But this was a very public place. She was surrounded by ordinary people, spending a happy evening. Nothing untoward could happen in such a civilised setting. Snatching up her bag, she opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
And stepped into total darkness. Cursing the French lighting system, she began to grope her way along the wall, hoping she would find the stairs before she fell down them. Her mutterings were silenced by a large hard hand closing over her mouth. Another powerful hand on her waist spun her around, then propelled her forward, struggling, and in seconds she was pushed into a bedroom. The shutters were closed, discreet lights on. A tray on a table by the door held champagne and glasses. The bed was turned down. The air was thick with the scent of roses. Twisting round, she saw Edmond d’Aubec deftly lock the door and thrust the key into his pocket.
CHAPTER 15
I was beginning to think you’d shinned down the drainpipe,” he said cheerfully.
She selected her weapon. Icy calm would do well. Screaming and hysterics and pounding on the door would draw attention to a situation she’d rather not advertise, and this thought was followed by the practical consideration that the staff here were undoubtedly on the count’s payroll.
“‘Number ten, overlooking the abbey’? ‘Your usual, sir’? How disappointingly predictable! How laughably Gothick!” She looked around the room with exaggerated distaste. “Good Lord! I’ve strayed onto the set of a Feydeau farce!”
To her surprise he grinned. “Heart’s Desire Hotel, perhaps? That’s my favourite!”
“I prefer The One That Got Away,” she replied. “Now—I’m not familiar with this script—tell me, through which of these doors am I meant to exit? Right? Left?”
“Heroine sinks gracefully onto small gilt chair, centre stage,” he said, and moved one of a pair forward. He settled on the other and waited until she responded by perching uncomfortably opposite him. “No need to be afraid of me, Laetitia…I may call you Laetitia, Miss Talbot? I apologise for tonight’s charade, but circumstances are propelling us together. Forgive my games but—consider this, will you?—you have questions to ask me, no? How else was I to contrive a meeting with you? If I’d have invited you to come to my house…?”
“I’d have refused. Naturally.”
“If I’d come calling on you at the rue Lamartine with a bunch of roses?”
“I would not have been at home.”
“And that leathery old boss of yours would never allow me to approach you while you are under his eye doing your digging.” He glanced with curiosity at her hands. “Tell me, Laetitia, can you really enjoy that? Scrabbling around in the dirt? Amongst all those worms and old bones?”
Encountering a gimlet glare he hurried on: “But here…” He waved a hand around the room in satisfaction. “…we may exchange information and confidences in secrecy and comfort, and if anyone cares to speculate, it will be supposed only that we are seeing each other for the most understandable and excusable of motives.”
It was a moment before his meaning dawned on her. Shock and disgust shook her but it was rage, a killing rage, that took her over, coursing through her, strengthening her limbs. She looked around for a weapon. A poker would do…a champagne bottle?
“Ice pick?” he suggested, again following her thought. “‘Nobleman found dead with ice pick in heart.’”
“I will go for a bigger target,” she snapped. “The head will do.”
He grinned. “Hear what I have to say and if you’re still feeling murderous, I’ll let you choose the weapons and take the first swing. I’m so sorry, Laetitia! I fear I have offended you. And I failed to make allowances for your English manners.” He took the key from his pocket and handed it to her. “The least I can do is release you at once. Perhaps I may depend on you to engineer an opportunity to exchange our information? If you wish, of course. At some later date…and at a place of your choosing?”
He rose, made a swift and formal bow of dismissal, and started for the door.
“Oh, wait a moment!” she said resentfully. “Sit down and talk to me. But…” She looked at her wristwatch. “I must ask you to be brief. My escort is even now crossing the square to collect me at ten.”
“Ah! The sporting vicar?”
“Not your concern. But since you seem prepared to talk some sense at last—how did you discover my identity? You must have thought yourself very clever, sending me a drawing of my own coat of arms?”
