The Splendour Falls

by Susanna Kearsley

  “Yes, I know. Five hundred lire. Last night at dinner I sat next to a kindly old Italian gent,” he explained, “who found that for me in the pocket of his overcoat. He charged me rather more than the going rate of exchange, I think, but I simply couldn’t let the opportunity pass.”

  “You mean you actually bought this from someone?” I stared down at the coin, feeling the weight of it, the warmth. “For me?”

  “You said your father gave you coins to wish with every morning, when you lived in Italy.” He turned his mild gaze upon the dancing spray that veiled the three bronze Graces. “Different fountain, of course, but I thought if the coin were the proper currency, you might still get your wish.”

  I was stunned that he’d remembered such a small thing, that he’d gone to so much trouble. My vision misting, I tucked my head down, mumbling thanks. The specter of my five-year-old self danced happily beside me. What should I wish for, Daddy? And again I heard his answer: Anything you want. Anything…

  I hadn’t heard Neil move, and so the touch of his fingers on my face startled me. It was a light touch, warm and sure and faintly comforting, as if he had every right to tip my chin up, to fix me with those understanding eyes and brush his thumb across the curve of my cheekbone, wiping away the single tear that had spilled from my wet lashes. “It’s really not that difficult,” he said. “Believing.”

  “Neil…”

  “Whenever you’re ready.” His smile was strangely gentle. “It’ll keep.” His thumb trailed down my face to touch the corner of my mouth, and then he dropped his hand completely and the midnight eyes slid past me to the crowded market square. “There they are,” Neil said.

  The boys had spotted us as well, but it took them a few minutes to push their way through. I was grateful for the delay. By the time they reached us, I was looking very nearly normal.

  Paul’s hands were empty, tucked into the pockets of his bright red jacket, but Simon had evidently fallen victim to the vendors. “…and you can’t tear it or wear it out,” was his final proud pronouncement, as he held up a perfectly ordinary-looking chamois cloth to show us. “You should have seen it, Emily—the sales guy even set fire to it, and nothing happened.”

  I agreed that was most impressive. “But what is it for?”

  “Oh, lots of things,” Simon hedged, shoving the miracle cloth back into its bag.

  Paul grinned. “He’s pathetic,” he told us. “He nearly bought a radiator brush, of all things. Every salesman’s dream, that’s Simon.”

  “Mom and Dad have a radiator,” his brother defended himself.

  “And I’m sure that’s what they’ve dreamed we’d bring them home from France—a radiator brush.” Paul’s voice was dry. “Have you still got my bread, by the way? I’ll need it to feed the ducks.”

  “What? Oh, yeah.” Simon rummaged in a carrier bag, tugging out a long piece of baguette. “I’m surprised those stupid ducks haven’t sunk to the bottom of the river, the way you feed them.”

  “Ducks need to eat, too.” Paul took the bread and turned to me, his dark eyes slightly quizzical. “You’re welcome to come with me, if you want, unless you’d rather—”

  “I’d love to come,” I cut him off, relieved to find my legs would still support me when I stood. Neil settled back against the bench, the soft breeze stirring his golden hair. He met my eyes and smiled. I was running away, and we both knew it, but he didn’t try to stop me. He seemed quite content to stay behind with Simon and peruse the bulging carrier bags, while I scuttled like a rabbit after Paul.

  The crowd surged in around me, swept me on, and shot me like a cork from a bottle onto the Quai Jeanne d’Arc, where Paul stood waiting at the foot of the Rabelais statue.

  We sat on the steps, as we had before, with the sloping stone wall to our backs and the river spread like a glistening blanket before us, stretched wide at either end to the horizon. The ducks were clustered out of sight at the end of the boat launch, but the cacophony of paddle and squawk still rose loudly to our ears, nearly drowning out the constant drone of traffic on the quai. The same flat-bottomed punt bobbed gently to the rhythm of the current at our feet, its chain moorings trailing clots of sodden dead-brown leaves.

