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“Feel better now?”
I pressed my fingers to my forehead and nodded, refusing the gypsy’s offer of a stout brandy and water. Harry settled back against his pillows with the air of a penitent. “I didn’t think…”
“You never do.”
“Well, how was I to know you’d go all weak-kneed on me? You’re not the swooning type, my love.”
“Yes,
well,” I pushed my hand through my hair with a tired sigh. No point in telling Harry I’d been fasting, either, I decided. He’d only try to feed me something. Instead I opted for a general explanation. “It’s been a devil of a week.”
“My fault, I expect.”
“Mostly.” I looked at him. “Harry, what on earth—”
“I can explain,” he promised, cutting me off with an upraised hand. “I suppose it’s easiest to start at the beginning, when I arrived in Chinon.”
“Last Wednesday morning, was it?”
He gave me a curious look. “Yes. I drove up overnight from Bordeaux, and got here shortly after breakfast. Rather proud of myself, I was, arriving two whole days before you.”
“But you didn’t go to the hotel.”
“Well, no.” His tone implied it was an odd suggestion. “It’s not as if I was expected, after all. Our reservations didn’t start till Friday. And one doesn’t usually check into hotels at breakfast time, Emily love. Not when the tourist season’s over with, and rooms are easy to come by. I figured there was no real hurry, so I parked the car and went to find this chap who’d written to me.”
“Didier Muret.”
“That’s right. How did you…?”
“Just go on. I presume you found him?”
“Yes. He wasn’t at home, but his neighbor said I should look down by the river. Said he’d gone out with his niece to—”
“Feed the ducks,” I finished calmly.
“Yes.” He sent me a faintly irritated, sideways glance before continuing. “Anyhow, I found him, but it didn’t take me long to figure out he’d got it all wrong, somehow. He didn’t read English, you see, he’d only seen the journal article in someone else’s house, and read the title: Isabelle’s Lost Treasure—I guess one could translate that easily enough—and so he’d written to me. Only it wasn’t Isabelle of Angoulême he was interested in, it was—”
“—another Isabelle. I know.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed on my face. “Perhaps you’d like to tell the story.”
The gypsy laughed, a soft laugh, at my shoulder, and hitched a second chair up to the bedside next to mine. “I told you,” he said, “she has been well occupied, this past week. She might have found you on her own, without my help.”
“No doubt.” My cousin’s voice was dry.
“I only know,” I said in self-defense, “that Didier Muret was after diamonds. A stash of diamonds, hidden at the end of the last war by a girl named Isabelle. I’d assumed he found what he was looking for, only…” I paused, frowning. “Only if he had, he wouldn’t have needed you.”
“Well, I can’t have been much use to him, as it was,” Harry confessed. “He kept asking me about the tunnels under the Clos des Cloches, and I hadn’t a clue. He’d said, in his letter, that he had information to give to me, but it certainly felt the other way around. Still, I felt bad about it—not being able to help him, I mean. I even rang your father, from a public call box.”
“But he wasn’t home.”
“How the devil do you know that?”
“He rang back, wanting to know why you called. I confess, I was rather curious myself.”
“Well, no great mystery. Your father’s got a network strung through Europe that would put our Secret Service men to shame, you know. I thought he might know someone who knew someone who could be of some assistance to this Didier fellow.”
“But you left the hotel’s number on Daddy’s answering machine.”
