by Peter Mayle
The thought of dealing with a bunch of suspicious insurance agents stiffened Elena’s resolve. “I’m sorry, too, Frank, but I’ve had it. When this is over, I’m quitting.” She took the letter of resignation from her briefcase and slid it across the desk.
Knox looked at it, sighed once more, emptied his glass, and shook his head. “Can’t say I blame you.”
—
Elena’s call woke Sam up. “I have good news and bad news,” she said. “I have to stay in L.A. for another couple of days.” She paused for a moment. “But the good news is I’ve quit.”
“Sweetheart, that’s great. How do you feel about it?”
“Well, you know—sad for Frank, but otherwise pretty good.” She paused. “No, otherwise it feels fantastic.”
“I can hear you smiling.”
“Listen, while you’re waiting for me to get back, why don’t you take a look around the inside of the house to see what needs to be done? I’ll expect a full report, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sam decided to enlist the help of Reboul, a man who had a thorough grounding in the joys of renovation, having spent three years licking Le Pharo into shape. He was almost as excited as Sam, and on the twenty-five-minute walk over to the house he offered some basic advice on dealing with the Provençal architect.
“First,” he said, “establish a strict budget—never popular, but necessary. Next, get a firm completion date written into the contract. This is even less popular. Finally, and the least popular of all, there should be penalty clauses if the work isn’t done on time. Oh, and watch out for les petits inconnus.”
Sam laughed. “I would if I knew what they were.”
“The little unknowns. They are every architect’s best excuse—the unpredictable problems that delay the progress of the work and increase the price. This can be anything from a fractured sewage pipe to a colony of killer hornets in the roof. But—quelle surprise!—how were we to know?”
Reboul carried on with his litany of tips and warnings until the two men had walked up the narrow, stony drive and stopped in front of the house. “My friend, don’t take anything I’ve said too seriously. This is a very special property.”
And no doubt it would be, but at the moment generous doses of optimism and imagination were required. There were windows, but they did their best to ignore the view, and they were small. So too were the rooms, with a tiny kitchen barely big enough to swing a saucepan, and a somber living room. Upstairs, one garret led to another—five in all—and the single bathroom, with a strong whiff of damp and a drip-stained bathtub, actively discouraged any thoughts of hygiene.
But once outside, everything changed. The terrace, although in need of repair, went around three sides of the house, giving the choice of sun or shade all through the day. And the view, in every direction, was incredible. It was this view, Sam and Reboul agreed, that had to be brought into the house, with much bigger windows and fewer, but larger and lighter, rooms. “Gut it,” was Reboul’s advice, “and make it selfish—just for the two of you.”
This raised the question of who should do the gutting. Preferably someone local, who had contacts with the most reliable workmen; someone with taste; and, if possible, someone who was fluent in English. Reboul’s mind went back to Tommy Van Buren’s house outside Cannes, and Coco Dumas.
“She would be ideal for this job,” said Reboul. “But as you know, Sam, I have a problem with her. Let’s find a few other architects, and see what you think of them.”
“What about the guy who did Le Pharo for you? He did a terrific job.”
“He did. And he sent me some terrific bills.” Reboul winced at the memory. “In fact, he retired to Martinique on the proceeds.”
Chapter 6
Sam stood waiting for Elena in the arrivals area at the Marseille airport, playing the game of Spot the Parisian. Although not yet full summer, the vacation season was off to an early start, and refugees from the north were becoming more and more numerous. They could often be identified by what they were wearing: the pessimists still in scarves and heavy jackets, the optimists dressed ready for a day at the beach. It occurred to Sam that this was the first time he had waited at the airport as a homeowner, and therefore almost a native; he did his best to look like a Marseillais.
He was expecting to meet a weary, travel-wrinkled Elena, and was delighted to see instead a fresh-faced, smiling vision coming toward him. As she explained on the way to the car, Frank Knox had been so grateful to her for staying on to help out that he had bumped her up to first class for the flight back.
