“No. I just didn’t realize you were a relative. Madame Martin said only that you come from a village located near Château Clement.”
“It is a small village, you see, so many of us are all related in one fashion or another. The family has been in that area a very long time, and my great-grandfather had ten children with two different wives, so there are many descendants.”
“The village is near Avignon, right?”
“Yes. It is called Saint-Véran, for the man who is said to have slayed a dragon from a nearby well.”
“When was this?”
“Long enough ago for there to have been dragons.”
Cady took another sip, and felt herself relaxing. She wondered if it was the Campari or if Jean-Paul had a way of making her feel at ease. It was... nice.
“I can’t get over you French,” she said, “what with your bread and your aperitifs and your...history.”
Jean-Paul chuckled. “Your people have no history?”
“Oh sure. Just not as much of it, and definitely no dragons. I’m from California, and a lot of our history centers on people stealing other people’s land, and searching for gold or building semiconductors.Whereas here, someone changes a road name four hundred years ago, and it’s still worthy of note.”
“Well, trust me,” Jean-Paul said, “a long memory isn’t always a good thing. I admire the innovation of the Americans.”
“That counts me out. I’m an old-style photographer. The basic technology of cameras and photo development hasn’t changed much over the last century.”
“Ah, yes, back to Yves Clement. What can I tell you about him?”
Cady brought out the sepia photograph of the woman and laid it in front of him. He raised an eyebrow, then leaned forward and picked it up.
“That is Yves Clement’s stamp, certainly,” he said. “Where did you find this?”
“Inside my rabbit.”
“Pardon?”
“My rabbit. Not a real one, of course. A carousel figure. There was a box hidden inside it.”
“A carousel figure? In the United States?”
She nodded. His gaze remained on her for a long moment, puzzled, before turning back to the woman in the photograph.
“This would be an unusual photo for Yves Clement to have taken.”
“Why?”
“It looks rather amateurish, slightly crooked. Also, he rarely took posed portraits—the only ones I’ve seen were of his wife, Josephine, and their son when he was a baby. This is why he is so interesting from a sociological point of view: His photographs focus on nature and architecture, and candid shots of people at work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Châteaux were not just fancy houses. The owners were landholders, with vast orchards and farms. Clement took photographs of people tending the olive orchards, pruning the pear trees, gathering lavender; men with huge baskets on their backs, bringing in the harvest. He alsotook a series of photographs of the artisans who assembled the carousel for Château Clement. He—”
“Wait, there’s acarouselat Château Clement?”
“Yes. I assumed you knew that.”
“How would I know that?”
“Because you just told me you had a carousel figure, and you have a photo of a woman standing in front of a carousel, and because you spoke to Madame Martin about carousels.”
She blinked.
