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Jim smiled. “That’s true.”
“Although,” Neil qualified, “if you want to be technical, that was Emily’s doing.”
“Me?” I did look at him that time, eyes widening. “What on earth did I have to do with it?”
“Well, you took off like a rabbit when you saw me coming, and no one knew where you had gone. Poor Thierry was beside himself.”
Thierry looked up suspiciously from his post behind the bar. “Comment?”
“You were concerned.”
“Ah. Yes, I showed to Monsieur Neil the photograph, a photograph of him, I was thinking, and he asks me where it came from, and I told him—”
“So I rang up François,” Neil went on, recapturing his narrative. “I thought you might have gone up there, to have a word with him, but of course he hadn’t seen you.”
“And then I am worried,” François said in turn. “Because I’m told that you were most upset, and so I called someone to come and stay with Lucie, and I came down here.”
“Where he met me,” said Jim. “So you see, Emily, it really was your doing.”
And the rest, I knew, had happened pretty much as I had thought it would. Danielle and Harry, on arriving at the meeting place to find I wasn’t there, had marched posthaste to the police station where, from all accounts, my cousin had stirred up a minor riot. The police in turn had telephoned the hotel to check my whereabouts. Naturally, that only raised the level of confusion as, with torches waving, everyone had formed a siege force the like of which had not been seen in Chinon since medieval times.
In all, I’d heard, some fifteen people had swarmed up the château steps to rescue me. Odd, I thought—I’d noticed only one.
Monsieur Chamond poured out the last of the Calvados and clucked his tongue regretfully. “Another bottle gone,” he said. “Thierry, would you mind…?”
“Not at all.” Thierry could hold his liquor rather better than the rest of us, I thought. He walked with little effort to the door behind the bar, then swore with feeling as he bumped against some unseen object in his path.
“Be careful,” Christian warned him, craning forward, “that is fragile.”
“So is my foot. You should give it to her…”
“Now is not a good time, I am thinking.”
I caught the furtive sideways glance and sensed they were discussing me again. “What should Christian give me, Thierry?”
For an answer Thierry hoisted up a flat brown paper parcel, two feet square. “This.”
A painting, I thought. It could only be a painting. And I knew which one it was before the paper fell away beneath my clumsy hands. Christian watched my face, uncertain. Everyone, it seemed, was watching me. My fingers hardly shook as I pushed back the torn paper so that nothing obscured my full view of the lovely painting. Painting number 88, the river steps, with Rabelais a sleeping shadow in the background.
Christian cleared his throat. “Martine, she told me that you liked that one, so I thought…” He knew why I liked it, too—his smile showed me that. It was a tight smile, almost forced. And then he put it into words. “I should have painted Paul there, yes? On the steps.”
I shook my head, and touched the fifth step lovingly. “No need,” I told him, honestly. “He’s there already.”
Harry was the only one who didn’t fully understand. He frowned and looked across at me. I’ll tell you later, my eyes promised him, only please don’t ask me now. Still frowning, he reached out a hand. “Can I see it?”
“God, it’s brilliant, Chris,” Neil breathed, looking over Harry’s shoulder. “That river really moves.”
Jim Whitaker leaned forward, too, to look. “It’s too bad,” he said finally, “that Didier Muret was never told what really happened to the diamonds. Think of all the trouble that it might have saved.”
François looked shocked. “You cannot mean that.”
“Sure. If he had known she threw them in the river, he’d have never tried to find them, would he?”
“The river?” François raised his eyebrows. “Who told you Isabelle did this?”
Jim faltered, thinking back. “Well, she did. At least, she told my father…”
“What did she tell him, exactly?”