“I had a full-length bed,” she said, “a couple of glasses of Champagne, and ten hours sleep. Heaven. Even better, when I woke up I remembered that I’d quit.” Her face was one huge beam.
“You’re not going to miss it?”
“Are you kidding? Does anyone miss toothache? Anyway, I won’t have time to miss it—I’ve got a house to fix up.”
The house was the main topic of conversation on the drive back to Le Pharo. Elena cross-examined Sam about the state of everything—windows, floors, plumbing, roof—until Sam suggested that these were delicate matters best left to an architect.
“Any ideas?” asked Elena.
“Francis has been working on it. He’s asking some of his friends if they can recommend anyone. This is all pretty new to me. I haven’t had too much experience with architects. Have you?”
“Once, when I moved into my apartment in L.A. But it didn’t work out.”
“No?”
“Let’s say we weren’t aesthetically compatible. That’s how I put it when I fired him.”
They arrived at Le Pharo, dropped off Elena’s suitcase, and went downstairs in search of Reboul. They found him on the terrace, having a drink with Hervé, the police report of the Castellaci robbery on the table between them.
“Ah, here she is, my favorite insurance executive. Welcome back.” Reboul stood up to present Elena and Sam to Hervé. “We’ve been looking at the report you left.” He poured glasses of rosé for them before sitting down. “I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t look very hopeful. I’ll let Hervé explain.”
Hervé, normally a jovial man, looked unusually serious. “It seems to me that my colleagues in Nice have produced a very professional report. All the relevant details are there, and I’m afraid I have to agree with their conclusion that there is little hope of recovering the diamonds or finding the thief.” He paused for a sip of wine. “Robberies like this are, fortunately, very rare. I can think of only one or two in the past five years or so—there was one in Monaco, another about eighteen months ago in Antibes, and now this. In and out, no signs of forced entry, no prints, nothing.” He shook his head. “And no publicity, either. Robberies like this are not glamorous or dramatic, like the jobs that are done in Cannes with guns and getaways on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. There’s no story. Nobody cares—it’s just rich people having some bad luck, that’s all.”
Sam was frowning. “Did the guys in Nice check on maids, cooks, chauffeurs, people like that, who are in and out of the house all the time?”
Hervé sighed. “Of course. In this case, the staff were given the night off, and they all had alibis.” He tapped the folder in front of him. “The details are in here. As I said, a very professional report.”
“So what happens now? Does this just get filed and forgotten?”
“Sam, if you think you can find something that a team of highly trained specialists overlooked, good luck to you. My personal theory—not to be repeated—is that Castellaci arranged for the jewels to be stolen so that he could pick up the insurance.” He saw Elena wince. “Sorry, my dear. But experience has shown me that the rich can be quite astonishingly dishonest.” He glanced at his watch and stood up. “I must go.” He looked at Sam, and winked. “I feel the urge to arrest somebody.”
—
Early the following morning, Elena dragged Sam out of bed and thrust him, still protesting, into the shower. Sh
e hadn’t yet had time to inspect the inside of their house, and could hardly wait to be done with breakfast. This was to be a big day. Reboul’s friends had recommended some architects, and interviews had been arranged. These would take place on site, and Elena was almost pawing the ground with anticipation.
On their way over to the house, Sam passed on the advice that Reboul had given him. “Fixed budget. Firm delivery date. And penalty clauses. OK?”
“How about aesthetic compatibility?”
“That too.”
When they arrived, Elena immediately went inside, leaving Sam to pace around the house and work out where and when the sun would hit. They had decided to create a breakfast terrace to catch the morning sun, a lunchtime terrace in the shade, and an evening terrace for drinks and a view of the sunset. Reboul had warned Sam not to rely on umbrellas for shade because, as he said, when the Mistral is blowing it can take an umbrella halfway to Corsica. So shadows cast by the house and trees would have to provide the necessary patches of shade.
