Till We Meet Again (88 page)

“If I’d had a choice, I’d rather have kept
you
—I have plenty of other brothers. Oh dear, you did make a proper mess of it, the two of you. What a bloody balls-up! Wartime marriages—I wonder if they ever work? I’m so glad I had to
wait.” Jane gave Freddy the self-congratulatory smile of a woman who has made a total success of her life.

“Just imagine, Freddy, I would never have met darling Humphrey, I would never have had my darling children, I would never have been a marchioness, which is simply the most glorious game going, although you may never find anyone honest enough to admit it. The trick is not to worry about death duties. After all, they can’t take it
all
away. Yes, it was a good thing that I wasn’t a war bride too. It all worked out for the best.”

“You never got remotely near being a war bride, Jane, as I remember perfectly well,” Freddy protested, “so how can you sit there being sickeningly pleased with yourself for having escaped a fate that never threatened you?”

“If Jock had asked me, I’d have married him like a shot, and been dragged off to the desert sands of wildest California, just like poor old Tony.”

“Come off it, Jane! You never had a romance with Jock!”

“Don’t rub it in,” Jane said with a touch of caustic asperity. A hint of future stateliness moderated the naughtiness of her brown eyes, but otherwise she was unchanged by her noble marriage.

“What are you talking about?” Freddy said, puzzled. It wasn’t like Jane to have fantasy flings when she’d had so many real ones.

“You never guessed? No, I can see you didn’t. But then I didn’t want you to, or anybody else. It was horrible enough being ridiculously in love with someone who didn’t know I was alive, without being an object of general pity.”

“You were in
love
with Jock Hampton?”

“For years. And you don’t have to sound so incredulous … that’s a reflection on my taste, and my taste is excellent, if you please, Mrs. Longbridge! I was in love with that lovely man longer than I care to think about. I couldn’t get over Jock, not properly, until I met Humphrey. I guess I’ll always be a little in love with that beautiful blond Tarzan.”

“That big
thug?
That over-the-hill cowboy? That derelict fullback, that only marginally intelligent lunkhead?” Freddy asked, bewildered and somehow angry. “No, Jane, say it wasn’t so.”

“Ah, but it was. And
how
it was! I doubt you’ve ever taken a good look at Jock. Never mind—it’s a question of taste. But Freddy, don’t you agree that once you’ve been
truly in love, even when you fall in love with someone else, the first love will always remain alive inside you?” Jane inquired.

“I won’t quarrel with that,” Freddy said, her voice touched by a complicated nostalgia, the bittersweet memories of hours that could never return. “But why didn’t you make a play for Jock … you never even flirted with him … you, the most shameless, infamous flirt in the British Empire? What was stopping you?”

“You,” Jane said.

“Me?” Freddy objected, outraged. “That’s the most unfair thing I’ve ever heard! How could I have stopped you?… 
Why
would I have stopped you, for God’s sake?”

“Not you yourself, silly—I meant that Jock was so entirely, head over heels, hopelessly in love with you that there was no way to even get his attention, much less flirt with him. He used to drag himself around looking at you—or worse, trying
not
to look at you—in a way that told me everything I needed to know. God, it was painful to watch him! Obviously I had to hang on to my pride, since it was all I had left. I found myself in the utterly mortifying position of watching him pining away for you while I pined away for him—and all the while Freddy and Tony, our two happy, self-absorbed young lovers, never even noticed a thing. Ah, love! But, as I said, it all worked out for the best—at least for me. And you know how truly sorry I was—I still am—that it didn’t work out for you and Tony. As for Jock—how is he, anyway?”

“Jock?… Oh, you know Jock, he’s … fine … going strong …”

“Poor Jock, still carrying that huge torch for you … a bit like the Statue of Liberty, isn’t he? Tony told me he’d suspected it for years. But … when someone isn’t one’s type, one can’t force it, can one?”

“Huh?”

“I said … no, never mind. Of course you’re thinking about other things. Shall I make you a drink, poppet?”

“Who?”

“A drink? Do you want one? Freddy? Freddy? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“What?”

“I’ll see to the drinks. You just sit there, it’s been a long day. I’m glad I stayed over … you need someone to take care of you.”

On the afternoon of the day following Paul de Lancel’s funeral, four officers from the headquarters of the Epernay police arrived at Valmont. They asked the housekeeper to tell Madame de Lancel that they were unwilling to disturb her grief, yet they were obliged to investigate an anonymous letter they had received concerning one of her cellars.

“Go on, do your duty,” Lucie had said with authority. “Madame de Lancel will tell you the same thing, but I don’t intend to bother her with nonsense now.”

The policemen left for the cellars, armed with the key and the map showing how to find the secret door to
Le Trésor
, which had been left at their headquarters by an unknown hand earlier in the day. Fifteen minutes later they stood in awe and astonishment as the door to
Le Trésor
swung open on a vast darkness. One of them groped about and found the light switch. The huge space was revealed to them under the brilliant lights, empty except for a body visible on the floor at the far side of the room. They approached it quickly. Even as they walked toward it, three of the four men, who had been in Epernay all through the war, recognized Bruno. Two of them swore softly, but without surprise. As they all stood over the corpse in a moment of hesitation, one of them, the senior officer, bent down to pick up the paper that had been left on Bruno’s chest. He read it silently and passed it to the man standing next to him. Each of the policemen read the note in the same silence, and the three who had known Bruno gazed at each other in immediate understanding.