He smiled, pleased with himself. “Three hounds—talbots you call them in England, I understand?—black as sable, passant, collared or, as you said. The crest appeared on the letter headings printed on the writing paper you used to communicate with your godfather. I asked Daniel to explain it once. He talked of you a good deal, Laetitia. I feel I know you. He even showed me a photograph of you.” He put a hand in his pocket and drew out a crumpled photograph. “In fact…very strange request, I thought…at the time…on the last evening we were together, Daniel gave me this and told me to watch out for you. I recognised you last night in the brief glimpse I had before you covered my eyes in that disgusting muck. I say, Laetitia, were you really going to drink that rotgut?”
“Your last evening? What are you saying? You knew Daniel? You? Well, clearly, I have to suppose that you did, but—how? Why?”
His reply took her aback.
“I did not, unfortunately, know him for long, but I considered him an exceptional man—and my good friend. We met at the stables, soon after his arrival in Fontigny. I keep some of my horses there in the season. I met him poking about, obviously enjoying the sight of so many wonderful horses under one roof, and we started to talk. As he appeared to be a keen horseman, I invited him to come to my home, and that was the beginning of our friendship. We had much in common besides a love of horses. I care very much about my roots, Laetitia; I know a good deal about Burgundy and particularly my own corner of it. I know its history from yesterday back to the time before man. At Brancy I have an extensive library, including many ancient documents which I thought would interest Daniel. I was not wrong! After his day’s work with the Americans he would come and spend an hour or two on most evenings in my library, joining me for a talk and a brandy before returning to town. Weekends, also, he was spending time at Brancy. He was working. Translating, researching, and codifying the contents of my library.”
Letty was startled to realise that she was listening to the man Daniel had mentioned in one or two of his letters. Not Daumier but d’Aubec. Assuming, as she had, that the antiquarian described was of her godfather’s generation, a kindly old dodderer, she had not made the connexion with this all too vigorous young man.
“He got on very well with my mama, too,” d’Aubec was saying. “Astonishing! She’s old and snobbish and can be very bad-tempered, but Maman looked forward to his visits. He wasn’t impressed by her nonsense—deference did not come naturally to Daniel! He made her laugh and they enjoyed a good gossip. Last summer, I had to go to Africa to work with the Moroccan government on the breeding of a new half-Arab strain. Of course, I gave full visiting rights to your godfather, who’d reached a pivotal stage in the decipherment of some papers he was working on—he promised me a surprise on my return.”
He fell silent for a moment and Letty said nothing, aware of what was coming next. “The news of his murder was not the surprise either of us had anticipated. I got back to Fontigny two days after he died.” He gave her a tight smile and looked her in the eyes before continuing with emphasis: “Two days, Laetitia. All times and dates checked and verified by the Police Judiciaire. You may contact the officer in charge if you wish: an inspector called Laval. And—no—I have no influence over the Lyon cops—Laval is not in my pay…In fact, he rather hates me! Nevertheless, I gave the authorities every assistance, of course, in their enquiries, but by then the trail had begun to cool. Laetitia, I have never believed that Daniel was killed by a street robber. A ridiculous notion and I said as much!” He added more calmly: “I have influence in th
is town that stretches beyond that of the local gendarmerie; someone would have come to me with the name of his killer the moment I returned, had it been a home-bred malefactor. My friend was killed because he was on the edge of a discovery that others wanted to keep quiet. Of that I’m certain.”
“Who else would have known about his work, other than yourself and your mother?” She could not keep suspicion from her voice.
“Paradee.” The name burst from him. “Or any of his crew. Any of Daniel’s fellow guests in the rue Lamartine. I wasn’t the only friend your godfather made in this town. Many people knew and liked him. The curé of la Sainte-Madeleine was a good friend. Daniel dined regularly with the mayor and his family. The director of the Haras…I could go on…If you’ve come here looking for his murderer, there must be more names on your list of suspects than mine. Though I must concede,” he added gravely, “that Edmond, Comte de Brancy, most probably figures at the head of it.”
“And there he stays until I know better,” she said crisply.
