Score!

purple shagpile, stretched fields of lavender.

Once the maid had disappeared to shop in Montvert, Florence relented and got out the family scrapbooks she’d kept since Tristan was a little boy. It wrung Lucy’s heart to see him always hovering at the edge of family groups, like an outfielder desperate not to miss a smile that miraculously Etienne might one day throw him.

At least the later scrapbooks were crowded with Tristan’s cuttings. Florence had already pasted in the marvellous reviews of The Lily in the Valley, dominated by the luminous beauty of Claudine Lauzerte.

To stop herself falling asleep, Lucy begged to be given a tour of the house. Downstairs big high rooms papered in cranberry reds, Prussian blues and deep snuff browns were the ideal setting for the Impressionist collection, acquired ahead of fashion in the late nineteenth century, and for Etienne’s great powerful oils, but not to lighten the heart of a little boy. Everywhere frayed tapestries of hunting scenes hung above cabinets lovingly painted with fruit, flowers and birds. Leggy gold tables and chairs seemed poised to race through the french windows into a park shimmering with heat-haze. You couldn’t see the mountains for dust.

The great hall housed the family portraits.

‘That was Louis who died at Crecy, and Edouard who was wounded at Agincourt, and there’s Blaize,’ Florence ran her finger inside the frame to test for dust, ‘who died in Spain on a secret mission. He was murdered by the Spanish Inquisition.’

Lucy peered at Blaize in excitement. Handsome, hawk-faced, with dark cynical watchful eyes, he was definitely a Montigny, and one of the reasons Tristan had embarked on Don Carlos.

‘And there’s Henri, painted by David,’ said Florence proudly, ‘Such a great general that Napoleon coaxed him out of exile to fight at Austerlitz and Borodino. The Montignys have always been a great military family.’

Soldier-citizens of the world like Posa, thought Lucy.

‘Tristan’s brother Laurent was brave, wasn’t he?’

‘More hotheaded,’ said Florence, somewhat disapprovingly. ‘A pied-noir builder fell off a ladder here one day. Madame Hortense rang six doctors but none would treat him. Laurent jumped in the Jeep, drove to the nearest, put a shotgun to his temple, and didn’t remove it until he’d come back and set the leg.’

‘How romantic,’ sighed Lucy. ‘No wonder Tristan hero-worships his memory. Why isn’t there a painting of him?’

Florence glanced round nervously.

Laurent’s portrait had hung in the hall, she admitted, smiling a welcome to everyone coming through the front door. But Etienne was so devastated when he was killed, the painting was locked away with everything else in his room.

‘But surely after Etienne’s death…’ protested Lucy.

‘He left instructions in his will that the door was to remain locked.’

‘At least let me look at Tristan’s room.’

‘It was very small.’ Florence looked unhappy. ‘When Tristan went to university Etienne turned it into an en suite bathroom.’

Don’t show your anger, Lucy had to keep telling herself.

‘There should be a portrait of Tristan. He’s the handsomest of the lot,’ she said crossly.

In answer Florence looked up at the gilt Montigny snake chained to the lintel. ‘“Seek not to disturb the serpent,”’ she whispered, her face creasing into a hundred folds of anxiety.

‘I’m only seeking to disturb the wretched thing’, Lucy was nearly in tears, ‘because I want to find out the truth. Tristan was desperate to question Hortense about his parents, but he was too busy with Carlos to fly out, and now it may be too late.’

‘It was a secret, Madame swore to Etienne she would take to the grave.’ Florence glanced up at a gold Empire clock, which featured Neptune brandishing his trident. ‘The nurse will be going in ten minutes. You can sit with her instead of me.’

Aunt Hortense had blurred, weather-beaten features and wild white hair, like a gargoyle caught in a snowstorm. She lay without covers, her long nightgown rucked up to show purple bruised shins and a plaster on every toe. Beside her on the bed were two marmalade cats and a tiny brindled Italian greyhound, which one of her gnarled, ringed, gardening-begrimed hands repeatedly caressed.

Opposite the bed, filling the wall, was a ravishing Rubens of milkmaids tending a herd of paddling red cows and chatting up a swain driving a horse and cart.

‘We hung it there last week,’ whispered Florence. ‘Madame wanted something beautiful to look at.’

To the right hung a small photograph of a young Hortense being handed the Croix de Guerre for her courage during the Resistance. With her boyish brown curls, her deep-set dark eyes and quick smile, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Tristan.

Perhaps? wondered Lucy. But Hortense would have been too old at fifty-five. Could she have had an illegitimate daughter? She must have a story to tell.

In moments of consciousness, Aunt Hortense played la grande dame for all her worth. ‘I wouldn’t dream of discussing family matters with a complete stranger,’ she told Lucy coldly.

‘I just wanted to talk about Tristan.’ Carefully Lucy explained the situation. That Tristan had been arrested for two murders that he hadn’t done.

Hortense, however, was only interested in why he hadn’t come to her party. ‘I broke totally with protocol and put him on my right and had to talk to air all lunch. I suppose his film and Claudine Lauzerte were more important.’

‘He sent you a lovely present,’ said Lucy, recognizing Rozzy’s gift-wrapping on the Louis XV desk. ‘You haven’t even opened it.’

‘Why d’you stick your nose into everything?’ snapped Hortense. ‘Are you a journalist?’

‘Tristan stayed away from your party because he felt a fraud,’ said Lucy desperately. ‘Rannaldini had just told him he wasn’t a Montigny, that Etienne wasn’t his father at all.’

Stammering, Lucy went through all the palaver of Maxim being so jealous of Delphine marrying Etienne that he’d raped her. For a second, Hortense’s eyes opened a centimetre like an old crocodile.

‘Really?’

‘So Tristan’s father was his grandfather, and on his deathbed Etienne kept rambling on about fathers and grandfathers.’

‘We once had a footman called Maxim,’ confided Hortense.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ exploded Lucy.

There was a knock on the door, the nurse was back to give Hortense a shot.

‘Oh, please don’t,’ cried Lucy in despair. ‘She’ll go even more doo-lally.’

‘I will not,’ said Hortense tartly. ‘I’ll have you know, young woman, I’m in considerable pain, and there’s no need to shout.’

Lucy fought sleep. It was still unbearably hot and the scent of jasmine growing up the still warm walls was almost sickly. The melon frames gleamed in the moonlight. She watched the tractors, hung with lamps, going back and forth, labouring to get the harvest in before next week’s forecast storm. The combines roared so loudly it was like working in a munitions factory, grumbled Hortense.

Down in the village they were celebrating Bastille Day. Fireworks rose and fell against a pearly grey night; Lucy could hear the accordion playing ‘La Vie en rose’.

Glancing at Hortense, she noticed tears trickling down her wrinkled cheeks and took her hand.

‘I’m so sorry to hassle you. Could Rannaldini possibly be Tristan’s father?’

‘I wouldn’t put anything past that devil, always hanging round Delphine like a wasp round a melon.’

‘Or Bernard.’

‘Have you seen the ghost of the Montigny snake yet?’ said Hortense, as she drifted off to sleep.

70