‘I suppose it will be nice for Christian, having a whole house to himself,’ Garland went on. ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t want to live where somebody had died … can you imagine how awful? And in a sense it’s kind of tasteless, don’t you think, for Martine to even offer? Out with the old, in with the new. I mean, her husband isn’t even buried …’
‘Ex-husband,’ Simon cut her off abruptly. ‘He was Martine’s ex-husband.’
Paul finally looked across and noticed I was all at sea. ‘A woman that we know,’ he told me, quietly. ‘Her ex-husband killed himself night before last, by accident. He tripped and fell down the stairs.’
‘Not down the stairs,’ Simon made the correction in authoritative tones. ‘Over the bannister. Broke his neck.’
‘Ah,’ I said.
Garland Whitaker smiled slyly. ‘Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe Christian did it, just to make sure …’ She broke off suddenly and twisted round in her seat as the hotel’s front door slammed. ‘Why Christian, darling, we’d almost given up on you! Come on in and join the gang.’
I had the distinct impression that the man hovering in the open doorway would have preferred to face a firing squad.
He appeared to be around my own age – a lanky, soft-eyed man with rough blonde hair that looked as if he’d cut it himself with a pair of garden shears and a beard that seemed more the result of simply forgetting to shave than of any concerted effort to grow one. His clothes, too, were rather rumpled and oddly matched, his denim jeans stained with small splotches of bright colour.
‘I must go and change my clothes,’ he excused himself self-consciously. His voice was quiet, edged with a German accent that kept it from being soft. ‘I have missed the bus connection back from Saumur, and it has made me late.’
‘You will join us for dinner, though?’ Garland Whitaker pressed him, then turned her smile on all of us. ‘We are going for dinner, aren’t we? To give Christian a proper send-off?’
It wasn’t so much an invitation as a stage direction, I thought. The man named Christian wavered a moment longer in the doorway, then gave in like the rest of us.
‘Of course,’ he said politely, and faded into the hallway. The heavy clump of his shoes on the stairs had a faintly defeatist sound.
Simon slouched back in his seat, scowling blackly, and opened his mouth to say something. I didn’t actually see Paul’s elbow move, but I did see Simon jump a little in his seat, and whatever he had meant to say he kept it to himself. Garland Whitaker, triumphant, turned her attention back to the rest of us, and started talking about some day trip she and her husband had taken, or were planning to take … I’ll admit I didn’t really listen.
She just went on talking anyway, red curls bobbing with the motions of her head, that honeyed Southern voice giving way to grating trills of laughter. Like Simon, I was not impressed. I felt the frown forming on my own face, and could have used Paul’s elbow in my own ribs to remind me of my manners. Instead, some instinct made me glance upwards, at the face of the man sitting beside me.
The look Neil Grantham slanted back at me was privately amused.
But he wasn’t smiling, and he didn’t say anything to me. So there really was no reason why I should have looked away as quickly as I did, face flaming, like some prudish Victorian spinster. Or why I should have felt, all of a sudden, a ridiculous urge to run.
CHAPTER FOUR
… let the past be past; let be …
The restaurant was packed to the rafters with the Friday night supper crowd, but I didn’t mind waiting for a table. It was a cosy sort of restaurant – small and warm, filled with glorious smells and furnished with a tasteful eye for detail. Besides, I thought, one had to like the name: Le Coeur de Lion. In honour of Richard the Lionheart, I presumed. Plantagenets again. Harry, when he stayed in Chinon, probably ate here every night.
While the seven of us waited, packed like sardines by the door, I introduced myself to the shy young German. His name was Christian Rand, he told me, above a firm but fleeting handshake.
‘Christian’s an artist,’ said Simon, who had dressed up a bit for dinner, topping his T-shirt with a thick black jumper and smoothing back his hair into a sailor’s pigtail. ‘He’s not a tourist, not like us. He’s lived in Chinon for … how long, Christian? Five years?’
‘Six.’
‘Really?’ I looked at Christian Rand with interest. ‘At the Hotel de France?’ I’d read of all those great composers, poets, writers, who had lived in hotel rooms, of course, but I’d never actually met someone who …
‘No.’ He shook his tousled head and smiled. ‘For these past two months only. I had until July a small house, not too far from Chinon, but my neighbours they were not so good. And so my friends the Chamonds said that I could stay at their hotel while I am looking for another house.’
It was the longest speech I’d heard him make, and the effort appeared to leave him exhausted.
‘And now you’ve found one,’ Garland piped up, her tone bright.
‘Yes.’ Christian looked down silently. He wasn’t as slow as he looked, I thought. He knew quite well that Garland Whitaker was dying to draw him into conversation, to learn as much as she could about his dealings with this Martine woman, whoever she was. But Christian Rand was not prepared to play.
The waiter finally managed to find us a table tucked well away from the other patrons, where we wouldn’t disturb the quieter, more reticent French at their evening meal.