Pardonable Lie (19 page)

Maisie sat on the bed again and reached for her document case. She pulled out a series of index cards upon which she proceeded to write down even the smallest details of her day, from the moment of waking until now. She noted her desire to confront Maurice, for she had deduced his association with Peter—or
thought
she had. A small element of doubt convinced her that the time was not quite right; possibly there was more to learn. She wrote of her telephone calls to Ebury Place, to Lord Compton, and then to Stratton and then noted her sense of the secrecy among the townsfolk of Sainte-Marie and of her curiosity surrounding the gardener at the château. Threads, threads, threads, some leading to each other, some leading in new directions.

Once again she lay back. The dragon was resting, lulled by her attention to her work.

“Mademoiselle Dobbs!” The shrill voice of Madame Thierry was accompanied by a sharp double knock. “Mademoiselle!”

Maisie leaped from her bed and opened the door. Madame held out an envelope.

“It arrived this past hour. It was on the table when I came from collecting vegetables. Would you like some soup with
saucisson
? It is good, to my mother’s recipe.”

Maisie took the envelope and smiled. “Ah, I can smell your fresh herbs from here. Yes, I would love some soup.”

Madame nodded. “I will call when it is ready. You are my only guest now. The holidays are over; there will be few visitors.”

“Thank you. I’ll wait to hear your call.”

Madame turned and went downstairs. Maisie closed the door and locked it before slipping her finger into the unsealed gap at the side of the envelope and tearing an opening. She removed the fine ivory paper and read:

Welcome, Mademoiselle Dobbs:

I would be delighted if you would join my granddaughter Pascale and me for lunch tomorrow at noon. Ours is a small town and news of visitors travels quickly, especially at a time when we expect most to have left. Pascale is learning English and would love to have a real Englishwoman to experiment on.

We look forward to enjoying your company.

Until tomorrow, Madame Chantal Clement

There seemed little time to respond, though Maisie suspected that any invitation from Chantal Clement was as good as an order. She was clearly the town’s matriarch.

Maisie tapped her left hand with the folded letter and walked over to the window. She looked out to the barely discernible lights of the château as they punctured the absolute darkness between the edge of the garden and the fields beyond. A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she turned to look to the left of the garden. Was that a man silhouetted against the apple tree? Maisie stood back to avoid being seen, but in a way to enable a broad view of the garden. Someone was watching her.
Who is that?
She stole another look, then shook her head and admonished herself. A light extended across the garden as the back door opened and Madame called out, “
Philippe! Philippe! Attention!
” Maisie heard the grumble of the old hound as he pulled himself onto all fours and walked toward his mistress in his own good time.
Did I perhaps see a dog and not a man?
Maisie squinted once more and then leaned back, pulled down the blind behind the lace curtain, and turned to the mirror. She splashed water on her face again and dried her skin with the towel.

“Mademoiselle Dobbs! Mademoiselle Dobbs! It is time.”

Maisie opened the door. “I’m coming, madame!
Un moment, s’il vous plaît.
”

EIGHTEEN

Maisie awoke to the mouth-watering aroma of freshly baked bread mingled with strong coffee. Instead of leaping from her bed, as she would at home, she lay back and allowed her thoughts free rein. She had not sent a letter to Andrew as she had promised; she must do that today. In truth, she was unsettled in the relationship, unsettled because despite his sunny disposition and readiness to encourage her in her work, along with that very special understanding he seemed to have of her, she could feel herself drawing back. She watched the clouds drift by, large puffy cumulus clouds with deep blue sky in between. Is that how she would be, driven in her work yet drifting in her most personal liaisons? She had drifted into living at Ebury Place, drifted into everything except each new case, or so it seemed. The flat was a good idea, a break, a chance to…to
experiment.
Yes, experiment with what she liked and did not like. She would choose the things around her, the furniture, the curtains—and definitely no lace. Maisie got up and walked to the window. Wasn’t it easier just to plunge ahead into work? Not to have to worry about living accommodation, about the everyday minutiae of life? Perhaps Andrew would be better off alone or with someone else—someone less confused about the past, someone who had not loved before.

Leaning her head against the window frame, Maisie heard the back door open and watched as Madame stood outside, looking back into the kitchen while pointing into the garden. “
Philippe! Attention! Vite, vite!
” The old hound ambled from the kitchen, across the garden, and took up his place by the apple tree. Maisie looked closer. What had she seen last night? Had she seen the dog move, long shadows caused by the light from windows fooling her into thinking it was a man? She turned back into the room and dressed quickly in brown trousers and a knitted brown cardigan, a scarf for her neck, and her sturdy walking shoes. Grabbing her jacket, she placed a beret on her head before running downstairs and into the garden.

