Cupid's Arrow (22 page)

I swallowed. I said, 'It's not, it's not what they think. Remy, it's not his fault. He's innocent. We, we just want to prove it. You've got to understand – please.'

'You don't have to convince
me,'
she said. She caught the eye of a waiter and ordered a black coffee. 'I know that things aren't always what they seem. And that's the truth.' She looked at Remy, and her eyes sparkled mischievously. 'Besides, he doesn't look dangerous. Except to your heart.'

We both blushed. Christine laughed. 'Young love! How I remember it! The world well lost for it, yes? Oh well. You live and learn. But not yet.'

I stared at her. 'Aren't you going to phone –'

'Your mother? The police?' Her coffee arrived, and she sipped at it. 'Never been one for telling tales. Besides, that's your responsibility, not mine.'

'You mean – you
won't
tell them?'

'Exactly.' She grinned. 'Believe you me, I've got other concerns than bustling off importantly to the authorities.'

'Thank you,' I faltered.

Remy murmured, 'Yes, thank you.'

She looked us up and down. 'You look pretty dreadful,' she observed. 'Both of you, but especially you,' she added, jerking her head at Remy. 'You look just like someone on the run from the police.'

'Please, Christine!' Why didn't she lower her voice?

She grinned, again. 'Sorry.' She didn't look sorry. She was an extraordinary person. Not like any other adult I'd ever met. You never knew what she might do or say next.

She finished her coffee. 'Look, it's none of my business, I know, but do you two have a plan?'

'Yes,' I began, but Remy shook his head, numbly. 'No,' I admitted. 'Not really.'

'Thought not. Why did you come here?'

'We got a lift,' I said. 'It was just where the man went who picked us up. We've just been looking up stuff on the internet. Things – things that we think might give us clues to what really happened.'

'What, and you've been doing that on old Henriot's machine? My God, now everyone in town will know what you've been doing, he's the biggest gossip ever and I swear he must have some spyware installed to see what people have been doing.' She laughed at the panicked expression on my face. 'Don't worry. That's just my joke.' She got up, looked at us, seemed to come to a decision. 'Hey, listen. I'm going home now. No pressure – but if you like, you're welcome to come with me, have a shower, a rest, a meal, use the computer or whatever it is you want to do at my place till you can work out what to do next. I can drop you at a station or wherever you'd like, if you decide that's what you want to do. Scout's honour, I won't interfere. And I won't tell anyone where you are unless you want me to. Mind you,' she added in a different tone, 'I really think you ought to ring your mother, Fleur. Just to tell her you're okay.'

'Oh, I will,' I said, hurriedly. 'I will, I promise. You're so kind. Thank you.'

'Yes, thank you so much,' echoed Remy, his voice flat. He was sounding totally exhausted by then.

'Don't thank me,' said Christine. 'Just be sure you know what you're doing, right? Or darling Oscar will be even crosser with me than he already is. He's always telling me I'm reckless. It's not true, he just likes to think that. Then he can tell himself I need protecting, if only from myself.' She smiled. 'But all the same, I'd prefer it if you didn't say where you were, Fleur, when you ring your mother. Stops a lot of boring lectures for all of us, yeah?'

'Sure,' I said, relieved. 'You're just great.'

Christine had a charming little stone house, covered in roses, a short distance from the town. It was set well back from the road, behind the high hedges of a secluded garden and, as we drove in, I'd felt as though we'd come to a haven of peace, an enchanted space in which we could rest and think and plan our next move. The calm before the storm.

