reminded her of Tristan’s eyes, when a bell jangled in the kitchen.
‘I’m plunged in pitch darkness, I don’t know if I’m alive or dead,’ said a querulous voice over the intercom. ‘Will someone immediately bring me a cup of tea?’
‘Let me take it,’ Lucy begged Florence.
‘Haven’t you gone?’ snapped Hortense, as Lucy opened the shutters.
‘Not yet. I haven’t got what I came for.’
‘I suppose you’re in love with my nephew like the rest of them. You’re certainly no oil painting.’
‘Just as well, judging by some of the oils downstairs,’ said Lucy. ‘I’d hate to be as fat as the Rubens nude or as bloated as that Francis Bacon cardinal.’
Aunt Hortense gave a snort of laughter.
‘Does Tristan love you?’
‘No, a great friend of mine, a most beautiful girl.’
‘
‘Very, and she adores him.’
‘Married, I suppose.’
‘Not acutely. She’s got a horrid husband and Rannaldini told Tristan he couldn’t marry her because he wasn’t a Montigny, and because of his bad blood because Maxim had raped his mother.’
Carefully, laboriously, Lucy went though the whole story until Hortense said sharply, ‘You told me all that last night.’
Lucy raised her eyes to heaven.
‘But you haven’t told me whether it’s true.’
‘I swore to my brother Etienne never to discuss the matter.’
‘But it’s so unfair to Tristan.’
‘Life has always been unfair to Tristan. He was such a sweet little boy — I was far too strict with him. I didn’t want him to grow into a cissy. I knew women, and possibly men, would spoil him later.’
There was a patter of feet as the little Italian greyhound scampered in, leapt on to the bed and covered his mistress’s grey, wrinkled face with kisses.
‘Still they love you. I’ve spoilt my animals so dreadfully. What will become of them when I’m gone?’
‘Tristan would look after them if you got him out of prison. Who is Tristan’s father? If it wasn’t Rannaldini could it be Oscar, or even Bernard Guerin? He and Tristan are incredibly close.’
‘It’s a secret I’ll take to my grave.’
‘You’re not going to your grave. Let me wash your hair.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I’m a hairdresser!’
‘And you have designs on my nephew!’
‘Don’t treat my head as though it was a glass bauble,’ snapped Hortense, a quarter of an hour later. ‘Give it a good hard rub.’
Despite pointing out that the fluffy fringe over her forehead was very common, Hortense was grudgingly delighted with the result, even making Lucy hold up the mirror at the back where a pink bald patch had been covered over. Afterwards she let Lucy make her up.
‘They’ll be doing that to me in my coffin very soon,’ she added.
‘Don’t be so macabre. Do you want me to come back and do it for you then?’
‘Not if you make me wear that lipstick. I look like a Jewess.’
Lucy giggled.
As soon as Florence had gone off to church, Hortense decided she’d like to give her make-over an outing and announced she wanted to pay a visit to her brother’s grave.
‘It’s horrendously hot.’
‘A good dress rehearsal for hell fires.’
‘And I don’t think you’re well enough.’
‘I’m the best judge of that.’
Everywhere outside was evidence that Hortense had lost her grip on the place. A jungle of plants, their huge leaves pressing against the glass, was struggling to get out of the conservatory. Ivy throttled the shutters. An emerald carpet of algae covered the moat. Grass had grown over the stepping-stones of the path leading to the fields of lavender.
But if Etienne had painted with a palette, and Tristan with light, Hortense had created as dazzling effects with plants. As Lucy wheeled her down the garden, she pointed out some pale yellow hollyhocks with pink centres.
‘Those came from Monet’s garden at Giverny.’
Like a brass section about to explode, to the right was a proud clump of Regale lilies.
‘Pick them for my brother,’ ordered Hortense.
Rozzy would do her nut, thought Lucy, as she laid the lilies across Hortense’s knees.
‘What a pity we couldn’t have used this for Charles V’s tomb.’ She sighed as they approached a splendid mausoleum.
‘“Etienne Alexandre Henri Blaize de Montigny, 1905–1995, painter,”’ she read out in a shaky voice.
Although Etienne had died eight months ago, there were as many flowers outside the tomb as at Valhalla. Pilgrims, acolytes, students and admirers came from all over the world and, denied access to the chateau, paid homage at the grave.
‘Now leave me,’ said Hortense. ‘I’ll call you when I want to go back.’
The noonday sun was punishing. Beads of sweat were breaking through Hortense’s make-up, red lipstick was escaping down the lines round her mouth as Lucy wheeled her back.
‘Those lilies were struck down in their prime, like Laurent,’ reproved Lucy. ‘Why didn’t they fly his body back and bury him here?’
‘Because he was blown up,’ said Aunt Hortense tartly.
‘By his own side, Tristan told me,’ persisted Lucy. ‘Why didn’t Etienne insist on an inquiry? He had the clout.’
‘Would that have brought Laurent back?’
As Lucy eased Hortense back into bed, her flesh felt as soft as marshmallow.
‘Was Etienne buried or cremated?’ she asked.
‘Buried, of course.’
‘Great,’ crowed Lucy. ‘That means his body can be dug up and DNA-tested to see whether he’s Tristan’s father or not.’
‘How dare you suggest that, you conniving hussy?’ gasped Hortense hoarsely. ‘Coming in here, stirring up trouble.’ Then, after an eternal silence, she seemed to cave in. ‘All right, Etienne wasn’t his father. Now are you satisfied?’
‘No,’ stormed Lucy. ‘I’m not leaving till I know who it was.’
But Hortense, whether deliberately or not, had fallen asleep.
After that Lucy lost any sense of time. As night fell and lightning flickered round the hills illuminating the clouds, she made one last attempt.
‘Please, please, Tristan can’t marry and have children if he believes a psychopath rapist was his father. He needs a family of his own so badly to give him the love none of you provided. All he ever did was try to please Etienne.’
The clock ticked, the cicadas chirped, Lucy longed to pick up La Grande Mademoiselle’s velvet-handled musket, which Hortense kept always by her bedside, and empty it into her.
‘I have nothing to say.’
But as the nurse frogmarched Lucy out, Hortense called after her, ‘Goodbye, Miss Latimer. Don’t forget to put your name and address in the visitors’ book.’
‘I bloody well won’t,’ shouted Lucy. ‘What d’you want me to say — that you’re a stubborn old bitch who, through your pigheadedness, sent Tristan to prison for life?’
She wept all the way back to the hotel. ‘I handled her all wrong,’ she told the chauffeur. ‘If, by any chance,