He asked his next question with uncharacteristic hesitancy. “Laetitia, did he, I wonder, communicate anything of this to you before his death? Perhaps if we were to share our information, we would arrive at a solution more quickly? Did he write to you in that last month?”
Letty took a moment to weigh her options and judged that she might gain more information than she gave away. She took the postcard from her bag and handed it to him. “It’s nothing. Just a jolly greeting. I was away in Egypt that autumn and winter and if he did send anything apart from this it must have got lost.”
He examined the card carefully. “As you say…perfectly ordinary.” And then, with sudden interest: “Who is this lady…this Uffington? I don’t know her. Daniel never spoke of her.”
So that much was confirmed. The lady remained mysterious and unconnected with Fontigny. Letty took back the card. “Oh, one of his old friends, a lover perhaps, passing through on her way down to the casinos, I suppose. You can’t have known everything there was to know about Daniel. Rather a goer in his youth! But it’s two minutes to ten, monsieur. I must thank you for a remarkable evening and let myself out.”
He smiled and took the key from her, making for the door. “I’ll hand you over to your pugilistic Reverend…your preux chevalier, then.”
“Thank you.” Pausing in the doorway, she turned and cast her eyes over the room she was leaving, lingering over the luxuriously decadent scene. “Champagne…crystal glasses…roses…a feather counterpane…” Her voice held a tantalising trace of regret. “Seems a pity to waste all this. Tell you what—why don’t you ring for a serving wench?”
As she groped her way down the unlit stairs to the door, a cold trickle of fear chilled her back and she hugged her shawl close about her. Daniel had always kept that photograph in his wallet. Had it still been there when the wallet had been taken from his body as he lay dying? Taken and kept by his killer?
A tall shape detached itself from the trunk of a plane tree and hurried to her side.
“Heavens, girl! You’re shaking! What’s he done? Is the lout still in there? I’ll tear his head off!”
She seized Gunning by the arm and sidestepped to put herself between him and the open door of the Lion d’Or, alarmed to feel the tension in his muscles, to see the combative glint in his eye. “It’s all right, William. Calm down! No harm done. Truly. A few surprises, though. Much to tell you. Shall we walk home?”
Unusually, he offered his arm and, unusually, she took it.
CHAPTER 16
Was there a cooling in the previous day’s warm camaraderie to be felt in the trench the following morning? Letty decided there was. Though on the surface perfectly polite, the three diggers she was working with, one local and two Parisian students, were avoiding conversation with her. Replies to questions came in monosyllables; eyes skittered sideways when she addressed a remark to them. She gathered that the news of her evening spent with the count had spread and, as d’Aubec had anticipated, a link of the most dubious kind had been forged between them. No skin off Laetitia Talbot’s nose, of course, but the Stella she was fast becoming was distressed and aggrieved.
Phil and Patrick, on the other hand, behaved with their normal joking friendship and, sensing the problem, did their best to rectify it. “So—Cinderella was back early from the ball last night? Prince Charming failed to impress, I guess?” Phil asked in a carrying voice. The pair had been sitting in the Huleux’s parlour when she got back and knew very well that her evening had been short and miserable.
“I’ll say! I’ve spent less tedious evenings playing snakes-and-ladders with my deaf aunt Daisy. I didn’t wait around for the pumpkin—I dashed for home at nine-thirty.” She was grateful for the opportunity so kindly thrown her to retrieve her reputation.
For the rest of the day she kept her head down, worked hard, shared information, and consulted the other diggers in an unemphatic way. When the time came to clean up and put away the equipment, friendly relations seemed to have been restored. Paradee had not put in an appearance. When she enquired about his absence, Phil told her cheerfully enough, “You’ve got a day’s respite, Stella. He set off early for Lyon in the site van. He goes every month to make his report to the Church authorities and pick up supplies.” The well-trained group seemed to get along very well without him.
Gunning had arrived at the trench towards the end of the day’s steady dig to sketch his record, and he timed his departure for a careful minute or two after her own. His long strides brought him level with her as they reached the old church of Mary Magdalene.
