake, apart from those on a quest for fairies. Of course, Mrs. Griffeth would probably not have considered a half-naked woman as anything out of the ordinary. Certainly the image, given Joanna’s description, seemed contrived to approximate her dead stepdaughter Gayla . . . or Amber.
Who would do such a thing? Why?
Caitlin was driving on autopilot as these considerations played themselves out in her mind’s eye. After all Joanna Capshaw had been through – after all Amber had been through – to subject either of them to such a grotesque practical joke was a cruelty beyond comprehension.
Even Farthing would have balked.
She hoped.
A strobic pulse of blue light in the rearview mirror yanked her back to the moment. A quick glance at the speedometer told her she wasn’t speeding. She pulled over and began rummaging through her purse for passport and license. Although she hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not that she was aware of, she felt guilty somehow, and her heart rose to her throat as a police officer, silhouetted in the headlights of the patrol car, approached. His flashlight washed the van with erratic swatches of curiosity.
He tapped on the window, and she rolled it down.
“We meet again,” he said, and at once the apprehension in her heart was displaced by another emotion altogether, mingled with relief. It was a Jean-Claude.
“Good evening officer.”
“Jean-Claude, please. I owe you an apology,” he said, removing something from his shirt pocket. He handed it to her. “I forgot to return this.”
It was her license. She studied it unsurely. “I didn’t know I’d given it to you.”
He squatted down so his head was on a level with hers. “You didn’t. I took it from the van earlier. I meant to give it back, but I was distracted.”
“Were you indeed?” she replied, trying to sound as cool as possible. Something about his nearness awoke a rowdy group of hormones from their long hibernation, and her subconscious was having difficulty containing the unexpected assault. She dropped the license into her purse. “Well, better late than never. I’m glad I didn’t need it.”
“T
hat would’ve been very uncomfortable, I’m sure.” He leaned little closer to the window. “You didn’t see anyone . . . anything suspicious did you?”
Reflexively her mind flashed to Mrs. Griffeth’s picture in its manila envelope in the seat beside her, at the same instant she realized that was not what he was talking about. “You mean the fugitive? No. Nothing.”
“Ah, well,” he leaned back slightly, as if sensing that he was making her uncomfortable. “We’ll get him eventually. He’s probably found a cave to crawl into.”
Caitlin knew that the area was honeycombed with caves – some many miles long – home to mankind’s most ancient and fragile works of art, with caverns large enough to accommodate Europe’s tallest cathedrals. Regardless of their size, however, they possessed one feature that made it damned unlikely she would ever be among the thousands of visitors: they were underground. She shuddered.
“How will you ever find them?”
Jean-Claude shrugged. “The same way we find everyone who hides in the caves. We wait.”
“Wait?”
“They need food. Since there’s nothing edible down there, they need an accomplice to bring it to them. We keep an eye on family and friends – from a discreet distance of course – and nine times out of ten, they lead us to the fugitive.” He lowered his voice. “This is confidential information, of course.” He smiled.
“And the 10th time?”
He shrugged. “They get lost down there. They die.”
Caitlin’s innate claustrophobia awoke with a sickening twist of her central nervous system, which came alive with a thousand pinpricks of panic. She felt the color drain from her cheeks, and she gulped a couple of deep, irregular breaths, as if she’d just been dropped into frigid water.
“Are you all right?” Jean-Claude asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.
Perhaps it was the genuine concern in his voice, or the warmth of his hand in contrast to the cool of the night, but the threatened panic attack passed as quickly as it had come.
“I’m fine,” she said, at the end of a long slow exhale. “It’s been long day and I’m tired.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Oh, yes. Fine.”
He regarded her doubtfully for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“No, really . . . ”
“No,” he interrupted, squeezing her shoulder lightly before letting her go. “I will follow you back to Plessy.”
“But . . . ”
He stood. “These roads are very dangerous at night, twisting and turning. Think how I would feel if I found your car at the bottom of a ravine tomorrow. You must let me see you safely home . . . I beg you to consider . . . for my peace of mind.”
He concluded his argument with an appealing tilt of his head that made her laugh. “Well, for your sake then I suppose . . . ”
“I’m most gratified.” He performed an exaggerated bow. “You are too kind.”
Chapter Sixteen–Waltzing the Past
“When we got here, he insisted on walking me to the door.”
“Oh, I’m sure he had to twist your arm,” said Jill. She tucked her feet a little further under her fanny against the chill of being sedentary for the few minutes it had taken Caitlin to tell her story. “Not much of a walk, considering it’s only twenty-five feet from the car park.”
“Not if you park it the other end of the drive.”
“You didn’t!”
Caitlin flushed at her school girlish contrivance which, in retrospect, must have been as obvious to Jean-Claude as it was to Jill. She flushed all the more. “It was a nice night for a walk.”
“Oh, yes. Of course it was. Of course it was.” Jill was pleased that Caitlin’s ashes had been stirred. Hers had been a long, slow climb out of an emotional tunnel since Michael’s accident. For nearly two years, she had watched her dear friend go through the motions, always saying she was fine, always a gracious and charming host to her clients, but lacking the spark of life, the innate joy that had always been the signature of her spirit.
