A Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  In faint confusion Mary raised her head from where it had been resting on her brother’s shoulder. “Are we nearly there?” she asked. For surely, if it was now nearly night…

  “We were diverted,” said her brother, “by an accident. A wagon overturned upon the road, so we were told, and one horse injured, and a rider was sent back to give a warning that the way was quite impassable. We had to turn and come the southern route along the river, which has cost us time and daylight, I’m afraid.”

  She sat more upright, holding Frisque a little closer. Up ahead, she saw a long and jagged slash of forest showing black between the deep blue-gray of sky and the dark green-gray of the land. It stood some distance off still. “And is that the woods of Saint-Germain-en-Laye?”

  “No. No, we are two leagues to the east of Saint-Germain. That is the forest at Chatou. There is a bridge there we can cross.”

  The shadows of the night had nearly swallowed all the light now, till the blackness of that forest drew the color from both land and sky and flattened them to nothing. Tiny flecks of yellow gleamed and glittered and were one by one extinguished—all the windows of the houses by the river, Mary realized, being shuttered. Only two small lights were left to burn, to mark the bridge.

  She did not relish traveling across that bridge and through the wood so late, but she’d resigned herself to doing it when Nicolas remarked, “I have an old friend at Chatou who keeps a grand house and a grander table, and is always keen to welcome company. We’ll stop here for the night.”

  She masked her own relief with calmness. “If you think it wise.”

  “I do.” She could not see her brother’s features in the dimness, but she heard the reassurance in his voice and felt it as he warmly laid his hand on hers again. “I would not have you journey in the dark.”

  Chapter 5

  The light never lasted at this time of year. There had still been a hint of late afternoon sun when we’d landed in Paris, but that had been fading so steadily I was now finding it difficult to read my map well enough to direct Jacqui while she was driving.

  I told her, “I think we should keep to the right, here.”

  “I’m sure we can find it.”

  “You said you’d been here before.”

  “Only once,” she defended herself, “when Alistair sent me to look at the diary and offer to buy it. And that wasn’t in the winter, it was June.”

  I wasn’t sure what difference that made, since a road should lead you to the same place every time you took it, but another concern had distracted me. “You said they’d had a falling out. Claudine Pelletier and Alistair,” I added, when she glanced at me.

  Claudine, who’d be our hostess here in France, was a photographer who’d closely worked with Alistair on the first two books of his trilogy about the exiled Jacobites of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. I’d looked her up. She was about his own age, early sixties, though the portraits I had found of her online had shown her as a younger woman, mostly—taking photographs herself, the cameras hiding her own features.

  Jacqui answered, “That’s my understanding, yes. It’s all a bit before my time, I don’t know all the details, but I’m told they haven’t spoken for some years.”

  “Is that why she’s being difficult about the diary?” After all, the easiest approach, short of buying it, would be to have the whole thing copied. I could take it with me then, and work in private back at home in England, and not inconvenience her at all.

  “I’ve no idea,” Jacqui said. “One doesn’t argue with Claudine, I’m told, or try to second-guess her. This is how she wants to do it, so it’s how it will be done.” She glanced at me again and smiled. “Don’t worry, though. You’ll like Claudine.”

  The question was, would she like me? She had agreed to give me room and board and space to work within her own house for a month or maybe more, but she might change her mind once she’d met me. She obviously valued the encrypted diary highly, and she’d probably already formed a mental image of the kind of person who’d be sent by an historian like Alistair to do this job. I doubted I looked anything like Claudine had imagined. She might not even let me near the book.

  My cousin, if she shared my worries, didn’t let it show. She was steering our rental car over a bridge on the Seine, with a lovely old church rising out of the twilight to greet us. “We’re here,” she said. “This is Chatou.”

  We came off the bridge onto a boulevard, broad and divided, where buildings of pale stone with sloped mansard roofs and tall, graceful French windows shared space at the edge of the pavement with more modern offices, shop fronts, and flats. I had an impression of tall, bare-branched trees and bright Christmas lights strung over doorways and dangling like icicles over the edges of awnings. They sparkled against the blue light of the evening and made the whole street look decidedly festive.

  “It’s pretty,” I said.

  “Wait till you see the Maison des Marronniers.”

  “That’s the name of the house?” I liked houses with names. “Are there actual chestnut trees?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because that’s what marronniers are.”

  “Ah.”

  “How can you spend so much time visiting France without knowing the language?”

  “We can’t all be linguists,” she commented. “How many languages do you speak now? Twenty?”

  “Other than English? I only speak two.”

  “No, it’s more than that, surely? You’ve French, thanks to Ricky”—my childhood best friend, who’d moved over from Normandy when we’d both still been in nursery school, and in whose house, next to our own, I’d spent most of my after-school hours, in the bustle and warmth of his French-speaking family—“and Swedish, from when you were keen on that Swedish chap. What was his name?”

  “Vendel.”