“What do we do now, Captain?” asked the youngest of the men.

“We bring the body to the château and we report the accident at headquarters, my boy.”

“The
accident
, Captain?”

“You were not here during the war, Henri. Many people had reason to want this man dead. Who could possibly find out now who they were? Or how many of them there were? Who would go to that unnecessary trouble? It could not be done, Henri. It
should
not be done. Take my word for it, Henri, if you wish to learn something useful. This was an accident that was meant to happen.”

“If you say so, Captain.”

“I do, Henri. We all do.”

“I
cannot
possibly understand why the police reported Bruno’s death as a hunting accident,” Freddy said. “I’m still in shock. Didn’t they
have
to know that it was murder—finding him after they got an anonymous tip—what else could it have been? Yet they’re not even going to investigate. I don’t hold any particular grief for Bruno, but what’s going on here? Doesn’t anyone else but me think that it’s simply unbelievable?”

Freddy, Eve, Delphine and Armand had just returned from the hurried formalities of Bruno’s funeral, and were sitting outside on the terrace of Valmont, where the old stones still held the warmth of summer.

“It was neither an accident nor murder,” Eve said, putting her arm around Freddy’s shoulder. “It was an execution.”

“What!
An execution? What does
that
mean? And since when are private executions legal in France? Why aren’t any of you more … I don’t know exactly … more
surprised?
Yes, that’s it! When they brought Bruno’s body to the house, I think I was the only person in the family who was truly stunned. The rest of you seemed to almost accept it—in a way as if you had all … expected something like that to happen. But you
couldn’t
have! What reason would anybody possibly have to imagine that Bruno was going to end up stone cold dead, a day after he left for a walk in the woods?”

“Darling, you’ve seen the monument in the center of Epernay, haven’t you?” Eve asked.

“Yes, but what does that have to do with it?”

“It’s not a tribute to dead soldiers, Freddy, it’s engraved with the names of two hundred and eight men and women of this small region who died in the Resistance, some at the hands of the Gestapo, many in concentration camps. A number of them worked here at Valmont. The police understood that Bruno’s death was connected to those deaths. He was a collaborator.”

“You knew?”
Delphine turned in astonishment, her hands flying to cover her mouth.

“Your father told me, but only me. He never wanted anyone else to know—the disgrace of the family name by his own son—it was to be hidden, even from you. However, we both realized that we knew only a part of the story. Who can tell what evil Bruno did here during the Occupation? He was
alone at Valmont, after your grandfather died, for three dark years. Many people must have had good reason to bring him to justice.”

“But the war’s been over for six years,” Freddy protested.

“It’s easy to see that you’ve never lived in an occupied country, Freddy,” Armand said. “Six years is nothing. If he’d come back here in ten years, twenty years, Bruno’s executioners—whoever they were—would still have been waiting for him. They may even have been the police themselves, or people they knew, relatives or friends. The police have their own reasons not to want to investigate this death.”

“Did you suspect anything, Delphine?” Freddy asked. “You were more or less in touch with Bruno during the war—do you have any idea what this could have been about?”

“No, nothing. Bruno was always … correct … with me,” Delphine answered serenely, taking Armand’s hand. Some things were far, far better buried. General von Stern’s dinner party had never taken place. She had never begged Bruno for help. She had never agreed to put on her diamonds and go to ask a favor of the General at the house on the Rue de Lille. Whatever Bruno had been killed for, she was convinced that he had deserved his fate. No one, not Freddy or her mother, or even Armand himself, could ever fully understand what it had been like under the Occupation. If you were fortunate enough to have survived, it was wiser to forget. Thank heaven for the pragmatic French police.

“Now I truly can’t wait to get away,” Eve cried, a day later, after the notary left, flinging open her arms. “I crave a good dose of California sunshine after all that legal business.”

“I was thinking, Mother—wouldn’t it be great fun to go back by boat?” Freddy suggested. “I’ve never taken a sea voyage since I was a little kid, and the weather is still good. How about it?”

“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard! First of all, you’ve been away from Annie for weeks as it is—much too long—and I’m dying to lay my hands on that delicious child. Second, I can’t imagine anything more depressing than watching the ocean for five days on end, surrounded by strangers. You’d go out of your mind with the slowness of it, Freddy, and it’s the last thing I need.”

“I thought it might be … oh, you know … relaxing, calming, peaceful, luxurious. Sort of a rest cure.”

“It’s boring, it takes forever, and everybody eats too much. It’s sweet of you to even consider it for my sake, darling, but I wouldn’t dream of going any other way than by air. The only question is how soon we can start. I’m practically packed, I’ve had my last conferences with the housekeeper, the gardeners, the head of sales, and the
chef de cave
. I could leave today, much less tomorrow.”

“I’ll phone Paris and book your tickets,” Armand volunteered, and set off in the direction of the phone.

“Swell,” Freddy murmured. “Is he always so helpful, Delphine?”

“We absolutely have to get back to Paris. That might have something to do with it. No matter how difficult it is to get last-minute reservations, I bet he’ll manage to get tickets for tomorrow.”