Score!

In answer Florence looked up at the gilt Montigny snake chained to the lintel. ‘“Seek not to disturb the serpent,”’ she whispered, her face creasing into a hundred folds of anxiety.

‘I’m only seeking to disturb the wretched thing’, Lucy was nearly in tears, ‘because I want to find out the truth. Tristan was desperate to question Hortense about his parents, but he was too busy with Carlos to fly out, and now it may be too late.’

‘It was a secret, Madame swore to Étienne she would take to the grave.’ Florence glanced up at a gold Empire clock, which featured Neptune brandishing his trident. ‘The nurse will be going in ten minutes. You can sit with her instead of me.’

Aunt Hortense had blurred, weather-beaten features and wild white hair, like a gargoyle caught in a snowstorm. She lay without covers, her long nightgown rucked up to show purple bruised shins and a plaster on every toe. Beside her on the bed were two marmalade cats and a tiny brindled Italian greyhound, which one of her gnarled, ringed, gardening-begrimed hands repeatedly caressed.

Opposite the bed, filling the wall, was a ravishing Rubens of milkmaids tending a herd of paddling red cows and chatting up a swain driving a horse and cart.

‘We hung it there last week,’ whispered Florence. ‘Madame wanted something beautiful to look at.’

To the right hung a small photograph of a young Hortense being handed the Croix de Guerre for her courage during the Resistance. With her boyish brown curls, her deep-set dark eyes and quick smile, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Tristan.

Perhaps? wondered Lucy. But Hortense would have been too old at fifty-five. Could she have had an illegitimate daughter? She must have a story to tell.

In moments of consciousness, Aunt Hortense played la grande dame for all her worth. ‘I wouldn’t dream of discussing family matters with a complete stranger,’ she told Lucy coldly.

‘I just wanted to talk about Tristan.’ Carefully Lucy explained the situation. That Tristan had been arrested for two murders that he hadn’t done.

Hortense, however, was only interested in why he hadn’t come to her party. ‘I broke totally with protocol and put him on my right and had to talk to air all lunch. I suppose his film and Claudine Lauzerte were more important.’

‘He sent you a lovely present,’ said Lucy, recognizing Rozzy’s gift-wrapping on the Louis XV desk. ‘You haven’t even opened it.’

‘Why d’you stick your nose into everything?’ snapped Hortense. ‘Are you a journalist?’

‘Tristan stayed away from your party because he felt a fraud,’ said Lucy desperately. ‘Rannaldini had just told him he wasn’t a Montigny, that Étienne wasn’t his father at all.’

Stammering, Lucy went through all the palaver of Maxim being so jealous of Delphine marrying Étienne that he’d raped her. For a second, Hortense’s eyes opened a centimetre like an old crocodile.

‘Really?’

‘So Tristan’s father was his grandfather, and on his deathbed Étienne kept rambling on about fathers and grandfathers.’

‘We once had a footman called Maxim,’ confided Hortense.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ exploded Lucy.

There was a knock on the door, the nurse was back to give Hortense a shot.

‘Oh, please don’t,’ cried Lucy in despair. ‘She’ll go even more doo-lally.’

‘I will not,’ said Hortense tartly. ‘I’ll have you know, young woman, I’m in considerable pain, and there’s no need to shout.’

Lucy fought sleep. It was still unbearably hot and the scent of jasmine growing up the still warm walls was almost sickly. The melon frames gleamed in the moonlight. She watched the tractors, hung with lamps, going back and forth, labouring to get the harvest in before next week’s forecast storm. The combines roared so loudly it was like working in a munitions factory, grumbled Hortense.

Down in the village they were celebrating Bastille Day. Fireworks rose and fell against a pearly grey night; Lucy could hear the accordion playing ‘La Vie en rose’.

Glancing at Hortense, she noticed tears trickling down her wrinkled cheeks and took her hand.

‘I’m so sorry to hassle you. Could Rannaldini possibly be Tristan’s father?’

‘I wouldn’t put anything past that devil, always hanging round Delphine like a wasp round a melon.’

‘Or Bernard.’

‘Have you seen the ghost of the Montigny snake yet?’ said Hortense, as she drifted off to sleep.

70

‘At last I’ve found someone I can charm,’ announced Rupert.

The proprietor of La Reconnaissance had sloped off to a Bastille Day party, but his busty, henna-haired wife had taken one look at Monsieur Campbell-Black, personally cooked him and Wolfie foie-gras pancakes and miraculous coq au vin and unearthed several bottles of the best claret Rupert had ever tasted.