Sam was making some rough notes on his iPad when Elena emerged, skipped across to him, and put her arms round his neck.
“It’s going to be great. Francis was right—gut it and start over. But tell me something: How can you have five bedrooms with one lousy little bathroom? Is that an old French tradition?”
Sam was stopped from speculating on the bathroom habits of the French by the arrival, in a Porsche convertible, of the first architect. According to the names and times on Sam’s list, this was Christian de Beaufort.
He was a most elegant gentleman, with a mane of silver hair, beautifully turned out in a black linen suit. He was accompanied by an equally chic young woman carrying a briefcase, who was having some difficulty negotiating the uneven stony ground in her perilously high heels. After introductions had been made and the view admired, de Beaufort insisted that he and his assistant should be left to look around the house on their own, without any distractions. Twenty minutes passed.
When de Beaufort came out, brushing dust off his jacket, it quickly became clear that he had not been impressed by what he had seen. “Of course,” he said, “with this property, the view is everything; the house is secondary. Above all, it needs to be substantially enlarged. At the moment, for instance, there is nowhere for the servants to sleep. Naturally, everything is possible, but,” and here he shrugged, “I don’t think that I am the man for the job. My work is on a larger scale. Désolé.” And with that, he put on his sunglasses and he and his assistant inserted themselves into the Porsche.
Sam was pleased to see that Elena was laughing. “The nerve of the guy,” she said, “although he had a point. Where will we put the servants?”
De Beaufort’s lukewarm assessment of the house was a taste of things to come. As the day wore on, three more architects came and went. One suggested razing the house to the ground and replacing it with a modern glass cube. Another wanted to add a penthouse and turn the ground floor into an indoor swimming pool. A third was practically speechless with shock when Sam mentioned budgets and penalty clauses. “How do you expect an artist to work like that?” he said, as he flounced off. By late afternoon, Elena and Sam had to face the fact that they hadn’t made much progress.
Over a drink with Reboul that evening, Elena confessed that she had been disappointed that all the candidates—and indeed the vast majority of architects—were men.
“Why aren’t there more women?” She looked accusingly at Sam, as though it were his fault, but gave him no chance to reply before climbing on to her hobby horse. “Women understand kitchens; most men don’t. Women realize that even the closest couples need some personal space. Women do bathrooms much better. Women aren’t afraid of working to budgets. Women appreciate the importance of well-organized storage space. In other words, they’re much, much more practical. And another thing,” she said, “they don’t let their egos get in the way of their work.”
While Reboul was listening to this, he couldn’t help remembering a few architectural hiccups that had occurred while Le Pharo was being renovated—mistakes that would not have been made by a woman: a lack of full-length closet space and a shower like a huge deep-freeze, in particular. He sighed as he came to the obvious conclusion.
“I remember you liked what Coco Dumas had done to Tommy Van Buren’s house. Would you think of using her?”
Elena put her hand out and squeezed Reboul’s arm. “Not in a million years, if it would be a problem for you.”
“I can always duck. But seriously, she’s very professional, there wouldn’t be any language difficulties, and, of course, she’s the acceptable sex. All I ask is that you keep her well away from Le Pharo.”
Elena leaned over and kissed Reboul on the cheek. “It’s a deal.”
—
Sam was by now getting used to Elena’s determination not to be outdressed by French women. Banned from the bedroom, he had settled into the sitting room next door to wait for her to appear. They were going to Nice for a meeting with Coco Dumas in her office, and, as Elena had explained more than once, her appearance would send a strong signal. French women take these things seriously; they are quite open about inspecting another woman’s outfit, and, if it passes scrutiny, she is more likely to be treated as an equal, worthy of respect.
“Well, what do you think?” Elena stood framed in the bedroom doorway, wearing a simple silk dress the color of pale lavender that set off her black hair and lightly tanned complexion.
“Lovely,” said Sam. “You look good enough to eat. She’ll be insanely jealous.”