Here was proof that, at least, there were embers to be stirred. “Which brings us back to Mrs. Griffeth’s photograph. If I have nymphs cavorting about the premises in the pre-dawn hours, I’m going to increase my rates. Maybe I could have my friend Martyn post the picture on our web site. May I see it?”
Caitlin placed the picture flat on the counter beneath the strongest light in the kitchen, the one over the vegetable sink, and they were huddled together examining it, their heads in conspiratorial propinquity when they were startled by a voice behind them.
“Ah! There you are!”
The women started guiltily and made an awkward and unsuccessful attempt to shuffle the photo under the cutting board as they turned to face Mr. Piper, who seemed oblivious to their covert actions.
“I was afraid everyone had gone to bed. Then I heard voices.”
“How may I help you, Mr. Piper?” Jill almost giggled at the adolescent rush of blood that colored her cheeks. She patted her fingers on her apron. “I’m afraid the kitchen’s closed, but I think I could scrape together a sandwich . . . ”
“After that dinner?” said Piper, uncharacteristically. He patted his stomach. “I don’t think so.” He thought better of it. “At least not just at the moment. No. Thanks. As a matter of fact, I was looking for you,” he said, directing his attention to Caitlin.
“What can I do for you?”
“Wagner and I have a gentleman’s wager.” Piper rubbed his hands together with the gusto of one who is assured of victory.
“Which is?”
“He says if you face direct sunlight and take a close-up of something, a flower for instance, or bug, or whatever, you can get a clear shot with a filter.”
“And you said?”
“I say you have to use a flash.”
Caitlin grabbed Piper’s right hand and held aloft in triumph. “Ladies and gentlemen, the winner! Of course, you could use a reflector.”
“Ah! I knew it!”
“Well, now that that’s settled, I guess I can turn in,” said Jill, clicking off the light over the sink. The only light remaining was from a self-conscious little sconce near the window.
“The world can rest easy tonight,” said Caitlin as they filed out the door. “So, what did you bet?”
“What did I? Ah. Ah! I see. No, it was nothing in particular. Just ‘I bet I’m right’ ‘I bet you’re wrong’. Pulling one another’s noses, as you Brits say. We call it a pissing contest.” He cocked his head and laughed through his nose. “Bragging rights, I guess.” He winked. “That’s better than gold. I’ll make sure he never hears the end of it.” He looked at his watch. “Starting first thing in the morning. Time to hit the hay.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Caitlin, accompanying him to the tower door. “I have to go out and bring the van up the drive . . . ”
“Oh? where is it?”
“It’s out . . . near the road.”
“What’s it doing there?”
Caitlin was wracking her brain, trying to say something plausible that would make sense. “Flat tire,” she said, almost surprising herself. “Yes, I had a flat tire.”
“Oh, well, you’ll want help fixing it.” Piper rolled up his sleeves and reached for the outside door.
“It’s fixed!”
“It is?”
“Yes . . . a friend fixed it.”
“And left it there?”
‘When first we practice to deceive,’ thought Caitlin. She was getting dizzy. She nudged Piper toward the stairs, hoping his forward momentum would carry him to his room. “I forgot to leave the key. Now, you go get some sleep. Tomorrow’s our last day, and we want to make the most of it. Just dream of all the ways you’ll be able to torment poor Mr. Wagner.”
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t want me to just walk along with you? It’s awfully dark out there.”
“Not necessary, I know the place like the back of my hand.” Piper ascended th
e stairs. “Mind you,” she called after him, “keep your window open. If you hear a loud splash, don’t lag about!” Piper’s pleasant laughter echoed up the turret.
By the time Caitlin had parked the van, a steady rain had begun to fall. She sat for a moment before shutting off the motor, staring through the windshield at nothing in particular as the wipers beat an intermittent counterpoint to her thoughts, in which Jean-Claude had become a recurring theme. She smiled. It was nice having something else to think about – someone else – after the dark questions and images that had occupied her mind recently. It was silly of course – she’d only known Jean-Claude a couple of minutes, all told – but it wasn’t so much romance, even the possibility of romance, as a desperately needed reminder that life existed beyond the suffocating world of her personal sorrow.
The peaceful image that was taking shape in her mind was brutally shattered by the sudden appearance of Joanna Capshaw’s terrified face in the headlights. She began pounding on the windshield, the rain turning her carefully applied makeup into a grotesque blossom of blackened veins on her cheeks.
Caitlin jumped out of the van, slamming the door behind her, and seized the frantic woman by the shoulders. Joanna spun upon her and pulled back, not sharply enough however, to break Caitlin’s hold, which tightened reflexively.
The abject horror in Mrs. Capshaw’s eyes was transmitted to Caitlin as if by a series of electric jolts. “My Lord, Joanna, what is it? What happened?” She could feel the stricken woman trembling uncontrollably, her mouth open in a scream that wouldn’t come. Caitlin shook her purposefully. “Get hold of yourself!” she shouted, her voice strained to an unnatural timbre. The windshield wipers threw fistfuls of water at them, as if in exclamation. Caitlin spat it out. “What happened?”
Finally Joanna blinked, like someone waking from a trance. “Gayla,” she said, her voice breaking for lack of air.
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