‘Hello, monsieur,’ Fen spoke not to the owner of the château, but to a plump fluffy black and white cat, which had appeared on the terrace as she reached the top of the steps. His gleaming coat seemed to mock the scratched-up earth and dry, dusty terrace around them. If fresh vegetables had been in short supply during the occupation, Fen thought to herself, then mice certainly hadn’t.
Fen gave the cat a quick tickle between its ears and then looked up at the building itself. From where she stood, she could see warm stone covered in vibrant red Virginia creeper, its straggling feelers climbing up between elongated stone-mullioned windows towards the roof, which was a dark terracotta with a decorative diamond pattern set into it. It reminded Fen of the highly decorated buildings she’d seen in Dijon when she’d stretched her legs between trains.
She put her suitcase down and walked along the terrace to the right of the building, where a fairy-tale tower, of which Rapunzel would be proud, connected the old, medieval wing to another, larger and slightly more recent three-storey section, making the whole building a solid L-shape in design. Looking up at the tower that loomed above her, Fen saw that at each corner there was a small turret. They clung to the tower like limpets and it was only the reassurance that they obviously hadn’t crumbled for the last few hundred years that gave Fen hope that her adventure wouldn’t be prematurely ended by falling masonry.
All in all, the château, though monumental in parts, was a modest one. More of a grand maison, as her mother would impishly say.
A thin wisp of smoke rising from the chimney hinted at life within the house and, picking up her suitcase, Fen walked back along the terrace in front of the older part of the building until she found a small gate in an evergreen hedge. She pushed it open, cringing at the loud creak it gave as she slipped through, and found herself in the central courtyard of the château.
‘Bonjour! Madame?’ Fen called to the woman in the courtyard who was hanging sheets on the line. She was bent over the washing basket and Fen wondered if her voice had been lost on the breeze that had suddenly whipped through the buildings.
‘Madame? Bonjour!’ She tried again and this time the woman turned to face her – a much younger woman than Fen had assumed from the unfashionable clothes that she wore.
‘Je m’excuse… mademoiselle,’ Fen apologised, although the disgruntled young woman didn’t relax a muscle in her face, which was a picture of pure irritation. She was dark-haired and slim, her face pinched and sallow, as if she had spent the war drinking vinegar rather than fighting off Germans. She was young though, and it struck Fen as odd that she still wore a skirt and pinny instead of overalls. Fen felt sorry for her in her old worsted, calf-length, shapeless piece, which somehow made even the workaday overalls Fen had spent most of the war in look like high fashion.
There’s no colour to her, Fen thought, subconsciously reaching up to check that her own brightly coloured headscarf was still in place, keeping her curls at bay.
Before she could apologise for her faux pas, the woman started talking in a stream of rushed French.
‘Who are you, coming here, surprising me like that, with your madame this and madame that? Bof! You could have given me a heart attack!’ The woman looked Fen up and down. ‘Dressed like a duchess but dirty like a tramp!’
Fen, who was unsure whether it was her smart skirt – she’d worn one of her best to travel in – and rather natty headscarf or her travel-weary and dirty face that had offended the woman, waited until the flow of objections stopped before replying, her French rusty, but falling back into place as she spoke. ‘Mademoiselle, I am sorry to cause you any offence. I am here looking for work and lodging as advertised on the town noticeboard.’
‘Parisienne?’ The maid indicated that she thought Fen was from Paris, the use of the feminine lending its own connotations to the word and Fen understood what she meant. The women of Paris, as she’d seen for herself, with their fashions and more cosmopolitan culture, were often regarded cautiously by more rural folk, who perhaps saw higher hemlines as heresy rather than haute couture.
‘No, I’m from England, but I have lived in France before. My name is Fenella Churche.’
‘Eh bien,’ the woman looked a little mollified and placed her hands on her lower back to arch it out before she returned the introduction. ‘I am Estelle Suchet. I am the housekeeper and nursery maid. The mistress is in the kitchen, I’ll take you through.’