'It's not a bad place at all,' agreed Christine, when I more or less said that. 'I found it quite by chance, on the internet.' We were standing in the garden, surrounded by greenery and humming bees and the heady scent of roses, Patou nosing her delighted way around all the different new smells. Christine waved a hand around and went on. 'I thought it was like a house in a fairytale. I fell in love with it at once. I don't own it yet – I'm only renting – but I'm seriously thinking of buying it. Oscar would like me to come and live in Bellerive when we're married – but I don't like that place. Never have. It's got too much of old Monsieur Dulac.' She smiled at the expression on our faces. 'Don't look so shocked, both of you! I know the world thought of him as a lovely old guy, but I saw quite another side. He could be hard as stone. Thought Oscar was somehow not up to scratch, even though he made a fair bit of money without his uncle's help. Of course, he made it on stocks and shares, which the old man thought was not a real job, and he spent it too freely, according to the old man. He disapproved of me, you know, despite what Oscar keeps trying to persuade himself of.' I remembered that little argument they'd had at the table, the first time I'd met Oscar and Christine, back in Bellerive Manor. 'Oh, I suppose he'd have disapproved of anyone his nephew brought along,' she went on, 'but it could be difficult, at times. Not that I spent much time with him.'

There was a little silence. 'He was very kind to my mother,' said Remy quietly.

She shrugged, and bent down to stroke Patou's ears. 'I'm sure he was. He could be charming to people he wanted to charm. Just not to me. Or what was worse, poor old Oscar, who was always trying to win his approval, and always failing.' She smiled. 'But never mind all that. Water under the bridge. Anyway, it was just to explain why I preferred living here to Bellerive. I'm trying to persuade Oscar to sell the place to that Morgan guy and buy this one instead. We can start afresh here. No unpleasant memories.'

'But he doesn't want to?' I said.

'He's leaning towards it now. The old man's death shook him up pretty hard – much harder than I could have imagined. He's falling to pieces. It's as if old Dulac's haunting him. He thinks he's responsible, you see.'

We stared at her. She went on, 'What I mean is, he thinks he should have been there. He usually took Raymond shopping, picked him up, brought him back home. But that day he was away. Raymond went to Avallon on the bus. He came home early by taxi and disturbed the burglar.'

'Do you think it really was a burglar?'

Her eyes widened. 'What do you mean?'

'Remy and I, we think that it wasn't your usual kind of burglar.'

She looked from one of us to the other. 'Oh. Don't tell me. You've been trying to look into this as well!'

'We just –'

'You'd do best to leave it well alone,' she said, very seriously, all trace of laughter gone from her eyes. 'Such things are dangerous. You don't know what you'll stir up. Leave it to the experts. No. Don't tell me any more. I don't want to hear. Or I might start thinking I have to ring the police at once and tell them you're here.'

'No. Please. We'll keep out of that one,' I said hastily. Remy didn't say anything, just looked down at the ground. I wondered if he was angry with me, blurting out all that stuff. Or just embarrassed. And tired. I said, softly, 'We'll just think about, about what happened to Valerie. I'm sorry, Christine. I didn't mean to put you in a difficult position. You've been so kind, and we –'

'Rubbish,' she said, 'I'm being reckless really, eh?' Her bright grin flashed out, suddenly. 'And that's just what Oscar and everyone will say, once they know, but too bad. I think you both need a breathing space and that's what you'll get. No questions asked. Now come in and I'll show you around.'

The inside of the house was just as nice as the outside. Bright, sunny rooms, decorated in pale colours, with simple, beautiful furniture and bowls of flowers everywhere. The back rooms looked out over a garden just as pretty as the one in front, but different, with herbs and flowers cascading over rockeries. Christine told us she loved rock gardens, and was always collecting pretty or unusual rocks in the woods not far from the house to add to the collection in the garden. From the top rooms, you could see those woods. She told us that in there was a place known as
La Roche des Fées,
or Fairy Rock, which, like the Lady's House near Bellerive, was reputed to be haunted by otherworldly spirits. 'People are very superstitious in this part of the world,' she said. 'If you believed all those stories, you'd think it was one of the most magical places in the world, open to God knows what strange things. There's another place not far from here, an abbey, where there's a standing stone that's supposed to turn around and dance every year at Christmas time. Some people say it was a girl turned to stone for dancing when she should have gone to church. Stupid story, in my opinion.'

'But you're Irish,' said Remy. 'I thought Ireland was full of those stories too.'