“Perfect. Let’s go.”
The drive from Marseille to Nice is an easy run on the autoroute, and they arrived at the Negresco with half an hour to spare before the appointment, plenty of time to take in the sea air along the Promenade des Anglais, an elegant thoroughfare built in 1830 with English money. Its original purpose was to provide refined young English ladies with somewhere to stroll where they wouldn’t be pestered by “licentious locals.”
Sam passed this historical nugget on to Elena, who was immediately intrigued by the thought of licentious locals. “What about that guy?” she said, as a young man with a baseball cap worn backwards hurtled past them on a skateboard. “Do you think he’s licentious? How can a girl tell?”
They stopped for a quick coffee, and Elena showed Sam a laconic text message from Frank Knox that had come in overnight: Please tell Castellacis they will be paid in full. Ouch. It was a reminder that the mysterious theft remained a mystery.
“Poor Frank,” said Elena. “I bet he can’t wait to retire.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“Same as me, I guess—relax, and forget about the insurance business.”
“You’re doing pretty well so far. Tell me—you’ve met the famous Coco. What did you think of her?”
“Tough. Smart. I can imagine her being quite a handful. But what I’ve seen of her work is terrific. What are you laughing at?”
“You’ve just described yourself. The two of you will make quite a pair. This is going to be fun. Oh, I meant to ask you: Is there going to be a problem between you two after that little misunderstanding at the party?”
“With Francis, you mean? No, not at all. When I called her to make a date for the meeting, I explained, and she was fine. Actually, she said she can’t wait to meet you.”
Chapter 7
Coco met them at the door of her suite—smiling, charming, and, as expected, quite unabashed about her detailed inspection of Elena’s outfit. Sam was amused to see Elena doing exactly the same thing, her eyes going from the summer sandals that displayed Coco’s scarlet toenails, up past the beige linen trousers and on to a sleeveless top of black silk. With this vital exchange completed, Coco led them to her office.
It was simple, uncluttered, verging on minimalist—a complete contrast to the Belle Époque splendors of the rest of the hotel. A collection of austere black-and-white architectural photographs hung on walls the color of pale
cream. In the center of the room was a round black conference table, with half a dozen black leather chairs. The floor was dark polished wood, and in one corner stood a small bronze statue of Mies van der Rohe, on a plinth engraved with his inscrutable but famous motto: Less Is More. The overall effect of the room, as Sam said later, had made him feel that he should have worn his best black suit for the occasion.
While they were getting settled around the table, Coco gave them a brief description of the premises. “Through that door over there, I have a small apartment—nothing very grand, but it’s convenient. And through the door opposite are two offices; one for me, and one for my colleague, Monsieur Gregoire.”
Right on cue, Gregoire appeared, welcomed Elena and Sam with crushing handshakes, flexed his shoulders as though preparing for a bruising physical encounter, and launched into his mantra of no bribes, no kickbacks. Despite the fact that he had gone through this dozens of times, he still managed to sound mildly astonished that, in a wicked world, such scrupulous probity still existed. He ended with a brief outline of the Cabinet Dumas’s terms of business before handing over to Coco.
The leather albums were produced, and Coco took Elena and Sam through a guided tour of her work, stopping from time to time to respond to questions and comments. “And now,” she said to Elena with a smile, “it’s your turn. I want to hear all about your new house.”
Elena produced her iPad and moved closer to Coco so that they could share the screen. “The place is a mess right now, but it could be great. Anyway, here’s the ‘before’ part of the project.” And she began to show Coco the photographs, starting with the interior of the house: the dreadful bathroom, the poky bedrooms, the funereal living room, the impossible kitchen. Sam was relieved to see that the two women seemed to be getting on, exchanging comments and even laughing at the architectural horror story as it unfolded. But when she saw photographs of the view, Coco was immediately enthusiastic. “Now I understand,” she said. “You fell in love with the view. Who wouldn’t?”