Fen thanked her and followed her across the courtyard, listening to the mutterings of the maid as they went. ‘Who does she think she is? Like she’ll last more than a minute in the fields with that silk scarf. Ha. She’ll be gone soon enough, I’m sure. Though her accent is good, I’ll give her that, though it’s far too Paris for my liking.’
Fen smiled to herself, not mocking the young housekeeper, but glad that although the war may have ravaged the country around them, the women of France were still as opinionated as they ever had been.
Estelle led her out of the sunshine of the courtyard into the cool of a small hallway and from there into the large vaulted-ceilinged kitchen of the château, where she left her and returned to her laundry. The overwhelming feeling was of stone – massive pale blocks of it created the walls and the deep fireplace, which once would have housed an old-fashioned spit, such as you would have roasted a whole pig on with a kitchen boy slowly turning it for hours and hours. Now there was a large black stove set into the soot-darkened recess, with copper pans hanging above it from cast-iron hooks.
Fen’s eyes moved up the chimney breast, thickset with stone and a carved family crest. It had likely once been coloured in heraldic blues and reds, perhaps a flash of gold, but those hues had long since faded and been tarnished by the black smoke of countless cooking fires. She could make out three fleurs-de-lis, the gold of their original colouring smutted with soot, and the azure blue behind them now mostly grey and blackened, too. There had obviously been an accident at some point, perhaps a copper pan wielded too energetically, but one of the smaller stones of the fire surround was freshly mortared into the chimney breast and it stood out starkly, clean against the soot. In the centre of the kitchen was a long, well-scrubbed wooden table. Near to where Fen stood, by the door to the hallway, the table was laid with dishes and cutlery, ready for dinner. Fen subconsciously touched her rumbling stomach and hoped she would be sitting there soon enough. The table was exceptionally long, however, and whoever would be dining there later would only take up about a third of it. At the far end, a woman was pounding bread dough into submission, her dark hair swept up into a chignon but tendrils around her face swinging rhythmically with her kneading.
‘Bonjour, madame,’ Fen hoped she was on safer ground, and that this was indeed the lady of the house, although she was only wearing a simple cotton dress, nothing fancy.
‘Yes?’ The woman looked up from her dough and spoke.
Fen introduced herself, and once again she was met with an inquisitive ‘Parisienne?’
‘No, madame, I am from England and I…’ Fen stopped talking, not because her French wasn’t up to it, but she hadn’t really thought terribly far ahead as to how she was going to explain her sudden appearance in Burgundy. She and Kitty, in all their planning over timetables and rationing coupons, had never thought of the need for a cover story. Perhaps it was the less-than-friendly greeting from both women, or the fact that the kitchen’s high stone walls seemed to suddenly bear down on her, but she stopped in mid-sentence and decided that it might be best not to explain about Arthur and her search for his whereabouts to this stranger.
As the lady stared at her, though, her impatient eyes demanding an explanation, Fen grasped around inside her mind for inspiration.
‘… I am travelling in order to write about the, er,’ Fen stalled before plucking an idea out of the air, ‘the, er, churches of the Côte d’Or region.’
‘That is a very niche subject matter, mademoiselle.’
‘Yes, it’s a passion of mine. Churches.’
/>
‘And what is your name?’
‘Fenella. Fenella Churche.’ Fen realised how silly this all sounded now. A Miss Churche writing about churches…
She held her breath as madame pounded the dough. Finally, she stopped and spoke to Fen as she peeled the sticky dough from her fingers.
‘Bon. We need help in the vineyard and the house. I assume you can work?’
‘Yes, of course. I was in the Women’s Land Army, I worked the fields and—’
‘Bon.’ Madame cut her off. ‘You will sleep with Estelle. Estelle!’ The call brought the housekeeper running back in from the courtyard. ‘Show Mademoiselle Churche to your room, you will share.’
The look of disgust on the maid’s face was hard for Fen to miss, but she bravely smiled at the pair of French women and picked up her suitcase.
‘But, madame…’ the maid whined.
‘Shush, Estelle, you used to travel the countryside in a caravan, you can share a room in a château!’
