The Eden Inheritance (7 page)

Guillaume had been little more than a baby then, but he fancied he could remember the excitement as the new vines began to flourish and bear fruit.

The cognac distilled from that first pressing was still maturing in the damp cellars when the Great War ravaged France, but it scarcely touched Savigny. And later, when the depression took its toll and prohibition drove a hole through the American market, Château de Savigny once again survived, for it was sold mainly to only the most exclusive outlets in England and on the continent, to the kind of people wealthy enough to be almost unaffected by slump or boom.

Louis had followed his father to an early grave and Guillaume was the Baron de Savigny by the time war once again threatened the peaceful way of life in Charente. This time there was no escaping it; when France surrendered to the Nazi invaders the demarcation line which was drawn between occupied and Vichy territory bisected Savigny land. But once again the production of the cognac was barely disrupted. The German conquerors were too partial to the smooth golden-brown liquor to allow its demise; as long as the bottles were earmarked for their own consumption they were happy enough to allow the process to continue uninterrupted, though there were, of course, fewer young men available to do the work and the older ones and the women had to toil long and hard to ensure the vines were stripped before the frosts came to spoil the flavour of the grapes.

During those turbulent years many cognac producers had taken a great delight in cheating the Germans – inferior blends had been bottled and falsely labelled so as to be passed off as the genuine thing – but Guillaume had never been able to bring himself to indulge in such sharp practice. He was too proud of the superior quality of Château de Savigny. He couldn't bear to think of anyone, even a German, tasting it and finding it wanting.

There was no danger of that now. In the boom of prosperity that had followed the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of France, Château de Savigny cognac had gained in reputation and gone from strength to strength, and Guillaume, for all the limitations advanced age had brought, still liked to retain his grip on the reins. All he hoped was that when he was gone there would still be a de Savigny to carry on his work. Henri did his best, but it wasn't the same; without the continuity of family heritage passed from father to son down the line how could it ever be?

His own sons were gone – no amount of wishful thinking could bring them back – and his daughter had only managed to produce daughters herself, and rather avant-garde ones at that. He shook his head slightly as he thought of Lise, twenty-five years old and still unmarried, seemingly more interested in left-wing writers and politicians than the family heritage, and Françoise, still studying at the Sorbonne, and looking increasingly likely to turn out the same way.

No, Guy was the one on whom his hopes were pinned – and Guy was coming to see him. With his thin, bloodless fingers Guillaume lifted the corner of his ledger and retrieved the letter which he had left on his desk top so as to be able to read and reread it at his pleasure.

It was unusual for Guy to visit at this time of the year and Guillaume allowed himself to wonder just what was behind it. That he had made up his mind at last to give up junketing about in these little twin-engined planes of his, perhaps, and move to Savigny permanently? That would be the perfect solution, the smoothest possible handover of Savigny power. It would be so good to know Guy was here, heir-in-waiting, when something happened to Guillaume, as it was bound to one day in the not-too-distant future.

I've already done a lot better than my father or my grandfather, Guillaume thought with a touch of self-congratulatory humour.

And supposed that it was Guy's impending visit that allowed him to regard his own mortality with such unaccustomed levity.

‘I need to talk to you, Grandpapa. Alone,' Guy said.

Dinner was over, the formal meal so beloved of the Baron Guillaume de Savigny, reminiscent of all the formal meals he had enjoyed throughout the years. Even when he and Louise were alone they still ate in the dining room at the long refectory table which could quite comfortably seat twelve, with the solid silver candelabra placed at either end throwing a soft dancing light on their lined faces and the portraits of his ancestors looking down at them from the walls. It was the way Gullaume liked it, yet another comforting familiarity to provide evidence of continuity.