  Paul reached for his cigarettes, nodding at my hand. “What have you got there?”

  Vaguely surprised, I looked down at my tightly clenched fist. “Nothing,” I said, a little too quickly. “Just a coin.” I dropped it loose into my handbag, and heard it fall to the bottom with a reproachful clink. Frowning, I ran a hand through my hair. “Listen, could I have a cigarette?”

  “Sure.” He held the packet out, unquestioning, and struck the match for me. “That must have been some conversation, back there. He looked like he could have done with a cigarette, too.”

  I inhaled gratefully. “Who did?”

  “Who, she says.” Paul shook his head and looked away, smiling through a drifting haze of smoke. “OK, since you don’t want to talk about it…”

  “There isn’t anything to talk about,” I told him, stubbornly. “We’ve fifteen years between us, Neil and I, and he lives in a different country. And he’s a musician, for heaven’s sake.”

  “What’s wrong with musicians?”

  “They’re unreliable.” I reached to tap the ash from my cigarette, my expression firm. “Besides which, he’s blond.”

  Paul didn’t even waste his breath trying to figure out what that fact had to do with anything. He simply looked at me with quiet sympathy, the way a doctor might look at a patient with a terminal disease. “You’re not making sense,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, well.” I rubbed my forehead with a weary hand. “I’ve not been sleeping, that’s the problem. I’m not thinking clearly.”

  “That’s OK. It’s the job of the Great Detective to think clearly,” he said with a wink. “Trusty sidekicks are always a little muddle-headed, don’t you know.”

  “Right then.” I leaned back, my eyes half closed. “What’s on the Great Detective’s mind this morning?”

  “Afternoon,” he corrected me, with a glance at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty, already. And if you must know, I’ve been thinking about numbers.”

  “Numbers?”

  “Twenty-two, in particular.” He smiled. “There are twenty-two people with the first name Didier listed in the Chinon telephone directory.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I stayed up last night, counting them. It’s a pretty thin directory. So if the man who wrote to your cousin does live in Chinon, he’s probably one of those twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-one,” I corrected him. “Didier Muret is out of it.”

  “Is he?” Paul sent a smoke ring wafting through the pregnant air. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. I asked Thierry what he knew about Martine’s ex-husband, and it’s kind of interesting, really.”

  I leaned back, hands clasped around my bent knees. “Oh yes?”

  “Yeah. It seems apart from being a colossal drunk, Didier Muret was one of those guys who likes to flash his money around. You know—expensive clothes, expensive car, buying drinks for everybody.”

  “So?”

  “So where did he get the money from?” Paul asked. “The lawyer that he used to work for fired him for stealing from the petty cash, and Martine cut him off completely, except for the house. So how could Didier Muret afford his lifestyle?”

  I had to admit no easy answer came to mind. “But I don’t see how that connects to my cousin, at all.”

  “It doesn’t, really. It’s just one of those things that I tend to wonder about.”

  I smiled, remembering his belief that everything ought to make sense. “Looking for the angle, are you?”

  “Always.”

  “What else did Thierry tell you?”

  “Oh, lots of things. It’s hard to shut Thierry up, once he gets
going. He said the death was ruled an accident, but the police originally thought someone else was with Muret that evening, because of the number of wine glasses they found. Which probably explains,” he said, “why they questioned poor old Victor Belliveau, and people like that.” He rubbed the back of his neck, thoughtfully. “Your cousin’s not a violent person, is he?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Harry?”

  “Suppose he’d been drinking, or someone made him really angry…”

  I finally caught his meaning, and rose bristling to my cousin’s defense. “Paul, you don’t think for one minute that Harry killed Martine’s ex-husband?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. I just think it’s a hell of a coincidence…”

  “It’s ridiculous,” I argued. Harry would never hurt anyone; he hated fighting, and besides, what possible motive would there have been? Even if Didier Muret had somehow read that article, and written to Harry, and met with him… how could that lead to anything like murder? And even if it was an accident… I shook my head. “Ridiculous,” I told Paul, resolutely. “Harry’s got a great respect for justice. He would never run away from something that he did.”