Estelle scowled but beckoned for Fen to follow her out of the kitchen and into the dark passageway that led to the bedrooms. Before they left the warmth of the kitchen, Fen asked madame one more thing.
‘Madame, if you don’t mind, may I have your name?’
‘Of course, my name is Madame Bernard. Sophie Bernard. My husband is Pierre. I will introduce you to the household at dinner. Six o’clock. Don’t be late.’
Fen thanked her hostess – or rather employer – and caught up with the disgruntled housekeeper. A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet, Fen repeated the mantra to herself as she followed Estelle from the kitchen through a door that led into the grand tower that Fen had looked up at from the terrace.
The tower itself served the purpose of linking the vaulted kitchen wing to the three-storey living quarters and was home to the most monumental staircase. Climbing it was like clambering through a fossilised ammonite, the smell of the stone musty and chalky, the air damp and cool.
‘Sharing a room! It is not right! I am not a child!’ Estelle chuntered away to herself as she led Fen up the spiral staircase. Fen was careful to follow in Estelle’s footsteps and keep to the widest part of each stair tread, as the steps narrowed to nothing at the cylindrical centre of the tower. Even so, her suitcase still accidentally bashed against the stone every now and again as she lugged it up with her, causing Estelle to tut under her breath. Needless to say, Fen wasn’t too keen on the pairing either, but the house suddenly seemed a large and potentially unfriendly place, so she wasn’t about to complain about having the company, however sour.
Soon enough, they arrived at the first floor, where an elegant painted blue door looked incongruous next to the solid stone surrounding it. As soon as the pair walked through it, Fen noticed that the architecture of this wing was different from the kitchen and tower, and she imagined that it must have been added to the medieval building later on.
The door opened onto a corridor, and Fen thought that the decoration, though not in its first flush of youth, was more elegant than the older part of the château. Light flowed in from large, unshuttered windows on the left-hand side and, as they walked along, Fen caught sight of the courtyard she’d been in a few moments earlier.
On their right were the bedrooms, and each door was painted in the same pale blue as the rest of the woodwork. One, two… Estelle stopped in front of the third door along and laid her hand on the door handle. She turned to look at Fen and gave her what felt like a final accusatory glance, a once-over up and down as if vetting her for the room, and then turned the large brass knob to open the door.
‘Wait here,’ the housekeeper demanded of Fen.
As she stood, Fen cast her eyes around the corridor, noticing the cobwebs high up in the cornicing and the dust on the skirting board. Mrs B would have had a field day in here, her duster and mop at the ready. Fen was busy fantasising about how her former landlady would react, and what choice words she’d use to describe the slatternly state of the cleaning, when Estelle reappeared and finally allowed her to enter their bedroom.
Fen picked up her case and walked in. The room wasn’t beautiful, but it had the potential to be so, with the proportions that you’d expect from a fine eighteenth-century building. Wide, dark wood floorboards were covered with a couple of threadbare rugs, and between Fen and the two large almost-floor-to-ceiling windows there stood two small single beds. But oh, the view from the windows… Even at this distance, Fen could see gently rolling slopes covered in vines, with a copse here and there in the distance. It was stunning countryside, different to the more wooded Weald of West Sussex, but a lovely sight all the same.
Fen was just edging past the beds to get a better look when she heard a ‘Tsk, non, non, non,’ from Estelle.
‘Sorry, am I in the way?’
‘Of course, but it is not that, that is your bed there.’ Estelle pointed towards the one nearest the door.
Fen placed her suitcase down on the floor next to it, glad to let go of the heavy weight and stretch out her fingers.
Estelle sighed heavily, as if every action Fen took was specifically designed to annoy her, and then did a cursory show round of the room. She opened the doors of a large grey armoire and pointed out the hanging space. She’s barely got a thing in there, Fen thought and in that moment went from being slightly overwhelmed by the whole situation to pitying the housekeeper, whose dresses only took up a few inches of hanging space.