Tonight however there were six; himself and Louise, elegant as always, if a little frail, in a Paris gown of the softest black wool, Henri and Celestine, his daughter and son-in-law, who had their own suite of rooms on the second storey of the château, Lise, home from Paris for the weekend, and of course Guy. Guillaume looked at his grandson and felt himself warmed by a glow of approval. At first glance he might have been looking at his own son, Charles, at the same age, but Guy had more about him than Charles had ever had – a strength of character his father had lacked and which Guillaume found gratifying for it eased, in part at least, the disappointment and frustration which had always marred his paternal pride in Charles. Perhaps he was wrong to harbour such resentment as he did against Kathryn, he thought, for he was fairly certain that Guy's strength had been inherited from her and nurtured by the way she had brought him up. But for all that he could not forgive her for taking Guy away from Charente, and the old enmities between them went too deep for forgiveness or any hope of reconciliation now.

‘You want to talk to me,' he said, swirling the last of the cognac in his glass. ‘Well, I suppose I should have known you had a reason, coming here so unexpectedly. We'll go to my study.'

‘Oh Guy, don't be such a bore!' Lise said. She spoke fiercely, everything about Lise was fierce these days, from her small set face to her defiantly masculine clothes. What had happened, Guillaume sometimes wondered, to the little girl who had set the château ringing with her laughter, the little girl in petticoats and flounces with ribbons in her hair? That hair was long and straight now, a sleek but, in his opinion, unbecoming curtain with a deep fringe which almost hid her eyes, and she never seemed to laugh. Her tone was always pitched somewhere between aggression and earnestness, totally lacking, he thought, in feminine charm, but he was also wise enough to know that the extra note of sharpness in it now was because Lise was disappointed that she was to be denied Guy's company, for a while at least. She hero-worshipped her cousin to the point of obsession – it had always been the same. As a small girl she had followed him everywhere like a pet puppy dog and little had changed in the intervening years. Guillaume was fairly certain she had come home this weekend especially because she had known Guy would be here; more often these days she remained in Paris with her intellectual and – in his opinion – extremely tiresome friends.

‘Sorry, Lise, but it's quite important.' Guy stood up and moved toward the door, tweaking a strand of that straight dark hair as he passed her chair. ‘I'll see you later and you can tell me all your news.'

‘What makes you think I want to tell you anything?' she retorted, but a little colour came into her sallow cheeks all the same.

Guy allowed his grandfather to precede, him along the corridor and up the curving stone staircase, matching his pace to Guillaume's.

The study was in darkness, the heavy curtains drawn against the night, and Guy went around the room turning on the lamps whilst Guillaume settled himself in his favourite chair. Then he perched on the corner of his grandfather's desk and turned to face him.

‘You remember telling me, when I was a little boy, about the. Nazi who was here during the war – the one who was responsible for my father's death?'

‘And your Uncle Christian's, and a great many others besides.' Guillaume's voice was bitter. ‘How could I ever forget?'

‘Well, I can't be sure, of course, but I think I might have found him.'

For a moment Guillaume was utterly still, the unexpectedness of Guy's statement robbing him of the ability to respond in any way. Then he shook his head.

‘After all this time? Impossible!'

‘Why impossible? So far, I know, he has managed to hide himself away to escape having to answer for what he did, but that doesn't mean he can stay hidden for ever. The world is a smaller place these days than it was thirty years ago. Besides, they become careless, these war criminals. They get overconfident, thinking, just like you, that after so long they are safe. Hasn't Klaus Barbie been found living under an assumed name in Peru? And there are plenty of others like him. So why shouldn't von Rheinhardt float to the top of whatever cesspit he buried himself in?'

‘That's true enough, I suppose. Somehow I imagined him to be dead, though I suppose there's no reason why he should be. He's a young man compared to me, and I'm still alive and kicking.' Guillaume's lips twisted into the ghost of a smile but the veins stood out taut and blue through the parchmenty skin as his hands gripped the arms of his chair. ‘ What made you look for him? all the stories I've told you, I suppose.'

‘I didn't look for him,' Guy said. ‘I have always thought I'd like to find him and make him answer for what he did but I've never actually done anything about it, apart from putting out a few feelers. I heard about this German, who I think could be von Rheinhardt by sheer chance – one of those flukes that beggars belief. In a funny sort of way that, more than anything, is what makes me inclined to believe it really is him.'

