Paul smiled. ‘She’s too old for you.’
‘Age,’ his brother said, indignantly, ‘is completely relative. You’re the physicist, you ought to know that.’
He bounced off, energy renewed, and Paul sighed. ‘You’re sure you don’t want to join us?’
‘Well …’
‘Joke,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. Two hours with us is long enough for anybody. Just don’t forget to warn your cousin.’
‘Warn him?’
‘That Simon’s after Queen Isabelle’s treasure.’
‘Oh, that.’ I promised him I’d not forget. ‘I’ll see you later, then.’
I left him on the road outside the château. Instead of going back the way we’d come, along the path that wound down through the ancient part of town, I walked a few steps further on and found, as Paul had promised, the entrance to the escalier de la brèche, a steep flight of stairs that led back into the fountain square.
It was far easier going down, I decided, although the steps were too broad to take at a normal pace. I had to take them like a child would, one foot down and then the other, following their steeply twisting course between stone walls hung thick with ivy. Here and there a wooden door gave a glimpse of someone’s terraced garden, or a fruit tree leaned across the wall to drop its leaves.
One final twist, a straight descent, and there I was, safely back at the fountain square with the hotel angling off beside me, its fanciful wrought-iron balconies webbed like pure black lace against the yellow-white stone of the facade.
The fountain sang and beckoned from the centre of the square. I stopped and paused, and took a step towards it. But the man sitting on the edge of the fountain’s basin changed my mind.
He had been sitting in that same spot yesterday, when I arrived – I’d seen him from my window. There couldn’t be two men in Chinon with a dog like that, a little spotted mongrel curled around its owner’s feet. And he wore the same clothes, leather jacket over tattered shirt, his blue jeans soiled and frayed. He looked, I thought, a shade less than respectable. Not threatening, exactly, but … something in his roughened face, some quality I couldn’t place, put me on my guard.
The man himself appeared to take no notice of me. He went on smoking, gazing placidly at nothing in particular. At his feet the small dog shifted, raised its head, and pricked its ears up, suddenly alert. It stared, I thought, directly at my face. And as I crossed to the hotel I felt those silent eyes upon me, watching steadily, as a hunter sights its prey.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nor knew what eye was on me …
Monsieur Chamond rose from behind the reception desk to greet me with a smile smooth as silk. In middle age he was a handsome man, neat and compact with an efficiency of movement that I much admired. In his youth, he would have rivalled his nephew Thierry as a breaker of women’s hearts. Most certainly he would have broken mine.
We exchanged our formal greetings, and because I answered him in French he kept on in that language, a little cautiously, poised to switch to English at my first sign of difficulty. ‘I’m sorry that I was not here to meet you yesterday, myself. You are enjoying your stay in our hotel, I hope?’
‘Very much.’
‘And your room, it is satisfactory?’
‘It’s lovely, Monsieur,’ I said, and was rewarded with a warm smile of pleasure.
‘I’m glad. Room 215, is it not?’ He handed me the key. ‘And you have another message, Mademoiselle. Just this morning.’
I took the narrow envelope he handed me and turned it over, frowning slightly. It was addressed, quite simply, ‘Braden’, in a bold black hand I didn’t recognise. ‘Another message …?’
Monsieur Chamond proved most perceptive. At the tone of my voice his eyes moved with sudden apprehension to one corner of the desk, below the counter, and whatever he saw there made him shake his head. ‘I am so very sorry, Mademoiselle, I had assumed …’ With the shrug of one resigned to suffering, he retrieved a small square notepad with a message scrawled upon it. ‘Our regular receptionist Yvette, she is on holiday for two weeks, and so her sister Gabrielle is filling in. She tries, poor Gabrielle, but she is not Yvette. She is … easily confused, and sometimes when I tell her things, she forgets.’ His smile held an apology. ‘Your cousin telephoned last night, while you were out at dinner.’
Wait for it, I thought drily. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘He speaks good French, your cousin – like yourself. He said he would be late, perhaps a few days. If you did not mind …’
‘I see.’ My host, I knew, had made that last bit up. Harry would hardly have cared whether I minded. ‘And did he say where he was ringing from?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’ He looked at me more closely, perhaps surprised that I’d received the news so well. ‘This will not spoil your plans, I hope? Your holiday?’
‘Good heavens, no.’ I’d rather expected it. In fact, when Harry hadn’t met me yesterday, as promised, I’d braced myself for the inevitable. My cousin rarely kept to schedules. Hours turned into days with him, and days to weeks, and by the time he did show up in Chinon I might well be safely back in England, sorting through my holiday snaps. I smiled at Monsieur Chamond. ‘I’m sure I’ll manage, on my own.’
‘But I am sorry that you were not told last night. We might have saved you worrying.’