  Paul looked at me, amusement in his eyes, and handed me another cigarette. “OK, OK. I’m sorry I brought it up.” His smile punctured the balloon of my righteous indignation.

  “Well, anyway,” I said, softening, “the point is moot, isn’t it? You said the death was ruled an accident.”

  “Accident,” Paul replied, “is just another word for chance.” But when I asked him what he meant by that he only shrugged, turning his gaze thoughtfully across the river. “I don’t know, exactly. Just a hunch I have. Tell me again about this theory of your cousin’s. About the lost treasure of Isabelle of Angoulême.”

  I told him, and he listened, quietly, attentively. My father looked like that, I thought, when he was doing crosswords. One could almost hear the wheels at work. “So what,” I asked him, “are you thinking?”

  “Nothing important.” He lifted his cigarette. “Like I said, it’s just a hunch. Simon’s paranoia rubbing off again, most likely. Gypsies, Nazis, treasures in the tunnels…” He smiled. “This really is a case for Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Well, don’t get too carried away with your investigations,” I implored him. “I’d hate for you to spoil your whole holiday on my account.”

  “Don’t worry so much,” was his advice. “I’m hardly spoiling my holiday. Here.” He handed me a hunk of bread. “Feed the ducks.”

  When all the bread was gone, he stretched and checked his watch. “I’d better go find my brother. He said something about having lunch with Christian—I don’t know. Simon thinks that every German is an expert on the Nazi empire.” Paul smiled. “He never gives up, my brother. He’s bound and determined to find one of those treasures, before we leave.”

  “You might never leave, then.”

  “Suits me. Hey, are you going back to the hotel? Could you take this with you?” He shrugged his jacket off and held it up to me. “It’s getting kind of warm, with all this sun.”

  “Sure. Paul…” I frowned. “I know you like playing detective and all that, but you will be careful, won’t you?”

  “What could happen?” Paul stood up, pitching his spent cigarette away. The breeze caught it and sent it tumbling down the steps into the brackish water, where it landed with a soft and final hiss. For a brief instant, with the sun at his back, he looked like some young hero from the Old Testament, a David yearning for the battlefield. But then I blinked and there was only Paul, with his black hair flopped untidily across his forehead and his dark eyes deep and quiet as the river at our feet. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Want to meet for drinks in the hotel bar? Say, three o’clock?”

  “OK.” I climbed with him to the top of the sloping steps and leaned, half sitting, on the low stone wall, watching him walk back toward the market place. At the other side of the zebra crossing he turned back, grinning, and called out something that I didn’t catch. He seemed to be pointing at the Rabelais statue beside me, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I nodded anyway, and waved. Satisfied, he turned away again and vanished in the crowd.

  My cigarette had burned down nearly to the filter. It left an acrid bitter taste upon my tongue, and I bent to crush it out against the wall, holding the torn stub lightly in my fingers while I looked round for a litter bin. There was one not far from me, at the edge of the busy road. Gathering Paul’s jacket in my free hand, I pulled myself away from the river wall with a small sigh, and wandered the few steps forward.

  The jacket felt a good deal heavier than it ought to have been. It hung awkwardly to one side, and for a moment I thought he’d left his wallet in it, until one pocket gaped to reveal the dog-eared pages of a thickish paperback, with a cracked disfigured cover. I was smiling as I tossed my dead bit of cigarette into the bin.

  The prickling at the back of my neck was my only warning. I barely turned in time to see the gypsy step from the shadow of the brooding statue and cross the boulevard, walking back toward the market square. He didn’t look at me. I might have been a ghost, invisible. Paranoia, I thought, was a sign of creeping age; and yet I did feel more at ease when man and dog had disappeared, and the shifting sea of faces swirled and flowed to fill the wake behind them.