She shrugged, looking out of the window at the outline of the woods. 'They're just as stupid there. Backward. I reckon this place, this region, it's beautiful, but it's backward. People look back to the past all the time. I don't care about the past. It's the here and now that counts. People ought to live like that, it would make the world work better.' She turned to us. 'But listen, how about you two freshen up, then I'll make us all a cup of coffee or something? Yeah? That suit you? Remy, you can use the room near the stairs, it's got a little bathroom attached. Fleur, you can use the main bathroom, it's near my room. Help yourself to any shampoo or whatever you want. I'll just get you some towels. When you're ready, come down. Okay?'

It was more than okay, having a blissful long hot shower, drying off with a big fluffy towel. I washed my hair and dried it in front of the mirror, scrunching in a bit of mousse I found in the bathroom cabinet so that it would look not as wild as usual. It was after I replaced the can of mousse that I found them, and at first I didn't know what they were: little discs in different colours, lying in tiny glasses filled with clear liquid. They looked like half-marbles – some blue, some brown, some green, some purpley, some with gold flecks and stars. I stared at them and suddenly it dawned on me what they were. Contact lenses! Contact lenses in all sorts of different colours! I thought, jeez, so that's why her eyes are so bright! She's wearing coloured contact lenses. I wondered what colour her eyes really were. I'd had a go once at a friend's house – she'd bought some of those party ones, the ones that are weird colours and with stars and stuff, like the ones Christine had. They were pretty freaky. They made you look like something out of an X-Men movie or something.

I went downstairs. Remy wasn't down yet, but Christine was bustling around making coffee and toast. She smiled. 'Feeling better?'

'Much better, thank you.'

'Did you find everything you needed?'

'Yes, thanks.' I hesitated, then went on. 'I saw your contact lenses. You've got an amazing collection.'

'Fun, aren't they? I don't know why more people don't use them. If you can get bored with your hair colour, why not your eyes too, eh?' She smiled at me. 'I suppose you're wondering now what colour my eyes really are. Come on, don't look so embarrassed! It's okay. People always want to know, once they know.' She reached into one eye and deftly flicked out a lens. 'Look.'

Without the contact her eye was still blue, just not as bright and sparkling. She said, 'These ones are just enhancers. I use them mostly these days because they're the only ones Oscar really likes. He can be a bit conservative, my poor Oscar.' She replaced the lens. 'In fact I was thinking of getting rid of the others. Would you like them?'

'Oh no, it's okay,' I stammered, 'I was just interested.'

'Try some on,' she said. 'Give Remy a surprise! I'm sure he's not as boring as my man.'

I flushed at the mischievous expression in her eyes. I didn't know what to say.

'A lot of people are superstitious about things like that,' she said. 'They're happy to cut and dye their hair but not change their eyes. It's as if they think they'll turn into someone else, that people won't recognise them anymore.' She shrugged. 'But eye colour is not something people remember, mostly. Unlike, say, voices. Tones. Accents. Pitch. And things like gestures. Smiles. The way people walk.'

I was going to disagree, to say I
always
noticed people's eyes, when Remy came in, Patou at his heels. He was looking rather pale. He said, 'I was just listening to the TV upstairs – and caught a newsflash about us.'

We stared at him. Christine said sharply, 'What do you mean?'

'Not about you, Mademoiselle Foy – about Fleur and me,' he said, and his voice sounded so sad, so tired, I just wanted to hug him and make it all better. 'They said the police were looking everywhere for us, that I was dangerous and that they held grave fears for your safety, Fleur. And they flashed up a picture of me.' He gave a ghostly smile. 'It wasn't the best picture ever. My ID card photo. I look like France's most wanted on it.' He sat down, heavily. 'And I suppose I am, right at the moment.'

I reached over to him, and took his hand. He said, quietly, 'If they find out I'm here, Mademoiselle Foy, you will get into trouble.'

'For heaven's sake, stop calling me Mademoiselle Foy. My name is Christine,' she said briskly. 'And why should I get into trouble? I've done nothing wrong. After all, I
know
you didn't kill your mother or abduct Fleur, don't I? Anyway, they won't find out. They don't even know where you headed. Why should they?'

