‘I eat in here,’ he told me. ‘It’s my habit, when I’m alone. Unless you would prefer the dining-room?’
I shook my head. ‘Here is fine.’
He must have already been sitting down to dinner when François had interrupted him. A table at the far end of the room was set for one, its polished surface scattered with an odd assortment of china bowls and chafing dishes.
I’d seen so many films about the rich that I was half expecting serving maids in starched white caps, but it was Armand Valcourt himself who fetched me an extra plate and cutlery, and filled my wine glass from the open bottle on the table.
‘It’s last year’s vintage,’ he explained, as he poured. ‘Not a great wine, I’m afraid, but sufficient for François’s cooking. The real cook is off this evening.’
He took the chair across from me and raised his own glass in a toast. ‘To small deceptions,’ he said, with a slow deliberate smile.
The wine, to my untrained palate at least, proved excellent, as did the meal itself. I thought François a smashing cook, and said so.
‘François has many talents,’ my host told me. ‘He’s a good man and a loyal one. But you will learn this for yourself, I think.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve made a friend of him tonight, make no mistake. He does not forget a kindness, and he’s very fond of my daughter.’
‘Oh, I see.’ I nodded. ‘Well, that’s understandable, Monsieur. She is a charming child.’
He smiled a little, lowering his eyes to the food on his plate. ‘Her mother’s doing, and not mine. Brigitte was much more sociable than I am.’
I thought it impolite to ask the question, so I didn’t, but he answered it for me anyway. ‘My wife had a weak heart, Mademoiselle. She died three years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He was still looking down, and I couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Life moves us onwards, does it not? More wine?’
I held my glass out while he poured. ‘How many children do you have?’
‘Just Lucie. I think it must be lonely for her, sometimes.’
‘I rather enjoyed being an only child, myself,’ I confessed. ‘I was spoiled rotten.’
Briefly, his enigmatic gaze touched mine. ‘François tells me I’m not to be angry with my daughter. Your words, I think.’
‘Yes, well … I did rather promise her that you wouldn’t be.’ I suddenly developed an intense interest in my own plate, pushing my vegetables round with the fork. ‘I shouldn’t have interfered, perhaps, but if you’d seen her you’d have understood. She looked so small, and so unhappy, I thought surely no parent would want to …’ My voice trailed off and I speared a carrot with my fork. ‘Besides, she wouldn’t have come with me, otherwise. She was afraid.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Afraid of what?’
‘Of your reaction, naturally.’
That surprised him, and he frowned as he dismissed the notion with a classic Gallic ‘pouf’. ‘I don’t beat my daughter, Mademoiselle.’
‘Of course you don’t. But your daughter was very tired,’ I reasoned, ‘and upset. And things always do seem quite a bit more frightening when one is lost. Not that she was ever lost herself, really, but she’d lost the people she was with, which rather amounts to the same thing.’
His mouth curved, and I had the distinct impression he found me amusing, but the tone of his voice betrayed nothing. ‘She would not have lost anyone if she had done as she was told. I gave her clear instructions to remain with her aunt.’
‘Yes, but she told me …’ I broke off suddenly, realising my error. It was really none of my business, I thought. This was a family matter, and I ought not to get involved.
Armand Valcourt raised his eyebrow a second time, expectantly. ‘Yes?’
‘Nothing. It’s not important.’ I scooped up a forkful of seasoned meat and tried to ignore his suddenly curious eyes, watching me across the table.
‘Where exactly was my daughter, Mademoiselle, when you found her?’
I glanced up, saw he wasn’t going to let the matter drop, and sighed. ‘She was sitting by the fountain just in front of my hotel.’
He frowned. ‘And did she tell you why she went there?’
‘She told me her aunt’s … friend was staying there. I think she hoped they’d come back to the hotel, so she was waiting for them. Forgive me for asking, Monsieur, but the child’s aunt …. your sister …’
‘My wife’s sister,’ he corrected me.
‘Shouldn’t someone notify her that your daughter is safe? She must be frantic with worry by now.’
My statement was punctuated by a loud bang from the front hallway, and Armand Valcourt reached, smiling, for his wine glass. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ he said. ‘This will be Martine now.’
Martine …
At first I thought, it couldn’t be, and then an image flashed into my mind of Armand Valcourt standing close beside the widow at today’s funeral, and I thought, of course it must be, and I turned expectantly as Martine Muret burst in upon us.
I believe I’d been preparing myself to dislike her, for her beauty if nothing else, but the moment the door from the hallway flew open all my preconceived notions went out of the window. In place of the coldly glamorous woman I’d expected, I saw someone who seemed scarcely older than her wayward niece, with cropped black hair and large eyes liquid in her bloodless face. And ‘frantic with worry’, I now saw, was an understatement. Martine Muret was terrified.