  “Ah, Vendel, yes. Charming man.” That, I knew, was pure sarcasm. Jacqui had never liked Vendel. She added, “But then you took courses in German, and—”

  “I know a little of four other languages, but I can only speak two.”

  Jacqui gave me a sidelong look I couldn’t read as she slowed the car and steered us through a narrow gate within a high wall fronting on the pavement.

  Claudine Pelletier, I decided, must have either married money or been born to it. Because the house that faced us was a cut above the pay grade, I felt sure, of a photographer.

  The house was old. Not ancient, but designed with grandeur and a certain elegance that made me think it dated from the century before the last. And it was much, much larger than I’d thought it would be, stretching long across the garden and rising up a full three stories, with an attic above them, revealed by two round windows set within the steep slant of the slate-gray roofline. There were chimneys—three, that I could count—and rows of gorgeous windows in the classic French style: tall, with lacy black wrought iron balconies for all except the ones at ground floor level, where a broad stone terrace with a carved-stone railing curved along the front facade and dropped a wide and generous fall of grand stone steps to welcome visitors.

  The chestnut trees were here as well. We drove beneath a massive one with black and leafless branches as we came into the circle of the drive, and there were others standing like a row of sentinels within the high walls shutting out the larger world with all its noise and bustle. In the twilight, all that pale stone with small accents of dark brick and those grand windows gleaming warm with golden light gave the Maison des Marronniers the look of a château.

  It looked like something of another age. It shouldn’t have been standing at the corner of a busy street. It should have been out in the country, as it must have been when it was built. It wanted gardens all around it, and the clop of horses’ hooves, and graceful carriages arriving with their guests, not our rented Peugeot rolling up to those impressive steps and coughing to a halt.


  There had been no one on the terrace when we’d stopped, I would have sworn to it, but when we had stepped out and got our luggage from the boot and turned around again, we met a woman coming down to greet us.

  I braced myself a moment, till I realized this was not Claudine, but someone nearer my own age, with straight black hair cropped closely in a stylish cut that framed her smiling face. Her English, when she spoke to Jacqui, was cautious and came with the handshake reserved for acquaintances, not with the bise—the light double or triple or even, in some places, quadruple kiss that was used when you’d moved beyond that and become more informal and friendly. “You have had a good journey?”

  “Yes, lovely, thanks. Sara,” my cousin said, “this is Denise, Claudine’s housekeeper.”

  I should have guessed that a house of this size would need people to run it. I held out my hand for the housekeeper’s handshake as Jacqui said, “Sara’s my cousin. The one who’ll be working here.”

  Denise smiled. “Yes, of course. You are… I am so sorry, I don’t know how you say in English…the déchiffreuse.”

  I answered her in French, to make it easier. “The code breaker, that’s right. Though not a trained one, I’m afraid. It’s just a hobby.”

  When she didn’t answer right away I worried I’d said something wrong, but then her smile broadened. “You speak French.”

  “Yes, I do. I learned it as a child.”

  “You speak it beautifully.” And then, to Jacqui, dropping into English for her benefit, the housekeeper repeated, “She speaks French.”

  My cousin smiled, in turn. “She does. But I’m still hopeless at it, so feel free to use her as a translator.” She glanced towards the partly open front door, just behind Denise. “Is Claudine not at home?”

  “She is working. But she will be back in time for dinner. Please, come in. I have prepared your rooms.”

  Ordinarily I traveled light, but taking my cousin’s advice I had packed extra clothes for the longer stay, and I was glad of Denise’s help with my spare suitcase. I followed her across the narrow terrace, through the tall doors set with tidy beveled squares of leaded glass, into the entry hall.

  There were tropical plants here, in pots, and the fronds of one brushed softly over my shoulder as I came in. I felt faintly on edge, as I always did in houses that belonged to someone else, with unfamiliar rooms around me and the constant worry I might break something, but I steadied myself with a deep breath, enjoying the sudden assault of the warm kitchen smells that were flooding this high-ceilinged area.

  The space was a mixture of textures. The floor was a pattern of tiny mosaic tiles, gathered within a striped border so decorative there was no need for a carpet; and there were stone statues, and more leaded glass, and a circular stair winding upwards, set off behind blue stained glass windows and old curving wooden doors standing ajar. More doors opened onto rooms to either side, with the kitchen ahead of us, partially blocked by a short table holding a small Christmas tree hung with bright silver tinsel.

  I couldn’t do more than glimpse part of the kitchen—cream walls and red brick and dark ceiling beams—because Denise was already ahead of us, leading us through the curved doors to the circular stair, and beginning to climb.

  “I put you in the same rooms as before,” she told my cousin, “so you have all on this level to yourselves.”

  The stairs brought us up to the first floor and paused on a corridor of wide-planked hardwood, well darkened with age, before winding up higher, to the unseen floors still above us. The doors here were closed, but Jacqui clearly knew her way around. Not hesitating, she reached for the handle of the nearest door.

  “Brilliant,” she said. “I adore this room.”