‘I see.' Guillaume's slightly rheumy eyes had gone very far away; what in fact he was seeing was the past. ‘And what do you intend to do about it?'

‘I'm going to the Caribbean myself. That's where this German is living. I want to meet him and try to establish if he is in fact von Rheinhardt.'

‘And how will you go about that?'

‘I shall check all available records, of course. Files, photographs, any information I can lay hands on. But I dare say he's made a pretty good job of establishing a new identity for himself, and there is another test – a simpler one. Inconclusive, of course, but it should be enough to tell me whether I'm on the right track or barking up a gum tree.'

‘Which is?'

‘According to what I've been told this German's house is full of treasures – artefacts which give every appearance of being French in origin. Von Rheinhardt stole things from us, didn't he?'

‘He certainly did. Things which had been in our family for generations. He took over the château for his HQ, you see, and managed to spirit away anything small enough to transport which took his fancy.'

‘Do you have descriptions of the missing items? Enough detail to identify them?'

‘Certainly. I made an inventory when the château was returned to us after the war.'

‘And photographs? Weren't there photographs?'

‘Yes, there were. Photographs always seemed a sensible precaution in case the treasures were stolen. Not that I ever expected them to be looted by an occupying power, of course – more by common thieves.'

‘Would you let me have them? If I could be sure the stuff in this man's house is ours then I think I could be fairly confident he is von Rheinhardt. And I think it is, Grandpapa. There's silver, there's porcelain, there's a bronze statuette. And there is a triptych.'

‘A triptych!' The old man stiffened so that his spine was ramrod straight against the back of the chair.

‘Yes. From my friend's description I think it might depict scenes from the life of the Maid of Orleans.'

‘
Mon dieu!
' It was little more than a whisper.

‘Wasn't that what our triptych represented?' Guy persisted.

‘Yes. Yes. There may be others, of course, but …'

‘But they must be few and far between. You see now why I think I may have found von Rheinhardt.'

‘Yes.' The old man was silent. Guy sat watching him, sipping his brandy and waiting for what he had said to sink in. After a long while Guillaume nodded. ‘Yes. If he has a triptych like that then you could be right. It could indeed be von Rheinhardt – the bastard. After all these years. I can't believe it.'

‘Then you'll help me?' Guy asked.

‘Oh Guy, Guy, I don't know …'

‘But surely you'd like to see him brought to justice? You always said he deserved to pay for what he did. And you'd like to see our family heirlooms back here in the château where they belong?'

‘I'd like them back, of course I would. Nothing would give me more pleasure. To see them again, to hold them in my hands. But as for the rest of it … I don't know. The price might be too great.'

‘I don't understand. What price?'

Guillaume shook his head slowly.

‘If you bring von Rheinhardt back now there would be a trial. A very public trial. It would be world news. You know how the media seize on these things nowadays. It would be most unpleasant.'

‘For von Rheinhardt, certainly. Isn't that what he deserves?'

‘It wouldn't only be von Rheinhardt who would suffer. We would all be forced to face things we would rather forget.'

Guy felt the beginnings of impatience. First his mother, now his grandfather, willing to let the monstrous Nazi who had marred all their lives go free rather than be made to confront the past themselves. He couldn't understand it. His mother, of course, had always refused to discuss it, but his grandfather had seemed fired up with hatred and a desire for vengeance. Now he, too, was counselling caution.

‘I realise it is not nice,' Guy said slowly, ‘having to remember the sort of atrocities that were committed. I realise that like my mother you have probably spent a lifetime trying to put what happened behind you. But surely it would be worth it, to know that von Rheinhardt was being punished at last?'

‘I don't know. If he came to trial it wouldn't be just a case of facing him with what he did. He wouldn't be likely to just hold up his hands and admit it – he knows if he did that he would be certain to go to prison for the rest of his life. No, he'd mount a defence with the best lawyers money can buy – from what you say he's not short of a penny and there are plenty of up-and-coming young advocates who would give their eyeteeth for a chance to make their names, one way or another, in a trial that would have all the notoriety this one would have. God alone knows what they would say in his defence.'