“
Bonjour, Philippe.
” Maisie approached the dog, holding out her hand palm up for him to take her scent. He did not move. She came closer, and it was not until she reached down that she realized that the dog was deaf. At her touch, he turned his head and allowed her to kneel beside him and stroke his gray muzzle and one floppy ear. “Ah, that is why you didn’t bark. Or was it you all the time, you old rogue?” The dog moved toward her and licked her face, his tail moving back and forth in what passes for a wag in an old dog. Maisie gave Philippe one last pat and moved to the place where she thought she had seen a man, close to the apple tree. She bent down and touched the ground with her fingers.

Someone was here.
The footprints suggested a man’s shoe. She called Philippe. Nothing, not even a tremor in the tail. The dog was asleep again.

“Mademoiselle Dobbs! Mademoiselle Dobbs!” Madame Thierry stood at the back door again, this time shouting for Maisie and not her dog.

“Pardon, madame, I was saying good morning to your dog.”

Madame laughed. “Then you will have to say it very loud, for Philippe is as deaf as a post. It is his fault that I have become used to shouting.”

T
HE MORNING WAS
spent in a leisurely fashion. Maisie walked around the town, relaxing as she strolled along narrow cobbled streets. Reaching the town square, she stopped by the war memorial and closed her eyes for a moment of respectful silence. A plaque alongside the adjacent church door piqued her curiosity, so she walked over for a closer look.

FROM THE TOWNSPEOPLE OF SAINTE-MARIE

IN MEMORY OF FRÉDÉRIC DUPONT, MAYOR OF SAINTE-MARIE,

GEORGES BAURIN, AND SUZANNE CLEMENT, WHO WERE EXECUTED

BY THE OCCUPYING GERMAN ARMY IN 1918.

THEY DIED FOR THE FREEDOM OF SAINTE-MARIE AND FOR FRANCE.

They died for the freedom of Sainte-Marie? Suzanne Clement?
What connection existed between Suzanne Clement and the woman who had issued an invitation to lunch? Maisie looked at her watch. It was time to make her way to the château for lunch with Chantal Clement and her granddaughter, Pascale.

M
AISIE CHANGED INTO
a black woolen skirt and cream silk blouse, pulled the woolen cardigan around her shoulders, and placed the beret on her head again, securing it with a hat pin tipped with amber. Once again she took the path that led to the place where Ralph Lawton had burned to death. She stood in silence, the breeze rustling through leaves on the trees nearby as she tried to imagine the crash. Certainly, if one were over enemy territory on a reconnaissance mission, this field was a good choice for an attempted landing with a burning aircraft, a flying coffin—that’s if it really was burning at the point of impact.

Had the villagers foiled attempts by their occupiers to secure the field? Had the brave gardener struggled in vain to reach Lawton? Of course he must have tried; was he overcome by the terrible inferno? Captain Desvignes was right, all evidence of the disaster was gone now: no burnt ground, no seared trees. The grass had grown, the round of planting, nurturing, and harvest reestablished, and the war was now a time that most wanted to forget. Yet at the side of the road a collection of shells and ammunition, turned over in the last plowing, awaited collection by the authorities. And so it went on, the earth yielding up her dead along with the terrible tools of war.

A skylark singing high above the fields interrupted Maisie, who looked at her watch. There was just time to walk to the river. Inspecting the ground and the surrounding countryside one last time, Maisie continued on a path that led through the trees and down to the water. It seemed more of a stream than a river, but it bubbled and splashed over rocks and into deep pools, across dams built of fallen branches, she suspected by local children; then the river swirled around the roots of ancient trees and wove its way across the land. Maisie thought it remarkable that the trees were still standing during the war, for so many forests had been lost to shelling. Could Lawton have been saved? Maisie wondered what might have happened had Lawton been rescued.
This is where I would have brought him.
But then what? Where might one hide a wounded aviator in occupied territory?

Not ten minutes later, Maisie walked through a gate from the fields that led onto the carriage sweep to the château. A man running would have cut that time down to three or four minutes.
But a cripple of war?
Maisie was interrupted by the sound of galloping hooves approaching and swung around in time to see a young girl atop a large black horse direct her mount to the fence on the opposite side of the carriage sweep. Maisie gasped but soon breathed a sigh of relief, as the horse cleared the fence with a foot to spare, the rider landing expertly, then bringing the horse to a canter and circling to a trot before approaching her. The girl was almost out of breath but smiling broadly, her dark chestnut hair falling in waves across her shoulders. She wore pale woolen riding breeches, long black leather boots, a white shirt, a scarf at her neck and a brown jacket.

“Hello, you must be Mademoiselle Maisie Dobbs.” The girl’s English was perfect. She dismounted and patted her horse on the neck before holding out her hand to Maisie. “I am Pascale Clement, and I am happy to meet you.”