  My first glimpse told me why. It was a cozy room, not large, with two tall windows hung with heavy curtains that had an almost Tudor look to them and brought to mind the hand-embroidered tapestries and bed hangings at Hampton Court. My cousin, despite her love of modern comforts, had a secret love of anything that looked as though it might have been at home within a castle.

  She set down her suitcase and turned to Denise. “That’s all right, I’ll show Sara where everything is. Thanks.”

  My cousin had actually taken a step so her one hand was on the door, waiting to close it as soon as the housekeeper left us. Clueless as I might be when it came to many social cues, I recognized this one as a dismissal. Denise clearly caught it as well. With a nod she turned round and was halfway downstairs by the time Jacqui shut the door.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Send her off like that.”

  Jacqui stepped out of her shoes. “You were getting that look.”

  “What look?”

  “That look. The one that you get when you’re finding it all a bit much. When you’re tired of trying to socialize.”

  I briefly glanced in the mirror that hung on the wall just behind her and couldn’t see any expression on my face but mild irritation. “I don’t have a look.”

  “Yes, you do. You have many looks,” Jacqui assured me. “And I know them all. Besides, I’m sure Denise was quite happy to get back downstairs to whatever she’s making. She’s really a marvelous cook.”

  I was not to be sidetracked. “It wasn’t too much. I’m not even a little bit tired. And you don’t have to nursemaid me.”

  “Darling, I wasn’t…” She stopped in midsentence and closed her mouth firmly, her time-tested method of ending an argument. “At any rate, your room’s through here. Come see.”

  She opened a connecting door and led me through into a larger room that spanned the full depth of this section of the house. Two tall French windows faced the front to overlook the drive, with two more facing out towards what must be the back garden. In between those two back windows was the bed, a large one with a flowered white duvet, and lighted sconces mounted on the wall above. And at the far end of the room a fireplace with a writing table and a small upholstered chair created an inviting spot beside another beautifully carved wardrobe.

  I took a few steps in, across a well-worn oriental rug that partly covered the age-darkened burnished floorboards. When I turned to look at Jacqui I could feel the breadth of my own smile.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s all like this. The whole house.” Standing in the doorway that connected our two rooms, she pointed sideways at another door set in the same wall. “That takes you back into the corridor. The bathroom’s at the far end. If you only need the toilet there’s a little washroom just beside the stairs.” She glanced at her mobile. “It’s just gone six o’clock. Claudine, if I recall correctly, likes to have aperitifs at seven. I think I might have a bath and tidy up, if that’s all right with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You won’t mind being left alone a minute?”

  “Jacqui, please. I’m not a child.”

  “Right, then. I won’t be long.”

  Alone, I faced the large round mirror hanging just above the fireplace. “I’m not a child,” I said again, to no one.

  My reflection seemed prepared to back me up on that. I’d chosen my clothes carefully that morning, toning down my use of color so that even in a sweater and a pair of jeans, I nearly looked the part of a professional.

  But Jacqui, in her briefing on our drive in from the airport, had assured me Claudine always dressed smartly for dinner. Not a custom that I’d ever understood, and since the food would taste the same no matter what I wore while eating it, I’d never seen the point.

  I did, however, see the point of trying to convince my hostess I could do the job that I’d been sent to do. And that meant blending in. I knew the trick of that.

  Deliberately I turned my back on what the mirror showed me, found my suitcase, and began to change.

  * * *

  Claudine Pelletier was studying my
skirt.

  It was one of my favorites, a rich voided velvet on silk chiffon, cut on the bias and wonderfully weighted to swirl round my ankles whenever I walked. I was sitting just now, facing Jacqui and Claudine across the round tea table in the salon on the ground floor—an elegant room lit by sconces and table lamps, with a piano between two tall French windows that faced out towards the front terrace and drive.

  My cousin, as ever, was flawlessly dressed with each hair in its place, but it heartened me to see that Claudine appeared to have hair that, like mine, had a mind of its own. Hers was graying attractively, silver strands glittering under the lamplight amid the black, looking like nothing so much as the tinsel that sparkled on the little Christmas tree out in the entry hall.

  I could see that tree from where I sat—the twin set of doors to the entry hall had been propped open—and if I turned and looked past Claudine’s shoulder I had a straight view through an open arch into the dining room, clear to the back of the house where another door set at an angle led into the kitchen. Denise had been back and forth twice through that door, setting out our aperitifs: sherry and slices of thin bread spread with pink pâté.

  Claudine told me now, “It’s a very unusual color.”

  It took me a moment to realize she meant my skirt, not the pâté.

  She asked, “Is it violet or blue?”

  I glanced down at the fabric. “It’s indigo. Blue.” I could name nearly all shades of blue. It was my favorite color; the color that made me feel centered and calm.

  “Yes, I see.” Claudine nodded. “It’s lovely.” Her English was polished, and she used contractions and idioms with so much ease that I wondered if she’d lived or studied in England, but I didn’t ask her. I tried not to ask people too many questions, in case I asked ones they considered too personal.