  Chapter 23

  …the heralds to and fro,

  With message and defiance, went and came;

  Thierry set my second kir on the low table at my knees, propped one foot against the carpeted step up to my section, and picked up his story where he’d left off. “…and they cannot eat or bathe, or do anything for pleasure—not until the sun has set, tomorrow night. It is a most important holiday. Paul calls it Yom… Yom…”

  “Yom Kippur?”

  “Yes, that is it.” Thierry nodded. “The Day of Atonement. Paul says it is a day for remembering the dead, and for confessing sins.”

  “I see.” I took a sip of my drink. “And this begins tonight, then, does it?”

  “When the sun goes down, yes. Paul and Simon, they will have to eat like giants before then, if they are to fast all day tomorrow.” Thierry placed a sympathetic hand on his own flat stomach. “I would not like to be a Jew, I think.”

  “Didn’t you ever fast for Lent?”

  His dark eyes danced with mischief. “My sins, they are so many, Mademoiselle—the fasting, it would do no good. Besides,” he added, “the Jewish holiday is more than just not eating. Paul says it is forbidden to be angry, or to hold an argument, or to think bad thoughts about someone. It is not possible.” He dismissed the notion with a “pouf.” “Not if I must serve Madame Whitaker.”

  One level up, the violin ran through a series of scales and then began its mournful song. Thierry frowned. “He has not listened to me, what I said. He plays today the love song.”

  Sure enough, the strains of the Salut d’Amour came drifting down the empty stairwell and into the bar. I tried to shut it out, leaning back in my chair. “Where is Madame Whitaker today, anyway?” I asked Thierry. “I haven’t seen her at all. Does she have another headache?”

  He shook his head. “She has gone with my aunt and uncle, to see the church at Candes-St-Martin. It is a nice church, very old.”

  “Did her husband go, as well?”

  “I do not think so. But he is also out, somewhere.”

  Hiding from his wife, most likely. Happy marriages, I thought, seemed something of a rarity these days. Especially in Chinon.

  “Ah.” Thierry glanced upwards, approvingly, as the violin shifted tunes. “This is the symphony by Beethoven, is it not?”

  I listened, and nodded. “Yes, the Eroica.”

  “Comment?”

  I repeated the name more clearly. “Beethoven’s Third Symphony. He wrote it for Napoleon.”

  Thierry raised his eyebrows. “So it is F
rench, this symphony?”

  “Well, in a way. But Napoleon went and had himself crowned Emperor before this piece was finished, and Beethoven wasn’t at all pleased about that.” In fact he’d been so disillusioned that he’d changed the dedication—no longer for Napoleon, but simply “to the memory of a great man.” Every age, I thought, had mourned the loss of heroes.

  Thierry smiled. “You know much about this music, Mademoiselle.”

  “Not really. I just remember certain pieces, and the stories that go with them.”

  “Me, I do not listen to the type of music Monsieur Grantham plays. I take him into Tours, to the discotheque, so he can hear real music, but…” The young bartender shrugged again, amiably. “He says he likes better the violin.”

  Silently, I sided with Neil. “What time is it now, Thierry, do you know?”

  He turned his wrist to look. “It is just after fifteen hours.” He sighed. “Two hours more before my work is finished for today.”

  Work or no, I thought, the hotel bar wasn’t the worst place one could spend an afternoon. The long polished windows stood open to the scented breeze and the glowing sunlight of an autumn afternoon fell warm upon my neck and shoulders. Outside, the market crowds had thinned and I could clearly see the fountain scattering its rain of diamond drops through which the Graces gazed, serene.

  Thierry was looking out the window, too, and thinking. “Yesterday, that was Monsieur Valcourt you lunched with, was it not? I did not know you knew him.” The trace of envy in his tone puzzled me, until he went on, “He has the best car, the very best.”

  I smiled, remembering that bright red Porsche that purred like a great cat and gleamed like any young man’s dream. “It is a nice car,” I agreed.

  “Madame Muret, she has promised she will take me for a fast drive in this car one day. When Monsieur Valcourt is gone to Paris.”

  “Has she really?”