“I am happy to meet you too, Mademoiselle Clement, though I must say you rather took my breath away with that jump.”

She laughed dismissively. “Oh, my Louis is a king; he can do anything.” As a groom emerged from the gate that led to the stables, Pascale hugged the horse’s neck, pulled a cube of sugar from her pocket and fed it to him before handing the reins to the groom. “
Merci
, Monsieur Charles.” She turned to Maisie again. “We have been galloping and jumping across the fields for two hours. It is nothing.” She paused and smiled broadly again, a devilish smile that startled Maisie.

“Come, Mademoiselle Dobbs, let me take you to meet Grandmère. She will be watching and I will be taken to task for the jump and for keeping you to myself.” As she led the way, Pascale turned to Maisie. “May I call you Maisie, please?”

Maisie tried not to grin. “Oh, I do believe your grandmother might not approve, Mademoiselle Clement.”

Pascale laughed, leaning back as she did so. “Of course, you are correct!”

Walking alongside the French girl, Maisie found it hard to believe that she was only thirteen. She was almost as tall as Maisie, moved with an easy, confident gait and had an almost flippant sense of humor, though it was a humor that revealed her age.

“You have met Captain Desvignes, we have heard.” She looked at Maisie as she asked the question, placing her tongue over her front teeth, and giggled again.

Maisie could not help herself and laughed too. “Yes, we have met. He is a nice man.”

Pascale shrugged. Maisie stole another glance at this girl who seemed so self-assured. Yet hadn’t she lost her mother, both her parents, in the war? She thought of herself, of her own loss when she was the same age as Pascale, a loss that lately had pierced her heart anew as if it were only yesterday. She thought of Avril Jarvis, who had lost her mother to a man who sent her away to London and a life on the streets. And here was this vivacious French girl laughing. Perhaps it was her way of rendering her losses powerless in everyday life, as Andrew was wont to do.

“Grandmère, Grandmère, I have found her!” Pascale had led Maisie past the butler, with a wave and an audacious wink, into a spacious drawing room. It was filled with antiques, along with several large Chinese vases overflowing with blooms, yet it was a bright room, with pale lavender drapes and a view across landscaped grounds from the grand glass doors on the far side of the room. Madame Chantal Clement was seated in an armchair, a lavender blanket across her knees. An elegant woman, she wore her silver-gray hair drawn up into a loose knot at the back of her head; the wide collar of her pale-gray silk blouse was open to reveal a pearl-and-amethyst choker at her neck. A pair of deep purple satin shoes were just visible under her long purple wool skirt She took off her spectacles and placed her book on a side table as Pascale entered with her “find.”

“Pascale, chérie, please, please calm down. I am sure our guest was not lost and you will wear her out before the day is done.” Chantal Clement turned to Maisie and smiled broadly, her deep gray eyes sparkling, and took Maisie’s hands in both her own. “
Enchantée
, Mademoiselle Dobbs. We are delighted to have you in our home. You give us an opportunity to practice the English language.”

“It’s lovely of you to invite me, Madame Clement.”

Chantal Clement nodded and turned to Pascale. “My dear, you will not sit at table dressed in that manner; it is most unladylike. Please go to your room and do not join us until you resemble the elegant young woman I am trying so hard to bring you up to be.”

Pascale kissed Chantal on the cheek, waved to Maisie, and ran from the room. The matriarch shook her head in mock despair. In that one gesture, Maisie could see that Chantal adored her granddaughter, that she delighted in her energetic disposition, and that it was her love that sustained the girl.

“You are so kind to come, but I fear the afternoon may be wearing for you. This is a small town, except when visitors arrive—and there are only a few of those, despite what Captain Desvignes or Madame Thierry may tell you—so everyone knows everyone else. Pascale especially was thrilled to hear that an Englishwoman was in our midst.”

Madame Clement smiled and Maisie intuited a change in her demeanor as she raised her chin and seemed to sit up a little straighter in her chair. She moved the blanket, took a cane from alongside her chair, and stood up.

“Walk with me to the window, Mademoiselle Dobbs. Lunch will be served shortly, so we have only a few moments before the whirlwind returns.” They made their way to the windows and stood for a moment in silence. Though she was tempted to comment upon the gardens, the ornamental lake, the statuary, a maze in the distance to the right, and the topiary figures that formed an avenue leading to a rose garden, Maisie waited for her hostess to speak.

“What brings you to Sainte-Marie, Mademoiselle Dobbs? You are not
en vacances
, are you?”

Maisie turned, a half smile on her lips as she replied. “Oh, Madame Clement, I do believe you know why I am here, do you not? If news travels quickly in your village, you know I have come to find out more about the British aviator who crashed during the war in your field.”