quadrangle, or the quad as it was known. There was a pond right in the center of it.”
His memory of the moment, the place and time, was acute. He could still see the colonnade that ran below the gymn, the cafeteria on the ground floor, with the science labs and art rooms above it, the classics rooms on the west side, where Latin and Greek were taught. And in the center of the quad, the Hutchiepond, as he came to know it. Two connected oblongs of murky water where lilies grew among the detritus of the playground. A strange feature for a boy’s school, plucked from the mind of some deluded architect.
“They didn’t!” Sophie gasped.
Enzo nodded, and couldn’t resist a smile. “They did. Completely submerged, I was. Soaked and half drowned. And they all ran off, leaving me in the water to be discovered by my new form master who thought I’d got lost. Of course, I was sent home in disgrace. A stupid boy who’d fallen into the pond on his first day at school. It was unheard of.”
He looked up to find Sophie stifling a grin. “Oh, papa. I guess it must have been awful for you at the time. But looking back, you’ve got to admit it was maybe just a little bit funny?”
Enzo grinned, too. “Sure.” But his decades-long feud with his half-brother prevented him, still, from fully appreciating the joke. “I never did snitch on him. So the lie went undiscovered.”
Sophie shook her head. “And that’s why you haven’t spoken to him for thirty years?”
“No.” Enzo stood up and pushed his hands in his pockets again. “We spoke for the last time at your grandfather’s funeral, though the feud between us dated from well before that. And it wasn’t anything to do with that first day at school.”
“What was it, then?”
“Like I said, it’s a long story.”
“I want to hear it.”
“And if I don’t want to tell it?”
“I won’t let you not tell it. You know that. You’ll never hear the end of it until you do.”
Enzo drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, and was saved by a knock at the door. Three soft raps. He froze where he stood, and he and Sophie exchanged panicked glances.
“What’ll we do?” Sophie whispered urgently
Enzo nodded toward the toilet door. “Go into the bathroom and stay out of sight. I’ll see who it is and get rid of them.”
She slipped off the settee and hurried across the room. As soon as she pulled the bathroom door shut behind her he straightened out the cushions where she had been sitting and crossed to the door as the knock came again.
With apprehension beating in his chest, he opened it a few inches to see Guy standing beaming at him from the darkness of the hallway. He had a conspiratorial air about him and was clutching a bottle and two glasses. Enzo let the door fall open a little wider and tried to adopt a casual air of surprise. “Guy?”
“I hope you weren’t in bed.” He glanced up and down then and grinned. “Ah. I see not. I hope you don’t mind me disturbing you like this, Enzo. But this is a mirabelle that I don’t share with just anyone.” He held up the unlabelled bottle. “And I knew you’d want to try it.”
Enzo didn’t see how he could refuse the invitation without seeming churlish, and he needed to keep Guy on- side if he was going to make progress with his investigation. He forced a smile. “Just a quick one, then. I’m pretty tired.” He held the door open to let Guy in, then shut it quickly, remembering the laptop, and moved hurriedly past him to close its lid and hide the screen.
“Doing a bit of homework?”
“Just checking my email and making a few notes.”
“Elisabeth said you were looking at Marc’s old laptop today. Find anything interesting?”
Enzo wondered why he would ask, when Elisabeth would surely have relayed to him the answer he had already given her to the same question. “Not really, no. Just looked back through some of his old emails. I tried to open a couple of files, but they were locked.”
Guy nodded solemnly. “He was very secretive in some ways, Marc. There was a part of him he never let anyone into. Not even Elisabeth. I think he shared more secrets with that damned computer than he did with his family.”
“Well, if he did, he didn’t leave them accessible to anyone else.” All of which was true. Still, Enzo felt he was indulging in a deception and felt uncomfortable with that. He changed the subject. “What’s so special about the mirabelle?”
“It’s made by an old farmer on the far side of the village. Wonderful stuff. You know, the government is taking away the inherited right to distill a certain quantity of your own alcohol each year, so whatever his secret is, it’s going to die with him.” He set the two glasses down on the coffee table and uncorked the bottle. He poured two small measures of the crystal clear liquid, and the perfume of mirabelle plums suffused the air around them. “It’s about eighty percent proof, so go easy. It’s got a helluva kick, but a taste to die for.”
Each raised his glass, they chinked them together, then sipped in silence. The taste of the plums filled Enzo’s mouth, and the alcohol burned all the way down to his stomach. It almost brought tears to his eyes. He blinked several times. “Wow!”
Guy grinned. “Told you it was good.” And he sank down into the settee where Sophie had been sitting only a matter of minutes earlier. “Take the weight off your feet, man.” He nodded toward the armchair opposite. “Elisabeth said you wanted to learn everything you could about Marc.” He chuckled. “And I’ve got a few stories I can tell you.”
Reluctantly, Enzo eased himself down into the armchair. There was going to be no easy escape. And Guy looked as if he was settling himself down for an extended stay.
Sophie had long ago given up hoping that Guy would make an early departure. He had been regaling Enzo for some time now with stories of adventures that he and Marc had shared during their apprenticeship together chez Blanc. She had all but stopped listening, standing with her back to the wall, then slowly sliding down it to squat on the floor counting the minutes till she could get out of here, back to the staff annexe and her bed. She glanced at her watch. It was gone midnight. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply.
“The thing about Marc and Jacques Blanc was that they just didn’t get on,” she heard Guy saying. “Jacques hated Marc, and Marc was terrified of Jacques. Once Marc found his feet in the kitchen he’d become a bit of a smart ass. And Jacques, I think, figured he was trying to peter plus haut que son cul. Accusing the apprentices of trying to fart higher than their asses was his favourite insult.” He chuckled. “The Blanc brothers had complete control over us, you see. You did what they told you, or else. And when you got asked to do something, they would stand over you and watch you do it. And, believe me, with just one of those sets of eagle eyes on you, it was only too damned easy to screw up.”
Enzo nodded. He knew how difficult it was to do anything well under the watchful gaze of a critical eye.
“So there was this one time… Marc was busy charging the firebox with coal. It was right before dinner service, and Jacques suddenly barked at him. He wanted him to add some ingredient to a jus that had been reducing on the grill for over two hours, and he slapped it down on the worktop beside the stove. Marc stood up in a panic and lifted it up. Can’t remember what it was now, but he had the ingredient in one hand, and a scuttle of coal in the other. ‘Well, go on then, kid!’ Jacques shouted at him. And in a moment of total confusion, Marc emptied the scuttleful of coal into the stockpot.”
Guy roared with laughter at the recollection of it. “Well, I don’t think I ever so Jacques Blanc so angry. A two-hour reduction totally ruined. And inexplicably. What on earth possessed Marc to do it, I’ll never know. But in a fit of temper Jacques swept the pot off the stove, and it went everywhere. Damned lucky that nobody got scalded. Anyway, he refused to let anyone clean it up, and it got tramped all over the floor, and dried in on all the work surfaces, and burned on to the stove top. And when the dinner service was finally over, he brought a toothbrush into the kitchen and handed it to Marc. ‘Use that to clean it up, kid,’ he said. ‘Every last drop of it. Even if it takes you all night. And if I find a single trace of it in the morning, you’ll be out of here, sweeping the streets where you belong.’
“Well,” Guy shook his head, “Marc was up all night. And Jacques got himself out of his bed several times to check on him. But in the morning, there wasn’t a damn trace of it anywhere. I really think Jacques was quite disappointed. It would have been his perfect excuse to get rid of Marc once and for all.”
