The Splendour Falls (22 page)

‘No point in worrying about Harry,’ my father said beside me. Smiling, he reached into his pocket and handed me a King John coin. ‘Here, make a wish.’

I took the coin from Daddy’s hand, without thinking, and tossed it in the water. It changed, too, as it fell, no longer silver but a diamond, and where it sank the river ran pure red, like blood.

Alarmed, I looked up at the place where I’d seen Harry, but he wasn’t there. The only person standing on the far shore was a lean tall man with pale blonde hair, his eyes fixed sadly on my face. He was trying to tell me something – I could see his lips moving, but the wind stole his voice, and all that reached me was a single word: ‘Trust …’

A cold shadow fell across the grass beside me, and I
looked up to meet the gentle gaze of the old man François. ‘Seeing ghosts?’ he asked me. Then, incredibly, he raised a violin to his shoulder and began to play Beethoven.

I opened my eyes.

One floor below, Neil stopped his practising a moment, tuned a string, began again. I listened, staring at the ceiling. Ordinarily, I found Beethoven soothing, just the thing to clear my mind of stray and troubling dreams, but this afternoon it proved no help at all.

At length, I simply shut it out. Closing my eyes to the light, I turned my face against the pillow and felt the unexpected trail of tears.

‘You’ve got a snail on your sleeve,’ Neil pointed out, quite calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence. I looked down in surprise.

‘So I have. Poor little thing. Making a break for it, that’s what he’s doing.’ Gently I detached the clinging creature from the slick material of my windcheater. I ought to have put him back in the bucket with the others, I suppose, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I closed my fingers softly round the snail and wandered on, away from the fishmonger’s stall. The noisy Thursday market crowd pressed in on all sides, but Neil managed to stay close by my shoulder.

‘Thief,’ he said, grinning.

‘I’m not stealing him, I’m liberating him,’ was my stubborn reply. ‘Bravery should be rewarded.’

‘Well, I’d hardly think that chap back there with the
tattoo and the cleaver would agree with you. He’s charging a good penny for his escargots.’

I shrugged. ‘Plenty more in the bucket. Do you see a planter anywhere about?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I can’t put him down here, now can I?’ I explained, patiently. ‘He’d be trodden on.’

Neil sent me a lopsided smile and lifted his eyes to look over my head. ‘Would a flower pot do?’ he asked. ‘There’s a flower seller over there, by the fountain.’

The fountain square was not so crowded, and one of the benches was actually free. Neil sat down with a grateful sigh while I set free my pilfered snail among the potted geraniums.

I was rather glad myself to be out of the crush for a moment. For all its festive fun and colour, the market was a confusing sort of place, with everybody jostling and disagreeing over the price of a bolt of calico or a hunk of cheese, and children coming loose from their parents and being chased down with a stern warning
not
to wander off again, and the vendors themselves doing everything short of a strip-tease to make one stop beneath the bright striped awnings and take notice.

Some of the vendors had gone high tech. With microphones shoved down their shirt-fronts they kept their running patter up and drowned the ragged voices of their neighbours, while from every corner of the Place du Général de Gaulle came blaring music, blending like a weird discordant symphony by some off-beat composer.

I didn’t mind the noise – it was the crowd that was a
nuisance. We’d started off in company with Simon and Paul, only to lose them several minutes later. I’d tried myself to lose Neil, once or twice, but it hadn’t worked. He was tall enough to see above the milling heads, and my bright blue jumper made me easy to spot. And, to be honest, I hadn’t really tried
that
hard.

‘I must be getting old,’ said Neil. ‘I haven’t the stamina for market day that I once had.’

‘I know what you mean.’ I turned, leaning against the bench, and found him watching me. The strong midday sun caught him full in the eyes, making them glow a strange iridescent blue before he narrowed them in reflex.

‘How many pets do you have, back in England?’

I stared at him. ‘Not a one. Why?’

‘I just wondered. Animals do seem to follow you about, don’t they? First the cat, and now a snail.’ Again the brief and tilting smile. ‘I’d have thought your house would be stuffed to the rafters with strays.’

I shook my head. ‘No, there’s only me.’

‘I saw your cat last night, by the way, when I went for my walk. Quite an adventurous chap, isn’t he? He’d gone clear across the bridge to the other side of the river, the Quai Danton.’

I heard the hint of admiration in his tone, and glanced up sideways, struck by a sudden thought. ‘I don’t suppose you ever adopt strays, yourself …?’

Neil intercepted my look with knowing eyes. ‘Much as I’m sure your little friend would enjoy the train ride back to Austria, I’m afraid I couldn’t take him. My landlady doesn’t allow pets.’

I’d been tempted to take the cat home with me to England, only it wouldn’t be fair to put him through the quarantine. I thought of winter coming on, and sighed. ‘He ought to live in Rome,’ I said. ‘They have whole colonies of cats there, running wild, with women to feed them.’

‘That reminds me,’ Neil said, shifting on the bench to dig one hand into the pocket of his jeans. ‘I’ve got a present for you.’

I blinked at him. ‘A what?’

‘A present. I meant to give it to you at breakfast, but Garland trapped me at my table …’ He dug deeper, frowning slightly. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve bloody lost it, after all that … no, there it is.’ His face cleared, and he drew the whatever-it-was from his pocket.

It didn’t look like anything, at first – I only saw his hand stretched out towards me. And then his fingers moved, and a disc of bright metal glinted between them, and he dropped the coin into my upraised palm.

It was the size of a tuppence but twice as thick, with a gold-coloured centre surrounded by an outer ring of silver. Absently I rubbed my thumb across the bit of braille close to the coin’s edge. ‘It’s Italian,’ I said, faintly puzzled.

‘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 spectre 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 blonde.’

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 defence. ‘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.