brother and sister. Except that she’s a lot more aloof. Treats the staff like the staff. Likes to be called patronne, or Madame Fraysse. Guy is happy for everyone to call him Guy. Which everyone does. Except for Patrick, of course. He’s been with the family for years. Ve-ery old fashioned. But nice.” She took another sip from her glass. “Apparently Marc had everyone just call him Marc, even the stagiaires. Which is unheard of. The chef is always called chef.”
“And Georges?”
“Oh, he’s chef. No doubt about that. You wouldn’t last long if you called him Georges.”
Enzo regarded his daughter thoughtfully as she drained her glass. “So what is it you haven’t told me yet?”
Sophie pouted. “Oh, papa, you’re no fun. How did you know?”
Enzo laughed. “Sophie, you’re like an open book.”
She frowned. “If I was, I wouldn’t have been able to work undercover here for four weeks without anyone knowing.”
Enzo smiled indulgently. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He gazed at her fondly. So much of her mother in her. The mother he had only really got to know vicariously in the bringing up of her daughter. “So what is your little secret?”
“A pretty open secret really.” But she grinned conspiratorially, leaning forward slightly, as if they might be overheard. “Georges’ wife, Anne, works as a receptionist at the hotel. You probably met her when you checked in.”
Enzo recalled the slim, handsome woman behind the reception desk. A woman in her forties, he would have guessed. Auburn hair drawn severely back from a pale face, strong features enhanced by the merest touch of make-up. Her smile had been warm enough. But he remembered, too, the momentary shadow which had dulled it when she realized who he was. “Anne.” He repeated her name, as if trying it out for size. But, in truth, it was the technique he employed for defeating his poor memory for names. Once repeated, forever remembered.
“Everyone who was here at the time reckons Anne Crozes and Marc Fraysse were having an affair.” Sophie sat back in the settee, pleased with herself. “Which, if you were looking for motive, would provide plenty for either Georges or Elisabeth.”
Sophie stayed another half hour, drinking more of his wine, regaling him with tales of her four weeks in the kitchen, demanding news of Cahors, wanting to know if he had seen Bertrand. But his mind was only half with her. If it were true that Anne Crozes and Marc Fraysse had been having an affair, then it would be reasonable to assume that if everyone else knew about it, then both Elisabeth and Georges must have suspected it, too. But while motive was significant, Enzo was always careful not to attach too much importance to it. Real, hard, forensic evidence was much more compelling, and often led in a direction that belied motive. Moreover, it was equally true that while everyone around you knew that your spouse was cheating, you were very often the last person to know it yourself. And, even then, the last one to admit it. Lending veracity to the old adage that there are none so blind as those who will not see. Still, it was food for thought.
Sophie was suddenly on her feet. “I’d better go.”
Enzo followed her to the door, where she stopped, turning to look at him earnestly. “Have you seen Charlotte?”
“Out of bounds, Sophie.”
“Oh, papa…”
“Goodnight.” He opened the door and pushed her gently out into the darkness of the hallway. She hesitated a moment before turning back to kiss him lightly on the cheek. “You can’t just accept it. You’ve got rights. And he’s my blood, too.”
But she was away before he could respond, and he saw her hurrying off along the carpeted passageway to be absorbed by the dark, his mind a complex confusion of thoughts he had successfully been keeping at bay. Until now.
As he turned to go back into his room, the merest hint of a movement at the opposite end of the hall flickered in his peripheral vision. He stood stock still, heart thumping, and peered into the darkness, eyes growing accustomed to the lack of light as he did. But there was nothing. No movement. No sound. After several long moments, he began to doubt that he had seen anything at all. He returned to his room and shut the door firmly behind him.
Chapter Six
Sunlight flitted about the vast landscape spread below them as clouds scudded across a sky torn and broken by a cold north-west wind. The rain and low-hanging cloud of the day before was gone, and from their table in the south conservatory dining room, the view was breathtaking, as if seen from some hidden vantage point in the sky itself.
“Saint-Pierre,” Elisabeth said, “is the closest you can get to heaven without passing through the gates.” She smiled. “So they say.”
“It’s aptly named, then,” Enzo said. “If this is, indeed, where St. Peter resides, then we must be at the very gates themselves.”
Elisabeth tilted her head and broke off a piece of croissant with long, elegant fingers. “Marc would certainly have had you believe that. He loved this place, you know. He had our bedroom fashioned from the room which had once been his parents’. He was born in that room. And his children were conceived there, too.” The brightness in her eyes clouded a little. “He might well have died there, had he lived.” And then her face broke into an unexpected smile. “If that doesn’t sound a little too… Irish, you would say, yes?”
Enzo grinned. “Yes.” He dipped his croissant into his grande creme and had raised it halfway, dripping, to his mouth, before realising that Elisabeth was watching him. Perhaps, he thought, his predilection for dipping croissants in his coffee was not quite de rigeur in a three-star restaurant. But it was too late now, and his momentary pause had allowed the coffee to soften the soaked segment of croissant to the point where it broke off and fell back into his coffee cup, splashing and staining the pristine white linen around it.
He felt his face reddening. “Excuse me.” He dabbed at the tablecloth with his napkin.
He wondered if her smile was just a little patronising. “Don’t worry, Monsieur Macleod, Marc would have approved. He loved to tremper his croissants.” It almost seemed like a way of affirming her husband’s humble origins while placing herself on a slightly higher plane.
A young female server approached the table with a replenished pichet of freshly squeezed orange juice. She hovered it over Elisabeth’s glass. “Madame Fraysse?” But la patronne simply dismissed her with a wave of the hand, and the server immediately shrank away to present herself at Enzo’s side of the table. “Monsieur?”
Enzo gave her a friendly smile. “No thank you.”
The girl bowed and moved discreetly away. Enzo glanced at Elisabeth, but the widow was now gazing from the window at the view below, lost in some distant thought.
He said, “In everything I have read about your husband, the speculation about Michelin being poised to remove one of his stars is ever-present. Did Marc really believe that was about to happen?”
She turned a weary expression toward him. It was a subject which had almost certainly worn thin. “I don’t know that he believed it. But he was certainly afraid of it.” She sipped at her steaming herbal tisane. “It is the nightmare of every three-star chef. The achieving of each star is a long hard road of blood, sweat, and frustration, Monsieur. Of terrible uncertainty in an uncertain world. Each star won is a cause for celebration. When you have one you want two. When you have two, you want three. But when you have three, there is nowhere to go but down. It was Marc’s constant dread that he would lose a star. It drove everything he did, almost to the point of obsession.”
“But where did the speculation come from? Michelin?”
“Oh, no. Michelin would never be so indiscreet. It originated entirely in the media.”
“Something must have given rise to it.”
She sighed. “It was all sparked, seemingly, by a single, malicious article published by one particular Parisian
