The interior was of stone and felt as though it had once been part of some monastic foundation, an impression which was reinforced by the thick bare wood of the tables and the heavy wrought-iron chandeliers. But any image of gloomy austerity was quickly dispelled when they opened the menu.
Over a convivial kir royale, they ran through the gastronomic possibilities. They felt the panic of people with only two days to do justice to the entirety of French cuisine. Lunch that day had been a wasted opportunity, a snatched sandwich in transit from the airport. Lunch the next day was doubtful. Gaby had entertained the possibility of taking Grand’mère out somewhere with them, but the old lady’s frailty precluded that. So really they only had the two evening meals for certain, and then they’d be back in England.
With this in mind, neither stinted herself on the ordering. As a starter, Gaby went for the Feuilleté d’Escargots au Beurre Vert Bordelaise, while Jude chose the Terrine de Foie Gras de Canard Röti tout Natural Cuit en Terrine with a Confiture d’Oignon au Vin Vieux. Their main courses were, respectively, Poitrine de Pigeonneau Rôti, les Aiguillettes au Foie Gras, Poêlée de Girolles and Filet d’Agneau Rôti à l’Ail Confit, Mongettes de Vendée Facon Cassoulet. The wine list was familiar territory to Gaby, and she homed in on a white and red Bordeaux from a château Jude had never heard of and would never have found unaided. The choice proved excellent.
Jude had things she wanted to say to Gaby, but not on this gourmet’s hallowed ground. In deference to the fury of the patron when another guest’s mobile phone had trilled, she switched hers off, determining to ring Carole when she got back to her hotel room.
She and Gaby settled down to enjoy the meal, and to talk about any subject in the world that didn’t involve murder.
The telephone rang as Carole was washing-up after her austere boiled-egg supper.
“Hello?”
The male voice at the other end sounded surprised. “Who is this?”
“My name’s Carole Seddon. Who did you want?” The man rang off.
Carole stood for a moment by the phone in the hall. This was very stupid. She was getting paranoid. Just a wrong number. And no, the voice hadn’t sounded like the one she’d heard on Gaby’s mobile outside the Crown and Anchor the previous week.
Still she lingered. Inspector Pollard had given her all his contact numbers. But no, this was no reason to bother him. It was nothing.
Be good to tell Jude about it, though. Jude would advise her whether she should do anything. And Jude might have something to tell about her encounter with Gaby’s Grand’mère. Yes, call Jude, that was the answer.
But the mobile was switched off. Carole was given the option of leaving a message, but she couldn’t think what to say that wouldn’t sound melodramatic or hysterical. And Carole Seddon had always had a great aversion to sounding melodramatic or hysterical.
She replaced the phone and went to wash down the kitchen surfaces. Then she’d have to take Gulliver out to do his business on the bit of rough ground beyond her back garden.
“Gaby,” said Jude, when they reached the landing of their small hotel, “I want to talk.”
The girl looked at her watch. “I was just about to call Steve, but we’re an hour ahead, he’ll be up for a while yet. So, fine.” And she meekly followed Jude through into her bedroom. Her manner suggested that she’d been expecting this, that she’d enjoyed their wonderful meal in the knowledge that it was an oasis in the bleak landscape of reality, and that they could only stay there for a limited time.
She sat on the bed, and looked across as Jude closed the door and lowered herself into a wicker chair.
“What is it then?”
Jude looked her straight in the eyes. “Gaby, how long have you known that Howard Martin was not your father?”
Gaby put her hands to her face, then swept them back and upwards, as though she were wiping it clean. But she wasn’t crying. Her voice was steady as she replied, “I think I’ve always had my suspicions. Particularly growing up with Phil. We were so different physically, apart from anything else. People at school kept saying, ‘I really can’t believe you two are brother and sister.’ And I always said, ‘Well, we are.’ Because then I thought we were.”
“And when did you know for certain that you weren’t?”
“Seven, eight years ago.”
“When Howard had the bowel cancer.”
Gaby nodded. “I was desperately worried about it. You know, cancer. The Big C. I read up quite a lot on the subject, and the evidence was there in black and white. Something called HNPCC, I particularly remember. Stood for Hereditary Non-Polyposis Colonic Cancer. But basically, if there’s a family history of bowel cancer, then the chances of getting it go up by some horrendous percentage.”
“So you told your mother about your anxieties?”
“Yes. And she saw the state I was in, and she knew that she could remove my anxieties instantly. So, rather than let me suffer any more, she swore me to secrecy, and divulged the secret she had kept for more than twenty years.”
“And did the knowledge change your attitude to your father – to Howard, that is?”
“No. In a way, it made sense of a lot of things. He had brought me up like his own, and he loved me – in the rather undemonstrative way he had of loving. In many ways, it was good for me to know. I stopped feeling guilty about the lack of instinctive closeness I felt to Howard – and to Phil, come to that.”
“That, of course, was the other thing that told me you weren’t Howard’s child.”
“What?” asked Gaby.
“It was something Stephen reported to Carole. And then I checked it with you yesterday.”
“Did you? I didn’t realize I was being checked out.” But she didn’t sound too affronted.
“When your father – or rather Howard’s – body was found, there was talk of it needing to be identified by a DNA match.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“And you said that might have been a problem because that night Phil had gone missing. You never even thought that you yourself might be able to supply a sample, because you knew that you and Howard didn’t share any DNA.”
“Ah.” Gaby clapped her hand across her mouth in mock-horror. “What a giveaway. Dear, oh dear. Thank God I’m a theatrical agent, and have no aspirations to be a criminal mastermind. I’d be really crap at that.”
Jude grinned, not so much because the joke was funny, more to put the girl at her ease, before she asked, “Do you know if Howard knew you were not his?”
Gaby screwed up her lips in doubt. “I’ve really no idea. It all goes back such a long way. And the subject wasn’t one that was going to spring up spontaneously in that family set-up. You’ve no idea how uptight my mum can be. It was very rarely that we talked about family matters, and as soon as she’d given me one scrap of information, she’d clam up.
“Still, I have no complaints. Howard Martin was a good man. And, in a way…this sounds an awful thing to say, but it’s true, so I’ll say it.” She looked defiantly at Jude. “The fact that Howard was not my father has made the last few weeks easier, you know, since his death. I mean, I’ve felt shock and all that – and pity for what happened to him – but I haven’t felt as emotionally bereft as I would if he really was my birth father.” She seemed to have shocked herself by what she’d said. “Maybe the impact just hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t know. But, in all the ghastliness that’s been going on for the past few weeks, I haven’t really missed him.”