‘When you’ve finished gawking,’ Estelle closed the armoire’s doors and indicated the chest of drawers, which was also painted grey, and positioned between the two windows.
Once, Fen thought to herself, this grand house must have had someone living here with an eye for detail and the money to commission such matching furniture. Now, it was merely a room for a housekeeper – and one with barely a stitch to her name either, Fen realised as Estelle indicated that only two of the drawers in the chest were hers.
‘Don’t you dare go through it though. Or go poking your nose around any other part of this room.’ Estelle waggled her finger at Fen, who was already nodding her head. ‘And under the bed is the pisspot and where you can store your case. Just don’t confuse the two in the middle of the night!’ This last, crass, bon mot sent Estelle into paroxysms of cackling laughter.
‘I will try,’ Fen assured her, glancing around as the maid still chuckled to herself. In between the beds was a small table, on which stood a framed photograph of a man and an oil lamp. A lack of electric supply was understandable in a rural, obviously run-down château. But a potty? Plus, she’d noticed that there was a large pitcher and bowl on top of the chest of drawers – put there no doubt for the ladies’ daily wash. Fen wondered if enquiring about the plumbing would irk her new housemate even more, and she decided to leave it and hoped she might find something resembling a bathroom when she was alone and able to explore.
Estelle suddenly snatched the framed photograph away from Fen’s eyeline. ‘There is work to do, I’m sure madame would like you to make yourself useful before dinner.’ She slipped the frame into one of the capacious pockets of her apron. ‘Don’t linger over the unpacking, unless you are actually Parisienne and have trunks and trunks of silk stockings and fine wools that I am missing?’ Estelle did a bad impression of a detective looking for clues with a magnifying glass and then laughed. ‘Bof, well, I am busy. Until dinner, à bientôt.’
Estelle bustled past Fen and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Fen counted to three, and then let out a long sigh. She sat down on the bed and winced as the metal springs gave their best impression of the string section warming up before a concert. She gave the bed a cursory bounce and the noise worsened so she stopped and sat in the still, silent room. She stared at the dust motes that danced around in the sunlight that streamed in through the large windows.
‘What a funny old place, with some funny old people,’ Fen said to herself under her breath. And then she let herself, just for a moment, wonder how diverting
Arthur would have found it all.
Five
Fen unpacked her suitcase, laying out her clothes on the single bed before deciding whether they should be hung up in the wardrobe or folded into a drawer. She hoped she’d brought the right things, and thought of what Kitty had said before she left about ‘baking in the French sunshine’. Fen smiled as she remembered their giggles…
‘It’s Burgundy, Kitty, not exactly the Riviera!’
‘Yes, but it’s still more thrilling than a wet weekend in West Sussex…’
‘To be fair, most things are more thrilling than that!’
‘And you get to have a proper adventure. Like Joan Fontaine in Frenchman’s Creek!’
‘As long as I’m not paddling the wrong way up the creek in Morey-Fontaine, we’ll be fine…’
And who knew where this adventure would lead her?
She settled on folding her dungarees and jumpers into one of the empty drawers and hanging her other Sunday-best skirt and blouse in the armoire. Other than what she was wearing, she had one more stout pair of shoes with her, some pumps and, of course, her short wellington boots, all of which she lined up in the bottom of the large wardrobe.
‘That’s odd,’ Fen whispered to herself as she noticed that a thin layer of dust covered most of the bottom shelf, except for a rectangular patch where a box or case might have recently been stored. Someone had obviously recently had cause to move whatever it was before any more dust could gather.
She shrugged and moved back to the bed where she’d left the handkerchief that she had used to wrap around a silver frame that contained a photograph of Arthur. She carefully unfolded it and placed the frame on the rickety bedside table so that she could see it from her pillow. She remembered the day they’d been to the photographic studio and had the portraits taken. Then, a few days before Arthur was sent abroad, they’d given each other these little love tokens. Fen wondered where the matching silver frame that contained the picture of her was? Lost, no doubt, to some roadside tinker now, sold on for cash or perhaps dirty and corroding in a ditch.
A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1) Page 4