'The guy who gave us a lift to Quarré,' said Remy, dazedly. 'He'll remember us.'

'If
he turns on his TV and
if
there's a news item about you, and
if
he's the sort who goes to the police,' said Christine calmly.

'There's not only him. There's the shop guy with the computer we used. And the café people.'

'Perhaps you ought to give yourself up then, if you think they're bound to find you anyway,' she said, with a touch of asperity.

'Not yet. No,' I broke in. 'You can't, Remy. Not while we don't know anything. While we have no idea of who might have –' I hurried on. 'I think we should check up on that Dreaming Holmes person again. Maybe they've sent us an email.' I saw Christine's puzzled expression, and quickly filled her in. She said, 'Good God. That's really drawing a long bow, isn't it?' She flashed a look at Remy. 'Sorry. That was just a manner of speaking. Didn't mean to remind you.'

I couldn't work out what she was going on about. Then it came to me. Drawing a long bow... Valerie, with the arrow in her neck. Remy's bow, found at the Lady's House ... A ripple of unease washed over me. Christine's clumsy apology made her unfortunate image even more glaring for poor Remy. I said, hurriedly, 'Anyway, we just thought we'd try it. Do you have a computer? Could I check?'

'Of course. Help yourself. The computer's in what I laughingly call my study. It's permanently connected to the internet. You just need to go into the browser. Here, take the coffee with you. Remy, you can stay here with me, tell me the whole story from the beginning, okay? Then we can work out what to do next.'

I was comforted by her use of 'we'. The TV news thing had rather shaken me. For the first time I really felt what we were up against, and wondered how we could possibly do it on our own. But with Christine Foy to help us – not just to hide us but to actively help us plan our next move – I felt better. Less overwhelmed. Less scared of what might happen next and how on earth we were going to get ourselves out of the bind we were in. I don't know why I thought she'd know more than us. Well, she was an adult, of course, and that made a difference. But it wasn't just that. It was a kind of aura she had, a feeling she gave off, that she knew stuff. That somehow she'd be able to help, because she was unshockable and thought differently from other people.

Christine's study was a crowded little room, with books and papers everywhere in toppling piles, and the laptop computer sitting on the untidy desk. I went quickly into the Mozilla Firefox browser and into Gmail. I logged on, into my 'Caroline' account. And there was an email from Dreaming Holmes:

Dear Caroline, They certainly make you do different sorts of assignments at school than in my day! I do remember the case you mean. It was not in my precinct but everyone talked about it. Two young policemen, working undercover, had infiltrated a notorious gang of safe-robbers, who had struck several places in Montreal and Quebec City. They were notorious not only because of the heists they committed but also because their leader, one Maurice Ferrier, was a cruel man with a record of violence as long as your arm. It was his particular pleasure to torture anyone who tried to resist him, and I know that every police officer in Quebec and beyond longed to put him away.

I believe the policemen involved in the case were particularly brave men, who'd been decorated for past efforts. I believe also that they were related – perhaps brothers, or brothers-in-law? I can't quite remember. The gang used to meet at the Hotel du Lys in Terrebonne – it was that kind of place. It doesn't exist any longer – it was pulled down years ago. Anyway, the undercover cops set up a police ambush to catch the criminals red-handed, but the gang did not take kindly to it, and in the resulting shoot-out, Maurice Ferrier was shot dead and two of his men severely injured. A couple of the gang members escaped and swore revenge. The policemen got all sorts of threats and they were moved to a safe house but somehow that was discovered. One night there was a fire and both young men were killed. I believe someone else – the wife of one of them? The sister? – was severely burnt as well. The culprit was never found, and though the surviving gang members were intensively questioned, there was just a lack of evidence against them – they were in jail by then anyway. Other people were pulled in: I think there was a certain amount of suspicion about the role that might have been played by Terrier's young cousin, Laurence Ferrier, who was very close to him. But nothing came of it, and Ferrier had to be released. The case remains a mystery to this day.