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“I think she has company already, that’s all.”
There was no one with her at that moment, but it was obvious from the glasses on the table that she hadn’t been drinking alone. Her glass held red wine, but whoever had been with her had been drinking Pernod. Martine hesitated for a moment, only a moment, then shook her head. “No, it is all right. Please,” she moved her hand, inviting us to sit down.
I took the chair facing the fountain, where I could watch the spring-fed water tumble gently past the bowing Graces like a jeweled transparent veil. Across the table from me Martine Muret smiled pleasantly, expectantly.
“So, what did Armand show you?”
Simon summarized our tour. He didn’t mention anything about the tunnel, though, which surprised me, until I remembered that Paul had termed his brother “paranoid.” Perhaps, I reasoned, Simon was afraid to talk about the treasure in case someone else started looking for it. When he came to the end of his animated account, he leaned back in his chair and raked the hair back from his forehead. “But I could really use a coffee,” he concluded. “He gave us these huge glasses to taste with. I always thought wine-tasting meant an inch of wine in the bottom of the glass. Who knew?”
Martine’s laugh was a tinkling echo of the fountain spilling down behind her. “So Armand has made you drunk, today?”
“Well, he certainly tried to,” said Paul. “But I’ve still got room for a beer. Emily?”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to buy me a drink, it’s quite all right.” But Paul insisted, and he would have kept right on insisting if I hadn’t finally given in and opted for my favorite drink of white wine and blackcurrant cordial. “I’ll have a kir, then, please.”
My own wine-tasting flush seemed to have worn off, but Thierry, when he came over to take our order, wasn’t altogether convinced. He sent me a piercing, faintly paternal look. “You have eaten lunch, Mademoiselle?” he asked me.
“Well, not exactly.”
He shook his head, disapproving. “No food at all?”
“Well, no, but—”
“It is not good,” he chastised me, “to drink the wine without food first.” But he brought me my kir in the end, along with a small dish of peanuts that he’d smuggled from behind the bar. “These are for you,” he said, setting the dish down in front of me. “Do not let Simon steal them.”
Simon sent him a wounded look. “You never bring me peanuts,” he complained.
“This is true,” agreed Thierry, without apology. “Is there anything else your table is missing? No? Then I leave you to enjoy. I have promised to Monsieur Grantham that I will find for him my little stereo so he can listen to his tapes.”
Martine frowned. “Did he not have a stereo already?”
“My big one, yes,” said Thierry with a wistful nod. “But this morning, it has broken, and so…” His shrug was resigned. “He is lucky it is only the machine that breaks, and not his violin. I warned him of this yesterday.”
When I asked him what he meant by that, he shrugged again and grinned. “Only that he plays every day his… how do you say it in English… les gammes?”
“Scales,” said Paul and I, in unison.
“Yes, his scales, and then the symphony by Beethoven. But yesterday,” he shook his head, “yesterday, he also plays the song of love, and Isabelle, she does not like to hear such songs.”
I heard the sharp clattering of a glass against the tabletop. Across from me, Martine Muret quickly righted her wine glass and reached for a paper napkin to mop up the small spill. “How stupid of me! No, it is all right, it is nothing…”
His offer of help refused, Simon took advantage of the moment of confusion to sneak a handful of peanuts from the dish in front of me. “Queen Isabelle, you mean?” he asked Thierry, showing off his knowledge, but the bartender shook his head emphatically.
“She is no queen, this Isabelle. She is our fantôme.” He cast his eyes upwards, searching for the English word. “Our ghost.”
“No kidding?”
“I do not kid,” he said to Simon, stiffly. “She lived here, in the last war.”
Definitely not Isabelle of Angoulême, I thought. Not King John’s young and tragic queen, but someone else, some later Isabelle, who couldn’t bear to hear Neil play a love song. I felt a sharper twinge of curiosity. “Have you ever seen her, this ghost?”
“Of course he hasn’t,” said Simon, mumbling through his mouthful of peanuts. “There are no ghosts.”
“Ah,” said Thierry, “are there not?” He slanted a superior eye down on this upstart skeptic from the New World. “Then it will not upset you to know that you sleep each night in the room where Isabelle died.”
***
“Isabelle.” Madame Chamond curled herself gracefully onto the seat opposite me and tilted her head to one side, smiling faintly. She was a lovely woman, tall and dark and elegant, with all her husband’s grace and charm and then some. “But this is such a sad story to tell, Simon, and I do not wish to spoil the evening for everyone.”
