I looked at Harry. ‘So you saw him, then. The man who murdered Didier Muret.’
‘That’s just it – I didn’t. It was too bloody dark, and the lights of the house were behind him. I couldn’t see a thing. He knocked me on the head for nothing.’ Harry rubbed his bruises ruefully.
My gaze swung back to the gypsy. ‘But you saw him.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the man who murdered Paul.’
‘Yes.’
I had to ask the question, even though I knew the answer. ‘The same man?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t go to the police?’
He looked at me as though I had two heads. ‘The police? This is not England, Mademoiselle. The police, they will not listen to a man like me. They think I tell the lies. And your cousin, he did not see the man who hit him. So …’ He shrugged, and blew a puff of smoke. ‘We talk, we think, we wait.’
‘You might have come to me,’ I said, a shade reproachfully. I would have known then not to get involved with Neil. I wouldn’t feel this aching emptiness inside me, as though my heart had shrivelled to a useless lump of ice. And Paul … Paul might yet be alive.
‘I tried this,’ was the gypsy’s calm response. ‘Your cousin, he is not so good the first few days – he cannot keep awake. But he keeps saying “the Hotel de France”, and “Emily”, and in his wallet I find this picture.’ He showed me a less-than-flattering snapshot of myself, a few years out of date. ‘And so I go to the Hotel de France. I look for you. On Friday, finally, you arrive, but it is not possible to speak to you. And so I wait until you go to dinner, I telephone to the hotel, I pretend to be your cousin.’
‘Why?’
My cousin answered that. ‘Jean had to think rather fast that day, I’m afraid. He had to come up with a story that would keep you from worrying, without tipping off the murderer. So he left a message that I’d been delayed – brilliant, really, considering he hardly knew me – and then he kept an eye on you, to see that you weren’t harmed.’
The gypsy smiled. ‘We frighten you, Bruno and I, I see this. But it is difficult, you understand. Always the killer he is very close to you.’
‘Yes, I know.’ I looked away more sharply than I meant to. A log fell into the fire with a hiss, and it was an ugly mocking sound, like an old woman’s wheezing laugh in that stale room. My eyes stung and I blinked the wetness back.
‘I see the way you smile at him,’ the gypsy said, ‘and I think no, she will not believe me.’
‘Well, you’re wrong.’ I felt the stubborn lifting of my jaw. ‘And you could have warned me when I first arrived, you know. I hadn’t met him, then.’
The gypsy frowned. ‘But …’
Behind us, on the bed, my cousin shifted. ‘My dear girl,’ he said, quite clearly, ‘of course you’d met him. The bastard dropped you off at your hotel.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
… the gates were closed
At sunset,
‘It didn’t half give me a shock, I can tell you,’ my cousin went on, shaking his head. ‘I mean, of all the bloody people for you to meet, your first day out!’
I slowly turned to stare at him, feeling rather stunned, like a racing driver who’d gone almost round the course at top speed only to slam into a brick wall at the final bend. ‘But it can’t be Armand.’
The two men shared a knowing look. ‘Look, love,’ said Harry, ‘I know you like the man, but—’
‘No, it isn’t that.’ I shook my head, impatient to make him understand. ‘It’s just that I know who killed Paul, you see, and it wasn’t Armand Valcourt. It was Neil.’ There, I thought, I’d said it; I’d finally put a voice to the painful thought. I stilled the treacherous quivering of my mouth, aware both men were staring at me. Couldn’t they see, I thought, how much I wanted to believe …?
My cousin frowned. ‘Who the devil is Neil?’
‘Neil Grantham. He’s a violinist, staying at my hotel.’
‘Ah.’
‘Only he wasn’t playing the violin yesterday, it was a tape, and the opening allegro to Beethoven’s Third is at least fifteen minutes long, so he had heaps of time to run up the steps and push Paul off … I doubt if it takes me more than a couple of minutes myself to climb those steps, and I’m not nearly as fit as Neil.’
‘Ah,’ Harry said again, as if my explanation were perfectly clear. ‘And why would this violinist want to push a Canadian kid off the château steps, pray tell?’
‘Because … because …’ My chin trembled, and I realised the motive was no longer clear, not after what the gypsy Jean had told me.
‘You’re way off beam, love,’ Harry told me, gently. ‘It was Valcourt who did the killing.’
I didn’t take that in, at first – I only felt relief that nearly shook my body in a deep and swelling surge. It wasn’t Neil, my inner voice rejoiced, but I was half afraid to listen to it. I turned to the gypsy. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
He nodded, his black eyes calm and certain. ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ he explained, ‘I am coming down from here to the town, through the souterrains, the tunnels. I stop at the door in the cliff. There is a space between the boards in the door, and so I look, like always, to make sure the way is safe.’ He drew one finger along the line of his eyebrow, frowning. ‘But it is not safe. He is there.’