Before I could even attempt to respond to my cousin’s eager flood of questions, there came a mouse-like tap on my bedroom door, which was just as well because I am not good at fibbing.
‘Ros, I’m terribly sorry but I’m going to have to go. I honestly haven’t got the time to talk now, I’m doing a big dinner this evening and I’ve got to shop and stuff.’ Phone in hand, I got up from the bed to answer the door. The young French girl was standing there, looking nervous. We eyed each other as I indicated I was talking on the phone.
‘Oh, what a pity.’ I could almost hear Ros pouting – an old habit she’d do well to ditch now she’s in the second half of her forties. ‘Just tell me how Carl is, then. Haveyou spoken to him?’
I explained we’d spoken earlier that morning and he was absolutely fine, too; at least that wasn’t a lie. My son was clearly having a whale of a time. ‘I’m going to call him again later. Ros, forgive me, but I’ve got to go now.’
‘Call me later too.’
‘Ros, I’ve got togo.’ At last I managed to end the call and looked again at the French girl hovering in the doorway. Her huge eyes I now saw were brimming with unshed tears.
‘I am very sorry,’ she stuttered. ‘I am very sorry,’ she repeated, but before I could say anything in response, she started to cry in earnest.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ I drew her into the room and sat her down on the bed. Despite my usual strict rule of keeping well out of domestic staff politics, I had half a mind not simply to find out what was going on with the girl but to see whether she could enlighten me as to the missing Mrs Susan Mandeville. The un-lovely Luc clearly had no intention of explaining anything. Besides, if I was going to stick it out at the Villa Matisse, which I had more or less resolved to do if only for now, I felt in need of an ally. Shoving my suitcase to one side, I sat down next to her. At close quarters she looked really very young indeed, this morning touchingly so, with her abundant black curly hair screwed up into two childlike bunches on either side of the crown of her beautifully shaped head.
‘Tell me what’s upset you,’ I said gently. ‘Has someone been horrible to you?’
‘Nooo,’ she wailed through wrenching sobs. ‘It isIwho is ’orrible to you.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ I said briskly.
‘But you not tell Monsieur Luc about the gate and the door I am leaving not closed!’
‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. No, but then it didn’t strike me as a hanging offence.’
She didn’t get this. ‘Comment?’
‘Never mind. Anyway, it wasn’t you who left the door and gate open, it was Tom. I saw him leaving as I was arriving last night.’
At this she abruptly stopped crying and looked wary.
‘Now, stop crying,’ I said, even though she had.
You couldn’t help feeling sorry for the kid, especially as she didn’t seem to possess a handkerchief. I reached round to rummage in my open suitcase in search my box of paper tissues and came up with several pairs of pants. Shoving them aside and drawing the hanky out of my sleeve, which was clean, I passed her that.
‘Come on, dry your tears,’ I adjured, patting her gently.
She scrubbed at her face briefly but got a grip on herself. ‘Your room, he is comfortable?’ she asked, her eyes wide.
I looked about me. ‘It’s fine.’
Well, it wasn’t the Ritz but perfectly serviceable if small and dull. The Mandeville family evidently did not believe in squandering their squillions or their design acumen on the servants’ quarters. There was everything you needed; double bed, wardrobe, chest of drawers, dressing table with mirror and so on, just all with that haphazard, unmatched look of having been jettisoned at odd times from other rooms or houses when no longerin vogue. During a private little snoop around when I’d got up that morning, I’d observed I seemed to be in some kind of modern extension tacked on to the back of the house, solely, it was clear, for the accommodation of domestic staff. There was a narrow connecting corridor leading in from the kitchen to the back entrance with three doors opening on the right hand side. One of these was my room, the other I assumed the French girl’s, with a bathroom sandwiched in between them. Nevertheless, my only real criticism of the room that I’d been allocated was that it was rather dark. But this was on account of the high hedge just a metre or so beyond the window, a hedge presumably planted to screen the traumatic sight ofles domestiquesfrom any of thebeau mondewho happened to be frolicking in the garden.
‘Tell you what,’ I said to Nicole. ‘How about you get yourself ready and we go out, get ourselves a cup of coffee somewhere nice and then do the shopping together?’
‘Ah, non, non.’ She immediately raised both her hands, palms towards me as if to ward off such a shocking suggestion. ‘Monsieur Luc does not like I go out.’
Bugger him, I thought. But it was perturbing.
‘If you’ll excuse me saying this,’ I remarked after a short pause during which she avoided my eyes. ‘But you’re very young to be working. Shouldn’t you still be at school?’
She drew herself up in that vulnerable way teenagers do when they’re trying to be grown-up and stand on their dignity. ‘I am seventeen. I am also studying the English.’
‘Good for you,’ I said encouragingly, thinking good luck to her more like, if you took literally what she had justsaid. Getting to my feet, I turned away to find my handbag to get my notebook and a biro to make a shopping list. ‘Is this a sort of holiday job, then?’
No reply. I turned back. But she had gone. Bemused, I went to the open door. No sign of her. She had vanished, vanished as silently and mysteriously as if she had never been. Flummoxed, I was peering both ways along the corridor when the door leading to the back garden suddenly burst open and Billy the gardener and Tom whatever-he-was came tramping in. Billy passed by without stopping on his way back towards the kitchen but with a friendly grin at me. He was now wearing a back to front baseball cap with bits of black hair sticking out from under it, which made him look as if there was a cat on his head that had been run over. Tom, however, came to halt, clicking his heels and treating me to a sort of mock salute. He was about to drive down into town, he said, and would I like a lift?
I didn’t see how I could refuse.
