There was a long silence, during which it was possible to hear her rapid breathing. Then,
Oh, God, Papa, please!
Another silence, then the line went dead, and Jane leaned over to switch off the machine. He noticed how pale she had become.
She said, “You can’t know how it feels to listen to that. And I must have done it a hundred times. Like listening to a ghost. The me I was in a former life, when I still had a husband and a life ahead of me.” She turned toward Enzo. “That was about two minutes after his call to me. For some reason I couldn’t get through again straight away. And then it rang and rang, before the answering machine cut in.” He heard the tremor in her voice as she drew her breath. “You can hear my distress. I’ve always thought I must have been uttering those words at the very time he was being murdered. That perhaps the killer himself heard them, and maybe even wondered what it was that Papa had told me.”
“What exactly did he say in that call, your father-in-law?”
“Just that he couldn’t tell me what was wrong. But that if anything happened to him, Peter was to come here as soon as he returned from Africa. He’d left a message in the study that only Peter would understand. And he said it was ironic that it was Peter who would finish the job. Then he made me promise that if something happened to him before Peter got back, I was to make sure that nothing in the study got disturbed.”
“What did you think when he meant by something happening to him?”
“That he was going to die.”
“He was terminally ill, of course.”
“Lung cancer, yes. I thought his condition must have deteriorated. But then, as things turned out, it wasn’t that at all. He believed that someone was going to kill him. He must have.” Enzo heard the same distress in her voice that he had heard on the phone. “Why didn’t he just tell me? Oh, God, he was so old-fashioned! Some things you could only confide in another man. A woman had her place, and that was in the home. God forbid you should trust her with anything more than a shopping list!”
For the first time, she noticed the walking stick in Enzo’s hands. He was running his palm over the smoothly carved head of the owl that was the handle.
“That was his,” she said. “He must have been carrying it when he was shot. It was found lying beside the body.”
And Enzo felt a sudden, strange connection with the man. In a way, it was as if he had just met him downstairs in his study. Already he had formed an impression of an ordered and obsessive mind. And now, holding his walking stick, it was almost as if he was making physical contact, reaching back through almost two decades to the night his life had been taken, and the curved head of the owl in his hand had been the last thing he touched on this earth.
He laid the walking stick carefully on the bed and stood up. “You know, Jane, even if he had told you that night, there was nothing you could have done about it. You were hundreds of miles away in another country.”
“I might have had some idea of who killed him. Mr. Macleod. I might have been able to put this behind me and move on. As it is, there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. Or a night when I don’t wake up in the small hours and wish to God I was free of it. It’s like he put a curse on me that night, and I can never escape it until the whole damned thing is resolved and his killer caught.” She looked at him, distraught, tears brimming in her eyes. “I can’t go on like this. I just can’t.”
Almost without thinking, Enzo extended an arm and drew her toward him. She offered no resistance, and pressed her face into his chest as he held her, trying to quell the sobs he felt rising from deep inside her. “If it was a message that only Peter could understand,” he said, “then we have to understand why, so that we know how to look at what he’s left us. We’re looking with eyes that aren’t Peter’s. That has to be the key.” And he remembered his words to Raffin in Paris. I hate to be anyone’s last hope. But for Jane, he realised, that is exactly what he was.
Chapter Eight
The Auberge du Pecheur occupied a three-story whitewashed building above the Eco-Museum, on the curve of the hill as it rose steeply up from Port Tudy toward Le Bourg. A hand-written menu chalked on a blackboard leaned against maroon doors in the yellow light of a coach lamp over the entrance. Heads turned curious eyes in the direction of the door as Enzo ushered Jane in ahead of him. A waitress in jeans and a knitted top led them to their table past tables and shelves crowded with island bric-a-brac: ceramic seagulls; pewter pots; an enormous, traditional, Groisillon cafetiere called a grek. Painted boats and seascapes hung on cream walls crowded with brass and glass and uplit by dozens of small table lamps.
Diners occupied several tables in the restaurant, and Enzo doubted if there was a single one of them who didn’t know who they were. With the possible exception of a young couple in hiking boots and heavy sweaters, anoraks over the backs of their chairs, who looked as if they could be late-season tourists on a walking holiday. There was an audible lull in conversation as Enzo and Jane took their seats, and interested ears strained to hear what they might say. Enzo took some satisfaction from the realisation that whatever discernible conversation might ensue between Jane and himself, it would be in English and unlikely to be understood.
“They do wonderful seafood here,” Jane said. “If you’re into that.”
Enzo smiled. “I am.”
The waitress brought a chalkboard menu to their table and sat it up on a chair for them to read. Her eyes lingered for a moment on Enzo, then she smiled. “Nice to see you again, Madame Killian,” she said in French. Jane just smiled and said nothing, and the waitress left them to make their choice.
“The shrimp are always good. And the dorade.”
“Then I’ll have shrimp for an entree, and dorade for my main course.”
Jane grinned. “Now I’ll feel bad if you don’t like them.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll pretend I do, even if I don’t.”
She laughed, and some of the tension seemed to leave her. “Such a gentleman.”
“Shall I choose a wine?”
“Please.”
Enzo cast his eyes over the wine list and picked out a 2005 M e moire Blanc from Chateau Clement Termes. When they had ordered, he rested his chin on interlocked hands and looked appraisingly at Jane Killian. “How come an attractive woman like you never remarried, Jane?”
She seemed to think about it for a long time. Perhaps deciding whether or not to speak the truth, or whether to brush his question aside, some superficial response to satisfy his curiosity. In the end her reply, Enzo was sure, came from the heart. “They say that for every one of us, somewhere in the world, there is the perfect partner. They also say that most people never get to find theirs. I was lucky. When Peter came along, I knew I had met mine.”
“How did you meet?”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything very exciting. We were both at Edinburgh University. Peter was from London. I came from Bristol. Edinburgh wasn’t either of our first choice, but that’s where we both ended up. As if fate had decided it for us.”
“You believe in fate, then?”
She smiled. “No. But sometimes it’s nice to think that something so right has been planned. That we actually do mean something in the great scheme of things.”
The wine arrived, and the waitress filled each of their glasses.
“Peter had always been interested in charity work. He was a great believer in the individual making a difference in the world. I never understood, after all that he saw and experienced, how he ever managed to hold on to that belief. He came back sometimes from his trips, usually to Africa, with stories that reduced him to tears in the telling. He saw awful things, Mr. Macleod. Hunger, disease, war. Terrible suffering on an unimaginable scale. And still he thought he could make a difference. For a few, maybe he did.”
“You were never tempted to join him?”
“I didn’t have his strength. In the face of such suffering, I think you have to remain resolutely dispassionate in