“Step inside for a moment, Stella. There’s never anyone about at this time of day and I notice my shadow seems to have been called off.”
She followed him to a side aisle where he stood to admire a fresco. It was painted on the plastered wall of the nave and was lit by the warm radiance of the late afternoon sun streaming through the lead-paned windows.
“Page forty-one?” she asked, watching him take Daniel’s guidebook from his pocket. “Are you about to show me page forty-one?”
He nodded. “Tell me what you make of this.”
Challenged again by the feeling that she was under male scrutiny, she replied briefly. “Fresco. Contemporary with the rest of the church fabric, I suppose. Look in your book. It’s a much better authority than I am.” She sighed and, led on by his silence and one slightly raised eyebrow, began again: “We’re looking at a depiction of the patron saint of the church. It’s Mary Magdalene. Identifiable by her appearance and the presence of the usual accompanying icons—there’s the skull…there on the left…and under her arm that highly decorated pot represents the unguent jar she used to anoint the Lord’s feet…. And down here on the ground at her feet is a rather charmless bit of earthenware—large and rounded—something in the nature of a funerary urn, I’d have thought. There’s nothing special here…lots of churches in this area have chosen her as their patron…even the cathedral at Vezelay is dedicated to her. And she’s popular in Provence, too—worshipped there, you’d say. They have a ceremony on the coast each year at Les Saintes Maries de la Mer where they parade a black statue through the town and walk it into the sea. It’s supposed to represent Sarah, the servant who accompanied the three Marys. She’s much revered by the Gypsy tribes who come from all over Europe each year in May to take part in the ceremony. Have you seen it?”
He shook his head.
“Well, according to the folktale, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salomé, the mother of James and John, Mary Jacobé, Jesus’ aunt, and their servant Sarah sailed across the Mediterranean after the death of Christ and ended up in Provence.”
She paused for a moment and added, “I’ve seen her skull.”
“You’ve seen whose skull?”
Pleased to have startled him, she explained. “Mary’s! An ancient skull was found in the mountains of the Sainte-Baume, where Mary is said to have led the life of a healer and holy woman. They claimed that it was that of Mary herself
. They dress it up in a rather improbable blonde wig and display it in procession about the streets on her saint’s day. I was there with my family five years ago. Tante Genevieve said the skull was a fake but I must say it looked convincingly old to me. It had the brownish yellow colour of tobacco-stained teeth. Rather gruesome. Especially when you compare it with this picture of her—so young and lovely.”
They stared at the alluring fresco in silence, enchanted by the slight shift in angle of the declining sun whose rays had now reached the stained glass of the western window and shone through, dappling the saint’s pale features with a glow of amber and rose.
“Oh, Lord!” whispered Letty. “She’s coming alive! Do you see it, William? Tell me—I expect this is the sort of thing vicars know—why is she always shown with flowing fair hair and a red dress? Is this a medieval convention?”
“I think so. And both attributes false. Entirely mistaken.”
“Mistaken? The red dress, surely, is an indication of her loose nature? The colour signals her status—identifies her as the prostitute that she was.”
“That was the intention. But Daniel was wrong in this—the lady was no prostitute.”
“But…but…I could quote chapter and verse that—”
“And all misrepresentations. There is just one word in the Gospels that gives rise to the stories: harmartolos, in Saint Luke. It doesn’t mean ‘prostitute,’ as people have said—the Greeks had quite a different word for that. It means ‘outside the law,’ and Jewish law, at that. It could refer to other less reprehensible types of behaviour, like failing to pay your taxes. It could even be a comment on her foreignness. A further problem is that there was no town of Magdala in Galilee after which she could have been named, though there was a Magdolum just over the border in Egypt. At all events, we can assume from the brief references in the Gospels that Mary Magdalene was an independent woman—in those days women were always referred to in the context of their relationship with a man…Miriam: mother, sister, daughter of…But the Magdalene stands alone. She must also have been wealthy. The unguent with which she anointed Christ was spikenard. Imported from India. Much used by temple priestesses…” He paused. “Worth a workingman’s wages for a year.”
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